Vicky Kaushal and Katrina Kaif are expected to exchange wedding vows next month in Rajasthan. While the alleged couple hasn't yet made any official announcement, they are reportedly busy in their marriage preparations. Vicky and Katrina will be tying the knot at a fort resort in Rajasthan and the latest reports suggest that they have issued a diktat for guests attending the ceremony.

Following the footsteps of Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone, Vicky and Katrina too will not allow guests to carry their mobile phones during the wedding due to privacy purposes. The ceremony will be a family affair and only a few names from the film industry will be among the guests.

Speaking about the ban on mobile phones, an insider told India Today that the soon-to-be-married couple will be imposing a no-mobile policy for guests attending their wedding ceremony. They have asked the event management agency to make sure that no videos or pictures make it to the internet from their marriage without their knowledge.

The insider said, "This is a big day for both of them, so its obvious that they are going all-out to ensure that there is no situation where photos and videos are being leaked on social media without them knowing. Katrina and Vicky are hands-on with the wedding prep and there is an elaborate team put in place to ensure privacy and security".

Before heading to Jaipur for their grand wedding, the alleged lovebirds are rumoured to have a court marriage in Mumbai next week. After their Rajasthan marriage, they will take a small break before resuming work.

Talking about Vicky's upcoming projects, he'll begin work on Govinda Naam Mera soon. The recently-announced film features Bhumi Pednekar and Kiara Advani as the leading ladies. He also has Sam Bahadur in his kitty.

On the other hand, Katrina has wrapped up shooting for Phone Bhoot alongside Ishaan Khatter and Siddhant Chaturvedi. She is currently busy with the third film in the Tiger franchise opposite Salman Khan. She has also signed Farhan Akhtar's female buddy film Jee Le Zara co-starring Priyanka Chopra and Alia Bhatt.
Gov. Whitmer announces $1.4 million USDA Grants to help Small Agriculture Businesses

Seven meat processing companies to receive federal grant dollars

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 24, 2021

Contact: HoltonJ@Michigan.gov

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer today joined Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) Director Gary McDowell to announce a nearly $1.4 million federal investment to help the state's meat and poultry processors recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and expand their processing capacity. This funding was made available by the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Meat and Poultry Inspection Readiness Grant (MPIRG) program.

"Strengthening our food supply chain and expanding homegrown processing can help reduce food costs while creating new jobs," said Governor Whitmer. "Our state is home to diverse and robust food and agriculture businesses that are a fundamental part of the MI New Economy plan to keep Michigan first. I appreciate USDA's commitment to grow Michigan."

MPIRG, a new program authorized by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, is jointly administered by USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service and Food Safety and Inspection Service. The program was part of USDA's comprehensive funding package to help small and very small processing facilities weather the pandemic, compete in the marketplace, and get the support they need to reach more customers.

There were seven Michigan companies awarded MPIRG grants:

Cozat Packaging in Coleman: $199,618.74

Creswick Farms in Ravenna: $200,000

Sommers Sausage Shop in Crystal Falls: $197,000

Wilson's Meats LLC in St. Johns: $200,000

Bosserd Brothers Meats LLC in Marshall: $199,887

Love Meats, Inc. in Rudyard: $200,000

Sarah Miles Cleveland J&S Meats in Newaygo: $186,670

With this grant funding, meat and poultry processing businesses can cover the costs for improvements such as expanding existing facilities, modernizing processing equipment and meeting packaging, labeling, and food safety requirements needed to achieve a Federal Grant of Inspection under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act, or to operate under a state's Cooperative Interstate Shipment program. These changes will allow these facilities to serve more customers in more markets.

"Michigan's food and ag sector is an economic powerhouse generating billions for the economy and supporting jobs across the state," said MDARD Director Gary McDowell. "Our farmers and food-based businesses have been challenged on a number of fronts throughout the pandemic and these funds provide so much needed support."

In June 2021, USDA announced the availability of $55.2 million in MPIRG funding, accepting applications for a competitive grant award process which resulted in today's awards. Remaining funds will be made available through a forthcoming Request for Applications.

To learn more about MPIRG and see the full list of awards, visit https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/grants/mpirg.
Thousands of returning citizens issued IDs, driver's licenses through MDOS, MDOC partnership

Thousands of returning citizens issued IDs, driver's licenses through MDOS, MDOC partnership

NOVEMBER 24, 2021

The Michigan Department of State (MDOS) has provided more than 5,000 state identification cards and driver's licenses to returning citizens since the start of its joint initiative with the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC). The program, which ensures newly paroled Michiganders receive a driver's license or state ID, has increased the number of these transactions by more than 10 times the amount conducted prior to the program.

"By providing identification to returning citizens, we are opening doors that enable them to re-enter the work force and their communities," said Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. "Our partnership with MDOC provides a valuable resource to formerly incarcerated individuals, ensuring they have the credentials they need to succeed."

MDOS and MDOC announced the joint initiative in June 2020 to assist returning citizens as they rejoin their communities by providing them with a driver's license or state ID upon their parole. The program was fully implemented following a successful pilot.

"Ensuring returning citizens have their vital documents upon release is an essential part of their successful return to society," MDOC Director Heidi E. Washington said. "We are pleased with the success of this program, and know that it is having a real and profound effect on these individuals as they embark on the next chapter in their lives."

Through the initiative, MDOC assists individuals designated for parole in obtaining required documents, paperwork, and photos and forwards the documents directly to MDOS to process either a driver's license or state ID. Once an individual is paroled, they are provided their license or ID, registered to vote unless they indicate they do not want to be, and given information on re-entering the workforce.

After launching the program last year, the departments collaborated to increase the number of returning citizens served. While some parolees may refuse, or do not have the necessary personal information to process an ID, the collaboration has been successful, resulting in 95 percent of parolees in the month of October 2021 receiving an ID or driver's license. Both departments expect to maintain this rate moving forward.

More information on voting rights for returning citizens can be found on the MDOS website.
Secretary Benson, legislators visit Livonia, Canton where service is faster than ever

Secretary Benson, legislators visit Livonia, Canton where service is faster than ever

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and state legislators visited the Livonia and Canton offices today, two of the most historically busy offices where the average wait time for service was more than 90 minutes in November of 2018. Now visitors are in and out in an average of just 20 minutes.

"We are in a new, service-driven era and Michiganders who visit our offices are consistently and pleasantly surprised at how quickly and easily they are in and out," said Benson. "Office visits are easy to schedule online and by phone, or residents can walk up to any office and they'll typically be served immediately or helped to schedule a visit at a time convenient for them."

Benson has made numerous improvements to Secretary of State operations, including adding online services and self-service stations. Now the majority - 60 percent - of all transactions are conducted without an office visit. This is more than double the share of remote transactions in 2018, and part of the reason the offices run so efficiently.

"I was grateful for the opportunity to see firsthand how the visits and services at our Livonia SOS branch office have improved," said state Rep. Laurie Pohutsky (D-Livonia). "I want to thank all the employees and Secretary Benson for this monumental effort."

"Improving the overall experience Michiganders receive when entering a branch office has been a cornerstone of Secretary Benson's goals. I appreciate the invitation to visit the branch office in Canton to see these improvements for myself," said state Rep. Matt Koleszar (D-Plymouth). "Branch offices are now working more efficiently, and morale among the employees is very high. That's a win-win."

"I'm proud that Secretary Benson was able to meet with employees in our Livonia Secretary of State office to see how their creative and forward-thinking efforts have made our local branches more accessible to all residents," Sen. Dayna Polehanki (D-Livonia) said. "Secretary of State staff have been working so hard to relieve the stress of residents since the onset of the pandemic and should be commended for their people-centered approach. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the Legislature to continue honoring the hard work of employees across our state by providing more resources to ensure smooth branch operations."

"I want to thank Secretary Benson for visiting Canton today to check on how well our branch is currently serving the public," said state Rep. Ranjeev Puri (D-Canton). "On the ground conversations with employees and customers are what led to this successful operations model to begin with, and I'm glad this work is continuing to fine tune the process and ensure this work can continue. Visiting a branch location is now easier than ever before, and I look forward to the Legislature's continued partnership with Secretary Benson to provide better and more reliable customer service than ever before."

Residents can conduct most of their Secretary of State business online at Michigan.gov/SOS, where they can also locate their nearest self-service station, many of which can be found in Kroger, Meijer and other grocery stores. Office visits can be scheduled at Michigan.gov/SOS, or by calling 888-SOS-MICH.

# # #

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. Gretchen Whitmer Announces Three Communities Chosen for Select Level of the Michigan Main Street Program

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Announces Three Communities Chosen for Select Level of the Michigan Main Street Program

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OCT. 28, 2021

Contact: Achtenbergk@michigan.org

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Announces Three Communities Chosen for Select Level of the Michigan Main Street Program

Adrian, Coldwater and Rogers City join 24 other Michigan communities taking a strategic approach to revitalizing their downtowns and commercial districts

LANSING, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer joined the Michigan Economic Development Corporation today to announce that the cities of Adrian, Coldwater and Rogers City have been selected by the MEDC to take part in the Select Level of the Michigan Main Street program.

As part of the Select Level of Michigan Main Street, these three communities will receive five years of intensive technical assistance from MEDC with a focus on revitalization strategies designed to attract new residents, business investments, economic growth and job creation to their central business districts.

"Now more than ever, it is vital that our communities take a common-sense approach toward strengthening their core commercial districts and driving growth in the community as Michigan's economic recovery continues," said Gov. Whitmer. "With the support of the Main Street program and the MEDC, I believe we can positively transform the downtowns and commercial districts in communities to ensure their place on Michigan's path toward our future."

The Michigan Main Street Program aims to create communities distinguished by a "sense of place." The rationale is based on a range of studies that show investing in creating a "sense of place" is an integral part of developing vibrant downtowns and commercial districts, thereby making the state economically stronger and culturally diverse.

Adrian, Coldwater and Rogers City join 24 other communities already benefitting from participation in the Main Street program. To view a map of the current Michigan Main Street communities, visit here.

"Developing downtowns and commercial districts is essential in creating jobs and growing vibrant, unique places where people want to live, work, visit and play," said MEDC Senior Vice President Michele Wildman. "Programs like Michigan Main Street provide communities with the tools needed to create jobs, provide desirable places to live and build a sense of place for Michigan residents. I look forward to seeing how these three communities will grow within the next five years."

Downtown Adrian

The city of Adrian and the Downtown Development Authority are positioned well for the Select Level. The board has shown increased engagement and commitment to the Main Street Approach through transitioning the way it functions under the Four Points. The downtown district has seen large amounts of investment and there are many opportunities for continued investment that will drive their revitalization in the future.

"I am very pleased to have our passionate volunteers and supportive stakeholders achieve MMS Select Level," said Harry "Dusty" Steele, DDA Board Chair. "We are eager to work alongside Michigan Main Street staff, as we continue implementing the Main Street Approach, to achieve our vision of attracting residents, business owners and developers by preserving and promoting our rich history and our vibrant arts and culture."

Downtown Coldwater

The city of Coldwater and the Downtown Development Authority are also well-positioned for the Select Level. The board has been engaged in the process and ready to move to the next level of Michigan Main Street. The city, board and stakeholders are ready to use the framework of Main Street to guide their comprehensive downtown revitalization efforts. They were able to demonstrate broad-based community support in a short amount of time.

"The city of Coldwater is thrilled to be chosen as a Select Level community. The Downtown Development Authority board and city staff have engaged with community stakeholders, volunteers, and donors to build support for the Main Street 4-Point Approach," said Economic Development Coordinator Audrey Tappenden. "We can't wait to start working with Michigan Main Street program specialists to develop transformation strategies for our downtown."

Downtown Rogers City

The city of Rogers City and the Downtown Development Authority are positioned well for the Select Level of the Main Street program due to the overwhelming community and business support and buy-in for comprehensive downtown revitalization. A group from the community attended the online training series and created a communication and fund development plan that allowed them to grow broad-based community support.

"The designation as Michigan's 25th Main Street Community is truly a game changer for the city of Rogers City, as it has been for all of the other MMS locations across the state," said Rogers City Mayor Scott McLennan. "The strong support received from citizens and local businesses led to this outstanding achievement. Now, looking to the future and with the backing of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, our city will be working to further enhance its assets, building a stronger economy and a more vibrant community for all."

Over the past year, Michigan Main Street communities generated more than $26 million in private investment, 127 new businesses and 143 facade improvements and building rehabilitations. Since its inception in 2003, Michigan Main Street has been a catalyst for job growth, private investment and community engagement. From 2003 through 2019, 1,622 businesses have been launched, with a total public investment of more than $128 million and total private investment of $346 million. In addition, 37,197 volunteer hours were recorded in 2021 in the task of revitalizing downtowns across the state.

To learn more about the Michigan Main Street program, visit here. To learn more about MEDC's community development programs, visit here.

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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In this day of over-the-top, gender-reveal parties, Traci Poore was different. She and her first husband didn't want to know whether they were having a boy or a girl. They didn't find out with their firstborn before she came into the world, and they planned the same delivery-day surprise with their second.

During an ultrasound when Traci was about 25 weeks along, everyone kind of laughed at how big and swollen the baby's feet appeared on the monitor.

"Then they kind of kept looking at things, and it started to get longer and longer. And then they said, 'We're going to get the doctor.'"

The couple's radar went off immediately.

When the radiologist at their local hospital in rural Kansas looked at the screen, he saw something else unusual. It was a 1-centimeter fluid-filled vascular anomaly called a cystic hygroma on the back of the head. Coupled with the swollen feet, he offered a preliminary diagnosis of Turner syndrome and referred the couple to the larger university hospital two hours away in Wichita.

The following week, doctors performed another scan and an amniocentesis.

"We know you don't want to find out the gender, but we kind of have to tell you," Traci recalled the doctor saying.

"So we knew."

They knew because the couple already had Googled Turner syndrome. It affects only girls. The condition results from complete or partial absence of the second sex chromosome in either all or part of a person's cells. It is mainly characterized by obstructive congenital heart defects.

Doctors told Traci her baby had little chance of making it to term alive and that only a very small percentage make it past the first trimester. However, a fetal echocardiogram found no problems with the baby's heart. Another at 30 weeks went well, too.

On the last check, at 35 weeks, they discovered a problem.

"They just very bluntly said, 'Your baby is going to have to have open-heart surgery or she'll die, essentially,'" Traci said.

Their baby had a heart defect called coarctation of the aorta. It means the main artery carrying blood from the heart to the body is narrowed or constricted. That obstructs blood flow from the heart to the lower part of the body and causes much higher than normal blood pressure in the left pumping chamber. It can cause thickening and damage to the overworked heart muscle.

The family had two weeks to get everything organized with their jobs and move three hours away to be near the children's hospital in Kansas City. Maizy Ferrell was born three days later, on June 19, 2012, at exactly 37 weeks. Traci got to hold her for about 30 seconds before a neonatal intensive care team swept in to care for her.

Maizy was 9 days old when surgeons repaired her heart defect. Using donor tissue, they enlarged the pinch in her aorta, allowing more oxygenated blood to flow through. She remained hospitalized until July 22. Two months later, she needed another procedure to fix a complication caused by scar tissue.

Now 9, Maizy visits her cardiologist regularly. She receives daily human growth hormone injections to fight one of the problems caused by Turner syndrome. She's on track to reach 5 feet tall and is currently normal height with other fourth graders.

"She's doing really well," Traci said. "She's active. She plays softball. She dances. She does piano and voice. She started cheerleading this year. She's not allowed to do power sports."

Maizy is learning "Baby Shark" on the piano. "It's pretty easy," she said. She also likes to sing show tunes from the musical "Hamilton."

"I can do Lafayette's song," Maizy said, when asked if she could rap. "I can do that song. I can do 'Guns and Ships.'"

"It's how I find her in the backyard," Traci said. "We're in the country, so we have a big backyard. If I can't find her, I just listen, and I can usually hear her singing somewhere."

Soon, thousands of students will hear Maizy in her role as an ambassador for the American Heart Association's Kids Heart Challenge. She videotaped a message about being a heart survivor that will be shown to elementary students across the country to encourage them to participate in the fundraising and heart health initiative.

"She obviously benefited from years of research and education," said Traci, an attorney. "If I hadn't had the access to care that I had at the point in time that I had it, Maizy's story could have been completely different. She's here because we had early access and early intervention."

Stories From the Heart chronicles the inspiring journeys of heart disease and stroke survivors, caregivers and advocates.

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CALAIS, France (AP)  Helicopters buzzed above the waves and vessels were already scouring the cold waters when French maritime rescue volunteer Charles Devos added his boat to the frantic search for a flimsy migrant craft that foundered in the English Channel, killing at least 27.

What Devos found was gruesome. But not, he later sorrowfully acknowledged, wholly unexpected. With migrants often setting off by the hundreds in flotillas of unseaworthy and overloaded vessels into the busy shipping lane crisscrossed by hulking freighters, and frequently beset by treacherous weather, waves and currents, Devos had long feared that tragedy would ensue.

That came this week, with the deadliest migration accident to date on the dangerous stretch of sea that separates France and Britain.

We picked up six floating bodies. We passed by an inflatable craft that was deflated. The little bit of air remaining kept it afloat, Devos told reporters.

Id been somewhat expecting it because Id say, Its going to end with a drama, he said.

France and Britain appealed Thursday for European assistance, promised stepped-up efforts to combat people-smuggling networks and also traded blame and barbs in the wake of Wednesdays deadly sinking that shone a light on the scale and complexity of Europes migration problems.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sent French President Emmanuel Macron and the EU leadership a letter Thursday proposing joint sea, air and land patrols starting as soon as next week. France has resisted the idea. Johnson also proposed an agreement allowing Britain to send back migrants to France.

Macron appealed to neighboring European countries to do more to stop illegal migration into France, saying that when migrants reach French shores with hopes of heading on to Britain it is already too late.

Macron said France is deploying army drones as part of stepped-up efforts to patrol its northern coastline and help rescue migrants at sea. But he also said that a greater collective effort is needed, referring to France as a transit country" for Britain-bound migrants.

We need to strengthen cooperation with Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, but also the British and the (European) Commission, he said on a visit to Croatia. We need stronger European cooperation.

Migration is an explosive issue in Europe, where leaders often accuse one another of not doing enough to either prevent migrants from entering their countries or from continuing on to other nations.

Ministers from France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Britain and EU officials will meet on Sunday to discuss increasing efforts to crack down on migrant-smuggling networks, Macron's government announced.

They will convene in Calais, one of the French coastal towns where migrants gather, looking for ways to cross to the British coast that is visible from France on clear days. Seaside communities on both sides of the channel were reeling Thursday from the sinking's horrific toll.

This was unfortunately something that could have been foreseen, a scenario of horror that wed feared and dreaded, said Ludovic Hochart, a police union official in Calais.

Across the channel, in the British port of Dover, small business owner Paula Elliot said: Its dreadful that people have lost their lives."

The vessels that they take, are traveling in, are not fit for purpose, she said. "They probably dont understand how arduous the journey is going to be, and especially at this time of year, its so much colder than in the summer.

Devos, the rescue volunteer, told reporters in comments broadcast by coastal radio Delta FM that the flimsy craft used by migrants for the crossing are increasingly overloaded, with as many as 50 people aboard.

Macron described the dead in Wednesday's sinking as "victims of the worst system, that of smugglers and human traffickers.

France has never had so many officers mobilized against illegal migration and its commitment is total, he said.

Ever-increasing numbers of people fleeing conflict or poverty in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Eritrea or elsewhere are risking the perilous journey from France, hoping to win asylum or find better opportunities in Britain.

The crossings have tripled this year compared to 2020. Shipwrecks on the scale of that seen Wednesday are not uncommon in the Mediterranean Sea, where just this year about 1,600 people have died or gone missing, according to U.N. estimates.

The French prosecutors office tasked with investigating the sinking said the dead included 17 men, seven women and two boys and one girl thought to be teenagers. Magistrates were investigating potential charges of homicide, unintentional wounding, assisting illegal migration and criminal conspiracy, the prosecutors office said.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said children and pregnant women were among the dead. Two survivors from the sinking were treated for hypothermia. One is Iraqi, the other Somali, Darmanin said. He said authorities are working to determine the victims nationalities.

Destabilized by shock and sadness, aid workers and Calais residents held a silent vigil Thursday night in the port city to honor the dead, huddling beneath a cold rain and lighting candles in their memory.

Macron's government vowed to bring those responsible for the tragedy to justice, piling pressure on investigators. Darmanin announced the arrests of five alleged smugglers who he said are suspected of being linked to the sinking. He gave no details. The prosecutors' office investigating the deaths confirmed five arrests since Wednesday but said they didn't appear to be linked to its probe.

Darmanin said a suspected smuggler arrested overnight was driving a vehicle registered in Germany and had bought inflatable boats there.

He said criminal groups in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Britain are behind people-smuggling networks. He called on those countries to cooperate better against smugglers, saying they dont always respond fully to French judicial requests for information.

Britain and France must work together. We must no longer be, in effect, the only ones able to fight the smugglers, the minister said.

In their immediate response to the sinking, French authorities initially gave differing figures on the number of dead, from at least 27 to 31. The figure that Darmanin used Thursday morning on RTL radio was 27.

The minister also took a swipe at British government migration policies, saying France expels more people living in the country without legal permission than the U.K. Illegal migration from France's northern shores to Britain has long been a source of tension between the two countries, even as their police forces work together to try to stop crossings. The issue is often used by politicians on both sides pushing an anti-migration agenda.

Darmanin also suggested that by hiring people living in the country illegally, British employers are encouraging illegal migration to English shores.

English employers use this labor to make the things that the English manufacture and consume," he said. We say reform your labor market.

U.K. officials, meanwhile, criticize France for rejecting their offer of British police and border officers to conduct joint patrols along the channel coast with French police.

Macron advocated an immediate funding boost for the European Unions border agency, Frontex, according to his office.

France will not allow the Channel to become a cemetery, Macron said.

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Leicester reported from Le Pecq, France. Lori Hinnant in Paris and David Keyton in Dover, England, contributed.

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Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
The midterm elections are a little less than a year away, but there is a new candidate who wants to represent the Thumb region in Congress.

Huwaida Arraf, a Palestinian-American human rights lawyer and Palestinian activist, announced earlier this month she would be running for Michigans 10th Congressional District seat. The district that covers most of the Upper Thumb is currently represented by Lisa McClain, a first-term Republican congresswoman from Bruce Township.

Born in 1976 to Palestinian immigrants in the Detroit area, Arraf grew up in Roseville as the oldest of five children. Her father worked a union job at a GM factory and was the only breadwinner in the family until she got a part-time job at the age of 12 at Dunkin Donuts. She has her bachelors degree from the University of Michigan and got her law degree from American University in Washington D.C.

One of the reasons they came (to America) was because there wouldnt be any opportunity for their kids under Israeli military occupation, Arraf said. We didnt have a lot growing up, were not in wont of anything. Im always looking for ways to give back.

In 2001, Arraf was one of the co-founders of the International Solidarity Movement, which her husband Adam Shapiro is also a part of. The group works to support the Palestinian cause against the Israeli military through nonviolent protests and methods. It was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.

Arraf currently lives in Macomb Township working as a civil rights attorney and has two children, having worked for a civil rights law firm in Detroit from 2016 until the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

I feel that as the daughter of working-class immigrants, and as a mom, I feel I understand the daily challenges of working people, Arraf said, adding that there is a lack of good jobs where people are paid livable wages as they struggle taking care of kids. When I was growing up, it was my fathers job to support the family, and he had good healthcare with the union. Even with my hopes and beliefs that I can do anything, and the opportunity is there, I dont see that in our kids. No matter how hard people are working, they still cant make ends meet.

Arraf feels the politics of the United States has become very polarized and sees plenty of things wrong with both political parties. She is running as a Democrat because that party is closer to her social policy beliefs.

To her, the Democratic Party has not communicated its beliefs or plans in areas it needs to, like the Thumb region, or has done things that turned people away from the party. The factory Arrafs father worked at closed due to overseas competition and policies that encourage globalization, which she acknowledged the party has not handled well.

When you dont communicate well, it seems that the party becomes elitist and loses people, Arraf said. Weve been the party of working-class people and families and our policies are intended to support working class people.

Arraf is also frustrated about policies that allow the rich to keep getting richer, get bailouts, and avoid paying their fair share, but also say items like affordable healthcare is too expensive. She attributes that to representatives not working for the people.

For her campaign, Arraf wants to make sure she gets to every area of the 10th Congressional District and talks to people about their needs, struggles, and how she can represent them. The district having Republican representation since 2003, when it was expanded to include more of the Upper Thumb, does not scare Arraf off since she feels policies that help working class families will help the district's residents.

The important thing is to be able to talk, Arraf said. We dont talk to each other as much. Candidates speak in slogans and signs, which doesnt do as much good for people. I always say that to have a strong country, we need a strong society. The best policies are around supporting people.

One of Arrafs concerns is about the agriculture industry, and how monopolization has weeded out small farmers and controlled all aspects of farming.

Michigan is also going through the process of redistricting, where the maps of Congressional districts are redrawn. The 10th district that Arraf is running to represent may not have the same boundaries when election day 2022 comes around.

Even if I might fall under a different district, I look forward to talking with residents of the area about what they need, not just to survive, but thrive, Arraf said.

For a period of time after graduating from college, Arraf was part of conflict resolution organizations that worked with Israelis and Palestinians. She called the human rights situation there outrageous as Palestinians were pushed out of their homes and trees were uprooted to make way for new Israeli settlements.

Seeing that pushed her further into her human rights advocacy work and beliefs that people everywhere deserve the right to have a home, a living wage, and safety and security for their families.

These are the basic rights that I see a lot of policies denied, Arraf said. I saw it in Palestine, and I see it around me in Macomb. I need to do something, and this is one of the most effective things I can do.
MIAMI (AP)  Brian Laundrie, who was found dead last month in a Florida swamp, shot himself in the head, officials announced Tuesday.

Laundrie had been the subject of a manhunt for more than a month as investigators searched for clues in the slaying of his girlfriend, Gabby Petito, during their cross-country van trip together.

The medical examiner in Sarasota County, where Laundrie's body was found, said in a news release that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the head, and the manner of death was suicide.

Attorney Steve Bertolino, who represents Laundries parents, said in a statement that the family had been informed about the autopsy results.

Chris and Roberta are still mourning the loss of their son and are hopeful that these findings bring closure to both families, Bertolino said.

Found in a Florida nature preserve, Laundries skeletal remains were positively identified last month using dental records.

The discovery of the remains concluded a massive search involving federal, state and local law enforcement that began shortly after Laundrie disappeared Sept. 14, two weeks after the 23-year-old returned alone to his parents home in North Port, Florida.

The investigation into Petitos slaying, however, has not yet concluded. But only Laundrie was ever identified by law enforcement officials as a person of interest in the case.

Petitos family reported the 22-year-old woman missing Sept. 11, launching a search that garnered worldwide media attention and, in Laundries case, focused largely on the Carlton Reserve wilderness park near the Laundrie home. It is a densely wooded, swampy area thats home to alligators, coyotes, bobcats, snakes and numerous other creatures.

Petito's remains were discovered Sept. 19 on the edge of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, one of the places the young couple had visited on the trip they documented through social media videos. Authorities said the body had been there for about a month.

An autopsy in Wyoming concluded Petito died by strangulation and that it was a homicide. Laundrie was listed as a person of interest in her killing but he was charged only with fraudulent use of a debit card that was not his.

Richard Stafford, attorney for Petitos family, said they would have no immediate comment on Laundries cause of death.
MANISTEE  Manistees historic gem, the Ramsdell Theatre, has been the center of the communitys holiday celebrations for nearly 120 years. That tradition continues in 2021.

First up is Tchaikovskys Nutcracker Ballet, presented by the Ramsdell Regional Center for the Arts and directed by Ingrid Bond.

It opens during Victorian Sleighbell Parade and Old Christmas Weekend with 8 p.m. shows on Dec. 3 and 4 and a 2 p.m. show on Dec. 5. There will also be 8 p.m. and 2 p.m. shows the following weekend, Dec. 10-12.

Also on Sleighbell weekend Manistees Lakeside Club will be organizing the Festival of Trees in the Ramsdell ballroom. The first look at the Festival of Trees will during the Manistee Area Chamber of Commerce's Business After Hours Holiday Edition from 5-7 p.m. on Dec. 2. The cost is $15 for members and $25 for non-members and advance registration is required at manisteechamber.com.

Historically the Ramsdell Regional Center of the Arts has been the center of Manistees Christmas celebrations and were excited to be carrying on that tradition, said Sherri Protasiewicz, Ramsdell marketing and events manager.

Were also bringing Miss Michigan, Vivian Zhong, here on Saturday during Sleighbell weekend, Protasiewicz said. She will be at the Ramsdell visiting the Festival of Trees and will also be helping the volunteers at the Vogue. And of course shell be in a carriage for the Sleighbell parade.

There will also be tours of the Ramsdell during Sleighbell weekend.

Well have multiple tour guides so tours will begin every 10 or 15 minutes and this way there wont be any long waits, Protasiewicz said.

She added that she is excited about the exhibit First Americans that is currently on exhibit in Hardy Hall and runs through Dec. 30.

This exhibit features Michigan Native American artists and is dedicated to our countrys first Native American cabinet member, Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior, Protasiewicz said. In addition to artworks by multiple artists, there are also some Native American works on loan from Traverse Citys Dennos Museum."

Another of the Ramsdells December events, Protasiewicz said, is one of a series of Family Opera Days on Dec. 18. While adults attend the opera Eurydice, students will participate in an art project related to the production. At intermission they will join their parents and see the second half of the opera together.

The idea is to introduce the students to the opera at an early age, Protasiewicz said.

The Nutcracker, which premiered in 1892, will involve over 150 cast members and volunteers. The Victorian-era holiday classic is a perfect match for the Ramsdell stage.



The choreography for the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy, done by original choreographer Marius Petipa, was handed down by legendary Russian-born prima ballerina Alexandra Danilova to choreographer Carol Greenaway, who now lives in Frankfort, to Ingrid Bond.

The Festival of Trees will be presented in the Ramsdell ballroom on Dec. 3 and 4. Trees and other holiday decor will be up for bid through silent auction. Further information on the Festival of Trees is available by phone at 906-440-6770 or email festivaloftreeslakeside@gmail.com.

Further information on the events at the Ramsdell Regional Center for the Arts is available by calling 231-398-9770 and at ramsdelltheatre.org.
SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP)  A 40-year-old California man died in police custody last week after officers used a stun gun on him twice in under a minute, authorities said Wednesday.

Jordan Pas was pronounced dead at a hospital at 2:17 a.m. Thursday in Santa Rosa, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) north of San Francisco, the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office said in a news release. The sheriff's office is investigating Pas' death.

Eight officers and a sergeant from the Santa Rosa Police Department are on paid administrative leave, according to The Santa Rosa Press Democrat. They are Sgt. Matt Crosbie and Officers Frank Sedeno, David Lamb, Nick Madarus, Joe Richards, Jonathan Morgan, Robert Moore, Bradley Marweg and Jerry Ellsworth.

The sheriff's office provided details about the Nov. 18 incident but a Facebook post issued Wednesday did not say which officers used their stun guns. The Facebook post included a photo of the gun Pas reportedly had before his encounter with the officers, as well as a photo of him allegedly pointing the firearm into a car.

Sgt. Juan Valencia, a spokesperson for the sheriff, said in an email Wednesday that Pas' autopsy had been conducted last week but he did not provide details.

At 1:19 a.m., the Santa Rosa Police Department got a phone call reporting several gunshots being fired in the street. Several other calls came in reporting a man  later identified as Pas through surveillance video  was walking around the neighborhood with a gun. The surveillance footage showed Pas firing a rifle into a car, the sheriff's office said.

Officers found Pas 10 minutes later, shirtless and holding a large landscaping rock in his right hand. He was pacing and sweating profusely on a cold night, the sheriff's office said.

The officers repeatedly told Pas to drop the rock and threatened to use a stun gun on him. He did not comply, the sheriff's office said.

At 1:35 a.m., an officer used stun gun on him, causing him to drop the rock and fall backward onto his knees. He crawled over to another large rock and tried to throw it at the approaching officers, the sheriff's office said.

An officer used a stun gun on Pas again  less than a minute after the first time  as he allegedly continued resisting by trying to get up.

The sheriff's office says Pas was lying on his stomach with his arms under his body as he tried to push himself up as officers tried to hold him down. He allegedly resisted their efforts by tensing up and continuing not to comply with their orders.

The sheriff's office account does not detail exactly how the officers tried to hold Pas down.

Pas was handcuffed at 1:36 a.m. and rolled to his left side so officers could monitor his breathing. But he was not responsive to verbal or physical stimulus."

Three minutes later, suspecting Pas had overdosed on narcotics, an officer administered one dose of Narcan. Narcan, the brand name for the drug naloxone, works to reverse an opioid overdose.

The vast majority of people who overdose survive if given naloxone. The sheriff's office has not released the results of Pas' autopsy and toxicology test yet, which would show if he had opioids in his system.

At 1:40 a.m., medical personnel arrived to take Pas to the hospital.

By 2:17 a.m., Pas was pronounced dead.
CHICAGO (AP)  Chicago police are investigating allegations that a substitute teacher at an elementary school was touching himself inappropriately in a classroom this month while students were present

According to the Chicago Tribune, the police department said the investigation into the alleged Nov. 16 incident at Walt Disney Magnet School is continuing. The paper did not identify the man because he has not been charged with a crime.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP)  The European Union's drug regulator on Thursday authorized Pfizers coronavirus vaccine for use on children from 5 to 11 years old, clearing the way for shots to be administered to millions of elementary school pupils amid a new wave of infections sweeping across the continent.

It is the first time the European Medicines Agency has cleared a COVID-19 vaccine for use in young children.

The agency said it recommended granting an extension of indication for the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty to include use in children aged 5 to 11.

After evaluating a study of the vaccine in more than 2,000 children, the EMA estimated that the vaccine was about 90% effective in preventing symptomatic COVID-19 in young children and said the most common side effects were pain at the injection site, headaches, muscle pain and chills. The agency said the two-dose regimen should be given to children three weeks apart.

At least one country facing spiking infections didn't wait for the EMA approval. Authorities in the Austrian capital, Vienna, already have begun vaccinating the 5 to 11 age group. Europe is currently at the epicenter of the pandemic and the World Health Organization has warned the continent could see deaths top 2 million by the spring unless urgent measures are taken.

The EMA green light for the vaccine developed by Pfizer and German company BioNTech has to be rubber-stamped by the EUs executive branch, the European Commission, before health authorities in member states can begin administering shots.

Earlier this week, Germanys health minister Jens Spahn said shipping of vaccines for younger children in the EU would begin on Dec. 20.

The United States signed off on Pfizers kids-sized shots earlier this month, followed by other countries including Canada.

Pfizer tested a dose that is a third of the amount given to adults for elementary school-age children. Even with the smaller shot, children who are 5 to 11 years old developed coronavirus-fighting antibody levels just as strong as teenagers and young adults getting the regular-strength shots, Dr. Bill Gruber, a Pfizer senior vice president, told The Associated Press in September.

But the studies done on Pfizers vaccine in children havent been big enough to detect any rare side effects from the second dose, like the chest and heart inflammation that has been seen in mostly male older teens and young adults.

American officials noted that COVID-19 has caused more deaths in children in the 5 to 11 age group than some other diseases, such as chickenpox, did before children were routinely vaccinated.

Earlier this month, the EMA said it began evaluating the use of Moderna Inc.s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 6 to 11; it estimated that a decision would be made within two months.

Although children mostly only get mild symptoms of COVID-19, some public health experts believe immunizing them should be a priority to reduce the virus continued spread, which could theoretically lead to the emergence of a dangerous new variant.

Researchers disagree on how much kids have influenced the course of the pandemic. Early research suggested they didnt contribute much to viral spread. But some experts say children played a significant role this year spreading contagious variants such as alpha and delta.

In a statement this week, WHO said that because children and teens tend to have milder COVID-19 disease than adults, it is less urgent to vaccinate them than older people, those with chronic health conditions and health workers.

It has appealed to rich countries to stop immunizing children and asked them to donate their doses immediately to poor countries who have yet to give a first vaccine dose to their health workers and vulnerable populations.

Still, WHO acknowledged that there are benefits to vaccinating children and adolescents that go beyond the immediate health benefits.

Vaccination that decreases COVID transmission in this age group may reduce transmission from children and adolescents to older adults, and may help reduce the need for mitigation measures in schools, WHO said.

___

Maria Cheng reported from London.

___

Follow APs coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
BERLIN (AP)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel labelled Thursday a very sad day and backed calls for more restrictions, as her country became the latest to surpass 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

The national disease control agency said it recorded 351 deaths in connection with the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, taking the total toll to 100,119. In Europe, Germany is the fifth country to pass that mark, after Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy and France.

It is of course a very sad day that we have to mourn 100,000 victims of the coronavirus, Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin. And unfortunately, at the moment, more than 300 deaths are being added to that each day.

The long-time German leader, who is currently in office as caretaker until her successor is sworn in, warned that hundreds more deaths were already looming.

(The deaths) correlate very clearly with the number of infections that are occurring, she said. We know how many people on average do not survive this disease.

The Robert Koch Institute, a federal agency that collects data from some 400 regional health offices, said Germany set a record for daily confirmed cases  75,961  in the past 24-hour period. Since the start of the outbreak, Germany has had more than 5.57 million confirmed cases of COVID-19.

The situation is so serious because we are still in an exponential growth and because the cases that we see getting sick today are basically the patients who will be in intensive care in 10 or 14 days, Merkel said.

She welcomed an announcement by Germany's government-in-waiting on Wednesday that it will create a new permanent expert group to advise officials on how to tackle the pandemic.

While the number of daily infections is higher than that seen during the last winter surge, there are currently fewer daily deaths per confirmed cases. Experts argue this is because of vaccinations, which reduce the likelihood of serious illness.

Still, hospitals have warned that intensive care beds are running out, with almost 4,000 already occupied by COVID-19 patients. Some hospitals in the countrys south and east have begun transferring patients to other regions.

The German air force has put two specialized medevac planes on stand-by to airlift ICU patients to regions with free beds.

The general manager of the Bavarian hospitals' association, Roland Engehausen, said the number of new cases needs to come down sharply.

Otherwise we're going to have a dramatic situation between Christmas and New Year's the likes of which we haven't seen yet, he told German news agency dpa.

Saxony, to the northeast, became the first German state to record a weekly number of confirmed cases above 1,000 per 100,000 inhabitants Thursday. It has the lowest vaccination rate  at 57.9%  among Germany's 16 states.

The government has urged people who were vaccinated more than six months ago to get boosters, and those who haven't been inoculated at all to get their first shot. Officials say 68.1% of Germany's 83 million inhabitants are fully vaccinated, far below the minimum level of 75% the government has aimed for.

Center-left leader Olaf Scholz, who is poised to succeed Merkel as chancellor next month, called Wednesday for mandatory vaccinations in nursing homes that care for particularly vulnerable people  and left open the possibility of extending the measure to others.

Vaccinations are the way out of this pandemic, Scholz said.

His Social Democratic Party's health expert Karl Lauterbach, a trained epidemiologist, cited the case of Bayern Munich soccer star Joshua Kimmich as a cautionary tale for those who believe they can avoid both the virus and the vaccine. Kimmich, who had hesitated to get the shot, tested positive this week. Bayern said Wednesday that Kimmich was doing well."

The case shows how difficult it is for unvaccinated people to avoid COVID these days, Lauterbach said on Twitter.

Merkel didnt address the question of compulsory vaccinations for all, that some senior German officials and the countrys association of intesive care doctors have proposed. But she said there should be more restrictions on contacts.

___

Follow AP's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
Biohaven Pharmaceutical Holding / Contributed photo

NEW HAVEN  Two city-based biotechnology companies, Artizan Biosciences and Biohaven Therapeutics, announced Thursday they will collaborate to develop a treatment for Parkinsons disease.

This is the second time this year the two companies have engaged in a collaboration. Artizan and Biohaven announced in March they were joining forces on drug candidates for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease.
NEW HAVEN  A Truman School teacher was arrested Wednesday after he allegedly assaulted a student, police said.

The student sustained minor injuries and was released to his parents, police said.

Teacher Paul Vercillo, 46, is charged with risk of injury to a minor, third-degree assault and disorderly conduct, police said. He was being held in lieu of $20,000 bail late Wednesday, police said.

The Police Department received a call about the alleged assault just after noon Wednesday and responding officers investigated, police said. The school is at 114 Truman St.

Vercillo was arrested there and taken to the department, police said. Authorities did not say how old the student is; the school serves students in pre-K through eighth grade.

A spokesman for the school district had earlier said a staff member was arrested on a charge of risk of injury to a minor after an incident during the school day.

District spokesman Justin Harmon earlier had declined to name the staff member, saying further information would have to come from the New Haven Police Department.

The district takes very seriously any incident that poses physical risk to a student, Harmon said.

The staff member is being put on leave while the incident is investigated, he said.

Also asked about the circumstances leading to the arrest, Harmon said he understands the facts of what happened are still under investigation.

The circumstances really are for the police to describe, he said.

Superintendent of Schools Ilene Tracey said the incident was under police investigation and referred to Harmons statement.

Mayor Justin Elicker, who also is a member of the Board of Education, said Wednesday protecting the safety and health of our students must be a top priority.

The alleged actions of this individual were disturbing and unacceptable. Im thankful that Dr. Tracey and the New Haven Police Department took swift action in this matter, Elicker said in an email.

Risk of injury to a minor is a felony charge.

The school and the district are cooperating fully with the investigation by the New Haven Police Department, Harmon said.
WEST HAVEN  The city will hold a holiday festival and Christmas tree lighting Saturday, officials said in a release.

The festival will begin at 4 p.m. and will feature Christmas songs by instructors, students and a choir from The Rock House School of Music, according to the release.

The event is presented by the city, the First Congregational Church of West Haven and West Haven United, which aims to bring together city volunteer groups.

The four-hour festival will also include an inflatable Santas village and four craft stations on the Green, where children can make marshmallow reindeer ornaments, decorate wooden ornaments, write letters to Santa, and make cards for U.S. troops overseas and those at the West Haven VA Medical Center, the release said.

Performances by members of Top Hat Dance Academy are slated for 5:30 p.m., it said.

Mayor Nancy Rossi, joined by Santa and Mrs. Claus, will light the tree at 6 p.m., the release said, and the North Pole power couple will meet with children and pose for photos until 8 p.m.

Following the tree lighting, The RumRunners will perform a holiday concert.

The event also will feature hayrides and rides for children in a vintage firetruck from the West Shore Fire Department, the release said.

While most activities set for the festival are free, people are asked to bring nonperishable items for the West Haven Emergency Assistance Task Force, which provides food for residents in need.

Food, snacks and drinks will be available for sale by volunteers from the First Congregational Church, the release said.

In case of rain, the lighting will be held at 5 p.m. Monday.
As the deadline approaches for active-duty sailors and Marines to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the U.S. Navy is closing in on 100% compliance, with fewer than 700 sailors not yet having received a dose.

According to data provided Wednesday by the Navy, 97% of the service's roughly 343,000 sailors are fully immunized, while an additional 2.8% have received at least one dose. Six sailors have received permanent medical exemptions, and none has gotten a waiver for religious reasons.

Meanwhile, the Marine Corps faces an uphill battle in meeting the Nov. 28 deadline set by Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro: As of Wednesday, 94% of Marines had received at least one dose of the vaccine and 91% were fully vaccinated -- the lowest rates of any of the Defense Department's service branches.

That means roughly 10,800 Marines have ignored the deadline or are seeking exemptions.

The Corps has not released data on religious or medical waivers, but a spokesman said Wednesday that all requests are being reviewed on a case-by-case basis.

Read Next: More Ham, Sweet Potatoes and Desserts: The Food US Troops Will Devour This Thanksgiving

"Each request will be given full consideration with respect to the facts and circumstances submitted in the request," noted a statement released by Capt. Andrew Wood, a communications strategy officer for Headquarters Marine Corps.

The Air Force and Space Force faced the earliest deadline of all branches -- Nov. 2. As of Wednesday, 97.1% of all airmen and Guardians had received at least one dose -- 600 more than in the days immediately following the deadline.

According to the Air Force, 7,874 members remain unvaccinated, including 4,756 who have requested a religious exemption, 1,993 who "haven't started the series" or had their vaccines properly documented, and 1,125 who have simply refused to get the shots.

Air Force officials have said those who refuse to comply with the mandate will face counseling and disciplinary action for disobeying a lawful order. The Air Force already took action against 40 basic and military trainees who refused the shot, dismissing them from the service.

On Monday, the service added a new restriction on its vaccine refusers: not issuing them orders for new assignments.

According to what appeared to be a memo released Tuesday by Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, the service's deputy chief of staff for manpower, personnel and services, and posted to Facebook, airmen who have refused the vaccine, as well as those waiting for a decision on exemption requests, will not receive any permanent change of station orders starting Nov. 29.

"This restriction will remain in place until the member is either fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or receives an approved medical exemption or religious accommodation," Kelly wrote.

Only those unvaccinated and partially vaccinated personnel who already have processed out of their base or shipped their household goods or vehicles by Nov. 29 will be allowed to proceed to their next duty station.

According to the Air Force, the new policy will be good for a year.

Soldiers have several weeks before they must be fully vaccinated, although they would have needed to complete the series of two shots by Nov. 24 to be considered fully immunized by the Armys Dec. 8 deadline.

Army officials said Wednesday that, as of Nov. 19, 95% of active-duty soldiers had received at least one dose, including 92% who are fully vaccinated.

The service has approved two permanent medical exemptions and no religious exemptions, Army spokesman Lt. Col. Terence Kelley told Military.com.

Army leadership said last week that soldiers who refuse the vaccine may stay in the service under certain circumstances but will be barred from reenlistment, promotion and school opportunities.

In a memo to the force, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said soldiers would not be dismissed from the service, but their records would be "flagged," signaling that they are non-promotable.

Navy officials have said they will separate all sailors who refuse the vaccines and do not have an exemption. But Del Toro said last week that all will be counseled and given a chance to comply before being forced out of the military.

"We're going to ... offer them an opportunity to change their mind," he said during a call with reporters.

As of Wednesday, there have been 253,989 cases of COVID-19 among U.S. service members and 75 deaths, according to the Defense Department.

The Coast Guard, with 40,487 members, falls under the Department of Homeland Security. As of this week, nearly 94% of the service's active-duty force had been fully vaccinated and 95% had received at least one dose, meaning that roughly 2,000 members still need to get their immunizations or a waiver.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Editors Note: This story was corrected to reflect the number of sailors who have not yet received a dose or who are waiting for a response to their waiver requests, according to the Navy.

Related: After Deadline, VA and DoD Middle of the Pack for COVID-19 Vaccinations, White House Says
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Australia announced Thursday it is sending police, troops and diplomats to the Solomon Islands to help after anti-government demonstrators defied lockdown orders and took to the streets for a second day in violent protests.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the deployment includes a detachment of 23 federal police officers and up to 50 more to provide security at critical infrastructure sites, as well as 43 defense force personnel, a patrol boat and at least five diplomats.

The first personnel left Australia on Thursday with more going on Friday, and the deployment was expected to last for a few weeks, Morrison said.

Our purpose here is to provide stability and security, he said.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare declared a lockdown Wednesday after about 1,000 people gathered in protest in the capital, Honiara, demanding his resignation over a host of domestic issues.

The protesters breached the National Parliament building and burned the thatched roof of a nearby building, the government said. They also set fire to a police station and other buildings.

They were intent on destroying our nation and ... the trust that was slowly building among our people, the government said in a statement.

Morrison said Sogavare requested assistance from Australia amid the violence under a bilateral security treaty.

It is not the Australian governments intention in any way to intervene in the internal affairs of the Solomon Islands. That is for them to resolve," he said.

Our presence there does not indicate any position on the internal issues of the Solomon Islands, Morrison added.

Australia led an international police and military force called the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands that restored peace in the country after bloody ethnic violence from 2003 until 2017.

Sogavare ordered the capital locked down from 7 p.m. Wednesday through 7 p.m. Friday after saying he had witnessed another sad and unfortunate event aimed at bringing a democratically elected government down.

I had honestly thought that we had gone past the darkest days in the history of our country, he said. However, today's events are a painful reminder that we have a long way to go.

Despite an announcement from the Solomon Islands police force that they would be conducting increased patrols through Honiara amid the lockdown, protesters again took to the streets Thursday.

Local journalist Gina Kekea posted photos on Twitter of a bank, shops and a school in flames.

Morrison said he decided to send help after it became clear that police in the Solomon Islands were stretched.

Sogavare angered many in 2019, particularly leaders of the Solomon Islands most populous province, Malaita, when he cut the country's diplomatic ties with Taiwan, switching its diplomatic allegiance to China instead.

Local media reported that many of the protesters were from Malaita, whose premier, Daniel Suidani, has been at odds with Sogavare, whom he accuses of being too close to Beijing.

China expressed serious concern about attacks on some Chinese citizens and institutions, without providing details.

We believe that under the leadership of Prime Minister Sogavare, the Solomon Islands government can restore social order and stability as soon as possible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing in Beijing.

He said that economic and other cooperation since the establishment of diplomatic relations has benefited both sides. Any attempts to undermine the normal development of China-Solomon relations are futile, he said.

Suidani said he was not responsible for the violence in Honiara, but told the Solomon Star News that he agreed with the calls for Sogavare to resign.

Over the last 20 years Mannaseh Sogavare has been in power, the plight of Solomon Islanders has worsened whilst at the same time foreigners have reaped the best of the countrys resources," Suidani was quoted as saying. "People are not blind to this and do not want to be cheated anymore.

Honiara journalist Elizabeth Osifelo said the cause of chaos was a mixture of a lot of frustration.

The switch to China from Taiwan, that was also, I could, say part of it, Osefelo told Australian Broadcasting Corp. Its not probably what has triggered the situation, but that has also pretty much contributed to some of the tension weve been experiencing.
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The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against seven accused, including private firms, for perpetrating a fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB) and Allahabad Bank in credit facilities and term loans to the tune of nearly Rs 73 crore during 2013.

The accused were identified as S.R. Alcobev Pvt. Ltd, New Industrial Estate, Jagatpur, Cuttack, its Managing Director Ranjan Kumar Padhi and Director Saina Kar; Naina Devi Suppliers Pvt. Ltd, Sainagoue Street, Kolkata, West Bengal (Corporate Guarantor), Chandraghanta Iron and Steel Traders Pvt. Ltd., Shyam Bazar Street, Kolkata, West Bengal (Corporate Guarantor), Brewforce Technologies, East Patel Nagar, New Delhi or Dehradun, Uttarakhand (Supplier) and a civil contractor named Sukanta Kumar Lenka, a resident of Cuttack.

According to the CBI, there is involvement of unknown public servants of Punjab National Bank, among others.

"The accused committed a fraud at Punjab National Bank, main branch, Buxi Bazar, Cuttack and Allahabad Bank, Bhubaneswar branch, in a matter of credit facilities or term loans to the tune of around Rs 73 crore (Rs 40 crore by PNB and Rs 33 crore by Indian Bank, formerly Allahabad Bank) during 2013," the probe agency said in a statement.

After disbursal of the loan proceeds, the borrowers and guarantors allegedly violated the terms and conditions of the sanction and they neither procured the machineries nor deposited the instalments in time and the account turned into a non-performing asset (NPA).

It was further alleged that the accused, including promoters, directors, guarantors and suppliers, had misappropriated and diverted the loan proceeds with the ulterior motive to defraud the banks to the tune of nearly Rs 140.48 crore (principal amount plus interest as on September 30, 2021).

The CBI conducted searches at the premises of the accused situated at Cuttack (Odisha) and Dehradun (Uttarakhand).

"Further probe is on," it added.

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.
After partly hearing public interest litigation (PIL) challenging the constitutional validity of the faceless appeal scheme, the Bombay High Court (HC) adjourned the matter to 29 November 2021.

Chamber of Tax Consultants (CTC) had filed a writ petition in a representative capacity. Considering the relief prayed for and the averments made by the CTC in a representative capacity, the HC, on 6 September 2021, had directed the petition to be listed as a PIL.

In its plea, CTC, one of the oldest industry bodies of professionals, had argued that there is a reasonable apprehension in the mind of the taxpayers that this scheme will harm the overall decision-making process, and the persons to be affected the most would be the assessees.

Senior counsel Arvind Datar, representing the Chamber, submitted that the faceless appeals scheme is a change in policy that cannot be made by way of delegated legislation. "The scheme poses a palpable threat to the independent functioning of the commissioner of income tax- appellate (CIT-A), which is a quasi-judicial body and expected to function impartially. The provision of review of appellate orders by another unit poses a threat to the independent quasi-judicial function of CIT(A). The scheme creates a system for a mandatory review in certain cases which itself is contrary to statutory provisions," he submitted.

Last year, the Union government launched faceless appeals to eliminate human interface from the first appellate system in the income-tax (I-T). Under the scheme, a taxpayer or an assessee is not required to visit an I-T department or meet an official for I-T related businesses.

The PIL filed by the CTC contends that the opportunity for a personal hearing is not given at the first appellate stage under the scheme. The first time the appellant or the representative will be heard in person will be directly before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT). Since ITAT is the final fact-finding authority, the scheme challenges the system, CTC said.

On 1 October 2021, while hearing transfer petitions concerning the faceless appeals scheme, the Supreme Court had clarified that it had neither transferred the matters nor impeded the hearing in any case about the scheme.

After this clarification, the Bombay HC proceeded to hear the CTC's submission. It will hear the submission by tax authorities on 29 November 2021.
November 25, 2021

'Democracy' Circus

The Biden administration has invited 110 'participants' to its 'Summit for Democracy' which is to take place virtually on December 9 and 10.

The use of 'participants' was necessary as not all 'participants' are recognized international states. Biden wanted to piss off China. He therefore invited Taiwan which is not recognized as a state by the United Nations nor by the U.S.

The Biden administration did not invite Hungary, a democratic NATO and EU member, where, according to polls, the opposition is poised to win next years election. Poland, which is governed more illiberal than Hungary is invited. Likewise the Ukraine even as the Zelensky government has put the opposition leader under house arrest and has shut down opposition TV stations and newspapers.

Turkey, also a NATO member, was left off the list. Turkey's president Erdogan may be autocratic but so is prime minister Modi of India which is invited.

Singapore, a democracy and somewhat U.S. ally, is not on the list. This is likely because its prime minister had rejected to take part in Biden's proposed 'coalition of democracies' as a cold war style entity aimed against China.

U.S. 'enemies' like Russia, Venezuela and Iran are of course not invited even while they regularly have free elections.

The event is thus what it could be expected to be. It is not about democracy but a propaganda show which is supposed to demonstrate strong 'U.S. leadership' where none exists.

The propaganda is not even aimed at a foreign public. It is supposed to assure the U.S. that it still has the credentials it claims to have.

The system has become so weak that it sees a need to assure itself.

Posted by b on November 25, 2021 at 17:59 UTC | Permalink

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DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP)  Bangladesh on Thursday began relocating hundreds of Rohingya refugees to an island in the Bay of Bengal, despite ongoing concerns from rights groups over the conditions on the vulnerable low-lying island and that no refugees should be sent forcibly.

The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group, over 700,000 of whom fled persecution and violence in neighboring Myanmar in August 2017. Bangladesh has been sheltering 1.1 million of the refugees in crowded camps near its coast.

A U.N.-sponsored investigation in 2018 recommended the prosecution of Myanmars top military commanders on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for the violence against the Rohingya.

A senior Bangladeshi official overseeing the relocation, Mohammad Shamsud Douza, said that a navy ship would take 379 refugees from Chattogram city to the Bhashan Char Island which lies off the country's southeastern coast.

They are going there voluntarily. All the 379 refugees have chosen to live there for a better and secure life, he told The Associated Press.

"Authorities will take care of everything from food to medicine, he added.

The government began sending Rohingya refugees to the island eleven months ago, and says it can now accommodate up to 100,000.

Douza said a total of 1,500 refugees would be transported to the island in phases over the next few weeks. Previously, about 19,000 refugees were relocated to the island from Coxs Bazar where more than 1 million Rohingya refugees from Myanmar live in crowded camps.

Crime and security concerns have become a major issue in the sprawling camps at Coxs Bazaar. In September, the killing in a gun attack of an international representative of the Rohingya refugees underlined the lack of security.

We are moving to Bhasan Char after talking to the camp officials, said Mohammed Abdul Hashim, a refugee as he left for the island on Thursday. Hashim said insecurity in the camps was rising, with many living in fear of criminal groups.

It was not clear when the next batch will travel to the island.

The government says the relocation is a temporary arrangement and eventually they will have to return to their home country in Myanmar, although Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has also said she will not force the refugees to return.

In October, the U.N. signed an agreement with Bangladesh's government to facilitate sending refugees to the island. The U.N. and other groups had earlier criticized the relocation, saying the island, which is regularly submerged by monsoon rains, was not fit for habitation. The government has spent more than $112 million on development, adding sea walls, hospitals, schools and mosques.

The U.N. agreement allows for close cooperation between the international body and the government to supply services and aid for the islands residents.

Rights groups, however, have continued to express concerns over the plans. This week, the International Federation of Red Cross urged in a statement that urgent action was needed to protect the refugees from cyclones and the COVID-19 pandemic on Bhashan Char Island. It said Bangladesh's Red Crescent has been working directly with the refugees so that lifesaving measures are in place ahead of the next big cyclone, as big storms regularly threaten the Bay of Bengal from September until December.

It said vaccinations have been underway for people aged over 55 on the island, and more doses are due for the remaining adults.

The Rohingya are not recognized as citizens in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, rendering them stateless, and face other forms of state-sanctioned discrimination and violence.
Sergei Grits/AP

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan (AP)  Turkmenistans autocratic president has put his only son in charge of the Central Asian nation's energy sector, further expanding his clout in a move seen as laying the foundations for a political dynasty.

Speaking at a meeting with officials, President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov told his son, Serdar, whom he previously appointed deputy prime minister in charge of economic and financial issues, to also oversee the energy complex, the government daily Neutral Turkmenistan reported Thursday.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Police on Wednesday released video of officers shooting a knife-wielding man who charged at them in a residential hotel.

Ajmal Amani, 41, was shot Friday morning in the narrow corridor of the building on South of Market after threatening several people with a large kitchen knife. He was shot in the stomach and leg and died at a hospital.

Amani was a former Afghan interpreter for U.S. special forces who had been shot several times during more than five years of service and struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, his former lawyer, his case manager and a property manager told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Amani was charged with assault with a deadly weapon in 2019 for allegedly slashing a city park ranger with a box cutter who said he appeared to be in an altered mental state."

Amani was ordered to undergo mental health diversion which he completed this year and was living in a city-rented room at the residential hotel.

Police were called to the hotel on Friday morning by reports that a man was screaming and yelling and had a knife. Amani's case manager also called 911 to report that a co-worker said Amani was having a really bad episode."

On Wednesday, police released hotel surveillance video and footage from officers' body cameras. They show Amani holding and gesturing with the knife, confronting two people, including someone who is fending him off with a broom, then walking past other people into a room.

When two officers arrive, the man with the broom tells them that Amani had threatened to kill him.

An officer tells the radio dispatcher that they can hear Amani screaming.

According to body camera video, the officers remain in the corridor and try to talk to Amani, who is in a room. Amani swears and tells them to leave him alone and one officer says nobody wants to hurt you.

Less than a minute later, Amani charges down the hallway and is shot after an officer shouts: Stay there! Stay there!

Police said Amani was holding a knife with a 6-inch blade. He was shot four times with a handgun and three times with bean-bag projectiles.

As Amani lay on the ground, still moving, more officers arrived. They waited several minutes to cautiously approach him, then handcuffed him and used CPR and a tourniquet on him before paramedics arrived.

At a virtual town hall meeting where the video was released, Police Chief Bill Scott said his department and prosecutors were investigating the shooting. Scott said he had personally offered condolences to Amani's family.

Scott Grant, a deputy public defender who represented Amani, said he was utterly devastated" by his death.

Grant said Amani suffered incredible trauma" and violence during his time with U.S. forces.

His tragic death is a failure of our systems of government here to support somebody who risked his life to support this country, Grant told KTVU-TV.
CALAIS, France (AP)  At least 31 migrants bound for Britain died Wednesday when their boat sank in the English Channel, in what Frances interior minister called the biggest migration tragedy on the dangerous crossing to date.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 34 people were believed to have been on the boat. Authorities found 31 bodies  including those of five women and a young girl  and two survivors, he said. One person appeared to still be missing. The nationalities of the travelers was not immediately known.

The regional maritime authority, which oversees rescue operations, later said 27 bodies were found, two people survived and four others were missing and presumed drowned. The discrepancy in the numbers was not immediately explained.

Ever-increasing numbers of people fleeing conflict or poverty in Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq, Eritrea or elsewhere are risking the perilous journey in small, unseaworthy craft from France, hoping to win asylum or find better opportunities in Britain. The crossings have tripled this year compared to 2020, and another 106 migrants were rescued in French waters on Wednesday alone.

A joint French-British search operation for survivors of the sinking was called off late Wednesday. Both countries cooperate to stem migration across the Channel but also accuse each other of not doing enough  and the issue is often used by politicians on both sides pushing an anti-migration agenda.

Four suspected traffickers were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of being linked to the sunken boat, Darmanin told reporters in the French port city of Calais. He said two of the suspects later appeared in court.

The regional prosecutor opened an investigation into aggravated manslaughter, organized illegal migration and other charges after the sinking. Lille Prosecutor Carole Etienne told The Associated Press that officials were still working to identify the victims and determine their ages and nationalities, and that the investigation may involve multiple countries.

Its a day of great mourning for France, for Europe, for humanity to see these people die at sea, Darmanin said. He lashed out at criminal traffickers driving thousands to risk the crossing.

Activists demonstrated outside the port of Calais on Wednesday night, accusing governments of not doing enough to respond to migrants' needs. Hundreds of people live in precarious conditions along the French coast, despite regular police patrols and evacuation operations.

The bodies were brought to the Calais port, Jean-Marc Puissesseau, head of the ports of Calais and Boulogne, told The AP. We were waiting for something like this to happen," he said, given the growing numbers of people risking the passage.

Aid groups blamed European governments for increasingly hard-line migration policies. The U.K. is not a choice, it is an escape, an escape for people fleeing the lack of welcome in Europe, said Nikolai Posner of French charity Utopia 56.

Darmanin called for coordination with the U.K., saying the response must also come from Great Britain.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke after Wednesdays tragedy and agreed that it is vital to keep all options on the table to stop these lethal crossings and break the business model of the criminal gangs behind them, Johnsons office said.

Downing Street said the two leaders underlined the importance of close working with neighbors in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as partners across the continent if we are to tackle the problem effectively before people reach the French coast.

Macron stressed the shared responsibility of France and the U.K. and told Johnson he expects full cooperation from the British and that they do not use the tragic situation for political purposes, the Elysee said.

Frances government is holding an emergency meeting Thursday morning to discuss next steps. Macron advocated an immediate funding boost for the European Union's border agency, Frontex, and an emergency meeting of European government ministers, according to his office. France will not allow the Channel to become a cemetery, Macron said.

Johnson convened a meeting of the government's crisis committee, and said he was shocked, appalled and deeply saddened."

He urged France to step up efforts to stem the flow of migrants, and said Wednesdays incident highlighted how efforts by French authorities to patrol their beaches havent been enough.

Weve had difficulties persuading some of our partners, particularly the French, to do things in a way that we think the situation deserves," he told reporters.

Darmanin insisted that France has worked hard to prevent crossings, rescuing 7,800 people since January and stopping 671 who were trying to cross on Wednesday alone.

A French naval boat spotted several bodies in the water around 2 p.m. and rescue boats retrieved several dead and injured from the surrounding waters, a maritime authority spokesperson said. French patrol boats, a French helicopter and a British helicopter searched the area.

More than 25,700 people undertook such dangerous boat journeys so far this year  three times the total for the whole of 2020. With changeable weather, cold seas and heavy maritime traffic, the crossing is dangerous for the inflatables and other small boats that men, women and children squeeze into.

Migrants from around the world have long used northern France as a launching point to reach Britain by stowing away in trucks or using dinghies and other small boats organized by smugglers. Many want to reach the U.K. in search of economic opportunity or because of family and community ties, or because their efforts to win asylum in the EU failed. French authorities say another big draw is lax British rules toward migrants without residency papers.

The overall number of people applying for asylum in Britain is down slightly on last year, and Britain receives much fewer asylum seekers than comparable European countries like Germany or France.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, says an estimated 1,600 people have died or disappeared in the Mediterranean Sea this year while trying to reach Europe from North Africa or Turkey. Hundreds more have perished in the Atlantic Ocean off West Africa on a migrant route to Spains Canary Islands.

How many more times must we see people lose their life trying to reach safety in the UK because of the woeful lack of safe means to do so?" said Tom Davies, Amnesty International U.K.s refugee and migrant rights campaign manager.

We desperately need a new approach to asylum, including genuine Anglo-French efforts to devise safe asylum routes to avoid such tragedies happening again," he added.

____

Hui reported from London. Angela Charlton in Paris, Sylvie Corbet in Strasbourg, France, Jill Lawless and Pan Pylas in London contributed to this report.

___

Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
BANJUL, Gambia (AP)  Investigators with Gambias Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission delivered a final report to the president Thursday, identifying and recommending prosecution for those most responsible for crimes and human rights abuses committed during the 22-year rule of former President Yahya Jammeh.

After receiving the report, President Adama Barrow said he hoped the commission will be one of his legacies as a leader of Gambia.

Following his election in 2016, Barrow vowed to right the wrongs of the past, especially widespread abuses under previous leader Jammeh. The commission was mandated to establish an impartial historical record of abuses committed from July 1994 to January 2017, when Jammeh fled into exile after losing elections. More than two years of hearings that led to the report documented human rights abuses and horrors that occurred under Jammehs rule.

Its submission comes just before Gambias 2 million people are set to vote in presidential elections on Dec. 4, in which Barrow is running for re-election against five other candidates.

After submitting the report, Commission chair Lamin J. Sise said that the individuals involved in perpetrating the violations and abuses must be held accountable for their crimes and their names are mentioned expressly in the relevant sections of the report.

The commission found that the abuses resulted in the deaths of 240 to 250 Gambians and non-Gambians in the hands of (the) state or its agents.

Sise did not mention the names of those the commission has recommended for prosecution, however, Jammeh is likely among them, according to experts.

The evidence is in  We have the truth, said Baba Hydara, whose father Deyda Hydara was a newspaper editor killed in 2004.

Now we need justice, he said. Justice for my father, justice for all of Jammehs victims, and justice for Gambian society as a whole.

The Gambia National Human Rights Commission called on the government to commit to implementing the recommendations of the report.

The government now has the duty to take the next important step, the national human rights watchdog said in a statement issued today and seen by The AP. We hereby urge the President, to consider and share the report with all relevant stakeholders  and put in place all the necessary mechanisms, institutions, processes, and resources to implement all the recommendations fully and adequately within a realistic timeframe.

Similar calls were reiterated by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, urging the Barrow administration to make sure that victims get redress.

Jammeh is likely at the top of the list of former officials whose prosecution is recommended, Reed Brody of the International Commission of Jurists, who works with Jammehs victims, said.

Witnesses with first-hand knowledge implicated Jammeh in murder, torture, rape and the other terrible crimes cited by the commission, said Brody.

This report begins the countdown to the day Yahya Jammeh will have to face his victims. Whether its in The Gambia or before an international court, it will be very difficult now for him to escape justice, he said.

The commissions report will not be made immediately public.

Barrow, who received the report in Gambias capital, Banjul, now has six months to release a paper on how to implement the recommendations submitted by the commission. He promised Thursday that justice will be done.

I assure (victims families) that my government will ensure that justice is done, but I urge them to be patient and allow the legal process to take its course, said the Gambian leader. He promised that his white paper would be filed within six months. He will, in the mean time, share copies of the report with the countrys lawmaking body, U.N. Secretary-General and the African Union.

In the interim, I advise all Gambians to exercise restraint, Barrow reiterated.

A recent rapprochement between Barrows National Peoples Party and the former governing party has cast doubt on the authorities willingness to right the wrongs of the past in making sure justice is served.

Barrow sought an alliance with Jammehs former party in September, a move denounced by rights activists. Jammeh, however, has formed a rival party, with many of his supporters hoping he will return from exile.

Jammeh, who seized power in 1994 in a bloodless coup, was voted out of office in 2016 after opposition parties created a coalition with Barrow as the main candidate.

After initially agreeing to step down, Jammeh resisted and a six-week crisis saw neighboring West African countries prepare to send in troops to stage a military intervention. Jammeh was forced into exile and fled to Equatorial Guinea aboard a plane with his family and many belongings.

The 56-year-old Jammeh still has considerable support in the tiny West African nation, despite the abuses under his rule.

___

Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal.

By ABDOULIE JOHN and CARLEY PETESCH

Associated Press
Chinese fashion photographer in Dior controversy apologizes View Photo

HONG KONG (AP)  A renowned Chinese fashion photographer has apologized for her past work after online critics called it insulting to the Chinese people and fashion house Dior removed one of her photos from a show in Shanghai.

Chen Man acknowledged the criticism of her earlier work, including Young Pioneers, a series of images of a young model with backdrops of major landmarks such as Chinas massive Three Gorges Dam or with an image of the countrys first lunar orbiter flying out from under her dress.

The criticism was reported by the state-owned Global Times newspaper, which said that comments on social media had called her work implicit child pornography and insulting the young pioneers, the name of a Communist Party-affiliated youth organization.

I have reflected deeply and blamed myself for my naivety and ignorance at the time. I think that I must still formally apologize to everyone, Chen wrote this week on her social media account.

Im a Chinese person, born and raised, I deeply love my motherland, she wrote. And I know, deeply, that as an artist, I have a responsibility to the mission to record and spread the Chinese peoples culture.

She joins numerous Chinese and foreign celebrities, brands and artists who have made public apologies following criticism of their work in state media. Some have been boycotted for refusing to apologize or if the apology is deemed insufficient.

Chens apology came more than a week after Dior was attacked over the photo at its exhibition in Shanghai, which pictured a model of Asian descent with tan, freckled skin and darkened eyelids holding a Dior purse.

Critics deemed the photograph contrary to East Asian beauty standards of fair skin and said it perpetuated Western stereotypes of Asian faces, such as slanted eyes.

At least one photo editor has praised her work in the past for creating an aesthetic that was neither aping Western magazines or Japanese and South Korean ones. And in 2019, the Global Times described Chen as Chinas answer to U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz, calling her a shining star with a unique perspective.

Dior removed the photograph, adding that it was part of an art project and not an advertisement. In a statement on its Chinese social media account, Dior said it respects the feelings of Chinese people and strictly abides by Chinese laws and regulations.

Other luxury brands have previously been embroiled in controversies in China. In 2018, a Dolce & Gabbana advertisement sparked public outrage after the Asian model in the ad was instructed to eat spaghetti, cannolis and pizza with a pair of chopsticks. The videos were later removed.

Chens social media post said she accepted criticism of her work including that for a certain brand, but didnt specify Dior.

The photograph taken down from the Shanghai exhibit was shot in a similar style to a series of covers Chen did for British fashion magazine i-D that featured 12 young Chinese women from different ethnic minorities. Many of the women did not fit what has become a common definition of beauty in China  some had small eyes and others had freckles.

Ding Yining, a photo editor at Sixth Tone, praised Chens work in a 2018 article for the state-backed English-language features website.

From her works, it would seem that Chen prefers female models with narrow, single-lidded eyes and a sense of traditional East Asian elegance, Ding wrote.

Chen told Sixth Tone that as a professional visual artist, I believe that I should help more people recognize the face of modern Chinese beauty with greater confidence.

___

Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan.

By ZEN SOO and HUIZHONG WU

Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP)  A Chicago woman was shot to death on Wednesday, just steps away from a memorial to her 14-year-old son who was fatally shot over the weekend on the same sidewalk where his mother was found.

Delisa Tucker was shot in the chest on the same street where Kevin Tinker was killed on Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Chicago Police have not said if they believe the two shootings are connected and nobody has been arrested in either shooting. But the death of the 31-year-old Tucker, who lost her son over the weekend and her brother to gun violence two years ago, left the Roseland community on the citys South Side where she lived distraught about the shootings just days apart.

Its just sad that this whole family, basically, to be killed over time, said Pastor Donovan Price, who said he consoled Tucker at a vigil for her son Sunday night. Im devastated.

Police have not made any arrests in either either shooting. On Wednesday mornings shooting of Tucker, they said when they responded to a ShotSpotter alert, they found her lying on the sidewalk, but could not locate anyone on the block who said they saw the shooting.

On Sunday, her son, an eighth grader, was on the same sidewalk when he was shot several times. Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said it was unclear if the boy was the intended target.

The deaths come toward the end of what has been one of the citys deadliest years in recent years. According to the police departments statistics, there have been 729 homicides in the city as of Nov. 21 compared to 702 for the same period last year and the number of shootings incidents has climbed to 3,221 this year compared to 2,960 for the same period last year.

And the Roseland area has been hit particularly hard by gun violence, with the police department statistics showing that the district that includes Roseland has seen 62 homicides this year compared to 42 during the same period last year.
Ahmaud Arberys mom: Thankful for justice and sons legacy View Photo

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  Ahmaud Arberys mother woke up Thursday with a new, very important blessing on Thanksgiving Day.

But there will still be an empty chair at the familys celebrations. It is a reminder that while she feels justice was served when the three white men who helped shoot her son were convicted Wednesday for cornering and killing him as he ran through a coastal Georgia neighborhood, she will never be made whole again because her son is gone.

This is the second Thanksgiving weve had without Ahmaud. But at the same time Im thankful. This is the first Thanksgiving we are saying we got justice for Ahmaud, Arberys mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.

The three white men who chased and killed Arbery in Brunswick in February 2020 were all convicted of murder Wednesday. They cornered Arbery after finding out he had been seen on a surveillance camera at a nearby house under construction and wanted to question him about recent burglaries in the area.

Arbery ran through the neighborhood and other areas near his home to clear his head. He had nothing in his hands and ran from the men for five minutes before one of them shot three times at him at close range with a shotgun. The men face life in prison when they are sentenced later and a federal hate crimes trial for them is scheduled for February.

Cooper-Jones said after the verdicts were read Wednesday, she thought of her sons supporters at the Glynn County courthouse every day who shouted Justice for Ahmaud!

I finally got a chance to come out of those courtroom doors and say, we did it, we did it together, Cooper-Jones said.

Sitting beside Cooper-Jones as she heard the judge read out guilty 23 times was the mother of Ronald Greene, a Louisiana man who died in 2019 after he was beaten and put in a chokehold by state troopers after a high speed chase. Troopers said Greene suffered his injuries in a crash, but his doctors reported that didnt appear to be true. A federal civil rights investigation into Greenes death continues.

In the days after her son was killed. Cooper-Jones got a call from the mother of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teen killed by a man who successfully claimed self-defense during his murder trial after confronting Martin as he walked in his gated community. Martin was visiting relatives.

She also spoke with the mother of Breonna Taylor. Taylor was killed by Louisville, Kentucky, police who burst into her home without knocking while serving a warrant during a drug operation. Taylors boyfriend fired on the group. The officers were not charged in her death.

Other mothers who have lost sons and daughters to racial violence or in police shootings also reached out. Cooper-Jones calls them a sorority.

We come together. We share our experience and we grow together, she said.

Cooper-Jones spent the past six weeks away from home, since jury selection started Oct. 18. She moved away from Brunswick after her son was killed.

So she plans a quiet Thanksgiving away from home today. She isnt sure if they will make Arberys favorite  pork chops and butter beans, but if not Thursday, the they will have them soon because she said her son loved them for Sunday dinner.

Today is actually going to be a day of rest. Ive been sitting in that courtroom since October 18, Cooper-Jones said. Im gathering my immediate family. Were going to have a small dinner. Weve going to be thankful. Were going to give our praises to God.

Other relatives are also grateful for the blessing of justice.

Were thankful for Ahmauds life. Thankful for the love that hes shown us, for the years we had him. Thankful for the fight we stayed in for justice. Thankful that now we can start healing, Arberys aunt Thea Brooks told the AP.

Cooper-Jones is also thankful her sons killers are facing justice and his death will make Georgia a safer place.

After Arberys death, Georgia became the 47th state to pass a hate crimes law. The Legislature also repealed the citizens arrest law that defense attorneys tried to use to justify chasing him, banning people who arent officers from detaining people outside of shoplifting.

When they hear my sons name. they will say, this young man, he lost his life but he did bring change, Cooper-Jones said.

___

Jeffrey Collins reported from Columbia, South Carolina. Associated Press writers Alex Sanz in Atlanta and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this report.

By RODRIQUE NGOWI and JEFFREY COLLINS

Associated Press
Biden wishes Americans happy, closer-to-normal Thanksgiving View Photo

NANTUCKET, Mass. (AP)  President Joe Biden on Thursday wished Americans a happy and closer-to-normal Thanksgiving, the second celebrated in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, in remarks welcoming the resumption of holiday traditions by millions of U.S. families  including his own.

As we give thanks for what we have, we also keep in our hearts those who have been lost and those who have lost so much, the president said in a videotaped greeting recorded with first lady Jill Biden at the White House before their trip to Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the holiday.

On the island, the Bidens visited the Coast Guard station at Brant Point to meet with personnel there and virtually with U.S. service members from around the world. Im not joking when I say Im thankful for these guys, the president said when asked what he was thankful for, referring to the Coast Guard members standing ramrod straight before him on the grounds as he departed.

Reporters were kept out of the room for Bidens virtual remarks, apparently because of tight space in the building. Well-wishers waved and cheered as Bidens motorcade navigated the islands narrow paved and cobblestone streets to and from the Coast Guard compound.

Biden, whose late son Beau was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, said he has watched U.S. service members in action around the world, from the South China Sea and Iraq and Afghanistan to South America. He said when foreigners wonder what America is, they dont see us here, meaning civilians. They see them, he said of members of the Coast Guard and the other branches of the U.S. military. It makes me proud.

From Nantucket, the Bidens also called in to the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, briefly bantering on air with NBC broadcaster Al Roker. Shut out a year ago, spectators again lined the route in Manhattan as some 8,000 participants joined the parade. Parade employees and volunteers had to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and wear masks.

The extended first family went traditional for their Thanksgiving menu: roasted turkey, stuffing using a grandmothers recipe and other fixings. Dessert was three kinds of pie, and  in no surprise to those who followed Biden in and out of ice cream shops on the campaign trail  chocolate chip ice cream.

Biden and his wife started spending Thanksgiving in Nantucket since before they were married in 1977 because they were looking for a way out of choosing whose family to spend it with. They did not visit in 2015 following Beaus death earlier that year from brain cancer at age 46, or in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic put the kibosh on big family gatherings.

Biden instead dined at home in Delaware last year with just his wife, daughter Ashley and her husband.

But this year, the president joined the millions of Americans who are celebrating the holiday with big groups of loved ones. Bidens entire family flew up with him Tuesday night on Air Force One to resume the Thanksgiving tradition: his wife; son Hunter and his wife, Melissa and their toddler son Beau; daughter Ashley; and grandchildren Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie and young Hunter, as well as Naomis fiance, Peter Neal.

The president has credited the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines with helping ease the return of family gatherings this holiday season, although a resurgent virus has fueled an increase in new infections in the U.S. The president and first lady both have had their full vaccine dose, and a booster.

Naomi Biden and her fiance rode bicycles along on a local path just before her grandfathers SUV departed the secluded home where the family is staying. The sprawling compound is owned by David Rubenstein, a billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of the Carlyle Group private equity firm.

Bidens visit, his first as president, is markedly different from his previous holidays here when he was a U.S. senator and later vice president. Then, he might have been seen walking around downtown.

Biden lost much of his freedom to move around on his own when he became president and now travels with a large group of security personnel, White House and other officials, and journalists. His every public move is closely watched by the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement.

Jill Biden was heard telling the Coast Guard members she would see them again Friday night at Nantuckets annual Christmas tree lighting, another Biden tradition.

Were all going together, she said of her family. The tree lighting ceremony is where Beau Biden proposed to his wife, Hallie, in 2001. They were wed on the island the following year.

Biden is expected to return to the White House on Sunday.

___

Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE

Associated Press
SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP)  A 40-year-old California man died in police custody last week after officers used a stun gun on him twice in under a minute, authorities said Wednesday.

Jordan Pas was pronounced dead at a hospital at 2:17 a.m. Thursday in Santa Rosa, about 55 miles (89 kilometers) north of San Francisco, the Sonoma County Sheriffs Office said in a news release. The sheriffs office is investigating Pas death.

Eight officers and a sergeant from the Santa Rosa Police Department are on paid administrative leave, according to The Santa Rosa Press Democrat. They are Sgt. Matt Crosbie and Officers Frank Sedeno, David Lamb, Nick Madarus, Joe Richards, Jonathan Morgan, Robert Moore, Bradley Marweg and Jerry Ellsworth.

The sheriffs office provided details about the Nov. 18 incident but a Facebook post issued Wednesday did not say which officers used their stun guns. The Facebook post included a photo of the gun Pas reportedly had before his encounter with the officers, as well as a photo of him allegedly pointing the firearm into a car.

Sgt. Juan Valencia, a spokesperson for the sheriff, said in an email Wednesday that Pas autopsy had been conducted last week but he did not provide details.

At 1:19 a.m., the Santa Rosa Police Department got a phone call reporting several gunshots being fired in the street. Several other calls came in reporting a man  later identified as Pas through surveillance video  was walking around the neighborhood with a gun. The surveillance footage showed Pas firing a rifle into a car, the sheriffs office said.

Officers found Pas 10 minutes later, shirtless and holding a large landscaping rock in his right hand. He was pacing and sweating profusely on a cold night, the sheriffs office said.

The officers repeatedly told Pas to drop the rock and threatened to use a stun gun on him. He did not comply, the sheriffs office said.

At 1:35 a.m., an officer used stun gun on him, causing him to drop the rock and fall backward onto his knees. He crawled over to another large rock and tried to throw it at the approaching officers, the sheriffs office said.

An officer used a stun gun on Pas again  less than a minute after the first time  as he allegedly continued resisting by trying to get up.

The sheriffs office says Pas was lying on his stomach with his arms under his body as he tried to push himself up as officers tried to hold him down. He allegedly resisted their efforts by tensing up and continuing not to comply with their orders.

The sheriffs office account does not detail exactly how the officers tried to hold Pas down.

Pas was handcuffed at 1:36 a.m. and rolled to his left side so officers could monitor his breathing. But he was not responsive to verbal or physical stimulus.

Three minutes later, suspecting Pas had overdosed on narcotics, an officer administered one dose of Narcan. Narcan, the brand name for the drug naloxone, works to reverse an opioid overdose.

The vast majority of people who overdose survive if given naloxone. The sheriffs office has not released the results of Pas autopsy and toxicology test yet, which would show if he had opioids in his system.

At 1:40 a.m., medical personnel arrived to take Pas to the hospital.

By 2:17 a.m., Pas was pronounced dead.
CAIRO (AP)  Thousands of Sudanese took to the streets on Thursday in the capital of Khartoum, renewing their demand for a fully civilian government and denouncing the country's military rulers who were behind the October coup.

Since the takeover, protesters have repeatedly taken to the streets in some of the largest demonstrations in the past years. Sudanese security forces have cracked down on the rallies and have killed more than 40 protesters so far, according to activist groups.

Meanwhile, the Sudanese Doctors Committee, which is part of the pro-democracy movement, said that 17 people were killed in clashes between Arab and non-Arab tribes in the restive province of West Darfur last week. The tribal violence is unrelated to the anti-coup protests.

The U.N. mission to Sudan on Thursday expressed serious concern over reports of the killings in the Darfur area of Jebel Moon. It appeared that reports of the violence were only now emerging due to the near-complete communications blackout imposed after the coup.

Thursday's demonstrations followed the military's signing of a power-sharing deal with the prime minister, after he was released from house arrest and reinstated by the generals as head of government. The agreement came almost a month after the generals orchestrated the coup that deposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok and detained dozens of politicians and activists.

Hamdoks reinstatement was the biggest concession made by the military since its Oct. 25 coup but leaves the countrys transition to democracy mired in crisis. Sudans key pro-democracy groups and political parties have dismissed the deal as falling short of their demands for a fully civilian rule.

Sudan has been struggling with its transition to a democratic government since the overthrow of autocrat Omar al-Bashir in 2019, following a mass uprising against three decades of his rule.

Protesters marched Thursday through Khartoum, beating drums and waving Sudanese flags. Many chanted: The people want to bring down the regime and Woe to the military!

The Sudanese Professionals Association, the group that spearheaded the uprising that culminated in al-Bashir's ouster, had called for the rallies and vowed to carry on with protests until the corrupt military junta is brought down and prosecuted for their crimes."

Similar protests were held elsewhere in Sudan, including in the provinces of Kassala, North Darfur, West Kordofan and Northern Sudan. Activists circulated videos on social media showing tear gas being fired at protesters. There was no immediate word of any injuries.

The deal that Hamdok signed with the military on Sunday envisions an independent, technocratic Cabinet to be led by the prime minister until new elections are held. However, the government would still remain under military oversight though Hamdok claimed he will have the power to appoint ministers.

The agreement has angered Sudans pro-democracy movement, which accuses Hamdok of allowing himself to serve as a fig leaf for continued military rule.

The deal also stipulates that all political detainees arrested following the Oct. 25 coup be released. So far, several ministers and politicians have been freed. The number of those still in detention remains unknown.

On Wednesday, Hamdok told a local Sudanese television channel that unless all are released, the deal will be worthless.

The statement by the doctors committee on the tribal violence said clashes on Nov. 17 in West Darfur's Jebel Moon killed 17 and wounded at least 12.

Earlier, Adam Regal, a spokesman for a local organization that helps run refugee camps in Darfur, told The Associated Press that the conflict grew out of a land dispute. He alleged that Rapid Support Forces, a paramilitary unit controlled by the country's second most powerful general, had eventually intervened on behalf of Arab tribes. The clashes subsided on Friday, he said.

The International Organization for Migration said Wednesday that 9,800 people have been displaced in the area of Jebel Moon. Some fled to nearby villages and others crossed the border into Chad. At least six villages were affected, some of them were burned down, according to the U.N. migration agency.

In January, tribal violence killed 470 people in Darfur, in one of the worst episodes since the vicious war of the 2000s there. The latest bloodletting has sparked fears the region could slide back into conflict and raised questions over the governments ability to implement a peace deal and protect civilians.

Al-Bashir had waged a scorched-earth counterinsurgency in Darfur against ethnic minority rebels who blamed the government for economic and political marginalization. Government forces and primarily Arab militias known as janjaweed are accused of widespread atrocities in the conflict, which killed over 300,000 people and forced 2.7 million to flee. Al-Bashir, now imprisoned in Khartoum, was indicted for war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court for the Darfur violence.

The fighting in Darfur gradually declined but violence continues to flare, as Arab militias roaming the provinces remain heavily armed and retain control over land they seized.
Courtesy, Donovan Thomson

Hoppy news for New Braunfels beer fans: Big Hops is in town. The chain of San Antonio-based craft beer bars has officially added a New Braunfels outpost.

Co-owners Donovan Thomson and Audi Paredes, both military veterans, are the franchise owners behind the new location at 2188 Texas Highway 46. Thomson, who Instagram followers might recognize as @satxrated, tells MySA his location is "a true craft beer taproom with a primary focus on Texas craft beer."
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  More than 1,000 anti-vaccine demonstrators rallied in the Ukrainian capital Wednesday to denounce coronavirus restrictions, in the second such protest this month.

The protesters, many of them members of radical nationalist groups, gathered outside the parliament building and marched across downtown Kyiv carrying placards reading Down with anti-constitutional bans! and The pandemic of lies!"

The Ukrainian government has required teachers, doctors, government employees and other groups of workers to be fully vaccinated by Dec. 1. It has also begun to require proof of vaccination or negative COVID-19 test results for travel on planes, trains and long-distance buses.

We are protesting against the compulsory vaccination and demanding (that the government cancels) restrictions, said Mykola Kokhanivskyi, the protest organizer who leads the OUN Volunteer Movement nationalist group. The constitution guarantees freedom from medical experiments to every Ukrainian and doesn't require any COVID certificates.

Ukraine has reported record numbers of infections and deaths, a surge blamed on the slow pace of vaccination. The country has reported over 3.3 million infections and 82,913 deaths since the start of the pandemic.

Four coronavirus vaccines are available in Ukraine  Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Sinovac  but only 23% of its 41 million people are fully vaccinated. The Ministry of Health reported that 96% of patients with severe COVID-19 werent immunized.

Health Minister Viktor Lyashko said the government has a goal of fully vaccinating at least 40% of the country's adults by the year's end.

The authorities further tightened restrictions Wednesday, cutting the validity of a certificate given after the first vaccine shot from 120 to 30 days to prevent people from delaying getting a second dose. Such certificates are required for access to public transport.

The restrictions have spawned a black market for fake vaccination documents, which sell for the equivalent of $100-$300. A phony government digital app for smartphones is reportedly available, complete with fake certificates installed.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's government has promised every fully vaccinated Ukrainian a payment of 1,000 hryvnia ($38), about 5% of the average monthly wage, but widespread hesitancy remains.

I will not allow anyone to force me to take drugs containing microchips, undermining health and provoking thousands of illnesses, one of the protesters, 36-year-old entrepreneur Olena Alkon, said, referring to long-debunked conspiracy theories about vaccines. I will not allow pharma mafia that invented a myth about the coronavirus to manage my health.

Speaking at the rally, Yuriy Ovsiykenko, a lawyer, denounced the vaccination as a cover for the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.

It was the second such demonstration this month. Following the previous protest on Nov. 3, authorities arrested Ostap Stakhiv, the leader of the anti-vaccine movement. A court ordered him to stay in custody for two months pending trial on charges of trying to destabilize the situation in the country.

___

Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
The age limit at December's Rolling Loud California has been amended to attendees 18 and older, according to a policy change made following November's Astroworld Festival tragedy in Houston.

In a tweet shared Monday night, Rolling Loud stated it wants "everyone to rage safely" at the December 10-12 concert series, which will feature headline acts including Kid Cudi, J. Cole, and Future in San Bernadino, Calif. Like Astroworld, the massive hip hop festival is also produced by concert promoter Live Nation.

Rolling Loud, which also hosts concerts in Miami and New York, did not specifically mention Astroworld in its announcement, but appeared to allude to the deadly night in Houston. "We welcome everyone to experience our festivals, however, in light of recent events, we will be implementing an 18+ policy specific only to our upcoming 2021 California festival," the statement said.

The new policy applies specifically to the California show, not other future Rolling Loud concerts, according to the announcement. Ticket purchasers under 18 have the option to use their tickets for next year's California concert or receive a refund.

All Rolling Loud concerts in the U.S. were previously open to all ages, according to recurring festival's website. All ages were also allowed at the Astroworld Festival concert, headlined by rapper Travis Scott, where 10 individuals died following a crowd crush on November 5. Three of the victims were minors, the youngest being 9-year-old Ezra Blount.

@RollingLoud

A number of Twitter users voiced support of the new age limit, some saying it should have been already been 18 and over. Other users said the new policy should remain permanently and be implemented at all Rolling Loud concerts.

Live Nation has not responded to requests for comment in regards to how it is reassessing safety protocols following Astroworld. The promoter on Tuesday posted its first tweet in weeks, advertising an upcoming slate of shows featuring the bands The Midnight, Architects and Waterparks. Live Nation's last post on the platform came November 8 in the form of a quote tweet of a statement by Texas-based promoter Scoremore regarding its ongoing cooperation with authorities in the aftermath of the deadly crowd crush. Meanwhile, lawsuits against the promoter have continued to mount in wake of the festival tragedy, including $750 million and $2 billion lawsuits filed last week.
Two family members who worked as security guards at early November's Astroworld Festival are suing artist Travis Scott, their employer and several others over the injuries they suffered during a deadly crowd surge.

Samuel and Jackson Bush were working for global security firm AJ Melino and Associates when a dramatic rush of people in the crowd lead to widespread panic and trampling as music blared on. In all, 10 people died and hundreds were injured during the now infamous concert. Samuel Bush suffered a broken hand and injured back, his nephew Jackson Bush suffered shoulder and back pain and emotional trauma from watching someone perform CPR, the suit explains.
International

Ukraine warns Russia that any attack on Ukraine would be costly

Dmytro Kuleba

KYIV, NOV 25 (AGENCIES) | Publish Date: 11/25/2021 11:11:34 AM IST

Ukraines foreign minister warned Russia on Thursday that an attack on his country would incur political, economic and human losses and would be too costly.

Russia has been building up forces near its border with Ukraine, and Kyiv, the United States and NATO have voiced concerns about a possible Russian attack -- a suggestion the Kremlin has dismissed as false. read more

We are not trying to guess what is in (Russian President Vladimir) Putins head, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told a televised briefing.

We are working to give him a clear understanding - a new attack on Ukraine will be too costly, so it is better not to do it.

He said Kyivs the main goal was to restrain Russia from further aggressive actions.

To do this, Moscow must clearly understand what political, economic and human losses it will incur in the event of a new stage of aggression, Kuleba said.

The head of Ukraines military intelligence told the Military Times outlet this weekend that Russia had more than 92,000 troops massed around Ukraines borders and was preparing for an attack by the end of January or beginning of February.

Ukraine, which wants to join the NATO military alliance, received a large consignment of U.S. ammunition and Javelin missiles earlier this year, prompting criticism from Moscow.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian navy received two refitted former U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats as a part of $2.5-billion package of assistance to Ukraine, and Kuleba said Ukraine could receive one another of the vessels.

Ukraines ties with Russia collapsed in 2014 after Moscow backed separatists who rose up in eastern Ukraine and took control of territory that Kyiv wants back. Kyiv says some 14,000 people have been killed in fighting since then.

Russia has not turned its back on talks with France, Germany and Ukraine about how to implement a peace deal over eastern Ukraine, Maria Zakharova, a foreign ministry spokeswoman, said on Thursday.
Yves here. This post raises a good question, why is the press so cowardly about discussing our bloated, overly ambitious, routinely underperforming military? But it doesnt go very far in probing why the media gives the Pentagon a free pass.

One obvious explanation is access journalism. Cross the spooks or the Pentagon and you go to the end of the line in getting planted stories pet leaks and access to insiders who can spin splain what is going on .

But a second factor is a love of men (and they still are nearly all men) with medals. Now that theres no draft, few Americans have seen up close that the military is as screwed up as any big organization. Ive been told by people in private equity that senior members of these firms, who are masters of the universe by pretty much any standard, are bedazzled by top military men and spooks. They love being around them, hire them as speakers, door openers, and portfolio company board members.

One proof of the degree to which the US media has been captured by the Pentagon is the wall to wall attacks on Biden after the US pulled out of Afghanistan. It was completely fair to criticize the Administration on poor execution, particularly in contrast to the Soviet exit in 1979. But how many nuanced critiques were there? The press delivered a barrage of Bad US loss of prestige, bad things will be destabilized (as if our presence wasnt destabilizing), bad dishonoring loss of life and treasure (sunk cost fallacy). The Oh did we screw up how we handled it was mainly an afterthought. And one wonders if the poor process was a feature, not a bug.

By Sonali Kolhatkar, the founder, host and executive producer of Rising Up With Sonali, a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV and Pacifica stations. She is a writing fellow for the Economy for All project at the Independent Media Institute. Produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute

Intense debate over the Build Back Better (BBB) legislation has triggered stern lectures by fiscal conservatives about government spending. The legislation, which hangs in the political balance between progressive lawmakers and conservative Democrats like Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, costs $1.75 trillion over 10 years in its present form, which is equivalent to $175 billion per year.

Compare this to President Joe Bidens proposed military budget expenditure of $753 billion for the 2022 fiscal year. According to the Security Policy Reform Institute, This amounts to an increase of well over $12 billion, meaning that Biden boosted Pentagon funding by an amount roughly equivalent to CDCs entire annual budget.

Extrapolating this figure over 10 years while accounting for the projected yearly increasesa good assumption considering that the military budget almost never loses its annual raisepredicts that American taxpayers will be footing almost $8 trillion on the defense slice of our budgetary pie in the coming decade.

Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute, explained to me in an interview that its amazing how hydraulic the system is. By that he meant, they cut $25 billion for home care from the BBB bill. Meanwhile, he said, Congress increased Bidens increase to the military budget by $25 billion at roughly the same time.

While the costs of the newly passed infrastructure funding bill that Biden signed into law and the yet-to-pass BBB legislation have been discussed ad nauseam on the front pages of major newspapers and in passionate debates on television networks, there is nary a peep from those same sources about the bloated military budget whose size continues to balloon year after year.

For example, this Washington Post article in late September headlined, Biden, Pelosi embark on late scramble to save $1 trillion infrastructure bill was one of many similarly billed pieces in major outlets through the end of the summer and early fall.

Imagine a headline casting implicit aspersions on the Pentagons funding. The fact that the size of the military budget is more than four times the size of the BBB legislation ought to be emblazoned across our papers. But we cant imagine seeing such ideas being discussed in mainstream avenues because the military budget is considered sacrosanctand not just by most lawmakers but also by corporate media outlets.

Semler pointed out that there are two concepts of spendingsocial spending and military spendingthat play by two separate sets of spending rules.

Coming on the heels of national hand-wringing over the costs of legislation that directly benefits the American people, the tacit acceptance of a military budget many times the cost of the social spending is jarringbut only to those paying very close attention or reading independent media outlets.

An example of fair reporting is Huffington Post writer Akbar Shahid Ahmeds article, whose headline reads in part, The Pentagon Budget Costs 4 Times As Much As Bidens Social Policy Bill.

Another example is Prakash Nandas article published in a non-U.S. outlet called the EurAsian Times, and headlined, Joe Bidens $778B Defense Budget Goes Unnoticed But His $170B Social Agenda Triggers A Huge Debate.

No such headlines appeared in major U.S. news outlets.

Its not as if there is zero debate in the nation over our spending priorities. If corporate media outlets like the Washington Post were taking their cues from progressive lawmakers like Bernie Sanders, they might have reported on the Vermont senators recent tweet pointing out how, It is beyond absurd that at the same time as our nation continues to spend more on the military than the next 12 nations COMBINED, we are told over and over that we cannot afford to invest in the needs of working class people here at home.

But instead, the Post and other outlets have continually amplified the desires and demands of conservative Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), in story after story without following up on Manchins willingness to spend trillions of dollars on the Pentagon. An article pointing out the hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives and their blanket approval of military expenditures would practically write itself. It takes effort to avoid expressing such a narrative.

Even some U.S. residents see the absurdity of the silence over the military budget. Alice C. McCain, living in Washington state, wrote a letter to a local paper called the Kitsap Sun questioning the size of the military budget. She was able to see the clear contrast in priorities, writing, Some of the same people who denounce the BBB plan as too expensive are eager to pass a bill giving the Pentagon $778 billion for one year, or nearly $8 trillion over ten years.

She asks pointedly, Why is it so hard to spend money on our country and its people, but so easy to dole out money for our military? Her question is one that media outlets have judiciously avoided for years.

Organizations and think tanks like the Project on Government Oversight, National Priorities Project, and Semlers Security Policy Reform Institute routinely call out the unjustifiably large Pentagon budget, offering up rich statistical comparisons, none of which seems good enough for major media outlets to highlight in a serious manner.

Ultimately, media outlets appear invested in the same sort of imperialist ambitions as politicians do. Semler pointed out how, the fear of Biden going into office was that the debate that him and [former President Donald] Trump had over who could be tougher, and more manly over China, during the lead-up to the general election would spill over into Bidens policy.

That fear was justified. In June, Biden signed an executive order citing, the threat posed by the military-industrial complex of the Peoples Republic of China, and has continued to drum up anti-China sentiment while proposing a military budget increase. The Post and other corporate media outlets dutifully buttress the logic of increasing the Pentagon budget with alarmist stories about Chinas expanding nuclear arsenal.

Social spending could follow the same rules as military spending in that theres always enough money, said Semler. But because Congress is only choosing to spend a certain amount [on social spending], effectively, military spending is stealing from social spending. Imagine seeing a top story in our major media reflecting such a radical and yet patently obvious notion.
(Natural News) Drs. Steven Hotze and Lee Merritt discussed the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines role as a Trojan horse for a sinister purpose during the Nov. 22 episode of The Dr. Hotze Report on Brighteon.TV.

Hotze explained what a Trojan horse is: You remember back in Greek mythology, there was a war between the Greeks and the city of Troy? The Greeks could not get behind the fortified walls, so they built a huge wooden horse. Inside that belly of that horse, they put some of their soldiers. They rolled it up to the gate of the city, and then they left.

The Trojans, figuring they had won the war, went out and pulled that horse into the city. When they went to bed at night, out of the belly of that Trojan horse came the Greek soldiers. They opened up the gate, the Greeks came back  and the rest was history. Troy was defeated, and the Greeks won the war.

The host said it appears to him that COVID vaccines are playing the role of a Trojan horse.

Merritt agreed. I think thats a great metaphor because if you think about it, this whole thing  COVID  is built on so many lies. The other thing is, what they were dealing with in Troy was stealth warfare, right? They thought it was a gift. People thought [the COVID-19] vaccine was a gift, but it was an act of stealth warfare and thats really what were involved in now, she said.

Even [the] mainstream media, as purposely blind as they [have] been about this, [is] starting to admit that the so-called spike protein came out of a lab [and] that it was a lab-manipulated thing. By definition, if something [is] lab-manipulated and it makes people sick  that is a bioweapon. [It] doesnt matter how or why it was released.

Merritt echoed the sentiments of former intelligence officer Jeffrey Prather about the vaccines being part of fifth-generation warfare. He claimed during the Oct. 15 episode of his Brighteon.TV program Prather Point that the COVID-19 vaccine is far deadlier than the disease it supposedly prevents.

It has been debunked  COVID-19 is like the flu. Its the vaccine that is deadly because that has the graphene oxide, Prather said. (Related: Jeffrey Prather: COVID-19 vaccines are part of fifth-generation warfare  Brighteon.TV.)

Merritt: They always want to depopulate us

Merritt said: One of the things about uncharacteristic warfare, this fifth-generation warfare, [is that] its a little hard to figure out who the enemy really is. Theres no battlefield laid out unlike the Trojan war. Many of us may not even realize were at war because it looks like something that comes out of nature, but it turns out its not.

She pointed out that the grand push to inject Americans with the COVID-19 vaccine lines up with the ideals of a book called Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars. The book was the result of a 1954 meeting by a group of elites during the early days of the Cold War. Someone had apparently taken notes of the meeting, which was later discovered in the 1980s in a used copier.

They got together and tried to figure out what theyre going to do. Obviously, there are too many of these  uppity Americans and so they had to do something about it. What theyre talking about is social engineering automation systems, about controlling us  the human cattle that they see us as, Merritt said.

Plato talked about the world being overpopulated. Its never been shown to be the case that we run out of things. But nonetheless, the tyrants always worried that were overpopulated because they worry about their power.

If there are too many of us  the kind of libertarian-type freedom-loving people  [theyre] not going to survive once we figure out [that] if we all get together, we can take [them] down.

They always want to depopulate us. What they say in this book  is that they [had] two options. They can either let us kill each other in wars, but thats kind of messy and [it] damages the environment. Or [they] can bring about these things, benevolence, slavery and genocide.

Spike protein represents soldiers inside the wooden horse

Hotze remarked that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine hijacks cells to produce the lethal SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. [This] thing we didnt want to get, now were producing it, he said.

Merritt concurred with this, adding that the same spike protein has a more sinister purpose. This is the very disease were supposedly solving [with the vaccine], right? No, thats not the point. One of the things this does is it kills people with a bad immune system  like elderly people. Not all elderly people have a badly incompetent immune system, but many do. They get rid of the people that are not going to be good serfs.

Theyre so sick that they have to eliminate them. How do they eliminate them? By convincing them that were going to help save their lives by giving them the bioweapon itself  that creates a spike protein which kills them, Hotze added in support of Merritts point. (Related: FOUR TIMES more vaxxed people are dying than unvaxxed depopulation effects are kicking in and the bodies are piling up.)

They knew that the vaccine was a risk to those people, and what did they tell us about the vaccine? Oh, you elderly and immuno-compromised, youre the people at risk for COVID. You should go and get this vaccine. That shows you the psychopaths were dealing with there.

Watch the full Nov. 22 episode of The Dr. Hotze Report with Dr. Lee Merritt at the video below. Tune in to The Dr. Hotze Report with Dr. Steven Hotze every Monday at 5-6 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Depopulation.news has more articles about the COVID-19 vaccines role in depopulating the world.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com 1

Brighteon.com 2

LawfulPath.com
(Natural News) Due to changes in solar cycles, Earth could enter a period of global cooling, warns Valentina Zharkova, a scientist who studies the magnetic waves in the sun. In 2015, Zharkova and a team of researchers authored a paper predicting that there would be a new grand solar minimum occurring between 2020 and 2053. She is now warning that temperatures could rapidly fall in the years to come. Zharkova argues that the upcoming cooling period will reduce global temperatures by upwards of 1 degree Celsius on average.

Low sunspot activity was correlated with low global temperatures in the early 1800s, and produced a time of minimum solar activity referred to as the Dalton minimum period. The sun is projected to go through a similar cycle over the next thirty years. In 2019, NASA stated that the forecast for the next solar cycle says it will be the weakest of the last 200 years.

Solar activity projected to fall over the next thirty years, leading to cooler than average temperatures

A grand solar minimum is a pattern of solar activity where less energy is produced, when sunspot activity is low. The last grand solar minimum, referred to as the Maunder minimum, lasted between 1645 and 1715. During that time, glaciers expanded and rivers in England froze over. Zharkova studied constants in the solar background magnetic field and how these principles affect a pair of magnetic waves that the sun generates throughout its layers. The team obtained sunspot data from the Royal Observatory of Belgium and collected examples of low temperature data in recent years. The research team was able to extrapolate the activity of those magnetic waves, backward in time. The corresponding solar activity matched sunspot activity that had been recorded over the past 800 years. When this solar activity was extrapolated into the future, it became clear that there could be a new grand solar minimum to come over the next thirty years.

The temperature during the current grand solar minimum will be slightly higher than it was during the Maunder minimumand this grand solar minimum will be shorter, Zharkova predicted.

Governments should prepare for cooler temps, not global warming

This global cooling research is ignored by the global warming alarmists, who are too busy convincing governments to levy carbon taxes on the people and conduct geoengineering experiments that remove carbon from the atmosphere. A recent study found that rising carbon dioxide levels are critical for crop yields and increased those yields by an estimated 40 percent since 1940. Carbon dioxide played a significant role in feeding a growing world population over the past eighty years, at a time when global life expediencies doubled. There are people who want to reduce the worlds population; they openly talk about reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to achieve these nefarious goals.

Zharkova believes that governments are being misled by the recent global warming COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland. As governments prepare their populations to fight global warming, Zharkova believes they should be preparing to counter a period of global cooling, brought on by forces out of mans control. They [global warming alarmists] want to gain their moneythe taxes, or whatever they get from green technologyas soon as possible, because they will be exposed very quickly, Zharkova said.

To make matters worse, global warming alarmists have been cherry-picking data and only showing temperature cycles and carbon levels over a short amount of time, relative to the Earths history. When the big picture is shown, atmospheric carbon levels are actually quite low, compared to all other periods of time throughout history. For more, check out ClimateScienceNews.com.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

Nature.com

NaturalNews.com

Brighteon.com
(Natural News) Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci is proposing to inject every eligible American with Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine boosters every six months. He shared this idea during a recent interview with the ABC program This Week.

We would hope  and this is something we are looking at very carefully  that the third [mRNA vaccine] shot  not only will boost you way up, but increases the durability so that you will not necessarily need it every six months or a year, he said.

Were hoping it pushes out more. If it doesnt and the data show we do need it more often, then well do it.

Fauci expressed the same sentiment toward booster shots when he spoke to Business Insider. Make it really simple: If you had a primary vaccination, get a booster. Right now, dont make it complicated, he said.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director expressed hope that booster shots for all adult Americans will help keep people away from hospitalizations and deaths caused by COVID-19. The effect of [injecting boosters] is very, very favorable to preventing people from getting infected, he said.

We have got to get almost everybody whos gotten the primary vaccination regimen  to get them all boosted. Even though for the most part, the vaccines absent the boost protect quite well  particularly among younger people  against hospitalization.

However, Faucis remarks conflicted with the guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The public health agency only recommended booster doses for adults aged 50 and above and long-term care residents aged 18 and up.

The CDC said other Americans who do not fall under the two categories may get their booster shots based on their individual risks and benefits.

Fauci redefines the term fully vaccinated

Back in September, Fauci argued that two vaccine doses will no longer suffice for full vaccination. He said during a White House briefing that month that three COVID-19 vaccine doses would be the standard for fully vaccinated individuals.

I would not at all be surprised that the adequate, full regimen for vaccination will likely be three doses, Fauci said. He continued that the protection from COVID-19 after a third booster dose was dramatic and durable. (Related: Fauci: Three shots will be the new standard for a full coronavirus vaccination.)

The NIAID director presented data from Israel about the vaccines waning protection after eight months. Despite the Middle Eastern country managing to vaccinate the majority of its population, the more transmissible B16172 delta variant caused a spike in so-called breakthrough infections among vaccinated Israelis.

In response, Israel started injecting older individuals with booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine on July 30. Fauci said the effects of the booster shot injection campaign included a greater than tenfold decrease in the relative risk of both confirmed infection and severe disease. This finding supported the rationale for COVID-19 booster shots in the U.S., he added. (Related: Israels covid plandemic czar tells citizens to prepare for upcoming FOURTH booster shot.)

I would hope that the countries that are boosting their populations similar to what we are understand the importance of the global necessity to essentially suppress this at the global level, Fauci remarked.

At least one other world leader followed Faucis footsteps in redefining the term fully vaccinated as having received three COVID-19 vaccine shots. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said during a press briefing that U.K. residents will definitely need a booster dose.

On boosters, its very clear that getting three jabs  will become an important fact. It will make life easier for your in all sorts of ways, and we will have to adjust our concept of what constitutes a full vaccination to take account of that, Johnson said.

As we can see from whats happening, the two [vaccine doses] sadly do start to wane, so weve got to be responsible and  reflect that fact in the way we measure what constitutes full vaccination.

The prime minister also called on British citizens to get their booster doses as soon as they are eligible. Johnson said: It would be an utter tragedy if, after everything we have been through, people who had done the right thing by getting double-vaccinated ended up being seriously ill or even losing their lives because they allowed their immunity to wane.

MedicalExtremism.com has more articles about Dr. Anthony Fauci pushing for regular injections with COVID-19 boosters.

Sources include:

TheNewAmerican.com

BusinessInsider.com

CDC.gov

News.Yahoo.com

TheEpochTimes.com
(Natural News) A prominent Canadian politician who took both injections for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) has passed away from covid, according to government officials.

Josee Forest-Niesing, 56, suffered from an autoimmune condition that reportedly affected her lungs. After getting jabbed, she got very sick and had to be sent to the hospital, where she remained for a full month undergoing treatment.

Niesing was eventually sent home on November 14, only to have her condition deteriorate even further. She passed away roughly one week later due to the injection-induced illness from which he had suffered.

Appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2018, Niesing occupied a seat with the Independent Senators Group, which is primarily made up of people affiliated with the Liberal party.

Despite the circumstances surrounding her death, Niesings office issued a statement of praise for the injections. Rather than honor her life, Niesings office took the opportunity to spread more pro-jab propaganda.

Senator Forest-Niesing would like to remind all Canadians of the importance of vaccination, reads the official statement. (She) remains convinced her fight would have been much different if it had not been for this protection.

Speaker of the Senate George Furey released his own statement extending his condolences to all of Niesings family, friends and loved ones.

mRNA jabs are not a cure, and only make things worse

Meanwhile, the Canadian government has yet to procure even a single piece of evidence showing that the injections do anything beneficial for peoples health.

There are no trials to show that the jabs stop either infection or transmission. In fact, there is no evidence to even back the widespread government claim that the shots help to prevent severe symptoms, which is evidenced by Niesings untimely death.

A Canadian physician from Alberta by the name of Dr. Chris Gordillo has actually seen the opposite occur in his fully vaccinated patients, many of whom are developing severe illness post-injection.

Ive seen strokes, Ive seen Bells palsy, Ive seen a heart attack, blood clots, Ive seen breathing disorders where people just cannot breathe after theyve had these vaccines, Dr. Gordillo explained at a recent rally in Edmonton.

Investigative journalist Jordan Schachtel has also come forward to condemn the shots, explaining that the mRNA cure has not lived up to its admittedly impossible to achieve standards.

Today we know that the shots serve as something akin to a potential six- to nine-month prophylactic with unknown long-term side effects, Schachtel added.

The expiring efficacy, which was best observed through first mover nations like Israel and Ireland, brought about the booster shot regime, but no recognition from world governments that the shots seem to be expiring.

Schachtel went on to explain that both government health officials and major pharmaceutical companies have been leveraging half-truths about the injections as part of a massive money grab for Pfizer, Moderna and those interested in injecting five-year-olds with expiring experimental shots.

Even so, Health Canada just last week approved these injections for children as young as five years old. The shots have emergency use authorization just as they do here in the United States, meaning they are not technically approved.

Very sad story, wrote one commenter at LifeSiteNews. I dont think her fight was made easier with the shots. I suspect it was made worse.

If I received all the vaccines and I still contracted the virus and then I ended up spending over a month in the hospital and then didnt feel too good about the future or ever getting out or getting over it, then absolutely not, no way would I push the vaccine on people saying take this vaccine, not going to happen, wrote another.

The latest news about Chinese Virus injections can be found at ChemicalViolence.com.

Sources for this article include:

LifeSiteNews.com

NaturalNews.com

LifeSiteNews.com
(Natural News) In case you have not noticed, civilization (if you can even call it that anymore) is crumbling before our very eyes.

Murder rates are soaring, mass shootings are becoming commonplace, and extreme degeneracy, as Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog puts it, is rampant and widespread.

Some of these events are staged false flags, of course, but some of them are also real. There is a clear and obvious social decline taking place that has almost become normal due to its frequency and severity.

To a certain extent, a lot of these things seem normal to many of us at this point, Snyder writes.

But the truth is that what we are experiencing is not even close to normal. We are literally watching our entire society slowly but surely go down the tubes, and it is heartbreaking to watch.

Just last Saturday, a group of looters stormed a northern California Nordstrom store and just ransacked it. Roughly 80 individuals, all masked to protect against covid, entered the store with crowbars and began grabbing anything and everything they could get their hands on.

According to a police report from the Walnut Creek Police Department (WCPD), the mob was in and out of the store in a matter of minutes. It was well-coordinated and there was no stopping it, in other words.

This sort of organized crime is becoming increasingly common, but the size and scale of this particular attack was particularly alarming, Snyder says.

This happened in one of the most prosperous areas of northern California, and one eyewitness described it as like a scene out of a movie.'

When people can no longer trust their governments, chaos ensues

Brett Barrette, one of the managers at a nearby P.F. Changs restaurant who witnessed the incident, says the whole thing was insane and unexpected. And perhaps the worst part about it is that it was not isolated.

A nearby Louis Vuitton store in San Francisco was also looted over the weekend. And just like the Nordstrom incident, most of the looters got away, though a few were nabbed.

Following the Kyle Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict, upwards of 150 rioters converged on Portland and began starting fires and smashing property. At one point, roughly a dozen police officers were forced into a garage by an extremely unruly mob.

Footage of that incident showed angry protesters aggressively accosting police officers who were donned in full riot gear. As they were backed into the garage, someone set the door to shut in front of them, locking them inside.

Way too often, the bad guys are starting to get the upper hand in situations like this, Snyder further writes. And I think that does not bode well for the troubled times ahead.

Snyder has been warning for a while now that this type of thing would increase. Chalk it all up to the new normal, we suppose.

Meanwhile, violent protests are breaking out in Europe and other parts of the world as well due to the lockdowns and other plandemic restrictions being forced on the masses for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

Austria, Croatia, Italy, Belgium, Northern Ireland, the French territory of Guadeloupe and the Netherlands are among the countries where civil unrest is reaching a boiling point, though for other reasons.

Part of living in a civilized society is being able to trust the government to do the right thing most of the time, Snyder says.

But now we have gotten to a point where large numbers of people in industrialized nations all over the globe do not trust their own governments.

The latest news about the downward spiral of society can be found at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

SHTFplan.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) Drs. John Spaulding and Deborah Miller are calling on parents all over the United States to once again take up their responsibility to be involved in their communities. Diamond and Miller believe the best way to do this is to participate in local school board meetings, where parents are increasingly being shut out to prevent them from criticizing school curriculums.

Spaulding and Miller talked about civic involvement during the Nov. 22 episode of America Unhinged with Dr. John Diamond on Brighteon.TV. Spaulding was serving as the shows guest host for the episode.

Miller, a Christian and a veteran educator, said most parents do not know that they have a responsibility and a right guaranteed by federal law to comment on the instructional materials used to educate their children.

According to Miller, many parents have the mistaken notion that the public school system really has your childs best interests at heart.

And so we have the mistaken belief that everything happening at school is for the good of our children, and thats absolutely false, she said. Make no mistake, children are being indoctrinated aggressively and intentionally indoctrinated and not into ways of thinking that most conservative or traditional parents would think was best for either their child or society at large.

Spaulding agreed and warned the viewers that the American left has a death grip on the public education system with the way they are easily indoctrinating children with their ideologies.

The progressives, the Marxists, the leftists, however you want to call them, they have a death grip on our public education system, said Spaulding. They are choking the life out of our children by removing any sense of American civic duty, any sense of history.

Spaulding pointed out that this trend most likely started with the campaign to remove any teaching of Christianity or Christian values in school. Miller agreed and pointed out that society has started to move away from embracing traditional Christian values, which created a healthy, balanced, adjusted society.

But we went from celebrating Christian virtues and values, to tolerating them, to becoming intolerant, to now becoming actively opposed to, said Miller.

School boards preventing parents from protecting their children

Miller has identified a trend among those who do not want parents to be involved in school boards. According to her, many among the professional elite in the education sector believe that parents do not need to provide any input about what their children are being taught.

This is a trend that can be seen all around the country as school board officials prevent parents from exercising their civic right to comment on how their kids are being instructed.

Daniel Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, called school board meetings battlegrounds and claimed that school board officials are being abused.

In Saginaw County, Michigan, one parent was censored by the school board after expressing concerns about the school districts draconian Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) policies and its teaching of critical race theory and anti-Christian health studies.

In the Carmel Clay School District in Indiana, the school board is not allowing parents who attend the meetings to comment. In Lee County, Florida, the school board is physically dragging people out of school board meetings to prevent them from participating.

Some school boards are going so far as to arrest parents who bring up topics the board considers too controversial for public discussions, such as COVID-19 lockdowns, mask mandates and critical race theory.

Many other school boards all over the country are acting with extreme hostility to parents exercising their civic duty to keep public schools that teach their children accountable. The only counter to this, Spaulding and Miller pointed out, is to continue participating en masse at school board meetings and elections. (Related: Parents united! Anti-critical race theory candidates for school board win big around the country in rejection of Marxist curriculum.)

We need to rise up in unison and we need to speak very, very quickly, clearly and forcefully. We will not stop, were not going to sit down, you are not going to censor us, we are in charge of you, our elected representatives. And that goes all the way down to the school board, said Spaulding.

You work for us. You dont work for Washington, you dont work for the state legislature. You work for us.

Watch the entire Nov. 22 episode of America Unhinged with guest host Dr. John Spaulding here:

America Unhinged with Dr. John Diamond airs Monday to Friday from 9-10 a.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

Insider.com

TheGatewayPundit.com

News.Yahoo.com

Fox4Now.com
(Natural News) At The Daily Bell, weve faithfully debunked the corporate medias unending fake news campaign to push the preferred storyline(s) of its owners.

(Article by Ben Bartee republished from TheDailyBell.com)

However, despite the impressive absurdity of everything from Jussie Smolletts midnight Subway lynching hoax to the safe and effective vaxx narrative, none has detached as fully from reality as the corporate media mythology surrounding the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings.

The Rittenhouse fiction serves as a microcosm of the fruits that propaganda machine  which furnishes rhetorical cover for the well-funded BLM/Antifa/corporate state alliance  has bore.

Last year at the height of BLM rioting (or protesting, * ), cities across the US burned for months on end.

( * The corporate media would have you believe that burning 150 buildings (mostly locally-owned small businesses) and damaging and/or looting 1350 more that had nothing to do with policing, government policy, or the George Floyd killing is somehow mere civil disobedience in the tradition of MLK.)

Above: civil rights heroes in action

Then, a few months later in August 2020, essentially the same series of events the next state over:

Police seriously injured a suspect under questionable circumstances (except, in this case, the suspect, Jacob Blake, was armed with a knife and had an outstanding warrant for previous sexual assault charges)

Within hours, corporate media incited violence and property destruction using an incendiary race-based narrative

Vandals, arsonists, and looters, in turn, strapped up their boots and went to work on Kenoshas small businesses under the auspices of protesting for civil rights

CNN described the whole scene in Kenosha as fiery but mostly peaceful:

The aftermath of the mostly peaceful protests:

Putting aside the common dilemma of reconciling destroying small businesses in your own community with protesting police abuse, here are the nonsense talking points specific to the Rittenhouse case.

The Big Lie #1: The Advent of the He Crossed State Lines Narrative

The immediate talking point, which has become a parody of itself, emerged: He Crossed State Lines (spoken in exasperated, utterly uncomprehending tones).

How could he? The monster! The absolute deplorable white supremacist savage!

Crossing state lines?? Not in America! Not in the land of MLK!

The initial cause for the talking point was the Rittenhouse (reportedly) crossed state lines with an AR-15 weapon, one which he (reportedly) could not legally possess.

Both claims turned out to be lies:

Despite the above undisputed facts that emerged during the criminal proceedings, the corporate media didnt bat an eye.

On the contrary: they pushed the he crossed state lines narrative even harder, with increasing desperation, over time. Why? A few reasons, perhaps:

Since the attacks on Rittenhouse by an armed mob were on video, the gunning down innocent protesters narrative no longer held water with normal people. The state lines/gun lie was all they had.

The corporate media only knows how to double-down on lies. The deeper they sink into their propaganda, the harder to crawl out. So they push ahead full-steam. (ex: Russiagate)

(Speculation): At some point, the federal government would like to further clamp down on interstate travel. Inserting the vague notion of criminality associated with crossing state lines into the public consciousness serves this aim.

Crossing state lines has never been illegal in the Unites States. In fact, thats the entire premise of the UNITED States  free passage between union members.

Rittenhouse also lived literally a mile from the state line. The drive from his moms house in Antioch to Kenosha took 30 minutes.

The Big Lie #2: Biden Calls Rittenhouse White Supremacist With Zero Evidence, Corporate Media Regurgitates Talking Point For Entire Year

While pandering to the woke vote to get elected, Biden in 2020 smeared Rittenhouse as a white supremacist.

Smearing political opponents as white supremacists is now so commonplace that no one batted an eye  except, perhaps, Bidens personal lawyers who realized he opened himself up for a defamation lawsuit.

After the verdict, Biden initially told reporters he respected the jurys decision.

After his handlers got to him, though, they wrote a statement in his name** which reads:

** Notice the careful arrangement of the phrase many Americans feeling angry and concerned, myself included.

The two-fold purpose is to simultaneously:

Signal to his rabid activist base (whats left of it) that hes angry at the verdict.

But, at the same time, by placing it before concerned and the comma, Bidens handlers allow semantical wriggle room to claim that he meant he was concerned, not angry. The message of Bidens anger in this sentence would be clearer (and less deniable) if the position of the two adjectives were reversed.

Jury Intimidation 101: The Neoliberal Tactics to Bully the Justice System Into Submission

The judge in the Rittenhouse trial booted MSNBC from the Kenosha courthouse for the duration of the trial after their camera guy got caught stalking the jury during transportation to and from the campus in an apparent attempt to snap their photographs.

Last night a person who is alleging to be affiliated with a national media outlet was briefly taken into custody and issued several traffic related citations. Police suspect this person was trying to photograph jurors. This incident is being investigated much further.  Kenosha Police Dept. (@KenoshaPolice) November 18, 2021

BLM and Antifa protesters/latent rioters also camped out around the complex throughout the process hoping to intimidate the jury into ruling the right way. ***

Given their previous activities, the obvious implied threat is that Kenosha would burn if they handed down the wrong verdict.

*** These are the same tactics Maxine Waters and the racialized mob she whipped up on the Minneapolis streets during the prosecution of the cop, Derek Chauvin to tilt the scales of justice via intimidation into delivering her funders preferred outcome.

And then Hasan Piker, Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks nephew and the ultimate nepotism beneficiary, tweeted this:

That Rittenhouse got out of the debacle  in spite of the truly relentless lies, smear campaigns, and jury intimidation  is a minor miracle. As we all, know, though, the BLM/Antifa/corporate state machine will be back in business real soon, more dogged than ever.

And theyll come for your sons and daughters next.

Read more at: TheDailyBell.com
(Natural News) Leaked documents revealed that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) were already studying the dangerous coronaviruses in high-risk bat species from Laos years before the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic began.

The documents suggest that both the bat origin theory of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lab-leak theory could be simultaneously true.

Back in September, researchers stumbled upon Banal-52, a coronavirus strain in Laos. Banal-52 shares a 96.8 percent genomic similarity with SARS-CoV-2, the viral strain that causes COVID-19, hinting that the two may be related.

Documents suggest Wuhan lab received viral samples from Laos

Some claim that the discovery of Banal-52 and its similarity with SARS-CoV-2 confirms hypotheses that the source of the pandemic was a natural spillover instead of a lab escape.

However, leaked emails between EcoHealth Alliance and U.S. government funders shed some light on how Banal-52 became SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, which is more than a thousand miles away from Laos.

The documents were obtained by the White Coat Waste Project, a U.S.-based bipartisan group that got the emails through a Freedom of Information Request.

According to the emails, between June 2017 and May 2019, the WIV received viral samples of bats and other high-risk species from Laos. Before Banal-52 was discovered, the EcoHealth Alliance was studying other bat viruses, including some from Yunnan, China, and sending them to WIV.

The samples included RaTG13, another strain thats genetically similar to SARS-CoV-2. RaTG13 was first discovered in a horseshoe bat in a Yunnan mineshaft. The Chinese government denied researchers access to the animal subject.

Reports say that data on the genetic sequences of the samples collected from both Laos and Yunnan were cleared from an online database at the WIV, where they were stored until September 2019. Because the data was cleared, researchers are now unable to accurately determine what strains the WIV studied.

COVID-19 could have started in Laos, not China

Gilles Demaneuf, a New Zealand-based data scientist and pandemic origins researcher, suggests that the leaked documents revelations offer a plausible route to trace the viruss spread from bats in Laos to Wuhan.

In a blog post, Demaneuf wrote that the documents hint at a very plausible direct route with two options.

Viscount Matt Ridley, co-author of the book Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19, also believes the leaked emails do more than support the lab-leak theory. He doesnt consider Banal-52 as the progenitor of the disease, but it still suggests that COVID-19 could have originated in Laos, not China.

In an interview, Ridley explained that the document leak showed how the EcoHealth Alliance was sampling bats in Laos. The document also revealed that it would be difficult to return and ask the U.S. government for permission to give some of the grant to a Laotian lab, so the group asked if they could forward all the samples to a lab that can analyze them.

The lab referred to was the one in Wuhan and the outbreak happened in a city with the worlds largest research program on bat-borne coronaviruses. The location was also close to where researchers in Wuhan could have tried to trace the origins of viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2. (Related: Documents and videos reveal life-threatening adverse effects of COVID-19 vaccines.)

Study of SARS-like viruses could have continued without US funding

Ridley suggested two possibilities: First, a Wuhan bat sampler was infected on a field sampling trip; second, a research accident in Wuhan occurred when scientists were manipulating a Laos Banal-like bat coronavirus.

Data from another leaked document accessed by Drastic, an open-source data analyst group, showed that EcoHealth Alliance President Dr. Peter Daszak had suggested that the U.S. government fund the artificial insertion of cleavage sites into SARS-like coronaviruses collected in the field and studied in Wuhan.

The document includes a plan to study potentially dangerous pathogens by generating full-length, infectious bat coronaviruses in a lab and inserting genetic features that could make coronaviruses better able to infect human cells.

In 2018, the U.S. government declined Daszaks request for $14.2 million due to worries about the impact of the organizations virus alteration work. Ridley thinks that the work still proceeded even though the U.S. turned down his request.

Most of the funding for the WIV comes from the Chinese government, not the American government. Ridley believes this could explain how the work Daszak proposed could have continued without the funding he requested in 2018.

The lab-leak theory also seems reasonable despite the naysayers because a similar experiment had already been done with a different kind of coronavirus by the WIV, said Ridley.

Go to Pandemic.news for more articles about the origins of COVID-19.

Sources include:

NewsPunch.com

WesternJournal.com

DailyMail.co.uk

TheAtlantic.com
(Natural News) Australian researchers have found that harsh tones may leave you feeling groggy, while melodic alarms may help you feel more alert when you wake up. This finding could be of use to many people, including emergency responders and airline pilots, who are required by duty to wake up quickly and be alert.

Published in the PLOS One journal, the study involved 50 people. All of them were given a questionnaire that they could complete anonymously at home.

The researchers asked the respondents about the type of sound they prefer to wake up to, how they feel about that sound and how alert or groggy they feel after waking up.

The results showed that the participants had an easier time waking up alert with melodic alarms than with harsh or jarring tones.

Lead author Stuart McFarlane, a doctoral researcher at RMIT University, explained that what makes a tone be perceived as melodic is the presence of at least two notes, time and the sequence in which the notes are sounded in relation to each other.

A melody is perceived as an articulate entity or musical phrase, McFarlane said. He cited the introduction to Madonnas song Borderline as an example of a melodic alarm. McFarlane theorized that the rise and fall of notes in a more melodic alarm helps to focus brain attention.

This is in contrast to an alarm that repeats a single note, like a traditional alarm clock or an alarm thats tuned in to a talk radio station. A more monotonous beep beep beep alarm might raise anxiety and promote confusion.

McFarlane said: If we can counteract the symptoms of sleep inertia by any measure through the alarm sounds we use, it would be a great benefit to many.

Sleep inertia is the grogginess that we tend to feel when waking up. It can temporarily impair our ability to think, remember and react. While it normally lasts about 30 minutes, its sometimes been reported to last as long as two to four hours, noted McFarlane.

Research dealing with sleep inertia has important implications for people like emergency responders, airline pilots and astronauts, who must be able to function well after waking up.

McFarlane said it is possible to design alarm sounds that could be utilized in a variety of industries and for the general public. At the very least, we can create best practice guidelines for alarm sound design that helps reduce sleep inertia.

Jennifer Doering, associate dean for academic affairs and associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee College of Nursing, cautioned that the study has several design flaws.

Doering stressed that the study involved only a small sample of people, the authors didnt screen for sleep disorders and there were no controls. Its difficult to draw any conclusions about what it really means, Doering said.

How to wake up refreshed

While its a bit premature to make any firm recommendations regarding alarm tones, Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler, a pulmonologist and sleep medicine specialist, said that there are several other things you can do to ensure that youre waking up as refreshed as possible.

Those things include getting enough sleep; keeping a regular sleep and wake schedule; avoiding alcohol at bedtime; and being more active during the day.

Meanwhile, a study in Sweden suggests that losing sleep may lead to weight gain. Those who have chronic sleep problems, work irregular shift hours or burn the midnight oil looking at their smartphones could be running the risk of slowing down their metabolism.

The small observational study looked at 15 adults who were at normal weight and then had them go through two lab sessions. In one, they slept for eight hours. In the other, they were kept awake the entire night. After each session, researchers took tissue samples from the subcutaneous fat  the fat that rests under your skin  and skeletal muscle.

This was done because these tissues can show where metabolism has been impacted by obesity and diabetes. Blood samples were also taken.

Researchers found the people who lost a night of sleep displayed a tissue-specific shift in DNA methylation, a process that regulates gene expression. Those who got a normal nights sleep didnt show this change

The researchers behind the study say that these findings could be significant in helping people better understand the adverse effects sleep loss can have on a persons body and overall health.

Sources include:

Healthline.com 1

NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

Healthline.com 2
(Natural News) Supply chain issues, primarily the heavy congestion at Californias ports, might prevent children all over the country from receiving new toys this Christmas.

The ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have been dealing with unresolved issues for months now. More than 100 ships remain anchored at the ports despite recent actions made by the state government to try and ease the strain on the supply chain. (Related: California temporarily increases weight limit for trucks in bid to resolve port congestion crisis.)

The massive backlogs in California are preventing many retailers from fully stocking up on toy gifts for Christmas. One report stated that some manufacturers are prioritizing soft toys over wooden toys, play kitchens and other similar products because it is easier to pack more of them into shipping containers.

Some of the other products being prioritized because of their small size are headphones and slippers. Larger products like television sets and hiking boots are being sent to the United States in smaller quantities because of the difficulties in transporting them.

Charities for children in need affected by toy shortage

The logjam of products at the ports has caused a shortage of toys, especially those that are normally donated to charities for children in need.

In the New Image Emergency Shelter in Los Angeles, Executive Director Brenda Wilson recently showed a media outlet one of the shelters empty storage spaces that is usually filled with goods for the annual Childrens Christmas Store.

The event provides around 2,000 children from low-income and homeless families a space to shop for toys, shoes and clothing. The charity even gives the families supermarket gift cards.

This day belongs to the children. We want them to forget about that they live in an encampment, we want them to forget about if theyre in a shelter. This is your day, said Wilson. So we are scrambling worse than we did last year to try to get enough toys. We need at least 40,000 toys.

According to Linda Moran, co-founder of the shelter and twin sister of Wilson, around 63 percent of the toys the shelter was supposed to get this year from two of its largest donors are still stuck in containers at the Port of Long Beach.

She has been in contact with port officials who told her there is nothing they can do, and the toys might be stuck there for several months. Their explanation was there are taxes being raised so theyre not going to be able to get it to us until after Christmas, said Moran.

Toys for Tots, a charity drive organized by local members of the Marine Corps Reserve in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has prepared for the shortages early.

We saw this shortage coming back in spring, so I knew I had to act early, said Kevin J. Miller, coordinator for Bucks Countys Toys for Tots drive. Our vendors were sending us messages that thered be a good possibility thered be supply chain issues this year. Some of us took the hint. I had the foresight to purchase thousands of dollars in toys back in August.

Miller explained that most of his vendors have electronic catalogs, and he did all of his shopping online.

Saw what was currently available in warehouses, made my order, and sent it to my contacts there. My vendors are holding the toys for me until I ask for them. Now its just a matter of funding the purchases.

According to Miller, he spent about $20,000 to fund the toy purchases. With or without reaching his goal of getting all his money back, Miller and his team in Bucks County have pledged to soldier on for the children.

We need toys for kids whose families need some help, he said. Were hoping to reach more families this year. But supply chain issues being what they are, it could be tough. We need to keep in mind those parents that are struggling to make ends meet. I cant imagine a child on Christmas asking why Santa didnt come.

Shoppers advised to make purchases early and buy locally made products

Shilpa Madan, a marketing professor and consumer behavior expert at Virginia Tech, has some advice for people worried about the supply chain crisis interfering in their holiday shopping.

First, Madan suggests that shoppers should make their purchases as early as possible.

Second, to avoid supply chain constraints, shoppers should consider buying gifts made domestically or locally. U.S.-based supply chains are running better than global ones, and hence, local products could be more readily available than foreign-made ones, she wrote for the Augusta Free Press.

Third, if gift recipients really want a specific product that may be out of stock, Madan suggests that shoppers can purchase gift cards for the company or retailer that sells the specific product. They might have to wait a bit longer for that cherished item, but its better than something they do not want or like.

Learn more about how the supply chain crisis is affecting American holidays at Collapse.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

LosAngeles.CBSLocal.com

BucksCountyCourierTimes.com

AugustaFreePress.com
(Natural News) Germanys Health Minister Jens Spahn warned that people will either be vaccinated, cured or dead from the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) within the next few months.

Spahns warning comes as the country struggles with a shocking increase in recorded COVID-19 infections. According to data, Germany reported 49,206 cases on Sunday, Nov. 21, the highest number of new cases in the country since the pandemic began. (Related: Highly vaccinated Germany experiencing another post-vaccine COVID-19 outbreak.)

Germany struggles with fourth wave of COVID-19

Germany is currently dealing with its fourth wave of coronavirus infections. Cases have skyrocketed rapidly and many hospitals are now full. The country has one of the lowest vaccination rates in Western Europe, with only 68 percent of its population fully vaccinated.

Health experts have warned that the fourth COVID-19 wave could be the worst yet.

The country enforced tighter restrictions for unvaccinated citizens, once again showing the discrimination people face when they decide to practice their right to choose. The restrictions exclude the unvaccinated from certain venues, and some of Germanys famed Christmas markets are now canceled.

Restrictions for unvaccinated people are also set to be introduced in areas where hospital admissions exceed a set threshold, as agreed upon by Chancellor Angela Merkel and the leaders of Germanys 16 states. According to the rules, the unvaccinated will be excluded from certain venues.

Merkel said the COVID-19 situation in Germany was dramatic, and that the government must quickly put a brake on the exponential rise in cases and intensive care unit (ICU) occupancy.

As agreed upon during a crisis meeting, the new rules state that in areas with a hospitalization rate of over three coronavirus patients per 100,000 people over the past seven days, only vaccinated people and those who have recovered from COVID-19 can access public spaces like cultural shows, sporting events and restaurants. The majority of German states currently exceed this threshold.

Getting vaccinated is a moral obligation, says Spahn

Spahn said he was against making coronavirus vaccines mandatory, but that it was a moral obligation to sign up for the vaccine as the decision not to do so affects other people.

Freedom means taking responsibility, and there is a duty to society to get vaccinated, said Spahn. He added that the very contagious delta variant is driving the latest wave.

Citizens who are unvaccinated will, over the next few months, become infected and lack protection, said Spahn.

Austria, other European countries protest against draconian COVID-19 restrictions

Recently, Austrians were placed under a nationwide lockdown, a move that triggered a fierce backlash. Tens of thousands of citizens charged the streets of Vienna at a weekend to protest against the measures.

At least 50,000 people attended the protest against Viennas fourth COVID-19 lockdown and a national vaccine mandate that will be enforced starting February 2022. In Vienna alone, an estimated 40,000 demonstrators gathered for the rally organized by the far-right Freedom Party.

The authorities said that the lockdown was enforced as Austrias seven-day incidence rate of COVID-19 infections increased to 1,085 per 100,000 inhabitants per week. Only two-thirds of eligible Austrians are fully vaccinated, a number much lower compared to other Western European nations.

Because of the new lockdown, only stores selling essential items are allowed to open. Cultural activities were canceled while museums and movie theaters were ordered to close.

Citizens are only allowed to leave their homes with a valid reason, such as buying groceries or exercising. Schools remain open, but the government is encouraging parents to keep their kids at home if possible.

Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said the lockdown will end by Dec. 13, but it remains unclear if anyone still unvaccinated after that date would be facing restrictions. As of writing, there is a looming vaccination mandate in Austria.

Other European countries also engaged in demonstrations to protest against COVID-19 mandates. Protests broke out in Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and Switzerland over draconian COVID-19 restrictions.

Got to Pandemic.news to learn how other countries are forcing citizens to get vaccinated for the greater good.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

BBC.com 1

BBC.com 2

CBSNews.com
(Natural News) The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) advised governments worldwide to err on the side of caution when engaging with Beijing or international bodies heavily influenced by the communist regime, especially on the topic of shaping the internets future.

In a new report, the ASPI said that China is hoping to export its domestic online censorship around the world by influencing how global bodies shape the rules and values that govern cyberspace.

The report stated: In serving as the leading voice in establishing an international governance system for cyberspace, China hopes for its own domestic governance of the internet to be emulated by multiple other jurisdictions and to reshape global norms.

In doing this, the ASPI said China is enabling a division of cyberspace to create susceptible surveillance and ideological influence.

The report assessed Chinas strategy to become a cyber superpower, its principle of internet sovereignty and its concept of community of common destiny for cyberspace. It also addressed how the Chinese could work to build a consensus on who will set the rules, norms and values of the internet.

Another thing that the ASPI warned governments about is the lack of comprehensive regulation around cyberspace, which they should be careful with when engaging with Beijing.

For instance, events such as the World Internet Conference may appear to be organized by an international community but is in fact organized directly under the Cyberspace Administration of China  an agency originally from the former Office of External Propaganda, which is responsible for managing online content in China.

China focused on controlling internet systems

Chinese President Xi Jinping has focused on controlling the internet for years to provide Beijing with what he described as discourse power over international communications.

In 2017, he shared a vision that uses technology to rule the internet by achieving control over every part of the system  from applications, content, quality and manpower. There were also talks about long-running concerns over bifurcation or splinternet between democratic nations and authoritarian regimes.

Countries like China, Russia and Turkey are placing heavy controls on internet usage. There is speculation of further development of the internet along geopolitical fault lines that could see the online world divided between an open and free internet and a heavily censored version.

China has been communicating with the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency that is responsible for setting the standards of computing and communication issues. It is currently headed by Chinese national Zhao Houlin.

This information comes as nations are in discussion over new infrastructure that underpins the internet to make it more efficient and cope with rapidly changing consumer demands. (Related: Chinas Xi Jinping wants to control the entire internet, leaked government documents show.)

Experts warn that Beijing and other authoritarian governments would seek to integrate authoritarianism into the architecture underpinning the web and give state-run providers more control over the users.

This is where Australian leaders expressed concerns, citing increasing cyberattacks from China and Russia. The Australian Senate earlier passed the Security of Critical Infrastructure Act 2018, which will give the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) the authority to step in and take over the operating systems of certain companies in the event of a cyberattack.

Senator Jim Molan, a former Army major general, said not one country has applied its full cyber resources into attacking another country through cyberspace.

We will only see the full cyber-capability of certain nations applied to other countries in the lead-up to, or actually in, war. And the prospect of war in our region is real, he said. These are worrying times.

Read more stories about how China is trying to control the internet at CyberWar.news.

Sources include:

TheEpochTimes.com

ASPI.org.au
(Natural News) Researchers from Qingdao University in China have found that a flavonoid present in Chinese skullcap (Scutellaria baicalensis) has potential anti-cancer properties.

In their report, published in The American Journal of Chinese Medicine, the researchers noted that baicalein, a flavonoid derived from the roots of Chinese skullcap, can induce cell autophagy and apoptosis  two processes that help clear out damaged cells from the body. In particular, the team investigated the mechanism behind the anti-cancer activity of baicalein using human glioma cells.

Exploring the anti-cancer activity of baicalein

A glioma is a tumor that develops in the brain or the spinal cord. This type of tumor originates from the glial cells, which provide support for the neurons. Among the types of glial cells found in the brain and the peripheral nervous system, three types of glial cells can produce tumors.

Astrocytomas are tumors that develop in astrocytes, star-shaped glial cells found in the brain. Astrocytes are the most abundant type of glial cell in the brain, and they are responsible for many important functions, including forming and maintaining the blood-brain barrier, regulating blood flow and maintaining brain energy metabolism, among others. Astrocytomas may develop in both children and adults at differing severity: Tumors that develop in children are often localized and grow slowly, while those that develop in adults grow rapidly and require immediate treatment.

are tumors that develop in astrocytes, star-shaped glial cells found in the brain. Astrocytes are the most abundant type of glial cell in the brain, and they are responsible for many important functions, including forming and maintaining the blood-brain barrier, regulating blood flow and maintaining brain energy metabolism, among others. Astrocytomas may develop in both children and adults at differing severity: Tumors that develop in children are often localized and grow slowly, while those that develop in adults grow rapidly and require immediate treatment. Ependymomas are tumors that form from the ependymal cells that line up the ventricles in the brain and spinal cord. These ventricles contain cerebrospinal fluid, which helps protect the brain and spinal cord from injury and infection. Ependymomas can develop at any age; however, these are seen more often in young children. This type of glioma is rare, with only 200 new cases reported each year.

are tumors that form from the ependymal cells that line up the ventricles in the brain and spinal cord. These ventricles contain cerebrospinal fluid, which helps protect the brain and spinal cord from injury and infection. Ependymomas can develop at any age; however, these are seen more often in young children. This type of glioma is rare, with only 200 new cases reported each year. Oligodendrogliomas are tumors that develop in oligodendrocytes, a type of glial cell that supports and insulates axons in the central nervous system. The most common symptom of oligodendroglioma is seizures: Six out of 10 people with the condition report having a seizure before diagnosis. Men between the ages of 35 and 44 are more likely to develop this type of tumor, but it can occur at any age.

For the study, the team treated glioma cells with baicalein in vitro. In particular, they were interested to see whether baicalein triggers autophagy and induces AMPK activation in glioma cells. The researchers found that baicalein can induce autophagy  that is, the bodys way of cleaning out damaged cells to regenerate healthier cells  in the glioma cells. In addition, treating glioma cells with baicalein also activated the AMPK pathway, one of the most important signaling networks for cell growth. This caused baicalein-induced autophagy and cell death. Researchers say this activation plays a vital role in the anti-cancer effect of baicalein.

Surprisingly, our research provides new insight with the function of anticancer of [baicalein], and the potential of the promotion in glioma cell apoptosis might be related to autophagy activation, they wrote in their report. These results demonstrate the anticancer activity of [baicalein], which can be used as potential therapeutic agents for cancer therapy. (Related: Cannabis oil saves infant from inoperable brain tumor.)

Other benefits of Chinese skullcap

Despite the foreboding name, the Chinese skullcap is a member of the mint family and has long been used in traditional Chinese medicine. In traditional medicine, the roots of the plant, called huang qin, are used to treat conditions ranging from insomnia, anxiety and tension to inflammation, hepatitis and cardiovascular disease.

In addition to baicalein, research has shown that Chinese skullcap contains other active ingredients that provide health benefits. In a study published in Neuroscience Letters, researchers from China found that oroxylin A  an antioxidant present in the roots of Chinese skullcap  may prevent the development of brain plaques linked to Alzheimers disease.

Follow AntiCancer.news for more novel natural treatments for glioma and other cancers.

Sources include:

NaturalNews.com

MayoClinic.org

ABTA.org

VeryWellHealth.com 1

Healthline.com

Cancer.gov

WorldScientific.com

VeryWellHealth.com 2
(Natural News) Author and minister Jonathan Cahn prophesied Americas future during his Nov. 23 interview with Thrive Time Show host Clay Clark on Brighteon.TV. He told the viewers that the signs America is seeing mirror those seen in ancient Israel.

Cahn first gained prominence as an author. His 2011 book The Harbinger and its 2020 sequel The Harbinger II touched on how current events in the U.S. had parallels with past events in ancient Israel. Aside from this, Cahn is also a pastor at the Beth Israel Worship Center in Wayne, New Jersey.

The harbinger means a sign, a herald or an omen. A sign of something that is yet to come, that could be a good thing. Usually, when we say harbinger, its a warning  and thats what this is, he said.

The ultimate thing is this: In the last days of ancient Israel, before destruction [and] judgment came, there were nine harbingers  prophetic signs  that appeared in the land. They were warning [the Israelites] what was coming. Those same nine harbingers  warning a nation in danger of judgment have now appeared on American soil. Some have involved American leaders, some have involved ceremonies [and] objects, but they all have appeared in specific detail.

The author said the nine biblical signs he wrote about in his 2011 work have had parallels in modern-day America. You know, the nine all kind of form a message that is based on one Scripture  Isaiah 9:10  which speaks of the first warning strike that came on ancient Israel.

The verse reads: The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones. The sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.

Years before the nations destruction, a warning comes in the form of an enemy strike. Its a warning, a wake up call  then the nation has a [period] of time to come back to God. It happened in the Bible, and again it happened in America with 9/11, Cahn said. (Related: 24 voices that are warning America about what is coming, and most of them are being censored and persecuted.)

The author cited the Sept. 12, 2001 speech given by former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) as one example of the prophetic signs he noted in the book.

The former senator said at that time: There is a passage in the Bible from Isaiah that I think speaks to all of us at times like this. The bricks have fallen down but we will rebuild with dressed stone; the fig trees have been felled, but we will replace them with cedars. That is what we will do. We will rebuild and we will recover. The people of America will stand strong together because the people of America have always stood together.

Daschle has no idea what hes doing, he has no idea what it even means. But he does the same thing that the leaders of ancient Israel did when they were attacked, that led to the judgment of the nation. He has no idea, but everything he says is prophetic  it happened right on Capitol Hill, Cahn commented. (Related: Remembering 9/11 and the criminal neocons who engineered it to destroy evidence of deep state criminality and the theft of trillions of dollars.)

Cahn: God uses the least likely people to show Himself

Cahn was not exactly a shining example during his younger years. I was raised going to synagogue [and] I went to Hebrew school. When I was eight years old, I became an atheist  but then I said, wait a minute. As time went on, [I realized] theres got to be something. This doesnt make any sense; it makes no sense to have nothing behind everything.

That led him to look up many books, including the Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsey that prompted a change in his thinking. Lindseys work touched on biblical prophecies that are happening in the present time.

I said Lord, Ill make a deal with You  if You give me a long life, I will accept you when Im on my deathbed. And then right after that, I almost got killed twice. I [then] said, Lord, can we renegotiate the deal? Ill accept you. When I turned 20, on my 20th birthday, I accepted the Lord, said Cahn.

Im the least likely person to be telling you anything about God, but He chooses the least likely. God uses the unlikely to show Himself.

The Harbinger author shared how the books idea first came to him.

I was standing at the corner of Ground Zero. I saw a tree that had been struck down by [the] 9/11 [attack], and something said Theres something here you got to look at. Theres a mystery here, you have to seek it. I started doing that and it just kept getting bigger and bigger, until it just blew me away. And that became the beginning of [the book.]

The tree that Cahn saw was a sycamore tree, which was at least 70 years old. It shielded the nearby St. Pauls Cathedral from the resulting damage  at the cost of being dislodged from where it was originally planted. Cahn included this sycamore tree in the book as the sixth harbinger.

Watch the full Nov. 23 episode of Thrive Time Show with Jonathan Cahn at the video below. Tune in to Thrive Time Show every weekday afternoon at 3:30-4 p.m. on Brighteon.TV.

Prophecy.news has more articles about prophecies regarding Americas fate.

Sources include:

Brighteon.com

BibleGateway.com

YouTube.com

911Memorial.org
(Natural News) Organized criminal elements are on a robbing spree in California, hitting several luxury retailers in the past week. The series of retail robberies in the state began on Nov. 15.

The city police department of Concord in the East Bay shared a video on its social media accounts showing at least nine masked and hooded individuals armed with hammers robbing a jewelry store. When store employees tried to stop them, they were kept back by the hammer-wielding criminals, the police said in a press release.

On Nov. 19, dozens of individuals made their way through a mall in San Franciscos Union Square and robbed multiple stores, including Bloomingdales, Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Yves Saint Laurent. The stolen products are believed to be worth over $1 million.

The next day, nearly 100 criminals in Walnut Creek in the East Bay rushed into a Nordstrom store in what police officers said was clearly a planned event. The thieves rushed the store and took as many products as they can into vehicles in the stores parking lot. One employee was pepper-sprayed and two others were assaulted.

On Sunday morning, Nov. 21, employees of a Lululemon store in San Jose reported at least four people leaving the scene of the crime with more than $40,000 worth of merchandise.

Later that day, an estimated 40 to 50 criminals in Hayward robbed a jewelry store by smashing open jewelry cases. Video footage of the incident showed dozens of hooded robbers running out of the store carrying the stolen items.

On Monday, Nov. 22, a clothing store in Oakland was robbed by more than two dozen individuals who flooded into the store and grabbed as many items as they could before quickly fleeing the scene of the crime. The stores owners said the thieves pried open the stores security gate and broke the windows to get inside.

The latest organized robbery incident happened in San Jose on Tuesday, Nov. 23, when two men were arrested after trying to steal items from a Macys. The two thieves were caught by police officers with an estimated $2,000 worth of store merchandise. After interrogation, the officers learned that the two suspects may be connected to another robbery.

California governors business robbed three times this year

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has described the incidents as people smashing and grabbing, stealing peoples items, creating havoc, terror in the streets. Newsom said he understands what retailers are going through as a business owner himself. He owns a hospitality company, including wine shops and restaurants.

My business has been broken into three times this year, said Newsom. I have no empathy, no sympathy for these folks and they must be held to account.

The governor announced that his office has already met with retailers who asked for more police patrols around their stores. Newsom said state authorities will start being more aggressive towards organized retail-theft rings.

More police officers are expected to start patrolling highly trafficked shopping malls around the states largest cities and more money will be allocated for law enforcement in next years state budget. (Related: LAWLESS CHAOS: LAPD tells residents to comply with robbers as society collapses in blue cities escape while you still can.)

Investigations are also currently underway, headed by a retail crime task force. Newsom said this task force has already conducted 773 investigations and recovered nearly $20 million worth of stolen merchandise.

The number of theft incidents is expected to rise as the holidays come nearer. Smash and grabs are noted to increase around the Christmas holiday season, according to Lynda Buel, president of security consulting firm SRMC.

Ben Dugan, president of the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail, said that retailers lose about $65 billion each year to organized theft. The bulk of this loss is conducted by professional thieves and organized crime rings.

Without proper action from California authorities, it is likely retailers in the state are going to lose even more this year.

Learn more about how California is failing its citizens by not providing adequate law enforcement at CaliforniaCollapse.news.

Sources include:

News.Yahoo.com

Newsweek.com

TheGuardian.com

Channel3000.com
(Natural News) Samsung has announced plans to build a $17 billion semiconductor factory near Austin, Texas, in the next three years in what is said to be the most significant foreign direct investment in the states history. The new factory is part of an effort by the South Korean tech giant to raise its manufacturing capacity and help stem a worldwide chip shortage.

The 5-million-square-meter facility will be built in Taylor and will be used for producing advanced logic semiconductors for phones, computers, 5G and artificial intelligence.

Construction on the factory is scheduled to get underway in the first half of 2022, with the company aiming to have it operational by the end of 2024. It is expected to create 1,800 jobs. The $17 billion expected investment will be the biggest investment the company has ever made in the United States and includes buildings, machinery, equipment and property improvements.

Earlier this year, President Joe Biden announced that domestic semiconductor manufacturing would be a priority for his administration as they aim to fix the ongoing chip shortages and address concerns raised by some lawmakers that outsourcing chipmaking could make America more vulnerable to disruptions in the supply chain. The U.S. share of the global chip manufacturing market has dropped from 37 percent in 1990 to 12 percent percent today, according to the trade group the Semiconductor Industry Association.

There is also a geopolitical risk as many American companies depend on chips produced in Taiwan, which China claims is its own territory.

In a statement praising the announcement by Samsung, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said: Increasing domestic production of semiconductor chips is critical for our national and economic security.

Right now, most of the worlds chips are being made in Asia, particularly in South Korea and Taiwan. Recently, the U.S. and Europe have expressed a desire to start making more of their own chips. Low supplies of semiconductors thanks to COVID shutdowns have been impacting the production of electronic devices and new vehicles for more than a year. Even after the current shortages subside, the demand for chips is only expected to rise as increasing numbers of everyday products use them.

Great news for Texas

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that the factory would provide lots of opportunities for people living in Central Texas. He said: Samsungs new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor will bring countless opportunities for hardworking Central Texans and their families and will play a major role in our states continued exceptionalism in the semiconductor industry. I look forward to expanding our partnership to keep the Lone Star State a leader in advanced technology and a dynamic economic powerhouse.

It is believed that the company chose Taylor because they already have an ecosystem of suppliers and partners in Texas thanks to their existing factory in Austin. Moreover, the weather and geological stability of Texas makes it well-suited to this type of facility.

Taylors Mayor, Brandt Rydell, was thrilled about Samsungs decision, calling it the single most significant and consequential development for the local economy since the International & Great Northern Railroad laid tracks here in the 1870s.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Taylor officials incentivized Samsung by offering them property tax breaks of more than 90 percent during the first ten years, with write-offs declining gradually in the coming decades.

This spring, one of Samsungs main rivals in the semiconductor manufacturing sphere, Intel, announced that it would be investing $20 billion in the construction of two new chip plants in Arizona, while another competitor, TSMC, is also building a new factory in Arizona.

Sources for this article include:

ZeroHedge.com

MBTMag.com

CNBC.com
View of the Syncrude oil sands extraction facility near the town of Fort McMurray in Alberta Province, Canada on October 25, 2009. Greenpeace is calling for an end to oil sands mining in the region due to their greenhouse gas emissions and have recently staged sit-ins which briefly halted production at several mines. At an estimated 175 billion barrels, Alberta's oil sands are the second largest oil reserve in the world behind Saudi Arabia, but they were neglected for years, except by local companies, because of high extraction costs. Since 2000, skyrocketing crude oil prices and improved extraction methods have made exploitation more economical, and have lured several multinational oil companies to mine the sands. (Photo : Photo credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

Oil industries such as ExxonMobil and Suncor, a Canadian conglomerate, have turned the tar sands into the world's finest commercial establishments, encompassing an area greater than New York.

"You have a sense of belonging here," she explained, "it's what I desire for our citizens, to reclaim their country."

However, during the last 20 years, the cabin was flanked by Alberta's oil sands pits, where oil firms have built massive outdoor holes to collect a dense kind of petroleum known as bitumen.

Oil Industry Caused Oil Pollution

Mike Mercredi, a Dene who lives in Fort Chipewyan, some 100 miles north of Fort McKay, said his folks loosely translates as "people of the region."

"ExxonMobil is dedicated to running our companies in a socially and environmentally ethical approach, aiming to reduce ecological impacts and benefiting the areas where we reside and operate," stated Julie King, an Exxon spokesperson.

Certain attorneys and environmentalists have referred to the oil sands as a typical case of what they call "ecological destruction," or massive environmental harm.

Pits for tar sands had engulfed an extensive area than Nyc, and the native village of Fort McKay is right in the heart of it.

As per official estimates, the quarries used approximately 58 billion gallons of water from the country's streams, lagoons, and reservoirs in 2019.

"It's absolutely a most absurd strategy to fuel and mining growth that is imaginable, given what we know about the influence on environments and the implications on atmosphere," explained Dale Marshall, country program director for Environmental Action, a Canadian campaigner.

The activities also emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, remnants of which were found in soils and snowfall hundreds of kilometers distant.

Including such barriers fail occasionally, or the birds disregard it and land anyhow - thousands per year, per a 2016 study to regional authorities acquired this year by The Narwhal, a volunteer Canadian journalism group. The carbon pollution from the quarries and profound operations combined almost match those of 21 coal-fired generating reactors, and that's only to get the petroleum out of the surface.

Also read: Experts Warn Next Coronavirus Pandemic Will Come From Asymptomatic Rodents

Chemicals That Harm the People

Energy industries obtain bitumen from sand by heating it and then treating it with a mixture of moisture and chemicals.

However, the Committee for Environmental Cooperation, an environmental organization established beside the Free Trade Agreements, found last year there was "valid scientific proof" that the trash dumps were seeping toxins into aquifers.

Stephane McLachlan, an ecologic expert at the University of Manitoba, was authorised by the Athabasca Chipewyan and Mikisew Cree First Countries to evaluate wildlife cells, and in 2014 he put out a report discovering raised amount of toxic contaminants - as well as arsenic, mercury, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - in the meat of moose, ducks, and muskrats in the area. In answer to a query concerning medical conditions, she stated that the organization "is dedicated to maintaining that Alberta's tar sands are exploited in a safe and legal way," and she addressed further inquiries to Alberta Health, the region's healthcare department.

A study released in the Journal proceedings of The National of Sciences in 2010 discovered higher amounts of mercury, lead, nickel, and other toxic substances in the lower reaches of tar sands production, and in Lakeside Athabasca.

When questioned further about the claim, Coldbeck stated that her organization "had no proof" that tainted freshwater has entered the Athabasca Lake.

"They snatched it all away," she claimed of the oil firms, referring not just to her nephew but also to the wider ecological impact.

Also read: About 620 Million Birds Have Quietly Vanished in Europe for the Last 40 Years
Commercial crabbing season has been delayed again in portions of California due to worries about endangered humpback whales that share their waters. Those expecting to catch a Dungeness crab for their Thanksgiving feast may find them in scarce supply this year.

Humpback Whale Entanglement

The entanglement of humpback whales in heavy ropes used by commercial crabbers has increased in recent years, resulting in the deaths and injury of scores of the endangered whales. State officials have pushed back the commercial crabbing season for the second time this year to decrease entanglements.

Restrictions between Sonoma and Mendocino counties, which reach the Oregon border, will be lifted by December 1, while conditions to the south, which run through the Bay Area and down to Lopez Point in Monterey, will be lifted remain in place.

Officials say the number of whales in the waters off the west coast is still high, with aircraft and ship surveys revealing up to 79 humpback whales near the Bay Area and off the coast of San Francisco over the previous month. "Based on the most recent surveys, we are still seeing a high number of humpbacks, especially out in the Gulf of the Farralones," said Ryan Bartling, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. They added that the following assessment would be done in early December.

Related Article: Man Finds Rare Deep-Sea Creature While Walking on the Beach



New Restrictions

California enacted new restrictions last year to prevent entanglements and developed a risk assessment program to better monitor when humpback whales and sea turtles - both of which are regularly entangled by the traps - are in the region.

The altering oceanic conditions that impact the whales' feeding patterns, pushing them into shallower waters during the months when crab traps are deployed, have been blamed on global warming. "There's some evidence that they're staying around a little bit longer due to foraging possibilities," Bartling said.

Delaying Crabbing Season

As a result, the $88 million west coast crabbing industry's season has shrunk, triggering bitter disputes between environmentalists, state authorities, and the fishermen who feel the pinch. Crabbers lament the fact that they missed out on the Thanksgiving shopping frenzy.

The California Coast Crab Association's president, Ben Platt, told the New York Times, "We've gone from a seven-month crab season to one that will be three months at most."

Meanwhile, environmentalists have pushed for statewide enforcement of tighter restrictions and urged the crabbing business to switch to ropeless gear. "Crabbers will face delays or closures as long as the fishing industry continues to drop thousands of heavy ropes into California waters, and endangered whales and sea turtles will continue to be entangled and killed," Kristen Monsell, legal director of the Center for Biological Diversity's oceans program, said in a statement.

Crabbing Industry

Crab traps are made up of strong ropes from surface buoys to underwater wire or wood pots. The rope is stowed on a spool that may be acoustically called to the surface in the ropeless variants, giving less time for other creatures to become entangled.

The crabbing business has fought the change, claiming that the equipment is insufficient - and far too expensive. Traditional traps are often four times as costly as modern technologies. A coalition of crab industry organizations across the state opposed a California law filed this year that would mandate crabbers to use the gear by 2025, claiming the restrictions would put fishers out of business.

Also Read: Lone Beluga Whale Discovered More than a Thousand Miles Away From Home in Seattle

For more animal, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 09: General view inside the stadium prior to the FA Cup Third Round match between Queens Park Rangers and Fulham at The Kiyan Prince Foundation Stadium on January 09, 2021 in London, England. The match will be played without fans, behind closed doors as a Covid-19 precaution. (Photo : Photo by Clive Rose/Getty Images)

Solar events are known to disrupt satellites, power grids, and even television broadcasts and mobile communication, but experts warn that the severity of it will cause an 'Internet Apocalypse'.

A study found that severe or 'Cannibal' solar storms can potentially disrupt internet connectivity and cause long-lasting global internet outages.

A major impact of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is expected to reach close to earth's magnetic poles, with Europe and North America as the highest risks, compared to Asia and Africa. Although such events do not affect people and their daily lives, it will digitally disconnect the globe for days.

A solar phenomenon

Sun outages are no strangers to Earth. In fact, it happens from time to time without us even knowing. They normally affect everything, from television broadcasts, to stock market transactions, to mobile communications. They are highly presumed which is why broadcasters, carriers, stock exchanges and other entities usually affected by such phenomenon take this into consideration during the hardware deployment stage. They also prevent equipment damage by installing guards to their receiving systems.

On the other hand, solar storms are different from sun outages. They are more severe and causes widespread power outages, even globally. However, cases of solar storms severely affecting earthlings are rare.

One notable event was way back 1989, when the entire province of Quebec, Canada suffered a blackout. It reportedly followed a powerful explosion on the Sun three days earlier.

NASA reported that the explosion was so large, it released the energy of thousands of nuclear bombs exploding at the same time.

The solar phenomenon resulted to short-wave radio interference, jammed radio signals in Europe, and destroyed power grids in Canada and the US.

The new research suggests an explosion this powerful, maybe even more, can also destroy global internet connectivity.

Also read: Huge Storm Expected to Hit Numerous Cities in Central and Eastern America

Heading towards Earth

Over the past week, scientists reported a series of geomagnetic storms that struck Earth as a result of a new solar cycle. This event typically takes place every 11 years and will reach its peak in 2025.

Just recently, scientists predict that 'Cannibal' CMEs will happen over the next four years due to the Sun's extreme activity - a series of coronal mass ejections that involve the emission of electrically charged matter and accompanying magnetic field into space.

"That first CME essentially works its way through the 93 million miles and almost clearing a path out for other CMEs to come in behind it," said Bill Murtagh, a program coordinator at the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

"Sometimes we use the term 'cannibalising' the one ahead."

Murtagh said that this CME could be manageable, although irregularities are already being felt. However, this specific kind of 'cannibalising' CME, according to Murtagh, can be far more severe, placing the entire world into an "internet apocalypse".

"We have determined for all practical purposes that our worst-case scenario for the extreme geomagnetic storm event scenario will indeed be this," Murtagh said.

Also read: Experts Warn Next Coronavirus Pandemic Will Come From Asymptomatic Rodents


Gorleston church holds community Open House

St Mary Magdalene Church in Gorleston has launched Open House once a week to give people in the local community an opportunity to socialise over a coffee.

The charity Age UK has found that more than two million people in England over the age of 75 live alone, and more than a million older people say they go for over a month without speaking to a friend, neighbour, or family member.



One of the initiatives at St Mary Magdalene which aims to try and combat this issue is Open House, which takes place on a Wednesday morning between 10am and 12 noon in the church building. It is preceded by said communion from 9.30am, and concludes with a time of prayer at the tables.



Reverend Matthew Price, vicar of St Mary Magdalene, pictured right, said, Open House is held in the warm, light, welcoming environment of our carpeted church. Its a quiet space that lends itself to listening, refreshments, and gentle arts, crafts, and activities. Anyone is welcome but we particularly want to welcome those who are older in years, who have memories to share and contributions to make, however big or small.



The church is drawing together a team of people who volunteer specifically to listen and provide informal care around the hot drinks, sweet treats, and light puzzles, jigsaw, or crafts.



Matthew said, Maybe you could do with someone to talk to in the week or would enjoy offering a listening ear to others? Maybe you have a friend or spouse you could bring with you who would benefit from someone else hearing their memories for a change, or who would enjoy the supportive company of others? Wed really love to welcome you!.



Anyone interested should contact Mary Ives, lay minister, on mary.ives@stmmgorleston.org.uk for details,

or call the Vicarage on 01493 494248.



Alternatively, just turn up on a Wednesday morning at the main entrance to St Mary Magdalene, Magdalen Square, Gorleston.



This story is based on an article in the Gorleston Community Magazine and also on Network Yarmouth .



The pictures above are courtesy of Matthew Price.

Do you have a news story or forthcoming event relating to Christians or a church in East Norfolk?

If so, e-mail tony.rothe@networknorwich.co.uk with details and, if possible a suitable picture.

Tony Rothe, 25/11/2021
LONDON (AP)  The deaths of at least 27 people in the English Channel is fueling tensions between the U.K. and France over how to stop migrants from crossing the worlds busiest shipping route in small boats.

Despite a pledge from British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron that they would do everything possible to stop people smugglers from endangering lives, politicians on both sides of the channel are already blaming their counterparts for failing to prevent Wednesdays tragedy.

British officials expressed frustration that France has rejected their offer to bolster enforcement along the channel coast by sending British law enforcement officers to conduct joint patrols with French police. But Macron said his country needed more responsible partners in the U.K. and the European Union to fight illegal immigration.

We are completely mobilized along our coast, Macron told reporters during a visit to Croatia. We are obviously going to maintain this maximum presence  (and) ask for additional mobilization from the British. Because I remind you, when it comes to this, we are holding the border for the British.

Wednesdays tragedy comes amid an increase in the number of migrants trying to cross the channel in inflatable boats and other small craft after the COVID-19 pandemic limited air and ship travel and Britains departure from the European Union curtailed cooperation with neighboring countries.

More than 23,000 people have already entered the U.K. on small boats this year, up from 8,500 last year and just 300 in 2018, according to data compiled by Parliament.

In June, the British government agreed to pay 54 million pounds ($72 million) to help France combat people smuggling. U.K. authorities have also proposed joint patrols, but France has repeatedly rejected to offer because of concerns it would undermine French sovereignty.

Home Secretary Priti Patel, who oversees the U.K. immigration system, on Thursday told the House of Commons that she had renewed the offer of joint patrols yet again ... in the last hour.

The status quo cannot persist, Patel said. I think theres a full understanding of this on the French side.

The tensions are at least partly the result of Britain's departure from the EU, which took effect at the beginning of last year.

When it left the bloc, Britain also exited a system that provided for intra-European cooperation on asylum and other migration issues, said Nando Sigona, professor of international migration and forced displacement at the University of Birmingham. At the same time, people smugglers have realized the channel is a lucrative route for migrants and they are stepping up their effort with bigger boats.

The big difference is that in the past when the United Kingdom was part of the European Union, (it) was also part of a system of solidarity and burden-sharing when it comes to dealing with asylum seekers and forced migration," he said. There was a mechanism in place that would regulate the way that the mobility of asylum seekers is managed within the European Union. Now the border has become a hard border in a sense, and there is not yet in place a new system that is able to manage and govern that kind of mobility.

But British newspapers took aim at France, publishing images of French police watching migrants launch inflatable boats just hours before 27 people, including a pregnant woman and three children, died in the channel.

Shameful, proclaimed The Sun. Youre letting gangs get away with murder, said The Daily Mail.

Rather disappointingly, yesterday we saw the French police in footage standing by while boats got together and migrants got in them and they went off the shore in France, Natalie Elphicke, a lawmaker from the governing Conservative Party, told The Associated Press. Britain has offered to help with people and resources, and I hope the French will now take up that offer and other European countries will come to Frances aid.

Pierre-Henri Dumont, a French lawmaker from the channel port of Calais, warned that the British proposal wouldnt solve the problem along 300 kilometers (185 miles) of coastline that needs to be constantly monitored.

I think its time for both our governments to stop blaming each other and to try and talk to each other and find real solutions, not a crazy solution such as having more and more people patrolling, sending the British Army to the French shore, Dumont told the BBC. That is not acceptable and will not change anything.

France has more police and military personnel deployed in the fight against illegal immigration than ever before, but it needs more help from the EU and neighboring countries, including Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as Britain, Macron said.

Britain has proposed tough new rules to discourage channel crossings. Those proposals, including the idea of setting up a center to process asylum seekers in another country, face stiff opposition in Parliament.

Rather than preventing the exploitation of migrants, these kinds of policies are forcing people to risk their lives in small boats, according to the Joint Council of Welfare for Immigrants, a 54-year-old organization created to protect immigrant rights.

This tragedy was completely predictable, indeed it was predicted and it was completely preventable, Zoe Gardner, the councils policy manager, told the BBC. This has to be a time for our government to mark a turning point. We need to offer people alternatives to the smuggling boats.

___

Follow APs global migration coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
KENT  They came for coffee, camaraderie, and a creative outlet. What they gave back in return went toward helping children.

The group  called Saint Kateris Womens Craft Group  has met every Wednesday after Mass in a downstairs room at Saint Kateri Tekakwitha Parish for about 20 years.

Items theyve made through the years include aprons, jewelry, holiday ornaments, doll clothes, hats, shoes and purses, wall hangings, and flower and sleigh baskets.

Originally, the group made items for themselves but in 2007, they began donating everything to childrens charities.

Charities include Shriners Hospitals for Children, which helps orthopedic conditions; Saint Jude Childrens Research Hospital which helps fight cancer and other life-threatening diseases; and to a priest living in the Appalachia region.

We send him money so that he can buy shoes and hats and gloves for the kids because he said they come to school in the middle of winter with flip flops, said Kent resident Jacque Petersen, who joined the group 15 years ago.

In addition to donating crafts, the group, which had no membership fee, gives about $1,500 a year towards the charities.

At its height, there were about 20 members.

Over the years, the group lost many of them  some have moved away to be closer to their children while others died. Over the past 18 months, the group lost six members.

Now, three women are left  Petersen, Kent resident Cyndy Gustafson and Amenia, N.Y. resident Sue Lorpardo  and theyve decided about a month ago to end the group.

Driving is part of it and some of us have difficulty getting around, said Petersen, who is 82.

Theyll be giving away their leftover crafts and craft supplies from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 27 and 28 at the church, 17 Bridge Street.

From boxes of beads for making jewelry to a variety of ornaments, we have just about everything you need to do a craft, Petersen said.

In exchange, theyre asking for donations. Once the items are sold, all proceeds  along with the remaining funds in their account  will be donated to the Kent Fire Department and Kent food pantry.

The bonds of friendship

Petersen, who is originally from Nevada, said when her husband died she moved to Kent to be closer to her sons. I didnt know anyone, she said.

Through craft making, she bonded with the other women and developed strong friendships.

I just had a ball. I have the best memories of this group. We have coffee and gab, said Petersen, who is a grandmother of three and a great-grandmother of one.

The group members, who are all retired, now regularly meet up on other days of the week, including for lunch on Fridays.

They have held two main craft sales a year  one in the spring and one at Christmas.

Every penny of what we make goes to childrens charities, Petersen said. Saint Jude always sent us a lovely thank you note.

Additionally, she said the priest in Appalachia was delighted with the crafts.

Some supplies were donated by parishioners. Most, however, were purchased by the women at yard sales and thrift stores.

Out of all the items theyve made, the top seller by far has been the aprons.

Sometimes, we were making about 40 to 50 a year, and selling every one of them, said Petersen, adding it takes from one to two hours to make each apron. They made adult aprons and childrens reversible aprons. The workmanship is so good. We just dont fly through these.

Petersen said she has been crafty from a very young age.

My mother taught me to sew and do crafts, along with my sister, she said, adding she owned a fabric store for 18 years.

Lorpardo, who is 72 and the baby of the group, has been a member for 10 years. She has made jewelry, doll clothing, candles, aprons, welcome signs and bird feeders with the group.

She said a member named Dale, who died two years ago, was the groups main idea woman.

She was an art teacher and very creative, said Lorpardo, a grandmother of three. She thought of all the ideas for the crafts.

The group has tried to find others to take over the reins  to no avail.

We put ads in our weekly bulletin in church and passed the word around town and many people are young and just dont have time. They work full time, Petersen said.

While the group may no longer be meeting, all the hours spent in that downstairs room will remain with them, Lorpardo said.

I will miss it, Lorpardo said. It definitely was about friendship more than anything else.

sfox@milfordmirror.com 203-948-9802
Our County Editor

Dave Hinton is editor of The News-Gazette's Our County section and former editor of the Rantoul Press. He can be reached at dhinton@news-gazette.com.
Eric Hiatt of Savoy has been named president-elect of the Illinois Jayceesafter restarting the previously disolved Champaign-Urbana Jaycees. At his home in Savoy on Friday, Nov. 19, 2021.
Infection by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is the virus responsible for the present coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, causes a wide spectrum of symptoms. Unfortunately, a minority of patients with COVID-19 require hospitalization due to progressive respiratory failure with a mortality rate of 20%.

Study: Impact of dexamethasone on persistent symptoms of COVID-19: an observational study. Image Credit: Cryptographer / Shutterstock.com

Background

Many individuals who survived the acute phase of the infection were found to suffer from prolonged symptoms that are termed long Covid or post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC).

A large randomized trial performed at United Kingdom (U.K.) hospitals throughout the pandemic indicated that the steroid dexamethasone was capable of reducing mortality in hospitalized patients who require oxygen. Although dexamethasone is used widely, little is known about its impact on prolonged symptoms after patients have recovered from COVID-19.

A new study published on the preprint server medRxiv* assesses the symptom burden and quality of life of hospitalized patients eight months after recovering from COVID-19 by comparing the individuals before and after being treated with dexamethasone.

About the study

The current study recruited 198 patients who were admitted with COVID-19 pneumonia from a single hospital in the U.K. between April 2020 and August 2020. The inclusion criteria were either a positive polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test against SARS-CoV-2 or a clinical-radiological diagnosis of COVID-19. The patients who received steroid treatment two weeks before admission or those who were on long-term steroids were excluded from the study.

The eligible patients were divided into two groups including one group who received 6 milligrams (mg) of oral dexamethasone once daily and the control group. Both groups consisted of patients with a similar age range, frailty score, presence of comorbidities, and requirement for ventilation during admission at baseline. However, more men and a higher rate of prior chronic lung disease were reported in the control group that did not receive dexamethasone.

Patients who required oxygen following their admission were identified and grouped based on whether they have been prescribed dexamethasone upon admission. The duration of the dexamethasone course was recorded, along with routine clinical and demographic information.

All patients were followed up for eight months after they had recovered from COVID-19 either by phone or in-person visits. The patients were asked to complete a short survey that included questions on their quality of life and a review of ongoing symptoms.

Study findings

The results indicated that across the two groups, 68% of the patients reported at least one ongoing symptom eight months post-infection. The most frequently reported symptoms were fatigue, insomnia, and breathlessness. However, the patients receiving dexamethasone reported fewer symptoms as compared to the control group.

Symptoms at 8-month follow-up comparing dexamethasone group (orange) to no dexamethasone group (green).

The mental and physical composite scores extracted from the questionnaire indicated no significant difference between the dexamethasone and control groups.

However, there can be several implications of the result. First, the patients receiving the steroid were most likely to recover, irrespective of the steroid used. Second, the use of dexamethasone was increased during the pandemic; therefore, the dexamethasone group was recruited later than the control group.

Therefore, reduced symptomatology in the dexamethasone group could be due to general improvements in care that led to a reduction of long-term symptoms. Third, the results could be due to more acute patients dying and not being available for follow-up. Fourth, the association between dexamethasone and reduced mortality might be casual.

The current study had several limitations. First, the sample size of the study was small and resulted in minimal data attrition. Second, the study is limited to only those patients who required oxygen during hospitalization. Third, the trial caused harm to hospitalized patients who did not require oxygen.

*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.
On November 23, 2021, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) governing board approved a $4.1 million grant to enable University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers to advance a new chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy from the laboratory into the clinic.

In this type of cancer therapy, a patient's own T-cells, a type of immune cell, are collected from a blood draw and genetically modified in the lab so that they can recognize proteins on tumor cells. After infusion back into the patient, the CAR T-cells kill the targeted cancer cells.

The work will be led by principal investigator Ezra Cohen, MD, professor at UC San Diego School of Medicine, associate director for clinical science and chief of the Division of Hematology-Oncology at Moores Cancer Center at UC San Diego Health, and Charles Prussak, PharmD, PhD, director of the Cell Therapy Translational Laboratory at Moores Cancer Center.

In their previous laboratory studies, Cohen and team developed CAR T-cells that specifically target ROR1, a molecule found on the surface of many cancer cells. ROR1 is normally used only by embryonic cells during early development, but it can also be exploited by cancer cells to promote tumor growth.

ROR1 is also the target of cirmtuzumab, an experimental monoclonal antibody-based drug developed by another UC San Diego School of Medicine research team with funding from CIRM. Cohen and team used a portion of the cirmtuzumab antibody to construct ROR1 CAR T-cells. They discovered that ROR1 CAR T-cells were especially active in blood cancers, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL).

The award will allow the team to take the steps needed to finalize the clinical product and launch clinical trials to test ROR1 CAR T-cell safety and efficacy in patients with blood cancers. Since ROR1 is rarely found in normal adult tissues, the researchers expect their therapy to have minimal side effects.

This really has the potential to provide a meaningful therapy to many patients with blood cancers that are resistant to standard chemotherapies, have few therapeutic options and dire prognoses. These patients represent a tremendous, global unmet medical need." Ezra Cohen, Head, Solid Tumor Therapeutics Program, Moores Cancer Center and Co-Director, San Diego Center for Precision Immunotherapy

Shortly after an initial Phase I clinical trial, the researchers plan to expand their approach to address difficult-to-treat solid tumors, such as head and neck cancers, triple-negative breast cancer and pancreatic cancer, which also produce ROR1.

"CAR T-cell therapies represent a transformational advance in the treatment of hematologic malignancies," said Maria T. Millan, MD, CIRM president and CEO. "This approach addresses the need to develop new therapies for patients whose cancers are resistant to standard chemotherapies, who have few therapeutic options and a very poor chance or recovery.

"Our goal is to always move the most promising research forward as fast as we can. That's why these programs are so important. They reflect potential therapeutic approaches that have shown promise in the lab and are ready to take the next step, to undergo further testing and examination to see if they might be able to work in patients."
Significant decreases in CT imaging for cancer persisted even after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, delaying diagnosis and treatment and raising the possibility of more advanced cancers and poorer outcomes for patients in the future, according to a study being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

Numerous studies have shown COVID-19's severe impact on U.S. health care, as the pandemic filled hospitals and reduced imaging capacity during its peak of March to early May 2020. Few studies, however, have explored the pandemic's lingering effects on cancer imaging.

For the new study, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Harvard Medical School in Boston compared cancer-related CT exams during three periods of 2020: the pre-COVID phase (January to mid-March), peak COVID (mid-March to May) and post-COVID peak (May to mid-November). They looked at CT volume and the type of care being delivered through imaging.

As expected, CT volumes dropped significantly during the COVID peak. CT for cancer screening fell a whopping 82%, while CT for initial workup, active cancer and cancer surveillance also saw significant declines. Volumes for cancer screening and initial workup failed to recover in the post-COVID peak period, remaining down 11.7% and 20%, respectively, from their pre-COVID numbers.

The decline during the COVID peak was expected because of stay-at-home orders and the number of imaging departments that shut down as a precaution. Once normal operations resumed, you'd expect that these patients were being imaged in an equitable way, but, in fact, it turns out that they weren't." Marc Succi, M.D., study senior author, emergency radiologist at MGH and executive director of the MESH Incubator, an in-house innovation and entrepreneurship center

The persistence of the decline in CTs for cancer screening and initial workup likely means higher numbers of patients with advanced cancers in the future.

"We expect that we're going to see increased morbidity and mortality due to the fact that these patients weren't able to get their routine imaging," Dr. Succi said. "You can also surmise that they probably didn't have their routine elective follow-up appointments as well."

CT imaging declines particularly affected the outpatient setting, as utilization shifted away from large academic centers toward community hospitals and the Emergency Department (ED). Cancer-related CTs at the ED actually increased in the post-COVID peak period.

"The ED remains a place in the American healthcare system where people can get help, no matter the situation," said study author Ottavia Zattra, a fourth-year medical student at Harvard Medical School. "From a systems perspective, however, the best care in terms of prevention is administered in the outpatient setting."

The possibility of being exposed to COVID-19 likely made many cancer patients reluctant to go to large hospitals and primary care centers, the researchers said. As a result, they may have put off a visit until symptoms grew too significant to ignore.

"When initial diagnostic imaging is done in the emergency room, that suggests that people were having symptoms due to cancer for months and months, and they weren't checking in with their primary care providers," Zattra said. "Ultimately, the symptoms got so bad they couldn't handle it at home."

The study findings underscore the vulnerable position of cancer patients in the pandemic.

"We need better awareness and outreach toward the oncologic patient population," Dr. Succi said. "For example, if a patient is due for a yearly lung cancer screening with a CT scan, we need to make sure they're aware that they can and should get that screening regardless of COVID. Delays in screening are inevitably going to lead to delayed diagnoses and increased morbidity."

The imaging utilization trends support the diversion of more resources to community centers to take care of patients who might be avoiding large academic hospitals. The trends also highlight the importance of a robust ED imaging service with overnight coverage in both academic medical centers and private practices.

"Even the smaller centers should think about having 24/7 ED imaging coverage to meet the needs of these patients who are being diverted," Dr. Succi said.

The researchers hope to do a follow-up study to track CT imaging volumes through 2021. They also want to look at the role that factors like race, language and income have played in access to cancer imaging during the pandemic.
Experts predict that without intervention, the problem of multidrug-resistant bacterial infections could be catastrophic by 2050, killing nearly 10 million people each year.

To seek solutions, the National Institutes of Health awarded a five-year, $1.8 million grant to Joseph Boll, assistant professor of biology at The University of Texas at Arlington, to identify and inhibit the defense mechanisms of Acinetobacter baumannii, a pathogen that thrives in hospitals and clinical settings.

A. baumannii can cause infections in the blood, urinary tract and lungs, or in wounds in other parts of the body. Infections are generally treated with antibiotics, but many strains are resistant to medication, including carbapenems, a class of highly effective antibiotics usually reserved for severe multidrug-resistant bacterial infections.

In previous research, we discovered that when A. baumannii experiences stress, such as antibiotic treatment, it modifies its cell envelope to tolerate the antibiotic for extended periods of time. Specific modifications allow the bacteria to survive long enough to acquire true antibiotic resistance, which can lead to antibiotic treatment failure. This can happen within 24 hours of antibiotic exposure." Joseph Boll, assistant professor of biology, The University of Texas at Arlington

Boll's team expects to identify what adaptations in the cell envelope allow the pathogen to survive in the presence of antibiotics and how survival contributes to the acquisition of true resistance.

In a recent study titled "Septal Class A Penicillin-Binding Protein Activity and ld-Transpeptidases Mediate Selection of Colistin-Resistant Lipooligosaccharaide-Deficient Acinetobacter baumannii," which was published in the journal mBio, the team showed that two LD-transpeptidase enzymes remodel A. baumannii's cell envelope to promote its survival when under stress, such as the kind experienced during antibiotic treatment.

Armed with this breakthrough, Hannah Bovermann, a senior double-major in biology and microbiology, is dissecting the genes that encode the bacteria's LD-transpeptidases to learn what stress conditions induce their activation. She isolates the LD-transpeptidase promoters, the part of the DNA that controls when other parts of DNA are used, and glues it to a different gene whose function is to turn the bacterial cell blue. When the cell is in an environment where it wants to modify its cell envelope to protect itself, it turns blue, and Bovermann can observe the timing of the change.

To provoke this reaction, she administers antibiotics, experiments with various temperature changes, exposes the cell to pH gradients and subjects the cell to nutrient deprivations.

"Each response brings us closer to an understanding of how cell envelope modifications keep the bacterial cell intact in stress," Bovermann said.

The researchers hope to find new targets on the cell surface for antibiotics to attack, strengthening existing medications' potency against A. baumannii infections.

Drug-resistant bacteria have cornered health care providers into using combinatorial therapies, where multiple drugs are employed to treat bacterial infections, but even those methods are becoming increasingly ineffective, Boll said.

"It has become a game. Researchers discover a new antimicrobial, then bacteria become resistant to it. We are running out of options," Boll said. "Bacterial resistance is quickly outpacing new antibiotic development."
A new algorithm can predict how many patients will need intensive COVID-related healthcare. This is valuable knowledge when it comes to prioritizing caregivers and ventilators in individual hospitals. The innovation could save lives, according to the UCPH researcher behind the algorithm.

When the COVID-19 pandemic peaked in December of 2020, Danish hospitals were under maximum pressure. Hospital staffs were stretched thin and the Danish Health Authority had to make tough decisions to prioritise treatments. Among other things, this resulted in 35,500 postponed operations.

Now, an innovative algorithm will help alleviate pressure whenever hospitals are confronted by new waves of COVID. Researchers from the University of Copenhagen, among others, have developed the algorithm, which can predict the course of COVID patients' illnesses in relation to how many of them will be highly likely or unlikely to require intensive care or ventilation.

This is important for the allocation of staff across the hospitals in for example Denmark, explains one of the study's authors.

"If we can see that we'll have capacity issues five days out because too many beds are taken at Rigshospitalet, for example, we can plan better and divert patients to hospitals with more space and staffing. As such, our algorithm has the potential save lives," explains Stephan Lorenzen, a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Computer Science.

The algorithm uses individual patient data from Sundhedsplatform (the National Health Platform) including information about a patient's gender, age, medications, BMI, whether they smoke or not, blood pressure and more.

This allows the algorithm to predict how many patients, within a one-to-fifteen day time frame, will need intensive care in the form of, for example, ventilators and constant monitoring by nurses and doctors.

Along with colleagues at the University of Copenhagen, as well as researchers at Rigshospitalet and Bispebjerg Hospital, Lorenzen developed the new algorithm based on health data from 42,526 Danish patients who tested positive for the coronavirus between March 2020 and May 2021.

Predicts the number of intensive care patients with 90 percent accuracy

Traditionally, researchers have used regression models to predict Covid-related hospital admissions. However, these models haven't taken individual disease histories, age, gender and other factors into account.

"Our algorithm is based on more detailed data than other models. This means that we can predict the number of patients who will be admitted to intensive care units or who need a ventilator within five days with over 90 percent accuracy," states Stephan Lorenzen.

In fact, the algorithm provides extremely accurate predictions for the likely number of intensive care patients for up to ten days.

"We make better predictions than comparable models because we are able to more accurately map the potential need for ventilators and 24-hour intensive care for up to ten days. Precision decreases slightly beyond that, similar to that of the existing algorithmic models used to predict the course of illness in Covid cases," he elaborates.

In principle, the algorithm is ready to be deployed in Danish hospitals. As such, the researchers are about to begin discussions with relevant health professionals.

"We have shown that data can be used for so incredibly much. And, that we in Denmark, are lucky to have so much health information to draw from. Hopefully, our new algorithm can help our hospitals avoid Covid overload when a new wave of the illness hits," concludes Stephan Lorenzen.
Researchers in the College of Health and Life Sciences at Aston University have been awarded funds to explore the microbiome of the kitchen chopping board with the help of 'citizen scientists'. The grant is from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and the Food Standards Agency (FSA) as part of a larger project to investigate food standard challenges.

The new citizen science project plans to recruit participants from underrepresented communities in the West Midlands to investigate levels of foodborne bacteria in the home and produce educational materials for their communities.

Citizen science projects put the public at the heart of the research process. Rather than being the subjects of the research, citizens are actively involved in collecting and analysing data, and even deciding what questions they want to ask and co-developing the approaches with researchers Citizen science also gives participants the opportunity to directly contribute to scientific research and influence policy.

The research team in the School of Biosciences will recruit citizen scientists through its students, who will act as ambassadors in their own households and communities. The team will create methods for sampling bacteria from chopping boards and gather their observations with their team of citizen scientists and ambassadors.

This will enable the researchers to identify the bacteria present and determine their antimicrobial resistance (AMR) profiles, providing opportunities for ambassadors and citizens to perform lab research.

The researchers, alongside their ambassadors and citizens, will then co-design and disseminate educational materials on food hygiene tailored to their target communities and based on the findings of the study.

Dr Alan Goddard, senior lecturer in the School of Biosciences and project lead, said:

"Many foodborne infections begin in the home, often through poor hygiene where chopping boards provide an opportunity for raw foods to cross-contaminate.

"This is why this project is an exciting opportunity to work with our students and communities to investigate a microbiological problem that causes significant disease every year. By working with the public, we get privileged access to authentic environments and can ensure our solutions are appropriate."

At present, around 40 per cent of outbreaks of foodborne infections in Europe occur at home, with approximately 2.4 million cases of food poisoning occurring in the UK annually, leading to 180 deaths. A common source of such infections is poor food hygiene, with chopping boards, where raw foods may cross-contaminate, playing a key role in the infection chain. Misunderstandings, or poor food hygiene, may therefore contribute a significant disease burden.

This exciting project brings together the expertise of University researchers with the natural inquisitiveness of members of the public to co-develop and undertake a research project which has the potential for real impact in reducing the burden of foodborne disease in the home." Professor Anthony Hilton, Executive Dean, College of Health and Life Sciences

The FSA and UKRI have awarded a total of 200,000 to fund six projects in order to bring the public and researchers together to investigate food standards challenges.

All six projects include exploring the bacteria on home grown produce, parents testing the safety of baby formula, and people with food hypersensitivities analysing the allergens in food bought online.

The citizen science projects are all linked to the FSA's Areas of Research Interest themes, covering issues such as antimicrobial resistance (AMR), food hypersensitivity and food safety and hygiene in the home. The funding was delivered in collaboration with the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Economic and Social research Council (ESRC), both part of UKRI. It is part of a wider effort to coordinate activities and develop a joined-up approach to tackle the challenges of maintaining safe food in the UK.

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Professor Robin May, Chief Scientific Advisor for the FSA said:

'I'm delighted that the FSA is supporting these exciting citizen science projects across the country. In addition to delivering invaluable data, these projects will allow the communities we serve to help build the evidence on which policy decisions are made. We are committed to using science and evidence to tackle the latest food-related issues and citizen science is a fantastic way of doing this.'

The citizen science project investigating the microbiome of the kitchen chopping at Aston University will start in January 2022, concluding in July 2022.
One in five U.S. adults will experience a mental illness in their lifetime, according to the National Alliance of Mental Health. But standard treatments can be slow to work and cause side effects.

To find better solutions, a Virginia Tech researcher has joined a renaissance of research on a long-banned class of drugs that could combat several forms of mental illness and, in mice, have achieved long-lasting results from just one dose.

Using a process his lab developed in 2015, Chang Lu, the Fred W. Bull Professor of Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering, is helping his Virginia Commonwealth University collaborators study the epigenomic effects of psychedelics.

Their findings give insight into how psychedelic substances like psilocybin, mescaline, LSD, and similar drugs may relieve symptoms of addiction, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The drugs appear to work faster and last longer than current medications -; all with fewer side effects.

The project hinged on Lu's genomic analysis. His process allows researchers to use very small samples of tissue, down to hundreds to thousands of cells, and draw meaningful conclusions from them. Older processes require much larger sample sizes, so Lu's approach enables the studies using just a small quantity of material from a specific region of a mouse brain.

And looking at the effects of psychedelics on brain tissues is especially important.

Researchers can do human clinical trials with the substances, taking blood and urine samples and observing behaviors, Lu said. "But the thing is, the behavioral data will tell you the result, but it doesn't tell you why it works in a certain way," he said.

But looking at molecular changes in animal models, such as the brains of mice, allows scientists to peer into what Lu calls the black box of neuroscience to understand the biological processes at work. While the brains of mice are very different from human brains, Lu said there are enough similarities to make valid comparisons between the two.

VCU pharmacologist Javier Gonzalez-Maeso has made a career of studying psychedelics, which had been banned after recreational use of the drugs was popularized in the 1960s. But in recent years, regulators have begun allowing research on the drugs to proceed.

In work by other researchers, primarily on psilocybin, a substance found in more than 200 species of fungi, Gonzalez-Maeso said psychedelics have shown promise in alleviating major depression and anxiety disorders.

They induce profound effects in perception," he said. "But I was interested in how these drugs actually induce behavioral effects in mice." Javier Gonzalez-Maeso, VCU pharmacologist

To explore the genomic basis of those effects, he teamed up with Lu.

In the joint Virginia Tech - VCU study, Gonzalez-Maeso's team used 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine, or DOI, a drug similar to LSD, administering it to mice that had been trained to fear certain triggers. Lu's lab then analyzed brain samples for changes in the epigenome and the gene expression. They discovered that the epigenomic variations were generally more long-lasting than the changes in gene expression, thus more likely to link with the long-term effects of a psychedelic.

After one dose of DOI, the mice that had reacted to fear triggers no longer responded to them with anxious behaviors. Their brains also showed effects, even after the substance was no longer detectable in the tissues, Lu said. The findings were published in the October issue of Cell Reports.

It's a hopeful development for those who suffer from mental illness and the people who love them. In fact, it wasn't just the science that drew Lu to the project.

For him, it's also personal.

"My older brother has had schizophrenia for the last 30 years, basically. So I've always been intrigued by mental health," Lu said. "And then once I found that our approach can be applied to look at processes like that -; that's why I decided to do research in the field of brain neuroscience."

Gonzalez-Maeso said research on psychedelics is still in its early stages, and there's much work to be done before treatments derived from them could be widely available.
Quarraisha Abdool Karim has spent the past three decades studying HIV and AIDS. She has become one of the world's leading epidemiologists and made major contributions to the global understanding of how HIV affects young women.

As associate scientific director of the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Abdool Karim has been honoured by science bodies around the world for her ground-breaking research on HIV prevention.

She told SciDev.Net that rapid progress against the disease means scientists are now close to eliminating transmission from infected mothers to infants, which had stood at about 30 to 40 per cent.

You've been researching HIV for 30 years. How much more do we know now about the virus that causes AIDS, what it does to the body, and how we help women fight it?

AIDS was inevitably fatal and is now a chronic, manageable condition due to a constellation of factors. We now use the most advanced drug combination for treatment of AIDS patients. Scientists were able to develop antiretrovirals (ARV) and figure out the combination of antiretrovirals that enabled us to control viral replication. We haven't stopped viral replication in human beings, but we are able to control it so that they can live a normal and healthy life.

We used to have transmission rates from infected mothers to infants of about 30 to 40 per cent. We are close to eliminating transmission like that. There were a number of children dying before age five, but we are now seeing growing numbers reach adolescence.

But in terms of preventing HIV infection, particularly sexual transmission, it remains a challenge. When you're talking about risk that's related to sex it's a very touchy issue. There's a lot of moral overtones to it. So 'the science' is only the beginning. It's getting it to the individuals who need it - ultimately, that's what for me is the importance of science.

How close are we to having a tool for women to be able to prevent HIV? One that's fool-proof and long-term?

In terms of science, this is probably the most exciting era. In 2010, we shared results from a trial we started in 2006 to evaluate an ARV-based topical agent - tenofovir gel - used by women around sex, and it showed for the first time that we could prevent infection using antiretrovirals. We also talk about it as 'pre-exposure prophylaxis' or PrEP. So that's something that's there today and available for women and men at risk.

Most of the new trials are around two-monthly injectables, or six-monthly injections, or implants that potentially could be used for a whole year, or a tablet that could be taken once a month. One study has been completed on a two-monthly injectable, which has really exciting data. So, what we are seeing in the prevention landscape for men and women is a menu of options. But particularly for women, they look very much like contraceptive options.

One thing that strikes me is that you may have the science, but that doesn't always combat the rhetoric. People can just simply choose not to believe what you're saying. How do you deal with that?

In dealing with COVID-19, as with HIV, we're not unique and isolated. But whether you denied it or not, we were vulnerable and the virus spread. The same with COVID-19. It's a pandemic. It means that globally we all are vulnerable and we've seen countries where leadership have let the public down. And the reality is that none of us are islands.

But there are also issues of trust. And whether it's trust in science and scientists and the medical fraternity, or whether it's trust in the government, they all come together. A lot of the issues around hesitancy and mistrust and so on, what we are seeing in COVID-19, is not in isolation from other things going on.

You wear so many hats right now, what are you most proud of when you think about your career?

As a scientist, one doesn't just do science. One also looks at the issue of teaching, and the engagement with the public; that's really come to the forefront. A lot of the science I've done has been informed by growing up in apartheid South Africa and activism. And so demystifying things, ensuring that people you work with, and particularly the communities and participants in studies, actually understand what their rights are. And one needs to remember one's history in terms of where you come from and how you go, and that definitely shapes you.
Just three minutes of exposure to deep red light once a week, when delivered in the morning, can significantly improve declining eyesight, finds a pioneering new study by UCL researchers.

Published in Scientific Reports, the study builds on the team's previous work, which showed daily three-minute exposure to longwave deep red light 'switched on' energy producing mitochondria cells in the human retina, helping boost naturally declining vision.

For this latest study, scientists wanted to establish what effect a single three-minute exposure would have, while also using much lower energy levels than their previous studies. Furthermore, building on separate UCL research in flies that found mitochondria display 'shifting workloads' depending on the time of day, the team compared morning exposure to afternoon exposure.

In summary, researchers found there was, on average, a 17% improvement in participants' colour contrast vision when exposed to three minutes of 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light in the morning and the effects of this single exposure lasted for at least a week. However, when the same test was conducted in the afternoon, no improvement was seen.

Scientists say the benefits of deep red light, highlighted by the findings, mark a breakthrough for eye health and should lead to affordable home-based eye therapies, helping the millions of people globally with naturally declining vision.

We demonstrate that one single exposure to long wave deep red light in the morning can significantly improve declining vision, which is a major health and wellbeing issue, affecting millions of people globally. This simple intervention applied at the population level would significantly impact on quality of life as people age and would likely result in reduced social costs that arise from problems associated with reduced vision." Glen Jeffery, Lead Author, Professor, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology

Naturally declining vision and mitochondria

In humans around 40 years old, cells in the eye's retina begin to age, and the pace of this ageing is caused, in part, when the cell's mitochondria, whose role is to produce energy (known as ATP) and boost cell function, also start to decline.

Mitochondrial density is greatest in the retina's photoreceptor cells, which have high energy demands. As a result, the retina ages faster than other organs, with a 70% ATP reduction over life, causing a significant decline in photoreceptor function as they lack the energy to perform their normal role.

In studying the effects of deep red light in humans, researchers built on their previous findings in mice, bumblebees and fruit flies, which all found significant improvements in the function of the retina's photoreceptors when their eyes were exposed to 670 nanometre (long wavelength) deep red light.

"Mitochondria have specific sensitivities to long wavelength light influencing their performance: longer wavelengths spanning 650 to 900nm improve mitochondrial performance to increase energy production," said Professor Jeffery.

Morning and afternoon studies

The retina's photoreceptor population is formed of cones, which mediate colour vision, and rods, which adapt vision in low/dim light. This study focused on cones and observed colour contrast sensitivity, along the protan axis (measuring red-green contrast) and the tritan axis (blue-yellow).

All the participants were aged between 34 and 70, had no ocular disease, completed a questionnaire regarding eye health prior to testing, and had normal colour vision (cone function). This was assessed using a 'Chroma Test': identifying coloured letters that had very low contrast and appeared increasingly blurred, a process called colour contrast.

Using a provided LED device all 20 participants (13 female and 7 male) were exposed to three minutes of 670nm deep red light in the morning between 8am and 9am. Their colour vision was then tested again three hours post exposure and 10 of the participants were also tested one week post exposure.

On average there was a 'significant' 17% improvement in colour vision, which lasted a week in tested participants; in some older participants there was a 20% improvement, also lasting a week.

A few months on from the first test (ensuring any positive effects of the deep red light had been 'washed out') six (three female, three male) of the 20 participants, carried out the same test in the afternoon, between 12pm to 1pm. When participants then had their colour vision tested again, it showed zero improvement.

Professor Jeffery said: "Using a simple LED device once a week, recharges the energy system that has declined in the retina cells, rather like re-charging a battery.

"And morning exposure is absolutely key to achieving improvements in declining vision: as we have previously seen in flies, mitochondria have shifting work patterns and do not respond in the same way to light in the afternoon  this study confirms this."

For this study the light energy emitted by the LED torch was just 8mW/cm2, rather than 40mW/cm2, which they had previously used. This has the effect of dimming the light but does not affect the wavelength. While both energy levels are perfectly safe for the human eye, reducing the energy further is an additional benefit.

Home-based affordable eye therapies

With a paucity of affordable deep red-light eye-therapies available, Professor Jeffery has been working for no commercial gain with Planet Lighting UK, a small company in Wales and others, with the aim of producing 670nm infra-red eye ware at an affordable cost, in contrast to some other LED devices designed to improve vision available in the US for over $20,000.

"The technology is simple and very safe; the energy delivered by 670nm long wave light is not that much greater than that found in natural environmental light," Professor Jeffery said.

"Given its simplicity, I am confident an easy-to-use device can be made available at an affordable cost to the general public.

"In the near future, a once a week three-minute exposure to deep red light could be done while making a coffee, or on the commute listening to a podcast, and such a simple addition could transform eye care and vision around the world."

Study limitations

Despite the clarity of the results, researchers say some of the data are "noisy". While positive effects are clear for individuals following 670nm exposure, the magnitude of improvements can vary markedly between those of similar ages. Therefore, some caution is needed in interpretating the data. It is possible that there are other variables between individuals that influence the degree of improvement that the researchers have not identified so far and would require a larger sample size.

This research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, and Sight Research UK.

To help meet the costs of this research and future research, Professor Glen Jeffery's Lab at the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology receives donations via UCL's Give Now platform.
Genetic lineages of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have wreaked havoc by evolving and circulating all over the world. Amongst these, the B.1.617.2 (Delta) variant is the most common lineage found in India and globally. In addition, breakthrough infections with Delta variant have been documented in COVID vaccine recipients and people with prior SARS-CoV-2 infection. It is unclear whether fully vaccinated individuals with two doses of COVID-19 vaccine can transmit the virus.

After two doses of either mRNA or adenovirus-based vaccination, vaccine effectiveness (VE) for the Delta variant is predicted to be around 50% for mild symptomatic infection. Earlier, 155 cases of vaccine-related infections had been documented among frontline Delhi healthcare workers (HCW), most of whom had received one or two doses of the Covishield (ChAdOx1) vaccine, and the majority were immunized >21 days prior to the symptomatic presentation.

According to existing data, vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals have identical viral loads, but the former group elicited a steeper viral decay over time. Also, the likelihood of virus culture was lower in immunized individuals. It's unclear whether those who have a vaccine breakthrough spread it on to other vaccinated people or if the transmission is primarily driven by the unvaccinated individuals.

The Study

A new study published on the medRxiv* preprint server employed in-silico techniques, combining genomic and epidemiological data, to determine possible Delta-variant transmission events between vaccinated healthcare workers (HCWs) in Indian hospitals.

The study design comprised of frontline healthcare workers exhibiting symptoms of SARS-CoV-2, who were tested for viral presence using reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR).

The bioinformatics and phylogenetic analysis were carried out by obtaining consensus sequences in fasta format from two separate Hospitals in Delhi, India.

Potential transmission networks between HCWs. Individual labels are coloured according to vaccine status, including the timing prior to infection at which the second vaccine was given, where relevant. The thickness of lines between individuals show the probabilities of distinct pairwise transmission events between individuals; these probabilities are conditional on transmission having occurred between the individuals observed in each network. Labels show the relative dates on which individuals became symptomatic, and respective gains of nucleotides in sequences collected from each individual with respect to the mutual consensus.

Findings

The results found 81 breakthrough infections among 1,100 HCWs in hospital A and 32 breakthrough infections among 4,000 HCWs in hospital B.

B.1.617 was found in 90.7% of the breakthrough infections in doubly vaccinated HCWs. B.1.1.7-like accounted for 5.3% of the total, whereas B.1.538 accounted for 1.3%.

Fever (82.3 %of all cases), cough (43.4 %), myalgia (20.4%), and loss of smell/taste (14.2 %) were the frequently reported symptoms. In hospital A, 66 sequences produced high-quality whole-genome coverage of more than 90%, including 43 cases of breakthrough infection. While in hospital B, 52 samples, including all 32 symptomatic breakthrough infections, were used to obtain high-quality genome sequences.

Numerous introductions into hospitals A and B occurred, with the subsequent intra-hospital transmission. As a result, significant partitioning of the inferred phylogeny was discovered, dividing the sequences into distinct clades.

Mutations to the Delta consensus that were discovered in these cases were detected everywhere over the SARS-CoV-2 genome. Neither of the single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) was found in homoplasic areas of the genome.

Notably, individuals 115, 127, and 305 in hospital A all had identical viral genomes. Overall, 1,381 possible transmission networks were recognized in hospital A, and 128 probable transmission networks were identified in hospital B, involving different medical staff.

When the data were compared to simulations, it was found that the transmission network inferred for hospital A is self-consistent. In contrast, the network inferred for hospital B is potentially distorted by missing data, with most individuals carrying unique mutations. A common genome sequence was shared by a junior medical staff member, a nursing student, and a nursing staff at hospital A  who developed illness over six days while three other team members had viral genomes that differed from this one a single SNP. In addition, nonsynonymous substitution T3082I in ORF1ab was observed in a junior medical staff member.

The present study has two significant caveats  firstly, it considered only symptomatic patients, excluding asymptomatic or people who failed to report infection status. Secondly, the reduced number of valid samples led to incomplete transmission chains.

Together, the present findings underscore the possibility of Delta variant transmission between fully vaccinated individuals in a healthcare setting, despite the high efficacy of vaccines in preventing severe disease. Furthermore, breakthrough infections were detected in hospital settings in people within 60 days of the second vaccine dosewhen circulating neutralizing antibody levels were at their peak.

This study highlights the importance of continued infection control measures, even in highly vaccinated populations, and mask use in individuals who have received two doses of vaccination to reduce onward transmission.

*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.
An international team of scientists, led by Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), has linked increased air pollution to an uptick in cases of lung adenocarcinoma (LADC) worldwide. The same study also concluded an overall lower consumption of tobacco worldwide is statistically linked to less people contracting lung squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC).

Lung adenocarcinoma is a type of cancer for which research strongly suggests that genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors play a part, while lung squamous cell carcinoma is often linked to a history of smoking.

This study, done in collaboration between NTU and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, showed that a 0.1 micrograms per cubic meter (g/m3) increment of black carbon, also known as soot, in the Earth's atmosphere, is associated with a 12 per cent increase in LADC incidence globally.

Black carbon is a pollutant that is classified as under PM2.5, and the research team found that it has increased globally by 3.6 g/m3yearly from 1990 to 2012.

Meanwhile, a one per cent decline of smoking prevalence was associated with a nine per cent drop in LSCC incidence globally. The number of smokers worldwide decreased by 0.26 per cent a year, cumulatively falling by nearly six per cent from 1990 to 2012.

Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer with an estimated 1.8 million deaths in 2020, according to CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Global statistics have highlighted the trends of lung cancers, but understanding what may be causing them has been unclear, until the NTU-led study, which has associated the incidence of the cancers to tobacco consumption and air pollution.

Professor Joseph Sung, NTU's Senior Vice President (Health and Life Sciences) and Dean, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine), who led the study, said: "In our study, we were able to determine that the global increase of lung adenocarcinoma is likely associated with air pollution. It had always been unclear, in the past decades, why we are seeing more females and more non-smokers developing lung cancer worldwide. Our study points to the importance of environmental factors in the causation of specific types of lung cancer."

Our study provided us with an indication as to the reason behind the rising trend of lung adenocarcinoma, despite the decreasing trend of smoking prevalence. Our findings pinpoint the necessity and urgency to reduce air pollutant emissions especially black carbon." Steve Yim, Associate Professor, NTU's Asian School of the Environment and first author of the study

The study analyzed data from the World Health Organisation from 1990 to 2012 for data on lung cancers, while the dataset for age-standardized smoking prevalence rates from 1980 to 2012 was derived from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, an independent global health research center at the University of Washington. The statistics on pollution were obtained from National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Pollutants that were analyzed were black carbon, sulfate[4], and PM 2.5.

The results of the study were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Atmospheric Environment in November.

Gender and geography have a role to play

The links between lung cancers and black carbon also vary between different genders across different continents. For instance, the link between the pollutant and the incidence of both LADC and LSCC was stronger in females than in males.

Globally, a 0.1 g/m3annual increment of black carbon was linked to a 14 per cent rise in LADC in women, compared to nine per cent in men. As for LSCC, the same increase in the pollutant was linked to a 14 per cent increase in females, compared to eight per cent in the opposite sex.

The study found that the link between air pollutants and LADC varied across continents. In North America, a 0.1 g/m3 increment of black carbon was linked to a ten per cent increase in LADC cases, compared to seven per cent in Europe.

In the study, global data demonstrates that the drop in LSCC is more significant among males, said the researchers, and that the declining trend coincides with the declining trend of tobacco consumption.

However, despite the overall decreasing trend of tobacco usage, a positive association between smoking and LSCC was demonstrated for females in Asia, North America and Oceania, where a one per cent increment in the number of female smokers was associated with a 12 per cent increase of the cancer in those geographies.

Impact of population growth and rising air pollution

The scientists explained that despite lower overall percentage of smokers worldwide, there were more smokers worldwide due to massive population growth from 1980 to 2012, resulting in the number of female smokers increasing seven per cent.

The rising incidence of LADC is particularly prominent in Asia, where emissions of black carbon and sulfate have been on the rise, according to the scientists.

LADC among males in Asia saw the largest increasing trend, increasing by 24 per cent yearly, mainly contributed by the prominent rises in Japan (38 per cent yearly) and South Korea (37 per cent yearly). For females in Asia, LADC increased by 25 per cent year, similarly, with both Japan (43 per cent yearly) and South Korea (36 per cent yearly) showing a clear increasing trend.

The researchers highlight the prominent trend of air pollution in Asia, in which black carbon (11.9 g/m3/year) and sulfate (35.4 g/m3/year) showed the highest increase worldwide, with South Korea presenting the largest increase for both pollutants.

The combustion of fossil fuel for power generation or transportation has long been known as the source of particulate air pollution in most urban settings. It also worsens climate change by increasing the carbon dioxide emissions, which cause global warming.

Prof Sung added: "Results of this study should give us fair warning that air pollution should be better controlled to protect health and avoid premature deaths from lung cancer or related illnesses, particularly in populations that live near urban areas, which are known to experience high levels of pollutant emissions. Air pollution, together with climate change, is one of the greatest environmental threats to human health. Our findings underscore the urgent need for further research into how pollutants such as black carbon and sulfate lead to the development of lung adenocarcinoma, and for international leaders and experts to look into mitigation strategies for air pollution."

Assoc Prof Yim added: "While national environmental regulatory bodies commonly measure and report on the levels of fine particulate matter, our results pinpoint the importance to measure individual types of particulates, especially, black carbon. The information would be useful for formulating effective emission control policies, supporting policies for sustainable development."

The team plans to carry out further research to investigate the functions of black carbon and sulfate in the development of LADC, which could lead to new studies to combat the surge of the cancer. The team also hopes to explore other pollutants that might be linked to lung cancers. Black carbon is the sooty black material emitted from gas and diesel engines, coal-fired power plants, and other sources that burn fossil fuel. Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) that has a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometers - about three-hundredths the diameter of a human hair. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians. Global Cancer Statistics 2020: GLOBOCAN Estimates of Incidence and Mortality Worldwide for 36 Cancers in 185 Countries (2020). Sulfates come from the combustion of petroleum-derived that contain sulfur. Inhaling them can cause reduced lung function, aggravated asthmatic symptoms, and increased risk of emergency department visits, hospitalisations, and death in people who have chronic heart or lung diseases.
In a study examining disparities and trends in the inclusion of minorities, women, and older patients in cancer clinical trials, investigators found that certain populations remain under-represented. However, for some, including Black and Hispanic patients, participation has increased in recent years. The findings are published by Wiley online in CANCER, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

By including people from diverse backgrounds, clinical trials can show if treatments are safe and effective for people with different characteristics. The National Cancer Institute (NCI) has established multiple initiatives to encourage such diversity in the clinical trials it funds.

Juan F. Javier-DesLoges, MD, MS, of UC San Diego Health, and his colleagues analyzed the NCI Clinical Data Update System, a database that contains information about participants in NCI-sponsored clinical trials, to assess the representation of minorities, women, and older patients in 766 breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer trials from 20002019.

The trials in the analysis included 242,720 participants: 197,320 Non-Hispanic White (81.3%), 21,190 Black (8.7%), 11,587 Hispanic (4.8%), and 6,880 Asian/Pacific Islander (2.8%) patients.

The researchers compared clinical trial participation from 20152019 to the proportion of cancer incidence rates from 20152017 for non-Hispanic whites versus minorities, elderly versus nonelderly patients, and female versus male patients.

In these comparisons of trial participation with cancer incidence rates, Black and Hispanic patients were more likely to participate in breast cancer clinical trials, but were under-represented in colorectal, lung, and prostate cancer trials; patients older than 65 years of age were under-represented in breast, colorectal, and lung cancer trials; and women were underrepresented in colorectal and lung cancer trials.

When the investigators compared the years 20002004 to 20152019, they found that Hispanic and Black patients were more likely to be included in breast, lung, and prostate cancer trials in recent years compared with the early 2000s. Women were less likely to be included in colorectal cancer trials in recent years, but more likely to participate in lung cancer trials. Trends in the inclusion of patients older than 65 years varied by cancer type.

Our article indicates that the disparity for clinical enrollment in NCI clinical trials has narrowed for minorities, but further efforts are still needed." Juan F. Javier-DesLoges, MD, MS, UC San Diego Health

Additional work is also necessary to address ongoing under-representation of women and older patients in clinical trials.
(Newser)  The conditions were perfect for what ABC Australia calls "the world's biggest sex event." From one section of the 1,429 mile-long Great Barrier Reef, marine biologist Gareth Phillips described witnessing a "magical" scene "with the water like glass and beautiful light coming from the moon." And trillions of eggs and sperm spreading every which way. This mass coral spawning event off Cairns, Queensland, happens only once a year, if conditions allow. Phillips says corals will simultaneously reproduce only at night, days after a full moon, if the ocean is calm and remains above 78 degrees Fahrenheit for a month. "I've seen the corals all go off at once, but this time there seemed to be different species spawning in waves, one after the other," he says, per CNN.

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The AP describes the release of eggs and sperm in "large plumes of red, yellow and orange." The explosion of color witnessed Tuesday, and expected to last two to three days, was a relief after coral bleaching episodes caused by warm ocean temperatures in 2016, 2017, and 2020. A study released this month found 98% of the reef has experienced bleaching since 1998, per CNN. "It is gratifying to see the reef give birth  after being in a recovery phase for more than 18 months," says Phillips, who will visit other portions of the reef over the next few days. It's "another sign that the reef is recovering." (Read more Great Barrier Reef stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Magdalena Andersson is now prime minister of Sweden againand if she is still in the post at nightfall, her second stint as PM will be longer than her first. Andersson, who became the country's first female PM Wednesday but resigned after seven hours

when her coalition fell apart amid a budget dispute, returned to the top job Monday after 173 members of the country's 349-seat parliament voted against her, the BBC reports. It takes 175 "No" votes to block a lawmaker from becoming prime minister. Andersson, leader of the Social Democratic Party, will try to govern until elections next September, though analysts say she will likely have a hard time getting legislation past the deeply split eight-party parliament. Our original story from Nov. 24 follows:

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Magdalena Andersson broke two records in Swedish politics Wednesday: She became the country's first female prime minister Wednesday morning, and became the country's shortest-serving PM less than eight hours later. Andersson, leader of the Social Democratic Party, resigned after the Green Party quit the two-party coalition over a budget issue, reports Reuters. In a shocking defeat for Andersson Wednesday, the country's parliament rejected her government's budget and instead voted 154-143 for the opposition's budget proposal, the AP reports. The Green Party said it could not accept any budget drafted by the far-right Sweden Democrats Party. Andersson said she didn't want to lead a " government where there may be grounds to question its legitimacy."

Andersson, who served as the country's finance minister for seven years, was elected party leader earlier this month following the resignation of Prime Minister Stefan Lotven. Under the Swedish system, a lawmaker can become prime minister as long as 175 members of the 349-seat parliament do not vote against them. She became prime minister by one vote after 117 lawmakers voted yes and 174 voted no. Another 57 lawmakers abstained, and one was absent. After the resignation, parliamentary Speaker Andreas Norlen said he would hold talks with the eight party leaders and seek a way forward.

"The complexities of Swedish politics mean we can't assume we've seen the last of her," writes Maddy Savage at the BBC. Andersson has said she will seek to return as PM without a coalition, and the Greens have said they will support her without a formal coalition deal. "But she'd end up in a vulnerable position at the helm of a fragile minority government, and would still have to stick to the right-wing budget already voted on by parliament," Savage writes. Reuters notes that Andersson's brief premiership meant that Sweden, which first allowed women to vote 100 years ago, is no longer the only Nordic country that has never had a female prime minister. (Read more Sweden stories.)
(Newser)  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants to see Kyle Rittenhouse join George Washington, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Dalai Lama in receiving the legislative branch's highest honor. The Republican congresswoman introduced a bill Tuesday to award the Congressional Gold Medal to Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two people and injured a third during a protest in Kenosha, Wis., last year, per the Washington Post. The Congressional Gold Medal represents Congress' "highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions by individuals or institutions," according to the Senate website.

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Greenewho voted against awarding the medal to US Capitol Police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 riot earlier this year, per HuffPostsays Rittenhouse, found not guilty of homicide and other charges last week, "deserves to be remembered as a hero who defended his community, protected businesses, and acted lawfully in the face of lawlessness," per the Hill. Her effort is unlikely to succeed, however. The bill needs to be co-sponsored by two-thirds of the Democratic-controlled House and Senate to go before committees and has zero co-sponsors at present, per the Post. President Biden, who has condemned Rittenhouses actions, would also need to approve the measure, if passed.

What Rittenhouse is getting from Congress is plenty of job offers. Reps. Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Madison Cawthorn, and Lauren Boebert have all said they would hire the 18-year-old as an intern, per Salon. Cawthorn, Gosar, and Boebert are even talking of arm wrestling for him. Asked Wednesday about Greene's bill, Gaetz spokesperson Joel Valdez notes "we are concerned that awarding Kyle with a Congressional Gold Medal will give him a big head during the internship with our office." None of this is landing well with Rittenhouse's trial attorney, Mark Richards. "They want to trade on his celebrity, and I think it's disgusting," he tells Insider. (Read more Kyle Rittenhouse stories.)
(Newser)  Slovakia's government on Wednesday approved a two-week national lockdown amid a record surge of coronavirus infections. Prime Minister Eduard Heger said the measures that take effect Thursday will target allboth unvaccinated and vaccinated, the AP reports. Under the lockdown, people can leave their homes only for some specific reasons. These include buying essential goods in the nearest stores to their homes, traveling to work and school, or to get vaccinated, tested for COVID, or for medical treatment. Unvaccinated people will be required to get tested to go to work if they have not recovered from COVID-19. If working from home is not possible, people will need to have a document from their employers about where their workplace is with details on their working hours.

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Economy Minister Richard Sulik said his Freedom and Solidarity party, a member of the four-party ruling coalition, vetoed a proposal to close most schools. But it agreed that schoolchildren and students will be tested on a regular basis. The announcement came after Slovakia set another record for coronavirus infections . The Health Ministry said daily infections surpassed 10,000 for the first time, with 10,315 testing positive on Tuesday. That's over 1,000 more than the previous record registered Friday. With 13,080 infections in the last seven days per 1 million people, the nation of 5.5 million is facing the worst surge in the world, according to Our World In Data.

President Zuzana Caputova warned Tuesday that a lockdown was "unavoidable." "Were losing the battle against COVID," she said. With 3,200 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, which is well above the 3,000-bed level considered critical by Slovakias Health Ministry, the country might be forced to seek help from other European countries. At 45.7%, Slovakias vaccination rate is one of the lowest in the European Union. Cases are surging in many other European countries, including the Netherlands, where health officials are calling for the government to bring in a strict lockdown before hospitals are completely overwhelmed. (In Austria, a nationwide lockdown began Monday.)
(Newser)  President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday he has taken an experimental nasal vaccine against the coronavirus, three days after he received his booster shot. Russia is facing its worst surge of infections and deaths since the pandemic began and is struggling to overcome widespread vaccine hesitancy, the AP reports. Putin was vaccinated with Sputnik V, Russia's domestically developed COVID-19 vaccine, in the spring. On Sunday, he said that he received a booster shot of Sputnik Light, the one-dose version of the jab, and that he wanted to take part in testing the nasal version of Sputnik V.

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Denis Logunov of Russia's state-funded Gamaleya Center, which developed Sputnik V, told Putin on Sunday the nasal vaccine has yet to go through clinical studies and is currently being tested "off-label mostly"on the center's staff members. In accordance with established scientific protocols, the vaccine will need to go through several trial phases, including those involving thousands of people, to establish that it is safe and effective to use. Last month, Russia's Health Ministry gave a regulatory go-ahead to early trials of the nasal form of Sputnik V among 500 volunteers, but it was not immediately clear whether it has already started.

Putin told a government meeting Wednesday that "exactly six months after vaccination, my titers of protective (antibodies) have dropped, and specialists recommended the procedure of revaccination, which I did." He said he didn't experience any unpleasant effects after taking the nasal vaccine. Doctors from 11 Russian hospitals released an open letter Wednesday inviting those skeptical of vaccinesand a number of prominent public figures in particular who have aired their skepticism in publicto visit hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. "Maybe after that you'll change your mind and fewer people will be dying," the letter read.

(Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)
(Newser)  If the Beatles' final days are legenda collision of various, usually conflicting narratives argued by fans for decadesPeter Jackson would seem a logical choice to reconsider the myth. In his hands, The Beatles: Get Back provides a fresh take, per a Wall Street Journal review: "joyous, tedious, euphoric and fab." The maker of the Lord of the Rings films took almost 60 hours of outtakes from the Beatles' Let It Be sessions in 1969 and produced a nearly eight-hour documentary that debuts Thursday, Friday, and Saturday on Disney+. Technology helps make the film look like the video was just taken, per the Journal. Some myths about the band seem to be debunked, other confirmed. Other coverage:

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Making it real: Jackson brings the Beatles, frozen in time since that period, back to life, "a flesh-and-blood working band," per the Guardian. "Watching them interactoccasionally irritably but often with good humorfeels as close as we'll ever come to deciphering their magic."

Listening in: The Beatles knew they were being recorded at all times, so they made loud noises on their guitars to cover their personal conversations, per the Irish Examiner. But the algorithms that Jackson came up with for his World War I film, They Shall Not Grow Old, took the guitar sounds out. The chats are no longer private.

The myths: The documentary clears Yoko Ono of breaking up the band, per the AP, though McCartney jokes she'd get the blame. And it partly shows McCartney as the controlling force he's been accused of being. The Beatles indeed were slowly breaking up. But they still collaborated, and there was still joyespecially in their famed rooftop performance. After this, despite the tension, they worked together again to make Abbey Road.

And in the end: Upset at Paul McCartney's condescension toward him, George Harrison leaves the sessions at one point. A microphone in a flowerpot caught McCartney telling John Lennon he expected Harrison to come back. "And probably, when we're all very old, we'll all agree with each other and we'll all sing together," he said. Only McCartney and Ringo Starr remain. (Read more Beatles stories.)
(Newser)  Official figures released Thursday show Germany has become the latest country to surpass 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. Germanys disease control agency said it recorded 351 additional deaths in connection with the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, taking the total toll to 100,119. In Europe, Germany is the fifth country to pass that mark, after Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France, the AP reports. The Robert Koch Institute, a federal agency that collects data from some 400 regional health offices, said Germany also set a record for daily confirmed cases75,961 in a 24-hour period.

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The surge in cases prompted Germany's government-in-waiting on Wednesday to announce the creation of a new permanent expert group to advise officials on how to tackle the pandemic. While the number of daily infections is higher than that seen during the last winter surge, vaccinations have reduced the likelihood of serious illness and there are currently fewer daily deaths per confirmed case. Still, hospitals have warned that intensive care beds are running out, with almost 4,000 already occupied by COVID-19 patients. Some hospitals in the countrys south and east have begun transferring patients to other regions.

Officials say 68.1% of Germany's 83 million inhabitants are fully vaccinated, far below the minimum level of 75% the government has aimed for. Center-left leader Olaf Scholz, who is poised to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor next month, called Wednesday for mandatory vaccinations in nursing homes that care for particularly vulnerable peopleand left open the possibility of extending the measure to others. "Vaccinations are the way out of this pandemic," Scholz said. Last week, Austria said vaccinations will be mandatory nationwide as of Feb. 1 next year. (Slovakia has now entered a two-week lockdown.)
(Newser)  An assistant professor of criminal justice and sociology at Virginia's Old Dominion University will part ways with the school after their research on "minor-attracted people" (or MAPs) generated outrage. NBC News reports Allyn Walker published the book A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity in June; the AP reports it contains interviews with more than 40 adults who are sexually attracted to minors. In a subsequent interview, Walker had this to say, and it didn't go over well: "I think we have a tendency to want to categorize people with these attractions as evil or morally corrupt. But when we're talking about non-offending MAPs, these are people who have an attraction that they didn't ask for. And one that frequently they would do anything to change."

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"But they find that they're unable to change those attractions," Walker continued. "And most importantly, the people in my study did not act on them." The Washington Post reports Walker's research into MAPs and their very use of that label generated outrage, with students and others arguing the term destigmatizes sex offenders. Nearly 15,000 people signed a petition demanding Walker's removal from the university. It reads in part, "We want to be clear that this is pedophilia and should not be considered a sexual preference. Being that they teach in the sociology and criminal justice department makes us worried their views will effect the next generation in a negative way."

Walker argues the goal of their work is actually to prevent child sex abuse by better understanding would-be sex offenders. Walker, who's transgender, was placed on administrative leave Nov. 16, and will remain there until their contract expires in May. The local chapter of the American Association of University Professors said the response to Walker's research was understandable, especially among those who were child victims, but that Walker did produce "meaningful, rigorous research" that had "the consistent, clear aim of preventing future abuse to minors." (Read more Old Dominion University stories.)
(Newser)  "The #INTERPOLGA has elected Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi of the United Arab Emirates as the Organizations new President." The Thursday tweet would be a typical update for Interpol, whose elected presidents serve a four-year term, except for the fact that al-Raisi has been accused of torture in five countries, among them France (the site of Interpol's headquarters) and Turkey (where the election took place). Per the AP, human rights groups have also alleged he has had a hand in torture and arbitrary detentions occurring in the United Arab Emirates, where he heads up security forces.

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His being appointed to the role comes after the UAE pledged $50 million to Interpol a few years ago, reports the Washington Post. In a preview of the vote, it saw al-Raisi as "the likely victor, having spent months traveling the world and meeting with law enforcement officials to hear their hopes for the organization." The AFP notes that the position is "largely ceremonial," with the running of the organization falling to Interpol Secretary General Juergen Stock, who was re-elected to a second five-year term in 2019. Still, al-Raisi will guide the body's overall general direction. Interpol said al-Raisi was elected following three rounds of voting and received 68.9% of the votes cast in the final round.

Al-Raisi will take over from Kim Jong Yan from South Korea, a vice president who was hastily elected to finish out Interpol president Meng Hongwei's four-year term. Meng went missing while on a return trip to China in 2018, and is said to be serving time there for corruption. His wife claims he is innocent and says the "fake case" against him is simply an attempt on the part of senior Chinese officials to silence him. (Read more Interpol stories.)
(Newser)  As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, strange news has emerged about a different holiday north of the border. Authorities in South Bruce Peninsula have admitted that groundhog Wiarton Willie, the Canadian equivalent of Punxsutawney Phil, died of a tooth abscess before this year's Groundhog Day. While the pandemic made this year's Groundhog Day an unusual one, suspicions were still aroused when the town released a video showing Mayor Janice Jackson tossing a fur hat in the air to predict the weather, the Canadian Press reports. The mayor normally appears with the groundhog and pretends to be listening to him say whether he has seen his shadow, signaling a longer winter.

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Willie was an albino groundhog, but his replacement will be an ordinary brown groundhog, town spokeswoman Danielle Edwards said. "When the end of the summer was approaching and groundhogs hibernating, our window of opportunity was quickly closing, so we adopted a brown groundhog," she said. Edwards declined to comment on exactly when Willie died or on why it wasn't mentioned sooner.

This has happened before, according to longtime groundhog caretaker Sam Brouwer, former owner of Wiarton Willie's Motel. He tells the Canadian Press that he found a previous Willie dead and frozen solidjust a week before Groundhog day in 1999. Brouwer recalls the crowd was shocked and children were upset that year when the annual ceremony featured a stuffed groundhog in a casket, with coins over its eyes, per the Toronto Sun. (Read more groundhog day stories.)
(Newser)  Try not to underappreciate your family this Thanksgiving. According to Pew Research Center, family is the No. 1 source of meaning among 18,850 adults in 17 advanced economies, who were asked between February and May to rank 17 possible sources of meaning in their lives. Family was the top answer in 14 countries, including the US, where 49% of respondents mentioned it. "Highlighting their relationships with parents, siblings, children, and grandchildren, people frequently mention quality time spent with their kinfolk, the pride they get from the accomplishments of their relatives, and even the desire to live a life that leaves an improved world for their offspring," according to the report.

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Occupation was the second most popular choice in eight countries, including Canada, France, Sweden, Singapore, and Australia. A whopping 43% of Italian respondents described finding meaning in their job. Americans and Brits instead chose friends as a second choice. That was followed by material well-being, occupation, and faith in the US. About 17% of US respondents cited their jobdown from 24% in 2017, per Gizmodowhile 15% cited spirituality and faith. Faith actually failed to make the top 10 in any other country, reports Bloomberg. The next highest percentage, from New Zealand respondents, was 5%, KTVI reports. Spirituality and faith didn't even get a mention out of Japan.

Right-leaning people were more likely to cite religion than left-leaning people, who were more apt to mention nature, friends, and hobbies. Hobbies was the third most popular response in the UK, with 1 in 5 ranking that option. Material well-being was one of the top three factors mentioned in nine countries, and the topmost one in South Korea. People said money allowed them to support their families, or gave them the freedom to do activities they enjoyed. People had similar reasons for choosing health, cited by 48% of Spanish respondents compared to 6% of Taiwanese, though people also describing finding meaning through exercise. (Read more meaning of life stories.)
(Newser)  Update: Police are investigating after three burned human bodies were found in a building in Honiara, the first to die in the riots. They were found in a burned-out building in the Chinatown section of the capital city, the Guardian reports. Police dont know who they are or how they died. We couldnt tell if they are Chinese people or locals, security guard Edie Soa said of the victims. Soa said they were found in a shop in the same room as a cash box with cash on the floor. The capital is under a curfew after protesters attacked the prime ministers home, and Australian police have shown up to help keep the peace, Al Jazeera reports. Our original story from Nov. 25 follows:

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Australia announced Thursday it's sending police, troops, and diplomats to the Solomon Islands to help after anti-government demonstrators defied lockdown orders and took to the streets for a second day in violent protests. Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the first personnel left Australia on Thursday with more going on Friday, and the deployment was expected to last for a few weeks. "Our purpose here is to provide stability and security," he said. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare declared a lockdown Wednesday after about 1,000 people gathered in protest in the capital, Honiara, demanding his resignation over a host of domestic issues.

It wasn't immediately clear what triggered the outburst of protests, but tensions between the government and the leadership of the most populous island, Malaita, have been simmering for some time. The premier of Malaita has been outspokenly critical of Sogavare's 2019 decision to cut the country's diplomatic ties with Taiwan, switching its diplomatic allegiance to China instead, accusing him of getting too close to Beijing, reports the AP. The province has also complained it has been unfairly deprived of government investment: The New York Times describes Malaita as "one of the least-developed provinces in the island nation."

The protesters on Wednesday breached the National Parliament building and burned the thatched roof of a nearby building, the government said. They also set fire to a police station and other buildings, and the Times reports more buildings were set on fire Thursday, with "outnumbered" police erecting a barricade to keep protestors out of the main business district. "They were intent on destroying our nation and ... the trust that was slowly building among our people," the government said in a statement. Morrison said Sogavare requested assistance from Australia amid the violence under a bilateral security treaty. "It is not the Australian government's intention in any way to intervene in the internal affairs of the Solomon Islands. That is for them to resolve," he said. (Read more Solomon Islands stories.)
(Newser)  Members of Native American tribes from around New England are gathering in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settlednot to give thanks, but to mourn Indigenous people worldwide who've suffered centuries of racism and mistreatment. Thursdays solemn National Day of Mourning observance in downtown Plymouth, Mass., will recall the disease and oppression that European settlers brought to North America, the AP reports. "We Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims," said Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota tribes and the granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, the event's founder.

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"We want to educate people so that they understand the stories we all learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are nothing but lies," James says. "To us, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, because we remember the millions of our ancestors who were murdered by uninvited European colonists such as the Pilgrims. Today, we and many Indigenous people around the country say, 'No Thanks, No Giving.'" It's the 52nd year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day. The tradition began in 1970.

Indigenous people and their supporters will gather at noon in person on Coles Hill, a windswept mound overlooking Plymouth Rock, a memorial to the colonists' arrival. Participants will beat drums, offer prayers, and condemn what organizers describe as "the unjust system based on racism, settler colonialism, sexism, homophobia, and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth" before marching through downtown Plymouth's historical district. This year, they'll also highlight the troubled legacy of federal boarding schools that sought to assimilate Indigenous youth into white society in the US as well as in Canada, where hundreds of bodies have been discovered on the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children.

(Read more Native Americans stories.)
(Newser)  The Arctic Ocean began warming years before previously documented, new research showsa finding that has scientists concerned about the accuracy of their models. The study showed the water temperature in parts of the polar region have risen about 2 degrees Celsius since 1900, as warmer and saltier water from the Atlantic flowed in. Researchers call it "Atlantification," CNN reports. More work will be necessary to determine whether human-caused climate change played a role, said Francesco Muschitiello of the University of Cambridge, one of the study's authors.

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By the time the 20th century dawned, "we've already been supercharging the atmosphere with carbon dioxide," Muschitiello said. "It is possible that the Arctic Ocean is more sensitive to greenhouse gases than previously thought." It's also possible that the system of currents that moderates temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere was a cause. The system became weaker after a cooling in the mid-19th century, which could have sparked the quick Atlantification, experts said. Ocean temperature and salinity didn't change much until the early 1900s.

Now scientists are questioning their processes. "The climate models that we use to cast projections of future climate change do not really simulate these type of changes," Muschitiello said. That means "there's an incomplete understanding of the mechanisms driving Atlantification," said Tesi Tommaso, another author, the university wrote in Phys.org. "The lack of any signs of an early warming in the Arctic Ocean is a missing piece of the puzzle," Tommaso added. The study was published Wednesday in Science Advances. (The two oceans are becoming more similar, another study found.)
(Newser)  France launched a plan Thursday to give COVID-19 booster shots to all adults, as it opted against a further lockdown or curfew to help combat an uptick in infections in the country. Coronavirus infections have jumped in France over the past few days, with daily new cases rising above the 30,000 mark, and virus-related hospitalizations and deaths are again rising. Health Minister Olivier Veran laid out the plans during a press conference in which he announced a reduction in the time gap between second and third shots from six to five months. He said France already has enough vaccine to launch the nationwide booster campaign, the AP reports.

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Veran also laid out a swathe of measures to increase the use of masks in public areas and said that the country's COVID pass, which is required in many indoor places across the country, will become invalid if a person has not received a booster shot within seven months of a second dose. He said there are 10 times as many unvaccinated people currently hospitalized because of the virus as vaccinated people, adding that without the vaccine the country would already be in a lockdown situation.

More than 89% of adults are vaccinated, but the most vulnerable were vaccinated early in the year, so immunity is believed to be waning. Also, children under age 12 have not had access to vaccines yet in France, though that could change after the European Medicines Agency on Thursday authorized Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for 5- to 11-year-olds. In a sign of resurgent concern about France's virus situation, Morocco is suspending all flights to and from France starting Friday. A government committee overseeing travel during the pandemic made the decision Thursday "to protect Moroccos achievements in managing the pandemic."

(Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Mostly cloudy with snow flurries and snow showers, especially in the afternoon. High 2F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of snow 40%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies. Low -6F. Winds light and variable.
This Thanksgivin g History Nugget has been proudly brought to you by the Fairbanks Igloos of the Pioneers of Alaska and you can view more History Nuggets on our website at pioneersofalaskafairbanks.org
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

A blind Bahraini teacher at Saudi-Bahraini Institute for the Blind has made Bahrain proud by winning first place in an international Quran recitation competition held in Sharjah, UAE.

Houria Al Aali beat 1,900 contestants from all over the world in the event entitled Our Children are Our Readers in its second session for the year 2021 in the category of people with special needs.

It was organised by the Holy Quran Radio in Sharjah, in cooperation with the Sharjah Foundation for the Holy Quran and Sunnah. Participants recited the Book of God in video clips that were judged by a specialised committee, and the names of the first winners in each category were announced.

Houria holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Arabic language and translation from the University of Bahrain, and a certificate of recitation and intonation from the Ministry of Justice, Islamic Affairs and Endowments.

She is also a graduate at Bahrain Teachers College. About her achievement, she said: I developed my abilities in the field of the Noble Quran by listening to the recorded cassettes that my father was keen to buy for me to memorise the surahs.

My parents were very keen to follow what I memorised since childhood, until I was registered in the Great Bahrain Competition, to represent the Saudi Bahraini Institute for the Blind several times.

Houria won second place in the primary and preparatory stages, and also participated in recitations on the school radio, and a recitation at the graduation ceremony in the presence of the Minister of Education and its senior officials.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Supreme Council for Women (SCW) opened the national forum to discuss Bahrains second gender balance report.

The event was attended by Finance and National Economy Minister Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa and SCW Secretary-General Hala Al Ansari.

Public sector officials, representatives of the private sectors and civil society were also present, along with representatives of the Saudi Gender Balance Centre, Gulf Statistics Centre, the UN Women, ESCWA Women Committee and World Bank (WB) experts.

The two-day forum aims to discuss the results of the national report on gender balance at the institutional level and in the main areas affecting national development, the results of which witnessed remarkable progress compared to the first report issued two years ago.

The participants in the forum were briefed on main initiatives and best practices monitored by the report, which contributed to the development of gender balance indicators at the national level, in addition to the desired improvement opportunities in various development areas.

The forum sessions also dealt with proposals that would contribute to the improvement of the outputs of the national report.

The focus was mainly on ways of adopting recommendations and implementation procedures and work priorities, or methodologies for developing some indicators to provide more objective readings of the reality of gender balance.

Finance and National Economy Minister Shaikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa addressed the session hailing womens strides in line with the directives of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, supported by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister.

He paid tribute to Her Royal Highness Princess Sabeeka bint Ibrahim Al Khalifa, Wife of His Majesty the King and Supreme Council (SCW) for Women President for her pivotal role in promoting womens status.

SCW Secretary-General Hala Al Ansari commended the efforts of the Government, chaired by HRH the Crown Prince and Prime Minister for its support to the national gender balance model.
Contributed / Brookfield Police Department

BROOKFIELD  Police reminded residents to lock their cars and remove valuables after recent incidents of cars being stolen or having items stolen from inside.

Several vehicles have been stolen and numerous unlocked vehicles have been entered and items removed, Brookfield police said in a post on Facebook Wednesday.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP)  Nine people who sued white nationalist leaders and organizations over the violence at a deadly rally in Charlottesville in 2017 won a $26 million judgment for the injuries and trauma they endured. But whether they will be able to collect a significant chunk of that money remains to be seen.

Many of the defendants are in prison, in hiding or have dropped out of the white nationalist movement. At least three of the far-right extremist groups named as defendants have dissolved. And most of the defendants claim they will never have the money needed to pay off the judgments against them.

I have no assets. I have no property. You can't get blood from a stone, said Matthew Heimbach, who co-founded the far-right Traditionalist Worker Party with fellow defendant Matthew Parrott. Their neo-Nazi group fell apart after Heimbach was arrested in 2018 on charges that he assaulted Parrott, his wifes stepfather. The men had argued over Heimbachs alleged affair with Parrotts wife, according to court documents.

Heimbach said he is a single father to two young sons, works at a factory and lives paycheck to paycheck. He said the plaintiffs lawyers who sued him just wasted $20 million to try and play Whac-A-Mole with public figureheads.

Months before the trial, Richard Spencer, one of the most well-known white nationalists in the country, told a judge his notoriety has made it difficult for him to raise money for his defense against the financially crippling lawsuit. He said the case has been extremely expensive and a huge burden for him.

Spencer popularized the term alt-right to describe a loosely connected fringe movement of white supremacists, neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists. After the verdict was announced on Tuesday, Spencer said he now views the alt-right as a totally dysfunctional institution with dysfunctional people and claims he has grown disgusted with a lot of it.

The whereabouts of two defendants, Andrew Anglin and Robert Azzmador Ray, are unknown.

Anglin, founder of a neo-Nazi website called The Daily Stormer, has not paid any portion of a August 2019 judgment for orchestrating an anti-Semitic harassment campaign against a Montana real estate agents Jewish family. A federal judge entered a default judgment against Anglin after he failed to appear for a deposition. Other plaintiffs lawyers, including those in the Charlottesville civil case, also have secured default judgments against Anglin.

In September 2020, U.S. District Judge Norman Moon issued an arrest warrant for Ray, a neo-Nazi podcaster who has written for Anglins website. Moon agreed to hold Ray in civil contempt of court for his total disregard of court orders in the lawsuit.

Even with the many obstacles to collecting the full $26 million judgment, there are ways to secure at least some of it. Typically, plaintiffs' lawyers will seek court orders to seize assets, garnish wages and place liens on property owned by defendants.

Several of the defendants' lawyers said they will try to reduce the award.

Attorney James Kolenich, who represented three defendants, including James Kessler, the lead organizer of the rally, said although some of the white nationalist organizations have some assets, I don't think any of them could afford to pay out of pocket these damages.

We are going to do what we can to cut this down to size, he said.

Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernadino, said the plaintiffs' lawyers may be able to recover some of the damages because of the sheer number of defendants named in the lawsuit. The jury issued the $26 million judgement against 17 defendants; the judge issued default judgments against another seven defendants before the trial.

The thing that's different about this case is you have a wide array of defendants. Some of them are currently locked up or destitute, but they might have assets, (insurance) policies or real estate that could be recoverable, Levin said.

Amy Spitalnick, executive director of Integrity First for America, a civil rights nonprofit that funded the lawsuit, said the group is "committed to ensuring our plaintiffs can collect on these judgments and see the full accountability they deserve.

Many of the racists who embraced the alt-right brand for their white supremacist ideology have largely faded from public forums since the bloodshed in Charlottesville. The movement began to crumble amid a flurry of litigation and in-fighting among leaders.

Two of the defendants are in prison.

James Alex Fields Jr. was sentenced to life on murder and hate crimes after he was convicted of intentionally ramming his car into a crowd of counterprotesters on the second day of the Charlottesville demonstrations, killing a woman.

Christopher Cantwell, who hosts a live-streamed talk show called Radical Agenda, was convicted of extortion in September 2020 and sentenced to nearly 3 1/2 years in federal prison for threatening to rape the wife of a man whom he believed was harassing him.

Many of the defendants were booted off mainstream social media platforms. Some have chosen to keep low profiles since Charlottesville. Rally organizer Elliott Kline, also known as Eli Mosley, disappeared from the alt-right scene after the New York Times uncovered evidence that he lied about his military service.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism, said the jurys verdict sends a message that there will be consequences for promoting hate and violence. The ADL financially supported Integrity First for America's work on the case.

"Accountability cant be underestimated in a case like this, Segal said.

___

Kunzelman reported from College Park, Maryland.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is already a veteran at surprising the world in just three years in power. He's done it again this week by announcing that, after a year of waging war, he will lead it from the battlefront.

Abiys rule has been short in the vast sweep of Ethiopian history, but he has spent almost all his life preparing for it. Told as a child by his mother that she believed he would lead Ethiopia, he now speaks of martyrdom, if needed, to hold the nation together.

Abiy rocketed to office out of seemingly nowhere in 2018 with vows of dramatic reforms to a long-repressive national government. He also announced he would make peace with neighboring Eritrea after years of bitter conflict. For that, the youthful prime minister was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Then, less than a year later, Abiy announced his military was at war with the leaders of Ethiopias northern Tigray region, who had dominated the previous national government but quickly found friction with the prime minister. Political differences turned to gunfire in November 2020.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed since then, and close to half a million people inside Tigray now face the worlds worst famine crisis in a decade, one that the United States has called entirely man-made.

The 45-year-old Abiy has now plunged into the fight, arriving at the battlefront on Tuesday, a government spokesman said.

The prime minister is no stranger to war. As a teenager, he joined fighters who eventually overthrew the countrys Marxist Derg regime, then signed up for the new government's military. He took part in Ethiopias war against Eritrea as a radio operator, serving at the border in Tigray, and later became a lieutenant colonel.

Now roles are dramatically reversed. The Tigray fighters Abiy once called friends are now the enemy, and the Eritrean soldiers he once fought have been allowed to join the war as Ethiopia's allies.

Years after his career turned from the military to politics, Abiy faces a battlefield challenge he has never faced before: Commanding an army.

But the prime minister is known as a man with a sense of destiny.

He clearly has a personal sense of his right to be ruler of Ethiopia and take on the responsibility it entails, said Christopher Clapham, a retired professor associated with the University of Cambridge.

Overseeing the fracture of Ethiopia, a nation with a 3,000-year history, would be a massive blow to Abiy, Clapham said, and by heading to the battlefront he is following the tradition of emperors.

But emperors can fall, and governments, too. The rival Tigray forces, whose advance on Ethiopias capital in recent weeks prompted a national state of emergency, want to see Abiy gone, by force if needed.

The deeply religious prime minister came to office preaching national unity, and representing it as well. The son of a Christian and Muslim and of mixed ethnic heritage, he shocked Africa's second-most populous country by apologizing for the past government's abuses. Tigrayans have recalled cheering him on, at first.

War is the epitome of hell for all involved, Abiy said in his Nobel address in those earlier days.

Now the hardened positions by the warring sides, each believing they can be victorious, have tested the efforts of mediators from the United States and African Union. Abiy believes the Tigray forces will be pushed back into their region, U.S. envoy Jeffrey Feltman said this week. But he added, I question that confidence.

The war front, Feltman said, is edging closer to Ethiopias capital, with the Tigray fighters newly on the move toward Debre Sina, less than a days drive from Addis Ababa. The fighters are also trying to cut off a crucial supply line from neighboring Djibouti, a further threat to Africas diplomatic capital.

Accordingly, a growing number of countries have told their citizens to leave immediately. And the U.S. has told Americans again and again that no Afghanistan-style evacuation is coming for them.

The war, Abiy said in announcing his move to the battlefront, is a struggle that determines whether we exist or not. But we will definitely win. It is unthinkable for Ethiopia to be defeated. We are in a time when it requires to lead the country by paying the sacrifice.

He called on fellow Ethiopians to meet him there.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  New Mexicos state legislative complex will be open to the public during upcoming legislative sessions, but only for those who provide proof of vaccination.

New rules will also prohibit performances, advocacy booths and tours at the state Capitol starting Dec. 6, when the Legislature meets for redistricting  setting new political boundaries based on 2020 census population counts.

The rules will also be in place during the regular legislative session that starts in January, limiting festivities in the Roundhouse  the state capitol building that includes the Legislature and the governors office  but allowing the public to attend legislative hearings for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

Given the high number of COVID-19 cases across the state and the strain this continues to put on state resources, it is incumbent on us to protect everyone in the Capitol complex while conducting the states business, said Legislative Council Service director Raul Burciaga, who oversees safety and operations at the state capital.

The vaccination requirement does not apply to lawmakers.

The Roundhouse has been open to the public for months, with a masking requirement but no vaccine requirement. It's popular for visitors thanks to four floors of local art and its round shape, unique among U.S. state capitals.

It was completely closed to the public during the last legislative session due to coronavirus concerns and fenced off with armed guards following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Legislative debates were broadcast online and public comment was given via Zoom.

The internet broadcasts will continue indefinitely.

Earlier this month, Democratic lawmakers banned weapons including firearms at the Capitol for the first time in its century-long history.

State Republican lawmakers have condemned the gun and in-person restrictions, including Tuesdays announcement.

Last year they put up a fence blockade and called the National Guard, this year theyve decided to ask for your medical records and take away your Second Amendment rights, said state House Republican Leader Jim Townsend, of Artesia, in southeastern New Mexico.

Before the pandemic, legislative sessions served as a festive platform for musical performances and dancing, and lobbying booths. That included advocacy groups handing out pens and massage stations where legislators and members of the public could get a free backrub, all of which are prohibited under the new rules.

New Mexico on Wednesday reported 1,409 new cases of COVID-19 and 21 deaths linked to the disease statewide, according to the state Health Department. Just under 650 people were hospitalized in New Mexico with COVID-19.

___

Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter.
TORONTO, Nov. 24, 2021 /CNW/ - Evolve Funds Group Inc. ("Evolve" or "the Manager") is pleased to announce that it has filed a final prospectus in plans to launch the Evolve Metaverse ETF ("MESH"). MESH is Canada's first metaverse ETF and is expected to begin trading on Monday, November 29, 2021 on the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX"), subject to TSX approval. MESH is designed to provide investors with an actively managed, diversified portfolio of companies involved in the development of the metaverse.

"In the 1990s many thought the internet was just a fad," says Raj Lala, President and CEO at Evolve ETFs. "Today, the internet touches almost every aspect of our lives. The metaverse will take us from simply interacting online to fully immersing within the digital world. As a leader in disruptive innovation, we decided to take an active approach to Canada's first Metaverse ETF. MESH will allow us to be nimble and invest in companies well positioned to capitalize on the future growth of the industry."

The investment objective of MESH is to seek to provide holders of Units with long-term capital appreciation by actively investing in a diversified mix of publicly traded equity securities of issuers from North America, as well as other developed markets from around the world, that are considered by the Manager to be involved in the development of the metaverse.

The metaverse is a term used to define an iteration of the Internet supporting persistent 3-D virtual environments combined with social media, communications and productivity tools allowing users to interact online in an immersive, virtual representation of the real world. The metaverse combines online personal computing with virtual-reality and augmented reality technologies. Metaverse technologies are being used in business, social, education and retail applications.

MESH is offering hedged Canadian dollar denominated ETF units. For more information, visit www.evolveetfs.com.

About Evolve Funds Group Inc.

With over $2 billion in assets under management, Evolve is one of Canada's fastest growing ETF providers since launching its first ETF in September 2017. Evolve is a leader in thematic ETFs and specializes in bringing disruptive innovation ETFs to Canadian investors. Evolve's suite of ETFs provide investors with access to: (i) long term investment themes; (ii) index-based income strategies; and (iii) some of the world's leading investment managers. Established by a team of industry veterans with a proven track record of success, Evolve creates investment products that make a difference. For more information, please visit www.evolveetfs.com.

Join us on social media: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook

Commissions, management fees and expenses all may be associated with exchange traded funds (ETFs). ETFs are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. There are risks involved with investing in ETFs. Please read the prospectus for a complete description of risks relevant to ETFs. Investors may incur customary brokerage commissions in buying or selling ETF. Please read the prospectus before investing.

Certain statements contained in this news release constitute forward-looking information within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking information may relate to a future outlook and anticipated distributions, events or results and may include statements regarding future financial performance. In some cases, forward-looking information can be identified by terms such as "may", "will", "should", "expect", "anticipate", "believe", "intend" or other similar expressions concerning matters that are not historical facts. Actual results may vary from such forward-looking information. Evolve undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statement whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors which affect this information, except as required by law.

SOURCE Evolve ETFs

For further information: CONTACT INFORMATION: Evolve ETFs, [email protected], t. 416.214.4884, tf. 1.844.370.4884; MEDIA CONTACT, Keith Crone, [email protected], 416.966.8716
EDMONTON, AB, Nov. 25, 2021 /CNW/ - With the federal government's announcement of Bill C-2, an Act to provide further support in response to COVID-19, the fitness industry can breathe a sigh of relief. Now, fitness businesses are able to apply for financial support to rebound and rebuild as a part of the program supporting hospitality and tourism. Fitness Industry Council of Canada (FIC) persistently lobbied the federal government to be recognized as a hard-hit industry. Today's announcement, to have the fitness industry included in a program for further support, is more evidence that the relationship between the fitness industry and the government is strong.

"We are proud of our lobbying efforts and the relationships we have built with our federal and provincial governments. Today's announcement showed us that our political leaders are listening," says Sara Hodson, President of Fitness Industry Council of Canada and CEO of LIVE WELL Exercise Clinic. "We have lobbied on behalf of our industry to prevent more businesses from having to close their doors. Bill C-2 provides much-needed subsidies to help us rebound. Our members are very pleased that the government has listened to our concerns."

Bill C-2 will provide targeted support benefits such as wage and rent subsidies. Prior to the announcement, the fitness industry was excluded from these financial assistance programs.

The Canadian fitness industry has suffered huge losses since the pandemic began in March 2020, with over 40 percent of businesses closing their doors, and even more job losses. FIC will continue to lobby the government to make gym memberships a medical tax deduction, a proposal submitted to the Liberals in February 2021, but not passed. More than 40 percent of Canadians surveyed in July 2021 said that a tax deduction would motivate them to purchase a gym membership. Such an initiative would support Canada's health and economic recovery.

About: Fitness Industry Council of Canada is the not-for-profit trade association that represents fitness facility operators across Canada.

SOURCE Fitness Industry Council of Canada

For further information: To book an interview with Sara Hodson, President of Fitness Industry Council of Canada,please reach out to Erin Phelan, Director of Communications, Fitness Industry Council of Canada, 416-822-8621
The announcement today that the B.C. government will legislate five employer-paid sick days as the statutory minimum comes as a surprise to many, since the Prime Minister has publicly committed to making ten paid sick days the policy for workers regulated by the federal government. There is widespread support in B.C. for making ten days the provincial standard.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternative reports that nine in every ten B.C. workers with an income less than $30,000 has no access to paid sick leave.

"Illness spreading in the workplace will only harm employers in the long-term, so ultimately such a timid approach to sick leave will benefit no one," said McGarrigle. "It is very disappointing that the Horgan government couldn't follow the Trudeau government's lead."

"When it comes to public health, B.C.'s workers need a government that listens to them, not one that cuts deals with a handful of powerful employers," added McGarrigle.

Unifor is Canada's largest union in the private sector, representing 315,000 workers in every major area of the economy. The union advocates for all working people and their rights, fights for equality and social justice in Canada and abroad, and strives to create progressive change for a better future.

SOURCE Unifor

For further information: For media inquiries or to arrange interviews via Facetime, Zoom, or Skype please contact Unifor Communications Representative Ian Boyko at [email protected] or 778-903-6549 (cell).

Related Links

https://www.unifor.org/


Building a more diverse and equitable industry through action and innovation

TORONTO, Nov. 25, 2021 /CNW/ - Sun Life Financial Inc. (TSX: SLF) (NYSE: SLF) is pleased to congratulate Rowena Chan, President, Sun Life Financial Distributors (Canada) Inc. & Senior Vice-President, Distribution on being named Canada's Leader of Change by Insurance Business Canada (IBC). Rowena is recognized as a trailblazer for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) while driving transformational change in the insurance industry.

With approximately 2,300 advisors supporting nearly two million Canadians, Rowena leads one of the largest distribution sales teams in the country. Dedicated to developing top talent, improving the dynamics of workplace equity, and taking steps to shatter the glass ceiling, Rowena has achieved gender parity in her leadership team and has driven her business to representation of over 60% women. With 36% of advisors as women, she leads one of the largest diverse financial services distribution organizations in Canada.

"When I speak to Clients and advisors, they want to know that Sun Life aligns with their values: sustainability, diversity, gender equity, representation of underrepresented groups," said Rowena Chan, President, Sun Life Financial Distributors (Canada) Inc. & Senior Vice-President, Distribution. "Our values are tied to the long-term success of the organization, and to the value and the difference it can make to the communities that we serve. Thank you to the IBC for this award and for recognizing my journey to create a culture where diversity, equity and inclusion is not only embraced, but celebrated."

As Head of Sun Life Canada's retail Distribution business, Rowena's leadership is central to delivering on Sun Life's Purpose of helping Clients achieve lifetime financial security and live healthier lives. Rowena ensures her team is equipped to tend to the needs of Canadians, whether in-person, through digital tools, or a combination of both. During her time at Sun Life, Rowena has accelerated progress on several fronts including developing an omni-channel Client experience that delivers protection, wealth, and health solutions to Clients at all life stages and a commitment to equip every Client with a personalized financial plan.

"It is with great pleasure that I congratulate Rowena on being named Canada's Leader of Change," said Jacques Goulet, President, Sun Life Canada. "Rowena is a bold leader, passionate about creating an inclusive environment for everyone and encouraging people to bring their true authentic selves to work. She firmly believes that Sun Life's strength resides in our ability to provide Canadians with holistic advice across wealth, health and protection needs. Her vision is to create a modern, sustainable Client experience that offers the best of both worlds - trusted empathetic advice from a professional advisor coupled with the convenience of digital enablement."

All Sun Life team members also extend a warm congratulations to past President & Chief Executive Officer, Dean Connor for being honoured with the Lifetime Achievement award in the insurance industry. Dean was recognized for his contributions to the Canadian insurance industry, as well as for being an inspiring leader to those across the business community.

Learn more about Sun Life's commitment to sustainability, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

About Sun Life

Sun Life is a leading international financial services organization providing a diverse range of insurance, wealth and asset management solutions to individual and corporate Clients. Sun Life has operations in a number of markets worldwide, including Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Japan, Indonesia, India, China, Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Bermuda. As of September 30, 2021, Sun Life had total assets under management of $1.39 trillion. For more information please visit www.sunlife.com.

Sun Life Financial Inc. trades on the Toronto (TSX), New York (NYSE) and Philippine (PSE) stock exchanges under the ticker symbol SLF.

Note to editors: All figures in Canadian dollars

Media Relations Contact:

Alessandra Nigro

Director, Corporate Communications

T. 416-979-4884

[email protected]

SOURCE Sun Life Financial Inc.
VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 24, 2021 /CNW/ - The Government of Canada continues to take action to support the transportation system of British Columbia after the recent floods.

Today, the Minister of Transport, the Honourable Omar Alghabra, and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, the Honourable Bill Blair, announced that the Government of Canada is contributing up to $4.1 million to the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority under the National Trade Corridors Fund to provide relief in the aftermath of the floods in British Columbia.

The initiative, led by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, will help ease supply chain constraints and bottlenecks in the Lower Mainland. It will address current supply chain disruptions, which have created delays and service challenges at the port's container facilities, by delivering additional container storage capacity, through the preparation of an undeveloped 40-acre parcel land within the Fraser Richmond Industrial Lands for the handling and storage of empty containers.

Transport Canada is actively engaged and working with the Province of British Columbia, along with port, terminal, railway, air, and trucking sectors, to provide any support required in response to the damages caused by flooding in British Columbia. Of paramount concern is supporting those who are displaced or being evacuated as a result of the landslides.

Through the National Trade Corridors Fund, the Government of Canada is investing in well-functioning trade corridors to help Canadians compete in key global markets, trade more efficiently with international partners, and to keep Canadian supply chains competitive. It represents a long-term commitment by the Government of Canada to work with stakeholders on strategic infrastructure projects to address transportation bottlenecks, vulnerabilities, and congestion along Canada's trade corridors.

Quotes

"All Canadians stand with British Columbians. Our government is taking steps to resolve transportation and supply chain issues, and we commend the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority for its leadership. We will continue to work with local partners in the coming days, weeks and months to address transportation issues as they arise."

The Honourable Omar Alghabra

Minister of Transport



The impacts of the recent extreme weather events have been devastating to British Columbians, including many First Nations communities, as well as to critical infrastructure, supply chains and the agricultural sector. That is why the Government of Canada will continue to provide support to the Province of British Columbia as they work to repair and recover from this tragedy. I would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge the important and collaborative work that has gone on between federal and provincial partners, as well as the many first responders, search and rescue volunteers and emergency managers. Thank you all for your ongoing and tireless efforts."

The Honourable Bill Blair

Minister of Emergency Preparedness



Quick Facts

Thousands of workers in our ports, terminals, railway and trucking sectors are working hard and collaborating to keep our supply chain flowing. Canadian supply chains are resilient and major efforts are underway to rebuild, recover, and restore operations.

An efficient and reliable transportation network is key to Canada's economic growth. The Government of Canada , through the National Trade Corridors Fund, is making investments that will support the flow of goods across Canada's supply chains.

economic growth. The Government of , through the National Trade Corridors Fund, is making investments that will support the flow of goods across supply chains. Transport Canada delivers the National Trade Corridors Fund, which supports improvements to Canada's roads, rail, air, and marine shipping routes to foster domestic and international trade.

delivers the National Trade Corridors Fund, which supports improvements to roads, rail, air, and marine shipping routes to foster domestic and international trade. The National Trade Corridors Fund is a competitive, merit-based program designed to help infrastructure owners and users invest in the critical transportation assets that support economic activity in Canada . A total of $4.2 billion over 11 years (2017-2028) has been allocated for the National Trade Corridors Fund, including over $1 billion in dedicated funding for building and improving transportation networks in Canada's Arctic and northern regions.

Related Product

National Trade Corridors Fund Backgrounder

Associated Links

Investing in Canada Plan

Port of Vancouver

This news release may be made available in alternative formats for persons living with visual disabilities.

SOURCE Transport Canada

For further information: Allison St-Jean, Senior Communications Advisor and Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Omar Alghabra, Minister of Transport, Ottawa, (613) 290-8656, [email protected]; Media Relations: Transport Canada, Ottawa, 613-993-0055, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.tc.gc.ca/


Indian Navy chief Admiral Karambir Singh on Thursday said that the navy is closely monitoring defence cooperation between China and Pakistan. Chief of Naval Staff was addressing an event at the naval dockyard in Mumbai, where INS Vela, the fourth Scorpene-class submarine was commissioned into the Indian Navy today. We are closely monitoring the defence cooperation between China and Pakistan. The recent procurements by Pakistan from China may change the dynamics, so we need to remain cautious, said Singh.



Recently, all-weather allies Pakistan and China signed a new nuclear agreement that will push the world towards a renewed nuclear race and conflict. The Framework Agreement on Deepening Nuclear Energy Cooperation was signed by Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) and China Zhongyuan Engineering Cooperation on September 8, 2021. The agreement, finalised at a high-level meeting on August 20, 2021, was signed through virtual mode and would remain valid for ten years. The agreement envisages the transfer of nuclear technology, uranium mining and processing, nuclear fuel supply and setting up research reactors, which will help Pakistan increase its nuclear weapons stockpile.

For China, an enhanced Pakistan nuclear arsenal adds teeth to its grand strategy of countering Indias military strength.
During a press conference in Beiging, Zhu Fenglian said that he can say for sure say that there are definitely more than those three people on the list.

As part of its stated objective to increase pressure on such firms and people, Beijing would reveal more names of those it believes are criminally liable for supporting Taiwan independence. This move comes after the Taiwan Affairs Office in Beijing produced a blacklist of entities deemed stubbornly pro-Taiwan independence earlier this month, detailing out the penalty it planned to apply for the first time.

Meanwhile, the November 12 blacklist named three prominent Taiwanese officials: Premier Su Tseng-chang, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, and Parliament Speaker Yu Shyi-Kun.

On Wednesday, a representative for the agency hinted that additional names will be submitted. During a press conference in Beiging, Zhu Fenglian said that he can say for sure say that there are definitely more than those three people on the list. Recently some pro-Taiwan independence people have claimed that they regret not being on the list. They should not worry, the time will come for them to feel real regret, he added.

Beijing would penalise anyone on the blacklist by denying them entry to mainland China, Hong Kong, or Macau, according to Zhu. Zhu revealed that the blacklisted people would also be prohibited from collaborating with mainland firms or persons, as well as benefitting from mainland commerce through the corporations or entities that sponsor them.

Those who ignore their ancestors, betray the nation, or split the country will never come to a happy conclusion and will undoubtedly be scorned by the people and condemned by history, Zhu told the secessionists. She stated that the mainland will pursue criminal charges against the secessionists in line with the law, and that they will be held accountable for the rest of their lives.

In response to this, Taipeis Mainland Affairs Council stated that Taiwan was a democratic society governed by the rule of law, and that it was not dominated by Beijing. Beijings recent comments came just days after it punished mainland subsidiaries of Far Eastern Group, a large Taiwanese corporation, for a variety of infractions.

Separately, China criticized the United States decision to invite Taiwan to a democracy meeting in December, calling it a mistake and urging Washington not to conspire with Taiwanese separatists seeking independence. On the US State Departments invitation list for the virtual event on December 9 and 10, 110 people are included, including India, but not China or Russia.
A day after Kellogg's threatened to start permanently replacing its striking workers, the company and its union agreed to return to the bargaining table.

Contract talks are set to resume next Tuesday between the Battle Creek, Michigan-based company and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union. Roughly 1,400 workers at Kellogg's four U.S. cereal plants have been on strike since Oct. 5.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)  Mayors across Brazil are divided on whether to maintain end of year festivities and Februarys Carnival, traditionally celebrated lavishly in all four corners of the vast nation, with some fearing that now-low COVID-19 infection rates could roar back.

Rio de Janeiro is moving forward with both New Years Eve and its legendary Carnival, each likely to attract millions of revelers. But others have opted for a more conservative approach: Several municipalities in Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais and other states cancelled Carnival altogether, including the street parties known as blocos".

The number of daily deaths and new infections from the virus are currently low and vaccination coverage is higher than in many countries  including the U.S.  but officials fear bringing large crowds together could reignite a disease that has already killed more than 600,000 in Brazil alone.

Officials in favor of maintaining events stress the importance of carnival for local economies that deeply suffered during the pandemic.

In Rio de Janeiro, Mayor Eduardo Paes has promised the largest-ever New Years Eve celebration, with multiple fireworks shows and artists performing on a dozen stages across the marvellous city.

Pre-sales for Carnival, held a few months later, are also open. Rehearsals of samba schools that will compete during the parade have resumed for the first time since the pandemic, filling the city's streets with rhythm and joy.

Rio has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country, with nearly 100% of its adult population fully vaccinated.

The city of Sao Paulo has not ruled definitely yet, but in October, Mayor Ricardo Nunes spoke in favor of maintaining Carnival, which is expected to attract some 15 million visitors.

But as many as 70 other cities in the interior of Sao Paulo state have chosen to cancel the festival, citing either health reasons or lack of budget, according to online news site G1.

In the state of Parana, state lawmaker Cobra Reporter requested that Carnival be cancelled, stressing the obvious and sad effects of last years celebrations that helped spread the virus and the number of deaths both in the country and his state.

Brazils Tourism Minister Gilson Machado Neto declined to take sides on Thursday, saying that legally, the decision lies with states and municipalities.

Brazil's National Council of Health Secretaries told The Associated Press that decisions should be made based on scientific studies and on the state of the pandemic in each municipality.

In the absence of national guidelines, many mayors are still undecided, especially since cases and hospitalizations are rise in countries with similar vaccination coverage to Brazil's, such as Germany.

In Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais state, the mayor said last week he could not force people to stay home, but that the city would not sponsor Carnival.

The mixed message brought criticism from state officials, who called for mayors not to shirk responsibilities. The worst thing a city can do, is not to interfere in anything, said Minas Gerais Gov. Romeu Zema on Nov. 23.

The position was echoed by his health secretary, Fabio Baccheretti: Carnival will happen, we cannot close our eyes. The parties are happening, the events are happening. And if we dont give guidance, Carnival will happen in a disorganized way, with greater risk for the population.
ZAGREB, Croatia (AP)  Croatia on Thursday signed a deal to buy 12 Rafale fighter jets from France worth nearly 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) that officials said will considerably strengthen its air force amid lingering tensions in the Balkans.

The contract for the used combat aircraft was signed during the visit of French President Emmanuel Macron to Croatia. It was the first visit by Frances head of state to Croatia since it split from the former Yugoslav federation in the 1991-95 war.

The purchase of the planes strategically is what we see as a game changer for Croatia, Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic said at a joint press conference with Macron after the signing ceremony.

This will not only give us the ability to avert those who have any aspirations toward our territory but also to become the so-called exporters of security  of stability in southeastern Europe, he said.

Macron said the aircraft deal will strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries and contribute to European defense.

Two Rafales made a low pass over the Croatian capital after the signing ceremony.

The selection of the French aircraft, announced in May, followed a long bidding process that was plagued by delays. Other offers had included new F-16s from the United States, new JAS-39 Gripen planes from Sweden, and used F-16s from Israel.

Eric Trappier, CEO of Dassault Aviation, which makes the fighter jets, said they "will give the Croatian Air Force complete satisfaction, while actively contributing to the exercise of Croatias national sovereignty.

Croatian officials said earlier that the purchase is worth 999 million euros and will involve 10 single-seater and two 2-seater F3R Rafale twin-engine aircraft. The first six Rafales are scheduled to be delivered in 2024, with the rest due the following year.

The French jets will replace a few still operational Soviet-era MiG-21s  first developed in the 1950s. Most of the MiGs were originally snatched from the Yugoslav military which tried to stop Croatias secession from the former Serb-dominated federation.

Croatia, which is a member of NATO and the European Union, is in a mini arms race with neighboring Russian ally Serbia, which has recently received six used MiG-29 fighter jets from Russia and four more of the type from Belarus.
Viktoria Sundqvist / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW HAVEN  A city man was sentenced to federal prison on a drug trafficking offense this week, prosecutors said.

Chawn Battle, 49, was sentenced Tuesday by Judge Michael P. Shea in Hartford to 21 months in prison, followed by four years of supervised release.
LEWISTON, Maine (AP)  Some of the Afghanistan evacuees are going to be settled in Lewiston, Maine's second-largest city, officials say.

Lewiston-based Maine Immigrant & Refugee Services and Virginia-based national resettlement network Ethiopian Community Development Council are going to collaborate, the Sun Journal reports.
GRISWOLD  The grandmother of a 6-week-old infant whose mother was charged Monday in connection with the babys death will also face charges in the case, Connecticut State Police announced on Thursday.

Last Wednesday, Nov. 17, medics responded to a Griswold home for a report of an unresponsive baby. The infant was taken to the Connecticut Childrens Medical Center, where he was treated for several days before he was pronounced dead on Sunday.

The Connecticut State Police Eastern District Major Crime Squad detectives immediately launched an investigation, which led them to the conclusion that the childs mother, Crystal Czyzewski, 35, was responsible for the childs death, state police said.

On Monday, investigators were granted an arrest warrant to charge Czyzewski in connection with the death. She was taken into custody without incident and charged with first-degree manslaughter and risk of injury to a minor. Her bond was set at $500,000.

On Wednesday, state police said, investigators obtained an arrest warrant for Czyzewski's mother, 58-year-old Linda Kennison. She was taken into custody without incident and processed on a charge of risk of injury to a minor. She was held on a $250,000 bond and is expected in court on Friday.

There are no further arrests expected in this investigation, police said.

The affidavit for Czyzewski indicated that the woman at first told investigators she put the child in his swing and went for a walk.

The document said she later changed her story and told investigators she was stressed with life and having two children  the affidavit said she also has a 5-year-old who was unharmed. The affidavit said Czyzewski told investigators both her kids were crying and it became too much, so she smothered her 6-week-old son with a blanket until he was dead.

Detectives spoke to Kennison, who initially claimed to investigators that the child was in the swing all day, and told her that her daughter admitted to suffocating the child and leaving him in the apartment most of the day without seeking medical attention, the affidavit said. Kennison then admitted she knew the child was dead on the morning of Nov. 17, the affidavit said.

She acknowledged she should have called the police but said she didn't know what to do, the affidavit said. Ms. Kennison said the victim was left in his swing all day after they thought he was deceased.

Kennison told investigators that around 4 p.m., she and her daughter devised a plan to put food in the childs mouth to make it look like the baby was still alive, the affidavit said. She told police that didnt work because the baby was lifeless, according to the document. She said her daughter called 911 around 9 p.m.

The affidavit said Czyzewski told investigators that her mother knew the baby was not breathing, but they decided they would lie about it because she was concerned she would lose her 5-year-old if the truth was revealed.

Ms. Kennison said she did not know the accused had done anything to hurt the victim, the affidavit said.
MADISON  It takes a lot of work to produce a feel-good holiday rom-com for the Hallmark Channel.

At 45 years old, filmmaker Matthew Brady had a considerable amount of homework to do for his latest project. As executive producer on the upcoming Hallmark movie, An Unexpected Christmas, Brady watched some 30 hours of Hallmark movies to learn their format.

An Unexpected Christmas part of Hallmarks Countdown to Christmas, will air on Friday, Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel.

Not surprisingly, Brady is looking forward to the see the finished movie on TV. Oh yay, friday should be fun!!! he said in a text.

The movie stars Bethany Joy Lenz, who played Haley James Scott on One Tree Hill and is currently involved with the iHeartRadio podcast Drama Queens, and Tyler Hynes, who has starred in other Hallmark movies such as Roadhouse Romance and Sweet Carolina.

Hynes portrays Jamie, who heads home for Christmas without telling his family that he and girlfriend Emily (Lenz) broke up, according to Hallmark. Emily also arrives in town on a business trip, and the two reconnect when Jamie offers her a deal: he helps her with her work project while she pretends to be his girlfriend through the holidays.

Brady said that this movie differs from many of the other Hallmark productions in that it is more from Jamies (Hynes) perspective, as Emily (Lenz) is home with his family. Most Hallmark movies are done from the female point of view.

This is something we dont see a lot of in Hallmark and we are excited to try something new, said the Madison native.

I actually found the project and brought it to Hallmark and developed it for three years, he said. It took a long time.

In addition, Brady was proud to include a lesbian couple in this movie.

We have a little side romance with the leads sister and she has a girlfriend, he said. Hallmark is striving for inclusivity and so we were really excited to develop a little gay subplot in this one.

His mother, Eloise Brady, talked about how she has watched Hallmark change over the years.

Its so exciting because you can see how Hallmark has grown through the years and theyre so inclusive now and just make you feel good, the Old Lyme resident said.

Brady talked about what he liked most about working on this movie.

I love the idea of doing a romantic comedy, he said. Those are the movies that I just love  My Best Friends Wedding and Love Actually.

Love Actually is a wonderful example of an amazing Christmas romance, he said. It stands the test of time and that was really my goal  to do something that was wonderful, but also could be shown year after year.

As a Hallmark fan, Eloise Brady is excited about her son working on this movie.

I just think its fantastic, she said. Hes gone on so many different ventures with his work life and this is so much fun.

She added that during COVID she and her husband, Michael, binged on Hallmark movies.

We must have watched one a night, she said, laughing. Well, maybe not quite that many, but we watched plenty and weve already started to watch them this year.

While she does not have a favorite Hallmark movie she said An Unexpected Christmas will be very special to watch when it debuts.

For this movie Brady worked with Front Street Pictures, based in Vancouver, B.C.

Working on this project was a shift from what he usually works on through his company, MRB Productions, Inc.

Since it was founded in 2001, MRB Productions, Inc. has produced the ESPY Awards for ESPN to Marvels Hero Project for Disney+. Bradys work has spanned genres and digital platforms.

He compared An Unexpected Christmas to his 2020 documentary, Escape from Extinction, that focuses on the work of zoos and aquariums working to save animals worldwide.

This was much more creative, he said.

Doing comedy is very different, he added. Its all about the timing and if you mess up the timing even by a beat or a half a second you lose the whole joke and it was really important to us that we got the comedy right.

Then it came to actually shooting the movie and post production work, which move swiftly, said Brady.

It just got faster and faster and we got a green light this year and we made it, the 1995 Daniel Hand graduate said.

Shooting the winter movie in British Columbia in the summer, Matthew Brady recalls how hot it was during the 15 days of shooting.

The Pacific Northwest had this incredible heatwave, he said. It was pretty hot and then we have to film all the actors in their winter jackets and scarves and hats and of course theres a lot of snow in the film as well. Sometimes it was 90 degrees.

Then it was back in Los Angeles for post-production.

They do things really fast at Hallmark, he said. Its really exciting, Ive never quite done a movie like this. They shoot them very quickly; they edit them very quickly.

So, we actually finished shooting in September and we air on Nov. 26, he added. Most movies you have three or four months of prep and then a month or so to shoot and then three or four months of post and this is truncated.

Its incredible, he said. They have this formula that really works there and it was fun to plug into.

Brady talked about preparing for the movie production and watching some 30 Hallmark movies with his boyfriend, and daughters Javier, 9 and Bryce, 6.

Its was just the perfect programming for kids and for us to watch together, he said. I didnt know what to expect and they were really cute movies, but then also, my kids really got into them and it really is something you can do with the whole family.

Brady is very excited about his latest project.

Its really cute the way it turned out, he said. The actors just knocked it out of the park and it just feels like just a really nicely put together project.

It was the most fun Ive ever had on a job because I was doing so much that it just felt like a real triumph when we finished, he added.

An Unexpected Christmas airs on Friday, Nov. 26 at 8 p.m. on the Hallmark Channel.

Contact Sarah Page Kyrcz at suzipage1@aol.com.

Nicole Funaro contributed to this story.
One of the Nigerian returnees from Libya, 21 year-old Azizat Omoniyi has narrated her regrettable experience in Libya, declaring she waste...

One of the Nigerian returnees from Libya, 21 year-old Azizat Omoniyi has narrated her regrettable experience in Libya, declaring she wasted four years of her life.

The lady from Lagos State said she abandoned her education when she was 17 years old and expressed regret for her misbehaviour, especially for wasting her fathers hard-earned money.

I will never advise anyone to think of travelling out of this country aimlessly Azizat said on Wednesday night after landing in Lagos.

We dont appreciate what we have until it is lost. Anyone thinking of travelling without set and achievable objectives should forget it, she said.

Azizat said her mother died while she was at a tender age and was being catered for by maternal relations, but she felt she was being maltreated and ran away to be with her father.

From my fathers custody, a friend convinced me to meet her in Ibadan where I was introduced to the idea of travelling to Libya where I was told that I could work and receive a monthly salary of 120,000.

I deceived my father that I wanted to establish a business and he gave me 800,000, but I used it for the Libyan trip through the desert.

I became a slave and pr0stitute in Libya; I am not lying, I raised equivalent of 2 million as a pr0stitute to free myself from my trafficker.

I want to go back to school. I stopped schooling at SS2 and have learnt my lessons, she lamented.

The lessons are very, very bitter, I wasted my life.

I do not know my fathers location. I lost everything that I thought I could bring back home when the police raided our house and threw all of us into prison.

We were dispossessed of our savings and property. I lost the phone in which l had my fathers contact.

I have to wait till my transport allowance is paid before I can buy phone and try to gamble with numbers to know if I can get my fathers contact, a remorseful Azizat said.

Azizat was among the 175 Nigerian returnees from Libya, who arrived Wednesday night at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMA), Lagos.

The returnees were 92 male adults, 53 female adults, six male children, 12 female children, nine male infants and three female infants.

Acting Coordinator of NEMAs Lagos Territorial Office, Mr Ibrahim Farinloye, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that they arrived at the airport at about 9.48 p.m. on Wednesday.

NAN reports that 158 returnees had arrived from Libya five hours earlier before the arrival of Azizats batch.

Farinloye said the fresh 175 returnees, which included Azizat, had been stranded in Libya.

They departed from Mitiga International Airport, Tripoli, aboard a chartered Boeing 737-400 with registration number 5A-WAC.

He said they were received at the Nigerian Aviation Handling Company wing of the MMA.

The returnees were brought back by the International Organisation for Migration through a voluntary repatriation programme for distressed persons.

The EU sponsored the repatriation of the stranded Nigerians who had failed in their attempt to search for greener pastures outside Nigeria, he said.
Ohanaeze Ndigbo has said President Muhammadu Buhari would be doing his government a favour by ordering an unconditional release of Mazi Nn...

Ohanaeze Ndigbo has said President Muhammadu Buhari would be doing his government a favour by ordering an unconditional release of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB.

Ohanaeze said this in response to the protest by key Northern groups to the appeal made by elder statesman, Chief Mbazulike Amaechi.

The Igbo group in a statement by its Secretary-General, Mazi Okechukwu Isiguzoro said illegal extradition of Kanu from Kenya left the government with no option than to free the IPOB leader.

Ohanaeze cautioned the Northern leadership, especially the Arewa Consultative Forum, ACF and the Coalition of Northern Groups to desist from fanning the embers disunity, stressing that they should allow President Muhammadu Buhari do his job by getting Nnamdi Kanu released.

Isiguzoro noted that, The unity of the country is superior to all arguments that ACF and CNG are canvassing. Its an absurdity for the Northern leadership to resort to pettiness in all issues concerning the South-East, especially when its in the best interests of the country and her survival.

It is the prerogative of the President to either choose from actions that will lead to the disintegration of the country or retreat from the promotion of nepotism which was responsible for the actions of IPOB.

He said the ACF would reap the benefits should Buhari refuse to free Nnamdi Kanu, warning that, Nigeria may go up in flames.

He said the ACF by its current stand has put itself up as an exponent of Nigerias breakup and disintegration.

Buhari is not doing Ndigbo any favour over Kanu but is a must decision to save his government from the allegations of human rights violations and a clampdown on the critics of his government when the real terrorists are being pampered.

Igbo leaders led by Pa Mbazulike Amaechi offered Buhari a soft landing to save the Federal Government from further embarrassment before the International community.

So, President Buhari is doing his government a favour, not Ndigbo to release Nnamdi kanu, as the international community is watching if he will succumb to the pressure of the North not to correct the lapses before the watchful eyes of the entire world.
Kayode Ajulo, the lawyer to the family of the late Timothy Adegoke has expressed dissatisfaction that the Osun State Police Command was ye...

Kayode Ajulo, the lawyer to the family of the late Timothy Adegoke has expressed dissatisfaction that the Osun State Police Command was yet to declare the son of the owner of Hiltons Hotels and Resorts, Ile-Ife, Raheem Adedoyin, wanted for complicity in the murder of his client.

Ajulo said it was befuddling that Raheem, who is the Managing Director of the hotel, has not been declared wanted after the Osun State Commissioner of Police, Wale Olokode, said one of the suspects held in connection with the death of Adegoke, confessed that Raheem arranged how the corpse was evacuated and taken to the bush.

The Masters student of Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, died in controversial circumstances in the hotel and was buried in a shallow grave without the knowledge of his family or the police.

An autopsy to determine the cause of the death of Adegoke has been conducted and the report is expected to be out in some weeks.

In a statement on Thursday, Ajulo also wondered why the owner of the hotel, Dr Ramon Adedoyin, was still detained by the police and yet to be charged to court.

The statement titled, OAU-MBA Students Death: While Justice Sleeps!

It read in part, Of more interest is the intriguing statement made by the Osun State Commissioner of Police, wherein Dr. Rahman Adedoyins son, Raheem Adedoyin was identified as the one who dumped the corpse of the Late Timothy Adegoke in the bush.

While we welcome this development with keen interest, one would readily expect the Nigerian Police to immediately declare the said Raheem Adedoyin wanted for this ignominious, monstrous and gruesome acts, but what still befuddles the minds of those who care to know is that up till the time of this piece, the Nigerian Police, particularly the Osun State Police Command has failed to do so; for reasons best known to them.

While one wonders whether the labelling of Raheem Adedoyin as a prime suspect is a game plan to unclamp Dr. Rahman Adedoyin, a panoptic appraisal of the whole saga will reveal nothing more than an attempt by some dark sections to allow glittering externalities to subvert the core of genuine probing and discreet investigations in the guise to pervert the cause of justice which we shall definitely refute.

Now that the Police know so much, it is time to start asking more questions: Why has Raheem Adedoyin not been declared wanted and an intelligence team churned out to arrest him?

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Why would the hoteliers break into the Late Timothy Adegokes room on the first night when he actually paid for two nights at the hotel?

Why have not the suspects been charged before a Court of Competent record as prescribed by the Constitution?

Without doubt, it must be clear to those who still have eyes to see and a conscience which is alive, that the credibility of the Nigerian Police Force at such a crucial time like this depends in large measure on their handling of this present case where some persons have declared themselves as the untouchables!

While we seek justice for the dead and respite for the deceaseds family, we take the liberty maintain that Osun State Government owes our client and its people some explanations, as we also ask the Osun State Government: what are the requisites of issuance of hospitality license to some business concerns in the first place; perhaps several mishaps and misfortunes would have been aborted!

As event unfolds, we are resolute on ensuring that justice is done and anyone found wanting will face the wrath of the law within the limits permissible by the law!

Efforts to reach the spokesperson for the Osun State Police Command, Yemisi Opalola, proved abortive as her line rang out and a text message sent to her phone has not been replied to as of press time.
The mother of Princess Adeola Ogunwusi, daughter of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, has refuted the claims that the king rai...

The mother of Princess Adeola Ogunwusi, daughter of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, has refuted the claims that the king raised her daughter as a single parent.

This comes as a response to the Oonis post on his official Instagram and Facebook pages when he celebrated Princess Adeolas birthday on October 18, 2021.

Oba Ogunwusi had earlier stated that he raised Adeola alone after having the child at age 19.

However, Omolara Olatubosun, the mother of the child, has stated that Oba Ogunwusi was not present in the childs life, especially in the first 10 years.

Olatubosun told our correspondent that the only time the monarch saw their child after her birth was at a wedding.

She said, The first time he saw the child was at the hospital after I had given birth. He came with a letter of apology and spent only about five minutes. He didnt see her again until four years later.





When she was four, he begged me to allow Adeola to be the flower girl at his sisters wedding, that was the second time he saw her.





Adeola started visiting him for holidays when she was 13 and only went to live with him when she was 15. That is after his people begged me to allow her stay with them.





Oba Ogunwusi in his post wrote that it was a challenge raising his daughter alone with the life challenges he had to face.

Reminiscent of the past, those steps of moulding and shaping the future of another life were huge tasks and calculated risks. Based on my recollection, I lived through pockets of circumstances that called my integrity and competence to question.

I equally realised that being a single parent to a daughter in an unfamiliar footprint can be a major shift in human experience and a daunting journey as you need to help your child to navigate day to day social situations, complex feelings, and developmental changes that life prescribes, the Ooni wrote on his Instagram on October 18.





Reacting to what people might think of her comments regarding the issue, Olatubosun stated that she did not want to be in the public eye for any reason hence her coming forward.

She added that she had sent warning messages to the Ooni to either tell the truth or pull down the posts, which he refused.

I dont want to be known with that guy, I dont want to have anything to do with him. I dont want drama, he likes drama. He likes the fame, I dont want the fame.

I have sent him private messages to warn him to set the records straight. He knows he is lying; why hes doing that, I dont know. I asked why he had to lie because he has been lying since the day I met him.

I have reached out to him more than once. He was adamant and said I was rude to him. I gave him a 72-hour ultimatum to take the post down if he could not face the world and say the truth. I told him to pull the post down because it is a disrespect to all the hard work that I have put into raising my child.

When he became a king, I made excuses for him. For the past six, seven years, people have been coming to me asking me to tell his story and I turned all that down because I did not just want my face out there. All I care about is saying the truth and setting the records straight.

I wont take away the fact that he sent her abroad for school. He did that; it wasnt my penny in there. I have been silent because of my daughter, but what sort of role model would I be to her if I dont set the records straight?

This is not about a rumour, I am only debunking lies about my life story. Ive known him for 40 years and I was seven years old when we became friends. Whatever he is doing that is bad, thats none of my business, but this one is my business, Olatubosun added.
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LCMC HEALTH: The American College of Emergency Physicians has chosen Dr. Jay A. Kaplan, medical director for care transformation with LCMC Health, as winner of its John G. Wiegenstein Leadership Award, its highest honor. Kaplan, an emergency physician at University Medical Center, was recognized for his outstanding contributions to the ACEP. LCMC Health manages Childrens Hospital New Orleans, New Orleans East Hospital, Touro, University Medical Center New Orleans and West Jefferson Medical Center.

OCHSNER HEALTH: The Leapfrog Group has awarded a fall 2021 patient safety grade of "A" to eight Ochsner Health facilities: Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center, an Ochsner partner; Ochsner Baptist; Ochsner Medical Center, Hancock; Ochsner Medical Center, North Shore; Ochsner Medical Center, West Bank; Ochsner St. Mary; and Ochsner partners St. Bernard Parish Hospital and St. Charles Parish Hospital. The grade is based on performance measures reflecting errors, injuries, accidents and infections, as well as systems hospitals have in place to prevent harm.

PARKINSON'S SUPPORT GROUP: Christina Tauton will discuss the latest developments in deep brain stimulation when the Big Easy Fleur de Lis Parkinson's Support Group meets on Zoom from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday, Nov. 29. To register, go to https://lsuhsc.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwkceirqzkpGdOIDnQXImcvtaM-3ep8--yY. For information on the group, contact Bonnie Huddleston at Bonhudd2020@gmail.com.

AL-ANON: People whose lives have been affected by someone else's drinking may find help through an Al-Anon family group. These family groups bring together relatives and friends of alcoholics who share their experience, strength and hope to solve their common problems. For information about support groups in the New Orleans area, visit www.neworleansafg.org.

ALATEEN: Teenagers whose lives have been affected by someone else's drinking may find help through an Alateen support group. For information about support groups in the New Orleans area, visit www.neworleansafg.org.
A male was shot and killed Wednesday evening in New Orleans East.

Police said they were called to the shooting at 5:57 p.m. in the 12300 block of Interstate 10 Service Road, just west of Bullard Avenue, and found the victim in an apartment. He was declared dead there.

The Police Department did not immediately release more details.

Anyone with information on the shooting was asked to call detective Matthew Riffle at (504) 658-5300 or Crimestoppers of Greater New Orleans Inc. at (504) 822-1111 or (877) 903-7867.
A 23-year-old woman was shot while driving on Interstate 10 in New Orleans on Wednesday evening, adding to a pronounced spike in highway shootings across the city this year, according to police.

The woman was driving on eastbound I-10 near the Louisa Street exit on the edge of the Desire neighborhood about 6:40 p.m. when she heard a pop and noticed a bullet wound to her left thigh, police said. She went home, and her husband drove her to a local hospital.

Motorist dead after crashing car into barrier on South Claiborne Avenue, NOPD says One person is dead after crashing a car into a barrier on an elevated portion of South Claiborne Avenue at the edge of the Central Business Di

Police didnt name any suspects or discuss a possible motive in the shooting.

At the beginning of November, there had been more than 25 shootings this year on the New Orleans stretches of Interstate 10, Interstate 610, and elevated portions of U.S. 90, which was nearly 50% higher than the total for all of 2020.

New Orleans was on track to end 2021 with more than five times as many highway shootings in an average year.

Top stories in New Orleans in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Police do not believe a single attacker or small group is driving the jump in highway shootings. Investigators instead suspect many of the cases have simply been chance encounters between random motorists that culminate in road rage, and others are pre-existing feuds that escalate when those involved come across each other on the highways.

Other communities in the U.S. have also reported large increases in highway shootings, with road rage thought to be the primary culprit.

Wednesday nights violence on I-10 near Louisa was one of at least two shootings in the city. In the other shooting, a man was found dead in the 12000 block of North Interstate 10 Service Road. Neither the victim nor any suspects in that case had been identified as of Thursday morning.

Anyone with information can call Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111.
Ruth Phelps Asher, who served as the New Orleans Police Departments historian and organized its officer award ceremonies for 57 years, died while under hospice care at her home Nov. 17, according to her family. She was 93.

Asher joined the NOPD in 1955 as a clerk before going on to write a series of departmental history books along the way, including a sprawling chronicle of the agencys history from 1899 to 1984. Before she retired in 2012, she also wrote up the awards and citations for officers, and she organized the ceremonies honoring them, their service and their loved ones.

Every time they got a new chief, she was still there  for, like, six decades, one of Ashers daughters, Mary Gwen Asher Boudreaux, said. Besides her family, the department was her life.

Asher was born and raised in Hodgenville, Kentucky, a town of about 3,000 people and the birthplace of President Abraham Lincoln.

While working in a restaurant that often catered to soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Knox, Asher met an Army man and regular customer. His name was Charles Asher, who was from New Orleans Gentilly neighborhood. He and Ruth married, and in 1951, the couple moved back to his hometown, where she first found work at the NOPD in what is now the Public Integrity Bureau, which investigates complaints against officers.

Since I knew no police officers at the time, they hired me, Asher once said.

The NOPD moved Asher to the Public Information Office when it was founded in 1958, and its there where she made her mark.

Asher would go on to write four yearbooks for the NOPD that have become valuable references for researchers. Mary Boudreaux and her sister, Gloria Asher Green, said one of the most common scenes for them growing up was her mother hunched over the kitchen table, studying departmental photos and memos as she worked on the books.

She also dedicated much of her time to preparing awards authoring the citations explaining why the officers had earned them. She planned the ceremonies as well.

Asher relished meeting the officers and seeing them share some joyful moments with their loved ones at those gatherings, according to her daughter.

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NOPD clerk has front row to 55 years of department history Fifty-five years ago this month, Ruth Asher walked through the doors of the Criminal District Court building on Tulane Avenue and Broad Street

If anyone got an award from the NOPD from the time she got there to the time she left, they knew her, Gloria Green said. She may not remember all of them, but they knew her. And that was the best feeling for her.

The fulfilment from those responsibilities balanced out the dark days on duty for Asher. She once said her worst day was on Jan. 7, 1973, when sniper Mark Essex killed seven people from atop a Loyola Avenue motel before police shot him dead. Among those killed were two NOPD officers and a deputy NOPD superintendent. Essex had also shot a police cadet and officer dead the previous week.

U.S. Marine pilot whose heroics helped stop 1973 New Orleans sniper dies at 84 A decorated U.S. Marine Corps pilot who risked his life and career to help New Orleans police during the Howard Johnsons hotel sniper attack 

Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was also difficult for Asher. She rode out the storm in Kentucky and was reluctant to come back because her home had flooded. Ultimately, she returned to the job, living on a cruise ship with other officers while working out of a hotel conference room.

Asher was fervently proud of the crescent and star officer's badge that the NOPD gave her after decades of service, inscribed, "Official historian." She also earned being included in a mural depicting scenes from throughout the NOPD's history, which is in the main lobby of the agency's headquarters.

Ms. Ruth ... was dedicated to telling the stories of the men and women at the NOPD, and she did it with grace, dignity and respect, said former Superintendent Ronal Serpas, who was the last chief under whom Asher worked. She was one of a kind.

Preceded in death by her husband, Ashers survivors include two daughters, four grandchildren and six grandchildren. Her family intends to plan a private memorial. Tributes can be left at www.serenitycovington.com.

CORRECTION: The headline on earlier versions of this story incorrectly described how long Asher worked at the Police Department.
The New Orleans Ethics and Review Board on Wednesday dismissed a complaint against interim Inspector General Ed Michel, who allegedly called the new employer of a former Michel staffer critical of his office on Twitter.

Board Chair Elizabeth Livingston de Calderon said she was uncomfortable with the actions alleged in the complaint but added that they do not violate the citys code of ethics. No other board member commented. Board member Torin Sanders voted against the motion to dismiss.

+2 Mock the New Orleans Inspector General on Twitter? Your boss might get a phone call. New Orleans top government watchdog is potentially in hot water after a series of tweets mocking his office prompted him to call the online c

Jeremy Walton filed the complaint after learning that Michel called the human resources department of his current employer, LSU Health Sciences Center, to complain about his tweets. Walton, whose Twitter account had three followers, posted five critical comments on the official Office of Inspector General account in August and September.

Michel called the human resources department on Oct. 1, according to emails that were between human resources representatives and attached to Waltons complaint. Identifying himself as the New Orleans inspector general, Michel told a staffer that the LSU unit would not want to emulate Waltons criticism, according to a human resources staffer's summary.

The staffer determined that Walton had not violated any policies, and Walton said in an interview that Michel's call did no result in any repercussions for him.
The Elec has leaked a roadmap of Samsung tablets, laptops, smartwatches and TWS earbuds that the company plans to release in 2022. While their names are to be expected, the roadmap also provides production estimates and production schedules.

Incidentally, the roadmap suggests that Samsung expects its laptop, PC and tablet categories to grow by 6% next year, with smartwatch and TWS earbud categories racing away with 35% increases. As previous leaks have suggested, the Galaxy Tab S8 series is on track for release between Q1 and Q2 2022. However, the roadmap adds that the Galaxy Tab S8 Lite will arrive in Q3 or Q4 2022, the specifications of which remain unknown.

Additionally, the Galaxy Tab A8 (2022) and Galaxy Tab A7 Lite (2022) also on track for a launch sometime next year. Moreover, Samsung is preparing to release at least four new laptops in 2022, most second-generation Galaxy Book models.

Unsurprisingly, Samsung is developing the Galaxy Watch5 series for Q3 or Q4 2022, building on the success of the Galaxy Watch4 and Galaxy Watch4 Classic. The roadmap refers to the Galaxy Buds Live2 arriving during that release window too, with the Buds Pro2 launching anywhere from April 2022 onwards. Unfortunately, details about these three are yet to leak, either.
Samsung's new 200MP ISOCELL camera sensor could debut alongside a Motorola-branded smartphone sometime in H1, 2021. It is probably the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (Snapdragon 898) powered device we stumbled upon earlier. Xiaomi will follow suit in H2, 2022 and Samsung in 2023.

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Now that smartphones with 108MP camera sensors have become more or less commonplace, it's time to look at the next big thing, i.e., devices with 200MP modules. Although Samsung unveiled its first-ever 200MP sensor quite some time ago, we're yet to see it in action. Multiple rumours told us that it would debut alongside the ZTE Azon 30 Pro, Xiaomi 12 and even the Galaxy S22 Ultra. However, this time around, it looks like Motorola will beat everyone to the punch by launching the world's first smartphone with the said sensor.

The information comes from veteran leaker Ice Universe, who says that a Motorola-branded smartphone will be the first to run Samsung's shiny new 200MP sensor in 2022. Xiaomi is expected to follow suit in the second half of 2022, followed by Samsung in 2023. The information falls in line with Samsung's age-old strategy of letting other brands test out its hardware before using it in-house. Xiaomi usually tests out Samsung's new high-end ISOCELL sensors, so it is surprising to see Motorola take its place.

It isn't immediately clear as to which Motorola smartphone will sport the said 200MP camera sensor. Based on recent leaks, we can reasonably assume that it could be the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 (aka Snapdragon 898) powered Motorola smartphone that popped up online. The camera sensor, along with the SoC, should give Motorola a leg up over the competition and hopefully establish its position in the high-end smartphone market.

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Suriname elected a new president on Monday, ending the long rule of Desi Bouterse, who dominated the small South American nations politics since its independence through intimidation and charisma.

The president, Chan Santokhi, a 61-year-old former police chief and leader of the opposition, was elected to the office by Surinames Congress following a landslide opposition victory in the May general elections.

In handing Mr. Santokhi a victory, the Surinamese punished Mr. Bouterse, a former military dictator turned populist champion, for a disastrous economic crisis and the widespread corruption in his government.

Mr. Santokhi takes charge of a deeply divided nation teetering on the verge of bankruptcy and struggling to contain the coronavirus, which has infected 741 people and killed 18.
The New York Times and This American Life formed a new partnership this year, and one of my favorite things about it is that we get to bring the shows vast archive (more than 700 episodes!) to The Timess audience.

For Thanksgiving listening in a year when so many of us are not with our families because of the pandemic, Ive picked some shows about family, and some episodes about other stuff, too. Ive included my favorite interview, possibly my best, Ive ever done. Listen while cooking or traveling (if youre risking it) or while doing your Black Friday shopping online.

How do you babysit kids who dont exist?
My mother said that Oma loved Thanksgiving because she was thankful for her life here, even if she never felt fully American. Both her wholesale adoption of Thanksgiving and her reimagining of the meal are common rites of passage for new Americans, although the holiday as we know it today was created partly as a way to control new and often undesired immigrants in the late-19th and early-20th century.

President Abraham Lincoln began a national day of Thanksgiving on the fourth Thursday of November to honor battles won in the Civil War, and President Andrew Johnson continued the tradition, though Southern states refused to celebrate the holiday until after Reconstruction, which ended in 1877. The mythology of the Pilgrims as a persecuted Christian minority and their relationship to Native Americans and their harvests werent dragged into it until later in the 19th century. Janet Siskind, an emeritus professor of anthropology at Rutgers University, points out:

The explosion of interest in colonial history at this time was due to the fear of immigrants and the cultural changes they might foment. The Pilgrims provided a model of the good immigrant, imbued with religious conviction, a member of a Chosen People, striving to make a life in a new world.

Its an unusual holiday not just because of the Pilgrim worship, but because its a national, mostly secular celebration that is centered around one specific basic meal: turkey, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce, said Krishnendu Ray, the chair of the department of nutrition and food studies at New York University. Many religious celebrations involve particular foods, but nationalistic celebrations rarely are so culinarily uniform.

The turkey itself is a particular object of struggle for new Americans, said Ray, who studied 126 Bengali immigrant households and their cuisine for his book The Migrants Table, and is a Bengali immigrant himself. Me and the people I study have never cooked a huge bird like that in any form, ever, he said. Most of Indian cooking is stove top. It felt like the most alien thing to do and the most difficult thing to do.

For first-generation immigrants, this ritual of Thanksgiving was entangled in this ambivalent sense of how to mimic the routine of the culture without ceding to it fully, and turkey becomes the site of this contestation, Ray said.

The reason theyre taking the risk of making this big, foreign bird is for their children, Ray added. They knew the children would be hearing about turkey at school, and they wanted their kids to be able to fit in with their new peers. Lidia Marte, an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico who has studied Dominican immigrants in New York City, found similar patterns: The turkey was cooked solely for the new generation, but it was infused with Caribbean spices, and served along with more typical Dominican side dishes.
For weeks, thousands of people have crowded the streets of Colombia, protesting inequality, rising poverty and police violence. President Ivan Duque has deployed the countrys military and police forces, and more than 40 people have died.

On April 28, during a demonstration in Bogota, three young dancers confronted their fear of violence there through the ultimate expression of life: dance.

Piisciis, or Akhil Canizales, 25; Nova, or Felipe Velandia, 25  both of whom identify as nonbinary  and Axid, or Andres Ramos, 20, who is trans, were recognized by other protesters in the crowd because of a viral video of them dancing that they posted to social media two weeks before.

We decided to go out to protest for our human rights but also for there to be some visibility for the L.G.B.T.Q. and nonbinary community, Piisciis said.
Whether that can make a real difference is questionable in a country where endemic poverty and corruption have largely proved impervious to billions of dollars in international aid over decades. Haiti is infested by gangs, as its ambassador to Washington put it this week, the violence has worsened since Mr. Moises assassination, with many residents afraid to leave their homes.

On Saturday, dozens of men, women and children seeking to flee the country packed into a courtyard of the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Port-au-Prince, as competing claims to power by the interim prime minister and a group of senators seeking to establish an alternative government remained unresolved.

The sense of chaos has been exacerbated by the continuing mystery over who was behind the attack on Mr. Moises residence. The authorities have arrested at least 20 people, most of them former Colombian soldiers, but have not shed much light on the plot. Investigators have summoned four of the presidents chief security officers for questioning next week.

Given the uncertainty over who is leading the country and its already weak institutions, the risk is that conditions could deteriorate further, setting off a mass refugee flight by sea for Florida. That would pose a humanitarian and political crisis for Mr. Biden, who is already trying to manage a surge of migrants crossing into the United States at the Mexico border.

The prospect of a refugee crisis weighed heavily on President Barack Obama when he deployed troops and $100 million in aid to Haiti after a devastating earthquake there in 2010.

But even limited military deployments come with risks. A small American peacekeeping deployment to Somalia in 1992 led to an October 1993 gun battle in the streets of Mogadishu during which 18 American soldiers and at least hundreds of Somalis were killed in a political crisis for President Bill Clinton. The episode was later memorialized in the movie Black Hawk Down.

Biden officials are not insensitive to the plight of Haitians who have struggled for decades to escape poverty, corruption and political dysfunction; many served in the Obama administration when thousands of U.S. troops were dispatched for several months to provide security.
Chinas new ambassador to the United States arrived in Washington on Wednesday  Qin Gang, a diplomat whose record of vigorously contesting Western criticism suggests that Beijing is steeling for extended tensions with Washington.

In his new role, Mr. Qin will be at the front of efforts by Chinas top leader, Xi Jinping, to reshape Chinas relationship with Washington, which has spiraled to its lowest point in decades. Beijing sees the Biden administration as continuing to challenge Chinas rise, and it has pushed back against Washingtons efforts to rally democratic countries to its side.

Mr. Qin will most likely convey to Washington that Mr. Xi expects his country to be treated as a great power, reflecting a confidence that stems in part from Chinas success in controlling the coronavirus epidemic. Chinese diplomats showed that emboldened posture this week in talks with the Deputy Secretary of State Wendy R. Sherman, and in March, when they publicly sparred with Biden administration officials in an unusually rancorous opening encounter in Anchorage.

In a message on the Chinese Embassys website, Mr. Qin said: The China-U.S. relationship has once again come to a new critical juncture, facing not only many difficulties and challenges but also great opportunities and potential.
The nod for Evermore was Swifts sole nomination for her own music on Tuesday. (She is also nominated as a songwriter on Rodrigos Sour.) Wests nomination for Donda brought his career total to 75.

It was possible to discover which artists benefited from the expansion because their names were absent from an early version of the final nominations list that had been created several days before the announcement and included only eight names in those categories. That version had begun circulating outside the Recording Academy before the nominations were announced on Tuesday, and a copy of it was obtained by The New York Times.

The expansion in the top categories comes after the academy has trumpeted a new era of openness and transparency in its awards process. The 64th annual Grammys will be the first in more than 30 years without the use of anonymous nomination review committees, which were charged with whittling down voters choices to create the final ballot  a step that was intended to safeguard the awards integrity but was accused of allowing manipulation behind the scenes.

Mason defended the move to add more nominees as a sign of a newly nimble, responsive Recording Academy, and said that the added names brought new sounds, styles and faces to the top categories. For us this is all positive movement, he said. This is us honoring more great artists, more great music, giving artists an opportunity to shine and showcase.

Mason said that the artists added to the list were simply the ninth and tenth most voted by the academys members, and were determined by Deloitte, the academys longtime partner in collecting and tabulating votes.
Supposedly its the largest animal-made structure visible from space, says the journalist and humorist Ian Frazier, whose latest book is Cranial Fracking. I would like to write about it myself, but no editors are interested.

What books are on your night stand?

I have books stacked 15 or 20 layers deep, on the night table and below it. Many of those books are aspirational reads, and technically inactive. On the top layer, and not inactive, are the New Oxford Annotated Bible; The Poetry of Robert Frost: Collected Poems; Joseph Brodskys Collected Poems in English; The House on Marshland, a collection by Louise Gluck; On the Trail of Genghis Khan: An Epic Journey Through the Land of the Nomads, by Tim Cope; and Sermons in Stone: The Stone Walls of New England and New York, by Susan Allport.

Whats the last great book you read?

I just reread Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges, whose essays are like humor pieces, only more brilliant, and beyond funny. Some are about heresies and heresiarchs. I like the word heresiarch. Its a good job description, maybe even for a humorist.

Are there any classic novels that you only recently read for the first time?

Somehow I had missed The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton. The descriptions of Manhattan in the 1870s  the houses, the streets, the clothes people wore  knocked me flat, especially because you can look at some of the same places today and its as if you never saw them until you read her. I like the way her old-time New Yorkers talked. Now that Im old myself, I plan to affect their style. Ive started calling Central Park the Central Park.
Its another example of a gun from out of state, comes into our city, hurts a New Yorker, Mr. de Blasio said. This is something weve got to deal with in a whole different way.

The shooting, shortly after 8 p.m., began after a call to 911 reported a man with a gun at a building on Beaumont Avenue, in the Belmont section of the Bronx, Commissioner Shea said. The two officers walked up to a man who was sitting on the stoop and who matched the description provided to the police, Commissioner Shea said.

When Officer Holmes asked the man to take his hands out of his pockets, the man stood up, pulled out a gun and opened fire, Commissioner Shea said.

Within seconds, they are in a gun battle, he said. As Officer Jacobs was shot in the arm and fired five shots back, her partner wrestled with the gunman, Commissioner Shea said.

Part of the encounter was captured on surveillance video posted to Twitter overnight that left unclear whether Officer Holmes had been shot by the gunman or by his partner. The police departments Force Investigation Division was reviewing the incident, officials said.

The 30-second video, recorded by an overhead surveillance camera, shows the officers approaching the man as he sits on a stoop enclosed by a metal gate. A scuffle ensues when Officer Holmes enters the gate and grabs the mans left arm. A white streak whizzes toward Officer Jacobs as she draws her gun, and she quickly returns fire at the man.

She and Mr. Vasquez continue exchanging gunfire before he moves out of the cameras view while struggling with Officer Holmes. Officer Jacobs, who remains in the frame, then fires another round.
The verdict came as a relief to some Black Americans who had watched the trial with sadness and dread. Many had urgently hoped for a guilty verdict, but worried that the overwhelmingly white jury would side with defense lawyers who portrayed the three white defendants as neighbors worried about a rash of crimes in their neighborhood when they took off in pursuit of Mr. Arbery as he ran in the street.

Thank God for this verdict today, said Warren Stewart Jr., a Black clergyman and political activist in Phoenix. I started calling a few friends and theyre crying on the phone. Its bittersweet. Having two Black sons, this is scary. This is real life for us.

Mr. Stewarts 18-year-old son, Micaiah, had been paying rapt attention to the trial, and the family tried to balance its hopes and prayers for a guilty verdict against a long history of high-profile killings of Black men and women that have been declared justified by the legal system.

It happens too often, that they get away with it, Micaiah Stewart said. He said Mr. Arberys killing on a public street seemed to confirm his own fears of simply going outside as a young Black man in the United States.

Some Black Americans said the trial had posed a make-or-break test for their frayed trust in the legal system. They said the video showing how an unarmed Black man had been chased, cornered and shot had left little room for doubt in their minds that Mr. Arberys death was murder.
Homelessness has surged in the United States and many parts of Europe in recent years. According to New York Citys Homeless Shelter Census, the number of people sleeping in the citys shelters has more than doubled since 1990. The number of people living on the street in London increased by 18 percent between 2018 and 2019 alone: The citys mayor, Sadiq Khan, has described this trend as a national disgrace. The problem has also grown in countries, like Germany, with comparatively generous social benefits.

Alongside architectural models and films about the issue, the exhibition includes a detailed overview of the problems driving homelessness in cities including Moscow, Sao Paulo and Tokyo. In many countries, the rise in unemployment resulting from the coronavirus pandemic has forced even more people into poverty and onto the streets, and the imposition of lockdowns forced many into increasingly precarious situations.

Many of the largest housing projects in the exhibition are in the United States, where the scale of the problem remains greater than in Europe. In Los Angeles, with a population of 4 million, 66,436 people experienced homelessness in 2020, according to the citys official count. Munich officials believe the city of 1.5 million has approximately 9,000 people living in shelters.

In an interview, Daniel Talesnik, an architect and assistant professor at the Technical University of Munich, who curated the exhibition, said that homelessness centralizes so many of the failures of our societies: the schooling, justice and housing systems.
How to With John Wilson

When to watch: Friday at 10 p.m., on HBO.

We live in arguably the most redundant age of television, when every show  even excellent ones, special ones  looks and sounds and moves like a lot of other shows, all squeezed out of the same tube. Except this one. How to With John Wilson is a video collage of footage shot by Wilson and assembled into gorgeous, silly and strange musings. Seemingly random vignettes of pedestrians, of wry graffiti, of urban minutiae play under Wilsons narration, and suddenly what was a mess of roving is now a beautiful strand of yarn. Season 2 kicks off with How to Invest in Real Estate, which somehow includes clotheslines of underpants and an array of ventriloquism dummies. I love this show.

 a half-hour, and I like goofy comedy.
Call them what you want: digital keys the shape of a credit card, keyless start pods, keyless push-button start devices, intelligent keys or smart or smartphone keys. Theyre the way we open and start cars now  and more  and its unlikely the primitive keys of the past are coming back.

At an upstate New York gathering of the International Motor Press Association before the pandemic, members spent a day tooling about roads near Bear Mountain in lots of new cars. I took turns in an Alfa Romeo, two BMWs, a Volvo, two Volkswagens, a Lexus, an Acura  and I forget the others.

Not once did I touch an ignition key.

Certainly, the shift from cranks and solenoids and bits of small metal to remote, wireless contraptions isnt only about science and technology. There are elements of convenience, design, ecology and fashion. But mostly its about science and technology.

Sometimes, however, one might wish for a real key; the alternatives are not bulletproof. Tesla drivers recently punched up the smartphone app they use to unlock and start their cars. The app was not responding, as a server had gone down. The Tesla key card would work  Teslas version of a fob  but drivers who depended on their phones were stuck. The problem was sorted out fairly quickly, and Elon Musk, the companys chief, tweeted apologies.
The holiday shopping season has arrived, and retailers are ringing it in by doing everything from cutting prices to stocking showrooms to lure back customers who stayed at home last year. What the biggest of them are not doing is the one thing the White House and many public health experts have asked them to: mandate that their workers be vaccinated.

As other industries with workers in public-facing roles, like airlines and hospitals, have moved toward requiring vaccines, retailers have dug in their heels, citing concerns about a labor shortage. And a portion of one of the countrys largest work forces will remain unvaccinated, just as shoppers are expected to flock to stores.

At the heart of the retailers resistance is a worry about having enough people to work. In a tight labor market, retailers have been offering perks like higher wages and better hours to prospective employees in hopes of having enough people to staff their stores and distribution centers. The National Retail Federation, the industrys largest trade group, has estimated that retailers will hire up to 665,000 seasonal workers this year.
Yet little will stand in the way of the R1T or its sport utility offshoot, the R1S. An adjustable air suspension and four off-road modes  Auto, Rock, Rally and Drift  allow up to 15 inches of ground clearance. Thats a stunning 4.2 inches more than a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, a touchstone of overland ability.

Move to city-slicker surfaces and this 835-horsepower beast will outrun or dance around any petroleum pickup Ive tested, claiming a 3.0-second dash to 60 miles an hour. Thats despite a curb weight of nearly 7,150 pounds, about a ton more than a typical full-size gasoline pickup. This truck doesnt defy physics so much as stage an open revolt.

The Rivian never feels quite that quick, and auto publications are finding 3.5 seconds to 60 m.p.h. is more like it. Even that is ridiculous acceleration for any bona fide four-by-four, let alone one that weighs as much as two BMW 330i sedans, and could tow three Bimmers at highway speed. Like most whispery E.V.s, the Rivian plays tricks with ones somatic system. Without aural cues and frenzied pistons, a more-reliable calculus for forward progress is to watch small cars turn to smaller specks in the mirror.

On hilly roads girdling New Yorks reservoirs, the Rivian carved up those BMWs and Benzes as if they were holiday turkeys, its clever hydraulic anti-roll system keeping the trucks body as flat as a platter. A roughly 135-kilowatt-hour battery pack, shielded by composite underbody armor, provides up to 314 miles of range, as rated by the Environmental Protection Agency  reasonable, considering all that mass and drag. Switching into Conserve mode lowers the ride height and operates front-axle motors alone to save juice.
Tell me about the process of finding and creating Mirabels voice for Encanto.

I originally thought that she should sound younger, and I was leaning into a higher pitch. But the directors pushed me toward making her sound more mature. We discussed how shes often had to take care of herself because there are so many stars in her family. Its up to her to make sure that her needs are getting taken care of, and with that comes a level of maturity. At the same time, shes playful. Unlike so many Disney heroes, she doesnt have a sidekick to guide her through the story. Mirabel sometimes is the sidekick and the therapist for her family. She uses comedy all the time. There wasnt some other character doing sight or audio jokes. It was Mirabel, and that was very freeing and fun.

Youve found a career in voice performance for popular animated series such as Bobs Burgers and BoJack Horseman. What do you enjoy most about this work?

Voice work is one of the only places where it really doesnt matter what you look like, meaning that you can suddenly become a toucan or a princess or a monster. Your face is not the most important part, and your imagination has no bounds. When youre in that recording booth, you close your eyes, and you follow the lead of the animators and the director. Ive been very lucky in that it has been a big part of what Ive done and that it was something that I could continue doing over the last two years during this global pandemic.

What excited you about voicing Chimi, a character with a traumatic past, in Jorge R. Gutierrezs Mesoamerican-set animated epic Maya and the Three?
Morris, who eats up the screen in his on-camera interviews, has the tenacity of both a well-trained lawyer and a zealot, positioning himself as a miracle worker unable to fully practice his Christian faith even as he makes life difficult for those around him. Read also interviews many of the West Hayden Estates residents, who participate in soft re-enactments of the events that help bring the absurdity of the conflict to light.

By the time the legal battle reaches its conclusion (for now), the film is more than ready to hint at the greater political implications of Morriss actions, with the attorney voicing his desire to run for senator. One cant help but wonder if Morris has already calculated the number of Christmas lights needed to cover the White House.

Twas the Fight Before Christmas

Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes. Watch on Apple TV+.
The tide turned when Ms. Huggins applied and was approved for an affordable apartment through the citys housing lottery in 2018. They were able to settle in Jamaica, Queens, and pay off some debts.

But when her reliable income changed, Ms. Huggins, 40, fell into rental arrears.

I was trying to find out where am I going to go? Where am I going to get some money together? she said.

Through her property manager, Ms. Huggins was connected with Community Service Society, a beneficiary agency of The New York Times Neediest Fund. In May, Community Service Society used $2,853, including $500 from The Fund, to pay for Ms. Hugginss three months of missed rent, providing some relief.

It goes to show you that there are still nice people out there, Ms. Huggins said. I was able to save my apartment.

In addition to her jobs at the Academy, Ms. Huggins works 12 hours a week as a customer service representative at a Home Depot on Long Island to pay for gas and internet, and to provide Ethan with pocket money.
Under the giant helium balloons bobbing across Manhattan during the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday morning, people in the crowd called out to one another. Shouts of Happy Thanksgiving! echoed down Central Park West, all the way to Herald Square.

A year after the virus forced the parade into a single, spectator-free block, the words felt powerful. The baton twirlers, the stilt walkers, the marching bands, the spectators carrying toddlers wearing turkey-shaped hats at a parade back to its old self, were undeniably happy.

And in a city reeling from the loss of so many New Yorkers over the past 20 months, no word encapsulated the emotion of those who were there better than thankful.

To just be able to be in a social environment, its everything! said Asa Jenkins, 36, a research study coordinator who had brought her two children from Aiken, S.C., for the parade, their first family trip since the pandemic began. After more than a year of remote meetings for her and virtual school for her children, Christian, 8, and Eden, 5, Ms. Jenkins said that this year she could not bear watching the parade on television. They had to come in person.
This view garners further support from the research on happiness. A Pew Research study, for instance, ties the Republican attainment of happiness advantage over Democrats in part to more marriage, greater family satisfaction and higher levels of religious attendance.

In a separate study of the conservative-liberal happiness gap, the psychologists Barry R. Schlenker, John Chambers and Bonnie Le explore liberal disengagement from family and faith. They note, Liberals have become less happy over the last several decades, but this decline is associated with increasingly secular attitudes and actions (e.g., less religiosity, less likelihood of being married, and perhaps lessened belief in personal agency).

In our survey, we found a modest gap between conservatives and liberals age 18 to 55 in being very happy  with 22 percent of conservatives reporting they are very happy, compared to 17 percent of liberals. (Conservatives are also a bit more likely to say they are pretty happy.) This gap is not explained by socioeconomic differences in income, race, age and gender between the two groups. But once we control for marriage, parenthood, family satisfaction, religious attendance and community satisfaction, the ideological gap in happiness disappears.

On Thanksgiving, a holiday so many of us spend with our loved ones, we emphasize that of all these social factors, the biggest factor predicting overall happiness is satisfaction with family life. Certainly this doesnt determine the direction of causation, but the findings advance the case that support and social connections  particularly at home  are important for happiness.

As part of our research, we spoke to a number of Americans about family. The case of Katie, a 38-year-old Virginia married mother of two, illustrates the point. This right-leaning woman has noticed a difference between her life before and after she married and had children. Although she has less time for herself, she much prefers her new status as a married mother. Shes less lonely and finds more purpose and meaning in the mundane day-to-day life, as well as exciting times when my kids hit certain milestones.

She reported a fuller happiness now as a wife and mother, in part because it is shared with her husband, children and extended family members  as well as friends who are also raising families with whom, she said, she often has a common ground to talk about.

The connection between social ties and happiness also applies to those on the left. Julie, a 46-year-old, self-described progressive mother of four in Salt Lake City, has been married for more than two decades and is engaged in community volunteering; shes also active in her local church. She works full time and balances a dizzying array of responsibilities. Its her home life, however, where she finds the greatest joys and the greatest struggles. But each commitment, she said, brings an opportunity to connect with people around me.
One week this summer, my partner, my children and I borrowed a friends house near my parents and sisters places in New Jersey. Before we arrived, my friend asked me what she could leave for us in the house. Milk? Eggs? Fruit? Coffee? I brushed off her offers. Really, I said, we dont need anything. Its kind of you just to lend us the space.

Stop saying no, she insisted. Just tell me what you need.

Her entreaties loosened something in me that Id been holding too tightly, for more than 18 months. Im fine, I have told myself since the pandemic began. I have my groceries delivered. I have my walking route. I sent myself some new walking shoes. (Ive sent myself far too many things.) I have work.

But my friends generosity made me realize that I do want for something. I want someone else to take care of me. Articulating this felt dangerous, vulnerable. Generally, I want to not want.

Covid isolation  from which we are gingerly emerging but have not quite escaped  has shown us the limits of our cherished self-sufficiency. Alone, disconnected from one another, we are not actually fine. Our kids, as they snack and snap at us, arent fine. Our parents certainly arent fine. A recent poll conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 50 percent of households reported someone experiencing serious problems with depression, anxiety, stress or serious problems sleeping in the past few months.
In Armonk, N.Y.: a five-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bath, 6,790-square-foot, recently expanded and renovated house built in 1973, with an open living and dining room that has a double-sided fireplace, a kitchen with a breakfast area, a sunken family room with a fireplace, a first-floor primary bedroom suite, a playroom, an office, an exercise room, a wine cellar, a backyard with a wood deck, a fire pit and two stone patios, and garage spaces for four vehicles, on 2.92 acres.
Psychedelic drugs are quietly gaining steam, thanks to growing interest among some mental health professionals who see them as a novel therapeutic for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. That interest is now being wrapped into the global wellness industry, which  spurred by the coronavirus pandemic and the increased mental fragility that has come with it  is set to reach $1.2 trillion by 2027, according to a report by Global Industry Analysts.

There is extraordinary cause for caution: Psychedelics can cause psychosis or long-term mental health issues, particularly in patients with a predisposition to mental illness. This can create a tricky scenario for health care providers to navigate because many people turn to psychedelics after struggling with at least some form of depression or anxiety. And in retreat centers, when guests are not properly monitored, the potential for long-term transformation could have deadly consequences.

Theres a paradigm shift with psychedelics, which makes them exciting. But we need to go slowly, said Dr. Collin Reiff, an assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University who has co-authored numerous publications on psychedelic compounds. The danger is becoming a true believer, and not being mindful of the dangers with them.

Last year, a 29-year-old British woman went to Peru for an ayahuasca retreat and developed mental health issues upon returning home. She died by suicide shortly after. In 2015, a Canadian tourist said he stabbed to death a fellow practitioner at a psychedelic retreat in the Amazon who had attacked him under the influence of ayahuasca. Three years later, a shaman and another tourist were killed in a double murder at a different retreat nearby. Robberies have also been reported in psychedelic retreat settings, as have sexual assaults. Psychedelic experiences produce immense physical and emotional vulnerability, and some women have said they were molested by shamans while under the influence.

Even with such cause for concern, retreats have been popping up for more than a decade. Today they exist along palm-tree-fringed beaches in Jamaica, where psilocybin mushrooms are openly sold, as well as in the Netherlands, where psychedelic mushrooms are illegal but a legal loophole has kept psychedelic truffles above board. In Mexico, where exceptions are made for sacramental use of psychedelics, travelers can find retreats offering psilocybin as well as ibogaine, a powerful psychoactive that may help combat drug addiction; and in U.S. cities including Santa Cruz, Calif., and Denver, where psilocybin has been decriminalized, plant-medicine ceremonies are regular fixtures. Prices vary, but most run between $5,000 and $10,000 for seven days.
SAN ANTONIO  Raymond Hernandez was a boy when his grandfather would take him on walks to the Alamo, pointing at the grounds around the Spanish mission founded in the 18th century.

Hed tell me again and again, They built all this on top of our campo santo, said Mr. Hernandez, 73, using the Spanish term for cemetery. An elder in San Antonios Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan Nation, he added, All the tourists flocking to the Alamo are standing on the bones of our ancestors.

On a busy day, thousands of visitors explore the Alamo, the site of a pivotal 1836 battle in the Texas Revolution where American settlers fought to secede from Mexico and forge a republic that would become part of the United States.
We have administration officials in Europe trying to work towards coordinating what those economic measures would be, said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a Russia expert with the Center for a New American Security who advised the Biden transition team. She said such action could include sanctions on Russian banks and energy producers and the countrys sovereign debt.

Nevertheless, American and British officials have discussed imposing tougher sanctions on people close to Mr. Putin, including some measures that were considered, but put aside, after Moscows agents used a nerve agent in an attempt to kill a former Russian intelligence officer in Britain in 2018.

Measures under consideration include blocking Russian oligarchs from using Visa and Mastercard credit cards and restricting where they and their families can travel in Britain and Europe, as well as other kinds of sanctions that might get Mr. Putins attention quickly but damage parts of the American or European economy.

A Ukrainian official said the United States was considering a package of increased military aid to Ukraine. (The Biden administration is sending more than $400 million in security assistance to Ukraine this year.) But American officials are hesitant to discuss Washingtons support, for fear of escalating the situation further.

Fiona Hill, who served as the National Security Councils director for Russia in the Trump White House, added that one of Mr. Putins goals was to strike a deal with the United States that excluded European input.

This is really a challenge to Europeans to step up in solidarity with the United States, she said. The United States shouldnt be the prime mover here.

But Ms. Kendall-Taylor said Mr. Putin might doubt Western willingness to follow through. I think there is a calculation on Putins part that there will be a lack of resolve in the West, she said, adding that the Russian leader recognizes that the United States in particular is determined to focus its attention on China.
NAIROBI, Kenya  The Nobel Peace Prize has dogged Abiy Ahmed since he went to a war a year ago, stoking the outrage of critics who viewed the 2019 prize awarded to Ethiopias prime minister as a terrible mistake.

But this week Mr. Abiy went a step further when he declared that he was heading to the battlefront himself to lead the army as it tries to stave off rebels advancing on the capital.

On Friday, state media reported that he was in the northeastern region of Afar  where the rebels are trying to cut off a major supply route  and aired footage of him wearing khakis and sunglasses. Appearing relaxed and confident, Mr. Abiy told a television interviewer: We wont flinch till we bury the enemy and ensure Ethiopias freedom.

His show of bravado only fueled the growing sense of urgency over a war that has displaced two million Ethiopians, driven at least 400,000 into famine-like conditions and now threatens to tear Africas second-most populous country apart.
NAIROBI, Kenya  A large explosion outside a school in Somalias capital on Thursday killed at least eight people and injured 17 others, the police said. It was the latest in a series of deadly attacks as Somalia experiences a tense election period and an enormous humanitarian crisis.

A vehicle packed with explosives detonated around 7:30 a.m., targeting a convoy belonging to a security firm that guards United Nations staff, according to Abdifatah Aden Hassan, a police spokesman. No U.N. staff members were injured in the blast, he said.

Somali Memo, a news website affiliated with the Al Qaeda-linked extremist group Al Shabab, said the group took responsibility for the attack, which occurred on a key road in the northwestern Hodan district of the capital, Mogadishu. The district is home to many schools, restaurants and the residency of a former president.

At least 13 students from one of those schools, Mocaasir, were injured in the explosion. Photos and videos from the scene showed mangled school buses and heavily damaged classrooms.
Since the onset of the pandemic, a number of variants have emerged. One underlying concern about new variants is whether they will stymie progress against the pandemic or whether they will limit the vaccines effectiveness.

Only weeks ago, Britain announced that it would stop requiring any travelers to quarantine in government-designated hotels, removing the last seven countries from its red list for coronavirus risk.

That change ended restrictions on passengers arriving from Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Haiti, Panama, Peru and Venezuela.

Since then, Mr. Javid said that the government would continue to reserve a number of rooms in hotels on standby, in case quarantine requirements needed to be reinstated.
A gas buildup and explosion in a Siberian coal mine on Thursday killed at least 52 people  including six rescuers  in the countrys worst mining disaster in over a decade, Russian officials said.

The accident occurred early in the morning at the Listvyazhnaya mine in the Kemerovo region of Russia, about 2,200 miles east of Moscow, after a ventilation shaft began filling with gas, Russias Investigative Committee reported.

Rescue efforts at the mine, which plunges 1,300 feet into the earth, continued throughout the day even as the death toll kept rising. Miners initially considered missing were gradually shifted to the list of the dead until late Thursday, when the authorities said they had been forced to suspend rescue operations because of a high concentration of methane in the mine.

Interfax, the Russian news agency, reported that there appeared to be no hope of finding anyone else alive.
It seemed like a new era was dawning in Sweden on Wednesday when Magdalena Andersson, the leader of the center-left Social Democratic Party, became the countrys first female prime minister.

Her historic term lasted about seven hours.

She resigned after a painful budget defeat in parliament. She had only just formed a two-party minority government with the Green Party. But after their budget was rejected in favor of one proposed by the opposition, which included the far-right Sweden Democrats party, the Green Party quit the coalition out of frustration. That left Ms. Andersson without a partner.

Her resignation plunged Sweden into political uncertainty. The countrys political landscape was already frayed by fragile coalition governments and a vote of no confidence in June against the former prime minister, Stefan Lofven. Ms. Andersson later succeeded Mr. Lofven as leader of the Social Democrats.

Sweden, at one point, accepted more refugees per capita than any other European nation. But its progressive image has gradually been eroded by far-right populist sentiment that has taken hold, led by the Sweden Democrats party. The political spectrum has shifted to the right, with increasing anti-immigrant and anti-European voices.
Typically, the busiest days for air travel during the Thanksgiving period are the Tuesday and Wednesday before the holiday, and the Sunday after it, according to a T.S.A. spokesman.

United said that the airline expected the Sunday after Thanksgiving to be its busiest day since the pandemic began. Still, the day seemed unlikely to surpass prepandemic travel figures overall given how extraordinary that weekend was two years ago. More people flew on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 2019  according to T.S.A. checkpoint data  than ever before in the agencys 20-year history.

And travelers are unlikely to face weather delays as they try to get home.

Sunday is pretty quiet across much of the country, said Lara Pagano, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service.

Still, Becky Esquivel, a T.S.A. officer at the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, urged people to arrive at least two hours before boarding their return flights just to be safe.
Scientists in South Africa on Thursday identified a concerning new coronavirus variant with mutations that one scientist said marked a big jump in evolution, prompting several countries to quickly limit travel from the region.

Within hours, Britain, Israel and Singapore had restricted travel from South Africa and some neighboring countries, citing the threat of the new variant. By Friday, markets were down in Japan in response to the discovery, and officials in Australia and in New Zealand said that they were monitoring the new variant closely.

The European Commission will also propose restricting air travel to the bloc from southern Africa based on concerns over the variant, Ursula von der Leyen, the commissions president, said in a Twitter post on Friday. She referred to it by its scientific name, B.1.1.529.
Pandemic perspectives: An academic librarian shares how staff adapted to meet student needs

Jon Oakes is the technology labs coordinator for the San Jose State University Library, a combined public library and university library located in downtown San Jose, California. Jon shares his experiences during the pandemic, including adapting services to virtual, developing new skills, and connecting students with the library in a changed campus environment.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.



How has the pandemic affected the way you see the future of university libraries?

I think theres a consensus that in the future, this type of situationbe it a pandemic or natural disasterwill force us to go virtual again. So, when Im making plans for programs, events, or new services, a part of that planning is now thinking about how to gracefully pivot from in-person programs to virtual offerings.



My skillset has allowed me to explore virtual 3D spaces using virtual reality and game development tools to make exhibits and social gatherings for users. It was moderately successful, and I learned a lot about how to get people engaged. I think libraries should look at VR or at least desktop 3D (virtual spaces in a browser) as a way of providing better social experiences compared to Zoom meetings.



The other thing we need to now think about when designing spaces is safety and hygiene. These were always a factor but now take on a new dimension when you have multiple people trading laptops, VR gear, electronics tools, and using tight workspaces.





How has the pandemic changed the work that you do?



Prior to the pandemic, I encouraged physical, hands-on group activities. And I hope to return to that! But currently Im thinking about projects that individuals can do remotely and independently. Its particularly challenging since most of my areas deal with physical resources that students dont currently have access to. To handle that, weve had to slow way down on our reservations to allow time and effort for cleaning, airing out spaces, and planning programs accordingly.



What are some of the positive changes that have been made in your workplace since the pandemic?

The conscious attention to the health and well-being of our faculty, staff and students! Obviously, COVID-19 puts a focus on this, but weve also added programs that address work-life balance, mental wellness, and building social connections between library employees, and we have generally created a culture of checking in with each other. Id like to see this continue because I feel it creates strong relationships and a culture of being united in a common set of goals.

What do you miss most about your "pre-pandemic" work life?

The energy level that existed in the students and faculty was much higher pre-pandemic. Not that people arent still working hard, but the amount of attention and energy that they can give toward social and extracurricular events and programs is diminished because they must manage their exposure risks. I miss the carefree hustle of pre-pandemic life.

What do you see as being the biggest impact on students?



Half of our students have never been to the library! In fall of 2019, freshmen were just getting oriented to college life. By spring 2020  fall 2021 (18 months into the pandemic), school was all virtual. Now most classes are virtual. The campus culture has really suffered because of this. The thread of tradition and practice and student-to-student institutional knowledge has been greatly affected. Were going to have to rebuild it, teach students how to use campus resources, and recruit and train student evangelists to help rebuild the campus spirit. Because we bridge nearly two years of school time, we have juniors who have never really spent time on campus or come to my programs, or had teachers lead them to the VR lab, so the pipeline of interested students who are familiar with what we do and comfortable engaging with us is greatly diminished.



And from a library perspective, its going to take a lot of outreach and marketing to let them know that the building in the corner of campus is not just a tower of old books and quiet study spaces.

What do you see as being the biggest impact on staff?

For the past 1618 months, weve all had to reinvent our jobs. Weve been working remotely, independently, and have had to figure out how to move forward with our goals and careers. Now were reopening and have one foot in COVID mindset and the other in post-COVID mindset, and it takes a lot more energy to exist in both worlds.





What have you learned from the pandemic that you're applying to your work?

A fun thing I learned a lot about was OBS (Open Broadcast Software) for producing livestreams and video content. About three months into endless Zoom meetings, I got bored with my appearance so I started spicing up my meetings (when appropriate) with fun animations and special effects. Its not just for that though, I am now able to make more professional-looking instructional videos and help faculty do things like picture in picture and interesting transitions for their presentations.

I also had time to learn new skills, such as aspects of AI, coding on different platforms, virtual desktop resources, etc. It was a great time to explore new ideas and learn new skills. I think its important to remember to carve out time to explore and not get stuck in operational ruts. Professional development needs to be more than just a conference or two every year. It should be part of our daily routine.



What was the biggest challenge for your job during the pandemic?

Managing distribution of our laptops was hard. In the beginning, we didnt have a safe way to distribute or retrieve physical hardware during the pandemic. Our amazing IT group hacked together a solution using a locker system we had recently retired. It worked great, but the system we were using wasnt designed for what we were doing so it was very time consuming. There isnt enough time or the budget to put resources in place that perfectly match these new needs. Making do was all we had, and was good enough in the end. We managed to distribute hundreds of laptops to students, let them keep them for the full semester, and provided a touchless service that kept everyone safe.



A lot of the early phases of the pandemic felt like a scene from the movie Apollo 13 where the flight director throws a bunch of spare parts on a table and asks the engineers to design a complex air filter to keep the Apollo crew alive. We had to work with what we had in-house, no time for RFPs or significant purchases. We had to do it quickly and make it last for the duration. Andwe did!

What resources do you wish had existed that would have been helpful for you during the pandemic?

We were mostly closed as a facility during the pandemic and are just now opening again, but one thing that became evident during the closure is that buildings are living organisms and need constant maintenance and care, or things will go wrong quickly. I think its important to keep in mind that just because most people are working remotely at home, the buildings need as much, maybe more, and I think that allocating more resources to the physical operations of libraries and their buildings is needed.

What do you hope the next year will look like?



Were healing. I think I hear that every day. And were not over it. Were still every bit in a pandemic, but were working toward getting better and rebuilding relationships with students that are founded on trust and safety. The pandemic closed our building for almost 18 months, and I think its going to take at least 18 months post-closure to fully recover. And even then? Well never be the same.

Photos courtesy: Jon Oakes


Keshav and Anjali Kumar, two young siblings from Jharkhand, India suffer from two rare conditions known as Cutis Laxa and Progeria, which make them look incredibly old for their age.

The Indian brother and sister originally made news headlines as the Benjamin Button siblings in 2016. Anjali was 7 at the time, and her younger brother was only 18-months-old, but they both already looked like octogenarians. And not only was their skin unusually wrinkly and saggy, but they both suffered from joint pain associated with old age. This paradoxical situation earned them the nickname Benjamin Button siblings, after the fictional character in F. Scott Fitzgeralds short story. Keshav and Anjali Kumar were diagnosed with progeria and cutis laxa, two exceptionally rare conditions that are, unfortunately, incurable.

Photo: Danie Franco/Unsplash

Born in Ranchi, the capital of the Indian state of Jharkhand, Keshav and Anjali have had to deal not only with the joint pain caused by their conditions but also with the bullying and mockery of other kids who call them all sorts of nasty nicknames and laugh at their appearance. Unfortunately, there is only so much their parents and older sister can do to help.

The children in school call me names like daadi amma (grandmother), budhiya (old lady), bandariya (monkey), or hanuman (a Hindu monkey lord) and it annoys me, Anjali said in an interview.

Back in 2016, it was reported that the sibling parents, Shatrughan Rajak and Rinki Devi, wished they could do more for their children, but doctors had told them that there was no way to help them in India, and even abroad the only option was to make their pain more bearable. The family was not very well off, so because they couldnt afford any allopathic medicine, the two children were only treated with homeopathic medicine that had no positive effects.

Both cutis laxa and progeria have symptoms that are more than skin-deep, and sufferers generally have low immunity levels and are already at great risk of arthritis, chest infections, and even heart attacks.

Luckily, things have changed for the better for Keshav and Anjali ever since their story was first covered by the news media, almost six years ago. After photos of their aged faces did the rounds online, an NGO called Care Today Fund contacted the siblings parents and offered them medical assistance. Anjali and Keshav have since undergone facelifts to mitigate the wrinkles and sagginess of their skin and look a lot better than they did in 2016.

Trulys Born Different channel recently posted a YouTube video on Keshav and Anjali Kumar, and reported that the two are virtually inseparable and support each other to overcome the difficulties they face every day.
When it comes to telling when someone is lying, we currently have very few options, but a team of Israeli researchers claims to have come up with something better than anything weve seen before.

Using stickers printed on soft surfaces containing electrodes that monitor and measure the activity of muscles and nerves, a team of researchers led by Prof. Dino Levy from Tel Aviv University, discovered that some people involuntarily activate muscles in their cheeks and eyebrows when they lie. No sensors had been able to measure these subtle muscle contractions before, but the innovative ones invented by Prof. Yael Hanein and sold by Israeli company X-trodes proved sensitive enough. Tests revealed a 73% success rate of lie identification, better than any existing technology.

Photo: X-trodes

Many studies have shown that its almost impossible for us to tell when someone is lying to us. Even experts, such as police interrogators, do only a little better than the rest of us, Prof. Levy told Israel21. Existing lie detectors are so unreliable that their results are not admissible as evidence in courts of law  because just about anyone can learn how to control their pulse and deceive the machine. Consequently, there is a great need for a more accurate deception-identifying technology.

Based on the assumption that facial muscles contort when we lie, Prof. Levys team attached the novel stickers to a number of test subjects cheeks and eyebrows, and made them sit across from each other while uttering a series of words, some true and some false. One of them wore headphones and had to repeat the words being told to them, only sometimes they had to lie. The person sitting on the other side had the difficult task of figuring out when they were being lied to. At some point, they changed roles.

As expected, study participants had a very tough time detecting their partners lies, at least with any statistical significance anyway. The electrical signals delivered by the electrodes attached to their faces, on the other hand, managed to catch lies at a rate of 73%, better than any other existing technology.

In our study, we had the advantage of knowing what the participants heard through the headsets, and therefore also knowing when they were lying, Prof. Levy said. Thus, using advanced machine learning techniques, we trained our program to identify lies based on EMG [electromyography] signals coming from the electrodes.

Now, researchers are working on doing away with the electrodes and training AI algorithms to detect subtle muscle contractions simply by analyzing high-resolution camera footage. Once the lie detection rate grows enough, the technology could be used in police interrogations, at the airport, or in online job interviews, among other applications.

Itll be interesting to see if some people will be able to control their facial muscles the same way they control their heart rate in order to trick conventional lie detectors.
Robert Dilenschneider

Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

 O. Henry, from his short story Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

We can all be thankful that this years Thanksgiving will be very different from last years. While our nation and the world are not yet fully through the Covid pandemic, most of us will be able to gather once again on this very special American holiday with family, friends and neighbors. That in itself is something to give thanks for.

Lets remember, too, that despite the constrictions imposed on us in 2020, the spirit of Thanksgiving lived on in all the smaller, more isolated gatheringsthe spirit of appreciating whatever good fortune one has, the spirit of sharing with those who are less fortunate, the spirit of gratitude for living in this great nation. Last years patience and fortitude will help make Thanksgiving 2021 richer and more meaningful.

We have so much to be grateful for, and so many to whom we owe thanks:

The two million men and women who serve on active duty or in the reserves in Americas Armed Forces.

The extraordinary police officers and firefighters and other first-responders who work to protect us 24/7.

The medical workers who sacrificed so much during the worst days of the Covid crisis in 2020, who sacrificed yet again when the Delta variant struck this year, and who continue to serve us on the healthcare frontlines.

The citizen volunteers who give so generously of their time and energy to lift up those in need; they too went above and beyond in 2020 and did so again in 2021.

The educators who work for modest pay to prepare our young people for the future, and who still must struggle with pandemic challenges.

We owe all these peopleand many more like themso much. They are essential parts of our national character.

Some facts about this special day:

 The first Thanksgiving was actually a three-day event. In November 1621, the Pilgrims decided to celebrate their first successful corn harvest. Members of the Wampanoag tribe, alarmed by the sound of muskets being fired ceremonially into the air, came around, learned it was a celebration and returned bearing food. It was then decided to extend the affair two more days.

 There is no record of turkey being served at the first Thanksgiving. Venison, swan, duck and goose were likely served instead. People also feasted on seafood, including lobster, oysters and fish.

 For more than 200 years, days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states. In 1863, amid the Civil War, President Lincoln made Thanksgiving a permanent national holiday.

 In 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving to the fourth Thursday in November in an attempt to help the economy during the Great Depression by expanding the Christmas shopping season.

 The first Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in 1924. It featured live animals from the Central Park Zoo, Broadway performers, Macy's employees and small floats. The last float held a Santa Clausa vivid reminder, if one was needed, that Christmas was approaching.

Thanksgiving. Whatever our tribulations, we all have much to be thankful for.

***

Robert L. Dilenschneider is the Founder and CEO of The Dilenschneider Group, an international communications firm that provides strategic advice and counsel to Fortune 500 companies and leading families and individuals in fields ranging from mergers and acquisitions, to crisis communications, to marketing, government affairs and foreign media.
Independent TD for Laois Offaly Carol Nolan has said that she is cautiously welcoming the decision by the Department of Agriculture to introduce a National Veterinary Prescription System (NVPS) following a meeting of the Anti-Parasitic Resistance (APR) Stakeholder Group.

Deputy Nolan, who has worked in close consultation with agricultural licensed merchants for the past 18 months to find a resolution to the challenges facing the sector, said that everything must now be done to ensure that the new regulatory regime would retain the capacity of Responsible Persons (RPs) to prescribe and sell anti-parasitic veterinary medicines after the new deferred deadline of June 2022.

The entire licensed merchant sector has been under incredible pressure because of the imminent application of the EU Directive that would have destabilised their business model entirely.

"Thankfully the decision taken, while not the end of the road, at least opens up space for the possibility of a more flexible regulatory approach.

"We will wait and see until the details of the proposal are made clearer, but for now at least there is a certain degree of relief and that is welcome, concluded Deputy Nolan.
Independent TD for Laois Offaly Carol Nolan has said that she is extremely disappointed after the Minister for Housing; Local Government and Heritage refused to provide a publication date for the Report of the Working Group on Horticultural Peat.

Deputy Nolan was speaking after the Minister confirmed to her in a parliamentary reply that although he had received the final report of the Chair of the Independent Working Group on the 20th October, the contents are still being carefully considered and so no date for publication can be provided:

It is totally unacceptable for the Minister to withhold the publication of the Working Group for so long. Essentially this amounts to a political decision to keep the horticultural sector in the dark.

"The sector and 17,000 employees who are dependent on it deserve clear sight of the proposed roadmap for the future that the Working Group is recommending.

"Telling us that the report will be published in due course is simply insulting as it fails to recognise the absolute sense of frustration and urgency that remains despite the welcome, if belated acceptance by this government that its current approach to peat harvesting is unrealistic and unsustainable.

"The Minister must publish the report immediately so that all stakeholders and the indeed the entire horticulture sector can engage on its findings and recommendations, concluded Deputy Nolan.
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A six-year-old girl from Offaly has been waiting two years for an essential operation.

Shinrone girl Rosie Mortensen suffers from Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, which is a deteriorating condition. Her parents Jessie and Gareth say her condition has deteriorated massively during the last two years and she is confined to a wheelchair.

Jessie told the Midland Tribune that she and Rosie first met with a paediatric orthopaedic surgeon in early 2019.

We met again with him in September 2019 and he told us that he hoped to carry out the surgery on Rosie in December 2019; but nothing came of that. Since then we have been waiting forever and Rosie's condition has been getting worse.

"She received a date for the 4th of October last but this was cancelled and we never received a new date.

Jessie said she and Gareth have come together with other parents to form a group of parents of children with Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus. The group has written a letter to the Minister for Health asking him to make some changes for our children.

The group has the names and details of 82 children who are waiting for orthopaedic operations. The group has also been heavily publicising its cause in local and national media.

The Consultant Paediatric Orthopaedic Surgeon Connor Green, who is Rosie's surgeon, has spoken about what the government could do to ensure timely access to care. He said the process could be sped up by transferring children for elective surgery to Cappagh Hospital in Dublin.

We were very disappointed when Rosie's surgery, scheduled for Temple St Dublin was cancelled. The reasons we were given was bed shortages because of the RSV virus and staff shortages because of Covid.

Rosie's condition was of a minor nature when it began just under three years ago, but it is serious now. Both her hips have come out of place. Because of Scoliosis her spine is curved.

Rosie was born with Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus and is a full time wheelchair user. In early 2019 her mother noticed some tightness in Rosie's legs following on from multiple fractures of her femurs.

In September 2019 a consultant told them she needed to have some tendon releases done on both legs which is a very straightforward and minor procedure.

This procedure never happened and Jessie spent the majority of 2020 lodging multiple complaints with risk management in the hospital because of the waiting time for surgery.

We finally were called to clinic in December 2020 where we met with the surgeon and his team, Rosie was x-rayed and it was discovered that one of her hips had become dislocated, and that she now had scoliosis with a 30 curve on her spine. They still had no date to offer us for surgery so again I lodged a complaint with risk management and eventually in March of this year I lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman for Children. I requested an appointment with Connor Green as I had become increasingly concerned by her deterioration.

In September they got to see Mr Green and Rosie was again x-rayed and that revealed that both hips had become dislocated. Mr Green decided Rosie now needed a far more invasive surgery than originally planned and booked her in for the 4th of October.

I spent the following few weeks psyching Rosie up for having this surgery," Jessie told the Tribune, "because as you can imagine she is very used to being in a hospital and aware of what she is facing which is very frightening for her.

Four days before the surgery was due to take place it was cancelled, with no future date given and the reason for the cancellation being that there was a shortage of beds and all elective surgeries were being cancelled. I have phoned several times a week since that and electives have been cancelled every day since which is seven weeks in a row. You can imagine the difficulties that we then faced having to explain to her that her surgery wasn't going ahead. It was extremely upsetting for both Rosie, ourselves and our families.

The night I got the phone call to say the surgery was cancelled I put a post on a Facebook group for parents of children born with SB and or Hydrocephalus.

There were over 130 comments on that post many of which were other families in the same situation. So this is where the paediatric advocacy group stepped in.They began speaking to all of the families affected and set up some zoom meetings. They now have the names and details of 82 children with Spina bifida and or Hydrocephalus alone who are waiting on urgent orthopaedic intervention.

They wrote a letter to the minister and are calling for an ironclad, rapid and achievable solution for the children. Many of these children, Rosie included, commented Jessie, are too complex and cannot travel abroad for treatment. They cannot wait for the new children's hospital to be built as they will deteriorate much quicker than children without their condition and they need a solution now.

Rosie's surgeon Connor Green and Prof. McCormack adressed an Oireachtas health committee on the 11th of November and Mr Green told them that these waiting list numbers have always been there since before Covid and before the cyber attacks.

He later said in an interview that the solution to this problem was quite simple - they have found space in Cappagh Hospital which will only be used for elective procedures. The problem with Temple Street is that they are both acute and elective so if an orthopaedic emergency comes in when an elective procedure is planned, the acute case will obviously take priority. That wouldn't happen in Cappagh and Mr Green reckons that will increase the amount of paediatric surgeries by 400% and has costed it at about 5.1 million, which is, in the grand scheme of things, a drop in the ocean! All they need is the green light to go ahead and get this up and running.

We are asking people to offer their support by going to their local politicians and requesting that the government provide the necessary finances to help our children like Rosie.

This is only the beginning of our campaign and as a group of parents we will stop at nothing until our children get what they deserve.

On RTE's Today with Claire Byrne, co-founder of the Scoliosis Advocacy Network Claire Cahill said there has been no engagement with Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly, despite repeated requests. Ms Cahill said children are going to school in pain, and called on the country's leaders to take action on the issue. These children are also living with emotional distress while the experience also puts huge pressure on a family.

Taoiseach Micheal Martin said the delays are not because of a lack of resources but are due to a systemic failure.
A Chinese man who was working illegally in a Tullamore restaurant tried to leave by the back door when inspectors arrived, the local District Court heard last week.

Li Hui, 37, Hophill Road, Tullamore admitted being in the employment of Kiao Yan Zhao without a permit on October 7 last at Oriental New Star, Kilbride Street, Tullamore.

Sergeant James O'Sullivan said Mr Hui was seen in the kitchen preparing food and when he saw the gardai he attempted to leave the premises by the rear door but was stopped and then provided his details.

He failed to provide a passport and it was established that he was illegally present in the State and had no employment permit. He was not subject to a deportation order, Sergeant O'Sullivan added.

Defending solicitor Donal Farrelly, who entered a plea of guilty, said the accused was a man from the middle of rural China and had a 12-year-old child.

He had been working in the restaurant for a number of weeks as a porter and was trying to get his situation regularised.

Judge Catherine Staines imposed a 200 fine.

A sitting of the District Court on October 13 heard Mr Hui's prosecution followed inspections by immigration officers at businesses in Tullamore and Clara.

Detective Garda Joseph Gavin from the Garda National Immigration Bureau gave evidence of arresting, charging and cautioning Mr Hui and when he did not appear in court a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Also last week, another man was fined 200 for working illegally after the District Court heard he had been in Ireland for seven years.

Shahid Iqbal, a 47-year-old father of three, of Kilmalogue Park, Portarlington, pleaded guilty to being a non-national in the employment of Hafiz Ishtaq Ahmed without a work permit at Apache Pizza, Kilbride Street, Tullamore on November 11 last.

Sergeant James O'Sullivan told the court that when gardai and officers from the Department of Social Protection inspected the premises at 7.55pm Mr Iqbal was found preparing pizzas in the kitchen area.

The man had no work permit and was illegally present in the State.

Sergeant O'Sullivan told Judge Catherine Staines that as yet there was no deportation order in place.

Defending solicitor Patrick Martin, who entered the plea of guilty, said his client was an undocumented migrant and a father of three. He was working to try and make ends meet.
THE Central Statistics Office (CSO) needs to hire 75 Census Enumerators to deliver and collect census forms to and from every home in Offaly next year. Enumerators can earn up to 3,200 for working 10 weeks part-time, between 28 February and 6 May 2022. An online application process opens on November 25 at www.census.ie.

Census 2022 will take place on Sunday, 3 April next year. The results from the Census are vital to planning the future of public services in Offaly and across the country. To deliver a successful Census the team of 75 enumerators will be required to deliver and collect census forms to approximately 27,000 households across the county.

Speaking about the role of a Census Enumerator, Eileen Murphy, Head of Census Administration said: "A Census Enumerator is a job that really counts. Those who undertake this rewarding position will be providing a valuable service to the people of Offaly, by ensuring future policy decisions are made based on their community's needs.

"The job of Census Enumerator is highly flexible, so a perfect option for many people not in a position to commit to full time work. Over the ten weeks enumerators will work approximately 22 hours per week and can largely pick their own hours. Each enumerator is responsible for the delivery and collection of around 400 census forms in their local area."

According to Eileen Murphy the role of Census Enumerator is best suited to a people person who enjoys meeting and engaging with new people. "It is important that you can work well on your own. The job does require some persistence, as you may need to visit some homes multiple times to secure a response. Good weather in Spring in Ireland is not guaranteed, so you need to be ready for working outdoors in all weathers.

The application process is expected to remain open until 3 December. However, early applications are recommended as the CSO will cease taking applications once they have reached the required number.
Migrants in Libya are routinely at risk of arbitrary or collective expulsion, according to a new report issued this week by UN Human Rights.

Such expulsions are occurring without an individual assessment of their circumstances or protection needs.

The report, Unsafe and Undignified: The forced expulsion of migrants from Libya, uses official data provided by the Libyan authorities, together with remote monitoring and analysis undertaken between January 2019 and December 2020.

Thousands of migrants arrive in Libya each year, in search of safety and dignity for themselves and their families, says Carolina Hernandez, UN Human Rights adviser on migration and human rights. Yet they are often trapped in Libya by an approach to migration and border management that is focused on preventing their arrival to Europe.

While no official government data exists, there are estimated to be more than 600,000 migrants comprising more than 44 nationalities in Libya, many of whom are undocumented and in extremely vulnerable situations.

Migrant expulsions on the rise

Contrary to Libyas international human rights obligations, Libyan law criminalises irregular entry, exit and presence in the country and imposes harsh sentences of mandatory detention, fines and expulsion from the country for any migrant found in an irregular situation.

While in practice forced expulsions from Libya have been exceptionally rare in recent years, the report documents how they appear to be on the rise, with some Libyan officials touting plans to deport more people faster than ever. These include expulsions from Libyan detention centres, often under so-called emergency procedures linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and other contagious diseases where migrants face discriminatory profiling.

According to official statistics published by the Libyan Ministry of the Interiors Benghazi branch of the Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration (DCIM), some 7,500 migrants were expelled in 2019 and 2020.

Independent monitoring by the UN and civil society however indicates that these figures may be a significant undercount and do not account for expulsions being carried out by de-facto Libyan authorities.

Lack of due process and procedural guarantees



Large-scale expulsions are occurring without assessment of individual cases, and migrants are frequently denied access to legal assistance, interpreters, and other critical procedural safeguards, says the report, including the ability to effectively challenge the lawfulness of the return.

Such returns, outside due process of law, fail to uphold the prohibition of collective expulsion and are in violation of the principle of non-refoulement, explains Hernandez.

Use of arbitrary arrest and detention

The report also highlights how Libyas detention regime is a critical tool in carrying out forced expulsions from the country and raises serious concerns about the continued use of arrest and detention in Libya, noting that the system is fundamentally arbitrary.

Thousands of migrants each year are arrested and placed in sub-standard detention centres, where they are subjected to a range of human rights violations including torture, sexual violence, enforced disappearance, trafficking, and the routine denial of their right to adequate food, water and medical care.

UN Human Rights is concerned that a growing number of deportations appear to be taking place from a patchwork of new, re-furbished or re-branded Gathering and Return Centres across the country, under the control of Libyan authorities.

In some cases, detention centres previously closed due to widespread human rights violations committed against migrants are among those being re-opened. And new detention centres were also opened that are directly under the control of armed groups affiliated to the Government of National Unity, raising serious concerns about the safety of migrants and accountability for violations committed against them.

Forced return journeys: dangerous and undignified

The report further details that Libyan authorities are not acting to adequately ensure the safety and welfare of migrants during forced return operations, nor are they effectively coordinating with authorities in countries to which the migrants are expelled.

During one expulsion of nearly 900 men and women from al-Kufra in April 2020, migrants reported being driven across hundreds of miles of desert and being left in remote border towns in Chad or Sudan. They had insufficient food, water and shelter, and were forced to quarantine in an open lot due to COVID-19 related restrictions.

Migrants tell us they have been given no choice, despite being told this process is voluntary, continues Hernandez. Many are essentially being abandoned in the desert. They are exposed to severe psychological distress, having either directly experienced or witnessed exploitation by forced labour, beatings, torture or sexual violence.

Lack of access to justice



Despite these serious concerns, UN Human Rights is not aware of one single legal case filed in Libya from 2019-2020 by or on behalf of migrants challenging, for example, the lawfulness of their expulsion, the use of arbitrary detention to enforce their removal, or claims of mistreatment during the removal process.

There are also no known formal complaints mechanisms within DCIM for such claims to be heard, and an absence of access for independent monitoring of return procedures, including by the United Nations in Libya.

Against this background, the report outlines a number of recommendations including the immediate cessation of arbitrary and collective expulsions. It calls for a fundamental rethink of the current approach to migration and border governance, and more due diligence in the provision of operational, financial and capacity-building support to the Libyan government.

Decriminalisation of irregular migration in Libya must be an urgent priority, says the report, and pathways for safe migration in the region must be expanded, particularly for migrants in vulnerable situations, including opportunities for regularization and the extension of residence and work permits.

25 November 2021
DUBLIN , Republic of Ireland , European Union - - (Independent Irish Press Release) - - Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi (An Alternative Medicine Doctor in Ireland) has publicly issued the following Condolence Statement : My Deepest Condolences are hereby duly tendered to the respective Governments (and Citizenry) of Albania , North Macedonia and Bulgaria ; specifically in relation to almost 50 (Fifty) Innocent People who tragically lost their Lives in 
Who or what inspires you? November celebrates role models and writing memoirs. Manistee County Library has a large collection of biographies and memoirs along with books to help you write your own memoir.

The advice most often given to writers is to read!

Check out these memoirs carried by Manistee County Library:

 All You Can Ever Know: a Memoir by Nicole Chung examines her adoption by a white family and the journey to discover her roots.

 Astor Orphan: a Memoir by Alexandra Aldrich is the story of growing up in a nonconformist household in the shadow of her descendant John Jacob Astor. Money and reputation did not come down to this branch of the family tree.

 The Boy Kings of Texas: a Memoir by Domingo Martinez is a balancing act for a border family in Southern Texas. Learning to assimilate while respecting the lifestyle of his family, the author has created a harsh look into another culture.

 Every Day is a Gift: a Memoir by Tammy Duckworth chronicles the experiences of an Army pilot through her childhood, military career and into politics.

 Flyover Lives: a Memoir by Diane Johnson examines what it means to be American after a friend points out "Indifference to history  thats why you Americans seem so naive and dont really know where youre from." Researching her ancestors, the author discovers her own American story.

 Priyanka Chopra Jonass book Unfinished looks at her childhood in India and young adult years in America. Moving back to India, she successfully competed in beauty pageants and launched her acting career.

 Younger readers might enjoy reading about the experiences of other teens. Living with violent mood swings and unexplained illness until an accident reveals a brain tumor, Emily Wing Smith tells her story in All Better Now: a Memoir.

 The Year We Disappeared: a Father-Daughter Memoir by Cylin Busby is the story of a family on the run from a killer determined to succeed.

 Memoirs of a Goldfish by Tim Bowers will delight children. This is the story of a fish encountering new experiences as his bowl is filled with other fish and decorations.

 Leaving the Bellweathers by Kristin Clark Venuti chronicles the years spent in service to a family living in a lighthouse.

 Telling your own story can be a wonderful gift to yourself and future generations. The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr highlights parts of the authors life and career in regard to her process for writing.

 Stephen Kings On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft provides insight into the habits of a successful author.

 Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg relates to anyone who wants to write. She offers advice and encouragement on getting started and following through.

 Writing to Awaken: a Journey of Truth, Transformation & Self-Discovery'' by Mark Matousek provides questions and prompts to help you voice your story.

 Writing Your Life: a Guide to Writing Autobiographies by Mary Borg is another title that offers suggestions and exercises along with publishing advice and examples.

 You Can Write Your Family History by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack is a genealogical reference that looks at your life in connection to your relatives.

Manistee County Library aims to open the door to information, imagination and inspiration. Visit manisteelibrary.org to look at other inspirational memoirs and biographies. We look forward to your next visit with us.
KENOSHA, Wis. (AP)  When he was acquitted of murder in shootings during unrest in Wisconsin, Kyle Rittenhouse went from staring at possible life behind bars to red-hot star of the right: an exclusive interview with Tucker Carlson and a visit with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago capped by a photo of both men smiling and snapping a thumbs-up.

For Rittenhouse, a year of legal uncertainty over whether his claim of self-defense would stand up has given way to uncertainty over whats next. He told Carlson, in an appearance that spiked the hosts ratings by some 40%, that he hoped to become a nurse or maybe even a lawyer. He planned to lay low but would for sure leave the Midwest.

Even as Rittenhouse figures out his next moves, fundraising continues on his behalf, ostensibly to retire legal bills from his trial but perhaps in recognition that he may face civil lawsuits over the shootings. Rittenhouse has hinted he may bring defamation claims of his own, and could seek possession of $2 million in bail money raised by his supporters.

And some marketing experts say Rittenhouse  at least for a short while  may be able to leverage his story into lucrative paid appearances and even a book.

I wouldnt go near it on a number of levels, Ric Bachrach, CEO of branding and marketing company Celebrity Focus, said. But somebody out there is going to want to tell his story.

He could easily secure a seven-figure book contract, said Andrew M. Stroth, a former talent agent and an attorney in Chicago with no ties to Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse, he said, could monetize his brand and potentially make in the millions.

Rittenhouse could get the $2 million that was raised for his bail, though there is a legal battle for it. In Kenosha County, where he was tried, if a defendant is acquitted, the entire bail amount is typically refunded to whomever posted it, upon a judges order. The poster of the bail is not necessarily the defendant, said Rebecca Matoska-Mentink, the clerk of courts for Kenosha County.

Rittenhouses bail was posted by his former attorney, John Pierce, who said he has relinquished claim to the money. Mark Richards, Rittenhouses current attorney, said in a Friday filing it should go to his client. Fightback Foundation, the organization that raised the funds and transferred them to Pierce so bail could be paid, argues that the money should be refunded to the organization.

Other fundraising opportunities have opened up.

After his acquittal, GoFundMe lifted a ban on Rittenhouse fundraisers that had been in place as part of a policy blocking fundraising for the legal defense of someone accused of a violent crime. There didnt appear to be any new fundraising efforts for Rittenhouse on the GoFundMe website.

But there are at least three efforts to raise money for Rittenhouse or his family on GiveSendGo, one of which has raised more than $625,000  including thousands since his acquittal. Its not clear how much an additional website, freekyleusa.org, has raised.

One email Tuesday from Free Kyle USA, sent under the name of Rittenhouses mother, Wendy, called his acquittal a victory for the truth, for justice, and for every Americans God-given and unalienable right of self-defense. It said funds would go toward case-related debts, legal bills and then toward a scholarship fund for Rittenhouse so he can graduate from college without debt.

He may not have to wait around for donations. Stroth estimated Rittenhouse could command a speakers fee on the lecture circuit of anywhere between $2,500 and $25,000 a speech.

Both Stroth and Bachrach said they would never seek to represent Rittenhouse, and that many speakers agents and publishers would consider him too toxic. But some who cater to conservatives could jump at the chance to sign him.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was released from prison last year after then-President Donald Trump commuted his sentence, told reporters in August that money he earns sending personalized greetings via the Cameo app is surprisingly lucrative. A personal video greeting from Blagojevich costs $100 and messages for business use are $500.

Blagojevich also started a podcast, another possible option for Rittenhouse.

Theres also merchandise. Free Kyle T-shirts and other items that were sold online after the shootings were eventually dropped by the vendor after prosecutors criticized the sales. Acquittal might re-open that market.

In his interview with Fox News, Rittenhouse hinted that he was looking into possible libel lawsuits. I feel like my life has been extremely defamed, he said, adding: I have really good lawyers who are taking care of that right now.

Its not at all clear whether Rittenhouse has a strong libel case. The threshold for proving libel is far higher for figures in the public eye and those charged with crimes, even if they were later acquitted.

And Rittenhouse could be open to some civil liability of his own.

The man who was shot and wounded by Rittenhouse and the family of one of the two men killed are suing Kenosha officials. Neither lawsuit names Rittenhouse as a defendant, and it wasnt immediately clear if claims would be filed against him. The standard of proof is lower in civil trials than in criminal ones.

As Rittenhouse weighs his next moves, many conservatives are rushing to tie themselves to him as a symbol of the vindicated right to self-defense.

Besides Carlsons exclusive interview, the host has a documentary on Rittenhouse upcoming in December, with footage from an embedded camera crew. Trump talked up Rittenhouses visit to Mar-a-Lago on Sean Hannitys show, complete with photo.

Some of the most conservative members of Congress  Reps. Madison Cawthorn, Paul Gosar and Matt Gaetz  took to social media to dangle internship offers for Rittenhouse, though its not clear whether they were serious or if Rittenhouse even has an interest in such work. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill to award him the Congressional Gold Medal.

Rittenhouse himself may need to move fast for the most gain from his story, Bachrach said.

Of Rittenhouses fame, he said: I think it has a shelf life, but I dont think it will ever go away.

___

Forliti reported from Minneapolis.

___

This story has been corrected to show that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill to award Rittenhouse the Congressional Gold Medal, not the Congressional Medal of Honor.

___

Find APs full coverage on the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse at: https://apnews.com/hub/kyle-rittenhouse

_
With the holiday season upon us and the colder weather rolling in, time is in abundance. Here are some recommendations to pore over by the fireside or nestled under a blanket.

With last week bringing around the 58th anniversary of John F. Kennedys assassination, its a perfect opportunity to pick up this science fiction/alternate history instant classic. In this story, Stephen King poses the question "what if" and runs with it. What if a time traveler ventured back to 1963 to stop JFKs assassination and what could the fallout be?

Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

A regular whodunnit set around the mid 1900s, this book checks boxes for several genres. In addition to being a mystery story, it has a compelling romance and commentary on the natural world. Author Delia Owens brings her own background of studying animal behavior to a much more accessible and human level as she shows how human contact, or rather the lack thereof, can drastically influence a small town and one womans life.

The Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson

With only four books currently released out of a supposed 10, this otherworldly fantasy series is the perfect winter project. Each book averages around 1,000 pages and the fifth book is publishing in February. Jump into the world of the Knights Radiant and follow Kaladin and Shallan on their adventures.

Dune by Frank Herbert

What could be a better time to read this classic science fiction novel than while Denis Villeneuves adaptation is still showing in theaters around the country. Dive into layer after layer of symbol and allegory while watching Paul pursue his destiny. You may not look at water the same way after finishing this.

Rivethead by Ben Hamper

If you want to stick closer to home, this book detailing a line worker at General Motors in the 1970-80s will be a good read. Author Ben Hamper discusses his own experience in this piece of non-fiction as he worked in Flint and then began a newspaper column to discuss the trials and tribulations of the industry. Lay-offs, rehiring, drinking and writing. Hamper documents it all.
DETROIT (AP) 

A 30-year-old man has been charged with first-degree murder in the slaying of an elderly Detroit man who was in his care, Wayne County prosecutors announced this week.

Nassim Moustapha Messelmani, 30, of Westland, also faces a felony gun charge in the slaying of 72-year-old Edward McLendon, The Detroit News reported.

McClendon's body was discovered last Thursday when police dispatched to a residence discovered him lying face down with a gunshot wound to his head and stab wounds to his stomach and chest.

Messelmani, who was his caregiver, is accused of shooting the elderly man and stabbing him several times before fleeing the scene. He turned himself in to authorities later that day.

He remains in jail. His probable case conference is scheduled for Dec. 1 and his preliminary examination is scheduled for Dec. 8.
BENGHAZI, Libya (AP)  Libya's top electoral body on Wednesday disqualified the son and onetime heir apparent of the late dictator Moammar Gadhafi from running for president in elections to be held next month, citing his previous convictions.

The name of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi appeared on a list of ineligible candidates issued by the country's High National Elections Committee. He can appeal the decision in court in the coming days.

Seif al-Islam had been sentenced to death by a Tripoli court in 2015 for using violence against protesters in a 2011 uprising against his father, but that ruling has since been called into question by Libya's rival authorities. He is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity related to the uprising.

Libya is set to hold the first round of presidential elections on Dec. 24, after years of U.N.-led attempts to usher in a more democratic future and end the countrys civil war. Adding to the concerns surrounding the election, the U.N.'s top envoy for Libya submitted his resignation last week, though he said Wednesday he is prepared to stay on through the vote if needed.

Following the 2011 overthrow and killing of Moammar Gadhafi, oil-rich Libya spent most of the last decade split between rival governments  one based in the capital, Tripoli, and the other in the eastern part of the country. Each side in the civil war has also had the support of mercenaries and foreign forces from Turkey, Russia and Syria and other regional powers.

The son of Libya's former dictator submitted his candidacy papers in the southern town of Sabha on Nov. 14. It was the first time in years that the 49-year-old, who earned a PhD at the London School of Economics, appeared in public.

He had been captured by fighters in the town of Zintan late in 2011, as the uprising ended his father's rule after 40 years. Seif al-Islam was released in June 2017.

The announcement of his possible candidacy stirred controversy across the divided country, where a number of other high-profile candidates have also emerged in recent weeks. Among them are powerful military commander Khalifa Hifter and the country's interim prime minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

The long-awaited vote still faces challenges, including unresolved issues over laws governing the elections, and occasional infighting among armed groups. Other obstacles include the deep rift that remains between the countrys east and west and the presence of thousands of foreign fighters and troops.

Meanwhile, U.N. envoy Jan Kubis submitted his resignation last week, though it didn't become public until Tuesday.

The Geneva-based diplomat serves as both special envoy for Libya and head of the U.N. political mission in the country. He told the Security Council on Wednesday that he is leaving to facilitate a change he considers vital: moving the mission chief's job to Tripoli to be on the ground at a high-stakes moment for Libya.

The idea divided the council during discussions in September. Western countries embraced it; Russia rejected it.

Kubis added that he was ready to continue as special envoy through the election, though he said the U.N. had accepted his resignation with a Dec. 10 effective date.

Asked about the discrepancy, U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said the organization would "continue to work with him while were seeking a successor.

The job was open for nearly a year before being filled by Kubis, a former Slovak foreign minister and U.N. official in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Security Council emphasized the importance of the upcoming election Wednesday, urging an inclusive and consultative electoral process, warning against violence and disinformation and calling for Libyans to accept the results of the vote.

Libyan Ambassador Taher El Sonni said his country appreciates all international initiatives with genuine intentions, but he said the councils members need to heed us, too and let Libyans lead their own way out of crisis.

You have a moral responsibility towards the developments in my country over the past 10 years, he told the group. Dont belittle us.

___

Associated Press writer Jennifer Peltz contributed from New York.
The Midland City Council and Planning Commission both discussed the City Modern Master Plan this week.

The two governing bodies met on Monday and Tuesday, respectively, to discuss the progress made with the process so far, and the next steps they will take. Both council and the commission also had various agenda items to address as well.

The City Modern Master Plan is a project the city has been working on since the start of this year, exploring what residents want to see in Midland by 2050. Grant Murschel, director of planning and community development, presented the progress so far, having explored themes of resiliency and sustainability, transportation and mobility, and neighborhoods and livability. Within these broad themes included topics of: electric vehicles; mapping out neighborhoods; flood mitigation and sewer improvements; equitable development; and park improvements.

The master planning will be a five-step process before it is adopted, with the city currently at the tail-end of the Imagine It! Phase, Murschel said. This phase involved surveys and community conversations to come up with broad visions of the master plan.

Councilors asked several questions about the process and discussed topics they would like to see explored. Councilwoman Diane Brown-Wilhelm asked Murschel about affordable housing.

Mayor Maureen Donker wanted to see more exploration of electric vehicles and infrastructure.

Councilor Steve Arnosky said he was glad to see flood mitigation and sewer improvements as part of the master plan discussions. He also asked Murschel how the planning department was going to increase its participation and the community outreach.

Murschel said the participation has been good compared to other communities.

City council approved a resolution in a 5-0 vote to approve the Imagine It! report and send it back to the planning commission for further work.

Other city council business:

Council approved a labor agreement with Midland City Professional Fire Fighters Local 1315.

Council amended the Washington Woods budget and accepted a grant award from the Alden & Vada Dow Family Foundation in a 5-0 vote for a new chiller for the facility.

Other planning commission business:
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Banjul, Gambia (PANA) - The Gambian Truth Commissions call for the prosecution of former officials who committed the worst human rights abuses during the 1994-2017 rule of former president Yahya Jammeh, should be followed by a process of criminal accountability, 11 Gambian and international groups said on Thursday
Photo: (Photo : DarkoStojanovic/Pixnio)

Meharry Medical College, a Nashville school with a mostly Black population, gave $10,000 for each student before they left for the Thanksgiving holiday. President James E.K. Hildreth proudly announced the gift and said that the students should receive their money before leaving for the break.

The $10,000 cash gift per student comes from the COVID relief funds distributed by the federal government for colleges and universities under the CARES Act. In late 2020, higher education institutions across the country received an estimated $1 billion each.

While other schools used the funding to clear the students' debts or provide free tuition for their most vulnerable students, Meharry Medical College decided to give the money as a cash gift for 956 students.

Read Also: Target to Close Every Thanksgiving So Workers Could Spend the Holiday With Family

Be Good Stewards

In a video message to the school community, Hildreth said that the students could use the money in any way they choose, but he suggested investing the $10,000 for their training or education. He told the young adults to become "good stewards" and resist the urge to splurge on Black Friday deals this Thanksgiving.

The university president also thanked the students because they played significant roles in Nashville's coronavirus response as Meharry Medical College operated a COVID testing site since the start of the pandemic. Many of its medical students were also part of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in the city.

Meharry Medical College has been around for almost 150 years and has been one of the largest producers of Black medical doctors and dentists in the country, after Howard University in Washington, D.C. Hildreth said that its graduates would "soon give so much to our world" so they deserve this cash gift.

A senior at Meharry Medical College, Benson Joseph plans to use part of his cash gift for travel expenses once he applies for residency programs at various hospitals next year. The student, who hails from Florida, hopes to specialize in neurosurgery.

Joseph did not initially believe his classmates as they talked about the cash gift until he watched the school president's video. He said that this has been an early Christmas gift and will help many medical students who have been plunged into a trial by fire in the last two years because of the pandemic.

Graduating with Student Loan Debts

Meanwhile, a 2019 report from the Tennessean indicated that most students of Meharry leave with over $280,000 student debts when they graduate compared to other students from Nashville schools like Vanderbilt University or the University of Tennessee. The report also cited that black colleges and universities historically have exceptionally higher loans.

Since assuming office, President Joe Biden has implemented more than $2 billion student loan forgiveness for at least 30,000 individuals. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona revealed in a tweet that they are "just getting started," hinting that more student loan debts erasures could be underway. Advocates have been working to cancel at least $50,000 per borrower if Biden's Build Better Back proposal receives approval from the House and the Senate.

Related Article: Father Owes $550,000 in Student Loans So His 5 Kids Could Finish College
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Is a cheap Chromebook good enough for distance learning and homework? Definitelydepending on whats inside.

As a parent or a student, you may already have weighed the pros and cons of Windows laptops vs Chromebooks. One of the appeals of a Chromebook is cost, especially if a family has to buy several. But some of the cheapest Chromebooks weve seen come with some big caveats. Well go over the key factors to consider before you buy. Consider these while you check out our best Chromebook deals for Black Friday.

The first thing you should do when considering any Chromebook, especially one thats enticingly cheap, is to check it against Googles Auto Update Expiration list. While Microsoft supports Windows PCs for a long time, Google sets a limitcurrently about six years from the products original ship date for most consumer models, though some (especially education and enterprise models) get a few years more.

When a Chromebook goes off support, Google wont upgrade the Chromebooks ChromeOS any further, which means no new features and no security patches. If you buy an older Chromebook, its already a few years closer to its expiration than a brand-new model would be. Retailers do not publicize this, so its worth checking out.

My son spent most of last school year doing schoolwork on an original Chromebook Pixel from 2013, which was way out of date, with no problems whatsoeverbut there are no guarantees.

Display quality: Resolution and brightness

A classic feature of cheaper Chromebooks is a lower-quality display. Whether youre young or old, looking at a small, low-res screen for hours at a time can be fatiguing at best and detrimental at worst. Thats why you should buy a Chromebook with a Full HD (19201080) display if at all possible. An HD (1366768) screenoften found on the cheapest Chromebookscan be tolerated on smaller 11.6-inch displays, but we dont recommend it. Eye fatigue can affect kids as well as adults.

The displays on cheaper Chromebooks can also be on the dim side. They may suffice for indoor use, but outdoor light will wash out the screen. If you can find a brightness spec, look for something 250 nits or higher.

Memory matters more than storage

While Chromebooks can store data locally, the vast majority of schoolwork is performed online. To my knowledge, neither of my children have ever saved something on to a Chromebook directly, so the size of the onboard storage rarely matters. PC enthusiasts may also prefer faster SSDs over an eMMC flash drivebut for a Chromebook? It really makes no difference, and you shouldnt even really pay attention to how much storage a Chromebook has if your work is mostly or always done online.

Memory plays a bigger role, because thats where your browser data is loaded. More memory means you can have more available browser tabs for surfing the Web.

Most Chromebooks come with at least 4GB of memory. Anything less than that (such as 2GB) may have a detrimental effectin fact, Zoom recommends 4GB of memory. A child in elementary school might not be using a Chromebook for more than Google Classroom, Zoom, and some other app. An older child might need to have multiple tabs open for research. With older students, teens, and adults, consider a Chromebook with a bit more memory. (Unfortunately, Chromebooks arent usually designed to be upgradeable.)

Connectivity

As with any laptop, smaller and thinner models tend to skimp on ports. Think about what you need to connectsuch as a USB drive, a headset, or a display. In general, look for an HDMI port (for an external display option), a microSD or SD card slot for loading photos, and a USB-A port (ideally more than one) to plug in peripherals. Youll also see USB-C ports on some Chromebooks, but usually not the cheaper ones. (We see a lot of discounted Chromebooks ignoring HDMI ports entirely, especially the ones being sold for Black Friday or the holidays.)

Choosing an older, cheaper Chromebook might mean suffering with an older Wi-Fi radio. Generally, however, 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi or better, plus Bluetooth, should work, even for Zooms bandwidth requirements of 2.5 Mbps for group video chats at 1080p resolution.

Webcam: Just make sure there is one

No well-meaning teacher is going to care about the quality of a childs webcam as long as there is one. A better webcam can make it easier to see your child, or make their work more visible if theyre holding it up for inspection, but a well-lit room can probably offset any shortcomings.

Processor performance: Zoom requires more

Chromebooks designed for browser-based schoolwork traditionally havent required much processor powerand often saved cost with lower-end chips. Now, however, both Zoom and YouTube play a more significant role.

YouTube shouldnt give even old, cheap Chromebooks much of a workout, especially as YouTube automatically scales the resolution to deliver a good experience. But with Zoom becoming more prevalent, it might be worth leaning toward a Chromebook with an Intel processor, either a Celeron a full-fledged Core chip. Zooms system requirements call for a 1 GHz processor for Zoom calls.

Youll typically find Chromebooks offering Core chips (far more horsepower than necessary), Celeron or modern Pentium chips (probably sufficient) and Arm chips from Qualcomm and Mediatek. Wed typically agree that even an Arm chip can run a Chromebook just fine (after all, theres one in your smartphone) but a quick web search of the processor cant hurt. If the chip was manufactured more than five years ago, you may want to consider a newer model.

This story was updated with additional information on November 25.
The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II has applauded Gyaama Pensan Senior High School for beating Opoku Ware School and Achimota School to win the National Renewal Energy Competition 2021.



The school leading all the others is a sign of greatness and therefore must be recognized on that level.



Otumfuo added that their award is a clear indication of the hard work of students and staff which also sends a signal that the location of a school does not matter and that excellence is possible.



Coming first in renewable energy contest shows that youre doing well in science and you can do more.



Otumfuo said you have gone ahead of Achimota and Opoku Ware so you should know that your school is great



The subject for the competition is equal to that of the recent climate summit held outside which means the topic is an important one.



The students and staff were charged to put in more hard work for continued success.



It does not matter where a school is sited, whether, in Kumasi or Accra, you can do it. Your award tells that both teachers and students are doing well, I realized that when I saw you.



This came up when the headmistress of Gyaama Pensan SHS, Madam Stella Naaenyo Atease led the student and staff to Manhyia Palace during the observation of Awukudae yesterday.



She said the National Renewal Energy Competition was initiated by the Energy Commission and Ghana Education Service for Senior High Schools of which their school made it in the Kumasi and Northern sector competitions after which the grand finale which took place in the Greater Accra Region also saw them through.



We got involved with the renewable energy competition of which we came first in Kumasi and also in the Northern sector. Currently, Gyaama Pensan SHTS is the champion for the renewable energy challenge 2021.



Aboasohene, Nana Opoku Tuasekanko II, was with the management of the school at Manhyia.









Source: kasapafmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Central And Western Regional Communications Manager for Ghana Water Company Ltd (GWCL), Nana Yaw Barima Barine, has urged customers owing the company to pay their debts.



He cautioned that the company will opt for prosecution over failure to remit the debt.



According to him, a lot of customers in the Central Region are owing them and due to that, their meters have been disconnected indicating they will be taken to court.



He disclosed there are about 28 customers indebted to a sum of GHC 305,000.



"We have processed them for court to come and explain why they are using water and refusing to pay their bills.



"Ghana Water Company is not a subvented organization and that there are no funds to pay salaries, buy pipes, chemicals among others, thus, all these can be done by the collection of water bills. So if a customer uses water and fails to pay the bill, it may lead to shutting down of the company and if that happens there would be no supply of good water in the country," he added.



Nana Yaw Barima Barnie made these comments when the company took some customers in KEEA and Cape Coast to a district court but some of them have failed to appear before the court.



The case has been adjourned to November 29, 6th and 15th December, 2021 respectively.









Source: Sally Ngissah/Peace News









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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British experts have sounded the alarm over a new Covid variant believed to have emerged in Botswana that is the most mutated version of the virus yet.



Only 10 cases of the strain, which could eventually be named 'Nu', have been detected so far.



But it has already been spotted in three countries, suggesting the variant is more widespread.



It carries 32 mutations, many of which suggest it is highly transmissible and vaccine-resistant and has more alterations to its spike protein than any other variant.



Professor Francois Balloux, a geneticist at University College London, said it likely emerged in a lingering infection in an immunocompromised patient, possibly someone with undiagnosed AIDS.



Changes to the spike make it difficult for current jabs to fight off, because they train the immune system to recognise an older version of this part of the virus.



Dr Tom Peacock, a virologist at Imperial College who first picked up on its spread, described the variant's combination of mutations as 'horrific'.



He warned that B.1.1.529, its scientific name, had the potential to be 'worse than nearly anything else about'  including the world-dominant Delta strain.



Scientists told MailOnline, however, that its unprecedented number of mutations might work against it and make it 'unstable', preventing it from becoming widespread.



They said there was 'no need to be overly concerned' because there were no signs yet that it was spreading rapidly.



Three infections have been detected in Botswana to date and six in South Africa  where variant surveillance is more robust.



One case has also been spotted in a 36-year-old man in Hong Kong who recently returned from the continent.



There are no cases in Britain. But the UK Health Security Agency, which took over from Public Health England, said it was monitoring the situation closely.



The Prime Minister's official spokesman said the variant was 'not seen as something that is an issue' for the UK at present.



The mutant variant has sparked concern because of its 'very extensive' set of mutations.



Professor Francois Balloux, a geneticist at University College London, said it was likely the variant would be much more able to dodge antibodies than Delta.



He told MailOnline: 'For the time being, it should be closely monitored.



'But there's no need to be overly concerned, unless it starts going up in frequency.'



He said its many mutations suggested it could have emerged during a lingering infection in an immunocompromised person, such as an AIDS patient.



In patients with weakened immune systems infections can linger for months because the body is unable to fight it off.



This gives the virus time to acquire mutations that allow it to get around the body's defences.



Scientists previously said the Kent 'Alpha' variant may have emerged in this way.



Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at Warwick Medical School, said it 'looks like' this mutant strain could be better at dodging vaccine-triggered immunity than other mutants based on its mutations.



But he added: 'It's always difficult to say just by looking at [mutations], and so much depends on how the immune system sees the change and responds.



'But it looks like just because of the severe load of [mutations]  some of which we know about quite a bit in terms of harming transmission  it looks like it might be slightly more worrying than the South African variant.'



He said it was hard to tell whether the virus would be more transmissible than Delta at this stage.

Source: Dailymail









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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Mr Samuel Atta-Akyea, former Minister for Works and Housing has lauded the Akufo-Addo led government for the effective management of the economy even in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic which has ravaged many countries.



According to him, the efficient management of the economy was an eloquent testimony of an exemplary and quality leadership by President Akufo-Addo.



Mr Speaker, strong leadership is measured by the gargantuan or sometimes the enormous problems one tackles and solves



Mr Atta-Akyea was contributing to the debate on the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of Government in Parliament.



Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta on November 17, 2021 presented the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of Government to Parliament after which the House was expected to debate the principles of the budget.



Mr Atta-Akyea also maintained that despite COVID-19 pandemic not a single worker in the public sector was laid off and that the economy had the shock absorbers to continue.



He cited for example that the economic impact of the pandemic on advance economies such as the United Kingdom and the United States has been unprecedented, saying what we are confronted is international.



He said government was working towards generating power from the Pawlugu multi-purpose dam in line with Goal Seven of the Sustainable Development Goals on affordable and clean energy for the people.



Mr Atta-Akyea also described the government initiative to setup the Ghana Integrated Aluminum Development Company as a gamechanger to the countrys quest for development.



He said initiative would have immense benefit for the nation and that the upstream sector would generate thousands of jobs for the country while the downstream sector was expected to yield billions of dollars with direct and indirect jobs.



Dr Kwabena Donkor, former Minister of Power in his contribution lauded government for assisting Ghana National Petroleum Corporation to acquire seven percent interest Anadarko Oil Company in Deep Water Tano and Cape Three Points, saying it fulfilled the vision started by erstwhile Mahama government to increase the countrys stake in the oil and gas business.



He however refuted claims made by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta in the budget that Parliament had approved 37 Deep Water Cape Three Points and 70 percent South Deep Water Cape Three Points oil blocks.



Mr Speaker, I want to put on record that Parliament never granted this approvedI am really amazed, mesmerized, worried that such a major policy decision could go into the budget statement.



Mr Speaker, what this Parliament did is to give the Ministers of Energy and Finance, and by implication GNPC the nod to go and negotiate a price and report back to this House for approvalthe Hansard of 6th August, 2021 attest to this he added.



Dr Donkor also stated that governments intention to achieve universal electricity coverage for the country by 2024 had been abysmal.



He said in 2016, the access rate for electricity coverage in the country was 83.25 percent and over past five years government has been able to increase it to 86.6 percent, saying the NPP government has been able to addition only three percent to the electricity coverage in the country.





Source: GNA









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Ghana's solely-licensed Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH), Afriwave Telecom says it is now set to give value to mobile value-added service (VAS) providers who work with telcos to provide subscription-based services to Ghanaians.



Afriwave is mandated by its license and by law to, among other things, deploy content delivery networks and telecom VAS platforms for authorized VAS providers in Ghana. This is to provide a single point of access for VAS providers into the telecom ecosystem and also facilitate revenue reconciliation between them and the telcos.



In that regard, Afriwave recently added a more sophisticated state-of-the-art data center through a strategic partnership with Ghana's second Internet Exchange Point (IXP) host, ONIX, who now hosts Afriwave's US$38 million infrastructure, set to provide full connectivity, Cloud and VAS into the Ghanaian and regional market.



This, according to Afriwave, has put the ICH in a strong position to carry all the VAS traffic in addition to the 100% voice and SMS interconnect traffic it currently carries between all telcos in the country.



Afriwave said it is set to also make life easier for the VAS players by eliminating the stress of having to go from one telco to the other to activate licensed short codes for a VAS service.



"They can now come to us and we will get all the telcos to activate the short codes and then the VAS player can connect from the ICH and provide services to subscribers of all the telcos via the ICH," they said.



Again, the ICH promises to address the revenue reconciliation challenges between VAS players and the telcos, leveraging the experience and expertise it has built in managing the interconnect revenue reconciliation between telcos themselves.

"So, with the ICH, you kill two birds with one stone - you get easy and stress free access to all telcos at a single point, and you also get the revenue reconciliation concerns addressed," the company said in a statement copied to TechGh24.



Value for Subscribers

[caption id="attachment_7064" align="alignnone" width="436"]

78-year-old Emelia Botchwey found VUCLIP GAMES activated on her phone and she lost over GHS40 to it

Meanwhile, there is an added value for subscribers as well, particularly with regards to the seeking their express consent for VAS subscription.



There have alleged remote signing on of subscribers to VAS services, which then lead to heavy airtime loss on the blind side of the subscribers.



But an industry expert has said that the ICH can cure that problem provided the ICH law, Electronic Communications Amendment Act, 2016, Act 910 is fully implemented to enjoin all VAS providers to route their traffic through the ICH.

It would be recalled that lately, lots of Ghanaians have been complaining about vanishing airtime. A case in point is one 78-year-old lady, Emelia Botchwey who lost over GHS40 to a VAS subscription called VUCLIP GAMES on MTN, for which she was charged GHS2.02 a day on her blind side, until her son discovered it and deactivated the service.



One Richard Bentle Junior also reported finding 12 unsolicited subscriptions on his phone recently, while yours truly also found an unsolicited paid-for Weather Service on his MTN TurboNet SIM, even though the TurboNet SIM was in the TurboNet and has never been put in any mobile phone.



VAS Code of Conduct



[caption id="attachment_513" align="alignnone" width="474"] NCA[/caption]

This is in spite of the the fact that the National Communications Authority (NCA) has a fine law dubbed Unsolicited Electronic Communications Code of Conduct, which is supposed to guide and govern the operations of VAS providers and how they relate to subscribers.



Section 6.1.3 of the NCAs Code of Conduct says The process of obtaining [subscribers] consent shall be clear and transparent to the subscriber, while Section 31 (1,2 and 3) of places the duty of subscriber protection and consequences for the violation of same, squarely on the telcos, even if the violation was committed by their VAS partners.



The Expert however noted that whereas the ICH can ensure some sanity with regards to third-party VAS players whose service qualify as interconnect traffic, the limitation is that "the telcos are themselves VAS providers and therefore can choose to route their VAS traffic directly on-net to their subscribers without routing it through ICH."



He however believes that the NCA can cure this limitation by insisting that telcos separate their VAS (authorization/license) business from the main telecom service as has been done for mobile money. In that case, all VAS authorization holders, including telcos, will have to rout the traffic through the ICH, and so there will be sanity there as well.



The Telecom Consultant however urged that the ICH operator, Afriwave Telecom ensure that it is really fully equipped to carry all the VAS interconnect traffic in the market, otherwise the market players may push back if the regulator wants to fully implement the ICH laws and insist all VAS interconnect traffic should go through the ICH.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The Danish government has pledged its commitment to support the water sector in Ghana.

According to the Danish Prime Minister, Mrs Mette Frederiksen, that had become necessary to ensure sustainable water supply, which was being threatened by global warming, a phenomenon which had culminated in challenges in many areas of human life.



The Prime Minister expressed the commitment when she called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo at the Jubilee House in Accra yesterday, during which they discussed bilateral relations between the two countries.



Mrs Frederiksen, who is the first Danish PM to visit Ghana, is on a two-day duty tour of the country.



She was accompanied to the Jubilee House by some Danish ministers of state, as well as the opposition leader from the Liberal Party of Denmark, Mr Jakob Ellemann-Jensen.



The visit also marked the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Ghana and Denmark.



Issues of interests



Mrs Frederiksen said the two countries had many issues of interest, including climate change, which she said was leading to an increase in poverty rates and migration from Africa.



We need to respond to threats of climate change in both Africa and Europe by building a stronger bridge between us to tackle the emerging challenges, she said.



On matters of radicalism and piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, she said they posed a danger to peace and harmony in the West African subregion.



She said it was for that reason that Denmark was helping to protect the ocean, adding that maritime security is a high priority of Denmark and we are happy with our collaborations so far.



On how to find solutions to youth unemployment, Mrs Frederiksen said it would be among issues to be discussed at a meeting of the African Union and the European Union in Brussels in February next year.



She commended the government for the efforts at containing the spread of COVID-19 in the country, saying: I would like to congratulate you on your efforts at fighting the COVID-19 spread. You have been quite successful in your country.



As part of her itinerary, the Danish PM will visit Frigate Danish Esbern Snare which has been deployed to the Gulf of Guinea to help improve maritime security.



Inspiring



President Akufo-Addo said the visit of the PM was inspiring and provided bases for the consolidation of the relationship between the two nations, which he said dated back to the 17th century.



He expressed concern over the growing menace of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, a development that the Danish government was helping to address.



He commended the Prime Minister for your courage in taking the decision to provide some military response for the activities of the pirates.



The President further expressed hope that the AU-EU Brussels meeting would provide opportunity for leaders on both sides to find lasting solutions to contemporary challenges of unemployment, security, among others.





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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We're back in familiar territory - growing concern about a new variant of coronavirus.



The latest is the most heavily mutated version discovered so far - and it has such a long list of mutations that it was described by one scientist as "horrific", while another told me it was the worst variant they'd seen.



It is early days and the confirmed cases are still mostly concentrated in one province in South Africa, but there are hints it may have spread further.



Immediately there are questions around how quickly the new variant spreads, its ability to bypass some of the protection given by vaccines and what should be done about it.



There is a lot of speculation, but very few clear answers.



So, what do we know?



The variant is called B.1.1.529 and is likely to be given a Greek code-name (like the Alpha and Delta variants) by the World Health Organization on Friday.



It is also incredibly heavily mutated. Prof Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the Centre for Epidemic Response and Innovation in South Africa, said there was an "unusual constellation of mutations" and that it was "very different" to other variants that have circulated.



"This variant did surprise us, it has a big jump on evolution [and] many more mutations that we expected," he said.



In a media briefing, Prof de Oliveira said there were 50 mutations overall and more than 30 on the spike protein, which is the target of most vaccines and the key the virus uses to unlock the doorway into our body's cells.



Zooming in even further to the receptor-binding domain (that's the part of the virus that makes first contact with our body's cells), it has 10 mutations compared to just two for the Delta variant that swept the world.



This level of mutation has most likely come from a single patient who was unable to beat the virus.



A lot of mutation doesn't automatically mean: bad. It is important to know what those mutations are actually doing.



But the concern is this virus is now radically different to the original that emerged in Wuhan, China. That means vaccines, which were designed using the original strain, may not be as effective.



Some of the mutations have been seen before in other variants, which gives some insight their likely role in this variant.



For example N501Y seems to make it easier for a coronavirus to spread. There are others in there that make it harder for antibodies to recognise the virus and might make vaccines less effective, but there are others that are completely new.



Prof Richard Lessells, from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, said: "They give us concern this virus might have enhanced transmissibility, enhanced ability to spread from person to person, but might also be able to get around parts of the immune system."

Source: BBC









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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Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Accra, in line with its Planet21 Environmental Campaign and the hotels 10th Anniversary celebration, held a Community Clean-Up Exercise on Friday 19 November 2021.



The clean-up based on the theme, DRIVING CHANGE TOWARDS POSITIVE HOSPITALITY commenced from the premises of the hotel throughout surrounding areas such as The Octagon, TUC, and the British Council amongst others.



The Planet21 programme under the Accor Group works with its team members, involves its guests, innovates with its partners, and works with local communities to achieve goals.



Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Accras Community Clean-Up was led in full swing by the General Manager of the hotel, Deborah Lee-Ann Sivertsen with the support of team members and Zoomlion Ghana Ltd.



During an interaction with journalists after the activity, Deborah Lee-Ann Sivertsen reiterated the need to raise awareness on sustainable practices and reassess our environmental footprint.



As a hotel, we are committed to providing a safe and healthy workplace for our team members and guests in all areas of our operations. Caring for our community and our environment is a necessity and we are proud that our team have embraced this and continue to support our internally processes to reduce energy consumption, manage our waste, among others.



Through this clean-up exercise, we hope to demonstrate our commitments towards positive hospitality so that ultimately, our guests can be encouraged to take action with us knowing that every step taken to preserve our environment counts, she said.



Team members of the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Accra also used the opportunity to share food with one hundred street children and the homeless within the surrounding areas.



It would be recalled that the Former President of Ghana, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, who was the Guest of Honour of the inaugural celebration, officially declared Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Accra launched on Monday 7th November 2011 in Accra.



The flagship hotel was completely rebuilt by his Royal Highness Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdul Aziz Alsaud, Chairman of the Kingdom Holding Company and Kingdom Hotel Investments (KHI). The historic event was also witnessed by Jean Gabriel Perez, former President and CEO of Movenpick Hotels & Resorts, Roger Kacou, Former Vice-President Africa  Movenpick Hotels & Resorts, Samad Sok, Chairman and CEO of KHI, Stuart Chase, first General Manager of the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel Accra, a relative of Ueli Prager, founder of Movenpick Hotels & Resorts, Mr. Kofi Bucknor, several government delegations and hospitality industry players.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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The introduction of the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021 has generated debate.

The bill seeks to provide legislation to stop all activities relating to LGBTTQQIAAP+ in Ghana.



Religious bodies, traditional rulers and Ghanaians have registered their support for the bill. At the same time, some learned lawyers and reputable academics have expressed their reservations against it.



LGBTTQQIAAP+?



To be or not to be; to legislate or not to legislate; to ban or not to ban, ordinary Ghanaians deserve further and better details of LGBTTQQIAAP+ in order to appreciate arguments from both sides.



L stands for lesbian  a naturally born female who says she does not feel for a man. She only desires to have sexual relationship with other females.

G stands for gay  a naturally born man/male who wants to have sexual relationship with other men/males by having sex through the backside of men. He does not want a woman.



B stands for bi-sexual meaning a female or a male who wants to have sexual affair with both males and females. Example, a married woman with a lesbian partner at the same time or a husband with another male sexual partner at the same time.



T stands for transgender  a naturally born male or female who feels that he or she is rather a male or female. Example, a boy who feels that he is a girl or a girl who feels that she is a boy instead. Such people want freedom to take medicines to increase in them the gender they feel to identify with.



T stands for tran-sexual  a person who wants to change from a man to a woman or from a woman to a man so they undergo surgery for that purpose. In fact, in certain countries, girls are allowed to change into boys and boys into girls. The technical term is transvestites.





Q stands for queer  a person who does not want to be limited to one gender. That person wants to be described as an individual  not he not she. Sometimes, such a person may have both sexual organs called hermaphrodite.



Q stands for questioning  a person who does not feel or know what gender he/she belongs to. If you call him he he will say I am not he, if you call her she she will say I am not she. If you ask so what are you? he/she will say I dont know. I am trying to find out or explore my gender.



I stands for inter-sexual  a person born with sexual characteristics which do not fit into the he and she categories.



Medical experts say that there are four genders: he, she, neuter and common. The world is currently estimated to have 52 or more genders.



The United Nations (UN) actually passed a resolution in June 2016 to recognise unlimited genders in the world (Ghana abstained from voting to pass that resolution). UN Free & Equals has more on this fact.



A stands for a-sexual  a person who does not have sexual feelings for anyone but he/she is not a celibate. A celibate is person who does not want to marry or have sex for religious reasons. For a-sexuals, they want to marry and have sex but not with anybody. What about animals?



A stands for allies  a person who supports all these people and their activities.



P stands for pansexual  this person wants to have sexual relationship with anyone and with all types of sexual preferences or orientations, no exception.



Debate



These are the simple meanings of the LGBTTQIAAP+ as stated in the Bill before Parliament.



As the Parliamentarians prepare to debate, they, just like the ordinary Ghanaian, ought to fully understand what LGBTTQQIAAP+ is all about.



The next question for consideration is why plus (+)? What does the plus (+) stand for?



The Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary gives the meaning of plus (+), among others, as an adjective used after a number to show that the real number or amount is more than what has been mentioned.



Without doubt, there are many MPs and Ghanaians, who do not fully know why there is a plus (+) and what it entails. Unfortunately, the pro-LGBTQ++ lawyers and professors have not to explained the full details of LGBTQ++ and what it involves.



Others



A meeting notice released in Canada recently had the following acronyms LGGBDTTTIQQAAPP. This notice included Twospirit(2s), Androgynous, Demisexual and Polyamorous which are not found in the bill.



According to BBC, LGBTTQIAAP+ list is not exhaustive. It has no end.

Considering carefully Ghanaian culture on one hand and human rights arguments for inexhaustive practices on the other, we need to tread cautiously never to inflict cultural chaos and absurdities on our communities.

For instance, will a bisexual, transgender, a-sexual, queer, questioning, intersexual, pansexual, etc, be able to occupy a stool or skin? Will custom permit a polyamorous woman as a queen mother? Or are we going to accept a Priest, who is bisexual, trans-sexual?

Additionally, we need to protect Ghanaians from obscure practices which may have a negative impact on our children, promote incest, bestiality and other behaviours known as taboos culturally, so as to maintain peace and order and to preserve our unique cultural identity.

May our Parliamentarians be so guided.



The writer is a lawyer.









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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Editor-in-Chief of the New Crusading Guide, Abdul Malik Kweku Baako says the Roads and Highways Minister, Kwasi Amoako-Atta's cessation of road tolls is a needless ''premature ejaculation''.



According to him, it's wrong for the Roads Minister to have stopped the collection of the tolls.



The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, presenting the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy at Parliament on Wednesday, November 17, indicated that "government has abolished all tolls on public roads and bridges. This takes effect immediately the Budget is approved".



Immediately after the Finance Minister's annoucement, Kwesi Amoako-Atta order for all public road toll collection to be halted effective Thursday, November 18.



His statement read; "Following the presentation of the 2022 Budget by the Hon. Minister of Finance on behalf of His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Ghana on Wednesday, November 17, 2021, the Ministry of Roads and Highways hereby directs the cessation of the collection of road and bridge tolls at all locations nationwide. This directive takes effect from 12am on Thursday, November 18, 2021.



The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, in an interview with Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme justified the Roads Minister's directive stating he had the adminstrative right to cancel the tolls.



Kojo Oppong Nkrumah argued that, "if Parliament has given you powers to introduce a charge and you want to suspend that charge, administratively you can do so without going to Parliament".



But Kweku Baako dissents to the justifications as well as the Minister's directive.



According to him, Kwesi Amoako-Atta had no legal right to stop the collection of road tolls when Parliament hadn't approved the directive yet.



"I think it was done wrong in terms of the sequence of events," he said.



Quoting verbatim a portion of the Finance Minister's statement where he specifically said the removal of road tolls only "takes effect immediately the Budget is approved", Mr. Baako was unhappy that the Roads Minister couldn't wait before prematurely executing his order.



"I repeat that relevant portion; 'this takes effect immediately after the budget is approved'. So, there was no room for premature ejaculation on the part of the Roads Minister. What he did was completely wrong . . . it was a rush, premature ejaculation and one has to be honest and admit some of these things. You see some of these complications don't help. Needless! And so I don't even see why one should attempt to rationalize or justify this gaffe!!," he asserted while contributing to a panel discussion on Kokrokoo on Wednesday, 24th November.







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 Minister of Central Region, Kwamena Duncan, has spurred Ghanaians to support the e-levy policy by the government.



Since the announcement of the e-levy by the Finance Minister in his presentation of the 2022 budget, there have been heated arguments on its significance.



Some critics, majorly the Minority in Parliament, have argued this is a ploy by the government to siphon money from Ghanaians and further compound their hardships.



Minority members like Sam George, Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, and the North Tongu MP, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa among others have vehemently opposed the budget.



Sam George, in a tweet on Saturday, 20 November 2021, said; The more I process the e-Levy, the angrier I get. It is a complete ripoff. It is a taxation Ponzi scheme designed to tax d same value of money multiple times and further stressed it is plain government thievery & I cannot vote to approve a budget that has that levy included. No!



On the part of Hon. Okudzeto Ablakwa, the E-levy, the MoMo tax, this budget is being called all sorts of names, the killer budget, (with) so many killer taxes. So they (the government) say that no tolls will be paid from immediate effect so that they can save face."



So that the bitter pill which they are forcing down our throats, Ghanaians will accept it. We are not kids, we know what is going on. We will not allow Ghana to become a banana republic because of a few shenanigan lawbreakers, he added.



Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, also reacting to the budget, stated, "it's only the Ken Ofori-Atta who ironically eases burdens to quote his words that there is no emotion about the suffering of Ghanaians, yet he is imposing further suffering, imposing a 1.75% MOMO electronic banking tax. So, it's only Ken Ofori-Atta who eases suffering with the imposition of new taxes targeted at GHC 15 billion within this period".



"The system is hot; to wit the system may not be able to bear the hardship. Literally, the system is hot," he emphasized.



But Kwamena Duncan has deflated the Minority's opposition asserting the e-levy is a good alternative to enhancing the nation's infrastructure development.



According to him, only a small fraction of the population are captured by the tax net which makes it difficult to improve the economy, therefore the e-levy will help to widen the net for every person to be part of Ghana's development.



"Close to 31 million, those who have the tax duty on their shoulder is just 3 million. Can this be fair in building a country? Can this be fair in building a country? Can this be an adequate source to cater for the needs of the people of this country?" he questioned.



He called for a collective support to make the e-levy effective.



"It all requires our collective contribution. You cannot lead your people to demonstrate that you want your roads done and then, when the government says let us all pull together, the little drops will make a mighty ocean, let us pull together to enable government to find the resources to do the roads, then you turn around that [look] we will not support this," he said during a panel discussion on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo'.





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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Governance Lecturer at the Central University, Dr. Benjamin Otchere-Ankrah, has called on government to reconsider the e-levy rate on electronic transactions announced by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta during his presentation of the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy.



The Finance Minister, reading the budget at Parliament, disclosed government's decision to abolish all road tolls and the introduction of the e-levy ensuring every Ghanaian pays tax on mobile money and bank transfers.



A 1.75 percent charge has been proposed by the Minister and awaits Parliamentary approval.



"After considerable deliberations, Government has decided to place a levy on all electronic transactions to widen the tax net and rope in the informal sector. This shall be known as the 'Electronic Transaction Levy or E-Levy.' Electronic transactions covering mobile money payments, bank transfers, merchant payments and inward remittances will be charged at an applicable rate of 1.75%, which shall be borne by the sender except inward remittances, which will be borne by the recipient".



"Mr. Speaker, to safeguard efforts being made to enhance financial inclusion and protect the vulnerable, all transactions that add up to GH100 or less per day (which is approximately GH3000 per month) will be exempt from this levy. A portion of the proceeds from the E-Levy will be used to support entrepreneurship, youth employment, cyber security, digital and road infrastructure among others. 3y3 Baako, Ye nyinaa bey tua. Mr. Speaker, this new policy also comes into effect (once appropriation is passed) from 1st January, 2022. Government will work with all industry partners to ensure that their systems and payment platforms are configured to implement the policy," he said.



Dr. Benjamin Otchere-Ankrah has welcomed the e-levy opining that it's a good initiative.



According to him, in principle, he is not against the levy provided it will be used for its intended purpose.



However, his issue has to do with the 1.75% which he says it's high for the start, so calling for a review of the amount.



He believes lot of Ghanaians, like himself, will have no problem paying the levy if it is made moderate for all.



''For me, the 1.75 is too high. Can we reduce it to 1 percent or 0.8? I will be the last person to say we shouldn't pay tax'' but the amount needs to be reviewed, he said on Peace FM's morning show ''Kokrokoo''.







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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African Mermaid Sister Derborah and Queen Hamamat Montia have set the Internet ablaze with new mouth-watering photo .



Sister Derby paid a visit to Hamamat at her African-themed spa, Hamamat African Village.



@iamHamamat wrote on her Instagram page "We Love it when you visit The Village #KingsandQueens: A rare case of the African Mermaid Sister Deborah in the Village. I admire my sister for so many reasons especially her continuous fight against plastics and saving the African ocean from pollution by using her music to create awareness . Book your Village adventure this Holiday Season . The Ultimate African Experience awaits you .



Hamamat Montia is one of Ghanas iconic entrepreneurs as she delights tourist in her African-Village themed spa.Hamamat Montia, has opened a new beauty spa in the Northern Region of Ghana.



Tourism in Ghana is on the rise and Hamamat's African Village is definitely on our list of destined places.

Source: peacefmonline.com









Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority.

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Beverley von Zielonka is the new head of Unisus School, enrolment at which she hopes to increase from its current level of about 150 students.
Mike Farnworth, minister of public safety and solicitor general, talks during a news conference at legislature in Victoria, Monday, Oct. 28, 2019. He says more than 6,500 people have been registered as evacuees and those whose homes were flooded last week are eligible for a $2,000 grant through the Canadian Red Cross and the province. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
Kasari Govender, British Columbia's human rights commissioner, is seen in an undated handout photo. The office of British Columbia's human rights commissioner has released its submissions to the province's special committee on reforming the Police Act, including an analysis of police data that it says shows "profound racial disparities." THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-B.C. Human Rights Commission, *MANDATORY CREDIT*
What type of bike is your primary bike?



Fat bike: 0.48%

Cross country: 10.32%

Dirt jump / street / 4X: 1.03%

Downcountry: 4.45%

eMTB: 3.41%

Enduro / all mountain: 50.22%

Freeride / park: 1.43%

Trail: 26.22%

Downhill: 2.45%



What brand is your current primary mountain bike? (Top 50 brands)



Specialized: 10.44%

Santa Cruz: 9.37%

Trek: 6.78%

Other: 4.69%

Transition: 4.63%

Giant: 4.46%

Ibis: 3.97%

Yeti: 3.95%

Norco: 3.87%

Rocky Mountain: 3.56%

Commencal: 3.47%

YT Industries: 3.39%

Kona: 2.96%

Canyon: 2.53%

Pivot: 2.34%

Scott: 2.12%

Evil: 1.89%

Devinci: 1.44%

Orbea: 1.29%

Intense: 1.28%

Cannondale: 1.27%

Nukeproof: 1.09%

Banshee: 1.05%

Marin: 0.95%

Knolly: 0.87%

Salsa: 0.72%

Cube: 0.68%

Guerilla Gravity: 0.68%

Fobidden: 0.65%

Niner: 0.65%

Propain: 0.62%

GT: 0.56%

Polygon: 0.56%

Chromag: 0.53%

Mondraker: 0.52%

Vitus: 0.52%

Orange: 0.50%

Revel: 0.49%

Cotic: 0.47%

Whyte Bikes: 0.47%

Merida: 0.38%

Canfield: 0.36%

NS: 0.36%

Diamondback: 0.35%

Nicolai: 0.32%

Fezzari: 0.31%

Pole: 0.28%

Ragley: 0.26%

Lapierre: 0.25%

Ghost: 0.47%



Which brand of complete mountain bike will you likely purchase next? (Top 50 brands)



Other: 9.41%

Santa Cruz: 8.91%

Specialized: 8.34%

Transition: 6.55%

Commencal: 5.45%

Norco: 4.88%

Trek: 4.45%

Ibis: 3.94%

Canyon: 3.63%

Yeti: 3.28%

Pivot: 3.13%

YT Industries: 2.90%

Rocky Mountain: 2.89%

Evil: 2.27%

Scott: 1.85%

Propain: 1.84%

Nukeproof: 1.83%

Giant: 1.80%

Kona: 1.76%

Forbidden: 1.67%

Guerilla Gravity: 1.59%

Orbea: 1.27%

Devinci: 1.21%

Cannondale: 1.11%

Revel: 1.07%

Banshee: 0.84%

Marin: 0.72%

Intense: 0.62%

Knolly: 0.54%

Salsa: 0.50%

Cotic: 0.46%

Fezzari: 0.46%

Polygon: 0.44%

Raaw: 0.44%

Chromag: 0.40%

GT: 0.40%

Mondraker: 0.38%

Vitus: 0.37%

Cube: 0.36%

Orange: 0.35%

Canfield: 0.34%

Nicolai: 0.33%

Zerode: 0.33%

Niner: 0.30%

Juliana: 0.25%

Pole: 0.24%

Spot: 0.21%

Surly: 0.18%

Whyte Bikes: 0.18%

Merida: 0.17%



What is the wheelsize of your current mountain bike?



26": 5.42%

26" Plus: 0.27%

27.5": 29.67%

27.5" Plus: 3.87%

Mullet (29" front, 27.5" rear): 3.79%

29": 55.31%

29" Plus: 0.96%

Fat Bike: 0.37%%

Other: 0.34%



What is the wheel size of the mountain bike you will likely purchase next?



26": 1.04%

26" Plus: 0.16%

27.5": 14.75%

27.5" Plus: 2.78%

Mullet (29" front, 27.5" rear): 15.80%

29": 62.82%

29" Plus: 1.21%

Fat Bike: 0.43%%

Other: 1.02%



How much rear suspension does your current primary bike have?



It's a hardtail: 12.83%

Less than 100 mm: 1.16%

100mm - 119mm: 6.29%

120mm - 129mm: 8.57%

130mm - 139mm: 11.27%

140mm - 149mm: 15.19%

150mm - 160mm: 29.96%

161mm - 180mm: 12.04%%

180mm +: 2.68%



How much rear suspension do you plan on your next bike having?



It's a hardtail: 6.29%

Less than 100 mm: 0.88%

100mm - 119mm: 5.39%

120mm - 129mm: 9.54%

130mm - 139mm: 11.27%

140mm - 149mm: 16.83%

150mm - 160mm: 30.51%

161mm - 180mm: 16.02%%

180mm +: 3.35%



When buying a new bike how important are a bike's aesthetics?



Not at all important, I'll buy the ugliest bike in the world if it rides great and the price is right: 8.5%

Somewhat important, I don't seek out aesthetics but I won't buy a bike I hate the look of: 59.65%

Very important, there are plenty of good bikes out there and I won't ride an ugly bike: 31.85%



In general, how loud do you want your bike to look?



Mild (plain colours, minimal graphics): 47.67%

Styled (strong colours, tasteful graphics): 43.75%

Wild (bright colours, lots of contrast, aggressive graphics): 6.35%

Other: 2.23%



What would you change about your current bike??



All my stuff is beat, so it needs new wheels, drivetrain, brakes, etc.: 8.01%

Honestly, it just needs a new paint job: 7.43%

I want 27.5" wheels: 1.54%

I want 29" wheels: 4.69%

I'd kill for a shorter seat tube and longer dropper post: 3.94%

I'd love some on-frame storage and better cable routing: 7.25%

I'd make it a lot lighter: 16.88%

I'd modernize the geo, of course. Slacker, longer, and with a steeper seat angle: 7.19%

I'd want less (and better) suspension travel: 1.60%

I'd want more (and better) suspension travel: 9.51%

If it had the latest hub standard, I'd keep it forever: 2.35%

It just needs a motor: 2.10%

My bike can't carry a water bottle, so that's what I'd add: 3.55%

Other: 23.95%



What frame material would you like your next mountain bike to be?



Aluminium: 25.88%

Carbon: 49.22%

Steel: 3.40%

Titanium: 2.41%

Other: 0.52%

Frame material doesn't matter to me: 18.56%





We see a lot of comments proclaiming the death of carbon on our stories but that doesn't seem to be borne out in these results. Nearly 50% of respondents told us they were planning on purchasing a carbon fibre bike next with only a quarter planting their flag for aluminium. 3.4% of you are steel stalwarts while exotic titanium can only convince 2.4% of you.



We see a lot of comments proclaiming the death of carbon on our stories but that doesn't seem to be borne out in these results. Nearly 50% of respondents told us they were planning on purchasing a carbon fibre bike next with only a quarter planting their flag for aluminium. 3.4% of you are steel stalwarts while exotic titanium can only convince 2.4% of you.

How would you classify your attitudes around e-mountain bikes?



They are amazing: 12.73%

Curious, but not ready buy one: 11.78%

I want one, but they are too expensive: 13.05%

Not for me, but understand the appeal: 28.62%

I'll buy one when I am older and can't keep up: 23.83%

They are horrible, I will never spend a dime on one: 7.23%

Other: 2.75%



In our introduction article, it looked like trail and enduro were evenly matched as the type of riding our audience does, but it looks like many of you prefer to do that riding on enduro bikes. Enduro bikes are often sold as do-it-all machines with the pedalling ability to tackle all-day rides and the attitude for bike parks and downhill tracks if you like, it's not much of a surprise they are a popular choice for our respondents. The second most popular bike category is trail followed by cross country in third.In total, 449 brands were represented from the biggest marques in the world down to "it's a generic frame that I repainted and I forgot the brand name." The most common answer from respondents was Specialized with more than 2,000 bikes followed by Santa Cruz then Trek.To be in the top 50, a brand had to have at least 47 responses. Of the brands included in 'Other', two could have made it into the Top 50 in their own right - Bird with 61 customers and Privateer with 49.When we asked what brand riders would purchase next, there was some change around. The top answer was "Other" (although the most common answer among the text responses was a variation of 'undecided'), then the two Californian 'S' brands swapped places with Santa Cruz topping the list closely followed by Specialized. This time 32 responses was enough to get a brand in the Top 50 and of brands named in the other section, only Privateer would have made it in its own right.Wheel size has been one of the big debates in recent years and among our respondents it looks like 29ers have won the battle for now. More than half of you are currently running a full 29er set up with nearly a third on the full 27.5" combination and 26" still in this place at 5.42%. So far mullets haven't had much traction among the bikes of Pinkers but if we look at the next set of results we see that that might change soon.Looking into the future, it won't be long before well be reading plenty of "27.5" ain't dead" comments as it seems to be a wheelsize on the wane. Its numbers halved when we asked what wheelsize they would consider buying nextbut the mullet configuration nearly quintupled, so maybe we can't ring the death knell just yet. The full 29er category grows even bigger to nearly 2/3rds of responses.It's not entirely surprising that when so many of you ride enduro bikes that more than 50% of the bikes here fall into the 140-180mm travel range. 150-160mm currently seems to be the sweet spot with nearly a third of respondents opting for that do-it-all range. 1 in 8 of you are keeping it real on hardtails but very few of you are running a big, 180mm+ bike as your primary ride.Looking ahead, it seems that these numbers won't change too much as we go forwards. The biggest change comes from hardtails where the numbers are half. We suspect this is because hardtails are common starter bikes and their sales will remain healthy thanks to incoming riders who aren't even aware this survey exists.Given the trashing some out-of-the-ordinary bikes have had in recent years, we weren't all too surprised to see that more than 90% of respondents were happy to admit that the aesthetics of a bike are important to them when making a purchasing decision. For most people, they aren't a deal-breaker but it's definitely something that could influence their decision.But what does a good-looking bike look mean? Well, definitely not loud! 5 years ago, bright, flouro colours were all the rage but that period appears to have passed with 'Mild' and 'Styled' on roughly equal footing in our SurveyWith tyre inserts, bigger wheels and ambitious intentions, we've seen the weight of enduro bikes creeping up over the past few years however that might have left some of you feeling like it might be time to shed the pounds. 17% of you, the biggest cohort, wanted to change that about your current bike with the next largest group wanting more travel at nearly 10%. Respondents were much less interested in getting the latest hub standard (2.35%), adding a motor (2.1%) or swapping for 27.5" wheels (1.54%).OK, time for the powder keg question, what do you all make of eMTBs? Well, around 50% of you expressed positive sentiments towards them with around 30% reacting negatively. We've definitely noticed our comments section mellow towards motors in recent years (although maybe this is mainly thanks to our filters) and it seems that is reflected in our Survey. It will be interesting to watch this question develop as we continue to conduct this survey in future years.So, the ultimate Pinkbike bike would be a carbon-framed Specialized enduro bike with 29" wheels and 150-160mm travel. It would have to be stealthily styled and we would want to cut down the weight on it. Come back tomorrow to find out how Pinkbike readers would spec it, maybe we should build it up in real life for a test in the future.
The 2021 World Series of Poker Europe has crowned the third champion at the King's Resort in Rozvadov. In a battle of Slovakians, Samuel Stranak prevailed against Alan Sabo in Event #4: 2,000 Pot-Limit Omaha and collected his first gold bracelet along with the top prize of 101,764. Both close friends battled for the first-ever gold bracelet for their home country with the better end for Stranak in a very entertaining and jovial heads-up duel.

The tournament attracted a field of 241 entries and the 423,557 prize pool was divided among the top 37 finishers. Notables on the final table included the UK's Ian Bradley, Amir Mozaffarian, and Krasimir Yankov.

Final Table Result Event #4: 2,000 Pot-Limit Omaha

Place Winner Country Prize (in EUR) 1 Samuel Stranak Slovakia 101,764 2 Alan Sabo Slovakia 62,894 3 Ian Bradley United Kingdom 44,044 4 Vasil Medarov Bulgaria 31,484 5 Amir Mozaffarian Germany 22,982 6 Krasimir Yankov Bulgaria 17,140 7 Stanislav Parkhomenko Bulgaria 13,065 8 Ermanno Di Nicola Italy 10,185

Eventual champion Stranak did the lion's share of the work en route to victory after knocking out seven of his last eight opponents on the feature table of Europe's biggest poker arena. Prior to his win, the 24-year-old scientist from Bratislava only had four recorded MTT cashes to his name while the one year older Sabo earned several WSOP Online cashes throughout the last two years.

Both had been playing against each other in cash games prior but it was the first time they participated in the same tournament together and that made the duel for the title and glory even more special.

"We were joking about it before but what are the odds? One million to one?" a delighted Stranak said while his buddy chimed in. "It was an amazing experience, I almost cried when I got heads-up with this guy. I am sad that I didn't get the bracelet but I am very happy for him," runner-up Sabo said during the joint winner interview with the two Slovakians.

Both didn't hold back when battling with each other even prior to the heads-up and Stranak had Sabo at risk during three-handed play only to see his friend turn an unlikely full house to survive. In the heads-up itself, it was Sabo who pulled away but a gutsy bluff didn't get through to shift the momentum towards Stranak.

"Ranges? I think it was the Gin Tonic we had before the hand. I don't know if I can talk strategy, I don't even know what I was thinking," Stranak joked when asked about his hero-call with just a pair of jacks. Sabo didn't quite agree with that but couldn't stop himself from grinning just like he did when being caught with the fingers in the cookie jar.

Both admitted that they prefer Pot-Limit Omaha while playing "Hold'em for fun" and will likely ride the wave to participate in further events during the ongoing 2021 WSOPE festival. But first, there is one day of rest and some partying planned to celebrate the occasion.

Samuel Stranak and Alan Sabo celebrate the victory

Big Names Fall Early on the Final Day

The final day started with 46 players still in contention and just 37 of them made the money. Sabo was among the bigger stacks right from the start and received a massive boost when he sent 2019 runner-up Omar Eljach to the rail. Jan-Peter Jachtmann was also among the casualties prior to the money and defending champion Tomas Ribeiro was then eliminated on the money bubble.

Other notables who cashed but failed to make the final table were Abdelhakim Zoufri, Mick Heder, Tomasz Gluszko, and Vivian Saliba. Stranak started his rise on the leaderboard with several double-ups soon after the bubble had burst and built a larger stack on the final two tables. Leonid Yanovski and Richard Toth were eliminated just shy of the final table while Sabo and Stranak surpassed the red-hot running Ian Bradley at the top of the leaderboard.

Stranak Dominates Final Table

When the final nine players combined to one table, it was Stranak to draw the first blood and eliminate a short-stacked Andriy Lyubovetskiy. It was a sign of things to come as the only finalist to not bust against Stranak from there on was seventh-place finisher Stanislav Parkhomenko. For example, Krasimir Yankov as arguably one of the most experienced contenders still in the mix, took a stand with a suited broadway combo but Stranak came out on top with two pair.

Amir Mozaffarian chipped up to threaten the top spot of the Slovakian but saw his hopes vanish in a large clash, which sent Stranak into an overwhelming lead. His run-good continued shortly after when he made a superior full house against Vasil Medarov.

Three-handed play turned out to be a far bigger challenge as the two Slovakians battled back and forth while Bradley doubled twice and even took the lead for a short period. However, he was then caught with a move holding pocket kings on an ace-high flop as Stranak looked him up with the top pair and secured the all-Slovakian heads-up duel.

The banter between the two countrymen was flowing back and forth, and it was Stranak who came out on top.

This wraps up the PokerNews coverage for this event but the live reporting team provides updates from all 15 WSOP gold bracelet events during the 2021 World Series of Poker Europe until December 8, 2021.
Moncks Corner, SC (29461)

Today

Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. High 77F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Rain showers early will evolve into a more steady rain overnight. Thunder possible. Low 53F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.
SUMMERVILLE  Juliana Velarde and her father sold so many Christmas trees last year on their choose-and-cut farm in Berkeley County, they had to halt sales.

Steve Penland encountered similar strong demand on his 60-acre spread of evergreens in York County near Rock Hill.

"People were starting to cut the smaller trees, and that would have cut into those that would be big enough to sell this year," Velarde said.

Penland, secretary of the South Carolina Christmas Tree Association, had the same reaction.

"We had to cut off sales last year after the third weekend because we didn't want to go into next year's crop," said Penland, who traditionally doesn't open Penland Christmas Tree Farm until the day after Thanksgiving.

Both are confident they will have plenty of good-growth trees this year, and they expect to sell more of the holiday centerpieces than last year, but they also said consumers will see higher prices.

On average, Penland said the conical greenery will cost about 10 percent more this year across the state.

Fuel, labor and shipping costs are up, and that has to be passed onto the consumer, he said.

As for the popular Fraser firs that are grown out of state, Penland expects fewer to be available and the price will be 10-20 percent higher.

Fraser firs have been in limited supply for the past few years because several farmers left the industry during the Great Recession more than a decade ago. Since fewer farms were operating, fewer trees were planted to replace those that matured in subsequent years.

Penland cut his order of the mountain-grown specimens this year because of the price increase. He's also leery of people seeing higher prices on the shipped-in orders and switching to artificial varieties.

"Trees on choose-and-cut farms cost less overall and are more economical," Penland said. "And families still want that experience of coming out to a Christmas tree farm."

He expects to sell more than the estimated 3,000 trees he sold last year on his 60-acre farm near the suburbs of bustling Charlotte.

With just the right amount of rain this past year, Velarde, too, said the trees are in good shape this year on the 30-acre Lebanon Christmas Tree Farm off Cypress Campground Road.

She took over the operation after her father, Kim Yerich, the longtime president of the S.C. Christmas Tree Association, died in August.

"I think it is going to be one of our busiest seasons ever," Velarde said. "I've already received hundreds of emails from people asking about trees this year."

Like Penland, she said there is no getting around a price hike this year, especially for limited-supply varieties from out of state, because of higher fuel and shipping costs.

"There will definitely be an increase in price," Velarde said.

Still, she plans to have more stock on hand than last year, when Yerich cut his Fraser fir order because he was stuck with leftover trees in 2019 and didn't know what to expect with the COVID-19 crisis last fall.

"We ran out of trees last year," Velarde said. "I've ordered more this year, so we should have plenty for everyone."

Also, to make up for the loss of some of the smaller farm-cut trees during last year's sales, she and her late father ordered specimens taller than tiny seedlings and planted them in January and February.

"The farm was not looking good after last year's sales," Velarde said.

Ideal amounts of rain have helped get growth back on track.

"This has been the best weather season for Christmas trees we have had in a long time," she said.

Velarde expects to exceed the 1,500 or so trees the farm sold in 2020.

Hal Frampton has operated Holy City Christmas Trees on the Charleston peninsula for three decades, but he, too, is seeing his inventory shrink.

"They are cutting everybody back this year," he said of the out-of-state suppliers of Fraser firs.

Frampton opened the day before Thanksgiving and he expects to sell out quickly.

"We sold out last year in 13 days," he said. "I don't think it's going to be any different than last year."

Trees at his lot on North Hanover Street near Romney Street start at 6 feet and $75. The price goes up with the height, with some going for more than $800, Frampton said.

Frampton expects to sell about 500 trees along with other greenery and stands, but his lot is open only during daylight hours.

"Buy early," Frampton said. "Get them home and put them in a bucket of water and keep them away from heat vents and sunny windows. The key to keeping them fresh is to keep them in water."

In addition to garlands and wreaths, tree farms also offer a variety of family activities such as hay rides, childrens games and fire pits on cooler days.
Three Palmetto State film projects will receive thousands of dollars in funding thanks to the Indie Grants program, a collaboration between the South Carolina Film Commission and Trident Technical College.

Frazier Bostic and Natalie Harris of Taylors were selected for their project "This Too Shall Pass," Cole Stamm of Greenville was chosen for "Day Pass" and Craig Trow of North Charleston will produce a film titled "The Manager Position."

Each of the projects, submitted in the 2021 selection process, will receive between $20,000 and $35,000. In addition, Trident Technical College students will assist in bringing those films to life while receiving hands-on technical training.

"Theres no other program like this in the nation, said Matt Storm with the S.C. Film Commission. It gives the next generation of professional crew a bridge to employment, while at the same time sharing South Carolina stories with the world.

Bostic and Harris' "This Too Shall Pass" is "a poetic reinterpretation of resiliency that takes us on a journey of remembrance through the South." The film follows a Southern family as they reflect on a wealth of memories that address historical narratives, current events and the pursuit of hope.

The themes are interwoven with a narrative poem by Bostic.

"Lately, there are so many stories about Black suffering and trauma," she said. "We wanted to embrace a different narrative."

Bostic used to spend summers in Chester with her grandmother, surrounded by acres of country land, solitude and plenty of time to observe and dream. Then there was the "sacred junk pile" of art to consume.

"Growing up, films inspired me to imagine beyond the circumstances and the limitations that I assumed were set for me in South Carolina," said Bostic. "While I did not have much, I had a television, a film camera, VHS tapes, jazz and a fantastic collection of hand-me-down books."

That led to high school and college student film creation and internships at the Television Academy at Crown Media and NBC.

"This Too Shall Pass" will be completed after months of work put into launching the project.

"We were hopeful we would find the support needed to complete the film," said Bostic. "Grants like this give filmmakers the financial freedom to accomplish their vision, find audiences, and build community."

Stamm, who recently graduated from New York University's Tisch Asia MFA film program based in Singapore, wrote "Day Pass" based on a job he had in Malibu working at a high-end addiction rehabilitation facility.

He had submitted the film to Indie Grants two years in a row; third time was a charm.

"I was pretty shocked and happy that they had a program like that in South Carolina, since we aren't a big city like New York or Los Angeles," said Stamm. "I was really proud of South Carolina for that.

He added, "I think the danger of not having grants like these is that important stories don't get told."

Trow, originally from England and trained as an actor at Bristol Old Vic, has been in the Lowcountry for just over a decade. During that time, he's been performing in addition to pursuing the technical aspects of filmmaking.

His project "The Manager Position" was born from an idea back during the 2008 recession. It explores work and identity.

"In America, I feel like people live in fear of their jobs and the harm that can happen if they dont have one," said Trow. "Where in Europe, jobs and careers are less an extension of who you are and more of a tool to help you have a life you want."

Trow said that while creating independent films has become more accessible in recent years, receiving financial backing is still a hurdle. This program is a rare gem, he said.

"There are no grants from my research that offer similar financial support," he offered.

The Indie Grants program has funded and produced more than 30 short films that have made top selects at festivals like Sundance, Tribeca and the L.A. Film Festival.
Students who want extra help with school can now access free online tutoring any time they need to through the South Carolina State Library.

The state library began using Tutor.com at the start of the pandemic to help provide one-on-one support to students who were thrust into remote learning overnight. Students and parents were "desperate" for help, library spokeswoman Ellen Dunn said.

Even though most students have returned to the classroom, many still require academic assistance. Learning remotely for the bulk of last year negatively impacted students' learning, causing scores on nearly all spring standardized tests to drop.

In English/language arts, only 42.6 percent of students met or exceeded grade-level expectations on the S.C. Ready tests given to students in grades 3 through 8. That's down 2.6 percentage points from 2019, before the pandemic. In math, only 37.3 percent of students met or exceeded grade-level expectations, down 7.8 percentage points.

This year students' academic progress was further interrupted when many districts and schools went virtual at the start of the year because the delta virus was spreading through schools, prompting at least 156,169 students in 15 districts to return to virtual learning.

To help students catch up, the state's Department of Education is using $1.5 million from federal COVID-19 relief money to help extend the service for three more years.

Through Tutor.com, students can chat with a tutor live about math problems stumping them or any other subject else they're struggling to understand.

"Being able to meet students where they are in real time to answer questions is essential," Dunn said.

Tutor.com is one of the oldest online tutoring programs, started in 1998. The company offers tutoring in all subjects and tutors are online to help 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Support is available in English and Spanish for all grade levels, including AP classes. Students can also study for the SAT or ACT tests.

To access help, South Carolina students must go to SCdiscus.org (not Tutor.com). Students should select the subject they need help with, write out their question, and then they'll be connected with a tutor through a live chat box. The tutor can use a virtual whiteboard to help demonstrate and students can opt-in to audio to talk with their tutor.

School districts have identified tutoring as one of the main strategies for helping catch students up from pandemic-related learning loss. Many districts are using their own share of pandemic relief funding to provide extra one-on-one and small group tutoring in the afternoon, on weekends and in the summer.

Between March 2020 and October 2021, South Carolina students have logged on to 19,163 tutoring sessions through Tutor.com, Dunn said. Math help was the most requested subject.
GREENVILLE  A South Carolina real estate agent caught on video inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot has pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor in exchange for the government dropping other charges against him.

James Douglas Lollis Jr. of Greer pleaded guilty to one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, a class B misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail, five years probation and a $5,000 fine. Lollis hasnt been sentenced yet.

Lollis also agreed to pay $500 toward a Capitol restitution fund that the U.S. government said is for repairs to more than $1.4 million in damage to the Capitol building and grounds from the Jan. 6 attack.

Prosecutors said that Lollis traveled to Washington on Jan. 5 with Derek Cooper Gunby, an Anderson man who also faces charges in the incident, and stayed in a hotel in Virginia before attending former President Donald Trumps speech near the Washington Monument on Jan. 6.

He then marched with a crowd to the Capitol and entered the building through the Senate wing door, stuck what appeared to be a card or sticker to the wall and walked through the lobby before exiting through the same door.

Outside, Lollis walked toward Metro Police Department officers near where a crowd of rioters had formed and yelled at officers, We got a man down here dying! His lips are purple! You need to get him now! according to the plea agreement that Lollis signed.

He moved closer to the officers and was sprayed in the face by a crowd control spray, according to the agreement.

Lollis was released on a $25,000 unsecured bond after his arrest in Greenville on Sept. 8.

In exchange for the guilty plea, the government will drop three additional charges against Lollis, including for entering and remaining in a restricted building, disruptive conduct in a restricted building and disorderly conduct in a Capitol building.

The Capitol was closed to the public on Jan. 6 because a joint session of Congress was being held to formally certify electoral college votes.

But rioters who wanted to stop the certification process pushed past police barricades. Some climbed scaffolding, smashed windows and fought with officers before entering the Capitol building as members of Congress were moved to safety. Congress returned later that night and certified the election.

Five people died during or after the incident, including one woman shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer. More than 100 members of law enforcement were injured and several committed suicide in the days and weeks following the attack.

More than 675 people have now been charged in the incident, including more than 210 charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the FBI.

Lollis becomes the third person from South Carolina who has pleaded guilty in the Capitol breach. He is among 11 from the state who have been charged in the attack.

Andrew Hatley and Nicholas Languerand previously agreed to plea deals in exchange for some charges being dropped against them. Languerand, 26, of Little River pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous weapon after evidence showed him throwing an orange traffic barrier and stick-like objects at officers outside the Capitol, according to the FBI. He will be sentenced in January.

Hatley pleaded guilty to the same charge as Lollis. He will be sentenced Dec. 16.
The Haiti Kidnapped Missionaries, consider the costs of such trips
COLUMBIA  Since the deadly condo collapse in Surfside, Fla., earlier this year, some along coastal regions, including South Carolina, have raised concerns about high-rise buildings.

S.C. Rep. Wendell Gilliard, D-Charleston, is hoping to diminish those anxieties with a proposed bill that would create a committee to study commercial buildings six floors or higher along the coast and the Charleston peninsula to evaluate their structural soundness.

"These are things that we really need to keep an eye on as to prevent any type of disaster from happening such as Miami," Gillard told WPDE in a Nov. 22 interview. When you see the signs like cracks in our infrastructure like our bridges, highways, et cetera, and our buildings. I always tell people that thats Mother Earth talking to us and we better take note and take measure.

Efforts by Post and Courier Myrtle Beach to reach Gilliard on Nov. 24 were unsuccessful.

Currently, South Carolina's coastal cities have strong buildings codes but there is no requirement to inspect buildings after construction unless the city is advised of a problem.

Gilliard's bill could change things if approved.

Under the proposed bill, the committee would look to see if re-inspections need to be required and what measures would need to be taken when or if buildings are structurally unsafe.

In Myrtle Beach  where there are no additional regulations  there are over 150 buildings that are six stories or higher, according to Emporis, a data collection agency on buildings of high public and economic value. North Myrtle Beach has about 80 buildings.

Code enforcement (adherence to life safety standards) is a top priority for Myrtle Beach, spokesman Mark Kruea wrote in a June email. We do fire inspections on a regular basis, but the point of a strong building code (which we have) is to see that the building is built correctly, using the proper materials, in the first place.

In June, a 12-story condominium in Surfside, Fla. collapsed killing 98 people. The cause of the collapse is still under investigation.

In Florida, Miami-Dade and Broward counties, which encompass Miami and Ft. Lauderdale, enacted an inspection program, which requires commercial properties that are over 40 years old to undergo a property assessment by a structural engineer. There is no similar program in South Carolina.

Gilliard filed the bill ahead of the 2022 legislative session, which will reconvene on Jan. 11.
Charleston, SC (29403)

Today

Some sun this morning with increasing clouds this afternoon. High 76F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy skies early then periods of showers late. Low 56F. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.
Giving thanks is a central part of most religions. Indeed, the American celebration of Thanksgiving that we trace (accurately or not) to 1621, that was first officially declared by George Washington and made permanent by Abraham Lincoln and later enshrined in law by the Congress was conceived as a religious holiday  although with a far different meaning than the traditional period of prayerful fasting that defined the thanksgiving that the Pilgrims brought with them from England.

But thanksgiving is not exclusively religious. The Mayo Clinic (and pretty much any public health expert) tells us that regularly recognizing our blessings increases our happiness, along with our physical health: In addition to helping you get more sleep, practicing gratitude can boost your immunity and decrease your risk of disease.

So today, whether were religious or secular or somewhere in between, whether were able to be with family or friends or not, we give thanks for blessings that we cannot begin to count.

We give thanks that we have clean water, abundant food, antibiotics and the breathtaking medical advances that have made it possible to treat, cure and even prevent cancer, hypertension, diabetes and other diseases that throughout human history meant certain death. That we are living in a time of tremendous prosperity, when our poorest neighbors live lives that are inconceivably luxurious compared to those lived by the overwhelming majority of people down through the millennia.

We give thanks that we live in a nation where we are free to practice whatever faith we choose to practice  or choose not to practice. Where we can express our opinions without fear of being imprisoned for angering the government. Where we can read what we want to read and associate with whomever we want; and yes, where journalists can keep us informed, whether we want to be informed or not. Where we elect our leaders rather than inheriting them or having them thrust upon us at gunpoint, and we have an opportunity to change our minds about those leaders on a regular basis. Where we have an independent judiciary to ensure that we are governed by the rule of law, not the whims of tyrants. Where we are not at war.

These are but a few of the blessings that are showered upon us year in and year out, blessings that are so much like the air we breathe that we only notice them when we force ourselves to step back and consider them. Which we should do more often.

A year ago, we celebrated how our presidential election had come and gone without the wave of pre- or post-election violence that many on the left feared from Trump supporters and many on the right feared from Biden supporters and many of us in the middle worried could ignite from a clash of the less reasonable on both extremes.

We didn't make it to the trouble-free transfer of power in January that we had predicted, but law enforcement put down the armed insurrection at the nations Capital with minimal loss of life, our republic survived, and the vast majority of our fellow citizens recognize what a dangerous breach that was. For that we give thanks.

A year ago, as we struggled through what at the time looked like the darkest days of COVID-19, we looked forward with thanksgiving to what promised to be the most extraordinary journey from novel virus to herd immunity in human history. That journey remains incomplete, not because of any shortcomings by the remarkable scientists who worked tirelessly to produce vaccines in record time but because so many Americans either dont believe COVID is real or dont believe the vaccine is safe or dont believe they are vulnerable. So the mask wars continued unabated, and they were joined by the vaccine wars  which feel less like genuine disagreements and more like yet another excuse for warring tribes to make war.

Despite the ignorance and stubbornness and selfishness, 196 million Americans  including 2.4 million South Carolinians  have received the vaccine and are largely protected. Doctors and other scientists have found better ways to treat the disease, and we have found better ways to live with it without destroying our economy. As for the culture wars, when we make the effort, most of us still can look past our genuine and manipulated differences and recognize that much more unites us than divides us. For all this we give thanks.

In our personal lives, we receive new blessings large and small on a daily basis. Every day, we should offer our individual thanks  if not to our God then at least for our health and well-being.

On this special day, our nation gives thanks. And we wish you all a blessed and happy day of Thanksgiving.
Officials are concerned that the omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is already among us - even if official tests havent yet confirmed it. Read more
Yesterday Rasmussen published this stunning poll result: in a national survey, Donald Trump beats Joe Biden by a whopping 13 points in a rerun of the 2020 election:

While most voters arent looking forward to a Biden-Trump rematch in 2024, its clear that the Republican would be favored. Forty-five percent (45%) of voters would choose Trump if the election were held today, while only 32% would vote to reelect Biden. Seventeen percent (17%) say theyd vote for some other candidate.

There is a lot of buyers remorse among Biden voters:

Only 69% of those who say they voted for Biden last year would vote for him again if the election were held today. Eight percent (8%) of Bidens 2020 voters would switch to Trump, who would get 83% support from those who voted for him last year. Seventeen percent (17%) of those who voted for Biden and 11% who voted for Trump last year would support some other candidate if the next election were held today.

It isnt hard to see why a lot of Biden voters would change their minds. Afghanistan was a turning point, and Bidenflation is a huge political as well as economic problem. Beyond that, I think the most fundamental point is that in November 2020, as a result of Bidens basement campaign and the presss covering for him, lots of people didnt realize that Biden is not a normally functioning human being. Now seeing him in action must be a shock to millions.

Of course, Republicans shouldnt get cocky about this sort of result as we look ahead to 2024. The Democrats wont be dumb enough to run Joe Biden again. They have other problems, like what to do with Kamala Harris. But dealing with Joe Biden will not be one of them.

Lets hope the GOP doesnt go along with Trumps desire for a 2020 rerun, either. Voters want to look forward, not back. In three years, the Democrats 2020 shenanigans may still be Trumps biggest concern, but it wont be the voters. 2024 is a long way off, but I think that if the Republicans run a backward-looking Trump and the Democrats run a forward-looking candidate, the forward-looking candidate likely will win. Especially if he is less than 75 years old.
Yesterday, I observed that Sen. Mark Kelly is underwater in Arizona. Polls show that more Arizonans disapprove of his performance in the Senate than approve of it. And Kelly is up for reelection (or defeat) in less than a year.

In passing, I noted that early polling among Republicans puts Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich well out in front of other GOP Senate hopefuls in the state. He is the first choice of 27 percent of respondents. The next most popular candidate is at only 10 percent. Brnovich also polls slightly better than his rivals in early head-to-head polling against Kelly.

However, theres a fly in ointment. Donald Trump is pressing Brnovich, as Attorney General, to back the claim that Trump carried Arizona in 2020:

Former President Donald Trump renewed his pressure campaign on Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, asking in a statement Tuesday what happened to the Rigged and Stolen Arizona Presidential Election that is being investigated. In his statement, Trump baselessly claims 35,000 fictitious votes in Pima County and calls on the state Legislature to decertify the 2020 election results. The statement, issued through his Save America political action committee, didnt attack Brnovich. But it makes clear that the investigation opened by Brnovichs office hasnt satisfied Trump, a man whose influence in Republican circles still could impact politics here. Brnovich is seeking the GOP nomination in next years U.S. Senate race. Trumps endorsement in that crowded primary could help determine who gets to challenge Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz.

I understand why, for Trump, embracing unsubstantiated claims that the election was stolen from him is close to a litmus test. The myth of invincibility (Trump will win so much well get tired of all the winning) is central both to Trumps psyche and to his appeal. Reality  that Trump led the party to defeat in 2018 and again in 2020  is unacceptable.

I dont quite understand why large numbers registered Republicans may demand that GOP candidates play along with Trump on this matter. Why not thank the former president for his service and try to find a candidate more likely to win going forward? Alternatively, if one thinks Trump is still the guy, why not concentrate on electing a Republican Senate for him to work with in 2025, rather than rejecting strong candidates who wont go along with the we wuz robbed excuse?

Glenn Youngkin wisely declined to embrace that narrative in his race for governor of Virginia. Good thing, too. Youngkin could not have performed as well as he did in the Northern Virginia suburbs if he had associated himself with Trumps claim that the 2020 presidential race was stolen. Given the tightness of the race, Youngkin might well have lost had he carried that banner.

Trump ultimately did not demand that Youngkin do so. Keep in mind, however, that there was no GOP gubernatorial primary. Had there been one, might Youngkin have been forced to go all-in on 2020 fraud claims or else see a rival win the nomination?

I dont know. I just hope that Trump wont demand fealty to his claims about the 2020 election, especially from Republicans running in Senate primaries. More importantly, I hope Republican voters wont base their voting decisions on who has, and who has not, subscribed to Trumps theory of the last election.

Allahpundit is pessimistic on this score:

Actually, the GOPs best hope of unseating [Mark] Kelly is Gov. Doug Ducey. Or it was Ducey, until he refused to overturn his states 2020 results amid Trumps insane whining. Now hes unelectable in Arizona. Give it a few months and Brnovich will end up that way too.

I hope not  at least not because of his handling of Trumps complaint about the 2020 election.

Trumps complaint about the Georgia result probably cost Republicans the Senate last time out because it depressed conservative turnout in the Georgia runoff elections. But at least when Trump first lodged these complaints there might still have been an outside chance of the Georgia result being reversed.

A year later, theres no chance of the 2020 outcome being reversed. Complaining about it now serves no substantial purpose other than upholding the myth of Trumps invincibility.

Adherence to that myth shouldnt be a litmus test for GOP candidates. If it is, the odds of Republicans regaining a majority in the Senate will diminish.
Bolt, an Estonian mobility company, announced Wednesday that it has has partnered with Metro Africa Express (MAX), in an effort to expand the Bolt vehicle financing programme in Nigeria.

This was disclosed in a statement issued by MAXs Chief Financial Officer, Guy-Bertrand Njoya.

Leading ride-hailing platform, Bolt has partnered with Metro Africa Express- (MAX) the largest vehicle subscription platform for low-to-zero emission vehicles in Africa  to expand the Bolt vehicle financing program in Nigeria, the statement reads.

It said the scheme is part of Bolts commitment towards enabling ride-hailing drivers to own vehicles with low equity repayment, support and improve earnings for drivers while allowing them to maintain flexibility as vehicle owners.

Key objectives

According to the statement, the Bolt partnership with MAX will launch a lease-to-own framework for e-hailing drivers to lease a vehicle and pay in instalments until full ownership is secured.

Mr Njoya explained that the partnership will also enable Nigerian drivers to increase their efficiency by accessing a variety of value-add services which include access to low-to-zero emission vehicles; licenses and permits, insurance; affordable health coverage, and other financial products.

In his remarks, Femi Akin-Laguda, Bolts country manager said: We launched our vehicle financing scheme early this year to enable drivers to own a car or motorbike with low equity repayment and have decided to expand the scheme to create opportunities for more prospective drivers.

In partnership with Max, he said we are looking to expand our commitment to helping drivers on the Bolt platform to earn more and at their own pace, either driving full time or part-time.

Drivers are fundamental to our business operations, and it is important to provide solutions that ensure that driving on Bolt is flexible and profitable because improving partner earnings is fundamental to sustaining the trust and loyalty that we have earned over time, he said.

Adetayo Bamiduro, MAXs co-founder and chief executive officer said their vision for African mobility is for shared modes of transportation to become the norm.

We strive for a world where people and goods can move in a predictable, safe and efficient way with zero impact on our climate. Our partnership with Bolt is perfectly aligned with this goal. We are enthusiastic about transforming the transport sector together, enabled by our innovative and industry-leading mobility and financial services infrastructure. Mr Bamiduro said.

In a similar manner, Chinedu Azodoh, another co-founder of MAX said, At MAX, we are constantly developing solutions to make travel easier, safer and more pleasing.

This is what powers our focus on innovation and strategic partnerships. We are excited about this opportunity to extend these solutions with Bolt further, he added.

With the first batch of drivers already integrated into the program, Bolt, in partnership with MAX, will continue advancing and easing mobility in Nigeria and empowering the economy with extra earning opportunities for drivers, the statement said.
Popular Yoruba comic actor, Babatunde Omidina, popularly known as Baba Suwe, who died on Monday, has been laid to rest at his Ikorodu, Lagos home.

Mr Omidina was buried on Thursday in the presence of friends, colleagues and family.

The president of Theatre Arts & Movie Practitioners Association of Nigeria (TAMPAN), Bolaji Amusan, popularly known as Mr Latin, was present at the burial to pay his last respects.

Other actors that were present include Femi Adebayo, Yinka Quadri, Ronke Oshodi Oke, Modupe Johnson, Murphy Afolabi and others.

Baba Suwe, 63, died after a long battle with an undisclosed illness.

The news of his demise came as a surprise to his colleagues and fans.

Baba Suwe, who started his acting career in 1971, became famous after he featured in a movie titled Omolasan.

His popularity soared with many households and fans gathering in front of their televisions to watch the comic actor in the early years of his career.

The late actor featured in several films including Iru Esin, produced in 1997; Jaiye jaiye, and others.

Burial Controversies

Meanwhile, there was a controversy between Islamic clerics and family members over his burial.

The disagreement reportedly caused a delay in the burial.

The lead cleric, Sheikh Ahamad Olanrewaju Alfulanny, claimed there were un-islamic practices exhibited by the family in the burial arrangement of the deceased actor.

The cleric pointed out that the normal practice in Islam is to bury a dead person within few hours of being pronounced dead, but the family delayed the burial till three days after.

There are so many things that they are doing, that are un-Islamic, they put his body in a casket, some other well-wishers even said they want to take his body round, but the family has told us they wont bury him with his body inside the casket, he told The Nation newspaper in an interview.

Despite the controversies, Baba Suwe was laid to rest at his house at Ikorodu, Lagos.

Health Complications

Baba Suwe, who dominated the Yoruba movie industry for decades and won several awards, began to suffer several health complications after his prolonged detention by the Nigerian Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).

The NDLEA arrested and detained the actor in October 2011, at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, on the suspicion that he ingested cocaine wraps.

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Baba Suwe was detained for 24 days and was released after he was granted bail by Justice Yetunde Idowu of the Ikeja High Court.

This incident not only caused his acting career to nosedive, but also resulted in health complications.

Several friends and families have eulogised him following his death.
The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in collaboration with the Federal Government have evacuated another 330 stranded Nigerians Tripoli and Benghazi, Libya in its continuous voluntary evacuation exercise.

The Charge d Affairs of the Nigerian Mission in Libya, Kabiru Musa, disclosed this in a statement on Wednesday, in Abuja.

According to Mr Musa, the 330 evacuees from Tripoli and Libya are expected to arrive the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos on Wednesday night in separate flights.

He said that almost 1,000 stranded Nigerians had been evacuated from Libya in November alone, reiterating the Nigerian governments commitment not to leave any stranded Nigerian behind in Libya.

Following successful evacuation exercises and the high number of stranded Nigerians in Libya, the IOM in collaboration with the embassy of Nigeria in Tripoli airlifted 158 Nigerians from Benghazi and 172 others from Tripoli on Wednesday.

The Benghazi chartered flight no. UZ389 departed Benghazi airport at 15.00 hours local time and is expected to arrive Murtala Mohammed international airport, Lagos at 22.00 hours, he said.

He said the Tripoli chartered flight no. UZ0190 left Mitiga international airport at 18.00 local time and expected to arrive the Lagos international airport at 23.30 hours.

A total number of 330 Nigerians were evacuated including men, women and children.

Some of the returnees were in Libyas detention centres for immigration offences while others were either rescued victims of human trafficking or irregular migrants on voluntary return.

The exercises were carried out successfully in full compliance with COVID-19 protocol. All the returnees are expected to spend few days at IOMs provided facilities before their reintegration into the society, Mr Musa said.

Mr Musa assured that the exercise will be ongoing until Nigerians who stand in need while in Libya are supported to re-unite with their families at home. (NAN)
Research has shown why women join violent extremist groups in Africa, but much less attention is given to those who leave or do not enlist at all. What makes some women resist recruitment? And why do those who join sometimes disengage?

The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) has recently explored the circumstances that allowed women to reject or cut ties with Boko Haram in Nigers Diffa region and Katiba Macina in Malis Mopti and Segou regions. Understanding these factors is key to womens safety. It will prevent their association with armed groups and reduce their exposure to extremist violence.

In Mali and Niger, women have mostly escaped recruitment by fleeing areas where the groups are active. Some end up in camps for internally displaced persons, while others take refuge with relatives who live far away or send their children to family members in safer parts of the country. Women interviewed in Niger took refuge there after escaping areas occupied or under attack by Boko Haram in Nigeria.

Those who did not flee avoided places where the groups were active and refrained from publicly criticising them. Interviewees said terror groups often targeted people who openly opposed them. Others said they knew of the groups activities in their area but did not encounter them.

Some women in Niger said their knowledge of Islam and the Quran stopped them from joining Boko Haram. In Mali too, women said they were not convinced by Katiba Macinas religious discourse and could deconstruct and identify inconsistencies in recruiters rhetoric.

This means that governments should invest in girls education from an early age  including religious education  and remove the many socio-cultural, religious and security barriers that obstruct their access.

Another factor preventing recruitment for some women in Mali was that they did not have a death to avenge. In both Mali and Niger, women have joined terror groups after witnessing or experiencing atrocities by defence and security forces in the name of counter-terrorism. They gave their allegiance to violent extremists to avenge the deaths or abuse of loved ones at the hands of those meant to protect them.

Other women decided not to enlist for fear of being arrested or killed by the soldiers fighting Boko Haram and Katiba Macina. This was especially true in Niger, where most women associated with Boko Haram live in the groups camps. Those abducted by Boko Haram or forced to collaborate with Katiba Macina said a military presence could have prevented their enlistment. In Niger, some women saw military offensives against Boko Haram as a chance to escape.

Military responses could improve womens safety but must be accompanied by measures that deal with the root causes of violent extremism. Such responses must also be mindful of human rights and tackle impunity by state and non-state armed actors.

Financial security is another reason women do not join extremists. Women in Mali told ISS researchers they had an acceptable form of income and one that Katiba Macinas activities did not directly threaten. Others had regular financial support from relatives in the diaspora.

In both countries, for men and women, the fear of family or community rejection and the influence of relatives and local leaders kept them from collaborating with terror groups. Some were dissuaded by their parents (especially mothers and grandmothers), who sometimes threatened to curse or disown them if they did. In Niger, women said they were influenced by the experience of their peers who had joined Boko Haram but had become disillusioned.

Others were influenced by prominent local figures (community and traditional leaders, imams, marabouts, etc.) who advocated against association with violent extremist groups. Religious leaders and social networks play an important gatekeeping role by filtering and dissecting the disinformation spread by recruiters.

Those trying to prevent violent extremism in communities must be supported and protected from retaliation by the groups. Counter-narratives should be encouraged to help individuals and communities build resilience to violent extremism. Governments need to work with religious and community leaders as well as civil society actors to achieve this.

For those who fled the areas where Boko Haram or Katiba Macina were active, having a chance to rebuild their lives in a safe environment was vital. But interviews conducted with women in refugee or displaced persons camps revealed that poor living conditions in the camps tested their resilience, leading some to consider enlisting with the terrorists. This means that humanitarian and development approaches are vital for managing refugees who have fled violent extremists.

For those who decide to leave terror groups, reintegration programmes must meet their needs to prevent them from rejoining. Some women who left Boko Haram in Niger said dashed expectations around reintegration made them consider going back. To work, these initiatives must be gender-sensitive and actively engage the communities women will return to.

The decision to not enlist in a violent extremist group is not a linear process. Some women who intended to join Boko Haram backpedalled after a family member intervened. In others, women who resisted recruitment were coerced or abducted by the groups. Some women who joined Boko Haram ended up fleeing to escape forced and abusive marriages and harsh living conditions.

Long-term responses to preventing violent extremism must involve reinforcing womens resilience to the groups involved. This, in turn, requires a sound understanding of the many and often interconnected factors that influence womens decisions about both recruitment and resistance.

Jeannine Ella Abatan, Senior Researcher, ISS Regional Office for West Africa, the Sahel and the Lake Chad Basin

This article is made possible with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the UK Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) and the Government of Denmark.

(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
The House of Representatives has told the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) to embark on explosive and ferocious raids on methamphetamine production laboratories in Nigeria.

The lower chamber also directed the federal government to develop a national policy to combat meth and other narcotics across the country.

These resolutions followed a motion of urgent public importance moved by Henry Nwawuba (APC, Imo) on Thursday during the plenary.

Mr Nwawuba in his motion raised the alarm of the scourge in some South-east states. He said over 70 per cent of the users are suffering from the adverse effect of the drugs.

He alleged that Mexican drug barons set up production labs in some states in Nigeria, hence, access to the products has been seamless.

The lawmaker noted that meth, which is referred to as Mkpuru Mmiri in Igbo language, has consequences on mental health.

There is a video on social media, where a user beheaded a human being. Some communities have resorted to public flogging to cure the youths and shame them, he stated.

Speaking on the motion, Lynda Ikpeazu (PDP, Anambra) said the consequences of meth would be dire in the next 10years.

According to the lawmaker, NDLEA agents have failed to arrest meth dealers despite operating in the open. She stated that even 11years old children are also using meths in her constituency.

It does sound like a joke, but it is actually very serious and killing a lot of people. In the next 10 years, if we dont stop it, we are going to have a zombie society. In my constituency, you will see 11years old person taking meth. What kind of future are we expecting these youths to have? We are going to have a doped up society, a Zombie society. That is not good, she said.

The deputy minority leader, Toby Okechukwu (PDP, Enugu), while supporting the motion, frowned on public flogging of addicts. Rather, the government should focus on rehabilitation and arrest of dealers, he said.

Also, Jonathan Gaza (APC, Nasarawa), in his contribution, said the National Orientation Agency (NOA) should be at the forefront of public enlightenment.

The lawmaker said the NDLEA cannot do the work alone.

Others who spoke on the motion include Shehu Kakale (APC, Sokoto), Abubakar Namdas (APC, Adamawa), Tajudeen Yusuf (PDP, Kogi) and Ifeanyi Momoh (PDP, Anambra).

Crystal meth

Methamphetamine is a central nervous system stimulant used as a recreational drug.

In 2016, officials of the NDLEA burst a meth lab in Asaba, the capital of Delta State. Four Mexicans were arrested at this lab during the raid.

Also, in 2018, a raid on a lab in Obinagwu in Ebonyi State uncovered another major meth production point in Nigeria.

Recently, the discourse into the meth scourge increased following a viral video showing flogging of addicts by community members.
The Nigerian government has committed to establishing special courts to tackle sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) cases.

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami, represented by Victoria Ojogbane, director of planning, research, and statistics, said his ministry is highly committed to fighting against SGBV in Nigeria and will not relent in advocating for the need to designate and establish specialised SGBV courts in the country.

It is my belief that the creation of special courts to handle cases of sexual and gender-based violence will improve the effectiveness of court service, ensure support for the victims, improve victim participation in the prosecution of their cases, and promote efficiency and better information sharing, Mr Malami said Thursday at the seventh Sexual Assault Referral Centres (SARCs) Network Conference.

The conference, themed The Imperative for Special Courts for SGBV cases, was organised by the Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption (RoLAC) programme of the European Union in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Justice and National Agency for Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

The National Programme Manager ROLAC, Danladi Plang, said the conference aims to identify relevant policy options, recommendations, and actions for the efficient disposal of SGBV cases which includes designation or establishment of specialised courts for SGBV cases.

To sensitise and mobilise relevant actors and stakeholders around the imperative for and relevance of special courts for SGBV in the context of Nigerias legislative, policy, and social environment, he said.

Speaking at the conference, Samuela Isopi, EU ambassador to Nigeria, reiterated the EUs support for the establishment of special SGBV courts in Nigeria.

The specialised SGBV court is a best practice, and state governments should consider having as many courts in their states as possible.

The conference also saw the launch of the Mock SGBV court trial by Nigerias Chief Justice, Tanko Muhammad, who was represented by Justice Amina Augie.

Ms Augie noted that SGBV cases are still underreported in Nigeria and as such, there has to be a synergy between stakeholders.

She also emphasised the need for training for judges, lawyers, and other stakeholders who will be working in these special courts.

The court is the last point of call, but before then, we need to actively get people to report these things, she said.

Joy Ezeilo, a professor of law and chairperson, Network of Sexual Assault Referral Centres in Nigeria, said the mock trial is meant to show the current realities as well as what should be the ideal in terms of granting women access to justice for those who have suffered violation especially when it relates to SGBV.

She said the trials will also show international best practices which include medical aid, legal support, counseling amongst others.

She noted that court cases could be intimidating for illiterate women and so these trials afford them an opportunity to understand the processes and in turn gain courage to appear in court.

Although the Nigerian government did not spell out a timeline for the establishment of the courts, Ms Ezeilo said she expects that by March 8, 2022, which is International Womens Day, the court would have been established at least in the countrys capital city.

The event was attended by ministers, judges, other public officials, diplomats, members of the civil society and others.

Nigeria and SGBV

Nigerias human rights commission, (NHRC) received about 1.2 million cases of rights violations in 2020.

About 35.5 per cent of this number (445,080) were SGBV cases.

According to the 2020 NHRC report exclusively obtained by PREMIUM TIMES, SGBV cases accounted for 35.5 per cent (445,080) of the 1,287,760 complaints filed across the 36 states of the federation and the FCT.

Apart from cases reported to the NHRC, many others are reported to the police and other law enforcement agencies. However, SGBV cases, like many others, suffer from Nigerias slow and inefficient judicial process.
Journalists and media experts met Wednesday in Abuja to discuss the role of the media in ensuring public accountability in Nigeria.

The experts spoke at a media dialogue and award ceremony hosted by the International Centre for Investigative Reporting (ICIR) in Abuja.

In his opening remark, the ICIR Executive Director, Dayo Aiyetan, said the programme was necessary because the media is not an island.

It operates in a corrupt environment, he said. Though we have had some bad experiences, we have also had wonderful stories to tell since we started.

Mr Aiyetan lamented the difficult conditions journalists operate in to do their job. In their effort to expose corruption, he said, journalists face different forms of threats by government officials who are using the institution of state to harm the media.

He added that government officials should see journalists as complimenting their work rather than see us as competitors.

In his keynote speech titled the political economy of press freedom in Africas most populous country, Martin Onoja, the Managing Director and Editor-in-chief of the Guardian newspaper, said the role of the media as clearly spelt out in the constitution is to monitor governance and hold public officers to account.

He said, only good and independent journalism can deliver this tough job.

But, Mr Oloja said, good and independent journalism costs a lot of money to do. You also need good capitalization to do investigative journalism.

Ordinarily, good journalism should be one of democracys safety valves. Without it, journalism can become sterile and barren, he said.

Mr Oloja added that: all the good newspapers in the world have a good capitalization and their economy is robust.

But in Nigeria, We always depend on the wicked and the criminals who have brought down the country to also have capitalization. Most of the proprietors do not have money on their own. They depend on the system we are monitoring and the people we are to hold to account. We depend on them too much for revenue, he told PREMIUM TIMES in an interview on the sideline of the event.

We cant practice robust journalism here. We are doing public relations not journalism and it is only good journalism that can improve the governance system of a country to hold people to account and to monitor them until they do something in the interest of the larger society, he said.

Earlier in his remarks, Kole Shettima, the Country Director of MacArthur Foundation in Nigeria, spoke on the importance of independent journalism in any democratic country.

He said the overall goal of his organisation is to improve the quality of life. And I am glad that the media is improving the lives of the citizens through accountability journalism.

Mr Shettima added that while it is important to support independent journalism through grants, it is equally pertinent that journalists have a business model. That is, the media should develop independent sources of revenue rather than relying on government advertisements or donor partners.

In his submission, Edetaen Ojo, the Executive Director of Media Right Agenda, said that unless the media contributes to sanitizing itself, it cannot begin to hold the government to account.

Parts of the challenges we face is that the media sector is rotten, he said, adding that there is no nice way to say it.

Also, Abigail Ogwezzy, a lecturer at the University of Lagos, submitted that if we dont understand why there should be accountability, we may not drive or push for it.

Ms Ogwezzy, a professor, noted that accountability is at the core endearment of all human rights. And it has two main components: Addressing past grievances and correcting systematic failure to prevent future occurrence.

At the event, the PREMIUM TIMES Editor-in-chief, Musikilu Mojeed, said journalists in Nigeria impoverished their own companies because of their complicit behaviour.

Speaking on generating revenue for media organisations, Mr Mojeed said there are many instances where the money that wouldve been used to advertise in a media company will be given to reporters and it passes just through individual pockets.

He conceded that the system is bad but journalists are also complicit.
The Nigerian Navy, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and Nigerian Export and import (NEXIM) Bank have begun the survey and charting for the lower River Niger and River Benue for enhanced waterway port to stimulate socio-commercial activities in the country.

The project will open up the countrys inland waterways to 25 African countries and Europe in transportation and trade connectivity, Dabney Shell-Holma, Chairperson, Sealinks Consortium, one of the handlers of the project, said on Wednesday in Lokoja.

According to her, the project, covering 932,000 square kilometres, will provide jobs for more than 5,000 Nigerian youth.

I am sure the British Government will be celebrating what we are doing here today and will say, Nigeria has finally woken up from sleep.

Its a fact that 25 countries within the sub-African region are crippled because of lack of waterways, thereby making maritime or shipping business very difficult.

This is why I said Britain will celebrate this flag-off ceremony.

For more than 10 years, we have been hoping to see this day and thanks be to God its happening for real at Ajaokuta, the best port for the waterways.

Sealinks Consortium is grateful to Afreximbank and NEXIM which have committed a 750,000 dollar-grant to Improve Nigerias inland waterways operations which when completed will reduce transportation challenges in Nigeria by 50 per cent and boost the nations economy,  she said.

George Muoghalu, the Managing Director, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), reiterated NIWAs commitment to the successful execution of the project.

The project is designed to directly improve the navigability of the nations inland waterways and enhance the efficiency and safety of navigation, he said.

Mr Muoghalu noted that the authority, among other things, had acquired two state-of-the-art hydrographic survey vessels to guarantee continuous survey of waterways, and purchased 20 patrol boats and ambulances to enhance the safety of navigation on the highways.

The Chief of Naval Staff, Awwal Gambo, described the project as governments statement towards expanding the nations transportation system through waterways and improving the nations economy.

Mr Gambo, a vice-admiral in the Nigerian Navy, assured the government of the navys commitment towards bringing out a world class chart that would meet international standards for maritime safety and national security.

Governor Yahaya Bello of Kogi also expressed happiness over the inauguration of the survey and charting of the lower Rivers Niger and Benue. He described it as the pride of Kogi citizens, and Nigerians as a whole.

Mr Bello expressed confidence that the project, when completed would provide jobs to more Nigerians and turn around the nations transportation and stimulate development. (NAN)
Nigerian female lawyers are set to benefit from a global Safety in the Workplace Initiative which will be launched at The Wings Towers, Victoria Island, Lagos, on Friday.

The initiative is being put together by The African Women on Board (AWB), a Nigerian-founded global non-profit organisation, dedicated to advancing the cause of African and diaspora women around the world.

It is aimed at reshaping traditional working environments to become places that accommodate growth and encourage women to realise their full potential.

The legal sector, they say, represents both a challenge and an opportunity for change hence the reason it has been selected as the starting point for the initiative.

The organisation says the new programme, tagged, Safety in the (Legal) Workplace, has been designed to facilitate systems change directly on the ground.

It added that the initiative also serves as a response to Gender-Based Violence to commemorate the 2021 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence with the theme; End Femicide.

About the initiative

Shedding more light on the project, Nkiru Balonwu, founder and co-chair of African Women on Board, said most adults spend most of their working lives at work, but for women in particular, these environments all too often become challenging ones.

She said: Issues such as bullying, sexual harassment, emotional and financial abuse, and broader inequality have not gone away.

Our new Safety in the Workplace initiative has been specifically designed to facilitate real systems change from the ground up, reshaping traditional working environments to become places that accommodate growth and encourage women to realise their full potential.

She also added that the issue of workplace violence against women remains prominent around the world and that it must be tackled in a joined-up way across society.

On her part, Yinka Edu of Udoma Udoma and Bello Osagie (UUBO), commended the timing of the initiative which her organisation is pleased to support.

AWB Chairperson, Chioma Agomo, a professor, added that: I am quite convinced that we are going in the right direction together with the right partners, using a replicable strategy to create safer workplaces globally  educational institutions, Law firms, professional bodies and the private sector.

Agenda

According to the organisers, at the event, a dedicated Gender Equity Certification programme will be unveiled, adding that the idea is to provide assessments, recommendations and training  to help organisations and human resources or employment practitioners to implement safer working environments.

The organisers said they have concluded all arrangements to lead Nigerian public and private organisations to launch global Safety in the Workplace Initiative.

It is being staged in partnership with the Faculty of Law of the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Association of Company Secretaries and Legal Advisers (ACSLA), and leading, Law firms and private sector organisations. Some of the Speakers include the UNILAG deputy vice-chancellor for development service, Ayo Atsenuwa, US Ambassador to Nigeria, Mary Beth Leonard. chairman, MTN Nigeria, and chairman, National Economic Summit Group (NESG), amongst others, the added

According to the organisers, some keynotes and panel discussions will include: Gender Equity and the Future of Work, Laying the Foundation: Educational Institutions and Safety in the World of Work.

Other topics are Safety in Educational Institutions: Taking the Lead, Learnings from the Faculty of Law UniLag, Safety in the (Legal) Workplace: A View from Ghana and Safety in the [Legal] Workplace: Learnings from the IBA.

Safety in the (Legal) Workplace: The Role of Educational Institutions & Professional Bodies in Laying the Foundation and Reimagining Work: Young Lawyers as Catalysts for Change/Change Agents.

AWB is an expanding network of African women on the continent and in the diaspora who aspire to become leaders within their workplaces, communities, and governments. The organisation is dedicated to reshaping the future for African women and girls globally by mainstreaming their voices and fast-tracking their trajectory into the leadership roles of the future.
Towards addressing the challenge of vaccine hesitancy among Nigerians and Africans by extension, health journalists and other experts on Thursday reviewed possible media intervention, noting that the safety of human race must be accorded priority.

The experts spoke at the opening ceremony of a two-day annual conference organised by the Association of Nigeria Health Journalists (ANHEJ), with the theme; Improving Confidence in COVID-19 Vaccine in Nigeria Beyond 2021: The Roles of the Media.

Speaking at the event, the World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Representative in Nigeria, Walter Mulombo, said media and journalists are the bridge between scientists and the public.

Represented by the head of the global bodys communications unit, Charity Warigon, Mr Mulombo said the COVID-19 pandemic, unlike any pandemic in history, has affected everyone and every country in a manner unexpected.

Mr Mulombo noted that in the earlier phases of the pandemic, there was absence of sufficient knowledge to inform development of vaccines as the sciences were limited.

He said these limitations were exploited by mischief makers, leading to infodemics.

Mr Mulombo, however, said journalists can correct all misinformation built about COVID-19 and its vaccines.

Vaccine hesitancy

Mr Mulombo said journalists have proven to be highly professional by rising to the test of the COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy by educating, mobilising, and creating awareness amongst the populace.

If we are to build and or maintain trust, this noble group and profession is one out of a few that have historically been proven to be trusted to provide information that shape the behavior and lives of generations of people the world over.

It behoves on every member of the fourth estate of the realm, as social responsibility, ensure the provision of accurate, timely, credible, understandable, relevant, and actionable information through various communication channels, he said.

He said the theme of the conference is timely and apt, as it not only speaks to the present, but also to the future of making Nigerians healthier.

The conference

In his remark, chairman of ANHEJ, Hassan Zaggi said the experience battling the pandemic in the past one year prompted the theme of the conference.

Mr Zaggi said despite the availability of various vaccines to reduce the impact of the pandemic, vaccine hesitancy is a major challenge to achieving the goal.

The chairman, who commended the government for the efforts towards achieving herd immunity against the pandemic, noted that some factors are working against these efforts.

One of the most important activities we have witnessed is the COVID-19 vaccine and the vaccination drive by countries to ensure everyone is protected from the virus, he said, adding that; You will agree with me that issues surrounding the uptake of COVID-19 vaccine have been a source of concern due to vaccine hesitancy arising from several factors.

Mr Zaggi said some of these factors include conspiracy theories on the safety of the vaccines, fear of the unknown, false and misinformation on social media, amongst others.

He said these factors have led to foot-dragging by most Nigerians to uptake the vaccine despite all the efforts made to import them.

As journalists covering the health sector, we are deeply worried by the way most Nigerians are not willing to take the vaccine even though the country has been applauded globally for its effort in COVID-19 vaccine roll out, he said.

He explained that the lack of interest by many Nigerians to receive the vaccine cuts across both the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor in different parts of the country.

In the next two days, we will channel our energy towards finding workable strategies on how health journalists can convince Nigerians to take the COVID-19 vaccines, he said.

Vaccination so far

At a recent briefing, the executive director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib, said 5,891,305 eligible persons have received their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, representing 5.3 per cent of the eligible population.

He said 3,252,067 have received their second dose and are fully vaccinated, representing only 2.9 per cent of the overall population of eligible persons.

He explained that the overall population of eligible persons targeted for COVID-19 vaccination to enable the country to reach herd immunity against the disease is 111,776,503.

Since Nigerias index case was reported in February 2020, the country has so far recorded 213,818 COVID-19 cases and almost 3,000 deaths.
As of 2020, less than five per cent of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in Nigeria submitted their procurement records to the Bureau of Public Procurement (BPP), the agency has revealed.

But a director at the BPP, Isaiah Yesufu, who disclosed the finding at a workshop for selected journalists in Abuja, on Tuesday, said the compliance level had increased significantly to 50 per cent one year after.

Speaking on the theme of the three-day event, Reporting Corruption in Nigeria, Mr Yesufu said the BPP developed a portal, Nigeria Open Contracting Portal (NOCOPO), where all information on governments procurements are accessed by the public.

Compliance is still relatively low but has experienced significant increase since 2020 from below 5 per cent to over 50 per cent of MDAs, Mr Yesufu said.

He referenced Section 5 (r) of the Public Procurement Act, 2007, which empowered the BPP to establish the portal to serve as the primary and definitive source of all information on government procurement.

NOCOPO is already live and is used by MDAs to prepare annual procurement plans and submit procurement records, Mr Yesufu explained.

He, however, pointed out in his presentation titled, Corruption in Public Procurement in the Civil Service: Recommendations for Improvement, that there is no law compelling the MDAs to submit their procurement records.

He enumerated irregular funding of contracts as one of teething challenges militating against efficiency in public contracting.

Tenders are getting smarter by dropping their profit at the tender stage, but clawing back huge profits from contract variation computations due to long delays in paying contractors, Mr Yesufu noted.

He suggested the federal government cut down on multiple project execution so as to adequately and timely fund awarded contracts.

Experts at the event were unanimous in their perspectives that bulk of the corruption in Nigerias public sector stems from contract procurements where prices are unduly inflated due to kickbacks.

Why journalists must embrace investigative journalism

In a presentation that held participants spellbound, on Tuesday, Idris Akinbajo, Managing Editor of Premium Times Newspaper, Africas foremost investigative media platform, said democracy could only thrive if journalists lived up to their responsibilities of holding government accountable.

Pointing journalists to Section 22 of Nigerian Constitution, which references accountability media, Mr Akinbajo explained that reporters could not afford to be only news disseminators, but be watchdog  interpretative, investigative, and accountability journalists.

The award-winning investigative journalist identified some troubling gaps in reporting corruption by journalists in Nigeria.

Mr Akinbajo decried the current situation where government agencies lead the tango in corruption reporting by issuing press releases to media houses.

Most journalists in Nigeria only rely on press statements from spokespersons of anti-corruption agencies.

In Nigerias corruption reporting, one can argue that state agents lead the tango, Mr Akinbajo said, adding, journalists hardly dig deep or ask critical questions while reporting on graft.

Speaking on Security and Safety for Journalists Reporting Corruption, Mr Akinbajo urged journalists to mitigate against threats by moving to safe locations and marking exit routes.

He highlighted Communication (with colleagues, superiors), accuracy and networking as some of the ways of escaping harm while reporting on corrupt practices.

Mr Akinbajo called for proper remuneration of journalists so as to be independently minded in taking up corruption reporting.

Independence is a major challenge to doing investigative reporting in Nigeria, he concluded.

In a similar fashion, Auwal Rafsanjani, Executive Director, Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), said journalists had a crucial role to play in fighting endemic corruption in Nigeria.

In his closing remarks at the workshop, which was jointly organised by CISLAC and the Konrad Adenauer Stiffung (Foundation), Mr Rafsanjani, in an impassioned tone, advised journalists to deploy the knowledge they had acquired from the training to expose corrupt practices wherever they are found.

It is important that journalists continue their efforts so that corrupt acts exposed, Mr Rafsanjani, who also heads the Transparency International office in Nigeria said, wondering how the country would be without a vibrant and independent media.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) on Thursday, arraigned a former Managing Director of Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM BANK), Roberts Orya, for alleged impersonation, misappropriation, and abuse of office.

In a statement signed by the EFCC spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, said the accused was arraigned on a 49-count charge before F.E Messiri of the Federal Capital Territory High Court, Apo, Abuja.

The commission accused the defendant of abusing his position as managing director of the bank to obtain over N1.4 billion from NEXIM Bank.

The EFCC added that Mr Orya while being the managing director of the bank, incorporated a company, Luxurium Leisure Service Limited, used the names of non-existent persons and others without their consent, and proceeded to grant loans to the company which remained unpaid years after.

The EFCC said his offence contravenes section 1 (1) (b) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act 2006 and is punishable under section 1 (3) of the same Act.

Count one of the charges, reads: That you Mr Roberts Orya while being the managing director of Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM BANK) on or about the 21st day of September 2011 in Abuja within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court with intent to defraud induced Nigerian Export-Import Bank to pay to Treasure Mix Construction Limited the sum of Four Hundred and Eighty-eight Million Naira (N488,000,000) as a loan under the pretence that the directors of Luxurium Leisure Services Limited applied for and are the beneficiaries of the said loan which pretence you knew was false and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 1 (1)(b) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act 2006 and punishable under section 1 (3) of the same Act.

Count four reads: That you Mr Roberts Orya while being the managing director of Nigerian Export-Import Bank (NEXIM BANK) on or about the 19th February, 2013 in Abuja within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, with intent to defraud, induced Nigerian Export-Import Bank to pay to Treasure Mix Construction Limited the sum of Six Hundred and Thirty Million Naira (N630,000,000) as a loan under the pretence that the directors of Luxurium Leisure Services Limited applied for and are the beneficiaries of the said loan which pretence you knew was false and thereby committed an offence contrary to section 1(1)(b) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act 2006 and punishable under section 1(3) of the same Act.

The defendant pleaded not guilty when the charges were read to him.

Upon his plea, EFCCs counsel, S.A Ugwuegbulam, asked for a date for trial to commence.

He opposed the motion for bail of the defendant, stating that the defence only served him in court. He also told the court that the defendant had jumped the administrative bail offered him by the commission.

The judge rejected the oral bail application and adjourned till November 29, 2021, for consideration of a formal bail application. The court ordered the remand of the defendant in the custody of the EFCC.
The Emir of Zazzau, Ahmed Bamalli, has praised the Nigerian edition of The Sokoto Caliphate authored by Murray Last and published by Premium Times Books, saying the book helps correct some errors by previous writers.

For being arguably the first book written on Sokoto Caliphate by a scholar whose sources are mainly written Arabic manuscripts, Mr Bamalli said at the book launch in Abuja Tuesday that it represents an essential milestone in the inquiry into the history of nineteenth-century Hausaland.

Quoting Thomas Hodgkin, the emir noted that the historical account given in the book supersedes all that was written on the subject and it corrects innumerable errors and misinterpretations of previous writers.

He further explained that some of these uninformed account included referring to the Jihad that enthroned the Caliphate  which covered a large swathe of present-day West Africa  as Fulani Jihad or Fulani War.

This has numerous consequences among which is that it gave the Jihad an ethnic colouration divested from the educational and reformatory objective of Shehu Dan Fodio.

It has also served to create Fulani phobia which is further accentuated by the prevailing security challenges currently experienced in the country. Thus one hears of terms such as Fulanization Agender and it is not difficult to understand that the foundation of this phobia was partly laid by the misnomer of calling the jihad of Shaykh Dan Fodio, the Fulani Jihad.

First published 54 years ago by Longmans, Green Co in 1967, The Sokoto Caliphate is the product of groundbreaking research which had Professor Murray Last, while he was a PhD student at the University of Ibadan, learn Arabic, live among the descendants of the caliphate and travel across territories formerly under the Caliphate.

He took a historical dive into the 19th-century emirate which evolved out of the jihad led by Uthman dan Fodio, a 19th-century Islamic cleric. It exhumed and assembled manuscripts, letters and pamphlets, many of which were written in Arabic and its transliteration and scattered all over.

Before the invasion by the Europeans, especially the British and French, the empire had a east-west reach extending from present-day Cameroon into Burkina Faso, and a north-south stretch from Agadez to Ilorin.

Read the Emir of Zazzaus full speech below:

THE RELEVANCE OF THE HISTORY OF SOKOTO CALIPHATE TO THE  PRESENT DAY NIGERIA

A remark made by his Royal Highness, Ambassador Ahmed Nuhu Bamalli, the Emir of Zazzau on the occasion of public presentation of The Sokoto Caliphate (The Nigerian Edition)

This book is one of the invaluable works written on the history of the Sokoto Caliphate. It is perhaps the first book written on this subject matter by a scholar whose sources are mainly written Arabic manuscripts. It can thus be said to represent an essential milestone in the inquiry into the history of nineteenth-century Hausaland,. particularly the Jihad of Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio and the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate.

The book is divided into three parts: the growth of the Muslim Community and the course of the jihad; the history of the nineteenth-century Caliphs, concentrating on their activities within metropolitan Sokoto; and a study of the Vizierate, the office of second highest rank in the Caliphate. This work is distinguished by Dr. Murray Lasts heavy reliance on written Arabic sources and the fact that in the words of Hodgkin: it supersedes all that was written on the subject and it corrects innumerable errors and misinterpretations of previous writers. A critical reading of this book reveals quite a number of critical points which are very crucial to the discourse on the relevance of the history of the Sokoto Caliphate to present day Nigeria. These are:

I. Contrary to the attitude of some western and later Nigerian writers, Murray Last never called the Jihad that birthed the Sokoto Caliphate a Fulani Jihad. This is because as he explained, the jihad was essentially the jihad of Shaykh Usman Dan Fodio. From the time this book was written till date, it has become commonplace among scholars and the uninformed to refer to the Jihad as Fulani Jihad or Fulani War. This has numerous consequences among which is that it gave the Jihad an ethnic coloration divested from the educational and reformatory objective of Shehu Dan Fodio. It has also served to create Fulani phobia which is further accentuated by the prevailing security challenges currently experienced in the country. Thus one hears of terms such as Fulanization Agender and it is not difficult to understand that the foundation of this phobia was partly laid by the misnomer of calling the jihad of Shaykh Dan Fodio, the Fulani Jihad.

II. Contrary to the contention that the Jihad was a class struggle, or: that it was waged for tribal, economic or political reasons, this book supports the argument that the Jihad was essentially an intellectual movement. The book reveals that Shehu Danfodio preoccupied himself with teaching and preaching, moving from one place to another. He spent many years travelling, teaching, preaching, converting and writing along with his expanding team of disciples. The shaykh we are told taught tirelessly, admonishing against oppression, extortion from the poor, robbing of markets or mosques among other vices. This therefore helped tremendously to get educated people who afterwards helped in the running of the administration of the Caliphate.

Part of the intellectual legacy left by the Jihadist was the development of Historiography. The Jihad leaders wrote extensively on variety of subjects, including History. This is evidenced in the fact the author relied on mostly written sources authored by the Shehu such as kitab al-farq, wathiqat ahl sudan and ihyau sunnah; Sheikh Abdullahi Gwandu who wrote Tazyin waragat and tanbih al-ikhwan; Sheikh Muhammad Bello who wrote infaq al maysur which according to Murray Last is the most detailed and factual account of the jihad. The triumvirate generally wrote various literatures consisting of poetry, prose, fiction, true story, parables, as well as the matters that pertain to faith, State, Medicine, Mathematics, Astronomy and Geography.

III. Contrary to the writings of some western scholars, the history of Sub-Saharan Africa in the pre-colonial period are not only accounts of conflicts and wars, which had virtually nothing to contribute to the modern day. The Sokoto Caliphate bequeathed an enduring legacy of the use of dialogue and application of intellectual debate in resolving intra and inter-State conflict. This is a praiseworthy historical precedent deserving commendation and emulation even by the civilized countries of today.

This African Islamic diplomatic history is typified in the discourse of the triumvirate founding scholars of the Sokoto Caliphate; Shehu Dan. fodio, his brother Abdullahi and son, Muhammad Bello. The differences in their advice and policies demonstrate not only a lively intellectual discourse and debate but also the dynamism and responsiveness of the Sokoto leadership to the challenges of governing a new multicultural state. The difference of opinion between Abdullahi and Bello for example on the ransoming of war prisoners held by Sokoto forces is an example of the role of intellectual dialogue in the formulation of Government policies. The possibility of African states to resolve their inter-state differences through dialogue and recourse to intellectual discourse is exemplified by the dialogue that took place between the Sokoto and the Borno Caliphates. This dialogue provides us with a window through which to examine the flexibility and responsiveness of Sokoto Caliphate to issues such as religious tolerance and peaceful co-existence.

The following are the salient lessons to be learnt from the history of the Sokoto Caliphate:

i. Commitment to education is the key to reforming the society

ii. Inter and intra State conflicts can and should be resolved through continuous Dialogue

By and large, man is supposed to learn from history in order to through past events, understand and provide solutions to problems: and challenges of the present. We must accept that the future of this country is dependent on our collective ability at reformation. Reformation on the other hand cannot be realized without mass education. We must therefore make concerted effort at educating our teeming population as no meaningful development can take place in an atmosphere pervaded by ignorance and iniquity. Our educational system must also be reformed to cater for the needs of the 21st century global community. To do this, our governments at all levels must demonstrate sufficient political will towards reforming the educational sector.

In addition, we must, irrespective of our religious inclinations, tribal leanings and political affiliations continue to engage ourselves in progressive and meaningful dialogue. This is the panacea to the myriads of challenges confronting us as a people. We must continue to make efforts to understand and tolerate our differences as well as advance our individual and collective aspirations through peaceful dialogue. Nothing else can salvage our dear nation. A home grown problem requires a home grown solution. The problems of Nigeria can only be solved by Nigerians. We must continue to think-through and proffer solutions to our challenges by ourselves as exemplified by the Sokoto Caliphate. This is a duty we owe ourselves and our generations yet unborn.

In conclusion, this book by reason of its rich content which has been adjudged to be objective and historical, is an indispensable tool to scholars and students in this field of research. It is also a book to be read by anyone interested in understanding the history of the Jihad of Shehu Dan Fodio and the Sokoto Caliphate. I therefore commend Premium Times Books for publishing for the first time this Nigerian Edition of the Book. I urge them not to rest on their oars in this onerous but rewarding task of bringing home books published about Nigeria elsewhere. I wish you all fruitful deliberations.
The registrar of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Olusegun Ajiboye, has suggested the deployment of officials of the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) to schools against the rising wave of insecurity in the country and the violent attacks on schools.

Mr Ajiboye suggested this on Wednesday while taking part as a guest at the third edition of The Dialogue, a virtual interactive stakeholders engagement initiative of PREMIUM TIMES in partnership with Strictly Speaking, a media and English Language training organisation led by a veteran broadcaster, Bimbo Oloyede.

The first series episodes of the initiative, which focuses on basic education, is sponsored by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) as part of its Regulatory Monitoring Project (REMOP) on basic education in Nigeria.

Mr Ajiboye, who informed the audience of the ongoing efforts of the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to develop a curriculum for schools on security studies, also emphasised the need for martial arts training for teachers and students across Nigeria for personal safety and defence.

He said; The new curriculum that has just been developed on security education for the country focuses on security studies to be taught in the ambit of social studies and some other subjects.

Also, the civil defence corps will be more apt in monitoring and policing our school(s) better, they will serve the right purpose if they are deployed to our schools to work. Martial art training is important for teachers and students for the betterment of our country.

The programme, which was anchored by a veteran broadcaster and team lead for Strictly Speaking, Bimbo Oloyede, also featured Nafisat Abdulkarim, founder of Ninvolve for child Movement and Gabriel Ogunjobi, a correspondent with the Foundation for Investigative Journalism (FIJ), who shared his field experience on a recent report which focuses on implications of farmers-herders clashes on basic education.

Teachers welfare

Speaking further on insecurity and the welfare of Nigerian teachers, the TRCN boss decried the poor welfare package for teachers in some states in the country, saying the development has compounded the woes of those he described as future builders.

If you look at the teachers welfare it is very critical to insecurity that we are discussing because when you have a group of people that their welfare is not being taken care of, their salary cannot take them home, we have challenges with regards to some states that are not able to pay teachers as and when due  this obviously compounds the issues of insecurity in the country.

Mr Ajiboye appealed to journalists to identify and report states owing teachers salaries, saying hunger breeds insecurity.

You journalists can identify them and you should be able to follow them up  where teachers are being owed for months, he said.

Mr Ajiboye, however, commended the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administrations investment in the Nigerian teachers, citing the implementation of 65-year-age retirement policy for teachers and the planned payment of allowance for teachers posted to rural areas, among others.

Curriculum review

The TRCN boss also spoke about the collaboration with the Universal Basic Education (UBE) and its affiliates to review the curriculum for provision of quality education in Nigeria.

He hinted at the incorporation of professional standards skills and other components for teachers towards mitigating the effects of insecurity on schools.

There is a synergy, even the review of the curriculum of quality education in Nigeria which started about two years ago. The National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) has been able to put in place certain things to be able to change some of the aspects of the curriculum to reflect current realities.

For instance, at the level of TRCN is to incorporate the component called the professional standards for Nigeria teachers in the new curriculum. We have also been able to incorporate the aspect of code of conduct or code of ethics for Nigerian teachers. We are working in partnership with UBEC and other agencies.

Recommendations

Meanwhile, the participants suggested the need for technology to improve security and improved infrastructure, and deployment of security personnels to schools.

The use of technology is important now that we now have to deploy technology to improve the level of security in schools. CCTV can be mounted in schools, Mr Ajiboye said.

He added that the security education curriculum that has just been developed will be able to provide such a solution.

Mr Ogunjobi suggested training of teachers and students on physical defence mechanisms such that when there is any form of attack, they know how to defend themselves.

On her part, Ms Abdulsalam believes that the timely responses from security operatives will help to minimise risk.

About the Dialogue

PREMIUM TIMES in partnership with Strictly Speaking- a media and English Language training organisation, launched the weekly roundtable forum, tagged The Dialogue- for education experts, policy makers, parents, students and other relevant stakeholders towards appraising the declining fortune of education in Nigeria.

The weekly forum, which is anchored by a veteran broadcaster and team lead for Strictly Speaking, Bimbo Oloyede, is designed to feature various experts and journalists who have recently published investigative reports on different challenges facing basic education in Nigeria.

The first six episodes of the programme, which focuses on basic education, are sponsored by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.

It is targeted at advancing conversations around investigative reports sponsored by the centre and aimed at mobilising support for meaningful impacts.
There is no provision for N5,000 monthly allowance for 40 million Nigerians in the 2022 budget, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, Adeola Olamilekan, has said.

The lawmaker who disclosed this to journalists Wednesday said there is still a provision for subsidy in the 2022 budget submitted by the Executive to the National Assembly.

He was reacting to an announcement made by the Minister of Finance, Zainab Ahmed.

Ms Ahmed had on Tuesday said the federal government will remove fuel subsidy and replace it with a monthly N5,000 transport grant to poor Nigerians.

The transport grant, she explained, will target about 30 to 40 million Nigerians who make up the poorest population of the country. And available resources after the removal of fuel subsidy will determine the number of beneficiaries.

Many Nigerians have kicked against this plan. Both the Nigerian Labour Congress and Trade Union Congress have opposed the plan especially since negotiations are still ongoing with regards to subsidy removal.

PREMIUM TIMES had reported how Nigeria spends over N102.5 billion monthly to subsidise petrol.

No budgetary provision, NASS unaware

But the governments plan is new to the National Assembly as no allocation was made in the 2022 budget currently before the lawmakers, Mr Adeola told journalists.

The proposal, he said, is still a rumour to him because before the Executive can embark on such intervention, a proposal will be sent to National Assembly.

The lawmaker noted that the planned intervention will cost about N2.4 trillion and there is a need for the legislature to question the criteria that would be used to determine the beneficiaries of the transportation allowance.

I dont want to go into details. If there is something like that, a document needs to come to National Assembly and how do they want to identify the beneficiaries. This is not provided for in the 2022 budget proposal which is N2.4 trillion.

Its still news because this budget we are considering, contains subsidy and if we are passing a budget with subsidy in the fiscal document, we cant speak because that is the document that is currently before us.

The Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning was quoted as saying that 40 million Nigerians will be paid N5,000 as transportation allowance, in lieu of the fuel subsidy.

There are still a lot of issues to be deliberated upon and looked into if eventually, this will come to pass and how do we raise this money to pay these 40 million Nigerians.

We dont have anywhere in the budget where 40 million Nigerians will collect N5000 monthly as transportation allowance totalling N2.4 trillion.

The lawmaker further said until there is a formal notice to the National Assembly requesting either a virement to the budget or reordering of the budget, it will be taken as a rumour.

However, the Executive can still propose an amendment to the 2022 budget proposal or submit a supplementary budget if it decides to go ahead with the subsidy removal and payment of transport allowance to poor Nigerians.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said only one in four health workers in Africa has been fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.

The WHO Regional Director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, while speaking during a virtual press conference on Thursday, said the figure represents 27 per cent of health workers on the continent.

Ms Moeti noted that failure of health workers to get vaccinated leaves the bulk of the workforce on the frontlines against the COVID-19 pandemic unprotected.

She said analysis of data reported from 25 countries finds that since March 2021, 1.3 million health workers were fully vaccinated, with just six countries reaching more than 90 per cent, while nine countries have fully vaccinated less than 40 per cent.

She explained that a recent WHO global study of 22 mostly high-income countries reported that above 80 per cent of their health care workers are fully vaccinated.

The majority of Africas health workers are still missing out on vaccines and remain dangerously exposed to severe COVID-19 infection.

Unless our doctors, nurses and other frontline workers get full protection we risk a blowback in the efforts to curb this disease. We must ensure our health facilities are safe working environments, Ms Moeti said.

Vaccine coverage

Ms Moeti said it is necessary to have high vaccine coverage among health workers not only for their own protection but also for their patients.

She said this will also ensure health care systems keep operating during a time of extreme need.

She explained that Africas shortage of health workers is acute and profound, with only one country in the region having the required health workers (10.9 per 1000 population) to deliver essential health services.

Sixteen countries in the region have less than one health worker per 1000 population. Any loss of these essential workers to COVID-19 due to illness or death therefore heavily impacts on service provision capacity, she said.

Infected health workers

The WHO official further disclosed that since March 2020, there have been more than 150,400 COVID-19 infections in health workers across Africa.

She said this accounts for 2.5 per cent of all confirmed COVID-19 cases and 2.6 per cent of the total health workforce in the region.

Five countries account for about 70 per cent of all the COVID-19 infections reported in health workers: Algeria, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, she said.

She explained that the risk of health worker infection rises whenever cases surge, a pattern that has been observed during the previous three waves of the pandemic.

She said with a fourth wave likely to hit after the end-of-year travel season, health workers will again face risks amid low vaccination coverage.

With a new surge in cases looming over Africa following the end-of-year festive season, countries must urgently speed up the rollout of vaccines to health care workers, said Moeti.

Vaccine hesitancy

According to WHO, the low vaccination coverage amongst health workers is likely due to the unavailability of vaccination services, especially in rural areas, as well as vaccine hesitancy.

The global organisation noted that recent studies found that only around 40 per cent of health workers intended to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in Ghana and less than 50 per cent in Ethiopia.

The international agency said concerns over vaccine safety and the adverse side effects of the vaccines have been identified as the main reasons for health workers hesitancy.

It noted that health workers are key sources of information for the general population and their attitudes can influence vaccine uptake.

The COVID-19 vaccine stands among humanitys extraordinary scientific feats. In Africa, were gradually overcoming supply constraints. Now is not the time to stumble over vaccine mistrust, Ms Moeti said.

Vaccination so far

Till date, more than 227 million vaccine doses have been administered in the African region.

Ms Moeti noted that in 39 countries which provided data, 3.9 million doses have been given to health workers. She said vaccine shipments have been on the rise over the past three months.

Africa has received 330 million doses from the COVAX Facility, the African Vaccine Acquisition Task Team, and bilateral agreements since February 2021.

Of these, 83 per cent have been delivered since August alone. As vaccine supply picks up, addressing uptake bottlenecks and accelerating rollout become more critical, she said.
The House of Representatives has passed for second reading a bill to provide the legal framework for the January-December budget cycle.

The national budget bill was debated and passed for second reading on Thursday. The bill, sponsored by Tajudeen Abbas (APC, Kaduna) seeks to define the budget cycle and create a timeline for each stage of the budget.

Over the years, the January-December budget cycle has been an issue of discretion between the executive and legislature.

In the 8th Assembly, it was difficult to maintain the January to December fiscal cycle because of what many believed to be caused by the friction between President Muhammadu Buhari and the leadership of the 8th Assembly.

The 2016 budget was signed in May 2016, while 2017 and 2018 budgets were signed six months into the year. Also, the 2019 budget was signed in May.

However, since the emergence of the 9th Assembly, the country has been able to maintain the January to December cycle.

Even though Section 89 of the 1999 Constitution made reference to financial year, it did not define a financial year.

Clause 2(2) of the proposed bill defines financial cycle as twelve months, from January to December.

Mr Abbas in his lead debate said the bill specifically provides a timeline for the different stages of the budget process, namely, planning, preparation, passage, execution and auditing.

He stated that Nigeria lacks an organic law on the processes and procedures for budgeting for the federation. He added that the bill seeks to complement the Constitution.

The Constitution is silent on the responsibility of the executive arm or the legislative arm on the various stages of the budget process, he said.

According to the lawmaker, the bill will define the limit of deficit budgeting and reasons for borrowing.

Although the fiscal responsibility act makes provision for deficit ceiling, for two years in a row, the government has exceeded the 3 per cent deficit-to-GDP threshold, citing national security.

Mr Abbas explained that the Constitution, the FRA, finance (control and management) act and the financial regulations have not been able to comprehensively address the process of budgeting.

Also, the bill seeks to empower the minister of finance with the powers to make regulations on budget. Mr Abbas said, these regulations may address some issues in detail for better understanding of actors, stakeholders and the general public.

Rejection of the previous attempt

In 2018, Mr Buhari had rejected a bill that sought to provide a time for the budget. The constitution alteration bill was passed by the National Assembly and the Houses of Assembly, however, Mr Buhari declined assent.

The bill had proposed, among others, that the president or governor must present the budget before the parliament not less than three months to the end of the year.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Solid Minerals, Tanko Al-Makura, has mentioned lack of funding and bureaucracy as the reasons stalling the takeoff of the Ajaokuta Steel Project.

He disclosed this to journalists Thursday after he presented his committees report to the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

He said a special fund needs to be created to achieve the intention of the federal government to diversify the economy.

The Ajaokuta Steel Complex in Kogi State was envisaged to serve as the bedrock of Nigerias industrialisation.

The steel complex had reportedly reached 98 per cent completion as far back as 1994 but no steel was produced after it was abandoned.

The eight Senate had passed a bill seeking $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account to fund the completion of the plant but it was rejected by President Muhammadu Buhari.

The president had said appropriating $1 billion from the Excess Crude Account is not the best strategic option for Nigeria at this time of budgetary constraints, and the nation cannot afford to commit such an amount amid competing priorities.

Speaking with journalists, Mr Al-Makura described the Ajaokuta Steel Complex as a vibrant sector of the economy that had been left in deep slumber and that is the

We have talked many times about the need to reactivate this company and I know as a fact, the president is very passionate to ensure that before he takes a bow, that Ajaokuta Steel Company will become very effective and drive the process of proper industrialisation in this country.

But unfortunately, the funding is the greatest problem. Not only that, certain bureaucratic red-tapism within and around agencies, departments and ministries have stalled this most desired project.

He, however, failed to mention the MDAs involved. He simply asked the MDAs to wake up and pursue this project with all the energy and focus it deserves.

It is only then that we will be able to have confidence that the so much expected industrialisation of this country through the Ajaokuta Steel Company is achieved, he said.

Earlier, during the presentation of the report, he appealed to the committee to make provision for a special fund to make the industrialisation and diversification drive of the present administration a reality.

There appears to be some kind of stereotyping of the budget and if we really consider the need for economic growth and diversification which is very much sought for, there has to be some initiative in ensuring that the budget is a pragmatic budget.

We found that the much desired growth in this sector may not be easily achievable without very special allocation to this ministry.

For the past two years when the initiative was put forward to reactivate the company, there has not been any meaningful allocation to the company.

With that, the much expected takeoff or reactivation of the company might not be made except when there is special fund. I will like to request the Chairman to look passionately into this request.

The lawmaker also expressed optimism for the growth of the solid minerals industry  which he said is feasible with more funding.

What is lacking is the funding, he said. There is no state that does not have one kind of solid mineral or another.

So the government should take into consideration the widespread presence of these minerals across the states and the funding should be in tandem with this multiplicity of opportunities across the states.

A member of a the committee, Smart Adeyemi (APC, Kogi West), emphasised the need for the completion of the steel complex for the socio-economic development of the country.

As a nation coping with large number of unemployed people, this sector is very important. It is key, it will help the nation in terms of job creation and employment opportunities, he said.

The chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriations, Jibrin Barau, said all hands must be on deck to make Ajaokuta work.

We know a lot of money has been spent to bring about Ajaokuta and now it is in a state of decay, not utilised so it calls for the involvement of everybody to make sure we resuscitate that important complex.

Many believe the Ajaokuta Steel Complex when completed, will have the capacity to produce major industrial machinery, auto-electrical spare-parts, as well as materials for ship building, railways and carriages.
A former presidential candidate in Nigeria, Kingsley Moghalu, has accused the Nigerian Army of arson in Imo State, Nigerias South-east.

Shops and a hotel were set ablaze in a community in Oru East Local Government Area of Imo State on Monday, after a deadly clash between soldiers and suspected members of the pro-Biafra group, IPOB.

A soldier and a suspected member of IPOB were shot dead during the clash.

The wanton destruction of civilian property in Awonmanma in Imo State by soldiers of @HQNigerianArmy in response to the killing of a soldier by some individuals is unfortunate, Mr Moghalu (@MoghaluKingsley) said in a statement he posted on Twitter on Wednesday.

That soldier did not deserve to die, and his killing was also wrong, but there is something called proportionality in responding to this sort of incident, he said.

Mr Moghalu, a lawyer, was the presidential candidate of the Young Progressives Party in 2023.

His statement reinforces claims by the locals that soldiers burnt down the shops as a reprisal for the killing of a soldier.

But the army has denied the accusation.

The army said the shops were razed by IPOB members who were angry that their owners opened them in disobedience to the sit-at-home order by the group.

Abubakar Abdullahi, a major and the spokesperson for the 82 Division of the Nigerian Army, said in a statement on Tuesday that IPOB members also set ablaze some businesses and homes at a road junction  Ishieke junction, along Owerri-Onitsha Express Way  as a vendetta against the citizens for not complying with the illegal order.

The South-east is being unnecessarily militarised, Mr Moghalu said.

Now that security threats appear to have reduced in the South-east after the Anambra governorship election, what is the justification for the continued militarisation of the region with multiple checkpoints, and soldiers reportedly collecting money from innocent transporters and commuters?

The unnecessary militarisation of civilian spaces creates a siege mentality. This is unhealthy for nation-building and national cohesion, he said in his Twitter statement.

The agitation for an independent republic of Biafra, championed by IPOB, has led to several killings and destruction in the South-east.

After the Monday clash between the soldiers and suspected IPOB members in Imo, a police officer was shot dead and a police facility set ablaze the next day in the state.

There has been pressure on the Nigerian government to release the IPOB leader, Nnamdi Kanu who is in detention in Abuja where he is facing trial for alleged treason.
The visit of Antony Blinken, the current U.S. Secretary of State, to Nigeria is one of the more humble expressions of the United States in a history of condescending relations with Nigeria. It is very easy, when listening to the United States on its soap box about democracy and human rights, to forget that that country only became a real democracy in the 1960s, after the Civil Rights Revolution.

This dance started a long while before we became conscious. Sometimes it is explicit but more often it is implicit. The relations between Nigeria and the United States of America was formed long before the political existence of the current countries. It is an association that has seemingly become cemented in abuse and caste hierarchy.

Recently, it was widely publicised that many people enslaved in the United States were kidnapped from the territory now known as Nigeria. Even though many were not directly shipped to the shores of what is now the U.S., many ended up there from South America and the Caribbean, after further sales. As such, at the founding of whatever the U.S. has become were the lives, sweat, bones, broken bodies and spirits of those whose relatives, many generations on, are now called Nigerians. Many of their descendants in the U.S. are living through the denial, disdain and depletion of humanity that that country reserves for its citizens of African origin.

The visit of Antony Blinken, the current U.S. Secretary of State, to Nigeria is one of the more humble expressions of the United States in a history of condescending relations with Nigeria. It is very easy, when listening to the United States on its soap box about democracy and human rights, to forget that that country only became a real democracy in the 1960s, after the Civil Rights Revolution. Before then, it was a Racialist Republic and shortly before then, a Sexist one. Even now, and at every opportunity, efforts are made to make the votes of African Americans insignificant. From the purely outrageous use of criminalisation and racist incarceration to the disenfranchisement of millions or, just simply, gerrymandering. Also in that vein are the efforts to ensure that the cost of registration on the electoral rolls, are procedurally or practically too expensive.

As the journey of the United States has shown, from the Bacons Uprising till January the 6th, the essence of White Supremacy is the religion of choice in that republic, as evident in the devotion to hanging and genocidal murder of African Americans, from the Clinton Massacre of 1875 and Wilmington Massacre of 1898, to the many who lost their lives registering African American voters, up until the end of the 1960s in the south of the U.S.

In the continuing Trump backlash against the administration of the first ever African American president, Republicans in the U.S. Senate have blocked the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Bill more than once, building on the groundwork of the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting similar efforts in 2013. Quite clearly, the U.S. is struggling to be a genuinely multi-ethnic democracy. Yet, it has one of the most forceful and aggressive global platforms on human rights, even though African Americans are daily subject to death in the hands of law enforcement, with the consequence being that names like George Floyd are now tattooed on the skin of the world, and Black Lives Matter as a political statement and movement is something that should go without saying. We must see clearly, using Olaju, and not recognise the U.S. with the eyes of the brainwashed or through Hollywood fantasies.

If the U.S. must grow in humility and maturity, Nigerians, especially the elite, must lose their fawning desire for visa access and the obsession with material accumulation and its attendant need for U.S. validation. The modern Nigerian is an emotive narcissist in my view: A creation of colonial education who, till date, has accepted the false notion that he or she will only be validated by being Westernised in education

As such, the humility of the Blinken engagement and tone has been long overdue. Hopefully, it is the beginning of a U.S. that listens, not just in Nigeria but especially in Ethiopia, Sudan and Guinea; listening to the diverse voices, rather than being hostage to a venal minority of activists. Respecting territorial complexity and integrity, rather than the preferences of choice acolytes. The listing of Nigeria as country on the list of countries highlighted for religious violence was a classic. Simply, the kind of violence that a Muslim faces in the U.S., from the Gulag of Guantanamo to being specifically excluded and treated with public and covert violence, can never happen to a Christian or any religion in Nigeria. The treatment of Nigerians seeking to visit or school etc. in the U.S. is plain outrageous and humiliating. In fact, in about two years of working for the State Departments civil society organisation in the Niger Delta, what was most notable was the lack and segregated treatment of African American officials of the United States Embassy in Nigeria.

If the U.S. must grow in humility and maturity, Nigerians, especially the elite, must lose their fawning desire for visa access and the obsession with material accumulation and its attendant need for U.S. validation. The modern Nigerian is an emotive narcissist in my view: A creation of colonial education who, till date, has accepted the false notion that he or she will only be validated by being Westernised in education and defined by the certification that that brings. Inevitably, the modern Nigerian is, unconsciously, one of the greatest champions of White Supremacy, being totally infatuated with Anglo-American capitalism. The more the modern Nigerian acquires, the greater the bombast, blinded by the grudging validation and damned by faint praise.

On the Nigerian side, having lost the appreciation for interdependence that is our pre-colonial ancestral purpose, it has not been and it is not easy to become a nation out of the heritage of hundreds of proud, independent ethnicities. It hs also not been easy to evolve beyond our dependence on oil revenue. It is extremely challenging, especially because the entire North-East of Nigeria has been embroiled in destructive insurgency and, unsurprisingly, that has made a larger part of our country extremely poor.

It will all be worth it if we reduce our partisan toxicity. Yes, we copied the U.S.s political architecture but must we copy its destructive partisanship too or become a society so unequal and manifestly unjust that we only celebrate ourselves by the number of those we are able to scapegoat? The Gini Coefficient of Nigeria, at 35, is better than that of the U.S., and that says a lot for this 61-year-old country.

We must rise above this underwhelming goal of being a representative democracy to aspiring to a fully participatory democracy. We also must have the moral courage we had in the recent past against the Apartheid government of South Africa to become a true friend of the U.S. by standing more visibly for and with our African American kin. Clearly, if we did then, the Trump administration and the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) lobbyists would not have been able to oversimplify Nigeria as a place of religious persecution, putting to shame elements in the Christian Association of Nigeria who exploit this gap. For us in Nigeria, we desperately need the Oju Inu to see the potential in our vulnerabilities.

As the Pan-African Free Trade zone evolves into a daily economic bloc that is meaningful to both the poorest and the rich, we enter this new multipolar world where the U.S. president admits that the world is looking to find leadership, and the U.S. Secretary of State admits that democracy is evolutionary for all.

As the Pan-African Free Trade zone evolves into a daily economic bloc that is meaningful to both the poorest and the rich, we enter this new multipolar world where the U.S. president admits that the world is looking to find leadership, and the U.S. Secretary of State admits that democracy is evolutionary for all.

In the order that is emerging, the demographic profile of Africa will be 50 per cent of all young people in the world. Africa must engage with the U.S. on more than trade, and economic exchange, that up to this point has been a very poor, extractive caricature. The proliferation of small arms in Africa, especially in the Sahel, has made the predicted destabilisation real (the effect of U.S. action in Libya is also another element). If Nigeria can be a bridge in Sudan, Guinea and Ethiopia, the U.S. must be a complementary friend, not a freelancing spoiler.

The U.S. must also recognise a critical part of its populace is African and they must be treated with the honour and dignity they deserve, especially by acknowledging their role in its material wealth. It could evolve a cultural exchange platform and vitalise the African American genetic curiosity about its African roots, recognising the self-interest in a healthy and thriving Pan-African world.

It is critical that the lesson in interdependence that COVID-19 has taught is not lost on the participants in this relationship between Nigeria and the U.S. Both countries should partner in vaccine production capacity in Nigeria, investing in research. In this connection, there should be better investment in developing a database of the Nigerian gene pool for connection with African Americans and other uses for humanity.

In the end, a more symmetrical relation with Nigeria gives the U.S. more chance of importance in the emerging order. This order is one in which it seems that both countries will swap places, not just in population size but in other critical qualities.

Adewale Ajadi, a lawyer, creative consultant and leadership expert, is author of Omoluwabi 2.0: A Code of Transformation in 21st Century Nigeria.
Armed bandits have asked the family of a police officer to pay a N200 million ransom for his quick release because they have to leave telecommunications service area.

Sambo Hosea was kidnapped alongside many other travellers on Sunday on the Kaduna-Abuja highway. He was the police orderly to Sagir Hamida, a former governorship aspirant in Zamfara State who was killed by the bandits in the incident.

The bandits subsequently demanded the N200 million ransom from Mr Hoseas family.

In a telephone conversation with the family on Wednesday, the outlaws said they were leaving the location where they could access service and urged for timely payment of the ransom.

When tthe relatives of the abducted police officer responded that they had raised N2 million, the kidnappers gave them six hours to hand over the amount they demanded.

A personal assistant to the deceased politician, Ibrahim Musa, confirmed the development to PREMIUM TIMES.

Our reporter listened to a recording of the phone negotiation between the bandits and Mr Hoseas family.

When offered the N2 million, the bandit launched into an angry rant:

You cannot say such to me after abducting such personality. What you are saying is nonsense. You are lucky your call was not on speaker, my colleagues could have beaten up your brother (the captive).

This issue can escalate into something big if you cannot hasten to pay the ransom. If you mention N2 million again, we will either shoot him dead or beat him up.

I have shown enough patience to you. I have done my best for sourcing network service to communicate with you. You have to talk sense. We are leaving network location and if we leave here, it will take you days before you hear from your brother again.

The kidnappers then extended the ultimatum from one hour to six hours to raise the money.

Its not easy, captive speaks on condition in captivity

When he was allowed into the call, Mr Hosea pleaded for timely payment of the ransom to the kidnappers, saying his condition was not good.

We trekked for days to access mobile network to communicate with you. Please go to my people, even if you can borrow, help me raise the money I will pay later.

The six hours is too much because we are moving from one location to another in search of network, Mr Hosea said.

During the conversation, the bandits also received an airtime recharge card from the relative of the police officer.

The phone contact of the police spokesperson in Kaduna, Muhammad Jalige, did not connect Thursday afternoon to obtain his comment on the development.
The University of Benin has granted amnesty to more than 500 students who had overstayed in the university.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Lilian Salami, announced this on Thursday in Benin in her address at the 46th and 47th combined Convocation and 51st Founders Day ceremonies of the institution.

Ms Salami said the university had also carried out several academic reforms, milestones and accreditation under her watch.

Part of these feats, she said, was making certificates of graduands to be available for collection right from the day of graduation.

She said the institution successfully introduced teaching methods through e-learning and physical teaching as fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The vice-chancellor said a directorate of quality assurance was established to standardise academic activities and ensure quality service delivery across all academic programmes in the university.

At the inception of this administration, a major source of concern was gross disequilibrium in the ratio of teaching to non-teaching staff.

The figure available put the teaching staff at 1,779 while the number of non-teaching staff was approximately 6,063.

With the continuing embargo on employment, something drastic needed to be done to address the situation. The administration then began the process of sourcing from among non-teaching staff, qualified persons who were subsequently redeployed to teaching cadre.

So far, over 250 of such qualified staffers have been re-deployed to academics. The administration did not stop there. As (of) today, over 200 adjunct lecturers have also been appointed, to bridge the gap in teaching positions, she said.

Ms Salami also said that the university under her administration introduced five new programmes into the academic curriculum which are Bachelor of Arts in Music and Psychology, as well as Master of Science, Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy in Maternal and Child Health Nursing.

The postgraduate programmes, she said, were funded via the Centre of Excellence in Reproductive Health Innovation.

The Chancellor of the university, James Ayatse, who is the Tor Tiv in Benue, in his remarks, called on tertiary institutions in Nigeria to be more innovative in tackling the enormous challenges inhibiting access to quality education.

The chancellor said Nigerian universities must engage in profitable ventures, without compromising the core objectives of setting up the institutions, to augment their dwindling subventions.

He commended the vice-chancellor, members of the management team and other members of UNIBEN community for ensuring peace and stability on campus.

The Chairman of the Governing Council of the university, Sonny Kuku, called for increased funding of education in Nigeria to achieve the desired result of producing highly skilled and competent manpower to drive the country.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that 17,517 students graduated for the 2018/2019 and 2019/2020 academic sessions.

(NAN)
Nigerias minister of state for Environment, Sharon Ikeazor, said the pollution caused by the Nembe oil spill in Bayelsa State, Nigerias Niger Delta region, is massive and could only be compared to the impact of atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during the World War II.

It was like a Hiroshima site, she told reporters on Thursday at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The spill has put Aiteo Eastern Exploration and Exploration Company, an indigenous oil company, on the spotlight, as well as raised questions over the continuous devastation of the environment in the Niger Delta through oil exploitation.

Toxic fumes were released into the environment and thousands of barrels of crude oil spilled into the waters for more than 10 days as Aiteo could not contain the leak which occurred on November 5 in its oilfield in Nembe.

Ms Ikeazor said she has been receiving briefing on the spill from The National Oil Spills Detection and Response Agency (NOSDRA).

What I saw in terms of the pollution The devastation of the Niger Delta is massive, she said. As we are cleaning up, what we are cleaning up is minute compared to the devastation going on.

Saghir el Mohammed, a director in charge of press affairs, Federal Ministry of Environment, said on Tuesday that 3,000 barrels of emulsified crude oil have been recovered so far from the waters and held in a recovery barge, after the leakage had been stopped.

Ms Ikeazor is calling for a review of the law establishing NOSDRA so that oil companies could face stiffer penalties for pollution. You will see that they will give maybe N100 fine, anyone can pay that and go back and re-pollute (the environment), she said.

It goes beyond the oil companies giving out palliatives, they must put measures in place to prevent such accidents from happening.

We need to put stiffer penalties, build the capacity of NOSDRA which is the regulatory agency in the oil sector to be able to have the teeth to bite. Without enhancing their capacity and reaffirming the legal framework, getting it stronger, they cant do much. These are areas we are looking into, she added.

Ms Ikeazor also spoke on Aiteos claim that the spill was caused by sabotage.

They are also claiming that the spill was due to sabotage by the local communities. We are going to have a targeted approach to illegal bunkering, tampering with oil installation and artisanal mining in the Niger Delta to get alternative livelihood for the young people of the Niger Delta, so that they would desist from this because it is further polluting the environment, she said.

Aiteo will account for the destruction  Bayelsa government

The Bayelsa State Government last week said Aiteo would be made to account for the destruction caused by the spill.

The governor is gravely concerned that if the high volume of crude being spilled continuously is not stopped immediately, it will spread to many more communities.

This will undermine the economic life of residents, who are predominantly farmers and fishermen.

(Governor Douye) Diri warned Aiteo not to assume that this criminal neglect of its facilities and disregard for human life and the environment, as demonstrated by its conduct will not be accounted for, the Commissioner for Information in the state, Ayibaina Duba, said in a statement.
Albert Ikpenwa, a Catholic priest and rector, Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, said the Catholic Church is not against the good aspects of African culture, but promotes it for a better understanding of the society.

Mr Ikpenwa told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Enugu that the church engages itself sometimes in cultural activities as a way to promote Nigerian culture among the youths and let them know that the church is not against it.

He said the school would be organising a cultural festival on November 26 to showcase the cultural heritage of different people in Nigeria.

Mr Ikpenwa regretted that youths have allowed westernisation to influence them against their own culture.

He urged them to uphold those cultural values Africans are known for.

The knowledge of our culture makes us to be our brothers keeper, protecting one another and ensuring sacredness of lives as well as respect for elders.

We expect the youths to come and to experience our attitude to culture on Nov. 26, Mr Ikpenwa said.

The church, he said, is only against what is bad in our culture such as idol worshiping, human sacrifices and other harmful traditional practices, adding that the message of Christ takes root in all cultures.

The priest noted that people of various races were already practising their culture before the church came to transform it for better.

As we know that Christianity started with Israel (Jews), then, to Rome, Roman culture accepted the church and transformed their culture by removing everything that is bad in it.

It came to Africa and tried also to transform African culture but people misunderstood it thinking it came to do away with it.

Church transforms culture by making the gospel of Christ rooted in it and that is why we are organising cultural activities to tell our people that we are not against it, he said.

Mr Ikpenwa added that the festival would last for three days with symposium, drama, dance and proverbs that depict Nigerian culture.

Here, we train Catholic priests and if they understand the culture of the people they are posted to, they would teach them good aspects of our culture.

It is not only in Africa that we have evil culture, Romans have a culture whereby people were being sacrificed to their idols and gods but when Christianity came, they stopped it, he said.

(NAN)
The Enugu State Government said it has concluded a modality for the organisation of two festivals to keep the state bubbling and attractive to national and international tourists during this years yuletide.

The Commissioner for Culture and Tourism, Ugonna Ibe, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Enugu that the festivals were Ezimo Waterfall Festival and Food Festival.

Mr Ibe said the waterfall festival would be held between December 26 and 28, while the food festival would start on December 20 and probably run for two days.

The commissioner said the line-up of these festivals and other tourists attractions in Enugu State would make the state the tourists destination this yuletide.

He said Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi was already putting in place robust security measures at the state, local and community levels to ensure a hitch-free yuletide.

The ministry, in conjunction with Ezimo Community Youth Forum in Udenu Local Government Area, will be organising a carnival from December 26 to December 28 targeted at unveiling the Ezimo Waterfall.

Ezimo Waterfall is one of the breathtaking waterfalls we have in Enugu State. We want to use this opportunity to showcase it to the public.

As our people and tourists come back from different parts of Nigeria and other countries, they can have a place to have fun and experience other unique cultures of the state, he said.

Mr Ibe said the ministry in partnership with On The Air Personalities, a group of broadcast media practitioners, would be organising a food festival on December 20 at the Okpara Square, Enugu.

This particular food festival will be grand as it will display our rich local cuisines and tourists can taste and feel these cuisines within a day or two days.

Those displaying the cuisines will also give history and background of the food and there will be lots of local palm wine, dancing and cultural displays to go with it, he said.

(NAN)
Six political parties have fielded candidates for the December 4 Ekiti State local government councils poll, an official has said.

Jide Aladejana, the Chairman of the State Independent Electoral Commission (SIEC), disclosed this when he spoke with journalists in Ado-Ekiti.

Mr Aladejana, a judge, assured the election would be free, fair and credible.

He said that no politician would be allowed to hijack and manipulate the outcome of the elections.

Let me use this opportunity to assure the electorate that the commission will conduct free, fair and credible poll that will meet the yearnings of all participating parties in the state, he said.

Parties

He named the political parties as taking part in the election as Action Alliance (AA), African Democratic Congress (ADC), All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), All Progressives Congress (APC), National Reduce Movement (NRM), and Young Progressives Party (YPP).

He added that the election would hold in the 16 statutory Local Government Areas (LGAs) of the state and the 19 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs) across the 2,195 polling units in the state.

We are going to make the election free, fair, and credible. This is our target and nothing can stop us. We wont allow anyone to manipulate the process.

We are going to be as transparent as possible by monitoring the process and ensure that the votes of the people count, he said.

The SIEC chairman stated that sensitive materials for the election would be made public on the eve of the election to avoid manipulations.

He added that the fact that the main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) plans to boycott the poll would not vitiate the process.

All of us are participants in the electoral system, but the only difference is that the political parties must sponsor candidates.

We are ready for the election. We have trained our ad hoc staff and the electoral officers in the 16 LGAs and 19 LCDAs.

We will work with security agencies to caution those who may wish to disrupt the conduct of the election, the chairman said.

Speaking on the PDPs planned boycott of the poll, the State Publicity Secretary, Raphael Adeyanju, said the party does not have confidence in the electoral body. He said tt cannot conduct free, fair, and credible poll.

He said the decision of the party was approved by the national secretariat. (NAN)
Some residents of Ikare-Akoko in Akoko Northeast Local Government Area of Ondo State defied Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolus 24-hour curfew on Thursday and razed a bank building.

The building belongs to the traditional ruler of the town, the Owa-Ale of Ikare.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Mr Akeredolu imposed the 24-hour curfew on Tuesday as a result of mayhem in the town which began on Saturday and claimed lives.

Witnesses said people had been moving around in spite of the curfew and were surprised that the arsonists set the bank building ablaze.

One of the witnesses told NAN that the arsonists earlier broke windows and door of the bank building before setting it on fire.

He said the damage had been done before the police arrived at the scene.

The Divisional Police Officer in Ikare refused to comment, but directed NAN to speak with the Police Public Relations Officer in Akure, Funmilayo Odunlami.

Ms Odunlami, in turn, did not respond to enquiries made by NAN for police reaction.

Ikare-Akoko has been embroiled in supremacy claims between the two traditional rulers in the town  the Olukare and the Owa-Ale- over decades.

The claim and counter-claims have also degenerated into the fractionalisation of the town with one part banning residents of the other part from venturing into their part of the town.

(NAN)
A coalition of civil society for #EndSARS victims has berated the attitude of the Lagos State government, federal government, and their officials towards the #EndSARS report released last week by the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry.

The coalition, which comprises 14 civil societies, expressed dissatisfaction towards the hostility of government officials to the report, at a press briefing in Lagos, on Thursday.

Some of the civil societies are Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA); Joint Action Front (JAF); Justice Development and Peace Commission; Spaces4Change (S4C); Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP); Youths Rights Campaign (YRC); Center for Dignity; and Peace and Development Project.

Speaking at the press briefing, Achike Chude, the vice president of JAF, said Nigerias media and political space have been on overdrive with all manners of interventions by both state and non-state actors since the release of the report.

According to the report of the Judicial Panel, at least 46 unarmed protesters were either shot dead, injured with bullets, or assaulted by security forces at the Lekki toll gate on October 20, last year.

Mr Chude said it is disgusting to see a manhunt of protesters who witnessed the October 20, last year, shooting incident at the Lekki toll gate and several statements by government actors to discredit the report of the panel.

While the citizens of the state, and indeed Nigeria and the international community have seen an opportunity for new beginnings in the implementation of the report, the actions by both state actors and non-state actors affiliated to the government, smack of an insidious and pernicious agenda by the government towards the report, he said.

Akinbode Oluwafemi, the executive director of CAPPA, said the collusion of federal and state governments and their agencies brought about the tragedy that unfolded at the Lekki Tollgate on 20 October last year.

We have talked enough about the boldness and objectivity of the panel, which after a year of sitting, came out with a report that rightly indicted multiple agencies of the federal and Lagos state governments as well as the Lekki Concession Company.

The body language of the state government, as well as the unwholesome bullishness and hostility of government officials over the release of the report, speaks volumes about the possible fate of the white paper awaiting release by the government, he said.

Mr Oluwafemi added that the leaked report of the panel was enough to induce a lot of soul searching by government and government officials, with a view to charting positively new paths of engagements with Nigerians, especially the youth.

But alas! The opposite has been the case, especially in Lagos state which has become the epicenter of the struggle against the structural injustice in the country, as well as the center of the repression of dissent emanating from the tragedy, he said.

Also speaking at the briefing, Zikorah Ibeh, a representative of Spaces for Change, said there is a general view that the state and federal governments are uncomfortable with the report and are working hard to undermine it as well as change the narrative.

We sincerely hope that this is not true, but if it is, such plans will fail, she said.

The groups also condemned attacks on victims of the Lekki incident, saying such attacks are unwholesome and cowardly.

We condemn most vehemently, the violent, bloody attack on Kamson Ibe, which took place in the evening of Sunday 21 November 2021. Kamson was also a victim of the army and police brutality at the Lekki Toll Gate last year. Her attack last Sunday was accompanied by threats of further mayhem by her assailants against #EndSARS activists.

On Monday 22 November, Dabira Oluwa also received a threat dropped on her car, warning that she was the next on the line to be attacked. We also note the threat of assassination against the persons of Barrister Olu Adegboruwa, Wiseman Kunle, and Barrister Faroti.

The prospect of a legitimately constituted government being involved in state sanctioned violent attacks and killings of innocent citizens is too gruesome and frightening to contemplate, the group said.

The coalition urged the Lagos state governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, to investigate the possible involvement of people close to him in the violence being perpetrated against Lagosians, especially survivors of the Lekki shooting incident.

The group added that the credibility of the president of Nigeria, Muhammadu Buhari, is at stake over the matter.

The totally dismissive response of the minister of information, Lai Mohammed to the Lagos state panel report is typical of his well-known combative position of see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil especially when it comes to the tragic events of 20th October 2020.

It is time to let government functionaries like Lai Muhammed know that they are not more patriotic that any other Nigerian, neither do they love our country more. We stand by the State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and Other Matters report as released, because it is a bold and objective reflection of the malfeasance that has characterized the behavior of our security forces over the years, the group said.

Stating their demand, the coalition called for an immediate prosecution of individuals indicted for human rights abuses and murder before, during and after the #EndSARS protest.

They also called for an investigation into the attack on Ms Ibeh as well as the threats on Dabiri Oluwa and others, and the perpetrators prosecuted.

All those involved in the sordid and criminal events of the 20th October 2020 should be punished in accordance with the provisions of the law. This would include army, police, government personnel as well as personnel of the Lekki Concession Company. Corporate sanctions, if possible, should also be considered. This should hopefully serve as a statement against impunity in our country, the group said.

They added that the Lekki tollgate should be designated a national monument in celebration of the heroism of the Nigerian youths who stood against brutality of the police, and victims of police atrocities be compensated.
The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Thursday, named newly completed 480 housing units of LagosHOMS at Ibeshe in Ikorodu after B.O. Benson who passed on at the age of 89 in 2020.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ikorodu-born Babatunde Olusola Benson (B.O. Benson), former General-Secretary and President of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA), died two weeks to his 89th birthday on June 24, 2020.

Mr Sanwo-Olu, while inaugurating the 480 homes delivered through direct budgetary allocation, echoed the virtues of the late patriarch while enumerating the impact of good and decent homes on the welfare of residents of Lagos State.

He said that decent shelter enhances the quality of life and promotes general wellbeing to generate ripple effects on other areas of life by adding meaning and essence to living .

The governor said decent housing was a priority for his administration, adding that the inauguration was in fullfilment of his electoral promises, describing the estate as a modern residential estate dedicated to the well-being of the good people of Lagos State.

He said his government had in the past two and half years adopted measures to bridge the huge housing deficit compounded by increased population due to influx of people to the state.

In order to cope with this trend, the state government regards it as a duty to keep on building more homes to take care of the increasing housing needs of its residents.

About five weeks ago, we commissioned an Estate of 100 homes constructed through joint venture in Lekki. Today, we are here again to release another set of 480 homes delivered through direct budgetary allocation.

In utilizing these two strategies of partnership with the private sector and budgetary allocation, we have been able to deliver 13 major housing schemes all over the state.

We are still counting because we are still at work in a number of housing construction sites all over the state.

Apart from the one being commissioned today, three schemes are virtually ready and awaiting commissioning at Sangotedo, Odo-Onosa Ayandelu, and Agbowa, he said.

Mr Sanwo-Olu assured that his administration would mark its third anniversary with 7,000 homes, adding that the state government was also embarking on partnership with private sector to meet more housing needs.

He said the private sector involvement in housing development was important for robust housing delivery policy while listing projects achieved through the partnerships.

The governor said the Phase 2 of the Ibeshe Housing scheme that its foundation for the construction was being laid will yield a total of 192 two-bedroom flats with good supporting infrastructure.

Mr Sanwo-Olu, who also performed the Ground Breaking Ceremony of LagosHOMS Ibeshe Phase 11, said that that his administration had created 17,000 direct and 18,000 indirect jobs in the construction value chain.

The Commissioner for Housing, Moruf Akinderu-Fatai, described Mr Sanwo-Olu as an accomplished housing development award winner who was passionate about making shelter available to all classes in the state, through deliberate consistent policies to bridge the shelter gap.

With more decent homes, the family ecosystem is better preserved, living standards are improved and the beauty of the environment is enhanced, he said.

He reeled out the achievements of the governor and commitment of ministry officials while calling for support of residents of the state.

It is important to note that this estate which is constructed through budgetary allocation is located close to the shoreline thereby making it a choice residential scheme, he said.

Rasheed Makinde, chairman, House Committee on Housing, said the governor took over all moribund housing projects and completed them while giving assurances and support of the state Assembly.

NAN reports that the newly inaugurated estate located opposite Nichemtex factory, Ibeshe Road, Igbogbo  Baiyeku LCDA, sits on15 hectares and consists of 40 blocks of one, two, and three bedrooms apartments.

(NAN)
LONDON, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Chubb today announced the appointment of Israel Rayan as Regional Head of Consumer Lines Distribution for Continental Europe, the Middle East and North Africa (CEMENA).

In this role, Israel will be responsible for overseeing regional large and strategic partnerships plus distribution channels (Digital, Direct Marketing, Affinity and Face to Face) for a wide range of consumer products, including Accident & Health, Personal Lines and others.

Israel, who was previously Vice President Direct Marketing, Latin America, will report to Florian Eisele, Senior Vice President, Director of Accident and Health, CEMENA.

The appointment is effective immediately and he will be based in Madrid from 1 January 2022.

Florian Eisele said: "I am delighted to welcome Israel to this new and exciting role in our CEMENA region. He brings with him a proven track record of success underpinned by more than 20 years of experience in sales and marketing. I am certain that under his leadership our innovative distribution capabilities will only strengthen further the already compelling offering we provide to our customers."

About Chubb

Chubb is the world's largest publicly traded property and casualty insurance company. With operations in 54 countries and territories, Chubb provides commercial and personal property and casualty insurance, personal accident and supplemental health insurance, reinsurance and life insurance to a diverse group of clients. As an underwriting company, we assess, assume and manage risk with insight and discipline. We service and pay our claims fairly and promptly. The company is also defined by its extensive product and service offerings, broad distribution capabilities, exceptional financial strength and local operations globally. Parent company Chubb Limited is listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: CB) and is a component of the S&P 500 index. Chubb maintains executive offices in Zurich, New York, London, Paris and other locations, and employs approximately 31,000 people worldwide. Additional information can be found at: www.chubb.com.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/324916/Chubb_Logo.jpg

Related Links

chubb.com



SOURCE Chubb
NETANYA, Israel, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE: CEL) announced today that an Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (the "Meeting") of Cellcom Israel Ltd. (the "Company") will be held on Thursday, December 30, 2021, at 17:00 p.m. (Israel time), at the offices of the Company, 10 Hagavish Street, Netanya, Israel. The record date for the Meeting is Thursday, December 2, 2021.

The agenda of the Meeting is as follows:

consideration of our audited financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020 ; appointment of Keselman & Keselman, a member of PricewaterhouseCoopers International Limited, as our independent auditors; reappointment of Doron Cohen (Chairman), Gustavo Traiber (independent director), Eran Shenar , Michael Joseph Salkind and Baruch Itzhak as directors of the Company; reappointment of Shmuel Hauser and Varda Liberman as external directors of the Company; approval of changes to the Company's Articles of Association; approval of changes to the Company's Compensation Policy; and appointment of the Company's Chairman as Acting CEO.

Quorum

Two or more shareholders holding in the aggregate at least one-third of the outstanding voting power in the Company, present in person or by proxy and entitled to vote, will constitute a quorum at the Meeting.

Voting Requirements

Item 1 will not involve a vote.

Items 2, 3 and 5 require a simple majority of all votes of the shareholders present in the General Meeting who are allowed to vote and who voted in it, not taking into account abstaining votes.

Item 4 requires a simple majority of all votes of the shareholders present in the General Meeting who are allowed to vote and who voted in it, provided one of the following is fulfilled: [a] included in the majority of votes in the General Meeting are a majority of all votes of shareholders who are not controlling shareholders of the Company or interested parties in approving the appointment, except for a personal interest that is not a result of a relationship with the controlling shareholder, who participate in the vote (abstaining votes are not taken into account); or - [b] the total number of opposing votes from among the shareholders set forth in paragraph [a] does not exceed two percent (2%) of all the Company's voting rights.

Items 6 and 7 require a simple majority of all votes of the shareholders present in the General Meeting who are allowed to vote and who voted in it, provided one of the following is fulfilled: [a] included in the majority of votes in the General Meeting are a majority of all votes of shareholders who are not controlling shareholders of the Company or interested parties in approving the Compensation Policy or approving the appointment of the Company's Chairman as Acting CEO, as the case may be, who participate in the vote (abstaining votes are not taken into account); or - [b] the total number of opposing votes from among the shareholders set forth in paragraph [a] does not exceed two percent (2%) of all the Company's voting rights.

Voting Instructions

Following the voluntary delisting of the Company's shares from the New York Stock Exchange, the Company will no longer mail proxy statements to its shareholders. Instead, on November 26, 2021, the Company will file an English version of its notice of 2021 annual general meeting, together with a form of voting card, with the Securities Exchange Commission, which is available here: https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001385145&owner=exclude&count=40&hidefilings=0

Section 2.10 of the notice contains voting instructions for shareholders whose shares are not held via a member of the TASE Clearinghouse (for trading on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange) but instead via a member of the Depositary Trust Company (DTC) or Shareholders who are registered directly with the Company's U.S. transfer agent, American Stock Transfer & Trust Company.

About Cellcom Israel

Cellcom Israel Ltd., established in 1994, is a leading Israeli communications group, providing a wide range of communications services. Cellcom Israel is the largest Israeli cellular provider, providing its cellular subscribers with a broad range of services including cellular telephony, roaming services, text and multimedia messaging, advanced cellular and data services and other value-added services in the areas of mobile office, data protection etc., based on Cellcom Israel's technologically advanced infrastructure. The Company operates advanced networks enabling high-speed broadband and advanced multimedia services. Cellcom Israel offers nationwide customer service including telephone customer service, retail stores, and service and sale centers. Cellcom Israel further provides OTT TV services, internet infrastructure and connectivity services and international calling services, as well as landline telephone services in Israel.

Company Contact

Shai Amsalem

Chief Financial Officer

[email protected]

Tel: +972-52-998-4774



Investor Relations Contact

Elad Levy

Investor Relations Manager

[email protected]

Tel: +972-52-998-4774



SOURCE Cellcom Israel Ltd.
BIT225 administered orally significantly reduced viral load in the lungs and blood of animals challenged with SARS-CoV-2.

BIT225 protected against severe disease, indicated by the significant prevention of body weight loss in animals treated with BIT225 compared to non-treated controls.

Pro-inflammatory cytokines were also significantly reduced in the lungs and blood of BIT225 treated animals compared with controls. Raised pro-inflammatory cytokines are associated with severe illness in people with COVID-19. Eliminating the "cytokine storm" is essential for successful treatment.

The results show statistically and clinically significant efficacy of BIT225 in this model of COVID-19.

In a cell culture in vitro study BIT225 was active against the highly infectious delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, reducing the level of virus by more than 99.99% compared to controls.

BIT225 is a clinical stage drug in development for treatment of HIV-1, with over 200 people dosed in trials to date. It is an oral drug, suitable for once-a-day dosing and has a well characterised safety profile. Biotron Limited is now seeking to accelerate BIT225 into clinical trials in SARS-CoV-2-infected patients.

SYDNEY, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Directors of Biotron Limited (ASX: BIT) are pleased to announce that the Company's lead clinical asset, BIT225, has demonstrated substantial and clinically meaningful efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 in a series of animal and cell-based studies performed at The SCRIPPS Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA.



BIT225 was tested in a COVID-19 mouse model (K18-hACE2). These mice have been engineered to be infectable by SARS-CoV-2 which then produces a range of pathologies including pulmonary disease. This model is routinely used to assess the ability of drugs to target SARS-CoV-2 and treat COVID-19 disease.



The study in the COVID mice showed that BIT225 given orally (by mouth) significantly reduced virus load in the lungs of treated mice when compared with control mice that were given drug-free control material (known as vehicle control). There was also a reduction in virus in the blood. The reduction in virus was dose-dependent - i.e. reduction in viral load was greater at the higher dose.



Increased levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines ('cytokine storm') are linked to severe illness and death in people infected with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Controlling this cytokine storm is essential for successful treatment of COVID-19.



BIT225 significantly reduced all assayed pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, including IL-6, IL-1, IL-1, TNF-, TGF- and MCP-1, in the lungs and blood of BIT225- treated mice compared to control mice.



During the course of infection with SARS-CoV-2, K18 mice generally develop severe disease that is reflected in the loss of body weight. The animals treated with BIT225 did not lose weight throughout the study and, in fact, significantly increased their weight in line with growth expectations of the age of the animals.



The impact of BIT225 on the proinflammatory cytokines and on overall health, indicated by preventing loss of body weight, indicates clinically significant benefit of BIT225.



In addition to the in vivo animal study, BIT225 was tested in an in vitro study in cell cultures to assess the ability of the drug to inhibit the highly infectious delta strain. The data showed that BIT225 reduced the delta virus in the cell cultures by more than 99.99% (over 4 logs reduction).



The in vivo study demonstrates that BIT225 is highly effective antiviral agent and protects the animals from severe disease. The in vitro study demonstrates that BIT225 is also active against the highly infectious delta strain of SARS-CoV-2.



BIT225 belongs to a new class of antiviral drugs known as viroporin inhibitors. It targets key viral-encoded proteins known as viroporins that are central to establishing and maintaining infections through modulation of the body's immune system.



BIT225 is Biotron's lead antiviral clinical-stage, investigational, small molecule antiviral drug. It is an oral drug, suitable for once-a-day dosing and has a well characterised safety profile. The drug has been evaluated in nine clinical trials involving healthy volunteers, patients with HIV-1 infection, patients co-infected with Hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV-1 and patients with HCV (as monotherapy and in combination with pegylated interferon-alfa and ribavirin). Formal pre-clinical studies have assessed safety over 24 weeks of dosing.



Recently the Company commenced two Phase 2 HIV-1 trials in Australia and Thailand to assess the impact of BIT225 on the HIV-1 reservoir and key markers of improved health outcomes.



Biotron is now in discussions with its USA advisors and consultants to expedite progression of BIT225 into human trials for treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The Company has sufficient drug product on hand after recently completing the manufacture of several kilograms of additional clinical grade (cGMP) drug.



The Chair of Biotron's Scientific Advisory Board, Professor Rob Murphy, Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Engineering, John P. Phair Professor of Infectious Diseases at Northwestern University, Chicago, said, "These very encouraging results in a SARS-CoV-2 animal model demonstrate a robust antiviral response that justifies further study in humans. BIT225 is a novel antiviral drug that has been safely used in over 200 patients with other RNA viral diseases including HIV and hepatitis C. This is drug that should be studied as a COVID19 treatment in the very near future."



Biotron's Managing Director, Michelle Miller, said "These results suggest that BIT225 may have benefit over other known antiviral agents. We will actively pursue all avenues to progress this Biotron drug into human trials as quickly as possible."



This announcement has been approved for release by the Company's Managing Director.



About Biotron

Biotron Limited is engaged in the research, development, and commercialisation of drugs targeting significant viral diseases with unmet medical need. The Company has BIT225 in clinical development for HIV-1 and promising preclinical programs for SARS-CoV-2 and HBV. In addition, Biotron has several earlier stage programs designing drugs that target a class of virus protein known as viroporins which have a key role in the virus life cycle of a very broad range of viruses, many of which have caused worldwide health issues such as Coronavirus, Dengue, Ebola, Middle East Respiratory virus, Influenza and Zika viruses.

Enquiries

Dr Michelle Miller

Managing Director

Biotron Limited

+61-(0)412313329

[email protected]

Rudi Michelson

Monsoon Communications

+61-3 9620 3333

SOURCE Biotron Limited
GURUGRAM, India, Nov. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Overview of Medical Education in Thailand: In Thailand, the undergraduate medical urriculum nsists f  6-yer trining rgrmme tyilly divided int three hses, i.e. yer 1 fr generl edutin, yers 23 vering bsi medil sienes, nd yers 46 fr gining linil exeriene. There re tw min trks fr medil trining, "nrml" nd "rurl", differing in their dmissin ress, le f trining nd le f wrk. Students frm nywhere in the untry n ly fr nrml trk trining thrugh  entrl seletin redure. Their trining is undertken in trditinl medil shls, nd jb lement is t ny mmunity hsitl in the untry. Students lying fr the rurl trk re seifilly seleted frm the rvines. Their trining is undertken in reginl r rvinil hsitls, nd jb lement is t mmunity hsitls in the rvines r regins frm whih they me. The curriculum for both tracks is very similar, with clinical training usually taking place in tertiary or quaternary care hospitals and involving limited community experience.

Enablers of Medical Education in Thailand: Public health infrastructure is an essential driver for medical education and training in any country. It provides structure and unbiased opportunity to medical students to train and educate themselves. Thailand has significant medical infrastructure, with a total of 17,013 health care facilities as of October 2015. Of these, 56% are sub-district health promotion units, 28% are private clinics and 7% are primary care units. A total of 780, or 5%, are district hospitals; 1%, or 88, are provincial hospitals; and another 1% or 116 are "other" public hospitals. In total, the country has 336 private hospitals.

In recent years, the policy push has resulted in introduction of universal healthcare. This covers everyone in the country under the unified umbrella of insurance building a bridge between private hospitals and public hospitals; eventually increasing the demand of doctors and standardizing the quality of procedure between private and public institutions.

Another major factor which will eventually push for the demand for the increase in physicians is that the country is ageing faster than the rest of the world, according to the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI). An ageing population will create many business opportunities, in segments such as food provision, medical equipment development and sales, health services, and nursery and home-care services, according to the TDRI. The government is looking for ways to handle this demographic issue.

The report titled "Landscape of Thailand Medical Education Market-Increasing Number of Top Rated Universities coupled with Undertaking Cutting Edge Research Driving the Industry" by Ken Research suggested that the Colleges have faced a slight downfall in terms of No. of Intake, Enrollment and Graduates amid COVID-19. Major merits of pursuing medicine in Thailand Universities are factors such is high salaries, cheap cost of living, free style education and high opportunities.

Key Segments Covered:-

Market Segmentation basis Type of Institution (Number of Colleges)

Private College

Public College

Market Segmentation basis Region (Number of Colleges)

North

Central

Southeastern

Southwestern

Eastern

Peninsula

Northeastern

Physician

Admission Process

Intake Status

Selection Process

Total No. of Graduates

Total Number of Intake

Internal Medicine

Admission Process

Intake Status

Selection Process

Total No. of Graduates

Total Number of Intake

Ophthalmology

Admission Process

Intake Status

Selection Process

Total No. of Graduates

Total Number of Intake

Key Target Audience:-

Public Medical Colleges

Private Medical Colleges

Aspiring students of Bachelor in Medical Education

Aspiring students of Master in Medical Education especially Internal Medicine and Ophthalmology

Time Period Captured in the Report:-

Base Year: 2020

2020 Study Period: 20162020

Colleges Covered:-

Landscape on Thailand Medical Education institutions include following institutions:

Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital Mahidol University

Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital Mahidol University

Faculty of Medicine Chulalongkorn University

Faculty of Medicine Chiang Mai University

Faculty of Medicine Khon Kaen University

Faculty of Medicine Prince of Songkla University

Faculty of Medicine Thammasat University

Faculty of Medicine Naresuan University

Faculty of Medicine Srinakharinwirot University

Faculty of Medicine Burapha University

School of Medicine Suranaree University of Technology

Faculty of Medicine King Mongkut's Institute of Technology Ladkrabang

Faculty of Medicine Mahasarakham University

Faculty of Medicine University of Phayao

College of Medicine and Public Health Ubon Ratchathani University

School of Medicine Walailak University

College of Medicine Rangsit University

Faculty of Medicine Siam University

School of Medicine Mae Fah Luang University

Faculty of Medicine, Narathiwat Rajanagarindra University

Faculty of Medicine Vajira Hospital Navamindradhiraj University

Faculty of Medicine and Public Health, HRH Princess Chulabhorn College of Medical Science, Chulabhorn Royal Academy

Phramongkutklao College of Medicine

Key Topics Covered in the Report:-

Thailand Medical Education Introduction

Detailed Landscape of Private and Public Colleges

Market Ecosystem

Market Segmentation basis Institution and Regions

Admission Process for both Bachelor and Master Course

Detailed Analysis on Physician Courses (Market Size on the basis of Intake Enrollment and Graduates)

Detailed Analysis on Internal Medicine Market Size on the basis of Intake Enrollment and Graduates)

Detailed Analysis on Ophthalmology Market Size on the basis of Intake Enrollment and Graduates)

Major Players in Thailand Medical Education Market

Medical Education Market Thailand Medical Education Market

Thailand Ophthalmology Education Market

Thailand Internal Medicine Education Market

Thailand Physician Education Market

Thailand Education Market

Ophthalmologists in Thailand

Internist in Thailand

Physicians in Thailand

MBBS in Thailand

MD in Thailand

Medical Higher Education in Thailand

Medical Graduates in Thailand

Thailand Education System

Growth of Ophthalmology Education Market in Thailand

Growth of Internal Medicine Education Market in Thailand

Growth of Physician Education Market in Thailand

Thailand Ophthalmology Education College Course Fee

Thailand MBBS Education College Course Fee

Thailand Physician Education College Course Fee

Thailand Internal Medicine Education College Course Fee

Major Colleges for Internal Medicine in Thailand

For More Information On the research report, refer to below link:-

Thailand Medical Education Market

Related Reports:-

Landscape of Vietnam Medical Education Market- Outcome Based Curriculum Began with Clear Explicit Articulations that Medical Graduates should Demonstrate Acceptable Professional Standards

Vietnam Medical Education Sector has been facing many macro and micro challenges. Each challenge has a direct or indirect effect on the Quality of Education and Quantity of Medical Professional prevailing in the Industry. Some of the major challenges faced by the Industry are lack of standard entrance exam, Statutory and Regulatory Body like Medical Council, Lack of standardized entry channels for Residency programmes, Diverse syllabi and heavy reliance on theoretical foundations. Major Enabler in the Vietnam Medical Education Market is mostly the capacity to accommodate medical students and imbalance in the medical ecosystem with increase in support staff like optometrist and technicians.

Landscape of Indonesia Medical Education Market- Consistent Changes In The Course Curriculum Helping Indonesian Medical Education System to Improve Skills of Medical Graduates

Indonesia Medical Education Sector has been facing many macro and micro-challenges. Each challenge has a direct or indirect effect on the Quality of Education and Quantity of Medical professionals prevailing in the Industry. Some of the common challenges faced by the Industry are high fees of medical programs, absence of standardized admission process, and difficulty to crack exams. The Industry also faces a major challenge in the form of learning outcomes, there is a disparity between the skills of graduates and the needs of employers. Hence Medical Education needs a curriculum that improves the skills of the graduates. Major Enabler in the Indonesia Medical Education Market is mostly the great environment to accommodate students especially International Aspirants provided by the country owing to factors such as a large number of medical schools, good infrastructure, high employment opportunities, and excellent scholarship schemes.

Landscape of Philippines Medical Education Market- Outcome Based Curriculum with Clear Explicit Articulations that Medical Graduates should Demonstrate

Philippines Medical Education Sector has been facing many macro and micro-challenges. Each challenge has a direct or indirect effect on the Quality of Education and Quantity of Medical Professional prevailing in the Industry. Some of the major challenges faced by the Industry are Malpractices by Education Agents, Regional Education Disparities and more. Major Enabler in the Philippines Medical Education Market is mostly the great environment to accommodate students especially International Aspirants provided by the country.

Malaysia Ophthalmology Market Outlook to 2025- Increase in Ophthalmic Surgeries & Consultations driven by Increasing Ageing Population Proportion and Ophthalmology Technological Advancements

Ophthalmology Market in Malaysia has witnessed a moderate rise over the review period 2015-20. Growth in Number of Ophthalmologists, Proportion of Ageing Population, Number of Patients with Eye Ailments, Technological Advancements in Surgeries, etc. has augmented the growth in Malaysia Ophthalmology Market. Selangor, Kuala Lumpur and Johor are the regions with maximum consultations, majorly through Private Single Specialty Hospital/Clinics. The growth in Market was further supported by Rising Number of Diabetic Patients, Insurance Coverage for Surgeries like Cataract and Single Specialty Clinics/Hospitals Increasing their number of locations to cater to larger set of Patients.

Follow Our Social Media Pages:-

Facebook: - https://www.facebook.com/kenresearch

Twitter: - https://twitter.com/KenResearch

LinkedIn: - https://in.linkedin.com/company/ken-research

Contact Us:-

Ken Research

Ankur Gupta, Head Marketing & Communications

[email protected]

+91-9015378249

SOURCE Ken Research
LOGAN, Utah, Nov. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- iFIT Health & Fitness Inc, a global leader in connected fitness software, content and equipment, today announced that it will launch NordicTrack from iFIT branded Pop In shops inside more than 50 select Amazon Books stores and 4-star stores in the United States now, and running through February 2022.

The Pop-Ins provide an immersive try-before-you-buy experience where consumers can demo iFIT's engaging fitness content on best-selling NordicTrack equipment. Across select Amazon store locations, iFIT will showcase its award-winning NordicTrack 1750 connected treadmill and the NordicTrack S22i connected studio cycle.

Both products feature the iFIT interactive fitness platform, with live streaming and on-demand workout series shot in the studio, and in visually stunning locations around the world in more than 53 countries. Customers can purchase iFIT subscriptions and NordicTrack products in-store for home delivery through the Amazon app via on-product QR codes.

The NordicTrack from iFIT connected fitness equipment and subscriptions will be available in select Amazon Books store and 4-star store locations across the United States, including New York City at 72 Spring Street, Berkeley, CA at 1787 4th Street, in Chicago at 3443 N Southport Ave, in the Los Angeles area at 6600 Topanga Canyon Blvd, and multiple locations around the country. See the complete list for Amazon 4-star stores here and Amazon Book stores here .

About iFIT

iFIT is a global fitness and well-being subscription technology company that provides unmatched fitness experiences and solutions to its growing community of over 6.4 million members in over 120 countries. iFIT's industry-leading brands  NordicTrack, ProForm, Sweat, Freemotion, Weider and 29029  are powered by the iFIT integrated health and fitness platform, which seamlessly connects the company's proprietary software, experiential content and interactive hardware. Based in Logan, Utah, with offices in Paris, Shanghai, Sydney and Leeds, the company offers immersive, adaptive, personalized workout experiences for every fitness level and interest. iFIT delivers these patented interactive experiences through an extensive offering of live and on-demand content across the industry's broadest range of connected fitness modalities. iFIT is a pioneer and leader in the health and fitness industry with more than 400 issued and pending patents.

Contacts

Colleen Logan, iFIT

[email protected]

SOURCE iFIT
VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Luminex Resources Corp. (TSXV: LR) (OTCQX: LUMIF) (the "Company" or "Luminex") announces that it has granted incentive stock options under the Company's stock option plan to certain directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company to purchase up to an aggregate of 1,387,000 common shares of the Company. The options are exercisable at a price of $0.51 per share and will expire on November 25, 2026. 1,357,000 of the options will vest in three equal parts over the first two years after grant and 30,000 options (the "First Globe Options") will vest in four equal parts over the first two years after grant.

Additionally, the Company has renewed its agreement with First Globe Capital International Inc. ("First Globe") that was announced on October 5, 2018, for an additional 12 months. First Globe is based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, and is owned by Anish Sunderji. First Globe provides institutional fundraising and advisory services to its clients. The Company has compensated First Globe for its services by granting the First Globe Options described above. In addition, the Company has also agreed to reimburse First Globe for its reasonable incidental expenses incurred in providing the investor relation services to the Company. First Globe does not otherwise have any relationship with or hold any securities of the Company, except for previously granted stock options.

About Luminex Resources

Luminex Resources Corp. (TSXV:LR,OTCQX:LUMIF) is a Vancouver, Canada based precious and base metals exploration and development company focused on gold and copper projects in Ecuador. Luminex's inferred and indicated mineral resources are located at the Condor Gold-Copper project in Zamora-Chinchipe Province, southeast Ecuador. Luminex also holds a large and highly prospective land package in Ecuador, including the Tarqui and Pegasus projects, which are being co-developed with BHP Group plc and Anglo American respectively.

Further details are available on the Company's website at https://luminexresources.com/.

To receive future news releases please sign up at https://www.luminexresources.com/contact/contact-us/.

LUMINEX RESOURCES CORP.

Signed: "Marshall Koval"

Marshall Koval, CEO and Director

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 Luminex Resources Corp.
Strong investor interest and participation from prominent Decentralised Finance-focused funds such as DAO Maker and Mirana Ventures

Surpassed 80,000 international users within 6 months

SINGAPORE, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DeFiato, a next-generation fintech platform for Decentralised Finance (DeFi), successfully completed the first round of its private token sale. Participating investors include leading DeFi-focused funds DAO Maker, Mirana Ventures (a venture partner of Bybit and BitDAO), CRC Capital, Double Peak Group, Dweb3 Capital and 7 O'Clock Capital. The strong interest and participation reflects a high demand for secure, centralised exchange graded platforms with fiat on-ramp.

Many decentralised platforms present various technical barriers in on-chain farming, staking and trading, while off-chain activities face liquidity issues, fiat restrictions and the lack of a central multichain to support crypto assets and institutional-grade custodians.

With its proprietary technology, such as One-Click-To-Farm, combined with ease of fiat access and exchange-grade security, DeFiato eliminates technical barriers and financial risks associated with many decentralised platforms today. It provides a user experience similar to centralised services, such as assured security, quick settlements, ease-of-use and customer service support.

Since its launch in December 2020, DeFiato has onboarded more than 80,000 international users on its platform.

"With the success of our first private token sale round, we strive to accelerate business development and drive user growth," says Dr William H. Nguyen, CEO and Founder of DeFiato.

"DeFiato aims to actively develop real-world solutions that will pave the way forward for the entire DeFi industry. The quick uptake on DeFiato has reemphasised the importance and demand for our platform."

DeFiato enables users to gain access to hundreds of DeFi services on its aggregated, centralised system. Users can also safely and easily deposit, withdraw, swap, stake and even farm cryptocurrencies with just one click.

The platform currently supports Ethereum (ETH), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon (MATIC) and Avalanche (AVAX), with Solana (SOL) soon to be onboarded. As DeFiato supports multiple blockchains and products, it has become a leading cross-chain aggregator.

By the end of 2021, DeFiato will be launching its native utility token and mobile app. This token will be used primarily for payment of fees within the platform, and users of the token can expect significant cost savings. The platform will also onboard five more blockchains and release multiple new features.

About DeFiato

DeFiato is the next-gen mainstream Fintech platform for Decentralised Finance (DeFi) that eliminates technical barriers and financial risks associated with many decentralised platforms. It provides a user experience similar to centralised services, such as assured security, quick settlements, ease-of-use and customer service support.

The platform enables on-chain liquidity through various pools, across different chains. It also offers fiat on-ramp via Prime Trust and will also support peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions.

For more information, visit www.defiato.com.

SOURCE DeFiato

Related Links

https://www.defiato.com/


LONDON, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Picus Security, the pioneer of Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) technology, today announced the details and speaker lineup of its SOCReLoad 2021 virtual event.

SOCReLoad takes place at 14:00 GMT 1st December 2021 and brings together leading industry experts to discuss the latest offensive and defensive strategies needed to achieve a Modern Security Operations Centre (SOC). Attendees will learn how to modernise their security operations through a threat-centric approach, and discover how this enhances cyber resilience and reduces alert fatigue.

Speakers include:

Chris Crowley , SANS, SOC Class-Course Author

, SANS, SOC Class-Course Author Christiaan Beek , McAfee, Lead Scientist and Sr. Principal Engineer

, McAfee, Lead Scientist and Sr. Principal Engineer David Bianco , SANS, Incident Detection and Response Specialist

, SANS, Incident Detection and Response Specialist Victor Monga , VMware, Senior Technical Marketing Architect

, VMware, Senior Technical Marketing Architect Max Heinemeyer , DarkTrace, Director of Threat Hunting

, DarkTrace, Director of Threat Hunting Augusto Barros , Securonix, VP Security Evangelist

, Securonix, VP Security Evangelist RoseAnn Guttierrez , IBM Security Business Development, Technical Enablement Specialist

, IBM Security Business Development, Technical Enablement Specialist Alex Hinchliffe , Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks, Threat Intelligence Analyst

, Unit 42 Palo Alto Networks, Threat Intelligence Analyst JJ Cummings, Cisco Talos, Principal - Threat Intelligence & Interdiction

Click here to see the full event agenda and register.

"SOCReLoad 2020 was a great success and this years' event offers another chance for security professionals to learn from the best and stay up to date in their careers," said Volkan Erturk, Picus Security Co-founder and CTO. "A modern SOC requires a proactive, threat-centric approach to security. Our speakers possess the extensive experience and in-depth knowledge needed to help attendees prepare for the complex and sophisticated threats of today, as well as those of the future."

"I want to help SOC teams move away from fighting fires, and empower them to be more proactive," said Chris Crowley, SANS, SOC Class-Course Author and SOCReLoad keynote speaker. "I will be at SOCReLoad 2021 to outline the key strategies needed to design, build and operate a modern SOC, supercharge a security strategy, and keep pace with emerging threats."

All SOCReload attendees have the opportunity to earn CPE credits that can be used to demonstrate ongoing professional development.

About Picus Security

Picus Security is a leading Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) vendor, enabling organisations to continuously test, measure and enhance the effectiveness of their cyber security controls through automated and intelligence-led security testing. Picus has been named a 'Cool Vendor' by Gartner and is cited by Frost & Sullivan as one of the most innovative players in the BAS market.

For more information, visit www.picussecurity.com

SOURCE Picus Security
DUBLIN, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Priothera Ltd, a late-clinical stage biotechnology company pioneering the development of its S1P receptor modulator compound, mocravimod, announces the appointment of Elisabeth Kueenburg, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer. Dr. Kueenburg will lead the advancement of mocravimod into Phase 2b/3 clinical trials as a potential treatment for patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), and expansion of Priothera's pipeline.

"The breadth of knowledge Elisabeth has gained working at Celgene, alongside her extensive clinical experience, makes her a crucial addition to our team," said Florent Gros, Co-Founder and CEO of Priothera. "We are delighted to welcome Elisabeth during this exciting time as we look to progress mocravimod, into a Phase 2b/3 study as a potential treatment for patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia receiving hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The study is expected to begin in 2022."

"I am pleased to join Priothera at such an important stage of its development," said Dr. Kueenburg. "Mocravimod has the potential to address the significant unmet need of AML patients undergoing HSCT. I look forward to guiding mocravimod and future programs into the clinic and making an important contribution to Priothera's future success."

Dr. Kueenburg brings significant drug development and medical affairs experience from her years at Celgene where she most recently served as Clinical Development Lead. At Celgene she developed deep clinical development and medical affairs expertise, providing strategic insight and overseeing the coordination of multiple clinical trials, in the area of hematology and specifically in multiple myeloma. Furthermore, Dr. Kueenburg has supported the successful global launch of Celgene's Revlimid.

Prior to her numerous roles at Celgene, Dr. Kueenburg spent more than 15 years in clinical practice and academic research specializing in oncology and hematology.

Dr. Kueenburg gained her Doctor of Medicine from the University of Vienna in Austria.

***

Photo of Dr. Kueenburg available on request

About Priothera

Priothera is leading the way in developing orally applied sphingosine 1 phosphate (S1P) receptor modulators for hematological malignancies. S1P receptor modulators are known to largely reduce egress of T cells from lymphatic tissues and not being immunosuppressants, thereby allowing for inhibition of graft-versus-host-disease (GvHD) while enhancing graft-versus-leukemia benefits in patients receiving HSCT.

Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Priothera was founded in 2020 by an experienced team of drug development and biotech experts.

Founding investors are Fountain Healthcare Partners (Dublin, Ireland), funds managed by Tekla Capital Management, LLC (Boston, Massachusetts), HealthCap (Stockholm, Sweden) and EarlyBird Venture Capital (Berlin, Germany).

For more information please visit: www.Priothera.com

Contacts

Priothera Florent Gros, CEO E: [email protected] MEDiSTRAVA Consulting Sylvie Berrebi, Sandi Greenwood, Frazer Hall E: [email protected] T: +44 (0)7714 306525

SOURCE Priothera
The Busan Contents Market, planned under the slogan of 'Changes that transcend space! 'Connecting the New World with Content!', was held both online and offline.

Especially, the online market drew attention as an exhibition space for the virtual world that was introduced for the first time in the international content market. The booth set up in the Metaverse served as a communication channel that transcends time and space for producers and buyers around the world.

Reputable producers who are interested in collaboration with Hallyu content, including Alibaba, and officials from various countries around the world, such as the Netherlands and Russia, also participated in the event.

Moreover, NFT (Non-Fungible Token) using blockchain technology was introduced so that all contents and information exchanged within the metaverse could be shared.

In addition, various programs such as * Asia Digital Broadcasting Academy * BCM 3D Virtual Online Market, * BCM Conference, * BCM Funding, and * BCM Academy were successfully run.

In this year's Busan Contents Market, the 'Pre 2021 K-Content Reaction Contest' with the theme of 'With Korea' was held thanks to the high popularity of international consumers for Korean content. Reaction videos created based on K-Content were submitted and the winners were selected based on the criteria of the cumulative number of likes.

An official from the organizing committee of Busan Contents Market said, "I am proud to open a rich global exchange platform through online and offline events during Living With COVID-19. At a time when global interest in K-content is rapidly increasing, it is expected that the Busan Contents Market, in which leading content creators and officials in Korea and around the world participated, will regain its reputation as the largest content exchange platform in Korea where everyone can communicate and empathize."

The Busan Contents Market in 2022 will be held in May as an offline event.

SOURCE Busan Contents Market
-- Spacetalk appoints Martin Darbyshire as Chief Design Officer

-- Founder and Chairman of Tangerine, Martin is a globally recognised design leader

Spacetalk Ltd. (ASX:SPA) ("Spacetalk" or "Company"), developer of innovative technologies that keep families safe and connected, is delighted to announce the appointment of Martin Darbyshire as Chief Design Officer ("CDO"). Martin joins Spacetalk from London based design firm Tangerine, the company he founded in 1989, and where he remains Chairman.

Since its founding, Tangerine has worked with some of the world's most renowned brands, including Apple, British Airways, Huawei, LG, Toyota and Virgin Australia, innovating to design compelling customer experiences and globally recognised products and services. A young Tangerine team, consisting of Martin Darbyshire, Clive Grinyer and Sir Jonathan Ive were instrumental in strategic direction setting for Apple and LG in the early 1990s. Martin is a fellow of the Royal Society of Designers and Chartered Society of Designers and a Trustee of the UK Design Council.

Martin will work closely with the Spacetalk team to further embed and advance its design-led culture as the Company embarks on its next phase of growth. The CDO role will encompass a broad spectrum of design leadership responsibilities including strategic design oversight of the next generation Spacetalk kids smartwatch phone devices and apps to deliver transformative customer experiences.

Spacetalk's ownership and control of its end-to-end technology and design is unique amongst its peers providing an important source of strategic competitive advantage. Martin's appointment will further enhance Spacetalk's existing capabilities.

(1) https://tangerine.net/

(2) Dr Brandon Gien is Chair of Australia's Good Design Awards, Deputy Chair of the Australian Design Council and former President of the World Design Organization.

Spacetalk CEO Mark Fortunatow said: "I warmly welcome Martin to Spacetalk. Martin and his team at Tangerine were closely involved in the design and development of our award-winning Spacetalk Adventurer watch, and his international reputation in the design world is legendary and well precedes him.

"Spacetalk aspires to be a truly design-led technology company. Together with Non-Executive Director Dr. Brandon Gien, himself a globally recognised design advocate, Martin's appointment as CDO has enabled us to build a formidable and world class design team to take our products and customer experiences to the next level."

Spacetalk CDO and Chairman of Tangerine Martin Darbyshire said: "I am delighted to build on the design leadership work that Tangerine has completed for Spacetalk in this last year. I look forward to helping this fast-moving business move forward and to put design at the heart of their business strategy; supporting Mark and the Spacetalk team to create a customer experience that is truly transformational."

This announcement has been authorised by Spacetalk CEO Mark Fortunatow.

To learn more about the Spacetalk devices and app platform, please visit: https://www.spacetalkwatch.com/.

Investor Centre: https://investors.spacetalkwatch.com/.

For more information, please contact:

Dimitri Burshtein

Investor Relations and Corporate Development

[email protected]

M: +61 493 041 751

Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=408742

Caption: Spacetalk CDO and Chairman of Tangerine, Martin Darbyshire (Photograph by John Munro)

SOURCE Spacetalk Ltd.
NEW YORK, Nov. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Matthew Libman, Founder and CEO of United Medical Credit, is pleased to announce that his company will be exhibiting at the Greater New York Dental Meeting (GNYDM) in New York City from November 29-December 1, 2021.

United Medical Credit will be in booth 911 at GNYDM; the booth is located on the west side of Hall 3E.

To learn more about GNYDM and why United Medical Credit is attending, please check out https://www.unitedmedicalcredit.com/united-medical-credit-joins-the-exhibitor-roster-at-gnydm-2021/ .

"We are very excited about this because we believe the GNYDM presents an unparalleled opportunity to meet, interact and network with dental professionals and to showcase how United Medical Credit can help bring dental healthcare providers and patients together," Libman said, adding that since its inaugural conference in 1924, the Greater New York Dental Meeting has grown to become one of the premier dental conventions in the world.

The team from United Medical Credit is looking forward to meeting with providers in person at GNYDM, and showing them how their company can help make dental financing more accessible to their patientswhile also ensuring faster payments for themselves.

"The Greater New York Dental Meeting, as one of the signature dental healthcare conventions in the world, is an excellent environment in which to offer face-to-face consultation with providers and demonstrate how United Medical Credit's lender network functions to help both providers and patients come together while taking the financial burden and worries off the shoulders of all concerned," Libman said.

"That's why United Medical Credit is proud to have secured an exhibitor booth at this prestigious event, and why we're thrilled to be in attendance."

About United Medical Credit:

United Medical Credit's mission is to make sure every one of their applicants receives the best customer service and secures the optimal financing terms for their healthcare procedures. They understand the physical and emotional difficulties a healthcare procedure can sometimes bring, and they want to do their part to ensure that high upfront costs are not part of the equation. For more information, please visit https://www.unitedmedicalcredit.com/ .

SOURCE United Medical Credit
NEW YORK, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Juan Monteverde , founder and managing partner at Monteverde & Associates PC, a national securities firm rated Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report and headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City, is investigating:

IKONICS Corp. (IKNX) relating to its proposed acquisition by TeraWulf, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, IKONICS shareholders will receive $5.00 in cash, one contingent value right, and one share of the newly combined company per share they own. Click here for more information: http://monteverdelaw.com/case/ikonics-corp. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.



relating to its proposed acquisition by TeraWulf, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, IKONICS shareholders will receive in cash, one contingent value right, and one share of the newly combined company per share they own. Noble Corp. ("NE" or the "Company") (NE) relating to its proposed acquisition by Maersk Drilling. Under the terms of the agreement, NE shareholders will receive one share of Topco common stock per share they own. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/noble-corp. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.



relating to its proposed acquisition by Maersk Drilling. Under the terms of the agreement, NE shareholders will receive one share of Topco common stock per share they own. CorePoint Lodging Inc. ("CPLG" or the "Company") (CPLG) relating to its proposed acquisition by affiliates of Highgate and Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. Under the terms of the agreement, CPLG shareholders will receive $15.65 in cash per share they own. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/corepoint-lodging-inc. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you.



About Monteverde & Associates PC

We are a national class action securities litigation law firm that has recovered millions of dollars and is committed to protecting shareholders from corporate wrongdoing. We were listed in the Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. Our lawyers have significant experience litigating Mergers & Acquisitions and Securities Class Actions. Mr. Monteverde is recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in Securities Litigation in 2013, 2017-2019, an award given to less than 2.5% of attorneys in a particular field. He has also been selected by Martindale-Hubbell as a 2017-2021 Top Rated Lawyer. Our firm's recent successes include changing the law in a significant victory that lowered the standard of liability under Section 14(e) of the Exchange Act in the Ninth Circuit. Thereafter, our firm successfully preserved this victory by obtaining dismissal of a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted at the United States Supreme Court. Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019). Also, over the years the firm has recovered or secured over a dozen cash common funds for shareholders in mergers & acquisitions class action cases.

If you own common stock in any of the above listed companies and wish to obtain additional information and protect your investments free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 971-1341.

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Attorney Advertising. (C) 2021 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC ( www.monteverdelaw.com ). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter.

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DUBLIN, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Alzheimer's Disease Market (2nd edition) by Type of Treatment (Symptomatic and Disease Modifying), Symptomatic Indications (Dementia, Insomnia and Other Psychological Symptoms) and Geography (North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific), 2021-2030" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Alzheimer's Disease Market report features an extensive study on the current landscape of the marketed, clinical and preclinical molecules available/being developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, offering an informed opinion on the likely evolution of the market, till 2030. The study underlines an in-depth analysis, highlighting the capabilities of various stakeholders engaged in this domain.

Alzheimer's disease is a progressive neurological disorder characterized by the death of brain cells, eventually leading to memory loss, cognitive dysfunction and dementia. Accounting for 60-70% cases of dementia, Alzheimer's disease is known to be the sixth leading cause of death in the US. Presently, more than 6 million Americans of all ages are living with Alzheimer's and this number is projected to reach around 13 million by 2050.

One of the key objectives of the report was to estimate the existing market size and the future growth opportunities for therapies being developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, over the next decade. Based on multiple parameters, such as disease prevalence, anticipated adoption rates and the selling price/likely selling price of therapies for the disease, we have developed informed estimates on the evolution of the market for the period 2021-2030.

In 2020, the healthcare burden associated with the disease was estimated to be around USD 305 billion. Given the socioeconomic burden associated with Alzheimer's, pharmaceutical players have been on the lookout for reliable diagnostic tests and effective treatment alternatives that can slow the progression of this disease. However, not many drugs could make their way to the market and majority of the existing therapeutic approaches have proven ineffective in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and its related symptoms.

Recently, in June 2021, the FDA granted accelerated approval for the first disease modifying therapy, AduhelmT (Aducanumab), developed by Biogen, for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The approval of this amyloid beta-directed antibody has sparked a ray of hope for other players which are seeking approval for similar therapies.

Further, multiple partnerships have been forged by various established players and start-ups in this domain in order to expand their research efforts and respective product portfolios. In addition, venture capital and other strategic investors are providing the necessary financial support to the research initiatives being undertaken by start-ups. Given the ongoing efforts aimed at finding effective and potential therapeutic cure, we are led to believe that the Alzheimer's disease market is likely to witness healthy growth in the coming years.

Amongst other elements, the report features:

A detailed review of the current market landscape of drugs developed for the treatment of Alzheimer's, including analyses based on several relevant parameters, such as current status of development (marketed, clinical and pre-clinical), phase of development (phase IV, phase III, phase II/III, phase II, phase I/II and phase I) of lead candidates, type of biologic (antibodies, peptides, cell and gene therapy, protein and vaccines), target disease stage (early stage, mild stage, mild to moderate stage and moderate to severe stage), type of treatment (symptomatic treatment, disease modifying treatment and both), mechanism of action (inhibitor, activator and modulator), route of administration (oral, intravenous, subcutaneous and others), dosing frequency (single dose, daily, twice daily, thrice daily, weekly, biweekly, monthly) type of therapy (monotherapy and combination therapy) and path to clinic (dedicated, repositioned and repurposed). Additionally, the report provides information on drug developer(s) involved in the domain, along with analyses based on a number of relevant parameters, such as year of establishment, company size and geographical location of headquarters.

A detailed analysis of completed, ongoing and planned clinical trials of the drugs for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease and its related symptoms, on the basis of several relevant parameters, such as trial status, trial registration year, type of sponsor/collaborator, type of study design, enrolled patient population, age category, leading industry sponsors/collaborators (in terms of number of trials conducted) and regional distribution of trials.

Elaborate profiles of the key players involved in the development of therapeutics for Alzheimer's disease. Each profile features a brief overview of the company, its financial information, details on its product portfolio, and recent developments and an informed future outlook.

Key Questions Answered

Who are the leading industry players involved in the Alzheimer's disease industry?

Which geographies are the most active in conducting clinical trials on therapies for Alzheimer's disease?

Which are the leading funding organizations providing grants in the Alzheimer's disease industry?

Which partnership models are commonly adopted by industry stakeholders in the Alzheimer's disease industry?

How is the current and future market opportunity, related to Alzheimer's disease, likely to be distributed across key market segments?

Key Topics Covered:

1. Preface

2. Executive Summary

3. Introduction

4. Pipeline Review: Marketed And Clinical- Stage Drugs

5. Company Profiles

6. Case Study: Terminated Drugs

7. Publication Analysis

8. Partnerships And Collaborations

9. Funding And Investment Analysis

10. Grant Analysis

11. Clinical Trial Analysis

12. Patent Analysis

13. Non-Pharmacological Interventions And Diagnostics

14. Market Sizing And Opportunity Analysis

15. Concluding Remarks

16. Executive Insights

Companies Mentioned

AB Science

AbbVie

AC Immune

ACADIA Pharmaceuticals

Acelot

Actinogen Medical

Acumen Pharmaceuticals

AFFiRiS

AgeneBio

Alector

Alkahest

Allergan (part of AbbVie)

Allinky Biopharma

Alterity Therapeutics (formerly known as Prana Biotechnology)

Alzheimer's Association

Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS)

Alzinova

Alzprotect

American Life Science Pharmaceuticals (ALSP)

Amylyx Pharmaceuticals

Anavex Life Sciences

Aphios

APRINOIA Therapeutics

Archer Pharmaceuticals

Ariana Pharma

AriBio

ArmaGen (acquired by JCR Pharmaceuticals)

ARMGO Pharma

Asceneuron

AstraZeneca

Athira Pharma (formerly known as M3 Biotechnology)

Atridia

Ausio Pharmaceuticals

Autifony Therapeutics

Avanir Pharmaceuticals

Avid Radiopharmaceuticals

Axon Neuroscience

Axsome Therapeutics

AZTherapies

Banner Alzheimer's Institute

Bausch Health

Beacon Biosignals

BELLUS Health

BioArctic

Biogen

Biohaven

Bionomics

BioVie

Bristol Myers Squibb

Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC)

Cassava Sciences (formerly known as Pain Therapeutics)

Celgene

Cenna Biosciences

CEOi

Cerecin (formerly Accera)

CereSpir

CHA Biotech

Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH)

Memorial Hospital (CGMH) Changchun Huayang High -tech

-tech Chaperone Therapeutics

Charsire Biotechnology

Cogentis Therapeutics

Cognition Therapeutics

Cognosci

CoMentis

Corium International

Cortexyme

CuraSen Therapeutics

Cure Alzheimer's Fund

Cure Network Dolby Acceleration Partners (CNDAP)

Cyclerion Therapeutics

DAE HWA Pharmaceutical

Denali Therapeutics

Denovo Biopharma

Edunn Biotechnology

EIP Pharma

Eisai

Eli Lilly

E-Scape Bio

Evidation

ExonHit Therapeutics (part of Sofinnova Partners)

FUJIFILM Toyama Chemical

GemVax & Kael

Genentech

Genervon Biopharmaceuticals

Genzyme

Gismo Therapeutics

GlaxoSmithKline

GliaCure

GliaPharm

Grifols

HSRx Biopharmaceutical

Hyundai Pharm

IlDong Pharmaceutical

Imeka

INmune Bio

Innovative California Biosciences International

IntelGenx

Intellect Neurosciences

Intra-Cellular Therapies

Ionis Pharmaceuticals

IXICO

Janssen Pharmaceuticals

Johns Hopkins University

KalGene Pharmaceuticals

Karuna Pharmaceuticals

Konkuk University Medical Center (KUMC)

K-PAX Pharmaceuticals

Kyowa Hakko Kirin

Libella Gene Therapeutics

Lipopharma

Longeveron

Lundbeck

Lyndra Therapeutics

MD Anderson Cancer Center

Medesis Pharma

Medipost

Medpace

Merck Sharp & Dohme

Metabolic Solutions Development.

Mission Therapeutics

Mylan

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)

National Institute on Aging (NIA)

National Institutes of Health (NIH)

National Research Council Canada

Nature Cell

Neuralstem

Neurim Pharmaceuticals

NeuroActiva

Neurocentria

Neurodon

NeuroGeneration

NeuroGenetic Pharmaceuticals

NeuroNascent

NeurOp

Neurotez

NIH Clinical Center (CC)

Novartis

Novo Nordisk

NYU Langone Health

Orion Pharma

Oryzon Genomics

Otsuka Pharmaceutical

P2D Bioscience

Pfizer

PharmatrophiX

Pharmazz

Pharnext

Proclara Biosciences

Procter & Gamble

ProMIS Neurosciences

Prothena

QR Pharma

Regenera Pharma

RemeGenix

ReMYND

Reviva Pharmaceuticals

Roche

Sage Therapeutics

Sahlgrenska University Hospital

Sangamo Therapeutics

Sanofi

Selexis

Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and Health Services

Shanghai Green Valley Pharmaceutical

Shape Therapeutics

Shionogi

Sierra Sciences

Sosei Heptares

St Vincent's Institute of Medical Research (SVI)

Institute of Medical Research (SVI) Stemedica Cell Technologies

Suven Life Sciences

Synaptogenix (formerly Neurotrope Bioscience)

T3D Therapeutics

Taipei Veterans General Hospital (TVGH)

Taiyo International

Takeda Pharmaceutical

TauRx Therapeutics

Tetra Discovery Partners

THERANEXUS

Tonix Pharmaceuticals

Treventis

TrueBinding

UCB

University of California

University of Kansas Medical Center (KUMC)

(KUMC) University of Oslo

University of Texas

VA Office of Research and Development (ORD)

Vaccinex

Vaxxinity (formerly known as United Neuroscience)

Vivoryon Therapeutics (formerly Probiodrug)

Voyager Therapeutics

VT BIO

Worldwide Clinical Trials

Wyeth

Xcelthera

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/eu5964

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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SOURCE Research and Markets
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The global anatomic pathology market size is expected to reach USD 34.66 billion by 2028, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc. It is expected to expand at a CAGR of 10.08% from 2021 to 2028. The advent of technology in the instruments and the protocols used during the anatomic pathological procedures is anticipated to increase the adoption rate of advanced anatomic pathological instruments.

Key Insights & Findings:

By product and services, the consumables segment accounted for the largest share in 2020. High availability, low cost, and a frequent purchase rate of consumables contributed to the segment growth

The instruments product and services segment is expected to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period. Technological advancements in instruments to minimize the risk of errors through the integration of novel design are expected to drive the segment

The disease diagnosis application segment dominated the market in 2020 owing to the increasing role of anatomic pathological tools in identifying any anomalies that help diagnose a condition. The use of biomarkers for tracking and identifying infections and diseases during diagnostic processes is expected to boost the growth of the segment

In terms of end use, the hospitals segment captured the largest share in 2020 due to an increase in the hospitalization rate that stimulates the adoption of pathological workflows for disease monitoring and diagnosis

The diagnostic laboratories end-use segment growth is facilitated by the use of state-of-the-art laboratory equipment and instrumentation, multiple electronic interfaces, and information systems

Read 176 page market research report, "Anatomic Pathology Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product & Services (Consumables, Instruments, Services), By Application, By End-use, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028", by Grand View Research

Market players are collaborating for the refurbishment of pathology products by the incorporation of innovative disease diagnostic models. In April 2021, Leica Biosystems collaborated with Paige, an AI-based diagnostics company, for expanded access to computational pathology products for translational and clinical research. Under this partnership, Paige's AI-enabled research software and Leica Biosystems' digital pathology platform were combined. This, in turn, accelerates investments in the up-gradation of pathological equipment.

Pathology-training programs offered to pathologist trainees by public and private entities drive the market. For instance, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education accredited residency programs for anatomic pathology provide education and training to individuals via numerous teaching conferences.

The drug discovery and development application segment are expected to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period due to the shifting paradigm from conventional medicine to personalized medicine. This is primarily due to the growing reliance on discoveries of putative biomarkers for the development of personalized therapies. Ongoing pathology training programs to ensure that the pathology residents are aware of the developments taking place in the field of personalized medicine have also accelerated the market growth.

North America held the largest revenue share in 2020 owing to a large number of funding programs by public agencies and the presence of key players. Asia Pacific is expected to witness the fastest growth due to the presence of multiple associations that are engaged in conducting pathology training programs.

Key players are undertaking various strategic initiatives such as mergers & acquisitions and new product development to maintain their market presence. For instance, in May 2021, CellCarta acquired Reveal Biosciences, an AI-based pathology firm. This acquisition is aimed at expanding CellCarta's offerings in AI-enabled multi-omic data analysis services and applications.

Grand View Research has segmented the global anatomic pathology market on the basis of product and services, application, end-use, and region:

Anatomic Pathology Product & Services Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Instruments



Microtomes & Cryostat





Tissue Processors





Automatic Stainers





Whole Slide Imaging (WSI) Scanners





Other Products



Consumables



Reagents & Antibodies





Probes & Kits





Others



Services

Anatomic Pathology Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Disease Diagnosis



Drug Discovery and Development



Others

Anatomic Pathology End-use Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

Hospitals



Research Laboratories



Diagnostic Laboratories



Others

Anatomic Pathology Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

North America



U.S.





Canada



Europe



Germany





U.K.



Asia Pacific



China





India



Latin America



Brazil





Mexico



Middle East and Africa (MEA)

and (MEA)

South Africa

List of Key Players of Anatomic Pathology Market

Danaher Corporation

Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings

Quest Diagnostics Incorporated

Sakura Finetek USA , Inc.

, Inc. F. Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Agilent Technologies, Inc.

PHC Holdings Corporation

Cardinal Health

Bio SB

NeoGenomics Laboratories, Inc.

BioGenex

Browse through Grand View Research's coverage of the Global Clinical Diagnostics Industry:

Blood Transfusion Diagnostics Market  The global blood transfusion diagnostics market size was valued at USD 3,713.7 million in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6% from 2021 to 2027.

The global blood transfusion diagnostics market size was valued at in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.6% from 2021 to 2027. Lateral Flow Assays Market  The global lateral flow assays market size was valued at USD 7.2 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.0% from 2021 to 2028.

The global lateral flow assays market size was valued at in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 4.0% from 2021 to 2028. Liver Cancer Diagnostics MarketThe global liver cancer diagnostics market size was estimated at USD 9.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.5% from 2021 to 2028

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:

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SOURCE Grand View Research, Inc.
The new state-of-the-art equipment will be based in Bostik's Shanghai R&D center, and primarily serve the flexible packaging converting industry, which provides adhesive solutions for food and beverage, fast moving consumer goods, pharmaceutical and industrial applications in the Asia Pacific region.

It will allow Bostik to deliver more sustainable, high quality and innovative adhesive solutions to customers in Asia Pacific and around the world, with areas such as solvent-free solutions, low monomer solutions, and solutions that serve the growing need for monomaterial packaging, among the ones that will receive particular focus.

By enabling Bostik teams to reproduce the exact production processes that its clients implement, it will also help speed up the pace at which innovations are developed and brought to the market, contributing to the prompt diffusion of more sustainable adhesive solutions for the packaging industry.

Finally, the new laminator will lead to strengthening the Bostik's Flex Pack Academy, a knowledge center on flexible lamination and adhesive solutions, thus contributing to expanding the knowledge on flexible lamination through the whole value chain.

"Working with partners such as Nordmeccanica will enable us to deliver superior and safe products to our customers, and at the same time unlock our potential in continuously delivering high performance and sustainable solutions. This is perfectly in line with Bostik's strategy to forge purposeful partnerships that contribute to our Group's ambition to create innovative materials for a more sustainable world." commented Richard Lelievre, Senior Vice President of the Advanced Packaging Business Unit at Bostik.

In the wake of the acquisition of Ashland's performance adhesives business, this new partnership further strengthens Bostik's global position in flexible lamination, a steadily growing market, thus actively contributing to Arkema's ambitious growth strategy.

For further information, please visit https://www.bostik.com/.

About Bostik, the Adhesive Solutions segment of Arkema

Bostik, a subsidiary of the Arkema Group and a global player in specialty adhesives for the construction, consumer, and industrial markets, develops innovative and multifunctional sealing and bonding solutions that have been shaping our daily lives for over 130 years. With an annual sale of 2.1 billion euros in 2019, a presence in more than 40 countries, and 6,000 employees, the company is committed to meeting the major ecological, energy and technological challenges through its innovations. It is focused on continuous improvement and operational excellence to meet the expectations of its customers and partners. www.bostik.com

About Nordmeccanica

Nordmeccanica is a world leader in the manufacture of coating, laminating and metallizing machinery. A total of 270 employees, five plants (three in Italy, one in China and one in the United States) and two direct operations, in India and Argentina. The company also operates through a network of representatives covering 87 countries worldwide.

Nordmeccanica Group, founded in 1978 and taken over in 1998 by Antonio Cerciello, is confirmed as a global partner, boasting a market share of 75 % in flexible packaging and 55 % in the industrial application field.

Media Contacts:

Global Bostik contact: Hortense Blazsin  [email protected]

Bostik APAC  Sara Liu  [email protected]

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1696493/Bostik_Nordmeccanica.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1696494/Bostik_Logo.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1696492/Arkema_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Bostik, an Arkema company
Leading global suppliers can assist buyers in realizing high-cost savings through their efforts on areas such as forward integration, reducing total ownership cost, manage ad hoc spend, negotiate on pricing and contractual terms, conference participation, managing labor price volatility, level of automation, quality management, and reduction in ad-hoc spend. Collaborations with global suppliers will also help buyers in cost-saving and ensure high-quality procurement in the dynamic market.

Business Intelligence Market in India: Key Price Trends

The pressure from substitutes and a high level of threat from new entrants has resulted in the moderate bargaining power of suppliers. This makes it extremely important to get the pricing and pricing model right. Buyers should align their preferred pricing models for business intelligence with the wider industry and identify the cost-saving potential.

Per-user licensing pricing, subscription-based pricing, and single-license plus service fee pricing are the most widely adopted pricing models in business intelligence. Each pricing model offers optimum benefits and fitment in specific situations. Buyers should identify the model that suits their operations in the best manner and link supplier performance to the pricing models.

The report also offers information on the upcoming trends and challenges that will influence market growth.

www.spendedge.com/report/business-intelligence-market-procurement-research-report

Insights Offered in this Business Intelligence Market Report

Top Business Intelligence suppliers and their cost structures

Top Business Intelligence suppliers in the US and their cost structures

Business Intelligence market spend analysis in the US

Business Intelligence price trends, and forecasts

Cost drivers influencing the Business Intelligence prices

Some of the Top Business Intelligence suppliers listed in this report:

This Business Intelligence procurement intelligence report has enlisted the top suppliers and their cost structures, SLA terms, best selection criteria, and negotiation strategies.

SAP SE

SAS Institute Inc.

IBM Corp.

Regional Analysis

Further breakdown of the market segmentation at requested regions.

Market Player Information

Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players, vendor segmentation, and vendor offerings.

Know the strategies adopted by vendors during the COVID-19 Recovery Phase.

View Free Sample Report

Best Selling Procurement Research Report :

Fruits and Vegetable Processing Equipment - Forecast and Analysis : The fruits and vegetable processing equipment will grow at a CAGR of 5.52% during 2021-2025 . Click the above link for a free sample report.

The fruits and vegetable processing equipment will grow at a . Click the above link for a free sample report. Amusement Park Construction Services Sourcing and Procurement Report : This report evaluates suppliers based on quality of services to ensure safety of drugs and medical devices, therapeutic expertise, reputation and level of experience, and global reach and capacity.

This report evaluates suppliers based on quality of services to ensure safety of drugs and medical devices, therapeutic expertise, reputation and level of experience, and global reach and capacity. Waste Management Equipment- Sourcing and Procurement Intelligence Report: This report evaluates suppliers based on warranties, low lifecycle costs, proximity to the buyers location, and manufacturing performance. The pressure from substitutes and a high level of threat from new entrants has resulted in the moderate bargaining power of suppliers.

To access the definite purchasing guide on the Business Intelligence that answers all your key questions on price trends and analysis:

Am I paying/getting the right prices? Is my Business Intelligence TCO (total cost of ownership) favorable?

How is the price forecast expected to change? What is driving the current and future price changes?

Which pricing models offer the most rewarding opportunities?

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.

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SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

SOURCE SpendEdge

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Canadian innovators to accelerate the world's transition to low-impact mining

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Canada's Digital Technology Supercluster is pleased to announce the launch of the Earth X-ray for Low-Impact Mining project. This project will deliver a new Discovery Platform that will help mining exploration companies to precision-target deposits beneath the Earth's surface in a way that changes the economics of discovery and increases the sustainable production of critical mineral resources needed to fuel the clean energy transition.

Led by muon tomography pioneer Ideon Technologies and in partnership with Simon Fraser University (SFU), Dias Geophysical, Microsoft, Fireweed Zinc, and Mitacs, the Earth X-ray for Low-Impact Mining project will enable mining exploration companies to identify density and magnetic anomalies with greater resolution and certainty up to 1 kilometre beneath the Earth's surface, much like X-rays and MRIs give us visibility inside the human body. The project also benefits from the direct involvement and support of BHP, the largest mining company in the world.

"As the world moves towards a low-carbon economy, global demand for critical minerals is increasing. Through this innovative project, the Digital Technology Supercluster is supporting the development of a first-of-its-kind, environmentally responsible mining technology that will position Canada as a world leader in responsible mining," said the Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry.

To power the global transition to electrification, wind, solar, nuclear, and other clean-energy technologies, production of many critical minerals and metals needs to increase by nearly 500% over the next 20 to 30 years. With most near-surface deposits already discovered, the mining industry is forced to search deeper underground in more difficult to reach locations. Traditional exploration methods involve extensive and environmentally invasive drilling, which often yields no results at a sizeable cost.

The Discovery Platform will feature state-of-the-art hardware and software, novel data inversion and integration techniques, advanced AI algorithms, and geostatistical methods to construct detailed 3D profiles of subsurface anomalies -- such as mineral and metal deposits, air voids, caves, and other structures. This new subsurface intelligence can positively impact the underlying economics of a very traditional industry, paving the way for low-impact mining exploration or, for some minerals, being able to mine without a mine.

"This project will generate new technologies and breakthrough approaches to help solve one of the oldest problems on Earth," said Gary Agnew, Ideon CEO and Co-Founder. "As co-innovators, we will deliver a solution to the global mining industry that will directly reduce the cost, time, risk, and environmental impact of finding new mineral and metal deposits, while dramatically increasing certainty and discovery rates in a sector that has been historically characterized by uncertainty."

Industry partners in the project will apply their deep expertise in exploration, geology, and geophysics to help inform product design and trials, economic value analysis, and commercialization strategy. Innovative Canadian mining junior Fireweed Zinc is part of the consortium as a co-development partner  testing, validating, and conducting deployments of the technology platform components as they are developed. "This project has the potential to accelerate the transformation of modern mineral and metal exploration, leading to definition of new mineral resources and economic growth in Canada and internationally," said Brandon Macdonald, Fireweed Zinc CEO. "We are thrilled to not only be able to access this game-changing technology before our peers, but also to be directly involved in making it happen."

BHP, the world's largest miner and one of the industry's most innovative producers, has committed to collaborating on the Discovery Platform as it is developed. BHP Chief Technical Officer, Laura Tyler said: "Technology will help us unlock the next generation of resources the world needs to support economic growth and decarbonisation. Through partnerships with technology innovators and others in the resources industry, we can help bring new technologies to market that will improve the precision, depth, and sustainability of exploration in Canada and globally. BHP has a long history and a growing presence in Canada, and we are pleased to join this collaboration to support the nation's resources sector."

The Earth X-ray for Low-Impact Mining project has a total investment of C$13,503,225 with C$7,923,711 invested by industry and C$5,579,514 co-invested through the Supercluster's Digital Twins program. Mitacs, a national research organization that operates research and training programs in industrial and social innovation, is adding C$345,000 in net funding to support a team of post-doctoral researchers at SFU.

"The Digital Supercluster is proud to be working with such an amazing group of Canadian companies that are demonstrating a true commitment to environmental sustainability," said Supercluster CEO Sue Paish. "We are happy to provide the digital innovation ecosystem that has brought together Ideon, SFU, Dias Geophysical, Microsoft, Fireweed Zinc, BHP, and Mitacs, making it possible for Canada to advance world-leading research and accelerate transformation of the mining industry."

More information on the Earth X-ray for Low-Impact Mining project can be found here.

Additional Quotes:

Dias Geophysical

"We founded Dias on the principle of turning scientific discovery into innovative technologies that can be applied to tough geoscience challenges," said Glenn Chubak, VP Technology. "Our partners in the Earth-X consortium share that vision, which is exciting for us as we work together on solutions to supply critical minerals to a world actively transitioning its energy production and distribution."

Saskatoon-based Dias Geophysical brings unique know-how in quantum magnetometry and synthetic diamond chip production.



Simon Fraser University

"SFU is excited to be part of this novel multidisciplinary collaboration, which will help advance our fundamental and applied research and create new opportunities for scholarship at all levels," said Glyn Williams-Jones, SFU professor and Department of Earth Sciences Chair. "Importantly, this partnership will connect cutting-edge research and innovation with pioneering enterprises to deliver environmentally sustainable and relevant solutions to critical global challenges."

"This revolutionary project is a testament to the power of partnerships between government, academia and industry," says Dugan O'Neil, SFU's vice-president, research and international. "As the first-of-its-kind in the world, it helps position Canada as a global leader in sustainability."

SFU contributes internationally recognized expertise in advanced industrial fabrication for micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) technology, as well as in Statistics and Earth Sciences. We are committed to global sustainability. Learn more at sfu.ca/sdgs

About Canada's Digital Technology Supercluster

Ahead of the curve starts here. The Digital Technology Supercluster is building a better Canada by growing Canadian businesses, creating a digitally skilled workforce and positively impacting lives across our Country. We accelerate the development and adoption of digital technologies that keep Canadians healthy, address climate change and drive economic productivity. Through a powerful combination of co-investment, cross-sector collaboration, IP creation and digital talent development, we unlock the potential of Canadians to lead and succeed in the digital world. Learn more www.digitalsupercluster.ca

SOURCE Digital Technology Supercluster
BRUSSELS, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A panel of policymakers from European Union (EU) institutions and member states, as well as leaders from industry recently came together to discuss how to put an end to the illegal trade of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). The event was hosted by MEP and Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) Committee Chair Cristian-Silviu Busoi and organised by the European FluoroCarbons Technical Committee (EFCTC).

The black market has been thriving in the EU over the past years due to uneven enforcement of the EU F-gas regulation's quota system for HFCs. The event was an opportunity to exchange experiences and effective measures to stop this black market from harming legitimate business, feeding organised crime and undermining the EU's climate policy.

The panellists agreed that there is not one way to combat HFC smuggling and that authorities need to be very agile: "We need to catch up with these fraudsters. They are very clever in finding new opportunities to make profits illegally," said Ernesto Bianchi, Director for Revenue and International Operations and acting Deputy Director-General at the European Anti-Fraud Office, OLAF.

Bente Tranholm-Schwarz, European Commission Deputy Head of Unit at the Directorate-General for Climate Action, added: "The Commission is aiming to close these holes with the help of the new F-gas regulation which will be proposed next year."

Recently, some member states have taken effective steps to address the issue. Konstantinos Aravossis, Secretary General for Natural Environment and Water at Greek Ministry of Environment and Energy, spoke about recent steps taken in Greece where a Ministerial Decision is due to be implemented to combat HFC smuggling. Partel Niitaru from the Estonian Ministry of the Environment also presented planned measures in Estonia which include increased fines and a ban of the possession and sales of non-refillable containers.

Information sharing between member state authorities was raised as another way to remain one step ahead of HFC smugglers. Panellists suggested pooling intelligence and bringing together data from multiple sources to better understand and combat illegally traded HFCs from entering the EU. Cooperation would also ensure that when enforcement is strengthened at one border, smuggling is not simply displaced to another trade route.

MEP Cristian-Silviu Busoi closed the discussion, calling for MEPs to raise awareness in their home countries. "The key issue is to enforce the current legislation," he concluded.

See here for more information.

SOURCE The European Fluorocarbons Technical Committee (EFCTC)
The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. The integration of smoke detectors with IoT and big data, and the rising governmental concerns to prevent fire hazards will offer immense growth opportunities. However, factors such as the integration of user interfaces with fire protection solutions may threaten the growth of the market.

To leverage the current opportunities, market vendors must strengthen their foothold in the fast-growing segments while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Fire Protection System Market 2022-2026: Scope

The report also covers the following areas:

Fire Protection Systems Market 2022-2026: Segmentation

Product

Fire Detection



Fire Suppression



Fire Response



Fire Analysis

Geography

North America



APAC



Europe



MEA



South America

Fire Protection Systems Market 2022-2026: Key Regions & Revenue Generating Segment

36% of the market's growth will originate from APAC. China and Japan are the key markets for fire protection systems in APAC. The development of the construction industry across the world will facilitate the fire protection system market growth in APAC over the forecast period.

The fire protection system market share growth by the fire detection segment has been significant for revenue-generating. Technavio report provides an accurate prediction of the contribution of all the segments to the growth of the fire protection system market size.

Get lifetime access to our Technavio Insights. Subscribe now to our most popular "Lite Plan" billed annually at USD 3000 . View 3 reports monthly and Download 3 Reports Annually!

Fire Protection System Market 2022-2026: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2022-2026

Detailed information on factors that will assist fire protection system market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the fire protection system market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the fire protection system market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of fire protection system market vendors

Related Reports:

Fire Extinguishers Market -The fire extinguishers market size is expected to grow by USD 1.54 bn and record a CAGR of 4.94% during 2021-2025. Download a free sample now!

Fire Detection and Suppression Systems Market -The fire detection and suppression systems market size is expected to grow by USD 5.04 bn and record a CAGR of 5% during 2021-2025. Download a free sample now!

Fire Protection System Market Scope Report Coverage Details Page number 120 Base year 2021 Forecast period 2022-2026 Growth momentum & CAGR Accelerate at a CAGR of 6.58% Market growth 2022-2026 USD 12.66 billion Market structure Fragmented YoY growth (%) 5.98 Regional analysis North America, APAC, Europe, MEA, and South America Performing market contribution APAC at 36% Key consumer countries US, China, UK, Germany, and Japan Competitive landscape Leading companies, competitive strategies, consumer engagement scope Companies profiled Carrier Global Corp., Gentex Corp., Halma Plc, HOCHIKI Corp., Honeywell International Inc., Johnson Controls International Plc, Minimax Viking GmbH, Robert Bosch GmbH, SECURITAS AG, and Siemens AG 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 preview If our report has not included the data that you are looking for, you can reach out to our analysts and get segments customized.

Download a free sample now to uncover highlights deployed by Companies in the fire protection system market.

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provide 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.

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SOURCE Technavio
DUBLIN, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Orthopedics Growth Opportunities" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global orthopedic implant market is in the midst of a transformation. With enhanced research, product development is improving to suit patient requirements and support more successful surgical outcomes.

The growth potential for orthopedic implants is more in emerging markets than in mature ones. This study provides revenue forecasts, market share analyses, competitive environment assessments, and market segment analyses for the global market. It also covers the changing landscape and the importance of understanding the business models to succeed in the digitally transforming market.

Orthopedic and spine procedures need to be specifically tailored to each patient, and the implants must accommodate an incredible range of anatomy and surgical scenarios. Additionally, many implants need to be customized during surgery, such as adjusting pedicle screw head angles and bending spinal rods, to fit the patient and enable the desired spinal correction.

Unlike devices that remain outside the body in ambient conditions where they can be observed, manipulated, and controlled, most orthopedic and spine devices are implanted during a surgical procedure and then left to perform their intended function within the body.

Hence, the implants need to meet strict requirements for the product's expected lifetime to be much longer than the average medical device.

The trends shaping the industry are:

Increase in the demand for patient-specific implantation and surgeries: Well-informed patients are demanding surgeons for personalized therapies, implants, procedures, and experience

Demand for better procedural efficiencies: Patients are demanding maximum comfort while requiring minimum physical supervision. The need of the hour is the reduction in surgery times, better efficiencies, and optimized outcomes.

Changing reimbursement trends: The shift toward payments based on quality plus cost over procedure-based reimbursement is expected to change the way medical technologies are evaluated and purchased

Changing dynamics between participants: Mergers and acquisitions, and joint ventures are expected to shape the industry.

Shift to emerging economies: Large orthopedic participants are focusing on Asia-Pacific and other emerging economies that are expected to register growth rates that are 2-to-3 times higher than developed markets.

and other emerging economies that are expected to register growth rates that are 2-to-3 times higher than developed markets. Demand for lesser hospital time: The focus is shifting to technologies that involve lesser hospital time for patients and lead to quicker recoveries.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Strategic Imperatives

Why Is It Increasingly Difficult to Grow?

The Strategic Imperative

The Impact of the Top Three Strategic Imperatives on Orthopedic Industry

Growth Opportunities Fuel the Growth Pipeline Engine

2. Key Takeaways from the Study

Market Segmentation

Technology Overview of the Study

Shift of Care Delivery Services

Digital Orthopedics Enabling Remote Patient Management

The Mega Trend Matrix - Mega Trends That are Reshaping the Supply and Demand Care in Orthopedic Interventions

3. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Orthopedic Device Market

Scope of Analysis

Market Segmentation by Product Type

Key Competitors in the Orthopedic Device Market

Key Growth Metrics

Growth Drivers

Growth Restraints

Forecast Assumptions

Revenue and Unit Shipment Forecast

Revenue Forecast by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast by Product

Revenue Forecast by Region

Unit Shipment Forecast by Region

Forecast Analysis

Global Trends - Orthopedic Market

Revenue Forecast Analysis by Product

Forecast Analysis by Region

Pricing Trends and Forecast Analysis

Competitive Environment

Revenue Share

Revenue Share Analysis

4. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Joint Replacement Implants Market

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue and Unit Shipment Forecast

Revenue Forecast by Region

Revenue Forecast by Product

Revenue Forecast Analysis by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast by Region

Unit Shipment by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast Analysis

Unit Shipment Forecast Analysis by Region

Revenue Share

Revenue Share Analysis

5. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Extremities and Trauma Fixation Market

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue and Unit Shipment Forecast

Revenue Forecast by Region

Revenue Forecast by Product

Revenue Forecast Analysis by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast by Region

Unit Shipment by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast Analysis

Unit Shipment Forecast Analysis by Region

Revenue Share

Revenue Share Analysis

6. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Spinal Devices Market

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue and Unit Shipment Forecast

Revenue Forecast by Region

Revenue Forecast by Product

Revenue Forecast Analysis by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast by Region

Unit Shipment Forecast by Product

Unit Shipment Forecast Analysis

Unit Shipment Forecast Analysis by Region

Revenue Share

Revenue Share Analysis

7. Growth Opportunity Analysis, Orthobiologics

Key Growth Metrics

Revenue and Unit Shipment Forecast

Revenue Forecast by Region

Unit Shipment Forecast by Region

Forecast Analysis

Forecast Analysis by Region

Revenue Share

Revenue Share Analysis

8. Changing Paradigms in Orthopedic Industry

Predictions and Future of the Global Orthopedic Device Market

Digital Orthopedics Enabling Remote Patient Management

The Orthopedic Market - An Evolving Ecosystem

The Mega Trend Matrix - Mega Trends That are Reshaping the Supply and Demand Care in Orthopedic Interventions

Specific Trends in Orthopedics - Shift of Care Settings

Specific Trends in Orthopedics - Procedural Shift

Specific Trends in Orthopedics - Technology Shift

9. Cutting-edge Innovations in the Orthopedic Industry

Market Capabilities - Cutting Edge Innovations

10. The Care Continuum

11. Future Trends and Companies to Watch

Future Trends in the Orthopedic Industry

12. Growth Opportunity Universe, Orthopedic Device Market

Growth Opportunity 1 - Improving Accuracy and Precision With Robotics for Reliable and Reproducible Outcomes

Growth Opportunity 2 - Addressing the Care Continuum Shift With Minimal Interventions for Enabling Quick Recovery

Growth Opportunity 3 - New Payment Models for Managing the Disease Condition

Growth Opportunity 4 - Integrating Data Across the Care Continuum for Clinical Efficiency and Optimized Performance

13. Next Steps

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/rkwcbo

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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DUBLIN, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Ultrapure Water Market - Global Outlook & Forecast 2021-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The ultrapure water market was valued at USD 7.15 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 11.21 billion in 2026 growing at a CAGR of 7.78%.

The primary end-users of the ultrapure water treatment market include industries such as semiconductors, solar photovoltaics, pharmaceuticals, power generation (sub and super critical boilers), and specialty applications such as research laboratories.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to accelerate digitalization, which could be expected to positively impact the microelectronics industry. The launch of the 5G mobile network is expected to stimulate the demand for semiconductor components.

Also, the adoption of internet of things (IoT) technologies such as cloud computing, data analytics, blockchain, and augmented intelligence are enhanced. This will increase the demand for ultra-pure water in the industry.

ULTRA-PURE WATER MARKET SEGMENTS

The filtration segment accounted for a revenue share of 34.90% in 2020 and is expected to witness an absolute growth of 49.83% by the end of 2026. The Ultrapure filtration technologies include particle filtration, depth filtration, carbon filtration, microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration, and gas filtration.

Washing fluid is the largest application for ultrapure water, and the segment is accounted for the highest share in the ultrapure water industry. Most of the industries such as semiconductors, flat panel display, and pharmaceuticals use ultrapure water as washing fluids which raise the demand.

GEOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

Asia: The Asian market for consumables and hardware is expected to create the demand for ultrapure water required by the semiconductor, pharmaceutical, flat panel display, and power generation industries.

North America: North America region is one of the fastest-growing for ultrapure water. Ultrapure water is used by semiconductor companies such as Intel Corporation, Nvidia, Texas Instruments, and Micron Technology as a cleaning agent. It is used to remove dissolved impurities that might precipitate or particles that might settle on circuits and cause the failure of microchips.

Europe: The pharmaceutical industry is one of the developing industries in the region. Germany is the leading pharmaceutical market in Europe. Therefore, the growth in the pharmaceutical sector would lead to an increased demand for ultrapure water. This will contribute to the expansion of the ultrapure water industry in the region.

VENDOR ANALYSIS

The key players in the industry are General Electric, Pall Corporation, DuPont, Asahi Kasei Corporation, and Pentair.

The customers are looking for vendors who deliver value-added services. This has motivated companies in the industry to focus their efforts on continuously working toward offering a varied range of product and service offerings. Asahi Kasei Corporation has a first-mover advantage in several segments. The global business solutions & strategies have assisted the company in coming up with a unique solution to tap the un-catered markets.

Innovation, costs, and convenience play a crucial role in setting up the demand for such products. Thus, vendors need to remain abreast with the latest customer demands and trends in the ultrapure water industry.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

The market growth is supported by increased demand for ultrapure water filtration for cleaning small and minute electronic appliances such as wafers and semiconductors.

Geographically, the APAC region is the largest market for ultra-pure water and accounts for 60.05% of the global ultrapure water market share.

The pharmaceutical segment dominates the Europe market and accounts for 40.33% of the global market share.

market and accounts for 40.33% of the global market share. Vendors need to find partners in emerging industries to expand their geographic presence in other potential markets.

Key Vendors

General Electric

Pall Corporation

DuPont

Asahi Kasei Corporation

Pentair

Other Prominent Vendors

Nalco

SUEZ

Evoqua Water Technologies

Mar Cor

Organo Corporation

Ovivo

Veolia

Kurita Water Industries

Aqua-Chem

Reynolds Culligan

Ultra Pure Water Technologies

Pure Water Group

Merck

SpectraPure

Nancrede Engineering

RODI System Corporation

Biosan

Sartorius

Agape Water Solutions

Zhuhai Wangyang Water Treatment Equipment Company

Key Topics Covered:



1 Research Methodology



2 Research Objectives



3 Research Process



4 Scope & Coverage

4.1 Market Definition

4.2 Base Year

4.3 Scope of the Study

4.4 Market Segments



5 Report Assumptions & Caveats

5.1 Key Caveats

5.2 Currency Conversion

5.3 Market Derivation



6 Market at a Glance



7 Introduction

7.1 Overview

7.2 Impact of COVID-19 Scenario



8 Market Opportunities & Trends

8.1 Transition to 5G

8.2 Evolving Microelectronics Market



9 Market Growth Enablers

9.1 Increasing Demand in Semiconductor Industry

9.2 Increasing Demand for Cleanroom Practices



10 Market Restraints

10.1 High Vendor Loyalty

10.2 High Standard Requirements of Advancing Nanotechnology

10.3 Drop in Coal-Based Power Generation



11 Market Landscape

11.1 Market Overview

11.2 Market Size & Forecast

11.3 Five Forces Analysis



12 Equipment

12.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

12.2 Market Overview

12.3 Filtration

12.4 Reverse Osmosis (RO)

12.5 Ultraviolet (UV)

12.6 Electro Deionization (EDI)

12.7 Others



13 Application

13.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

13.2 Market Overview

13.3 Washing Fluid

13.4 Process Feed



14 End-Users

14.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

14.2 Market Overview

14.3 Semiconductors

14.4 Power Generation

14.5 Flat Panel Display

14.6 Pharmaceuticals

14.7 Others



15 Capacity Consideration

15.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

15.2 Market Overview

15.3 Small Scale

15.4 Large Scale



16 Geography

16.1 Market Snapshot & Growth Engine

16.2 Geographic Overview

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/wcxi09

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets
TORONTO, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Golden Star Resources Ltd. (NYSE American: GSS) (TSX: GSC) (GSE: GSR) ("Golden Star" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List) has granted an interim order (the "Interim Order") authorizing various matters in connection with the Company's previously announced plan of arrangement under Section 192 of the Canada Business Corporations Act (the "Transaction"), involving the Company, Chifeng Jilong Gold Mining Co., Ltd. (SHSE: 600988) ("Chifeng") and its subsidiary Chijin International (Hong Kong) Limited (the "Purchaser") and/or an assignee of the Purchaser, pursuant to the arrangement agreement dated October 31, 2021 (the "Arrangement Agreement").

The interim order provides, among other matters, that a special meeting (the "Meeting") of holders ("Shareholders") of Golden Star's common shares ("Golden Star Shares") will be held on December 30, 2021 at 11.00 am (Toronto time) to consider the Transaction and that the record date (the "Record Date") for determining the Shareholders entitled to notice of, and to vote at, such Meeting is the close of business (Toronto time) on November 25, 2021.

The Transaction is subject to approval of, among other things, an affirmative vote of at least two-thirds of the votes cast by the Shareholders at the virtual Meeting. Further details regarding the Transaction will be included in the management information circular (the "Circular") to be mailed to Shareholders of record as of the Record Date in accordance with applicable securities law and the interim order. The Circular will be filed by Golden Star on SEDAR and will be available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

The Transaction

Pursuant to the Arrangement Agreement, Chifeng, through the Purchaser and/or its assignee, has agreed to acquire all of the issued and outstanding Golden Star Shares. Pursuant to and upon completion of the Transaction, Shareholders will receive total consideration, payable in cash, of US$3.91 (equivalent to approximately C$4.85 as of October 31, 2021) per Golden Star Share (the "Consideration"), which equates to a total Transaction value of approximately US$470 million on a fully-diluted, in-the-money basis.

Advisors

Golden Star has engaged Canaccord Genuity Corp. as its exclusive financial advisor as well as Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP and Davis Graham & Stubbs LLP as its respective Canadian and United States legal advisors. Canaccord Genuity Corp. provided a fairness opinion to Golden Star's Board of Directors. Chifeng has engaged Stifel Nicolaus Canada Inc. and First Asia Group Ltd. as its financial advisors as well as Goodmans LLP as its legal advisor.

Golden Star Profile

Golden Star is an established gold mining company that owns and operates the Wassa underground mine in the Western Region of Ghana, West Africa. Listed on the NYSE American, the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Ghanaian Stock Exchange, Golden Star is focused on delivering strong margins and free cash flow from the Wassa mine. As the winner of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada 2018 Environmental and Social Responsibility Award, Golden Star remains committed to leaving a positive and sustainable legacy in its areas of operation.

Chifeng Profile

Chifeng is an international gold mining company listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of approximately US$4.4 billion. It operates five mining assets, including the world-class Sepon gold mine in Laos. In 2018, Chifeng acquired Sepon before undertaking significant capital expenditures to redevelop the gold processing facility in order to double its future gold production.

Statements Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Some statements contained in this news release are "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and "forward looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). Generally, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes" or variations of such words and phrases (including negative or grammatical variations) or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved or the negative connotation thereof. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and involve risks, assumptions and uncertainties that could cause facts to differ materially. Such statements are based on numerous assumptions regarding present and future business strategies and the environment in which Golden Star will operate in the future.

Forward-looking statements may include but are not limited to, statements related to the Transaction, the Meeting date, the Record Date, the mailing of the Circular, the approval of the Transaction by Shareholders and the closing of the Transaction including the acquisition of the Golden Star Shares and payment in respect thereof.

In respect of the forward-looking statements and information concerning the anticipated completion of the proposed Transaction and the anticipated timing for completion of the proposed Transaction, Golden Star has provided them in reliance on certain assumptions and believes that they are reasonable at this time, including the assumptions as to the time required to prepare and mail shareholder meeting materials, including the required Circular; the ability of the parties to receive, in a timely manner, the necessary regulatory, shareholder, court, stock exchange and relevant authority approvals; and the ability of the parties to satisfy, in a timely manner, the other conditions to the closing of the Transaction. These dates may change for a number of reasons, including unforeseen delays in preparing meeting materials, inability to secure necessary approvals in the time assumed or the need for additional time to satisfy the other conditions to the completion of the Transaction. Accordingly, you should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release concerning these times.

Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Golden Star to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include, without limitation: risks associated with the Transaction and acquisitions generally; the Arrangement Agreement may be terminated in certain circumstances; there can be no certainty that all conditions precedent to the Transaction will be satisfied; Golden Star will incur costs even if the Transaction is not completed and may have to pay a termination fee or expense reimbursement if the Arrangement Agreement is terminated in certain circumstances; all necessary approvals may not be obtained; uncertainty regarding the ability of the parties to complete and mail the Circular to be prepared in connection with the Meeting and the ability to hold the Meeting within the time frame indicated. Additional risks, uncertainties and factors include, without limitation: gold price volatility; discrepancies between actual and estimated production; mineral reserves and resources and metallurgical recoveries; mining operational and development risks; liquidity risks; suppliers suspending or denying delivery of products or services; regulatory restrictions (including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability); actions by governmental authorities; the speculative nature of gold exploration; ore type; the global economic climate; share price volatility; foreign exchange rate fluctuations; risks related to streaming agreements and joint venture operations; the availability of capital on reasonable terms or at all; risks related to international operations, including economic and political instability in foreign jurisdictions in which Golden Star operates; developments in Ghana that may have an adverse impact on Golden Star and/or the Transaction; risks related to current global financial conditions including financial and other risks resulting from the impact of the COVID-19 global pandemic; actual results of current exploration activities; environmental risks; future prices of gold; possible variations in mineral reserves and mineral resources, grade or recovery rates; mine development and operating risks; an inability to obtain power for operations on favorable terms or at all; mining plant or equipment breakdowns or failures; an inability to obtain products or services for operations or mine development from vendors and suppliers on reasonable terms, including pricing, or at all; public health pandemics such as COVID-19, including risks associated with reliance on suppliers, the cost, scheduling and timing of gold shipments, uncertainties relating to its ultimate spread, severity and duration, and related adverse effects on the global economy and financial markets; accidents, labor disputes and other risks of the mining industry; delays in obtaining governmental approvals or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities; litigation risks; the quantum and timing of receipt of the proceeds from the sale by the Company of its interest in Bogoso-Prestea; risks related to indebtedness and the service of such indebtedness; and general business, economic, competitive, political, health and social uncertainties.

Although Golden Star has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that future developments affecting the Company will be those anticipated by management. Please refer to the discussion of these and other factors in Management's Discussion and Analysis of financial condition and results of operations for the year ended December 31, 2020 and in our annual information form for the year ended December 31, 2020 as filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forecasts contained in this press release constitute management's current estimates, as of the date of this press release, with respect to the matters covered thereby. We expect that these estimates will change as new information is received. While we may elect to update these estimates at any time, we do not undertake any estimate at any particular time or in response to any particular event, except as may be required by applicable securities laws. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and accordingly investors are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking statements due to their inherent uncertainty.

SOURCE Golden Star Resources Ltd.

Related Links

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GUANGZHOU, China, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Began on November 25, 2021, Huilai Five-Product Online Showroom was officially launched on International Trade Online Expo (ITOE). ITOE will enable the integrated information of Huilai agriculture industry and Huilai local enterprises to be showcased to overseas markets via digital promotion platform. The online showroom has three functional interfaces, namely, History & Culture, City & Industry, News & Policies, available in both Chinese and English version. The showroom will exclusively display and promote five Huilai's agricultural products: Huilai litchi, pineapple, abalone, Longjiang pork feet, fish balls. A special Facebook topic page is also created for global fans to exchange their comments and thoughts.

The presence of Huilai Five-Product Online Showroom elevates the gross market value of agricultural products that made in Guangdong, and achieve high quality agriculture development. On the next move, the Online Showroom will closely rely on the government support and market operations to achieve win-win cooperation. Online digital trading can breakthrough the restriction of traditional marketing and expand to overseas markets in a more effectively manner. Huilai Five-Product Online Showroom will be on display for all the year round and never close.

Huilai Five-Product Online Showroom is one of important trial discovery of CCPIT Guangdong Committee for pushing forward digital agricultural development across Chinese provinces, cities, counties and towns, stated by Cai Yiyue, director of Exhibition Unit of CCPIT Guangdong Committee. These five products are not only representing the agriculture industry of Huilai County, but also the contributors to building the fame of Huilai brands and use them to penetrate into bigger international markets for better development. That is also the obligation of support task team of Jinghai Town, Huilai County.

Well-renowned overseas Chinese figures who had delivered their congratulations to the opening of the online showroom include Mr. Wu Yuansheng, Chairman of Malaysia Teochew Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Li Jiachun, Chairman of Thai Young Chinese Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Lin Han, Chairman of Guangdong Chamber of Commerce in Philippines, Mr. Jiang Xuzhong, Chairman of Philippines Federation Chaoshan Friendship, Mr. Jiang Xuzhong, Chairman of Overseas Friendship Union Cambodian Chaoren, Mr. Chen Qixiong, Chaoshan General Chamber of Commerce in UAE, Mr. Chen Yunsheng, Chairman of South Africa-China Shenzhen General Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Wang Xinghua, Chairman of Chaoshan General Chamber of Commerce in Mexico, Mr. Lin Hanming, Chairman of Guangdong General Chamber of Commerce in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mr. Chen Zhi, Chao Shan General Association of New Zealand and others. They show great interests to the agricultural development of Huilai County and want to provide helps. Every bite of food that made in hometown is the memory of home, all overseas Chinese are willingly contributing their forces to develop their hometowns.

SOURCE Huilai Five-Product Online Showroom
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif., Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kinecta Federal Credit Union proudly hosted its 48th Annual Holiday Food Drive at Jesse Owens Park in Los Angeles on Sunday, November 21. Kinecta made Thanksgiving a little brighter for over 1,000 deserving families selected by Los Angeles-based community organizations by giving them each a bag of traditional Thanksgiving food items along with a $75 grocery store gift card to help complete their holiday meal.

"The holiday season is known as a time of giving and each year Kinecta enthusiastically conducts activities to support the communities where we work and live," said Latrice McGlothin, Executive Director, Kinecta Community Foundation. "As food insecurity rises amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we are delighted to make this holiday season a little easier for deserving families in need. We thank our employees, the community, corporate sponsors, members and individual donors for their support in helping to make our 2021 Holiday Food Drive a success!"

During November, Kinecta collected monetary donations raising over $55,000 from corporate sponsors, members, employees and individual donors. At the event, cars lined up to safely receive their goodie bags in a drive thru environment hosted by more than 75 Kinecta volunteers, including employees, family, friends and vendors, joined by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, prominent Watts activist & Parents of Watts founder, Dr. Sweet Alice Harris, and LA Galaxy forward, Cameron Dunbar.

The 48th Annual Holiday Food Drive successfully supported families selected by community organizations, including: Al Wooten Jr. Youth Center, Athens Park Tiny Tots, Centro de Ninos, Inc., City of Hawthorne Project Gobble, Community's Child, Drew League, El Centro Del Pueblo, El Nido Family Center, Epiphany Church El Monte, Good Faith Baptist Church, GRYD, Hawthorne President's Council, Jefferson Elementary, Jesse Owens Park Community, King/Drew Magnet Medical High School, LAPD Cadets - Southeast Division, Metro LA Region of Los Angeles Church of Christ, N. Pasadena Church of Christ, Our Lady of Victory Elementary School, Parents of Watts, Richstone Family Center, Salvation Army of Compton, South Bay Family Health Center, St. Albert the Great, St. Lawrence Elementary School, St. Odilia's Elementary School, Thomas House Family Shelter, VFW El Monte Post 10218 and Watts/Century Latino Organization.

Special thank you to this year's sponsors that donated $1,000 or more:

Affinity Trusts; Appraisal Solutions; Big 5; Cook Solutions Group, Inc.; Cox Automotive; CU Direct; CU Revest; DiVenture Marketing Group; Entrust Datacard; Experian; First American Mortgage Solutions, LLC; Forsyth Howe O'Dwyer Kalb & Murphy; GoodLeap; Iron Mountain Record Management; iSpace; Land Gorilla, Inc.; LPL Financial; Mrs. Cubbison's Foods; Open Lending; Servion, Inc.; Ralphs/Food 4 Less; Styskal, Wiese & Melchione; Skechers USA, Inc.; SWBC; and Symitar.

During 2020 employees of Kinecta and its subsidiaries volunteered over 4,560 hours, donated more than $634,000 to charitable causes and participated in over 145 community events. To learn more about Kinecta's community outreach programs and activities, visit https://www.kinecta.org/community/

About Kinecta Federal Credit Union

Kinecta Federal Credit Union is the country's 35th largest credit union, with assets of $6.5 billion and over 270,000 member-owners. Our 800+ employees serve members from 32 branches, a variety of specialty offices, and highly responsive call centers on both coasts. Banking the Southern California area for more than 80 years, with recent expansion to Northern California, New York, and New Jersey, Kinecta offers its members a full range of financial products through the Credit Union and its subsidiaries, Kinecta Wealth Management and Kinecta Insurance Services. Daily Breeze readers have named Kinecta a top South Bay credit union for the past 10 years, and Kinecta was voted Easy Reader's 2020 "Best of the Beach" Credit Union.

SOURCE Kinecta Federal Credit Union
PUNE, India, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- According to The Insight Partners study on "Menstrual Cups Market to 2027  Global Analysis and Forecast  by Product Type, Size, Material and Distribution Channel" the menstrual cups market was valued at US$ 406.70 million in 2019 and is projected to reach US$ 636.16 million by 2027; it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 5.9% during 20192027. The growth of the market is attributed to the growing number of accidents and trauma cases, rising incidence of infectious diseases and developing liquid biopsy technology are expected to boost the growth of the global blood collection devices market. However, the market is likely to get impacted by the risk factors such as shortage of skilled professionals during the forecast period.

Get Exclusive Sample Pages of Menstrual Cups Market - COVID-19 Impact and Global Analysis with Strategic Insights at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/sample/TIPHE100001400/

In the North America region, the market for menstrual cups is primarily held by the US among the other countries. The growth of the menstrual cups market in the United States is expected to grow owing to increasing organic developments by the market players in menstrual cups market, rising awareness among consumers for advanced menstrual cups, and increasing accessibility of menstrual cups. The U.S. holds the most significant market share for Menstrual Cups market in North America. Certain factors such as higher emphasis on menstruation management, availability of the products, and focus on utilization of eco-friendly products is driving the adoption of menstruation cups in the country.

Additionally, growing awareness of menstruation cups in schools and academic institutions by the government authorities, non-profit organizations, and operating players in the market are anticipated to fuel the adoption of menstruation cups during the forecast period, which will eventually accelerate the market growth. Increasing concerns of biological wastes and environment protection are expected to create lucrative opportunity for the adoption of menstrual cups in US. For instance, according to data published by Stanford University in 2017, an estimated 12 billion pads and 7 billion tampons are disposed each year in the US. Such massive waste creates huge burden on garbage management. Since a single menstrual cup can be utilized for 4-5 years, the product serves as suitable alternative over other sanitary products. Additionally, increasing adoption of menstrual cups by women suffering from PCOS (Polycystic ovary syndrome) are also expected to drive the growth of the US menstrual cups market during the forecast period.

The Menstrual Cups Market in Asia Pacific is anticipated to grow to increasing awareness for menstrual cups, increasing disposable income, growing initiatives by the government and non-government organizations to promote the adoption of reusable menstrual products are expected to equally influence the overall growth of market during the forecast period.

Based on product type, the menstrual cups market is segmented into disposable and reusable. The disposable and reusable accounted for more than 65.71% of the market share in 2019. In terms of material, the menstrual cups market is segmented into medical grade silicone, natural rubber, and thermoplastic elastomer (TPE). The medical grade silicone segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of size, the menstrual cups market is segmented into small, medium and large.The medium segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of distribution channel, the menstrual cups market is segmented into online stores, pharmacies and retail stores.The online stores segment held the largest share of the market in 2019.

Download the Latest COVID-19 Analysis on Menstrual Cups Market Growth Research Report at https://www.theinsightpartners.com/covid-analysis-sample/TIPHE100001400/

Increasing Popularity of Menstrual Cups in Menstrual Cups Market Growth

Menstruation is a part of women's life; however, talking about it is difficult for some women. Recently with government initiatives and support, talking about menstruation is easier, and thus new products are being launched in the market. Tampon, menstrual pad, and liners are the most commonly used products, and the market players are also cutting down their prices in order to increase their sales. As per the charity Bloody Good Period, approximately 4,800 are spent on period products in an average lifetime by a woman. Such organizations are eradicating the stigma surrounding menstruation by encouraging conversations on it.

Menstrual cups are becoming more popular due to the growing preference for reusable products. The menstrual cups are inexpensive, reusable, and safe and are unlikely to leak like other products such as menstrual pads and tampons. Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are promoting the adoption of menstrual cups.

The number of Google searches for menstrual cups and reusable menstrual products has increased in recent years. The Google Trends search engine gives a number out of 100 to represent the number of searches. In 2013, the "menstrual cup" had a popularity score of 21, and increased to 83 in 2018 and reached 100 in September 2019. Owing to their benefits and popularity, many of the drug stores, local big-chain stores, health food stores, pharmacies, and online stores are offering. For instance, Walmart and Target are the most popular chain stores, and drug stores such as Walgreens and CVS offer menstrual cups in the US.

Also, initiatives by government and non-government organizations have led to an increase in awareness of menstrual cups. For instance, the Alappuzha municipality, India, distributed free menstrual cups as an initiative to find an alternative to the waste management problem. The municipality distributed 3,000 menstrual cups to the women in order to adopt the environment-friendly technique for menstruation. Thus owing to the benefits offered by menstrual cups and initiatives by the government and non-government organizations is likely to increase the popularity of menstrual cups.

Inquire before Buying (Menstrual Cups Market Research): https://www.theinsightpartners.com/inquiry/TIPHE100001400/

Market: Segmental Overview

In terms of product type, reusable segment is anticipated to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period. Reusable menstrual cups are small and flexible funnel-shape cups made up of rubber or silicone that are inserted into the vagina to collect and catch menstrual fluids. The reusable cups are the most commonly used menstrual cups as they are safe, cost-effective and eco-friendly means of managing menstrual cycles. Moreover, using these cups helps the females to not compromise on various physical activities such as swimming and exercising which are otherwise hampered due to leakage. Some of the prominent global brands offering reusable menstrual cups include Keeper Cup, DivaCup, Lunette Menstrual Cup, Lena Cup, Lily Cup and others. In terms of material, the menstrual cups market is segmented into medical grade silicone, natural rubber, and thermoplastic elastomer (TPE). The medical grade silicone segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of size, the menstrual cups market is segmented into small, medium and large.The medium segment held the largest share of the market in 2019. In terms of distribution channel, the menstrual cups market is segmented into online stores, pharmacies and retail stores.The online stores segment held the largest share of the market in 2019.

Menstrual Cups Market: Competition Landscape and Key Developments

Diva International Inc., Lunette Menstrual Cup, The Keeper Inc., Mooncup Ltd, Anigan Inc., Procter & Gamble, Me Luna, YUUKI COMPANY S.R.O., Silky Cup, Earth Care Solution among others are among the key companies operating in the Menstrual Cups Market. These players are focusing on the expansion and diversification of their market presence and the acquisition of a new customer base, thereby tapping prevailing business opportunities.

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In April 2019 , The new product is targeted at the age group 18 years old, and under, the all-new Model 0 has strengthened the robust and inclusive set of menstrual cup options by DivaCup's.

, The new product is targeted at the age group 18 years old, and under, the all-new Model 0 has strengthened the robust and inclusive set of menstrual cup options by DivaCup's. In October 2018 , P&G is a leading feminine care brand, added the latest option in its family of period protection products Tampax Cup. The Tampax Cup has unique features such as SoftCurve shape, 100% medical-grade reusable silicone, Up to 12 hours of protection, and other such features.

, P&G is a leading feminine care brand, added the latest option in its family of period protection products Tampax Cup. The Tampax Cup has unique features such as SoftCurve shape, 100% medical-grade reusable silicone, Up to 12 hours of protection, and other such features. In May 2018 , Me Luna introduced its new product is more firm compared to the other products. The product has proved useful to women's strong pelvic floor muscles and who are physically active.

Browse Related Reports and Get Sample copy

Feminine Hygiene Products Market to Grow at a CAGR of 6.3% to reach US$ 36,371.54 Mn Million from 2019 to 2027

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The Insight Partners is a one stop industry research provider of actionable intelligence. We help our clients in getting solutions to their research requirements through our syndicated and consulting research services. We specialize in industries such as Semiconductor and Electronics, Aerospace and Defense, Automotive and Transportation, Biotechnology, Healthcare IT, Manufacturing and Construction, Medical Device, Technology, Media and Telecommunications, Chemicals and Materials.

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Contact Person: Sameer Joshi

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SOURCE The Insight Partners
SHENZHEN, China, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nam Tai Property Inc. ("Nam Tai" or the "Company") (NYSE Symbol: NTP) today announced that its Board has received a written request from Greater Sail Limited and others (the "Requisitioning Shareholders"), who in aggregate are entitled to exercise more than 30% of the voting rights of the outstanding shares in the Company, calling for the Company to hold a special meeting of shareholders to consider certain changes to the Board of Directors after the special meeting to be held on November 30, 2021 and on or before 23 December 2021.

The Board has reviewed the purported request from the Requisitioning Shareholders. Based on the information provided to date, the Board has determined that the request from the Requisitioning Shareholders is in accordance with the Company's governing documents and relevant British Virgin Island laws.

The Company noted that shareholders are not required to take any action at this time. The Company will issue notice of the special meeting to shareholders specifying the date, hour, place and resolutions as appropriate.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENT AND FACTORS THAT COULD CAUSE OUR SHARE PRICE TO DECLINE

Certain statements included in this announcement, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "might", "can", "could", "will", "would", "anticipate", "believe", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "forecast", "intend", "plan", "seek", or "timetable". These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, may include projections of our future financial performance based on our growth strategies and anticipated trends in our business and the industry in which we operate. These statements are only predictions based on our current expectations about future events. There are several factors, many beyond our control, which could cause results to differ materially from our expectation. These risk factors are described in our Annual Report on Form 20-F and in our Current Reports filed on Form 6-K from time to time and are incorporated herein by reference. Any of these factors could, by itself, or together with one or more other factors, adversely affect our business, results of operations or financial condition. There may also be other factors currently unknown to us, or have not been described by us, that could cause our results to differ from our expectations. Although we believe the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. You should not rely upon forward-looking statements as predictions of future events. These forward-looking statements apply only as of the date of this announcement; as such, they should not be unduly relied upon as circumstances change. Except as required by law, we are not obligated, and we undertake no obligation, to release publicly any revisions to these forward-looking statements that might reflect events or circumstance occurring after the date of this press release or those that might reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

ABOUT NAM TAI PROPERTY INC.

We are a real estate developer and operator, mainly conducting business in Mainland China. Our main land resources are located in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area ("Greater Bay Area") and Wuxi, China, of which the three plots in Shenzhen will be developed into Nam Tai Inno Park, Nam Tai Technology Center and Nam Tai Inno Valley. We plan to build these technology parks into landmark parks in the region and provide high-quality industrial offices, industrial service spaces and supporting dormitories to the tenants. Based on the experience of developing and operating technology parks and an industrial relationship network accumulated over the past 40 years, we have also exported the operation model of technology parks to other industrial properties. Through an asset-light model, we have leased industrial properties for repositioning and business invitation. We will also expand the commercial and residential property business in China as an auxiliary development strategy of the Company. As the growth prospects of China maintain, we shall seize development opportunities in the Greater Bay Area and other first- and second-tier cities in China, and continue to strengthen and expand the business of industrial real estate, and commercial and residential properties. Nam Tai Property Inc. is a corporation registered in the British Virgin Islands and listed on the New York Stock Exchange (Symbol: "NTP").

Please refer to our corporate website (https://www.namtai.com/) or the SEC website (www.sec.gov) for our press releases and financial statements.

SOURCE Nam Tai Property Inc.
LONDON, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and Trip.com Group have launched 'Trending in Travel,' a new report that shows the latest trends in traveler behavior and future booking patterns in the wake of COVID-19.

WTTC, representing the global Travel & Tourism sector, joined forces with leading global travel service provider, Trip.com Group, and its major consumer brands Trip.com, Ctrip and Skyscanner, to analyze consumer trends shaping the recovery of the Travel & Tourism sector.

WTTC's latest projections show strong growth in international spending for 2022 and beyond, projected to overtake domestic spending in 2022, as more destinations ease restrictions and vaccination rates continue to rise.

Following a 69.4% decline (2020), global international spending on travel is set to rise by 9.3% in 2021, and significantly by 93.8% in 2022.

The report also reveals how severe and confusing travel restrictions around the world drove a significant rise in domestic tourism, with a surge in domestic hotel bookings of more than 200% on Trip.com's platform this year compared to 2019.

Since the start of the pandemic, mobility restrictions have hindered international travel and, although domestic travel will provide a much-needed boost to the sector, WTTC says the return of international travel is critical to rebooting the global economy.

The report focuses on booking trends, consumer considerations and consumer profiles. It also features examples of markets whose resilience has provided a platform for the recovery of the Travel & Tourism sector.

The report shows how COVID-19 has changed the way people travel; younger travelers are the first to return to travel; increased demand for longer stays; the importance of fee-free cancellations and the demand for high levels of health and safety checks.

To avoid travel restrictions, travelers are seeking secondary destinations, away from traditional holiday spots, as their destination of choice. This preference positively impacts local communities and livelihoods. According to Trip.com's hotel booking data, Abu Dhabi (UAE) Chiang Mai (Thailand), Doha (Qatar), Florence (Italy) and Frankfurt (Germany) were the most popular secondary destinations in their respective countries in 2021.

The report goes on to show that, according to Ctrip data, bookings for 'the great outdoors' will predominate in the short and medium term. In China  one of the world's largest travel markets  nature-related attraction bookings have increased by 265% in the first half of this year compared to the same period last year.

The pause in travel has also heightened consumers' eagerness to travel more sustainably with more than eight out of 10 (83%) global travelers saying they would make sustainable travel a priority in the future.

Reinforcing this long-term trend, since its launch in 2019, the report shows 68 million travelers have opted to book a "Greener Choice" labeled flight on Skyscanner, a comparatively lower-carbon flight choice.

According to the report, 70% of travelers in many major countries such as the U.S., Spain, the UK, Canada and Japan plan to spend more on travel in 2022 than they have in the last five years, including 2019  one of the best years on record for Travel & Tourism.

Julia Simpson, WTTC President & CEO, said: "It is clear people are really looking forward to traveling again. Consumers are curious, they are looking at new destinations, 'the great outdoors' and travel that benefits the places and people they visit. As travel and tourism represents over 10% of global GDP this is good news for jobs and economies. The impact in some countries has been devastating for local communities and this report shows that business is returning in earnest."

Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group, said: "Travelers around the world have shown their eagerness to travel, whether limited to domestic travel or able to cross borders, we see a huge amount of pent-up demand steadily being released.

"To better evolve with the recovery we must understand travelers, and as an industry adapt to emerging trends."

Latest WTTC research shows the global recovery of the Travel & Tourism sector is picking up pace with the sector's contribution to global GDP projected to rise by 30.7% in 2021 and 31.7% in 2022. The Americas continue to lead the overall recovery with 36.8% projected growth of Travel & Tourism GDP this year, led by the Caribbean (47.3%) and North America (37.9%).

For more information on the Trending in Travel: Emerging Consumer Trends in Travel & Tourism in 2021 and Beyond report, download the full report here .

About the World Travel & Tourism Council

The World Travel & Tourism Council ( WTTC ) represents the global travel & tourism private sector. Members include 200 CEOs, Chairs and Presidents of the world's leading travel & tourism companies from all geographies covering all industries. For more than 30 years, WTTC has been committed to raising the awareness of governments and the public of the economic and social significance of the travel & tourism sector.

According to WTTC's 2021 Economic Impact Report , during 2020, a year in which it was devasted by the COVID-19 pandemic, Travel & Tourism made a 5.5% contribution to global GDP and was responsible for 272 million jobs.

SOURCE The World Travel & Tourism Council
NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Novartis has announced the launch of its new innovation hub, Novartis Biome sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), which will spearhead the further development of innovative business models and technology-driven solutions to improve healthcare in the region. The hub will focus on cross-sectoral partnerships to accelerate innovative approaches to increase affordable access to high-quality medicines and sustainably strengthen health systems.

"Our goal is to provide every patient in SSA with affordable access to high-quality medicines and to ultimately transform healthcare in the region. For this, innovation and digital technologies have an immense potential to contribute, and with cross-sectoral partnerships, we can truly maximize the impact on the health of our people," said Racey Muchilwa, President and Head, Novartis Sub-Saharan Africa.

Recognizing that access to medicines remains one of the world's biggest healthcare challenges, and with Africa being home to the largest underserved population in the world, the Novartis Biome SSA will concentrate on four strategic priorities:



1) extend affordability of healthcare

2) strengthen early diagnosis to drive better outcomes

3) lead in supply chain innovation

4) support HCP education and patient awareness

Working across these four priorities supports Novartis aspiration to double its patient reach in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2022 and increase it five-fold by 2025.

"While healthcare innovation is at the core of our work at Novartis, we know that no single company can solve these challenges alone. Building strong partnerships and fostering greater collaboration is the only way to truly drive transformative, meaningful access improvements in our region," continued Muchilwa.

Impacting affordability, access, and outcomes through partnerships

The Novartis Biome SSA will also continue to build on its partnership with Medtronic Labs to deliver end-to-end care for hypertension and diabetes patients by seeking to scale their model across the continent and working with both major international organizations as well as local implementation champions. The digital solution powered by Medtronic provides doctors with the ability to proactively manage large patient cohorts and act on red alerts, as well as giving patients the chance to join virtual patient support groups.

In addition, Novartis has partnered with the Commonwealth Pharmacists Association (CPA) to support training of more than one million pharmacists in all 54 Commonwealth countries, of which more than 20 are from SSA and supported by the Novartis Biome SSA.

Disclaimer This media update contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "may," "could," "would," "expect," "anticipate," "seek," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," "aims," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding potential marketing approvals, new indications or labeling for the investigational or approved products, or regarding potential future revenues from such the launch of the digital innovation hub. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Novartis is providing the information in this media update as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this media update as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About the Novartis Biome

A catalyst for impactful digital collaboration, the Novartis Biome is a network of 15 innovation hubs in targeted strategic locations, that helps teams successfully partner, develop and scale digital solutions to improve and extend patients' lives. With 65+ digital innovators, supported by a community of 125+ leaders from our enabling functions, the Novartis Biome unites the best of science and technology to create better healthcare solutions and patient experiences, at scale. Examples include a clinically tested mobile application designed to help monitor vision remotely, and a point-of-care diagnostic solution for sickle cell disease. Find out more at www.biome.novartis.com .

About Novartis sub-Saharan Africa

Novartis sub-Saharan-Africa (SSA) provides healthcare solutions that improve and extend people's lives. We use science-based innovation to address some of society's most challenging healthcare issues. We discover and develop breakthrough treatments and find new ways to deliver them to as many patients as possible. Novartis SSA comprises 46 countries and is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. SSA is grouped into East Africa Cluster, English West Africa, Francophone West & Central Africa, and the Southern Africa Cluster. Find out more at: Sub-Saharan Africa | Novartis

Novartis Data & Digital

Novartis is focusing itself as a leading medicines company powered by advanced therapies and data science. Going big on data and digital is a key strategic pillar that helps Novartis realize that ambition. Data science and digital technologies allow the company to reimagine how to innovate in R&D, engage with patients and customers, and increase operational efficiencies. Find out more at novartis.com .

SOURCE Novartis
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Matt Maglodi, founder of the full service internet marketing company Online Advantages, is pleased to announce that search engine optimization (SEO) will be his company's main focus for 2022.

To read more about Online Advantages and the highly effective and innovative SEO services that they offer, please check out https://onlineadvantages.net/services-search-engine-optimization/ .

As Maglodi noted, he knows first hand that when it comes to modern life, everything begins and ends with the Internet. He also understands that the top businesses in the world are those who have harnessed the amazing power of the Internetspecifically by effectively handling and employing SEO techniques.

When done correctly, SEO will help businesses to expand their visibility, brand awareness and client base, and to be found when potential customers conduct a search on a major search engine.

To help his clients to be as successful as possible, Maglodi was inspired to re-focus his company's efforts on providing effective SEO services in 2022 and beyond. The SEO services that Online Advantages offeres include organic search, on-page SEO, local search optimization and keyword research/strategy and activity reports.

"Our seasoned staff of experienced marketing strategists, content creators, writers, and web designers has the skill, knowledge, experience, and passion to help you effectively advertise and grow your company's online footprint without forcing you to learn the basics of an entire brand-new skill set, elements of which may be obsolete before you're even finished with the course," Maglodi said, adding that this is especially true of the category of broad whitepapers, seminars, and webinars selling SEO training, which claim to transform rank amateurs and beginners into brand new search engine optimization "experts."

"SEO is the lifeline of online marketing. We offer our valued clients a high quality and affordable package. Leave the rest up to us as our experts are trained on the latest guidelines from all major search engines."

About Online Advantages:

Online Advantages is a unique full service internet marketing company. Founder Matt Maglodi specializes in all aspects of online marketing from video marketing, to pay per click advertising, organic search and social media. For more information, please visit https://onlineadvantages.net/ .

SOURCE Online Advantages
SODERTALJE, Sweden, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Stefano Fedel, currently Scania's Regional Executive Director for Eurasia, Middle East and Africa, has been appointed Executive Vice President and Head of Sales and Marketing. He takes up the position effective immediately and will report to Christian Levin, Scania's President and CEO.

Stefano Fedel, born in 1970, joined Scania in 1996, and has a Degree in Engineering of Materials, with mechanical specialisation from Trento University.

Since he started at Scania, he has held several managerial positions in services and the position as Managing Director, first for Scania Milano and later the East Adriatic Region. He took up his current position as Regional Executive Director for Eurasia, Middle East and Africa in 2016.

"Stefano Fedel is a strong addition to the management team and I look forward to his contribution to the development of Scania as a leader in sustainable transport. His background in services will strengthen our focus on solutions sales even more and his experience in the digitalisation of our customer interaction will add great value to the continued transformation of Scania," says Christian Levin, President and CEO.

Stefano Fedel succeeds Alexander Vlaskamp, who has been appointed President and CEO at MAN Truck & Bus SE and member of the TRATON Executive Board*.

*subject to approval by MAN Truck & Bus SE's Supervisory Board.

For further information, please contact:

Karin Hallstan, Head of Corporate Communication, Scania

Phone: +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/stefano-fedel-appointed-head-of-sales-and-marketing-and-member-of-scania-executive-board,c3460928

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/209/3460928/1501779.pdf Stefano Fedel appointed Head of Sales and Marketing and member of Scania Executive Board https://news.cision.com/scania/i/19140-005-16-7-ta,c2984965 19140-005 16-7 ta

SOURCE Scania
SINGAPORE, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Thunes, a global cross-border payments company, today announced that it has appointed four new senior executives to lead its business in strategic regions: Asia Pacific, the Americas, Middle East and North Africa, and Greater China. These key hires come as part of Thunes' global strategy to further expand its global presence, deepen relations with local markets and localise its sales, product, and network capabilities.

"We have been ramping up our efforts to piece together a best-in-class team and solidify our leadership globally. The company is now in a position to take on new challenges with an expanded leadership team. We have added four highly talented regional Senior Vice Presidents (SVPs) to complement the strong leadership we already have in Africa and Europe, who together will accelerate our growth of Thunes across the different regions where we operate. And I'm glad to highlight that half of our global SVPs now are women, as diversity in the workplace can only strengthen us as a company," said Aik Boon Tan, Chief Commercial Officer of Thunes.

Jenna Wyer, SVP for the Americas

Based in the US, Jenna has over a decade of experience as an executive leader and consultant in the mobile payments and e-commerce space. Her past roles include leading Business Development, Partnerships & Payments at Recurly, and being the founding Vice President of Sales at Braintree, where she secured deals with their largest merchants, including Uber, Airbnb, and HotelTonight.

Simon Nelson, SVP for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Simon has over 20 years of leadership experience in the payments industry and is based in Dubai. Before joining Thunes, Simon was most recently the CEO of Mercury, the domestic scheme in the UAE. Previously he was SVP for the Payment Processing arm of Network International and led the growth of that organization. Prior to that he built out his career in a variety of leadership positions in American Express and GE Money.

Biren Zandani, SVP for Asia Pacific (APAC)

Biren, based in Singapore, is a recognised payments expert with over 20 years of experience in financial services, particularly B2B, B2P, and P2P payments. Before joining Thunes, Biren was the Head of APAC at Transfast, a Mastercard company, where he was in charge of generating revenue and establishing robust network partnerships. He was also the Head of Business Development & Network Management for SEA & ANZ at Earthport (now Visa Direct). Prior to that he held several leadership roles in Banking, he was the SVP for APAC at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and the Executive Director for Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia at J.P. Morgan.

Daphne Huang, SVP for Greater China

Daphne, based in Beijing, brings in over two decades of sales, business development, banking, and fintech experience. Before joining Thunes, she was the Head of China for SWIFT, where she spearheaded its strategic and business development initiatives. She was also the CEO and General Manager of Cross-Border Financial Information Services, a joint venture limited company owned by SWIFT, the China National Clearing Centre, Cross-border Interbank Payment System Co Ltd, the Payment & Clearing Association of China, and the PBOC Digital Currency Institute.

Media contact:

Irina Chuchkina

[email protected]

SOURCE Thunes
DUBLIN, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "U.S. Packaged Food Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report by Product (Beverages, Ready-to-Eat Meals), by Distribution Channel (Supermarkets & Hypermarkets, Online), and Segment Forecasts, 2021-2028" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The U.S. packaged food market size is expected to reach USD 1,376.00 billion by 2028 and is expected to expand at a CAGR of 4.1% from 2021 to 2028

The increasing product innovation, innovative packaging, changing lifestyle, rising number of dual-income families, and hectic schedules of consumers have boosted the demand for packaged foods in the U.S.

Moreover, the growing trend of plant-based and organic foods is driving the market. With the rising health consciousness, consumers are gradually shifting toward healthy food and drink alternatives. As a result, food products with low-calorie, low-fat, gluten-free, sugar-free, and organic claims gain traction among consumers.



The beverages product segment accounted for the largest share of over 20.0% in 2020, followed by the dairy products segment. Healthy drinks made with natural ingredients and less sugar are gaining traction among consumers.

Furthermore, increasing demand for functional beverages is fueling the growth of this product segment. Milk, butter, and cheese have wide application in the daily lives of consumers in the U.S. In addition, lately, yogurt and yogurt drinks are gaining significant popularity across the nation.



The market is highly competitive with a large number of well-established companies across the country. Consumers have been preferring companies that are known for prioritizing sustainable production and environment-friendly packaging. As a result, several companies are focusing on sustainable packaging and a transparent supply chain.

For instance, in January 2020, Nestle announced to invest up to USD 2.12 billion in advanced sustainable packaging solutions to shift to food-grade recycled plastics from virgin plastics. The company has committed to making 100% of its packaging reusable or recyclable by 2025.



U.S. Packaged Food Market Report Highlights

By product, the beverages segment held the largest share of more than 20.0% in 2020. The strong popularity of such products among consumers as healthy drinks is expected to remain a favorable factor for the segment growth over the next few years

The ready-to-eat meals product segment is expected to register the fastest CAGR of 5.7% from 2021 to 2028 owing to the busy lifestyle and hectic work schedule of the consumers

In terms of distribution channel, the supermarkets and hypermarkets segment dominated the market by accounting for over 65.0% share in 2020. Over the past few years, consumers are preferring these distribution channels owing to the availability of a wide range of products and significant price discounts offered in these stores

Key Topics Covered:



Chapter 1. Methodology and Scope

1.1. Market Segmentation & Scope

1.2. Market Definition

1.3. Information Procurement

1.4. Information Analysis

1.5. Market Formulation & Data Visualization

1.6. Data Validation & Publishing



Chapter 2. Executive Summary

2.1. Market Outlook

2.2. Product Outlook

2.3. Application Outlook

2.4. Country Outlook



Chapter 3. U.S. Packaged Food Market Variables, Trends & Scope

3.1. Market Introduction

3.2. Penetration & Growth Prospect Mapping

3.3. Industry Value Chain Analysis

3.3.1. Sales/Retail Channel Analysis

3.3.2. Profit Margin Analysis

3.4. Market Dynamics

3.4.1. Market Driver Analysis

3.4.2. Market Restraint Analysis

3.4.3. Industry Challenges

3.4.4. Industry Opportunities

3.5. Business Environment Analysis

3.5.1. Industry Analysis - Porter's

3.6. Roadmap of U.S. Packaged Food Market

3.7. Market Entry Strategies

3.8. Impact of COVID-19



Chapter 4. Consumer Behavior Analysis

4.1. Consumer Trends and Preferences

4.2. Factors Affecting Buying Decision

4.3. Consumer Product Adoption

4.4. Observations & Recommendations



Chapter 5. U.S. Packaged Food Market: Product Estimates & Trend Analysis

5.1. Product Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2020 & 2028

5.2. Bakery & Confectionery Products

5.2.1. Market estimates and forecast, 2016 - 2028 (USD Billion)

5.3. Dairy Products

5.4. Snacks & Nutritional Bars

5.5. Beverages

5.6. Sauces, Dressings, & Condiments

5.7. Ready-to-Eat Meals

5.8. Breakfast Cereals

5.9. Processed Meats

5.10. Rice, Pasta, & Noodles

5.11. Ice Creams & Frozen Novelties



Chapter 6. U.S. Packaged Food Market: Distribution Channel Estimates & Trend Analysis

6.1. Distribution Channel Movement Analysis & Market Share, 2020 & 2028

6.2. Supermarkets & Hypermarkets

6.2.1. Market estimates and forecast, 2016 - 2028 (USD Billion)

6.3. Convenience Store

6.4. Online



Chapter 7. Competitive Analysis

7.1. Key players, recent developments & their impact on the industry

7.2. Key Company/Competition Categorization (Key innovators, Market leaders, Emerging players)

7.3. Vendor Landscape

7.3.1. Key company market share analysis, 2020



Chapter 8. Company Profiles

8.1. Company Overview

8.2. Financial Performance

8.3. Product Benchmarking

8.4. Strategic Initiatives

Nestle S.A.

The Coca-Cola Company

PepsiCo.

Tyson Foods, Inc.

Mars, Incorporated

Cargill, Incorporated

The Kraft Heinz Company

General Mills Inc .

. Conagra Brands, Inc.

Kellogg Co.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/i40wxq

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


BALTIMORE, Nov. 24, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This week, America discovered that GERD or Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease is the cause for President Biden's throat clearing. Usually, symptoms of GERD don't gain much notice.

And that can be dangerous.

When Heartburn can Save Your Life. A new test allows for early detection of deadly cancer caused by GERD/Reflux Disease. Tweet this How Heartburn can Save Your Life. A new test can quickly and affordably detect your risk for the deadly cancer caused by reflux disease/GERD - if you don't ignore the symptoms.

Heartburn can cause Cancer

Reflux disease can lead to Esophageal Cancer. Throat clearing, sore throat, hoarse voice, persistent cough, choking when you lie down, even tooth erosion are among the lesser-known symptoms of GERD. Heartburn is the one symptom everybody knows.

For many Americans, these symptoms are their only warning that they are at risk for cancer.

This is GERD Awareness Week  designated to coincide with the gluttony of Thanksgiving. But you don't have to overeat to experience GERD and the risk it can pose to your health.

Pills May Not Be the Answer

Too many see heartburn as a fact of life and use over-the-counter medications to ease their symptoms. Unfortunately, symptom relief doesn't eliminate damage the backflow of stomach acid and bile can cause.

Medicine doesn't stop the spray of caustic stomach contents that can cause a pre-cancerous condition known as Barrett's Esophagus. That happens when the lining of your esophagus changes to resemble your stomach. For some, it results in a deadly progression to Esophageal Cancer.

Don't Ignore the Alarm

Barrett's Esophagus causes no symptoms. That means GERD symptoms may be your only warning  and could be key to saving your life!

When caught early, Esophageal Cancer can be prevented. Outpatient procedures can eliminate the Barrett's tissue and stop the cancer before it starts.

Are You At Risk?

Millions of Americans have Barrett's Esophagus right now  and don't know it.

Too often, as was the case for my husband, patients with Esophageal Cancer don't discover they have a problem until they suddenly can't swallow. Once they reach that point, survival becomes elusive. Only one in five people diagnosed with Esophageal Cancer will survive five years.

That's because this disease is usually caught so late that treatment is rarely effective.

But it can be caught early  and prevented.

Easy to Get Checked

For the first time, American patients can now easily discover their risk. A quick swallow of the pill-sized EsoCheck device gives an easy and affordable check of their esophagus. The EsoGuard test uses DNA to assess the presence of Barrett's Esophagus.

The tests are available in doctors' offices and at screening centers in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Denver, and Salt Lake City - with more locations planned in months to come. Learn more at EsoGuard.com.

Thankfully, most people with GERD won't develop cancer.

But this is not a disease you dare to leave to chance.

Getting checked is the greatest gift you can give those you love.

Just ask the thousands of families like mine that Esophageal Cancer has left with an empty seat during the holidays.

Mindy Mintz Mordecai is the founder of the Esophageal Cancer Action Network, Inc. (ECAN). She lost her husband to Esophageal Cancer when their children were just nine and twelve. Learn more at Get-Checked.org.

SOURCE Esophageal Cancer Action Network
Q3-2021 revenue growth driven by Wishpond's expanded sales team, new product introductions and the Company's acquisitions.

Wishpond returned to Adjusted EBITDA positive in Q3-2021.

The Company now exceeds $16M in annualized revenue run-rate

VANCOUVER, BC, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Wishpond Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: WISH) (OTCQX: WPNDF) (the "Company" or "Wishpond"), a provider of marketing-focused online business solutions, announces it has filed its interim consolidated financial statements (the "Interim Financial Statements") and management's discussion and analysis ("MD&A") for Q3-2021, representing the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021. Copies of the Interim Financial Statements and MD&A are available on the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

"Third quarter 2021 was an outstanding quarter for Wishpond which demonstrated that our organic and inorganic growth strategy is working," commented Ali Tajskandar, Wishpond's Chairman and CEO. "Wishpond's revenue in Q3 increased by 90% YoY driven by the success of our expanded sales team, new product introductions and the acquisitions of Invigo, PersistIQ and Brax. We are also very pleased to return to positive Adjusted EBITDA in the third quarter of 2021. In the first half of the year, we made investments in our product development and sales teams, which are now paying off for the Company, as we are now exceeding $16M in annualized revenue run-rate."

Ali Tajskandar adds, "The Invigo, PersistIQ and Brax acquisitions have broadened our product portfolio and proven to be accretive to Wishpond's financial profile. We are beginning to witness the synergistic benefits of our acquisitions through cross selling the Company's products and services across the different parts of the growing organization. We continue to have a robust pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities and a strong balance sheet with an undrawn credit facility providing the Company with ample cash to continue to execute on our inorganic growth strategy."

Third Quarter 2021 Financial Highlights:

Wishpond achieved record quarterly revenue of $3,976,965 during Q3-2021, an increase of 90% compared to revenue of $2,095,933 generated in Q3-2020. The increase in revenue was primarily driven by higher organic growth from the Company's incremental investment in its sales team and inorganic growth from the positive contribution of its acquisitions. Wishpond generated 73% of its revenue in the United States , where the Company's growth remained remarkably strong with 104% year-over-year revenue growth in the US market.

during Q3-2021, an increase of 90% compared to revenue of generated in Q3-2020. The increase in revenue was primarily driven by higher organic growth from the Company's incremental investment in its sales team and inorganic growth from the positive contribution of its acquisitions. Wishpond generated 73% of its revenue in , where the Company's growth remained remarkably strong with 104% year-over-year revenue growth in the US market. Wishpond achieved Gross profit (1) of $2,760,709 , representing an 82% increase from Q3-2020, driven by an increase in overall revenue. Wishpond achieved a Gross margin (1) percentage of 69% during Q3-2021, compared to 72% during Q3-2020. The Gross margin (1) achieved for Q3-2021 was within the historical range of 65% to 70%.

of , representing an 82% increase from Q3-2020, driven by an increase in overall revenue. Wishpond achieved a Gross margin percentage of 69% during Q3-2021, compared to 72% during Q3-2020. The Gross margin achieved for Q3-2021 was within the historical range of 65% to 70%. During Q3-2021, Wishpond had Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $204,322 compared to Adjusted EBITDA (1) of $175,653 in Q3-2020. The increase in Adjusted EBITDA is attributable to an increase in revenue from Wishpond and it's newly acquired subsidiaries, Invigo, PersistIQ, and Brax.

of compared to Adjusted EBITDA of in Q3-2020. The increase in Adjusted EBITDA is attributable to an increase in revenue from Wishpond and it's newly acquired subsidiaries, Invigo, PersistIQ, and Brax. As at September 30, 2021 , Wishpond had $7,758,720 in cash and no long-term debt.

, Wishpond had in cash and no long-term debt. As of September 30, 2021 , the Company had 51,835,687 common shares issued and outstanding.

Third Quarter 2021 Business Highlights:

On September 29, 2021 , the Company entered into a new credit facility agreement with National Bank of Canada's Technology and Innovation Banking Group for a $6 million dollar secured revolving operating line. The credit facility remains undrawn as of today's date.

, the Company entered into a new credit facility agreement with National Bank of Technology and Innovation Banking Group for a secured revolving operating line. The credit facility remains undrawn as of today's date. On August 31, 2021 , the Company completed the acquisition of certain assets and specific liabilities of AtlasMind Inc., doing business as Brax.io (" Brax "). Brax is a rapidly growing and profitable Software-as-a-Service business that offers a robust advertising platform for the management of a company's digital ads across multiple sources and is expected to be immediately accretive to Wishpond.

, the Company completed the acquisition of certain assets and specific liabilities of AtlasMind Inc., doing business as Brax.io (" "). Brax is a rapidly growing and profitable Software-as-a-Service business that offers a robust advertising platform for the management of a company's digital ads across multiple sources and is expected to be immediately accretive to Wishpond. On July 14, 2021 , the Company announced that the Depository Trust Company ("DTC") has made Wishpond common shares eligible for electronic deposit at DTC. The Company believes that the opportunity to clear and settle trades in its common shares on the OTCQX should provide a more seamless experience for its U.S. shareholders.

Events Subsequent to September 30, 2021:

On October 21, 2021 , Wishpond launched its new integration of Zoom with Wishpond Appointments, and the availability of the Wishpond Zoom App in the Zoom App Marketplace. Wishpond Appointments now connects seamlessly with Zoom allowing Wishpond's customers to easily create virtual meetings for their next business call, customer meeting, or consultation.

Normal Course Issuer Bid:

On June 7, 2021 , the TSX Venture Exchange accepted a notice of the Company's intention to commence a normal course issuer bid ("NCIB") for its common shares. The board of directors of the Company believes that the recent market prices of the Company's common shares (the "Shares") do not properly reflect the underlying value of such Shares, and that the purchase of the Shares would be a desirable use of corporate funds in the best interests of the Company and its shareholders. During the three months ended September 30, 2021 , the Company purchased 63,500 common shares under the NCIB for cancellation, for aggregate consideration of $81,282 . Since approval of the NCIB on June 7, 2021 , to November 16, 2021 , the Company has purchased a total of 126,400 common shares for cancellation at an average trade price of $1.24 per share.

Outlook:

Wishpond is on track to achieve strong revenue growth in Q4-2021 driven by increased capacity in the Company's sales team, positive contribution from its acquisitions and new product related revenues. The investments made in the first half of the year in expanding Wishpond's sales and product development teams are already beginning to have a beneficial effect on the Company's financial performance. As such the Company expects to achieve positive Adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the year. In addition, Wishpond has developed a robust pipeline of potential acquisition opportunities that are expected to add revenue and EBITDA growth as well as expand the Company's product and market capabilities.

Selected Financial Highlights:

The tables below set out selected financial information relating to Wishpond and should be read in conjunction with Wishpond's annual consolidated financial statements, including the notes thereto, and MD&A for the three and nine months ended September 30, 2021 and September 30, 2020, copies of which can be found under Wishpond's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Three-

months

ended

September

30, 2021

$ Three-

months

ended

June 30,

2021

$ Three-

months

ended

September

30, 2020

$ Nine-

months

ended

September

30, 2021

$ Nine-

months

ended

September

30, 2020

$ Revenue 3,976,965 3,226,877 2,095,933 10,094,422 5,627,247 Gross profit 2,760,709 2,238,143 1,519,047 6,795,788 3,773,624 Gross margin 69% 69% 72% 67% 67% Adjusted EBITDA(1) 204,322 (320,027) 175,653 (434,484) 373,751 Net increase(decrease) in

cash during the period (2,306,673) (1,142,712) 416,212 453,174 994,820 Cash - end of the period 7,758,720 10,065,393 1,264,356 7,758,720 1,264,356

Reconciliation to Adjusted EBITDA

Three-

months

ended

September

30, 2021

$ Three-

months

ended

June 30,

2021

$ Three-

months

ended

September

30, 2020

$ Nine-

months

ended

September

30, 2021

$ Nine-

months

ended

September

30, 2020

$ Income (Loss) before

income taxes (1,281,849) (1,517,758) 88,081 (3,994,376) (55,298) Depreciation and

amortization 228,459 199,919 97,648 587,479 288,671 Interest expense 1,442 2,520 6,461 7,546 21,116 EBITDA (1,051,948) (1,315,319) 192,190 (3,399,351) 254,489 Stock based compensation

expense 589,266 573,610 23,220 1,724,819 82,703 Remeasurement of

contingent consideration

liability2 458,605 234,933 - 693,538 - Other expenses (income) 141,883 71,524 (5,912) 258,583 48,017 Acquisition related expenses - 53,953 - 160,203 - Earn-out remuneration3 43,528 52,266 - 95,794 - Foreign currency losses

(gains) 22,988 9,006 (33,845) 31,930 (11,458) Adjusted EBITDA 204,322 (320,027) 175,653 (434,484) 373,751

Footnotes:

1 EBITDA, EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITDA, monthly recurring revenue, annualized run rate, gross profit and gross margin are not financial measures recognized by generally accepted accounting principles ("GAAP"), do not have any standardized meaning prescribed by GAAP and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other entities. See "Cautionary Statements - Non-GAAP Financial Measures". 2 The PersistIQ Earn Out Payments constituted consideration for the business combination as defined by IFRS 3 Business Combinations and is to be recorded as a contingent consideration liability. The contingent consideration liability will be remeasured to fair value at each reporting date, until such time as the earn-out period is over, with changes to fair value included in the consolidated statements of loss and comprehensive loss. 3 The Invigo Earn Out Payments constituted remuneration as defined by IFRS 3 Business Combinations and will be recorded as non-operating expense on the consolidated statement of loss and comprehensive loss.

On Behalf of the Board of Wishpond

"Ali Tajskandar"

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

About Wishpond Technologies Ltd.

Based out of Vancouver, British Columbia, Wishpond is a provider of marketing-focused online business solutions. Wishpond's vision is to become the leading provider of digital marketing solutions that empower entrepreneurs to achieve success online. The Company offers an "all-in-one" marketing suite that provides companies with marketing, promotion, lead generation, and sales conversion capabilities from one integrated platform. Wishpond replaces entire marketing functions in an easy-to-use product, for a fraction of the cost. Wishpond serves over 3,000 customers who are primarily small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) in a wide variety of industries. The Company has developed cutting-edge marketing technology solutions and continues to add new features and applications with great velocity. The Company employs a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model where substantially all the Company's revenue is subscription-based recurring revenue which provides excellent revenue predictability and cash flow visibility. Wishpond is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the ticker "WISH". For further information, visit: www.wishpond.com.

Cautionary Statements - Non-GAAP Financial Measures

In this press release, Wishpond has used the following terms ("Non-GAAP Financial Measures") that are not defined by International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), but are used by management to evaluate the performance of Wishpond and its business: earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("EBITDA"), adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization ("Adjusted EBITDA"), gross profit and gross margin. These measures may also be used by investors, financial institutions and credit rating agencies to assess Wishpond's performance and ability to service debt. Non-GAAP Financial Measures do not have standardized meanings prescribed by GAAP and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Securities regulations require that Non-GAAP Financial Measures are clearly defined, qualified and reconciled to their most comparable GAAP financial measures. Except as otherwise indicated, these Non-GAAP Financial Measures are calculated and disclosed on a consistent basis from period to period. Specific items may only be relevant in certain periods. See the disclosure under the heading "Non-GAAP Financial Measures" in Wishpond's most recent Management's Discussion and Analysis ("MD&A") for a discussion of Non-GAAP Financial Measures and certain reconciliations to GAAP financial measures. The intent of Non-GAAP Financial Measures is to provide additional useful information to investors and analysts, and the measures do not have any standardized meaning under IFRS. The measures should not, therefore, be considered in isolation or used in substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS. Other issuers may calculate Non-GAAP Financial Measures differently. Non-GAAP Financial Measures are identified and defined as follows:

Gross profit and Gross margin: The Company defines " gross profit " as revenue less cost of sales and " gross margin " as gross profit as a percentage of revenue. Gross profit and gross margin should not be construed as an alternative for revenue or net loss determined in accordance with IFRS. The Company believes that gross profit and gross margin are meaningful metrics in assessing the Company's financial performance and operational efficiency.

and The Company defines " " as revenue less cost of sales and " " as gross profit as a percentage of revenue. Gross profit and gross margin should not be construed as an alternative for revenue or net loss determined in accordance with IFRS. The Company believes that gross profit and gross margin are meaningful metrics in assessing the Company's financial performance and operational efficiency. EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA: EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as alternatives to net earnings, cash flow from operating activities or other measures of financial results determined in accordance with GAAP as an indicator of Wishpond's performance. The Company defines " Adjusted EBITDA" as EBITDA less foreign currency losses (gains), net other expenditures (income), and stock-based compensation. The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations which the Company can use to fund working capital requirements, service future interest and principal debt repayments and fund future growth initiatives.

and EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA should not be construed as alternatives to net earnings, cash flow from operating activities or other measures of financial results determined in accordance with GAAP as an indicator of Wishpond's performance. The Company defines " as EBITDA less foreign currency losses (gains), net other expenditures (income), and stock-based compensation. The Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA is a meaningful financial metric as it measures cash generated from operations which the Company can use to fund working capital requirements, service future interest and principal debt repayments and fund future growth initiatives. EBITDA margins : EBITDA margin is a profitability ratio that measures earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, as a percentage of total revenue.

: EBITDA margin is a profitability ratio that measures earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, as a percentage of total revenue. Monthly recurring revenue: Normalized measure of predictable monthly revenue.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements that are not reported financial results or other historical information are forward-looking statements or forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"). This press release includes forward-looking statements regarding the Company, its subsidiaries and the industries in which they operate, including statements about, among other things, expectations, beliefs, plans, future operations, origination of additional targets in which the Company may hold an interest and acquisition opportunities for the Company, business and acquisition strategies, opportunities, objectives, prospects, assumptions, including those related to trends and prospects, and future events and performance. Sentences and phrases containing or modified by words such as "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "intend", "expect", "may", "will", "project", "predict", "potential", "targets", "projects", "is designed to", "strategy", "should", "believe", "contemplate" and similar expressions, and the negative of such expressions, are not historical facts and are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned to not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements in this press release are reasonable, such forward-looking statements have been based on expectations, factors and assumptions concerning future events which may prove to be inaccurate and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the Company's control, including, but not limited to, the risk factors discussed in the continuous disclosure materials of the Company which are available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement and are made as of the date hereof. The Company disclaims any intention and has no obligation or responsibility, except as required by law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Wishpond Technologies Ltd.
OSLO, Norway, Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Zwipe launches a range of enrolment solutions to complement their next-generation biometric payment card platform, Zwipe Pay ONE. Seamless customer onboarding remains one of the most important components in enabling the transition to the safer and more secure payment experience provided by biometric payment cards.

The Zwipe R&D team has created some exclusive inventions to overcome several challenges that many in the industry had considered insurmountable. For the first time, it is now a realistic proposition to have consumers enroll their card at home using just a mobile phone and a set of simple instructions.

Zwipe has created a range of innovative enrolment solutions that meet the evolving demands of the financial services industry and consumers. With a focus on providing simple to use, cost-effective and low environmental impact products, Zwipe will deliver multiple different types of solutions that include not only passive and customizable enrolment devices, such as sleeves, highly integrated card fulfilment packaging, and branch-based enrolment solutions, but also self-service mobile phone APIs that can easily be integrated into issuer apps. Issuers can choose the solutions that best suit their needs and use cases of their products and cardholder segments. For example, while mobile app-based enrolment would be attractive for the majority of consumers, in-branch supervised enrolment may better suit financial inclusion programs.

All these solutions will be made available to Zwipe Pay ONE customers in 2022.

"Zwipe has undertaken extensive research on enrolment, and after very clear customer feedback and interest, we decided to invest heavily in this area. Issuers repeatedly told us that enrolment is one of the most important parts of the user experience for biometric payment cards and we are delighted to have made several breakthroughs that we believe will transform the way in which consumers enrol their cards whilst even further strengthening the value proposition for issuers. These developments underscore Zwipe's ambition to be a leading innovator in the industry, putting user experience in front", commented Andre Lvestam, CEO of Zwipe.

The enrolment solutions will be demonstrated at TRUSTECH in Paris, on Zwipe's booth, from 30 November 2021.

For further information please contact:

Andre Lvestam

CEO

+47 991 66 135

[email protected]

About Zwipe

Zwipe believes the inherent uniqueness of every person is the key to a safer future. We work with great passion across networks of international organizations, industries & cultures to make convenience safe & secure. We are pioneering biometric payment card and wearables technology, and biometric technology for physical & logical access control and identification solutions. We promise our customers and partners deep insight and frictionless solutions, ensuring a seamless user experience with our innovative biometric products and services. Zwipe is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, with a global presence.

To learn more, visit zwipe.com

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/zwipe-as/r/zwipe-launches-innovative-enrolment-solutions-and-creates-breakthrough-for-issuers,c3460246

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/18194/3460246/1501378.pdf Enrolment PR https://news.cision.com/zwipe-as/i/enrolment-pr-image,c2984526 Enrolment PR Image

SOURCE Zwipe AS
Yaounde, Nov 25 : Unidentified gunmen killed three students and one teacher in an attack on a government school in Cameroon's war-torn Anglophone region of Southwest, according to local authorities.

The assailants stormed Government Bilingual High School in Ekondo Titi locality on Wednesday when students were studying, and detonated an improvised explosive device, Xinhua news quoted the Divisional Officer of Ekondo Titit, Timothe Aboloa as saying.

Three students, namely 12-year-old Emmanuel Orume, 16-year-old Joyceline Iken, 17-year-old Kum Emmanuel, and a French language teacher Celestina Fien were killed in the attack.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The attack came barely two weeks after an explosive device wounded at least 11 university students when it was thrown on to the roof of a lecture hall in the region.

Separatists have been clashing with government forces since 2017 in a bid to create an independent nation they called "Ambazonia" in Cameroon's two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The Centre has invited food ministers from across the country on Thursday to discuss the issue of community kitchen and other issues that will lead to the creation of a national food grid for those persons who are beyond the scope of the Public Distribution System to fight with hunger and malnutrition.

Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution Piyush Goyal will chair the meeting organised by the Department of Food and Public Distribution (DFPD) under his ministry.

The meeting is prompted due to a writ petition in the Supreme Court regarding establishing the concept of community kitchens across the country, formulation of requisite scheme to provide food to the needy persons and creating a national food grid for those persons who are beyond the scope of the Public Distribution System to fight with hunger and malnutrition.

Incidentally, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) data released on Wednesday has revealed falling nutritional indicators across several states.

The Supreme Court has directed the Union of India to come up with a 'Model Community Kitchens Scheme' agreeable to the states/union territories (UT) within three weeks' time.

The Court has also directed all the state governments/union territories to attend the meeting to be arranged/organised by the Union of India and cooperate with them in coming up with the said scheme, which can be made uniformly applicable to all the states/union territories.

Some of the likely key issues that will be discussed during the meeting are Model Community Kitchen Scheme, One Nation One Ration Card-status of implementation, Aadhaar seeding of Ration Cards, Biometrically authenticated FPS transactions and others.

Earlier, the Secretary, DFPD, held a meeting on November 21, 2021 with the Chief Secretaries and Food Secretaries of states and UTs to discuss the model Community Kitchen Scheme.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Lucknow, Nov 25 : In a shocking incident, a man stabbed his elder brother to death with a pair of scissors at their house in the Gomti Nagar police station area.

The two brothers were alone in their house on Wednesday evening while the other family members had gone shopping at a weekly market.

Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP), Gomti Nagar, Shweta Srivastava said, "The accused Bittu was in an inebriated condition and he picked up a verbal fight with his brother Golu over some issue. Some neighbours rushed in on hearing the commotion, pacified them and left.

"A little later, they again started fighting and this time, Bittu picked up a pair of scissors and stabbed Golu in his neck. Golu started bleeding heavily. The victim was rushed to the RML hospital where he was declared as brought dead. Doctors said the victim died of excessive blood loss." The ACP said the family has not yet given a formal complaint and Bittu is absconding.
Lucknow, Nov 25 : Over 340 persons have been booked through 108 FIRs lodged under the provisions of the anti-conversion law that came into existence last year.

According to the Uttar Pradesh Police data, 189 people were arrested and charge sheets were filed in 72 cases.

At least 77 victims have given statements before a magistrate that they were forced to convert.

According to the police spokesman, a final report was filed in 11 cases, which included six cases in Bareilly police zone.

In Shahjahanpur district, five persons were booked, including two Christians and two Dalits, under the anti-conversion law.

In one case registered in Moradabad, two men were booked but in the statement before the magistrate the woman had refuted the charges.

The maximum number of FIRs -- 28 -- were registered in the Bareilly police zone.

The maximum number of charge sheets in 18 cases were filed by the Meerut police zone.

Officials in the DGP headquarters said that all the district police chiefs and police commissioners have been instructed not to harass any individual accused in cases of anti-conversion law and act solely on evidence.

"We have also directed senior police officers to supervise probe in pending cases," said a senior police official.

Meanwhile, the police said that as many as 31 accused booked under the anti-conversion laws were minors.
Paris, Nov 25 : English champions Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain of France, Real Madrid of Spain, Inter Milan of Italy, and Sporting Lisbon of Portugal qualified for the last-16 stage of the UEFA Champions League with a round to spare.

Last season's finalists City came up with a dominant display to quell the attacking prowess of Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian MbappA to emerge 2-1 winners against Paris Saint-Germain in a Group A clash on Wednesday night as both teams advanced to the next stage -- City topping the group with PSG finishing runners-up.

Real Madrid thrashed Sheriff Tiraspol 3-0 in an away match to seal their place from Group D; Inter defeated Shakhtar Donetsk 2-0 at the San Siro in Milan in the same group while Sporting got the better of Germany's Borussia Dortmund 3-1 in Lisbon in a Group C encounter as all three joined City and PSG in the last-16 stage.

In other matches on Wednesday, Germany's Leipzig routed Club Brugge 5-0, Liverpool defeat3d Porto 2-0 in a clash of former champions, La Liga winners Atletico Madrid went down 1-0 to AC Milan while Dutch club Ajax Amsterdam overcame Besiktas 2-1 in Istanbul.

The clash of the night however was played in Manchester with City overcoming PSG in a star-studded encounter.

A cool 76th-minute finish from substitute Gabriel Jesus ensured Manchester City go through as Group A winners, with Paris qualifying as runners-up. After dominating the first half, City were caught out by a slick interchange involving the visitors' attacking trio of Lionel Messi, Neymar, and Kylian MbappA, culminating in the France striker firing his side ahead five minutes after the break on his 50th UEFA Champions League appearance.

Raheem Sterling prodded the hosts level, however, and Neymar missed a golden chance to restore Paris's lead wide two minutes before Jesus's eventual winner.

This was PSG's only loss in their last 22 Champions League group stage matches, of which they won 16.

In another match in Group A played in Burges, Belgium, Leipzig win despite the absence of several players. the visitors were nevertheless on top from the first whistle and had already gone close twice by the time Christopher Nkunku tapped in for his sixth goal of the group phase.

Emil Forsberg swiftly doubled the advantage from the penalty spot before AndrA Silva's towering header made it three and Forsberg scored from distance with the final kick of the first period. Leipzig crowned their biggest European win, and one that takes them third in Group A when Nkunku turned in in the final seconds.

In England, Two superb second-half goals helped Liverpool make it five victories out of five in Group B. Porto had the better of the first-half openings, not least when OtAvio sliced a gilt-edged opportunity wide.

Liverpool were sparked into life by a brilliant Thiago AlcAntara strike soon after the interval. Mohamed Salah then added a fine solo effort as the Reds coasted to another win, though Porto's fate is still in their own hands thanks to Milan's defeat of AtlAtico in Madrid.

In Group B, AC Milan remain in contention for a place in the last 16 after a goal three minutes from the end by Champions League debutant Messias Junior gave them their first win of this campaign.

The 30-year-old's header from a delightful Franck KessiA cross took the Rossoneri off the bottom of the group - with AtlAtico replacing them - and they are within a point of Porto with one game to go.

Key stat: This was Milan's first away victory in the competition for almost exactly eight years, since a 3-1 win at Celtic in November 2013.

In Group C, Sporting sealed their last-16 spot with a Pedro GonAalves-inspired 3-1 triumph over ten-man Dortmund in Lisbon. The visitors controlled possession but were made to pay for moments of lax defending, not least when Pedro GonAalves was allowed to nip in to poke home the opener. The 23-year-old made it back-to-back Champions League doubles with a brilliant curler before half-time.

Dortmund's own qualification hopes imploded with Emre Can's late red card, before Pedro Porro nodded in the rebound from GonAalves's missed penalty. Donyell Malen's added-time reply was only a consolation.

In Istanbul, substitute SAbastien Haller's brace ensured Ajax came from behind to clinch the top spot in Group C. The forward, introduced at half-time with the v'sitors trailing to Rachid Ghezzal's 22nd-minute spot-kick, took just nine minutes to pull his side le'el, converting NicolAs Tagliafico's unselfish pass from close range.

The competition's joint-leading scorer this season bagged a second with 21 minutes left to keep Ajax's perfect record intact.

In Group D, the Merengues weathered early pressure that must have raised fears of a repeat of September's shock home loss to the Moldovan champions, as they claimed their place in the last 16 with a game to spare.

David Alaba's deflected free-kick and a sweet strike from Toni Kroos opened up a 2-0 lead by the interval, and Karim Benzema added a third soon after the restart to cap an impressive performance by Carlo Ancelotti's men.

In another match in the group, Inter Milan advanced to the knockout stage for the first time in a decade thanks to two second-half goals from Edin DAeko.

The Nerazzurri were left frustrated after failing to reap the reward from a dominant first half, but the pressure valve was released when DAeko finished expertly from the edge of the penalty area just after the hour. He headed in a second six minutes later to rubber-stamp the win.
Panaji, Nov 25 : In the poll-bound Goa, notorious Colombian king of cocaine 'Pablo Escobar' has suddenly become a talking point in the coastal state's politics (and crime). In Goa's highly chirpy pre-election chatter, the most recent reference to Escobar.

Former Water Resources Minister and sitting opposition MLA Vinod Palienkar late on Wednesday claimed that one 'Pablo Escobar' was running an extensive drug network in Goa, especially his coastal constituency of Siolim, and added that if he named the brain behind the narcotic mafia, he would be killed the next day.

Palienkar wasn't of course speaking about the architect of the Medellin cartel, who was gunned down in 1993, but using the name that once inspired the fear of death in Columbia as a familiar alias for a powerful mastermind of drug trade in Goa, especially north Goa.

"Drug trade is flourishing. If I speak about the person who is openly handling this, I will be killed tomorrow. I am not scared of death. The man who is referred to as Pablo Escobar is running all this racket. I have informed the Chief Minister about the activities of this Pablo Escobar in detail in writing. The CM has to decide on this," Palienkar told reporters in his constituency of Siolim, which includes popular beach villages like Anjuna, Vagator and Chapora, which are also known as drug havens.

"There are many Pablo Escobars, you find them everywhere. But the time has come to crush the main Pablo Escobar and I hope the CM will act on this soon," Palienkar also said.

Palienkar's outburst against the mysterious and unnamed mastermind of Goa's drug mafia, is not the first reference to 'Pablo Escobar' made by Goa's politicians while referring to a narcotics mafia kingpin.

In August last year, the ruling BJP also alleged the presence of a 'Pablo Escobar' following the arrest of Bollywood actor Kapil Jhaveri, who was arrested after a rave party bust in Anjuna.

"Like the police established the phone trail while investigating the Sushant Singh Rajput case, by tracking Rhea Chakrabarthy's phone, police should also track down Kapil Jhaveri's call records and put the details in the public domain. People of Goa need to know which corrupt politicians Jhaveri was in touch with," BJP spokesperson Dattaprasad Naik told a press conference at the BJP's state headquarters on August 19.

On November 17 this year, Goa Congress spokesperson Agnelo Fernandes, during a press conference demanded a probe into drug trade in the state hinting that a government minister was actually fuelling drug trade in Goa, the 'Pablo Escobar'.

The 'Pablo Escobar' metaphor was also used by the Congress party in January this year, while the state government was toying with the idea of allowing legal cultivation of marijuana in the state.

"Goa's Ministers will turn into 'Pablo Escobars' if legal farming of marijuana is allowed in the state. Some ministers have a vested interest in this and they are running the state and taking these decisions on behalf of the drug lobby," state Youth Congress president Varad Mardolkar had said.

While Goa is considered as one of the top beach and nightlife destinations in the country, the coastal state is also notorious for being a drug haven, where narcotics are easily available.

According to official records, police teams conduct one narcotics seizure every alternate day.

From 2018-2020, 589 drug-related cases were filed in Goa spread over 1,095 days. Ganja or grass or marijuana, one of the cheapest banned drugs accounted for 71.30 per cent of the total drug busts.
Seoul, Nov 25 : South Korean tech giant Samsung has released a standalone "Expert RAW" app to enable Pro Mode support for the telephoto zoom lens on Galaxy S21 Ultra handsets.

This new app allows Galaxy S21 Ultra's primary, ultrawide, 3x telephoto, and 10x telephoto cameras to be used in Pro Mode.

Currently, the Expert RAW app is only available on the Galaxy Store in South Korea, reports 9to5Google.

One can adjust the exposure value (EV), focus, ISO, shutter speed, and white balance while shooting images and videos.

Images can also be saved in their lossless JPEG versions or 16-bit linear DND RAW formats. Expert RAW also supports HDR. One can even directly open DNG RAW files in Adobe Lightroom through a dedicated button on the image viewer screen.

The Expert RAW app is in beta and only currently compatible with Galaxy S21 Ultra devices running Android 12 with One UI 4.0.

Samsung recently announced the official launch of One UI 4 that will roll out first on the Galaxy S21 series, including Galaxy S21, Galaxy S21+ and Galaxy S21 Ultra.

The update is based on Android 12 and adds new theming options, keyboard tweaks and privacy settings.

One UI 4 is available on the Galaxy S21 series and will soon become available on previous Galaxy S and Note series as well as Galaxy Z series, A series and tablets.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Five people were hospitalised in the southwestern area of Delhi after they reported problem in breathing and burning eyes sensation, an official said here on Thursday.

There were unconfirmed reports that the incident occurred due to a toxic gas leak in the area which was denied by the police. "Investigation is going to find out the reason of the incident after which necessary action will be taken," the police official told IANS.

The incident was first reported to the Fire department which received a call about the fire in a cylinder around 9.20 p.m. on Wednesday in H. No. 45 R, Sonia Gandhi Camp, Sector-6, Ekta Vihar, RK Puram, after which two fire tenders were immediately pressed into service. As the fire engines reached the spot, they didn't find any blaze.

"It was reported that some unknown toxic gas has leaked in the area, however, the source of leakage could not be traced out and the charge was handed over to the local police," Delhi Fire Service chief Atul Garg told IANS, adding that all the fire tenders returned at 11.00 p.m. and there were no casualties.

The five people, who were having difficulty in breathing along with itchy eyes, were admitted to Safdarjung hospital in the city.

Police informed that they received the information about the incident at the same time around 9.15-9.20 p.m. after which SHO RK Puram along with other officials reached the spot.

The official confirmed to IANS that there was "no toxic gas leak" in the area.

"There was no fire in any gas cylinder and no fumes were found emanating from any place in the Ekta Vihar area," the official said, adding that the situation is now normal. A Delhi Disaster Management Team was called by the police to assess the situation.

Fear and panic also gripped the Ekta Vihar colony as rumours of the toxic gas spread like wildfire.

Notably, the national capital is reeling under soaring levels of pollution and itchy eyes is one of the reactions after being exposed to the polluted air for a long time. As of Wednesday, the air quality in Delhi remains in 'very poor' category.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 25 : Sohan Roy, a Forbes-listed entrepreneur from Kerala and who has a passion for getting noticed in the film industry through his unconventional contribution to humanity and the world cinema has now become the first Indian who has been awarded the honorary title of 'Knight of Parte Guelfa' in Italy.

The knighthood was conferred on Roy for his humanitarian and environmental protection efforts in business and movies.

The conferring ceremony took place early this week at the prestigious Basilica of Santa Croce and the Palagio di Parte Guelfa in Florence.

Some of the previous proud recipients are Pope Francis, Stefano Cordero di Montezemolo, Giannozzo Pucci di Barsento, Gualtiero Bassetti, Luciano Artusi, among others.

His notable works include the documentary "Black Sand" on ecological degradation and unscientific mining methods which got shortlisted in the Oscars.

The documentary is still going strong at various film festivals.

The movie "Mmmmm (Sound of Pain)", which he produced was indeed loud and clear about the message of environment protection. This movie brought to light many related issues like climate change in depth.

His debut documentary and film "Dams: The Lethal Water Bombs" and "Dam 999", respectively, focused on the negligence of environmental protection, the most destructive is the disasters caused by dams.

While the documentary received 23 international awards, the movie "Dam 999" was played in nearly 130 international film festivals and became the first Indian movie to get shortlisted in the Oscars.

A naval architect and marine engineer by profession, Roy and his team of designers and engineers have by now redesigned more than 1,500 ships with green technologies to reduce pollution.

Roy hails from Kerala and is settled in the UAE.
Patna, Nov 25 : Patna Police have seized 17 bottles of India made foreign liquor from the premises of a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader on Thursday morning.

BJP leader Nilesh Mukhiya is the owner of a soft drink agency in Digha locality. A joint team of Patna police and excise department raided the soft drink agency and arrested half a dozen employees. The police said Mukhiya managed to escape from the spot.

"We have conducted the raid after we received specific information. The liquor bottles were found from the office cabin of Nilesh Mukhiya, who was present at the time of the raid. When we started searching in the cabin, he managed to escape from the premises. We did the videography of the raid," said R.K. Verma, an investigating officer of this case.

"An FIR under Liquor Prohibition Act was registered in Digha police station. Raids are on to arrest the BJP leader," the police official added.

Nilesh Mukhiya is an influential person who has close links with a number of BJP Ministers.

He contested the election of Deputy Mayor in 2020 and his wife is a ward councillor of Digha area of Patna.
Dharamsala, Nov 25 : There is nothing 'fishy' going on in the sacred natural Dal Lake nestled amidst lush green deodar forests in the foothills of Dhauladhar range on the countryside of McLeodganj, the abode of Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, in Himachal Pradesh these days.

As old as the memory of the locals and their ancestors, the sacred lake with some 200-year-old Lord Shiva temple located on its banks is on the verge of renouncing the world, but that has not left the people high and dry.

They are religiously saving the fish by reintroducing it into nearby water bodies -- an arduous task but nevertheless fulfilling.

Like previous years, the Dal Lake located at an altitude of 1,775 metres above sea level at a distance of 11 km away from McLeodganj in Kangra district has shrunk to a small pit of slush.

Experts blame warming climates, scanty precipitation, and lack of mechanical management are draining crucial water sources, threatening habitats and cultures.

Locals, comprising a large number of exiled Tibetans from McLeodganj, are busy these days in rescuing the fish gasping for breath in the muddy waters.

"For the past one week we have been catching the fish from the lake by using nets and then immediately transporting them to nearby water bodies. Otherwise, they will die owing to asphyxiation," Ramesh Thakur, a resident of Tota Rani village located close to the lake, told IANS on Thursday.

He said every winter the lake dries up and the locals come to the rescue of the fish.

"During monsoon the lake is brimming with water. But in winter it dries up fast. The reason is that the water seepage is at an alarming rate owing to lack of the lake restoration by the local authorities," he said, adding "the phenomenon of lake drying has been occurring for the past eight-10 years".

Another resident Deepak Verma said every winter they catch the fish from Dal Lake and release them to nearby water bodies and private fish farms. "This helps give them a new life." Nearly 300 people, largely locals and volunteers from Tibetan organisations, have been involved in the dawn-to-dusk exercise largely at their own resources.

Government official Shilpi Beakta, a Subdivisional Magistrate in Kangra district, told IANS a majority of the stock of fish has been rescued from the lake.

"Our teams were there to assist the local volunteers (in the fish rescue operation)," she said.

Admitting that for the past many years the natural water system of the lake has been drying up, she said the Deputy Commissioner has called a meeting in Dharamsala on Friday to look into the reasons for its shrinking and to adopt mechanical steps to save and restore its glory.

Even the Jal Shakti Department has been recharging the lake by pumping water into it to enable the fish to survive.

The area of the Dal Lake is around one hectare (i.e. 10,000 sq mt). On the bank of the lake the famous Lord Shiva temple is located. According to one legend, a sage named Durvasa prayed to Lord Shiva there.

The experts attribute the lake's decline to man-made problems like pollution, siltation, construction activities and overgrowth of weeds.

They recommend treatment of catchment area by taking vegetative and mechanical measures, clearing of streams, management of excreta of the livestock near the water body and awareness about the lake's multifunctional role.

Similarly, rapid development activities in the area have also put tremendous pressure on the water body.

They recommend studies to document hydrological status, rate of sedimentation and biodiversity of the lake.

(Vishal Gulati can be reached at vishal.g@ians.in)
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The Hyderabad-based vaccine manufacturer Bharat Biotech on Thursday said that the recent study on Covaxin provides 'evidence for effectiveness' of India's first indigenous vaccine against Covid-19.

Reacting to a real-world assessment, which said that Covaxin is 50 per cent effective against symptomatic Covid-19, Bharat Biotech said, "These results provide evidence for effectiveness for Covaxin in real life settings." The vaccine manufacturer said, "Bharat Biotech commends the investigators from AIIMS on the BBV152 study published in Lancet Infectious Diseases." The firm further said, "An effectiveness result of 50 per cent achieved during the peak Covid-19 Delta variant wave in India, in a high-risk study population of physicians and healthcare workers, in a health-related environment, and who are challenged repeatedly with high viral loads, provides insights into the efficacy and effectiveness of Covaxin." In a study published in the journal The Lancet, earlier this month, Bharat Biotech demonstrated Covaxin to be 77.8 per cent effective against Covid-19, and 65.2 per cent against Delta variant.

However, in the latest study researchers at AIIMS acknowledged that the vaccine effectiveness is lower than the efficacy reported by a recently published phase-III randomised control study of BBV152.

Of the 2,714 employees in the study population, 1,617 people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection, and 1,097 tested negative. The adjusted vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19 after two doses of BBV152 with the second dose administered 14 or more days before undergoing RT-PCR testing was 50 per cent.

On the Delta variant, Bharat Biotech noted, "These results compare well with the 65.2 per cent efficacy obtained during the controlled Phase 3 clinical trials of Covaxin conducted among the general population." Covaxin shot developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Virology (NIV), in July announced the final results of its Phase-III clinical trials.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Bhopal, Nov 25 : After the Madhya Pradesh government lifted all Covid-related restrictions last week, number of cases in the state witnessed an upward trend.

A total of 22 new Covid cases were registered on Wednesday, first time in a month after witnessing 10 odd cases for weeks.

According to state government's data, in the last five days, as many as 75 cases were registered in the state which is nearly 150 per cent higher than the tally of the previous five days.

The active cases' tally has again crossed 100 and now stands at 104, according to state health bulletin.

The cumulative Covid positive tally in the state has risen to 7,93,073 since pandemic began in early 2020.

Indore with 13 new Covid-19 cases was the only district to report daily count in double digit while Bhopal was at second place with five daily cases. More than 20 cases were reported in the state last time on October 20.

According to state health bulletin, there were eight recoveries on Wednesday, taking the total recovery count to 7,82,443.

Covid prevention protocols seem negligible in almost all districts. Even before Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced lifting all restrictions, private and public transport buses were carrying passengers at full capacity. Local trains are ferrying passengers from one to another district without observing Covid restrictions.

Even in state capital Bhopal, most people can be seen without wearing masks.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : The team of recently released Kannada movie 'Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana' is on cloud nine after the movie's director and actor Raj Shetty got a call from leading Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap lauding the film.

Shetty explained that Kashyap called him up and showered praises on the movie after watching it. He said the movie is brilliantly made and amazing and Kashyap was surprised to know that the film was shot in just 32 days.

"Anurag was surprised to know that I have written, directed and acted in the lead role. He has invited me to Mumbai to talk about my movie making process," Shetty said. Meanwhile, the film has become a huge hit among audiences and created a lot of buzz in the industry for its making.

The movie is based on a Yakshagana (traditional art form of coastal Karnataka) play depicting an ego clash between the gods Shiva and Hari.

The trailer had garnered 2.5 million views in just four days and created a buzz before the release. Actor Rishab Shetty is also seen in a parallel lead role. The movie is presented by Paramvah Studios.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women (EVAW), the United Nations in Afghanistan has called for concrete actions to end violence against women.

Gender-based violence continues to be a serious threat to women and girls and a major obstacle to achieving lasting sustainable development and peace. Referred to as a 'shadow pandemic', violence against women has been worsened by the Covid-19 pandemic and the humanitarian crisis.

Globally, one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence, mostly by an intimate partner. Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of violence against women globally, with nine out of 10 women experiencing at least one form of intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

"We must act together to tackle this shadow pandemic. The violence should be prevented, we must change attitudes that shame survivors and support violence, we must support services for survivors," said Deborah Lyons, Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Afghanistan.

The global community needs to listen to the voices and experiences of Afghan women and girls and urgently respond to their needs, especially survivors of violence and those who face multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination.

Violence against women and girls in Afghanistan has further increased due to restrictions in women and girls' enjoyment of their rights and freedoms, particularly women's right to work and their freedom of movement. While the need for services have increased, access to essential services for survivors of violence has been greatly impacted.

"The message we receive from our partners and women across the country is clear -- violence against women that was already at alarming levels, has been exacerbated by both crisis and Covid-19. And yet, lifesaving services for women survivors of violence have closed on account of fear of being targeted," said Alison Davidian, UN Women Country Representative in Afghanistan.

Women and girls living in fear holds back all past and current efforts for peace and sustainable development that is necessary for Afghanistan. "Violence at home affects everyone -- women and girls, men and boys, families and communities, societies and economies, in Afghanistan and around the world. Gender-based violence has devastating impacts on women's physical and mental health. It limits their potential to prosper and to lead free and equal lives. Now more than ever we need to respond to the needs of women and girls' survivors of violence and ensure their unimpeded access to life saving services including shelter, health care and counselling. These services are life-saving," added Alison Davidian.

The UN in Afghanistan continues to respond to the needs of women and girl survivors of violence, to advocate for their rights and eliminate all forms of violence through direct support to service providers and women's rights organisations, prevention and response programmes, and advocacy campaigns.

Powered by women's rights grassroots organisations globally, the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an international campaign that takes place each year. It commences on November 25, the International Day for the EVAW, and ends on December 10, Human Rights Day.
Puducherry, Nov 25 : The confrontation between the Chief Secretary of Puducherry and the government reached a boiling point with the recent visit of a central team for damage assessment in rain affected areas.

While the Chief Minister had requested the Union Home minister for a Rs 300 crore relief, the administration projected the losses between Rs 15 to Rs 20 crore to the central team which visited Puducherry and Karaikkal along the rain-affected areas of Tamil Nadu.

The legislators of the ruling AINRC, BJP combine and some independent MLAs and the lone Congress MLA have protested against the Chief Secretary not acting in the best interests of the state. The legislators have threatened to stage a 'dharna' in the secretariat if the officials do not heed to the request of the people's representatives.

BJP legislator Kalaynasundaram said that there are 20 IAS and 20 IPS officers in the Union Territory but they are reluctant to conduct field visits. This was the reason for the administration's failure to assess the damage incurred properly.

Legislators of AINRC and the BJP complained that the officials were lethargic to conduct field visits and that the people's representatives would conduct protests across the state against the attitude of the officials which, according to the legislators, are not in the good interests of the people of the territory.

The legislators also complained that the administration is unable to perform during natural disasters, including rains, due to the acute shortage of staff. There are around 10,000 vacancies of government staff including that of Deputy Thahsildhars, Junior Engineers, Teachers, Village administrative officers, Electricity linemen, and police constables. The legislators said that several other posts are also lying vacant leading to the failure of field visits and proper reporting.

MLAs said that the elected government had given proposals to fill up these vacancies but the Chief Secretary was not sanctioning.

The confrontation between the elected government and the Chief Secretary would lead to a situation wherein the administration will not be able to manage heavy rains and rain-related miseries.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Delhi Assembly's Committee on Peace and Harmony on Thursday summoned Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut to depose before it on December 6 (at 12 noon) over her recent social media post in which she had labelled farmers protesting against Centre's three farm laws as "Khalistani terrorists".

"Pertinently, the committee has received numerous complaints eliciting inter alia, outrageously offensive and derogatory Instagram stories/posts allegedly published by yourself (Kangana Ranaut) over your official Instagarm Account against the 'Sikh Community' by blanketly labelling them as 'Khalistani Terrorists' through the purportedly deliberate references and imputations made in the said stories/posts, thus depicting the entire Sikh community in a very bad light, which as per the complaints, has the potential to endanger harmony as well as cause wounding humiliation to the entire Sikh community," the summon read.

It has further cited one of Ranaut's post in which she has, without taking any names, mentioned India's first lady prime minister Indira Gandhi and Operation Bluestar carried out in 1984. "Khalistani terrorists may be arm twisting the government today... But let's not forget one woman...the only woman prime minister ne inn ko apni jooti ke neeche crush kiya tha (she had crushed them under her feet)..." "The aforementioned post have purportedly caused immense agony, distress and gravely hurt the religious sentiments of the people from Sikh community, thus potentially leading to a situation of disruption of peace and harmony in the NCT of Delhi by allegedly disrespecting the entire community and purportedly instigating threats to the life and liberty of the people from the aforesaid community," it added.

Padma Shri Kangana Ranaut has been actively posting hate content over social media against anti-CAA and anti-farm laws protest. She was also banned by Twitter for violating community hate speech guidelines in the month of May, this year.

Headed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Raghav Chadha, the committee has been constituted to recommend suitable measures to defuse the situation and restore harmony among religious communities, linguistic communities or social groups.

It had also sent a summon to Facebook India in the month of October to send its senior representative to appear over the northeast Delhi riots before the panel on November 2 with the aim to focus on social media platform's role in curbing false and malicious messages that could cause disharmony in the society.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
San Francisco, Nov 25 : Popular online discussion platform Reddit, which acquired short-form video social platform Dubsmash late last year, has announced that it is now shutting down the platform on February 22, 2022.

Following the shut down, Dubsmash will not be available to download through the App Store or Google Play. Also, downloaded apps will stop functioning on the same date.

"The Dubsmash team has been accelerating Reddit's video, so parts of Reddit will feel familiar to Dubsmashers," the company said in the blogpost.

"Dubsmashers can continue connecting with each other at r/dubsmash and hop over to Reddit to discover an endless stream of new creators and communities that match their many interests and talents," it added.

Reddit also mentioned that it is rolling out new video features. The built-in camera now includes options to change recording speeds and set a timer.

Additionally, it is now possible to upload clips in landscape, portrait mode and fill, as well as adjust and trim multiple clips at once. A new editing screen allows users to add stickers, doodles, voice-overs and filters to their clips.

Last year, the company said it will integrate Dubsmash's innovative video creation tools into Reddit, which will empower Reddit's own creators to express themselves in original and authentic ways.
Warsaw, Nov 25 : Poland's Constitutional Tribunal has ruled that the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has no jurisdiction over its appointment of judges, in effect ignoring a ruling from May by the European human rights court.

Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, as far as it includes the Constitutional Tribunal in its definition of a court, is not compatible, Tribunal's President Julia Przylebska said on Wednesday.

The May ruling of the ECHR stated that one of the judges of the Constitutional Tribunal was seated unlawfully, denying a company a fair hearing, Xinhua news agency reported.

However, the Tribunal claims the ECHR has no authority over the institution. According to its reasoning, the Tribunal is not a court in the sense of the European Convention on Human Rights. The case was filed by Polish Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro.

The Polish Constitutional Tribunal, which according to critics at home and abroad is packed with political allies of the ruling conservative Law and Justice party, had previously sparked a legal crisis in Europe by claiming in early October that some parts of European laws are not in line with Poland's constitution.

Poland has been criticised by its European Union partners for undermining the rule of law by politicising its courts and tightening control over judges.

The Polish government claims its judicial changes are necessary. "Today, the rule of law has won over the usurpation of competences," Deputy Justice Minister Michal Wojcik tweeted on Wednesday.

"Today's judgment from the Polish Constitutional Tribunal is unprecedented and raises serious concerns," said Marija Pejcinovic Buric, the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. "We will carefully assess the judgment's reasoning and its effects." The ECHR, based in Strasbourg, France, was formed after the Second World War and rules on cases involving the Convention, which applies to all member states of the Council of Europe.
San Francisco, Nov 25 : Meta-owned Instagram's chief Adam Mosseri is expected to appear before a Senate panel during the week of December 6 as part of a series of hearings on protecting children online.

According to The New York Times, Mosseri's appearance follows hearings this year with Antigone Davis, the global head of safety for Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, and with Frances Haugen, a former employee turned whistle-blower.

Haugen's revelations about the social networking company, particularly those about Facebook and Instagram's research into its effects on some teenagers and young girls, have spurred criticism, inquiries from politicians and investigations from regulators.

In September, Davis told Congress that the company disputed the premise that Instagram was harmful for teenagers and noted that the leaked research did not have causal data, the report said.

But after Haugen's testimony last month, Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, wrote a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, suggesting that his company had "provided false or inaccurate testimony to me regarding attempts to internally conceal its research," it added.

Blumenthal asked Zuckerberg or Mosseri to testify in front of the consumer protection subcommittee of the Senate's Commerce Committee to set the record straight.

"He's the top guy at Instagram, and the whole nation is asking about why Instagram and other tech platforms have created so much danger and damage by driving toxic content to children with these immensely powerful algorithms," said Blumenthal, who chairs the subcommittee.

"The hearing will be critically significant in guiding us to develop laws that can have an impact on making platforms safer," Blumenthal added.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The Delhi High Court on Thursday dismissed a plea seeking direction to stop the publication, circulation and sale of former Union minister Salman Khurshid's controversial book for its alleged remarks on Hindutva likening it to radical jihadist groups like ISIS and Boko Haram.

Adv Raj Kishor Chaudhary, appeared for petitioner Adv Vineet Jindal and pointed out the comment in a chapter called "The Saffron Sky" on Page 113 of the Congress leader's book "Sunrise over Ayodhya: Nationhood in our times" which reads -- "Sanatan dharma and classical Hinduism known to sages and saints was being pushed aside by a robust version of Hindutva, by all standards, a political version similar to jihadist Islam of groups like ISIS and Boko Haram of recent years." During the course of the hearing, the bench of Justice Yashwant Varma orally observed that it's just an excerpt in the book. Further, the counsel argued that the book will create communal problems and then requested to remove the excerpt.

"Tell everyone that the book is badly written. Tell them to read something better. what can we do if people are so sensitive. Nobody has asked them to read it," the judge said while dismissing the petition.

According to the plea, it was stated that the equivalence of Hinduism to ISIS and Boko Haram is perceived as a negative ideology Hindus have been following and Hinduism is violent, inhuman, and oppressive.

Freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1) of the Constitution goes hand-in-hand with reasonable restrictions that may be imposed under Article 19(2), so, in a country like India, which is perpetually on a communal tinderbox, where religious sentiments run deep, where respect for certain public and historical figures always come accompanied with veneration for their demi-god status, it doesn't take much for malice to be coated with a toxic communal hue based on the contents of the book, it contended.
Mogadishu, Nov 25 : Several people were killed and some others were believed to be injured in an explosion in Somalia's capital Mogadishu early Thursday, police and witnesses said.

A police officer, who declined to be named, told Xinhua that the blast, which took place near Mogadishu's KM4 junction, caused multiple casualties.

"So far, we know that several people, including students have been killed in the blast. We will give you further details later," the officer said.

Witnesses said they heard a massive explosion in Hodan district, and some buildings have been damaged, Xinhua news agency reported.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : Foundation stone was laid on Thursday for re-construction of two mosques in Telangana's new state secretariat premises, five months after they were razed during demolition of the old secretariat buildings.

Head of leading Islamic seminary Jamia Nizamia, Mufti Khaleel Ahmed laid the foundation stone for the two mosques in the presence of home minister Mahmood Ali, state Waqf board chairman Mohammed Saleem, AIMIM leader in state Assembly Akbaruddin Owaisi, TRS legislators Amer Shakeel and Farooq Hussain and some selected invitees.

The ceremony was kept simple and the general public was not allowed to participate in view of the ongoing construction of new secretariat complex.

The state government allotted 1,500 yards for the two mosques, which will be built at a cost of Rs 2.9 crore. The home minister said the government will fulfill its promises and two mosques would be among the most beautiful mosques in the country.

Two mosques and a temple were razed during the demolition of old secretariat buildings located near Hussain Sagar lake in the heart of the city.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had expressed his regret over the incident. He had claimed that the places of worship were damaged due to the fall of the debris on them.

The chief minister had promised to rebuild the place of worship on more spacious sites and at the government's cost.

On September 5, the chief minister announced that the government will rebuild mosques and a temple along with a church in the new secretariat complex.

He made the announcement after delegations of Muslim and Christian leaders called on him separately. Christian leaders had informed the chief minister that church services used to be held in the old secretariat.

Rao assured the delegations that he will lay the foundation stone for all three places of worship on the same day in true spirit of communal harmony for which Telangana is known and will ensure their speedy completion.

Leaders of various Muslim organisations have been expressing concern over the delay in construction of mosques and on several occasions urged the state government to start the work without further day.

The chief minister is likely to lay the foundation stone for the temple and the church at a later date.
Patna, Nov 25 : While the BJP MLAs are blaming the Nitish Kumar government for the failure in liquor ban implementation in Bihar, the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) National General Secretary Alok Mehta has asked the BJP to withdraw support from the state government if its leaders are unhappy with it.

"You (BJP MLAs) are questioning the decision of liquor ban and asking Chief Minister Nitish Kumar for a review meeting on this subject and on the other hand you are also participating in the government. Why are you not withdrawing support from the Nitish Kumar government? The MLAs of the ruling party cannot do both -- criticizing the government and also enjoying being in power at the same time," Mehta said.

"The liquor ban has completely failed in Bihar. The state government does not have the power to address the issue. Nitish Kumar's claim of a successful liquor ban is completely false," the RJD national General Secretary added.

The statement of the RJD leader came after two BJP MLAs -- Hari Bhushan Singh Bachaul and Kundan Singh questioned the liquor ban in the state.

Bachaul, a BJP MLA from Bipsi in Madhubani district, demanded rollback on liquor ban. He said the state exchequer is incurring revenue losses due to the ban.

Kundan Singh, BJP MLA from Begusarai, said crime rate is increasing due to the liquor ban in the state.

"While the state police is keeping an eye on liquor operations in Bihar, crimes like murder, kidnapping, rape, theft and other cases are increasing now. The Bihar police is not paying attention to the rising crime graph," Singh added.

"In a bid to implement the liquor prohibition law, the state police entering into the rooms of brides is extremely unfortunate. No one can justify it," he said.

"School children are smuggling liquor in their bags. They are offering home delivery and the state government is playing with the future of the next generation," the BJP MLA added.

"Moreover, the liquor mafias are contesting in the panchayat elections. They are openly distributing liquor among voters. They are using illegal means to win elections and become more powerful. Which kind of society are we making?" he said.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said that instead of simplifying and rationalising the GST tax structure, the GST Council has made it as "most complicated GST law in India over the world" and much against the GST structure shown to CAIT by the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley.

CAIT National President B.C. Bhartia and Secretary General Praveen Khandelwal said that in the cotton textile industry there was no inverted tax structure, then why fabric and other cotton textile goods were brought under the 12 per cent bracket.

Even in the man-made textile industry, at the stage of manufacturing garments, sarees and all types of made ups, there was no inverted tax issue. Without having any understanding of the stages of the textile industry such a harsh decision will be a regressive step.

The Central Government's notification to increase the rate of GST on basic items like textiles and footwear from 5 per cent to 12 per cent is being opposed all over the country, including Delhi, and the CAIT has decided to launch a mega agitation across the country against such arbitrariness.

The agitation will be led by two important trade associations of cloth trade, namely Delhi Hindustani Mercantile Association and Federation of Surat Textile Association (FOSTA) under the umbrella of CAIT. Apart from textiles and footwear, trade organisations of all types of trade, workers, employees associated with them will also participate in it.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said, "Roti, Kapda & Makaan are three basic things of life. Bread has already become very expensive due to high rise in prices, buying a house is beyond the reach of a common man and the cloth, which was accessible, has also been made expensive by the GST Council.

"After all, what kind of treatment is being done to the common man of the country. In this matter not only the Central Government but also the State Governments are completely guilty because these decisions have been taken unanimously in the GST Council and no one has opposed such an irrational decision," CAIT said.

They have demanded that the increased rate of GST on clothes and footwear should be withdrawn immediately. They said that retail trade in the country has already been destroyed due to Covid and now that the business was resuming on track from this year, the increase in the GST rates will be the last nail in the coffin of the trade, CAIT said.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that according to sources, it has been learnt that the Fitment Committee of GST has recommended an increase in the GST rate on gold jewelry from 3 per cent to 5 per cent and the current tax rate in GST 5 per cent has been recommended to 7 per cent, 12 per cent to 14 per cent and 18 per cent to 20 per cent. They said that this proposed increase in tax rate is highly irrational and unjustified and is clearly arbitrary action by the fitment committee.

In the matter of increase in clothes and footwear, no consultation was done with any stakeholder of the country. GST is being distorted continuously and the concept of "One Nation-One Tax" has been made a joke.

They said that traders across the country have mobilised against this unilateral and arbitrary increase against which the traders across the country are in great anger and resentment.

To decide about the future strategy of the agitation, the CAIT has convened a video conference on November 28 with the leaders of textile and footwear trade across the country, which will also be joined by prominent trade leaders of all States.

Bhartia and Khandelwal said that it is very unfortunate that the GST which was talked and explained to CAIT by the then Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who by soliciting the support of trading community on June 4, 2017 was a simple tax structure having minimal compliance, but has been blown up and replaced by a very complex GST tax system. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's announcement of Ease of Doing Business and One Nation-One Tax is being openly ridiculed, CAIT said.

CAIT said the officers have become autocratic and either the command of the responsible leaders has become lose or they are also involved in torturing the traders. Traders across the country will no longer tolerate this situation.
Harare, Nov 25 : Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa called for the restitution and repatriation of African artifacts that were expropriated from Africa during the colonial era and are currently displayed in Western museums.

Mnangagwa made the remarks on Wednesday at the third edition of the International Conference on African Cultures, being held here from November 23-25 and attended by dignitaries from across the African continent.

"Our peoples' heritage must be freed from the hostage of Western museums, public spaces and private institutions. Within the purviews of the rights-based discourse, Africa and its people continue to unreservedly pronounce that 'cultural rights are human rights too.' In light of this, Africa must reunite with that which belongs to it," Mnangagwa said.

Raphael Chikukwa, director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe said the looted artifacts are of great cultural and economic value, and therefore should be returned to their rightful owners, Xinhua news agency reported.

He said the return of the artifacts is essential for Africans to revisit and re-engage with the important aspects of African history the artifacts represent.

Zimbabwe's Minister of Youth, Sport, Arts and Recreation Kirsty Coventry said the return of the artifacts is imperative for the realisation of the national identity.

"To us as Zimbabweans, as we strive towards Vision 2030, it is imperative that we strengthen our national identity, we need to know and fully appreciate where we come from in order to know where we are going," she said.

Vision 2030 seeks to propel Zimbabwe into a middle-income economy by the year 2030.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : INS Vela, the fourth submarine in the Project-75 series of six Scorpene Class submarines, was inducted into the Indian Navy on Thursday.

The formal commissioning ceremony took place at the Naval Dockyard in Mumbai.

Indian Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh unveiled the commissioning plaque of INS Vela in the presence of senior military and civil dignitaries.

The Scorpene Class submarines are being built in India by the Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) Mumbai, under collaboration with Naval Group, earlier DCNS, France.

The commissioning of the fourth class submarine is a major milestone achieved, the Navy stated. INS Vela would form part of the Western Naval Command's Submarine fleet and would be another potent part of its arsenal.

Crew of the erstwhile 'Vela', a Russian origin Foxtrot Class Submarine, which was decommissioned in 2009, was also present amongst the guests on this occasion.

The Scorpene submarines are extremely potent platforms. They have advanced stealth features and are also equipped with both long range guided torpedoes as well as anti-ship missiles.

These submarines have a state of the art SONAR and sensor suite permitting outstanding operational capabilities.

They also have an advanced Permanent Magnetic Synchronous motor (PERMASYN) as its propulsion motor.

The delivery of Vela is yet another affirmation of the impetus being given by the Indian Navy towards consolidating its position as a 'Builder's Navy' as also indicative of MDL's capabilities as a premier ship and submarine building yard.

"The commissioning of the submarine is coinciding with 'Azaadi ka Amrit Mahotsav' and 'Swarnim Vijay Varsha' celebrations," the Navy stated.

The submarine was designated as 'Yard 11878' during its construction.

The construction of the submarine commenced with the first cutting of steel on July 14, 2009. The submarine was 'launched' and named Vela on May 6, 2019. After extensive system, machinery and weapon trials, the submarine was handed over by MDL to the Indian Navy on November 19, 2021 'Commissioning' is an age-old ceremonial tradition and one of the most significant milestones amongst many others that brings a ship/submarine to life.

The new Vela carries forward the legacy of her namesake, the erstwhile INS Vela, which was commissioned on August 31, 1973 as the lead boat of Vela class submarines.

Apart from being a training ground for many submariners, she had several noteworthy operational achievements during her long and illustrious career. The submarine rendered yeoman service to the nation for 37 years and was the longest operational submarine at the time of decommissioning on 25 January 10.A The new Vela is a potent Man o' War, capable of undertaking offensive operations spanning across the entire spectrum of maritime warfare.

Once dived, she is truly poised for the kill with very impressive stealth and strength. Vela is fitted with advanced weapons and sensors.
Chennai/New Delhi, Nov 25 : Tamil Nadu Minister for Industries Thangam Thennarasu on Thursday said the state government has leveraged investments for setting up three large petrochemical projects in Nagapattinam, Thoothukudi and in Cuddalore.

Speaking at the 'Global Chemical and Petrochemical Manufacturing Hubs in India' event held in Delhi, Thennarasu said the state government has categorised specialty and petrochemicals as sunrise sectors to extend financial support through additional incentives.

He said the government has leveraged investments for setting up of three large petrochemical projects in Thoothukudi, Nagapattinam and in Cuddalore.

"This will ensure supply of all required feedstock to strengthen and position the state as the petrochemical investment destination," he said.

The Chennai Petroleum Corporation Ltd (CPCL) has commenced work on the Rs 31,580 crore, 9 million metric ton per annum (MMTPA) grassroots refinery at Nagapattinam.

Interestingly, the Tamil Nadu government recently withdrew the bid for proposed Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the petrochemical cluster planned in Nagapattinam owing to opposition from the farmers and others.

According to Thennarasu, Tamil Nadu is the third largest contributor to the country's chemical output housing more than 2,500 chemical industries with a strong chemical industrial ecosystem.

He said the confidence of the investors in Tamil Nadu was showcased recently in Coimbatore where over 50 large companies committed to invest in projects over Rs 33,000 crore with an employment generation for 75,000 people.

Thennarasu said the vision of the Tamil Nadu government and the Union government are aligned together to capitalise the manufacturing sector's growth potential and domestic demand available in the country, at large.

He also said the government has set up Tamil Nadu Polymer Park spread across 306 acres near Chennai to cater to the needs of plastic manufacturing and logistics while a pharmaceutical and textile park have been proposed.

The government is strengthening the cross-country and City Gas Distribution pipeline to ensure feedstock availability.
San Francisco, Nov 25 : Elon Musk-owned electric vehicle company Tesla is now asking owners getting into the Full Self-Driving (FSD) Beta programme to accept that Tesla can use footage from both inside and outside the car in case of a safety risk or accident.

According to the auto-tech website Electrek, it is the first time that the electric vehicle company will attach footage to specific individuals.

Tesla has updated the warning that comes with downloading a new version of the FSD Beta. It includes all the warnings that were part of previous releases, but the automaker added important new language.

"By enabling FSD Beta, I consent to Tesla's collection of VIN-associated image data from the vehicle's external cameras and Cabin Camera in the occurrence of a serious safety risk or a safety event like a collision," as per the new update.

The important part is "VIN-associated," which means that the footage collected will be associated with the owners' vehicle.

The fact that Tesla added that language specifically related to safety risks and accidents would point toward the automaker looking to secure usable evidence in case of an accident where its FSD system is blamed, the report said.

Before adding that mention, Tesla could not link any footage to a specific vehicle without the driver's permission, which it is now pre-emptively requiring. The update comes after what might have been the first reported accident related to Full Self-Driving Beta.
Kanpur, Nov 25 : Kyle Jamieson (3/38), and Tim Southee (1/30) made crucial strikes as New Zealand clawed back in the second session of the first Test at the Green Park Stadium here on Thursday. At tea, India were 154/4 in 56 overs with debutant Shreyas Iyer (batting on 17 off 55 balls) and Ravindra Jadeja (6 off 13 balls) at the crease.

Jamieson struck on the sixth ball post lunch break, ending the 61-run partnership for the second wicket as Shubman Gill inside-edged a full nip-backer to his stumps. Though Jamieson troubled Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, the duo eventually swatted him for a boundary each through off-side in the 34th over.

Left-arm spinner Ajaz Patel continued to leak runs as Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara took a boundary each off him in the 37th over. But in the next over, Tim Southee had his first wicket of the match as Pujara pressed forward to defend outside the off-stump, only for the ball to take an outer edge to the keeper for a clean low catch.

Post 'ujara's dismissal, Rahane hit some crisp boundaries through the off-side, with the one through cover off Jamieson being the standout. But in the 50th over, the tall pacer had the last laugh as Rahane chopped onto his stumps, undone by the low bounce.

Iyer, who was almost caught out while going for a big shot early in the innings, got two boundaries and survived a close lbw shout off off-spinner William Somerville as well. He and Jadeja have a huge task on their hands in lifting India to a safe score in the final session.

New Zealand, on the other hand, will be happy with their showings in the second session. But the Kiwis will be worried abo't Southee's availability after he walked off the field midway through an over. They will also want their spinners to be more accurate as the pitch continues to play tricks.

Earlier, India had made a good start thanks to opener Shubhman Gill's half-century (52 not out off 87 balls) that steered India to 82/1 at lunch.

After Rahane elected to bat first, Gill survived a chance in the third over as Southee had him lbw but the right-hander got to reverse the decision as replays showed a big inside edge.

Jamieson, who constantly probed the off-stump channel, got his first wicket on Indian soil as Mayank Agarwal (13) nicked behind to keeper Tom Blundell in the eighth over.

Post Agarwal's fall, Gill saw off the tricky period from Southee and Jamieson. He had luck on his side at six in escaping an lbw shout in the first over of Ajaz Patel. From there, Gill tore into Patel, taking him for four fours and oozed confidence in smashing the left-arm spinner for a straight six. Pujara, on the other hand, kept playing the second fiddle while seeing an impressive Gill attack from the other end.

However, he could not build on to his good start and failed to put up a big total, leaving India in a difficult position in a Test in which they would have liked to put up a substantial total in the first innings, giving their spinners some leeway to work their magic.

Brief scores (at tea): India 154/4 in 56 overs (Shubman Gill 52, Ajinkya Rahane 35, Kyle Jamieson 3/38, Tim Southee 1/30) against New Zealand IANS

nr/bsk
Brussels, Nov 25 : After Austria this week imposed a shutdown, Slovakia has become the second European country to go into lockdown as Covid-19 cases surge, the media reported.

Slovakia has declared a 90-day state of emergency and a two-week lockdown following a spike in Covid cases that saw the country's seven-day average of cases rise above 10,000, Euronews reported.

The decision came after president Zuzana Caputova addressed the nation on Tuesday, saying that "Slovakia is losing the battle against Covid." She also explained that the lockdown was needed as the healthcare staff became overworked, and the strain on the hospitals became almost unbearable, the report said.

During the two-week lockdown, people will be allowed to leave their homes only for specific reasons, such as buying groceries, travelling to work and school, or getting vaccinated.

Those still unvaccinated will be required to have a test or proof that they have had Covid in order to get to work.

All gatherings of more than six people who do not live in the same household have also been prohibited during the 90-day state of emergency.

Slovakia ranks as the third-lowest European Union country in vaccination rates, with little over 45 per cent of Slovaks fully vaccinated.

The country has surpassed the 3,000-hospitalisations mark, and almost 83 per cent of those hospitalised were not vaccinated, according to the Slovak Health Ministry.

As the number of infections is rising steadily in many European countries, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday warned that Covid-19 deaths in the region could increase by around 700,000 by March 2022.

The additional 700,000 deaths would take the region's overall death toll to 2.2million.

Slovakia's neighbours -- the Czech Republic and Hungary have also registered a record daily rise in cases.

Austria has already put a total lockdown in place from November 22. The country is also going to make vaccination mandatory from February 1 of next year, making it the first country in the world to do so.

Partial restrictions have also been imposed in the Netherlands and Belgium.

Earlier, the WHO said that it is "very worried" as Covid cases continue to spike in Europe.

According to regional director Dr Hans Kluge the risk is due to low mask use and vaccine hesitancy, winter season, and dominance of the more transmissible Delta variant. Several European countries have loosened masking requirements, citing vaccine efficacy.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Chennai, Nov 25 : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K.Stalin on Thursday urged the Central government to sign an air transport bubble agreement with Singapore and Malaysia.

In a letter to the Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya M. Scindia, the chief minister said that Tamils having permanent residentship of Singapore and Malaysia and others who had visited India during pandemic period are facing hardship for their return journey due to non-availability of direct flight services.

People have to travel through Dubai, Doha and Colombo which is causing serious inconvenience and financial burden as they have to pay more air charges and travel long distances, he said.

In the absence of a temporary Air Transport Bubble agreement between India and Singapore and Malaysia, he said the travel business is being cornered by other foreign airlines like Qatar Airways, Emirates and Srilankan Airlines.

"Hence, I request you to make a temporary Air Transport Bubbles agreement with Singapore and Malaysia at the earliest, for providing temporary airline services and resolve the difficulties faced by the Tamil diaspora in Singapore and Malaysia," Stalin said.
Mogadishu, Nov 25 : At least eight people were confirmed dead and 17 injured in a suicide car bombing here early Thursday, the police said.

A police officer at the scene told Xinhua that the death toll could rise after a suicide bomber targeted a convoy escorting foreign security forces near a local school in the Hodan district in Mogadishu.

"At least eight were killed and 17 others injured in the blast. The blast occurred in front of Muasir school and children are among the casualties," the police officer, who declined to be named, said on the phone.

The police said the target was a convoy belonging to a security firm that guards the UN personnel who were reportedly travelling from Gordon training camp to Halane base camp.

Al-Shabab militants have claimed responsibility for the latest attack in the restive city, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Somali National Army backed by the African Union Mission in Somalia drove al-Shabab out of Mogadishu in 2011, but the terror group is still capable of conducting attacks, targeting government installations, hotels, restaurants and public places.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Mumbai, Nov 25 : Ex-Police Commissioner of Mumbai, Param Bir Singh, recently declared a 'Proclaimed Offender' by a Magistrate court, reached the city on Thursday morning and joined the police investigation into an alleged extortion case registered against him.

Singh, who informed the media on Wednesday that he was in Chandigarh, went to the Crime Branch Unit 11 at Kandivali Police Station to join the probe as directed by the Supreme Court.

"I am joining the investigation as directed by the court," Singh told the media after his arrival.

The IPS officer, who was 'untraceable' since last May, is facing at least 5 extortion cases and a government-appointed panel probe here.

The apex court recently granted him interim protection against arrest till December 6.

Singh, who was the Commissioner of Police, remained 'off-duty' for the past nearly six months after he was transferred as Commandant-General of Maharashtra State Home Guards after the major row following a SUV with 20 gelatin sticks found abandoned near the home of industrialist Mukesh Ambani and the death of its owner, Thane businessman Mansukh Hiran.

Later, Singh created a furore by his letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray levelling allegations of corruption against the then home minister and senior Nationalist Congress Party leader Anil Deshmukh, who was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate and is currently in judicial custody.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, Nov 25 : On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, an inaugural seminar was organised on the theme - "Reclaiming Public Spaces: Empowering Women for Safer Cities" by We4HER foundation.

The seminar was followed by a panel discussion on "Is Delhi Safer for Women Post 10 Years of Nirbhaya Case?" The discussion included notable women leaders, thinkers, lawyers and experts which included Ms Pratibha Jain, Group General Counsel and Head of Corporate Affairs, Everstone Capital and Founder/Trustee of We4Her Foundation.

Jain said "When I set up the foundation along with my co-trustee, I initially thought that we could support other organisations that are working in the field, but the more I spoke to existing organisations, I realised that the task was so immense that it needed more voices Also there is a lack of awareness in some circles on the day to day struggle faced by women in a patriarchal society." Highlighting the need for women to reclaim public spaces, Ms Jain said that crime is the most unswerving pattern affecting personal safety. Women constitute more than half of violent crime victims across the globe. In India, a woman is subject to harassment every 51 minutes in a public space. "Sexual and physical violence against women in India has caught the police and government attention following the horrific gang-rape in Delhi in December 2012. It is important that we keep the momentum of the civil discourse around achieving safe public spaces for women in India. Not only is it of physical and psychological importance for half a population of the country, it has a direct and a substantial impact on the economy of the country and the relevant city. Public safety is confidence to people who live in a society and those who are visiting a place. It has a number of other advantages that transcends other factors. Needless to say, safe neighbourhoods and cities attract tourists besides attracting industries to a particular region. The Hon'ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi has regularly reiterated the importance of safety of women in public spaces. Its now the responsibility of his government and the administration to implement it," Ms Pratibha Jain said.

India ranks 133 out of 167 countries in the Women's Peace and Security Index 2019. "Empowerment is critical to ensure that women are not subject to any abuse. UN defines the term to include a women's sense of self-worth and to determine choices, the right to have access to opportunities and resources, the right to have the power to control their lives both within and outside the homes and their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order nationally and internationally. The UN SDG 5 and 11 emphasise granting women the opportunity to live free without discrimination, including workplace discrimination and making cities inclusive and safer," Ms Jain concluded. Adopting a three-pronged strategy, the We4HER foundation will undertake programmes, conferences, seminars and research directly on gender justice and gender equality; provide grants to organisations working in the field of gender justice and gender equality in non-urban areas; and create an ecosystem for organisations working in the field of gender justice and equality.

The seminar and panel discussion included Justice Gita Mittal, Former Chief Justice Jammu and Kashmir High Court and Chairperson, broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCI). "From public spaces to public restrooms, the design of urban spaces can deny women their right to equal access, which can be further impeded by caste, class, disability and sexuality. Women are not seen as legitimate users of public space if they do not have a specific purpose at certain times of the day. Gender sensitive urban designing that prioritises positive liberty can play a critical role in ensuring women's safety in public spaces and offer more inclusive solutions." As a first step, the foundation is launching an initiative in Defence Colony in Delhi asking families to come out at night from 9 to 11 p.m. to create awareness on safety for women in the colony by reclaiming public spaces at night, Jain added. Ms Pratibha Jain, who is an alumni of Oxford University, was joined by Hemani Malhotra, Addl. Sessions Judge, Tis Hazari Court who said that there has been a paradigm shift in the laws relating to sexual assault on women, and a number of reforms have taken place. This has made all stakeholders more victim friendly; however, victims still feel intimidated when they come to the court. Starting from the registration of the FIR, just the idea of narrating the entire experience to the police officials is a very difficult job for any woman.

Ms Shalini Singh IPS, Special Commissioner of Police, Delhi Police added, "The Nirbhaya case was a watershed moment since it made the police and society introspect about what can be done to prevent such cases from taking place again. We (the police) realised that we needed to make institutional changes, and we decided to increase the proportion of women in the police force. Currently the Delhi Police is made up of 13 per cent women personnel and we plan on increasing that to 33 per cent. We also set up 24x7 women help desks, which connect you to the hotline of whichever state you are present in. We have also undergone gender sensitisation drives for our personnel so that they become more attentive and sensitive to women's issues. There has also been an emphasis on proper, scientific evidence based investigation and we have tried to change the mindset of our own people."
Tokyo, Nov 25 : A junior high school boy, who fatally stabbed a fellow student in central Japan, said he had problems with the victim and held a grudge against him, local media reported on Thursday.

The alleged attacker, whose name has been withheld as he is a minor, told investigators that he bought a 20 centimetre-long kitchen knife online, which he is believed to have used to stab Yuzuki Ito in the stomach on Wednesday.

The victim, also a 14-year-old boy, who was in the third grade of Jyushiyama junior high school in Yatomi city, Aichi Prefecture, was confirmed dead later in the day at a hospital due to haemorrhagic shock, Xinhua news agency reported.

No injuries were reported among other students and teachers.

The suspect, who has admitted to stabbing Ito, was arrested by the police on Wednesday and was sent to prosecutors on Thursday.

The stabbing took place from the front in a hallway outside a classroom at around 8 a.m. local time on Wednesday when other students were arriving.

The two students were neither in the same third-year class nor in the same extracurricular clubs at the school. However, they were in the same class during their second year.

The father of the suspect told local media "There is no information and I am confused. I cannot say anything." The municipal board of education said on Wednesday that there was no mention of the two boys in its questionnaire survey last month on bullying, and it did not know if there was any trouble between the two.

A father of a 15-year-old female student, who is also in the third grade, said he felt worried about the mental health of students who witnessed the incident.
Seoul, Nov 25 : South Korea will officially open a consulate on the Indonesian resort island of Bali later this week to offer better consular services to its citizens and travellers, the foreign ministry said on Thursday.

The consulate began operations in March to support Korean nationals' Covid-19 vaccinations and passport services, but its formal opening has been delayed due to the pandemic, the ministry said.

The opening ceremony will be held on Friday and be attended by Park Tae-sung, South Korea's ambassador to Indonesia, as well as local government officials and Korean residents, Yonhap news agency reported.

The ministry said the new consulate is expected to improve consular services for Korean residents and travellers in Bali and eastern Indonesia.

Bali is one of the major tourism spots in the Southeast Asian nation, drawing over 213,000 Koreans in 2019 before the pandemic, according to the government data.
Mumbai, Nov 25 : In the Mumbai terror attacks trial, the crucial evidence provided by a survivor and star witness -- a girl was not even ten years old -- proved to be the nemesis for Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only Pakistani terrorist who was captured alive, and ensured that he was hanged after he had exhausted all legal remedies.

Kasab was one of the 10 heavily armed Pakistani attackers who wreaked unprecedented mayhem in the country's commercial capital for nearly 60 hours as the world watched silently.

Devika Rotawan, then about to turn nine, was injured by a bullet that hit her in the leg as Kasab and his associate opened fire indiscriminately inside the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus building that eventful evening.

Now 22, Devika recalled how her father Natwarlal and she were waiting to board a train for Pune where her brother, Bharat, 34, lives with his family. "Suddenly, we heard gunshots and loud booming sounds, people shrieking, crying, running helter-skelter. We were caught in the melee and the complete chaos," she said, recounting the horrors of that night.

As she tried to escape with the others, she stumbled, felt a numbing pain and saw blood oozing from her right leg.

"Within moments, I realised I had been shot. I collapsed right there and regained consciousness only the next day," Devika told IANS, the chilling sights of that fateful night still fresh in her memory.

Despite the confusion, she was somehow rushed to the nearby Sir J. J. Hospital and the next day, she underwent a major surgery to remove the AK-47 bullet lodged in her leg.

That was just the beginning of her visits to the hospital. Over the next six months, she underwent several surgeries and in the subsequent three years, it was only after another six major operations that she was able to become completely mobile and independent.

"She was so small," her father, Natwarlal Rotawan, recalled. "My wife Sarika had passed away just two years ago and with my two other older sons, we all took care of her despite great odds and little financial help forthcoming for her education or future." Natwarlal was one of the prime prosecution witnesses in the 26/11 trial.

Devika admits that those initial three years were horrific for the entire family. She was even shifted to her native Sumerpur village in Pali district (Rajasthan), where the entire clan took good care of her. Soon afterwards, the family had to return to Mumbai for the court proceedings against Kasab.

With both the distraught father and his injured daughter not only surviving the ordeal, but also becoming the star witnesses, it was finally their "clinching evidence" in the court in June 2009 that drove the proverbial last nail into Kasab's coffin.

After exhausting all legal remedies, Kasab was hanged nine years ago -- on November 21, 2012.

Though his life ended at the gallows, little Devika, who turns 23 next month, has seen her life being a continuing struggle on all fronts.

After managing to complete her school education from IES New English High School, Bandra East, Devika went on to do her HSC from Siddharth College, Churchgate, and is now pursuing her Second Year Bachelor of Arts from Chetana College in Bandra.

Natwarlal said that initially, the family got around Rs 3.5 lakh as compensation, besides Rs 10 lakh as medical aid, and they had been promised a house under the quota for the economically weaker sections, but it has not come to the family even after 13 years.

"We have written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to successive governments in Maharashtra. The PM talks about 'Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao', but what about my daughter Devika who challenged terrorists and Pakistan for our country," the disconsolate father added bitterly.

Devika's brothers Bharat, a shopkeeper, and Jayesh, 26, who has a severe spinal problem, recall how the family rose to the onerous task of caring for their "star kid sister, who was often in deep pain, but always restless".

It involved regular visits to hospitals, cajoling her to take medicines on time, the daunting trips to the high-security Special Court inside the Arthur Road Central Jail, and Devika and her father coming face to face with Kasab during the trial, her unending meetings with lawyers, police officials, trudging from one government department to another for her financial compensation, college admission and other necessary chores.

The family is ever grateful to Mumbai Police for helping them throughout. Natwarlal recalled how, so many times, the cops even carried the oft-naughty little Devika in their arms for the court hearings.

"They could obviously feel our pain ... after all, they had also lost many of their brave colleagues. Unfortunately, the political apathy has really saddened us," Natwarlal said.

Fortunately, at the height of the lockdown, the family managed to get timely help from the Bandra MLA, Zeeshan B. Siddique, a Congressman. Devika explained their predicament: "My father's business came to a stop 12 years ago, my younger brother, Jayesh, has a severe back problem and cannot work ... I hope to earn as soon as possible and help my family." She is quite firm on her future plans -- cracking the UPSC exams to become an IPS officer, don the police uniform, and hound criminals and terrorists out of their comfort zones.

"I have not been able to overcome my trauma even after 13 years," Devika said. "And I have not forgiven those who attacked my country and injured me." Her father added: "My daughter has shown the country what she is capable of. She now wants to dedicate her life to the nation. It is now up to the government and the politicians to honour their pledge." (Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)
New York, Nov 25 : An Indian American professor acted as an interpreter in the unsuccessful attempt to win freedom for the hostages held by Pakistani terrorists in the Mumbai Jewish centre during the 26/11 terror strike in 2008.

P.V. Viswanath has recalled in an article and an interview with Jewish-oriented publications how the terrorist he spoke to from New York displayed an eerie calm.

But it appeared to him that the Pakistani had already determined what he would do.

Speaking Voz Is Neias, Viswanath wondered about what could have been the final outcome of the negotiation with the terrorist Imran Babar who was at the Jewish centre.

Viswanath told the publication: "He was going to do whatever he was going to do, or had already done... So if the plan was to kill everybody, that was what he was going to do. Our talking to him ... I don't think would have changed events in any way." A convert to Orthodox Judaism with the Hebrew name Meylekh, Viswanath had volunteered to interpret for Rabbi Levi Shemtov, an emissary of the Chabad movement whose centre at the Nariman House had been captured by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba terrorists.

Gavriel Holtzberg, the rabbi who was in charge of the Chabad Jewish centre, his wife Rivka, and four others were murdered by the terrorists.

Holtzbdrg's two-year-old son, Moshe, was saved by his nanny, Sandra Samuel, who hid him away.

The centre run by the Lubavitcher sect serves Jews in India and those visiting the country.

In an article in Forward, Viswanath wrote that he had a personal connection because he had visited the Chabad centre and met Holtzberg during visits to Mumbai, where he had grown up.

When Shemetov called the mobile phone of Holtzberg during the crisis, an Urdu-speaker answered, Viswanath wrote in his account of the "nearly 17-hour ordeal that soon had me in prolonged negotiations with the terrorists holed up in the Jewish centre, moving toward a deathly denouement." When he was patched into a conference call with the terrorist who identified himself as "Imran", Viswanath recalled that the man's "voice was so soft that I assumed the connection must be bad" but soon realised that "there had hardly been any tension in the voice at the other end ... he had been calm and collected." The terrorist later identified as Imran Babar told him, "We haven't even slapped them around," when he asked the man about the condition of Holtzberg.

Babar demanded to speak to an Indian official and asked for a captured fellow terrorists to be brought to him, Viswanath wrote.

Babar insisted, "Put us in touch with the Indian government and we will let the hostages go," Viswanath said in his Forward article.

Later while they were trying to find an official to talk to, Babar told them that one of his comrades had been captured and wanted him brought to him, Viswanath wrote.

"Do this, and we will let your friends go," the terrorist said, Viswanath recalled.

"We lost our connection" when an Indian police officer who was ready to talk to the terrorist was found, Viswanath wrote.

"Unfortunately, we did not succeed in finding anybody else in Bombay, nor were we ever able to contact Imran again," he added.

When they asked Babar how many of them were there, his calm demeanour appeared to give way.

Viswanath wrote that he grew annoyed and told him, "It seems like you're not interested in saving your friends, that you're asking all these irrelevant questions. Keep to business matters and think of how to do what we are asking you to do." Noting the general calm and matter-of-fact manner nature of Babar, Viswanath wrote, "Even during the few times that Imran expressed annoyance and uttered low-level threats, it didn't sound as if he felt pressured in any way." "The police had cut off electricity to the Nariman House and had surrounded the building on all sides, including from the air, where helicopters were keeping a watch, but Imran gave no indication of being rushed," he added.

When Indian commandos scaled down on the Chabad building from a helicopter they found Babar and another Pakistani, Abu Umar, dead.

Viswanath, whose family is originally from the Palakkad area in Kerala, is now the chair of the graduate programme at the Lubin School of Business, Pace University, New York City.

A polyglot, he says on his web page that besides English and his mother tongue Tamil, he is fluent in five languages, has varying levels of fluency in six others and has studied 12 other languages.

His linguistic interest in Yiddish, the language of some European Jews, led him to Judaism.
New York, Nov 25 : As 13th anniversary of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attack rolls around, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Pakistani Canadian, is in detention awaiting a ruling on extradition to India, and four others, who have been charged in a US court, are on a wanted list of the US government in its attempts to crackdown on the alleged collaborators.

Prisoner Number 22829-424 Rana is being held at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Detention Centre, a check on the Bureau of Prisons database on Wednesday showed.

Rana's childhood friend, Pakistani American Daood Sayed Gilani who goes by the Western-sounding name David Coleman Headley, is serving a 35-year sentence after a federal judge convicted him on charges of helping carry out the Mumbai attacks.

He turned approver to avoid getting the maximum sentence of life in prison and testified against Rana.

He was also declared an approver in India and a Mumbai sessions court pardoned him in 2015 and accepted him as a prosecution witness.

With the alleged help of Rana, he got a business visa for India and conducted surveillance for the terror attacks that killed more than 170 people, including six Americans.

Sajid Mir of the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), who was charged in a federal court in Chicago in connection with the 2008 attack, is a fugitive on the FBI's Most Wanted Terrorist list with a $5 million bounty on his head.

The State Department's Rewards for Justice (RfJ) counter-terrorism programme that offers a bounty for information leading to his capture says that he "served as a 'handler' for David Headley and others who were directed to carry out actions relating to planning, preparing for, and carrying out terrorist attacks on behalf of LeT." Along with him, three others who were also charged in the case, are on the RfJ list.

They are Major Iqbal, who allegedly funded and planned the 26/11 attack; Abu Qahafa the alleged trainer of the attackers, and Mazhar Iqbal alias Abu al-Qama, who is a commander of the LeT, according to the RfJ.

The four are residents of Pakistan, it said.

Rana was acquitted in a federal trial in Chicago on a charge of providing material support for the 26/11 attack, but convicted of helping the LeT and participating in a terrorist plot against a Danish newspaper and sentenced in 2013 to 14 years in prison.

He was temporarily released on compassionate grounds because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but was arrested immediately on a federal court warrant in June last year in connection with the extradition request from India and is still in custody.

Federal Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Chooljian in Los Angeles ordered the government and the defence to file documents supporting their respective pleas before July 15.

In their filing, Rana's lawyers maintained that Headley's testimony against him implicating him in the Mumbai attack was not reliable because he was an approver and that since he has been acquitted on the charges relating to 26/11 by the Chicago court he could not be extradited to face similar charges under their interpretation of the extradition treaty.

The government said in its filing that Rana and his partner in the immigration and travel business filed fake documents for an Indian visa making Gilani "regional manager supervising and consulting our operation in the Asian region" to enable him to operate in India.

Gilani used that cover to gather intelligence for the LeT to carry out the attacks in Mumbai.

Gilani kept Rana aware of his activities and he "became aware of how the terrorists were going to attack targets in Mumbai, that people would likely die" but did not distance himself from the conspirators, the government said.

As the case now stands, the last filing was by the government lawyers was on July 21 making technical arguments about a point made in the defence document that it said was "beyond the scope" laid down by the court.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hampered the progress of the extradition case by limiting direct hearings.

According to court documents from the government, Rana and Gilani shared quarters at the Cadet College Hasan Abdal "and remained friends throughout their lives".

Rana became a Pakistani Army doctor reaching the rank of captain, but immigrated to Canada. After becoming a Canadian citizen, he moved to Chicago and ran a travel and immigration business.

When Gilani was arrested on drug trafficking charges, Rana put up his house as surety for Gilani's bail.

Gilani was attacked in a Chicago area federal prison in 2018 and had to be hospitalised, according to media reports.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : For Telugu star Adivi Sesh, who's playing the 26/11 martyr, Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, in Mahesh Babu's upcoming film 'Major', the braveheart's life has been a lesson for him.

"The 26/11 attacks may have claimed him, but his life has taught me more. I hope that shines through in our film," the actor said about the character he plays.

Major Unnikrishnan, an Indian Army officer who was serving in the elite 51 Special Action Group of the National Security Guards (NSG), died fighting the Pakistani terrorists who were holed up in the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

He was martyred after he had rescued the hostages trapped in the hotel and for his exemplary bravery, he was awarded the nation's highest peacetime gallantry award, Ashok Chakra.

"We take this moment to honour, not just Sandeep sir, but all the heroes who laid down their lives to protect us on those fateful three days in November 2008. We bow our heads in silence, in the memory of them and the victims," Adivi Sesh had earlier said on social media.

The actor knows how difficult it is to step into the shoes of Major Unnikrishnan, but he expressed the hope that he would be able to do justice to the officer's incredible story of courage under fire.

A 94-second teaser of the film, which was unveiled earlier, shows Adivi Sesh, playing the braveheart officer, speaking emotionally about what it means to be a patriot.

A multilingual film directed by Sashi Kiran Thikka and scheduled for release in Telugu, Malayalam and Hindi on February 11, 2022, 'Major' also stars Saie Manjrekar, Shobhita Dhulipala, Revathi and Prakash Raj.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : In the wake of the Andhra Pradesh government's decision to introduce an online movie ticketing system, Telugu megastar Chiranjeevi has appealed to Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy to consider hiking ticket prices in the interest of filmmakers.

Andhra Pradesh State Assembly on Wednesday passed the AP Cinemas (Regulation) (Amendment) Bill 2021, paving the way for an online movie ticketing system to be administered by the state government. The government said the regulation of cinema ticket pricing would help to check exploitation of moviegoers.

This decision by the AP government was not well-received by the biggies of the industry. Chiranjeevi, on Thursday took to his social media to make an appeal to the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister.

In the note, he first appreciates the idea of an online ticketing system, as it improves the transparency for the moviegoers in the state. On the other hand, Chiranjeevi appeals to consider the ticket prices, based on the ticket prices in the other states.

In his note, Chiranjeevi made it clear that the ticket prices by the state government are not in the favour of the moviemakers who invest everything in the movies. "Please consider hiking the prices of the tickets, otherwise, this might become a threat to the investors and the moviemakers," Chiranjeevi said.

Chiranjeevi had earlier tried to discuss the issue ever since the government revised the ticket prices. He is also the first star from the industry who has openly appealed to the government of Andhra Pradesh to make necessary changes in the Bill passed in the state Assembly.
Bhopal, Nov 25 : A protest organised by the National Students Union of India (NSUI) against the new education policy at the residence of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan here on Thursday turned into a melee.

Students' associations along with NSUI, the youth wing of the Congress, have launched a protest against the new education policy and in a show of aggression they tried to reach the Chief Minister's official residence in Bhopal.

NSUI members along with Congress workers first gathered at their party office and marched towards Chouhan's residence. However, Bhopal police barricaded the area. NSUI members tried to cross the barricades resulting in an argument between the police and the protesters.

The protesters started pelting stones and tried to cross the police barricades forcefully. Seeing the situation getting out of hand, the police resorted to a lathicharge to disperse the crowd, in which several students got injured and were rushed to hospital for treatment.

The police have detained several NSUI members and sent them to jail.

NSUI members have been protesting against the new education policy in various districts of the state for the last few days and they had announced to end their protest in Bhopal.

"They were allowed to organise a peaceful protest but they tried to break the barricades and pelted stones at the police. The police tried to calm the NSUI members but seeing the situation get out of control, there was no option except to allow police to lathicharge to disperse the crowd," said a senior police officer.

Kamal Nath, the Madhya Pradesh Congress President and former Chief Minister, condemned the police action.

"Students were protesting peacefully to make their voice heard. They were demanding release of pending scholarships of tribal students along with raising other issues. But Shivraj Singh Chouhan government beat up the students brutally and has arrested them," Nath said.
November 25 : Actor-politician Kirron Kher, who has been battling cancer and was undergoing treatment, resumed work and returned to the set of the TV reality show India's Got Talent as a judge for the new season.

The 69-year-old actor was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, earlier this year. Kirron Kher has now started shooting for India's Got Talent, which she has been judging since its start. On the new season, Kirron Kher will be seen co-judging with rapper Badshah, actress Shilpa Shetty and lyricist Manoj Muntashir.

Shilpa shared a behind-the-scenes video from the set and wrote, "BTS on IGT. First day, first show with Kirron Kher and Badshah." In the video, Kirron Kher looked as beautiful as ever in a beige coloured saree with red border. She can be seen wearing a face shield. In the clip, Shilpa can be seen admiring Kirron Khers statement neck piece and jokingly asked the senior actress to adopt her so that she can inherit all of her jewellery. "I come to shootings only to see her jewellery," Shilpa can be heard saying in the clip, after which Kirron Kher laughs and says, "Don't be silly." Shilpa then continues to say, Mai to kehti hu adopt kar lo mujhe, Sikander (Kirron Kher and Anupam Kher's son) thodi pehnega ye (I am telling you, just adopt me, Sikander won't wear your jewellery)." To this Kirron Kher says, "Usko pehenni padi toh shayad wo bhi pehen lega...the other day I told him that I think I should sell some of my jewellery because tum shaadi to kar nhi rahe, he said, 'Don't you do it, my wife will wear it'."

Shilpa then turns the camera towards her and sends out a message to Sikander. Sikander Im taking away her jewellery.

Talking about the ninth season of the show, Kirron Kher told IANS, India's Got Talent has always been close to my heart. This being my 9th year with this prestigious talent reality show, returning as a jury member is a wonderful experience. It feels like I am coming back home.
November 25 : In the ongoing controversy, Kangana Ranaut has been summoned by the Delhi Legislative Assemblys Committee on Peace and Harmony over her outrageously offensive and derogatory remarks on social media against the Sikh community.

The panel headed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader and MLA Raghav Chadha reportedly said the committee has received multiple complaints on outrageously offensive and derogatory Instagram stories/posts posted by Kangana.

According to the complainants, the posts shared by the actress cite instances that hurt the religious sentiments of the Sikh community and have a tendency to disturb the peace and harmony in society. The complaints, according to the committee, stated that the Queen actress has allegedly called the Sikh community Khalistani terrorists, which led to unbearable humiliation for the community. The actor has been asked to appear on December 6.

An AAP statement read as, Given the gravity and the importance of all these issues in the NCT of Delhi, the committee on Peace and Harmony under the Chairmanship of MLA Raghav Chadha has summoned Ms. Kangana Ranaut to appear before the Committee so as to deliberate on the present issue in a more comprehensive and coherent manner. The summons were issued and she has been called to appear on 06.12.2021 at 12 pm.

Meanwhile, a new FIR was filed against Kangana in Mumbai on Tuesday for allegedly using derogatory language against the Sikh community on social media. Mumbai police on Tuesday registered the FIR against Kangana Ranaut, which was lodged at the suburban Khar police station a day after the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee (DSGMC) submitted a complaint against the actress.

The 34-year-old actress has been booked under section 295A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

Kangana took the FIR with a pinch of salt and reacted to it by sharing a throwback picture of herself on Instagram and expressed her reaction. The actress shared an old picture from a 2014 photoshoot, in which she can be seen posing with a glass of drink in her hand. The actress is dressed in a sultry black skirt with a thigh-high slit and a black bralette. Sharing the picture, she wrote, "Another day, another FIR. Just in case they come to arrest me. My mood at home.
San Francisco, Nov 25 : Popular virtual gaming platform Roblox has sued a YouTube creator it banned from the platform over harassment and sexual content, saying he amassed a "mob" that temporarily shut down its October developers conference.

According to The Verge, the Roblox Corporation filed a complaint against Benjamin Robert Simon, also known as Ruben Sim, for breaching its user contract and violating anti-hacking laws.

"Defendant Simon is the leader of a 'cybermob' that with malice, fraud, and oppression, commits and encourages unlawful acts designed to injure Roblox and its users," the suit claims, seeking $1.65 million in damages.

Polygon initially reported the existence of the California lawsuit. In it, Roblox said it banned Simon for attempting to upload a near-nude picture of himself, images of Adolf Hitler and a "sex game" that's forbidden on the kid-focused platform.

Simon also allegedly harassed other members of the platform, used racial and homophobic slurs and impersonated Roblox employees online, among other behaviour.

After the ban, the suit said he continued accessing Roblox using fake accounts, evading bans on his hardware and IP addresses and encouraging his roughly 760,000 YouTube followers to do the same.

The worst damage allegedly came during the Roblox Developers Conference in October of 2021.

Roblox said the conference was temporarily locked down while police and private security searched the facility and it incurred $50,000 in expenses securing the event and investigating the incident. It alleges that Simon committed fraud by falsely representing the existence of a terrorist threat and trying to scare users away from the event.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Telecom major Bharti Airtel on Thursday announced that it has successfully conducted India's first 5G trial in the 700 MHz band in partnership with Nokia.

Airtel has been allotted test spectrum in multiple bands by the government's Department of Telecommunications for the validation of 5G technology and use cases. The demonstration, which was conducted on the outskirts of Kolkata, was also the first 5G trial in Eastern India.

"Back in 2012, Airtel launched India's first 4G service in Kolkata. Today, we are delighted to conduct India's first 5G demo in the coveted 700 MHz band in the city to showcase the power of this technology standard," Randeep Singh Sekhon, CTO - Bharti Airtel, said in a statement.

"We believe that with the right pricing of 5G spectrum in the upcoming auctions, India can unlock the digital dividend and build a truly connected society with broadband for all," Sekhon added.

Leveraging the enhanced propagation characteristics of the 700 MHz band, Airtel and Nokia were able to achieve high speed wireless broadband network coverage of 40 km between two 3GPP standard 5G sites in real life conditions.

Airtel used equipment from Nokia's 5G portfolio, which included Nokia AirScale radios and standalone (SA) core.

"5G deployment using 700Mhz spectrum is helping communications service providers across the world to cost-effectively provide mobile broadband in remote areas, where typically it is challenging for them to set up the network infrastructure," said Naresh Asija, VP and Head of Bharti CT, Nokia.

"Nokia is at the forefront in the development of the global 5G ecosystem, and we look forward to supporting Airtel on its 5G journey," Asija added.
Chennai, Nov 25 : Tamil Nadu Police have launched a crackdown on pharmacies and medical stores that sell sedatives to children and youth.

The state police held a meeting of pharmacy and medical store owners and directed them not to sell sedatives to youth as part of its move in cracking down on drug use among students.

A statement from the state police said it is embarking on this mission following several complaints across the state on sedatives and psychotropic drugs being sold without prescription.

The Tamil Nadu police as part of its crackdown under the 'Drive against Drugs' have found that several school children are taking sedatives and some medical shops have been selling these to children and youth and earning profit.

Tamil Nadu Director General Of Police, C. Sylendra Babu had himself directly ordered a crackdown on medical shops and pharmacies that sell sedatives to children, and all district superintendents of police are directed to constitute special teams under the leadership of an Assistant Commissioner of Deputy Superintendent of Police in all tehsils.

Police officials have directed the medical shop owners across the state not to sell sedatives, psychotropic drugs and tablets without prescription from registered medical practitioners. The police have directed medical shop owners to prominently display the sedatives that are not sold without proper prescription.

The police have also directed the pharmacies and medical stores to install CCTV cameras in their shops and to record the details of the children and youngsters, including their phone numbers and contact details of their residences and parents. They must also record the identity card details of the buyers in a record book that is to be maintained at the shops.

The police have informed the pharmacy owners across the state that criminal action would be taken against them if they violate the directive.

The state police have ordered that sedatives should not be sold in bulk under any circumstances and directed the pharmacy owners to inform the police about anyone who was insisting on sale of sedatives in bulk without proper prescription.

The police said even with a prescription, sedatives must not be given beyond a quantity and have asked the pharmacy owners that the police would provide the quantity that can be sold with a prescription.
Mumbai, Nov 25 : Actor Aftab Shivdasani is receiving praise for his performance in his latest web series 'Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story'.

While the show, starring Kay Kay Menon, has given Aftab a chance to showcase his skill as an actor, he says that for the longest time he did not get a chance to do so as more often he was getting typecast.

Starting his career as a child actor with the film 'Mr India' he has appeared in other films like 'Awwal Number', 'Shahenshah' and 'ChaalBaaz'. After making his debut in Bollywood as a lead actor with 'Mast', Aftab was mostly seen in comedy films like 'Awara Paagal Deewana' and 'Hungama' to name a few.

However, with a character like Aditya Singh Rathore in 'Poision 2' last year and now his portrayal of Vijay Kumar in the espionage thriller 'Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story', the audience has got a chance to see a new side of Aftab.

Asked about if he made any strategy on choosing certain kinds of projects henceforth, Aftab told IANS: "I would say that I am still the same actor who is trying to be the better version of himself with each passing day, it is all about the opportunity. I have always looked for an opportunity and made the most out of it. I have been working for the last 22 years and most of my life I am being stereotyped until these two web series happened to me. I think it is just that I had to wait longer to get these chances." He went on adding, "Having said that I am a big believer of destiny and timing. For all these years, if I did not get a chance to act a character like Vijay Kumar that I did in 'Special Ops 1.5', it was meant to happen that way. So I have no problem with the past and I made my peace with it. Now, I know how I am preparing myself for greater opportunities. And that has nothing to do with genres, tomorrow again if I am offered a good comedy, I will show my interest as much as that for action or thriller." In the show, the actor played Himmat Singh's best friend named Vijay Kumar who is also an intelligent agent.

As he was working with the cast and crew for the first time Aftab shares how his friendship with Kay Kay reflected on their on-screen equation.

"I met Kay Kay first time when we were heading for the shoot. You know we shot post the first Unlock process started. So after we reached Ukraine, for 15 days we had to stay in quarantine in our hotel. Every day, all of us including Neeraj (creator of the show) will do calls from the landline and endlessly chat about everything...cinema, things happening around the world, or life in general. We bond over a lot of things and that somewhere reflected in the on-screen friendship between Vijay Kumar and Himmat Singh." The show 'Special Ops 1.5: The Himmat Story' is a prequel to the main espionage thriller that was released last year. The show, also features Gautami Kapoor, Parmeet Sethi, Kali Prasad Mukherjee, Vijay Vikram Singh, Aadil Khan and it streams on Disney+ Hotstar.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Two people -- a storekeeper and a contractual staff -- working at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) were arrested by the the Economic Offence wing (EOW) of Delhi Police for embezzeling government funds to the tune of Rs 13.80 crore.

According to an official on Thursday, Medical Superintendent at Rajender Prasad Eye Centre, AIIMS, Delhi, Dr Anoop Daga, had lodged a complaint regarding embezzlement of government funds to the tune of Rs 5 crore (raised to Rs 13.85 crore during the investigation) on account of purchase of linen items. The items were never supplied actually but payment was released to the supplier firm Sneh Enterprises.

After preliminary enquiry, a case under IPC sections 409, 420, 467, 468, 471 and 120-B was registered at the EOW police station and the investigation taken up. The police said the scrutiny of the e-way bills revealed that vehicles shown as used for delivery of those goods to AIIMS, never delivered the same at AIIMS Delhi on any of the dates mentioned on e-way bills.

Scrutiny of GPS logs of the vehicles appearing on the e-way bills showed their locations out of Delhi. "The first accused, identified as Bijender Kumar, was a storekeeper at AIIMS. He prepared the forged purchase performa, supply order, inspection note and secured the release of payments in favour of Sneh Enterprises," the police said.

The second accused Naveen Kumar was a contractual employee and was posted as Programme Assistant in the office of Dr Atul Kumar, Ex Chief Dr Rajender Prasad Eye Center, AIIMS. Indents for the goods were issued through the official ID of Naveen Kumar and same were also verified by him. All the manual and digital records maintained at AIIMS for the purpose of such supplies revealed criminal misdeeds of the accused in connivance with accused firm.

During investigation it was revealed that accused Bijender and Naveen both, issued forged supply orders in connivance with the accused firm. "Bills were raised by the accused Bijender and got approved himself. After getting these bills of 'sham deliveries' sanctioned, cheated amount used to be transferred to the account of firm namely," the police said.

Both the accused were arrested on Wednesday. "Following arrest, the accused were produced before the designated Court. Further investigation of the case is in progress," the police added.
Patna, Nov 25 : Super cop Shivdeep Lande, Bihar cadre IPS officer, will be returning to Bihar after five year's deputation in his home state of Maharashtra, a Bihar police official said.

Lande is currently posted as joint commissioner of police in Mumbai crime branch. He is expected to take charge in Bihar in the first week of December.

Lande's track record was so impressive in Bihar that every one, especially chief minister Nitish Kumar, wanted him back in the state. Though, the post that awaits him is not known but as per sources, the way Nitish Kumar dealt with liquor mafias in last few weeks after series of liquor tragedies in Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, West Champaran and Samastipur, it seems he would be absorbed in the liquor prohibition department.

During his eight months' tenure as City SP of Patna, he cracked several cases -- fake currency notes, drug rackets, fake cosmetic syndicates etc.

A garment merchant was killed in Ashok Rajpath for extortion. Due to fear, a majority of businessmen shut their shops. But Lande arrested the accused and thrashed them in front of Patna Medical College and Hospital (PMCH). His swift action emboldened the shop owners who reopened their shops.

During his tenure as SP of Rohtas, he managed to stop the activities of sand mafias in the state. He was deployed as SP of Araria district as well.
Dharwad : Nov 25 (IANS) The Health Department in Karnataka is on high alert as the number of medical students testing positive for Covid-19 at a medical college in Dharwad rose to 66 on Thursday.

About 50 of students tested positive on Thursday morning, while the test results of another 100 are awaited.

All the students are pursuing their MBBS at the SDM Medical College in Dharwad city. Sources said that about 200 students attended a get together in the premises of the college a few days ago. All the students had reportedly taken both doses of the vaccine and were showing no symptoms of Covid-19.

Deputy Commissioner Nitesh Patil, who visited the campus on Thursday, said that of the 300 students tested so far, the reports of 66 have returned positive.

"There are 400 students on the campus and we will know the test results of the rest by the evening," he said.

There are about 3,000 staff working at the medical college, and all of them would be tested. Whoever tests positive will be quarantined and treated, Patil added.

"We have already sealed two hostels, and the students whose test results are awaited have been quarantined. We are initiating all possible measures to prevent the infection from spreading. The district health officer is here, and the management of the college has also been cooperative," he said.

Patil further stated that the infection is within the cluster of students and it has not spread outside. "We will control it within this cluster," he said.

The authorities are sanitising the entire campus.

The government and the health department are repeatedly making appeals to the people not to neglect social distancing and to use masks at public places.

It may be recalled that 32 students of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Kodagu district bordering Kerala had tested positive for Covid in the last week of October.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Smartphone brand OnePlus is reportedly planning to launch a new smartphone OnePlus RTA in India this December along with Buds Z2 truly wireless earphones.

The OnePlus RT is said to be a rebranded OnePlus 9RT that launched in China last month.

The source claims that the OnePlus RT will be available in Hacker Black and Nano Silver colours in India, whereas the Buds Z2 will come in Obsidian Black and Pearl White colours, reports GSMArena.

OnePlus RT is likely feature a 6.62-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate.

It may be powered by the Snapdragon 888 SoC paired with up to 12B RAM and up to 256GB of storage.

The device is likely to feature a triple rear camera setup with a 50MP primary sensor, 16MP wide-angle lens, and a 2MP macro lens. Up front, the phone may house a 16MP selfie camera. It may pack a 4,500mAh battery with 65W fast charging support.

Meanwhile, OnePlus Buds Z2 with feature 11mm dynamic drivers and comes with Bluetooth v5.2 connectivity. The TWS earbuds come with ANC support to reduce noise up to 40dB. There are three microphones for ANC as well as voice calling.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : China has recently developed new cold-resistant clothing and equipment for plateau operations to support border defence troops stationed in high-altitude regions to overcome the harsh winter.

Upgrading clothing and equipment for a second consecutive year shows the focus of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) on its border defence troops' quality of life and combat capability amid a border standoff with India, Global Times reported.

Ten types of new clothing and equipment, developed by the Central Military Commission (CMC) Logistics Support Department, are being delivered to the border defence frontline, the PLA Daily reported on Thursday.

Containing high technologies, these warm, lightweight clothing and equipment are tailored by military and civilian experts and renowned companies, and will provide strong logistical support for officers and soldiers who train and conduct missions in harsh environments, the report said.

Since last year's commissioning of customised cold-resistant clothing and equipment including sleeping bags, down training coats and down cotton-padded jackets and pants, the CMC Logistics Support Department continued researching and developed this year's new equipment, including a long version of a cotton-padded coat, a thermos flask, anti-fragment goggles, electrically- heated gloves, kneecaps and shoe-pads, and a camouflage suit for snipers.

The new coat uses optimized thermal material and an improved design, so it is warmer and more practical in tactical moves.

Using lightweight, high strength titanium alloy, the thermos flask has a smart display of water temperature on its cap, the report said.

Capable of resisting salt haze, sand and wind, the goggles can be used in minus 40 to minus 55 degrees Celsius and protect its user from shock, strong light and ultraviolet rays.

The electrically-heated gloves allow the users to shoot weapons with the gloves on, kneecaps can protect body joints and the shoe-pads are designed to be comfortable and easy to use. Graphene and low temperature-resistant batteries are used to make them.

The sniper camouflage utilizes a new type of paint and a special structural design, making it more undetectable to the naked eye and infrared detection, the report said.

The second consecutive year that plateau border defence troops received new cold-resistant clothing and equipment shows that the PLA pays great attention to the troops' quality of life under harsh environments, which will also contribute to combat capabilities, a retired PLA officer who served in Southwest China's high-altitude Xizang Autonomous Region told the Global Times on Thursday, requesting anonymity.

It is part of the Chinese military's modernisation. Logistical upgrades were not as frequent in previous years, the veteran said.

The living conditions of PLA plateau border defence troops have attracted the attention of Chinese netizens, particularly after the border conflict with India in 2020 and the standoff since, the report said.
London, Nov 25 : Ride-hailing major Uber will halt its cabs in most of Belgium on Friday after a court ruling that extended an earlier 2015 order to also cover professional drivers providing its ride-hailing service.

According to TechCrunch, Uber was "studying the detail of the ruling to decide whether to appeal the decision with the country's Supreme Court".

"This decision was made based on outdated regulations written in a time before smartphones, which the government has promised and failed to reform for the last seven years," Uber's country chief, Laurent Slits, was quoted as saying in the report.

Uber faced a temporary suspension in Brussels in September, which it called "exceptional and unprecedented." "Current regulations were drafted in 1995 and include very outdated measures such as the prohibition for drivers to use a smartphone," Uber had said in a blog post.

"As a result, drivers who use the Uber app to drive you to your destination receive fines and risk having their vehicles taken away. This is not acceptable in 2021".

Small number of Uber drivers will be allowed to offer ride-hailing services in a Flemish region of the country.

Back in March, the local government in Brussels banned Uber drivers from picking up rides via smartphones and geolocation.

The company called the government's March order "mistaken".

In the UK, Uber was recently forced to recognise drivers as workers after losing employment challenges at the country's Supreme Court.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) carried out raids at multiple locations in Kashmir on Thursday in the Al-Qaeda case of Uttar Pradesh's Lucknow.

The agency said that they conducted searches at five locations in Shopian and Budgam districts of Kashmir. "During the searches conducted today, large numbers of incriminating documents and digital devices have been seized," NIA stated.

The case pertains to Umar Halmandi, an Al-Qaeda operative, who along with other accused persons, had been radicalizing and recruiting vulnerable persons for Al-Qaeda in Indian Subcontinent and trying to raise Ansaar Gajwatul Hind to carry out terrorist acts for which they had already arranged arms and explosive substances.

The case was initially registered on July 11, 2021 by Uttar Pradesh and NIA took over the case on July 29, 2021.

In July, Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad arrested two operatives of Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind. It was alleged that the two were planning a series of blasts in Uttar Pradesh around Independence Day.

The arrested accused were identified as Minaz Ahmad, 32, arrested from Kakori outskirts of Lucknow and Masiruddin, 50, from Madioan. The sleuths also recovered improvised explosive device in the form of a pressure cooker bomb along with a 9 mm countrymade pistol from Minaz's house.

The arrested accused were connected to the Ansar Ghazwat-ul-Hind for the past one year.

It is alleged that the two accused were in touch with Umar Halmandi, a listed Al-Qaeda operative based somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. On Umar's directions, the duo was planning blasts in the state.

Umar is handling Al-Qaeda's operations in the Indian sub-continent region.

The Al Qaeda's India sub-continent module was announced on September 3, 2014, by Al Zawahiri and Maulana Asim Omar was made its leader.

Asim Umar had roots in Sambal district of Uttar Pradesh and was killed in 2019 in Afghanistan. Thereafter, this module was being run by Umar Halmandi from Peshawar/Quetta area.

Halmandi was radicalising and then recruiting men from Uttar Pradesh.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Chinese threat groups are likely to soon collect encrypted data with long-term utility, expecting to eventually decrypt them with quantum computers, a new report by Booz Allen Hamilton has warned.

By the end of the 2020s, Chinese threat groups will likely collect data that enables quantum simulators to discover new economically valuable materials, pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Quantum-assisted AI, meanwhile, is unlikely to emerge or influence adversary behavior in the foreseeable future.

Quantum computing is evolving from the theoretical to the practical. Today, several quantum computers at global institutions can complete certain tasks orders of magnitude faster than any classical supercomputer.

Although quantum computers' current abilities are more demonstrative than immediately useful, their trajectory suggests that in the coming decades quantum computers will likely revolutionize numerous industries-from pharmaceuticals to materials science-and eventually undermine all popular current public-key encryption methods, and plausibly boost the speed and power of artificial intelligence (AI).

What's more, China has recently emerged as a major player in quantum computing, the report said.

Many organisational leaders and chief information security officers (CISO) lack insight into the practical importance of quantum computing and how to manage related risks., the report said.

They don't know how and when the technology might become useful-and how it might shape the behavior of threat actors such as China, a persistent cyber adversary of government and commercial organizations globally and a major developer of quantum-computing technology, the report said.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : The Telangana government on Thursday announced the setting up of a multi-industry supported innovation and technology hub for flow chemistry in Hyderabad, to ensure greater incorporation of its techniques during pharma R&D and greater adoption of continuous synthesis for manufacturing of active pharma ingredients (APIs).

A consortium agreement for setting up the centre of excellence on flow chemistry was signed in the presence of Industries Minister K.T Rama Rao and Secretary Jayesh Ranjan.

Dr Reddy's Laboratories Ltd Co-Chairman and Managing Director G.V. Prasad, Laurus Labs CEO Dr Satyanarayana Chava, Director, Life Sciences & Pharma and Chief Executive Officer, Hyderabad Pharma City, Shakthi Nagappan, and Dr Reddy's Institute of Life Sciences Director Dr Srinivas Oruganti signed the agreement.

This hub would function as a Center of Excellence (CoE) and is being set-up at Dr Reddy's Institute of Life Sciences, a research institute of global eminence, and will receive funding and patronage from Dr Reddy's Laboratories Ltd and Laurus Labs.

Research activities at the CoE will benefit from the scientific mentorship and support from world-renowned scientists like Prof Goverdhan Mehta (University of Hyderabad) and international advisors such as Prof Steven Ley (University of Cambridge, UK), Prof Oliver Kappe (University of Graz, Austria), and Prof Shu Kobayashi (University of Tokyo).

The Telangana government will facilitate strategic support and scale up for the hub by encouraging more industries join the consortium and benefit from it.

K.T. Rama Rao said that this hub would be an enabler for the pharma industry in India to make a paradigm shift towards incorporation of modern approaches from R&D to manufacturing and migration to greener and sustainable processes.

"We remain committed to the growth of life sciences sector and consolidating our leadership position. Government of Telangana jointly with DRILS has envisaged establishment of this hub to support pharma companies in the city build scientific capabilities, support process development and also training," said Jayesh Ranjan.

Nagappan said that CoE is another milestone in accelerating the growth of Life Sciences sector in the state. This is part of the larger effort of the state become the $100 billion life sciences ecosystem by 2030.

Prasad said they were happy to participate in this collaborative effort spearheaded by the Telangana government to bring the latest technologies in flow chemistry to the API and intermediate industry and to the state. "As an early adopter of sustainability as a core value, we look forward to contributing to the creation of deep local expertise in sustainable and green manufacturing processes." Hyderabad is regarded as the life sciences capital of India and an important life sciences hub in Asia-Pacific. With over 800 pharmaceutical companies, the city hosts the highest number of USFDA approved facilities globally and contributes to about 35 per cent of India's overall pharmaceutical production.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Massive protests on Friday in Delhi, and other places, will mark one year of what the farmers called as "historic struggle" to demand repeal of the three contentious farm laws.

The farmers' movement had begun with a call of 'Dilli Chalo' on November 26-27 last year not just protesting the three farm laws but also putting forth several other demands.

The Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), a consortium of 40-odd farmers' organisations, said in a release: "The fact that such a long struggle has to be waged is a clear reflection on the insensitivity and arrogance of India's Government towards its toiling citizens." "Over the course of twelve months of one of the largest and longest protest movements across the world and in history, crores of people took part in the movement which spread to every state, every district and every village of India," SKM said.

A meeting of Samyukta Kisan Morcha will be held on November 27 at Singhu Morcha. In the meeting, the farm unions will take a decision regarding the further course of action, the release said.

After an announcement by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last Friday to repeal the three farm laws, the cabinet had on Wednesday approved its repeal and also said the formality in the Parliament will be done at the earliest.

Stating that apart from the Government's decision and Cabinet ratification of repeal of the three anti-farmer laws, the movement achieved several victories for the farmers, common citizens and the nation at large, the SKM statement said: "The movement created a sense of unified identity for the farmers, cutting across regional, religious or caste divisions, farmers are discovering a newfound sense of dignity and pride in their identity as farmers, and their assertion as citizens. It has deepened the roots of democracy and secularism in India." The SKM expressed its deep appreciation to all the participants and supporters of the movement, and reiterated once again that the repeal of the three anti-farmer laws is only the first major victory of the movement.

"SKM is awaiting the fulfillment of the remaining legitimate demands of the protesting farmers," it said.

The still-pending demands of the 'Kisan Andolan' include legal right for MSP on all agricultural produce, withdrawal of Electricity Amendments Bill, keeping farmers out of penal provisions of legal regulation related to Delhi air quality, withdrawal of cases against thousands of protesting farmers and dismissal and arrest of Ajay Mishra Teni, the MoS Home, in connection with the Lakhimpur Kheri incident.

On the call of Samyukta Kisan Morcha, to mark one year of the historic farm movement with massive protests at Delhi morchas and the capitals and district headquarters of distant states, farmers and workers are responding in huge numbers, the statement said.

Thousands of farmers have started arriving at the various morchas in Delhi. In states which are far away from Delhi, preparations are underway to mark the event with rallies, dharnas and other programmes.

A massive Kisan-Mazdoor Mahapanchayat is scheduled to be held in Mumbai's Azad Maidan on November 28.

The Mahapanchayat will be organised under the joint banner of Samyukta Shetkari Kamgaar Morcha (SSKM) comprising over 100 organisations, and will see the participation of farmers, workers and common citizens from across Maharashtra, it said.

The SKM has reiterated its demand raised in its letter to the Prime Minister, that the Union government should announce compensation and rehabilitation to the families of the farmers martyred in the movement, and allocate land at the Singhu morcha to build a memorial in their name.
Chandigarh, Nov 25 : Over 150 Vice Chancellors of universities from the North Zone will be attending a two-day conference from Friday to deliberate on sustainable development goals through higher education institutions for ensuring equality and sustainable society.

The meeting is being organised by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) in collaboration with the United Nations, which has set the agenda, and is being hosted by Himachal Pradesh-based Shoolini University.

While about 50 Vice Chancellors have confirmed physical participation, others would be joining the conference online.

Addressing the media here, AIU President and Vice Chancellor, AMET University, Chennai, Col (Dr) G Thiruvasagam said the agenda of the meeting was part of the United Nations charter for implementation of four Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

These aim to achieve gender equality, reducing inequality within and among countries, building sustainable cities and communities and ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns in higher education institutions. These will be the main focus of the conference.

Shoolini University Vice Chancellor Atul Khosla said the agenda of the conference was in line with Shoolini University's focus on Sustainable Development Goals and in particular, the Himalayan ecology and environment.

The conference will be inaugurated by Himachal Pradesh Chief Secretary Ram Subhag Singh, while Shoolini University Chancellor P.K. Khosla will be the guest of honour.
Gurugram:Deepal Perera ,Richard Nuttall ,Ashok Pathirage ,Dimuthu Tennakoon and V.Ravindram during Srilankan Airlines press conference at Gurugram in Haryana on Thursday 25,Nov,2021 .(Photo: Qamar Sibtain/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Gurugram:Ashok Pathirage Chairman(C) SriLankan Airlines with CCO Richard Nuttall(L) during a press conference at Gurugram in Haryana on Thursday 25,Nov,2021 .(Photo: Qamar Sibtain/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, Nov 25 : Healthy passenger flow from India as well as reduced Covid restrictions will lead to more flights between India and Sri Lanka, said airline major SriLankan Airlines.

The airline is looking at servicing around 5 million Indian tourists to the island nation in the next 3 years or more, and plans to connect smaller but highly growth oriented destinations in India to Sri Lanka.

To achieve the number, the airline might exponentially increase the weekly frequencies to about 250-300 in the next 3 years or more.

In a conversation with IANS, SriLankan Airlines Chairman, Ashok Pathirage, said that during the pre-Covid era, the airline operated over 120 flights per week to nine cities in India.

"At present, we are operating 54 flights per week, ferrying about 1,500 passengers per day from India to Sri Lanka.

"We expect this number to gradually increase, but it might take one year's time for us to reach the pre-Covid level of flight frequencies to India." According to Pathirage, accelerated vaccination drives along with lower Covid numbers should allow for more tourists from India to visit the island country.

"India is our biggest market, and we are dedicated to re-establish operations to full scale where the Indian market is concerned.

"We continued to operate both passenger and cargo flights to and from India even during periods of lockdown and despite many global travel restrictions." Besides, he said the airline is ready to take on the upcoming competition from Tata Sons-backed Air India.

Furthermore, he said that the airline has launched flights to new destinations including Nairobi, Seoul, Moscow, Frankfurt, Sydney, Kathmandu, and Paris during 2020 and 2021.

"We plan to add more international destinations including in India." "The trends like 'revenge travel' are some of the reasons for the rise in passenger numbers. This demand is sustainable and here to only grow further." (Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in)
Nagpur, Nov 25 : The much awaited annual political affair for the people of Vidarbha, the staging of Winter Session of Maharashtra Legislature which was scheduled to be held in the first week in December, has been finally shifted to state capital, Mumbai, commencing from December 22 to 29.

The state cabinet took the decision on Thursday in Mumbai after days of uncertainty.

The second capital of Maharashtra, Nagpur, which lost the status of Capital of then Madhya Pradesh after the formation of Maharashtra with merger of Bombay State, Madhya Pradesh and Hyderabad State in 1953, was bestowed upon the honour of holding one session of newly created Maharashtra state every year.

A historic Nagpur Agreement was signed on September 28, 1953 by the then leaders and protagonist of Vidarbha who had submitted their demand for Vidarbha State before the State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) headed by Justice Fazal Ali which suggested an alternative of giving importance to Nagpur and Vidarbha region and holding Assembly Session here.

The Winter Session of Legislature thus not being held in two successive years in 2020 and 2021.

In short, the MVA government has not visited Nagpur for holding Winter Session of State Assembly.
Chandigarh, Nov 25 : The Haryana Cabinet, presided over by Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, on Thursday accorded approval to the state government to enter into an MoU with the National Institute for Smart Government (NISG) to enhance and improve in-house capacities of departments.

The agreement will be valid for five years from the date of signing, and may be extended further up to five years by mutual consent of both the parties.

As per the pact, the state government and NISG may nominate coordinators as nodal officers to represent the parties and promote interface so as to plan, implement, monitor and review the schedules of activities from time to time.

The NISG is a not-for-profit company set up in 2002 by the Centre on the public-private-partnership (PPP) model with Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology as its Chairman.

--IANS vg/vd

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New Delhi, Nov 25 : Since 1990, more than 1,500 Jammu and Kashmir policemen have laid down their lives while fighting Pakistan-sponsored militancy in the Himalayan region. Most of the slain cops have been locals and have fought the ultras valiantly.

Being a policeman in J&K is not an easy job. Everyone who opts for a job in the police in the Union Territory, especially in Kashmir, is aware of the dangers he may face. But the local Kashmiri men and women have proven it beyond doubt that they are brave and courageous. Them joining police force is ample proof of their resolve to fight the adversary, who has left no stone unturned to convert J&K into a hell.

On November 22, President Ram Nath Kovind conferred Shaurya Chakra to three J&K policemen. Late Sub-Inspector Imran Hussain Tak and Special Police Officer (SPO), late Ashiq Hussain Malik, were awarded posthumously, while the third J&K policeman, head constable Subash Chander, received the award in person from the President.

Tak displayed heroic action, indomitable spirit and exceptional bravery while fighting the militants in Zakura area of Srinagar outskirts in 2017. He killed a top militant commander and arrested another despite sustaining bullet injuries. He laid down his life for the nation. His wife Gulnaz Akhtar received the award from the President in New Delhi.

"President Kovind presented Shaurya Chakra to ShriImran Hussain Tak (Posthumous), Sub Inspector, J&K Police. He displayed heroic action, indomitable spirit, exceptional bravery, utmost commitment to duty in fighting with terrorists and made supreme sacrifice for the nation," the office of President tweeted.

Special Police Officer (SPO) of J&K Police Ashiq Hussain Malik displayed the highest degree of courage during an anti-militancy operation in Anantnag in 2018. He killed four heavily armed militants before laying down his life. His parents Maqbool Malik and Shahzado Bano received the award from President Kovind.

"President Kovind presents Shaurya Chakra to ShriAshiq Hussain Malik (Posthumous), Special Police Official, Jammu & Kashmir. He displayed exceptional & conspicuous bravery, raw courage and commitment to duty in fighting with terrorists and made supreme sacrifice for the nation," read another tweet from the President's office.

The third policeman, head constable Subash Chander, was conferred by Shaurya Chakra by the President in person. Chander was deployed at a joint checkpoint at Kralhar in north Kashmir's Baramulla district during Urban Local Bodies elections.

During checking, an SUV was stopped and the passengers asked to prove their identity. One of the men in the vehicle took out an AK-47 rifle and fired on Chander, who by then had taken a defensive position. There were eight others in the vehicle, making it difficult for the policeman to engage the militant. In the melee, civilians attempted to flee but the two militants - including the first attacker - tried to take them hostage.

The President Office tweeted: "President Kovindpresents Shaurya Chakra to Shri Subash Chander, Head Constable, J&K Police. While safeguarding the lives of four civilians in an extremely dangerous situation, he displayed extreme bravery and eliminated two Pakistani terrorists." Saga of sacrifices

Despite facing intimidations, life threats and difficult situations, the policemen have not succumbed and have been an integral part of the fight against militancy in Jammu and Kashmir.

During the past three decades, from special police officers to DIG-level officers, many have lost their lives. In 2004, a Deputy Inspector General of Police was shot dead outside a mosque in Srinagar. In June 2017, Deputy Superintendent of Police Ayub Pandit was lynched by a mob outside Jamia Masjid in Srinagar's old city when he was on night duty in the holy month of Ramadan.

On June 20, 2017, Station House Officer Feroz Dar was killed with his five associates in a militant ambush at Achabal town in south Kashmir's Anantnag district.

In August 2018, 45-year-old police sub-inspector Mohammad Ashraf Dar came home to celebrate Eid with his family and was killed in his kitchen in front of his one-year-old daughter.

In October 2018, sub-inspector Imtiyaz Ahmad Mir was killed by militants when he was on way to his home in Pulwama district.

In June this year, policeman, Fayaz Ahmed, his wife, Raja Begum and daughter, Rafia Akhtar, were shot dead by ultras at Hari Parigam village in Pulwama.

The victims were home when the militants barged in and opened indiscriminate fire. In the same month, police officer, Parvez Ahmad Dar, was shot dead by militants in front of a mosque in Nowgam area on Srinagar outskirts. He was going for the maghrib(evening) prayers when the ultras targeted him.

In September this year, a probationary sub-inspector, Arshid Ahmad, was shot dead from point-blank range by a militant at Khanyar in Srinagar's old city.

In a nutshell, J&K policemen have been the soft targets for the militants and whenever ultras have got a chance to hit them, they have done it. But these brave men have remained steadfast in their resolve to eliminate the militancy from J&K and have been successful in their mission. They have been at the forefront in the fight against militancy.

Daring Acts J&K policemen have led from front to fight the militants. Soon after the JeM militants carried out a suicide attack at Pulwama on February 14, 2019, leaving 40 paramilitary CRPF men dead, security forces launched a counter offensive against the ultras. In an encounter with the JeM militants then Deputy Inspector-General of Police, South Kashmir range, Amit Kumar, sustained gunshot injuries in his abdomen while leading the operation.

In March 2017, militants ambushed a cavalcade of senior police officers in south Kashmir. The ultras travelling in a car, appeared from a narrow lane and started firing at the cavalcade of Superintendent of Police, Pulwama, Rayees Mohammad Bhat, Superintendent of Police, Awantipora, Mohammad Zahid and Additional Superintendent of Police, Pulwama, Chandan Kohli at Padgampora in Pulwama.

The daring IPS officers retaliated and killed two militants on the spot.

After the Pakistan sponsored militancy broke out in J&K, policemen were pressured by various militant organisations to tender their resignations and call it quits. But most of these brave men and women didn't succumb to pressure. They carried on with their jobs and also inspired coming generations to follow their footsteps. They have shown unparalleled courage. From maintaining law and order to providing assistance in disasters and fighting militancy J&K Police have proven its dedication to serve and secure the lives of the people. They have remained available 24x7 to ensure a safe environment for the people.

Many commanders of the central armed forces have always reiterated that fighting militancy in the Union Territory without J&K Police would not have been possible. The robust intelligence network established by the local policemen has thwarted every attempt of the neighbouring country to disrupt the process of peace and development in the Himalayan region. J&K Policemen along with other security forces have neutralised every threat. Militancy in J&K is on its last legs due to the sacrifices and efforts of the security forces, including local policemen.

Addressing the Police Commemoration Day-2021, J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha had said: "I salute the families of the martyrs and assure them that the J & K Government will always stand by them. My sincere homage to the police personnel, who laid down their lives while fighting terrorism in J&K." J&K Police origin

The Jammu and Kashmir Police force came into existence in 1873 with one police officer known as Kotwal and 14 thanedars for Srinagar city. This police force would control crime and take care of law and order situations. It was in 1913 that the state requisitioned the service of an Imperial Police (IP) officer on deputation and appointed Mr Broadway as the first Inspector General of Police in June 1913. Since then the Police in J&K has undergone several re-organisations. The employee strength of Police in J&K in the year 1889-90 was 1,040, which further rose to 1,570 in 1903 and 40 years later, in 1943-44, the strength of J&K Police was 3,179. At present, it has exceeded the 90,000 mark.
Kolkata, Nov 25 : The battle between the state government and the governor continued as he questioned the claims of investment in the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) made by the Mamata Banerjee government in the last five years.

Asking the state government to release a white paper on the investment the governor said - "Sought information and White Paper #BGBS five editions @MamataOfficial as tall claims of "resounding success" are belied by ground reality." In a two-page letter written to the chief minister, Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar said, "Tall claims made as regards the "resounding success of BGBS are apparently not in sync with ground reality or official data available. In such a scenario, towards generating confidence for investment, a White Paper on all the five editions of BGBS would render the situation crystal clear".

"I am sure you will bestow attention to this and make available earliest the information sought from this end as regards the five editions of BGBS and come out with a White Paper on the same," he added.

"You would concede that for attracting investment, it is essential that governance is in accord with constitutional prescriptions and rule of law with due concern for human rights and democratic values. All these constitute transparency and accountability. On all these counts as is felt in all quarters, there is need for massive uplifting," the said.

He said that he had written a letter to the government on August 25, 2020 asking for information regarding the five editions of the Bengal Global Business Summit detailing: "Year wise amount spent since 2016 in holding Bengal Global Business Summit. Names of the agency/agencies through which spending has been made for organising BGBS. Names of Event Companies for BGBS and whether payment was made directly or through FICCI: Number of MoUs signed investment and jobs promised in each of BGBS annual events since 2016; Achievement's due each BGBS event since 2016 as regards actual investment made, and jobs created?" "Unfortunately, this information has so far not been made available, now for over a year. This is not in consonance with constitutional prescription under Article 167 of the Constitution. I am constrained also to indicate that the assurances held by you in your communication dated 8 October, 2021 have not fructified," the governor said.

"Neither the information sought under Article 167 of the Constitution, including as regards Bengal Global Business Summit has been imparted, nor the Chief Secretary, the Home Secretary and the DGP have called on me," he added.
New Delhi/Srinagar, Nov 25 : In August this year, top army and police officers met the parents of the active militants in south Kashmirs Shopian district. They urged them to persuade their wards to shun arms and choose life over death.

General Officer Commanding (GOC) of Srinagar-based 15 Corps, Lt General D.P. Pandey, GOC Victor Force, Major General Rashim Bali, and Inspector General of Police, Kashmir, Vijay Kumar, interacted with 83 families of active militants.

It was for the first time in 30 years of militancy in J&K that top officers of the security establishments met the kith and kin of active ultras. They assured the family members of all possible assistance to the terrorists who shun militancy.

The move did help as some families were able to convince their wards to drop the guns. They came back and are alive. But the ones who remained adamant to pursue the agenda of their handlers are getting killed in encounters and shootouts in the Valley.

On November 24, three TRF militants - Mehraan Yaseen Shalla of Jamalata Srinagar, Arafat Ahmad Sheikh of Nikloora Litter Pulwama and Manzoor Ahmad Mir of Babhar Pulwama - were killed in a shootout with the security forces at Rambagh in Srinagar.

According to police records, Mehran Yaseen was involved in several terror crime cases including grenade attack at Barbar Shah Srinagar on June 26 this year in which one civilian Mudasir Ahmad Bhat of Hanjigund Beerwah was killed and three others sustained injuries.

Mehran was involved in the killing of Meeran Ali Sheikh at Bulbul Lanker Nawa Kadal on July 21, 2021, and of probationary sub-inspector Arshad Ahmad at Khanyar on September 12 this year. He was also involved in the killing of school principal Supinder Kour and teacher Deepak Chand of Government Higher Secondary School, Khankah Noorbagh in Srinagar, on October 7, 2021.

His another aide killed in the shootout - Arafat Ahmad - was also involved in several terror crime cases, including the killing of a non-local labourer at Litter area in Pulwama in south Kashmir on October 16 this year.

Another slain ultra - Manzoor Ahmad - was involved in transportation of foreign militants from south to central/north Kashmir and vice-versa through his strong OGW network.

The three militants shot dead by the security forces in Srinagar, according to the police, were hardcore ultras, and were on a mission to disrupt the normal life by throwing grenades and killing innocents. They were young and could have achieved anything in their lives. But they chose death over life.

When the top commanders of the security forces met the family members of active militants in Shopian two months ago, they told them that societal and family support can wean these boys away from the path of violence and death.

They informed them that the security forces were ready to accept surrenders by militants even during the active operations as they were focusing on the militants without weapons, who sustain and handle terror activities.

"The overall aim is to break the cycle of violence," the officers said.

Militant handlers change strategy Militant handlers sitting across the Line of Control (LoC) have realised that many Kashmiri youth have understood that choosing life over death makes sense, and picking up arms won't serve any purpose. These handlers seem to have changed their strategy. It's clearly visible that the ultras during the past two months haven't attacked the security forces. Instead, they are attacking common people and are choosing soft targets.

It appears that they have been told to ensure that blood keeps on spilling in Kashmir to send a message to common people that they cannot board the wagon of peace and development.

The changed tactics of militants are ample proof of the fact that Pakistan is in no mood to let the people of J&K live in peace. It wants to carry on with the proxy war it had started 30-years ago at any cost. Lives of J&K people don't matter for the people sponsoring militancy and violence.

For them J&K people are nothing more than tools destined to die. Pakistan which claims to be fighting war for Kashmir's "Azadi" considers common Kashmiri as its cannon fodder without whom conflict can't be kept alive.

Army, Police make attempts to protect youth The army, J&K police and other security forces in the Valley are making every possible attempt to safeguard the lives of common people and to protect them from becoming the instruments of the militant handlers, who through social media and other means are radicalising the youth.

Just a few days ago J&K Police prevented three teenage boys from crossing the Line of Control (LoC) in Kupwara in North Kashmir. The boys, all residents of Meej Pampore, were following the directions of handlers from across the LoC. They were in touch with militant handlers and were following their directions. After being apprehended police handed them over to their family members.

"They are fortunate enough that their lives were saved and now they have a chance to lead a normal and progressive life ahead," a senior police official said.

Whenever any local militant is engaged in a gunfight with the security forces, he is given ample chances to surrender. On many occasions family members of militants are called to persuade them to lay down their arms. In some cases they surrender but in many they don't and end up losing their lives.

Kashmiris caught in a web Despite facing difficult situations, people of Kashmir are making an attempt to come out from the web they have been caught in for the past three decades. They are trying and the security agencies are helping them out but the people sitting on the other side don't want Kashmir and its people to progress.

They want them to live in uncertainty and chaos so that they can keep fighting their war by turning a common Kashmir into their shield. The common people have realized it as street protests, stone-pelting incidents and shutdowns are no more a part of lives of Kashmiris but unfortunately militancy and violence continue to be there.

Recently, J&K Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha said: "I want to say that circumstances have changed but still attempts are being made. I assure you will not find militancy in any part of Jammu and Kashmir after two years."
New Delhi, Nov 25 : His prowess at reconnoitering sites for unconscionable and indiscriminate terror bloodbaths was perhaps only exceeded by his propensity to cooperate with authorities when caught.

Thirteen years after the Mumbai carnage, Daood Sayeed Gilani aka David Coleman Headley remains an enigma, with no clear answers to the vexed question of whom he worked for, to what extent, and what he believes in.

Caught by the US when planning a new outrage, he was made available to Indian investigators, but his extradition has been firmly ruled out -- even as that of his childhood friend is progressing on the basis of evidence he is providing.

Sentenced to a three-and-a-half-decade jail term, Headley's present whereabouts are unknown.

And in India, he transitioned from a key accused to a key prosecution witness, being pardoned by a Mumbai court on the condition that he makes a clean admission of the conspiracy behind 26/11 -- and he freely complied.

What do we make of the chequered life and career of David Headley? Renowned journalist and author Adrian Levy got it right, categorising Headley, whose mismatched pupils are his distinguishing feature, as an "extraordinary maverick chameleon character who only served himself despite professing multiple allegiances".

Levy's 'The Siege: Three Days of Terror Inside the Taj', co-authored with Cathy Scott-Clark, contends Headley's background -- a Pakistani father and an American mother -- explains why he betrayed everyone he came in contact with: his friends when he became a drug dealer, the drug syndicates when he became an informer for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and later, US intelligence and his jihadi masters, with wider consequences.

On Headley, who was so sought after by US intelligence, Levy, participating in an Indian literary festival soon after his book was published, maintained that this was because the man was convincing and difficult to control, and all these attributes made him "attractive for intelligence agencies".

Levy added: "Also, he was the only American passport holder that could lead the US security agencies to Osama bin Laden." Though Indians will long remember Headley for his meticulous reconnaissance for 26/11, the Danes for planning one of the most audacious terrorist outrages for the country -- though nipped before it come to fruition, and the US for the way he misled and deceived them for over a decade, they will also bear in mind the ease with which he turned over and told all, in copious detail, all that he had done, once in custody.

And not only his role, he even agreed to point a finger at his former associates, which ensured that not only did he evade capital punishment in the US, he was also pardoned by an Indian court, as a veteran Danish journalist showed.

In the 'The Mind of a Terrorist: The Strange Case of David Headley', Kaare Sorensen cited a telling story to show Headley's swinging allegiances.

He says Headley was so impressed with Ilyas Kashmiri (one of the few high-ranking non-Arabs in the Al Qaeda hierarchy) of the infamous '313 Brigade', who promised to help Headley attack the Danish newspaper 'Jyllands-Posten' (which had run a set of cartoons deemed "blasphemous" by the Muslim world), that he became frantic when he could not contact him, distraught when reports said Kashmiri had been killed, and ecstatic when these were proved wrong.

On the other hand, it was Headley himself, once in custody, who offered to go and meet Kashmiri in his hideout on the Pakistan-Afghan borderlands and present him a sword with a homing device embedded in it so that the Americans could track him.

Headley's role in 26/11, as well as in the attack itself, was also discussed by Indian ex-police officer Shirish Thorat.

In 'The Scout: The Definitive Account of David Headley and the Mumbai Attacks', Thorat seeks to answer what kind of a person can coolly go around a bustling metropolis with the objective of reconnoitering a series of high-profile and bustling targets for a relentless, unconscionable carnage and strike up acquaintanceships with those who might well figure among the victims? Many details are now known of the Pakistani-American Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who planted the seeds of 26/11 by providing the terror outfit with detailed inputs and hours of footage of the iconic and well-frequented targets, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Leopold Cafe, and even the hard-to-find Nariman House (aka Chabad House).

Thorat and his co-author seek to answer questions such as, when the attack was being directed by LeT commanders, why was Headley not invited to the 'command centre' and his calls fobbed off, as they provide a riveting reconstruction of the preps for the dastardly attack, their bloody unfolding, and a tantalising bit of the aftermath, though they clarify their narrative "is a combination of verifiable facts and a professional's estimate of what happened and how".

Ultimately, the question that arises is why India should keep its focus on Headley, and it is Sorenson, who has covered Islamic terrorism and international affairs extensively, who shows how the threat of terrorism is down but not out.

Headley's life may have been a long litany of deception and betrayals, but even "before a terror attack becomes an item on a breaking-news ticker or social media, before the first shot is fired, even before the attackers pack their weapons, you will find a guy like David Headley," Sorensen says.

"He could be the person sitting next to you in the hotel lobby or at a bar in any major city in the world. And he would fit in." (Vikas Datta can be contacted at vikas.d@ians.in)
Bhopal, Nov 25 : Madhya Pradesh Food and Civil Supplies Minister Bisahulal Singh has courted controversy by stating "women from upper castes should be dragged from their houses to work in the society".

The remarks were apparently made during an award function for women organised in his Assembly constituency in Anuppur district on Wednesday.

Addressing the gathering comprising both men and women on the occasion, Singh said "the women from Thakur and other upper castes are kept inside their houses and they are not allowed to come out to work by their men..." He continued saying that women from lower castes work in fields and their homes (the homes of people of upper castes). "Women from lower castes work outside but the women from upper caste are kept inside and are not allowed to work outside. They should be dragged out of their homes to work in the society," Singh is heard saying on a video that went viral on social media.

However, during a conversation with IANS on Thursday on the issue, the Minister said that he has no intention to hurt anyone's sentiments but his words were "taken otherwise" by the Opposition and the media.

The minister said he was addressing a gathering in his constituency where people are familiar with each other and they take jibes at each other as well.

"The video that went viral on social media shows a particular line only... not the entire speech. Those who were present were locals, including some upper caste men and women. I stated it replying to one of the known ones, and district level party worker who belongs to upper caste. We know each other and live together in the society, and therefore, sometimes, we takes dig at each other as well," the minister said.

Singh, an MLA from Anuppur, is considered as one of the prominent tribal leaders in Madhya Pradesh.

Associated for years with the Congress, he had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2018.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch the BJP's campaign for the Uttarakhand assembly polls in December. The polls will be held in February-March next year alongwith Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Manipur and Goa.

It is learnt that the Prime Minister will kick-off the election campaign in the first week of December for which the date is yet to be finalised. "Prime Minister Modi will kick-off the BJP's campaign in December for which the date is yet to finalised. Everything will be in place in the next couple of days," a party leader said.

On the second day of his visit to the state, Union Minister and BJP election in-charge for Uttarakhand Pralhad Joshi on Thursday held a meeting of the party's resources and manifesto, special contact programme committee of the 'election management committee' to discuss the poll preparations.

"Joshi reviewed poll preparations and discussed upcoming programmes. He expressed satisfaction over the state unit's preparations and advised that we must stay connected with the people on the ground," an Uttarakhand BJP leader said.

Joshi also chaired core group meetings in Chamoli, Rudraprayag and Pauri districts of Uttarakhand. "Joshi asked the party leaders to work to ensure the BJP wins in the next assembly polls by taking the welfare schemes of the double engine governments at the Centre and the state to the people," a party leader said.

Earlier this month on November 5, the Prime Minister visited Uttarakhand. He inaugurated and laid the foundation stones of multiple key infrastructure projects in Kedarnath. Modi also reviewed and inspected the execution of the ongoing infrastructure work in the state. "We are fully prepared for the Assembly elections in Uttarakhand. We all are working on the grassroots level in the state. People will extend their support to the BJP in the state." Recently, BJP chief J P Nadda was on a two-day visit to Uttarakhand to review the party's poll preparedness. Nadda held several organisational meetings to take stock of the ground situation. In August, Nadda had visited the hill state to see the BJP poll preparedness and attended around a dozen meetings.

Last month, Union home minister Amit Shah visited Uttarakhand and addressed a rally in Dehradun. Shah also reviewed the preparations at a meeting at the party state unit headquarters in Dehradun. During his visit, Shah also inaugurated the Mukhyamantri Ghasiyari Kalyan Yojana of the Uttarakhand government.
Pune, Nov 25 : Veteran Gandhian and social crusader Kisan Baburao alias Anna Hazare, who was rushed to a hospital here on Thursday morning, underwent a successful angiography and his condition is reported to be stable, officials said.

Following mild chest pain for the past 2-3 days, Hazare was admitted to the Ruby Hall Clinic here, said the Medical Superintendent Dr Avdhut Bomadwad.

He was thoroughly examined by a team of experts and an ECG revealed some minor charges, said the hospital.

Accordingly, a team of heart specialists comprising Chief Cardiologist Dr P.K. Grant and Dr C.N. Makhale conducted an angiography on Hazare.

"The angiogram revealed a minor blockage in his coronary artery. The procedure was performed successfully. He is receiving the appropriate line of medical treatment,a said Dr Grant, who is the Managing Trustee of the hospital.

On getting the information, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray inquired after the senior activist's health condition and said: "I wish him a speedy recovery." Dr Grant said Hazare's condition is stable now and he is likely to be discharged in a couple of days.
Islamabad, Nov 25 : November 26, 2021 will mark the 13th anniversary of the worst ever terror attack in India, which changed the dynamics and relationship between India and Pakistan for an indefinite time.

Today, as India looks towards Pakistan and demands punishment to the culprits, Pakistan continues to deny all the allegations.

In November 2008, 10 terrorists entered into India from Pakistan via the sea route and opened fire indiscriminately, targeting multiple important locations in Mumbai. The multi-targeted attacks killed at least 166 people, including at 18 security personnel besides injuring several others.

Since then, India has been claiming that the terrorists were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the attacks were masterminded from Karachi.

India has backed up its claims by sharing dozens of dossiers with Pakistan, demanding action against the terror groups and its leaders, including Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Zakiur Rehman Lakhwi, who they say were the masterminds behind the attacks.

Pakistan, on the other hand, has been rejecting India's claims, stating that the members of the proscribed organisations have been probed by Pakistani courts, which have repeatedly given a clean chit to them, that too after consideration into the dossiers that India claimed had irrefutable evidence.

While Pakistan has been maintaining that the matter is being heard and investigated by the Pakistani courts, any decision on it would have to come from the courts, which it insists require evidence to back the claims of involvement of the individuals and the Pakistani military establishment.

Over a decade after the ghastly attacks, memories of the day still haunt the families of those who lost their lives.

It will not be wrong to say that 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks changed the overall approach of both countries towards each other, as India accused Pakistan, while Pakistan continued to reject all the accusations.

Both countries have now drawn a red line, demanding prior steps to see through the possibility of any opportunity for both to sit across the table and negotiate.

Pakistan keeps the Kashmir dispute on top of its agenda, while India demands punishment for the masterminds of the 26/11 terror attacks as its top priority.

Both Pakistan and India, since 26/11, have seen bloody clashes along the Line of Control (LoC) and the working boundary, while both sides have accused each other for supporting, harbouring and facilitating militant outfits to carry out terror activities in each other's countries.

With no hope of any normalcy between the two nuclear-powered neighbours, and with both sides refusing to take the first step towards confidence building, those who lost their loved ones continue to await justice.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : Union Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Dr. Bharati Pravin Pawar on Thursday said there is a need to educate the next generation on food choices.

Speaking at an event of Food safety and Standard Authority of India (FSSAI), Pawar underlined that food is an essential component of health in a holistic sense.

"Balanced nutrition is an integral part of health," she said.

The minister also emphasised that citizens are stakeholder for food safety along with the government and the industry. She lauded the action taken by the organisation along with industry partners to take the country forward in food safety.

She said that with the onset of globalisation and consumerism, there should be more awareness regarding the ingredients of the food we are consuming.

"Mothers and grandmothers played a key role in the food choices and nutrition of our earlier generation. There is now a pressing need to educate the next generation on food choices," she said.

Pawar also flagged off Food Safety Awareness vehicles and unveiled a book on the History of Food and another cookbook on curated recipes that uses minimal salts. The 'National Low Salt Cooking Challenge Report' was also released.

The Minister also inspected the technical capabilities of Mobile Food Testing Vans called "Food Safety on Wheels". These vans are equipped with State-of-the-Art equipment to detect adulteration in submitted food items.

She also released various innovative books and initiatives by FSSAI including the book 'History and Food' that traces history of commonly cooked and consumed foods in India.

The cookbook 'Eat Right with Low Salt' with curated recipes that use minimal salt was also unveiled by her along with the 'National Low Salt Cooking Challenge Report.'
Mumbai, Nov 25 : Days after the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks stunned the world, leaving around 175 dead and 300-plus injured, multiple security agencies from the U.S. got down to study the strikes and learn lessons from it -- swiftly.

This emerged from the detailed two-session hearing of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs of the U.S. Senate, which were conducted on January 8 and 28, 2009. The committee was chaired by Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, whose legislation had paved the way for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, and attended by 15 other U.S. Senators and security experts.

Shortly after the 26/11 attacks, Sen. Lieberman had flown to New Delhi and met the then Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee and National Security Adviser (NSA) M.K. Narayanan, followed by a visit to Pakistan for meetings with the then PM, Yousaf Raza Gillani, and the army's chief of staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

"The terrorists wanted to divide and radicalise people in India and to provoke a war with Pakistan," Sen. Lieberman, who served in the U.S. Senate till 2013, noted. "But India's government, indeed, India's people have proven stronger and wiser than that, while being persistent in demanding that those responsible for these attacks be brought to justice," he added.

The US exercise was mainly intended to secure itself from a similar attack, for the one on Mumbai had proven to be unique on several counts, as the U.S. Senate committee concluded following a detailed autopsy by experts.

For starters, the 10 terrorists belonging to the Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT), which was then struggling to emerge from the shadow of its more dreaded cousin, Al-Qaeda, which became a household name after the September 9, 2001, strikes in the US, had chosen "soft targets" at private and public locations with the intention of inflicting maximum human casualties in Mumbai.

Charles E. Allen, the then Under Secretary for Intelligence & Analysis, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, observed that the 10-man mini-army used "fairly ordinary weapons" but wreaked havoc and destruction, indicating they were well-trained.

They had all possible information on their targeted sites -- all located within barely a 5 sq. km. area in South Mumbai. It was the result of extensive advance recces and ferreting information on traffic patterns, escape routes, and so on, which made it "a successful attack".

The 'low-tech' attacks, with weapons of a basic infantryman, were dramatically enhanced by tech enablers as they used satellite and cell phones, monitored the global media's live coverage of their brutality, and also took hostages to get latest information on the Indian government's response, besides real-time instructions from their 'handlers' in Pakistan.

The attackers, moreover, in a typical 'hit-and-run' operation, fully exploited the initial complete chaos that hit Mumbai, and slid onto new sites while the security forces still grappled with the first target, as there was an absence of a "unified command".

In his testimony, the then Chief Intelligence Officer of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Donald N. Van Duyn, said that with India's permission, aN FBI team had rushed to Mumbai on November 29, 2008, just as the 60-hour-long horror was winding down, and one attacker, Ajmal Amir Kasab, had been nabbed alive, to assist the Indian authorities with the probe.

The FBI team's agenda was to ensure justice for the U.S. citizens killed in the 26/11 attacks and to launch a prevention mission to ascertain who else (besides the LeT) could pose a potential threat to the U.S., its people and her allies.

Echoing the observations of Sen. Susan Collins, a ranking committee member, Duyn said that 26/11 proved terror groups don't need weapons of mass destruction or even large quantities of explosives, but they made the simplest weapons deadly with the help of a band of small, disciplined, highly trained team that could wreak unprecedented mayhem.

"Other terrorist groups will no doubt take note of and seek to emulate the Mumbai attacks," Duyn said. "We need to continue looking at both large and small organisations with the right combination of capabilities and intent to carry out attacks," he cautioned.

The committee, apart from Sen. Lieberman, comprised Senators Susan Collins, Carl Levin, Daniel Akaka, Tom Coburn, Thomas Carper, John McCain, Mark Pryor, George Voinovich, Mary Landrieu, John Ensign, Claire McCaskill, Lindsey Graham, Jon Tester, Roland Burris and Michael Bennet.

(Quaid Najmi can be contacted at: q.najmi@ians.in)
Chennai, Nov 25 : With actor Kamal Haasan unavailable to host 'Bigg Boss Tamil 5' for at least two weeks due to his treatment for Covid-19, the question now is who will anchor the weekend episodes of the popular reality show.

There are unconfirmed reports that Kamal Haasan's daughter Shruti Haasan has been approached in this regard and that she may anchor the show until her father is back.

Rumours are also rife that actress Ramya Krishnan and Vijay Sethupathi have also been approached and that one of the three actors may end up stepping into Kamal's shoes for a week or two.

However, Star Vijay, the television channel on which the reality show is aired, has so far chosen to keep the cards close to their chest.

When IANS got in touch with the channel, it said it couldn't comment on the issue at the moment and was neither willing to acknowledge or deny the rumours.
Shillong, Nov 25 : Opposition leader Mukul Sangma, who along with 11 Congress MLAs joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday night, on Thursday said that the Congress has failed as an effective opposition party in the country and the TMC would be a pan-India viable alternative opposition party. Reliable sources said that political strategist Prashant Kishor and his team members, who have been camping in Shillong for the past two months, apparently engineered the defections.

State Congress President and Lok Sabha Member Vincent H. Pala said in Shillong that the desertion of the 12 MLAs is not a setback for the party, it is a new challenge and the Congress leaders know how to face the challenge.

Sangma, a former Chief Minister of Meghalaya (2010-2018), said that their potential was not exploited fully by the Congress and they were unable to be an effective opposition party in Meghalaya. "To be an effective opposition party and to serve the people as per their wishes we have joined the Trinamool Congress. Our commitment towards the people remained unfulfilled despite our meeting the central leadership on a number of occasions," Sangma accompanied by the 11 MLAs told the media in Shillong.

The 56-year-old leader said that in the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress by securing 21 seats (in the 60 member assembly) became the single largest party but unfortunately it could not form the government. Sangma along with the other MLAs on Thursday met assembly speaker Metbah Lyngdoh and lay claim to being recognised as the main opposition party.

The Speaker later said that he would have to examine the procedures about Sangma and the other MLAs' claims as per the provisions of the Tenth Schedule. The 12 MLAs who joined the TMC include four legislators from the Khasi-Jaintia Hills region and eight MLAs from Garo Hills.

The 12 MLAs are Mukul Sangma (Songsak), Charles Pyngrope (Nongthymmai), Himalaya Shangpliang (Mawsynram), George B Lyngdoh (Umroi), Shitlang Pale (Sutnga-Saipung), Dikkanchi D Shira (Mahendraganj), Miani D Shira (Ampati), Zenith Sangma (Rangsakona), Marthon J Sangma (Mendipathar), Jimmy D Sangma (Tikrikilla), Winnerson D Sangma (Salmanpara) and Lazarus M Sangma (Chokpot). The strength of the Congress, which was the main opposition party in the assembly since the 2018 polls, has now been reduced to five as other MLAs have either died or left the party.

Sangma, a physician turned politician, was upset over the appointment of Shillong Lok Sabha Member Vincent H. Pala as the state Congress President in September. He reportedly met Trinamool's National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee in Kolkata last month triggering speculation amid a reported rift within the Congress in the northeastern state. Sangma had termed it as a courtesy meeting.

With the latest political development a triangular contest is in the offing in the 2023 assembly elections between the ruling National People's Party (NPP) led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) in which the two-member Bharatiya Janata Party is an ally, the Congress and the TMC.

The latest political development in the northeast state is a major boost for West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who after the March-April assembly election success in her state, has been trying to expand her party's footprint beyond Bengal. Meghalaya is the newest state as Bengal's ruling party in its expansion mission mainly at the expense of the Congress, has made inroads in Tripura, Goa, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana.
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : Thirteen years have passed since the 26/11 Mumbai attack by Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists. Along with bitter memories of the unprecedented violence, the bravery of Indian security personnel, especially of NSG commando, the late Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan, is etched forever in the hearts of Indians.

Years after his martyrdom, he is still a celebrated hero in Bengaluru and across Karnataka. Major auto stands, many junctions, and a number of bus shelters in Bengaluru proudly display his photograph along with other national heroes and his cutouts, posters, and banners can be seen in all major urban areas of the state.

A major arterial road has been named after him in Bengaluru too.

The 31-year-old Indian braveheart laid down his life for the country fighting Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists on November 28, 2008, and has become a symbol of inspiration, patriotism and sacrifice.

His family in Bengaluru is proudly looking ahead to the event of inauguration of their son's bust in Kannamangala army base in Bengaluru on November 28, the day he made the supreme sacrifice for the country.

His father, K. Unnikrishnan, a retired ISRO officer, told IANS: "I am looking forward to the event as it is organised by army personnel. That is where Sandeep Unnikrishnan belongs. The function is going to be attended by jawans to lieutenant generals." He said that it is a beautiful bronze, monolithic bust. "It is going to be a private function on November 28, the day Sandeep Unnikrishnan attained martyrdom." He said that the government and public response has been only growing since 13 years.

The second floor of the residence of Unnikrishnan had been converted as a little museum where all army belongings, including his uniform, were kept. People used to queue up for a glimpse of the hero's belongings and pay respects to him. But it has been shut now.

"I have prohibited public entry to the archive now," his father said, adding that he didn't like the way the photos are being put up on social media platforms.

His father proudly remembers his son's attitude of winning in everything he did and how he liked Sachin Tendulkar. He would be disappointed when India lost a match, but he even used to console his father whenever an ISRO project failed.

Sandeep Unnikrishnan always cared for his fellow soldiers and helped them financially. His charitable nature was not known to the parents until his colleagues told them. "Though he got a decent salary, there wasn't much money in his account. Sandeep was donating to many charitable institutions," his father said.

The last message from Sandeep Unnikrishnan while carrying out operation to eliminate terrorists was: "Don't come up, I will handle them." He soon laid down his life fighting against terrorists, but the bravery of the young NSG commando is still cherished by the army and his colleagues.

He was conferred the Ashok Chakra, the country's highest peace time gallantry award on January 26, 2009.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait made it clear on Thursday that the protest by farmers will continue for Minimum Support Price (MSP) law and to oppose various legislations which are in pipeline and are harmful to their interests He said though the Central government has announced repeal of three farm laws, the farmers' problems will not come to an end with this as the government is trying to bring in various anti-farmer laws.

Tikait was addressing 'Maha Dharna' organised by All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (AIKSCC)-Telangana unit in Hyderabad to mark one year of the countrywide agitation by the famers against the three agri laws.

Stating that farmers' protest at Delhi's Ghazipur border will continue, he claimed their protest was not merely for repeal of the three agri laws but it was also to demand MSP guarantee law and resolve other issues faced by farmers.

He alleged that the Narendra Modi government was run by companies and several legislations were in pipeline to serve their interests. He cited the proposed amendments to laws relating to electricity and seeds.

"They are looking to do away with weekly agriculture markets in the country. There will also be police stations for seeds where farmers will be questioned about the seeds sown by them in their fields. Several laws are in pipeline because nobody in Parliament speaks on these issues," he said.

The farmers' leader said Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), the union of nearly 40 farmers' group spearheading the agitation, will write to all political parties to raise the real issues like repeal of three agri laws, passing of MSP guarantee Bill and price rise during the ensuing Parliament session. The parties will be urged to avoid debate on non-issues as they are taken up to divert public attention from the real problems faced by people.

Tikait also demanded setting up of a committee with representatives from SKM, government officials, and agriculture scientists to hold talks on all issues relating to farmers. He slammed the Central government for avoiding talks with farmers.

Later, the farmers' leader told reporters that SKM's strategy is to defeat the BJP in Uttar Pradesh. He said they would try to ensure that the BJP faces boycott in villages and claimed that this has already started in western part of Uttar Pradesh.

He said SKM would decide future course of action at its meeting on November 27. "We will organise a tractor march in Delhi on November 29 and another at the national capital's borders the next day," he said On Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao's announcement of ex-gratia of Rs 3 lakh each to the kin of around 750 farmers, who died during the year-long protests, Tikait said the Centre should also provide ex-gratia to them and also withdraw all cases booked against farmers.

Stating that the fight was for farmers of the entire country, he said like Telangana the other states should also declare assistance to the families of the martyred farmers.

Tikait also advised the Telangana Chief Minister to help the farmers in the state. On the problem faced by paddy farmers in the state, he hoped that they will also be benefitted by the MSP guarantee Act.

Stating that SKM was formed for the country, he said the agitation has given new hope to the country. "This is not just the movement of farmers. This is movement of 14 crore unemployed people who were let down by the government by going back on the promise to create 2 crore jobs every year. This is amovement of tribals, landless farmers and every oppressed citizen of this country," he said.

Leaders of AIKSCC, CPI, CPI-M, Telangana State Rythu Sangham and other groups attended the 'Maha dharna'.
Jaipur, Nov 25 : Union home minister Amit Shah will come to Jaipur on December 5 to address the BJP state working committee meeting and to address the public representatives conference here, informed state party president Satish Poonia while speaking to the media.

Poonia said that Shah's visit will boost the morale of the Rajasthan BJP workers and will infuse new energy which will prove to be a milestone in the party's Mission 2023 to win the polls.

The two-day state working committee meeting will be held in Jaipur on December 4 and 5, in which Amit Shah will address a special session on December 5 and after that he will address a conference of about 10,000 party workers. In this conference, Shah will address people's representatives like Panchayat Samiti members, Zilla Parishad members, District Heads, Deputy Chiefs, Pradhans and Deputy Pradhans, MPs, MLAs etc.

Poonia informed that the working committee meeting will start on December 4, in which the party's organizational review, upcoming action plan, complete farmer loan waiver, electricity, health, education, unemployment, law and order, the strategy and mission of the movement etc will be taken up along with a detailed discussion on victory in 2023.

As the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government has completed 7 years, it will be discussed in detail in the meeting that the public welfare schemes of the Modi government should be taken to the villages and houses of the state.

He said that in the coming days there will be agitations against the anti-people policies of the Congress government in the state. Party workers wanted the guidance of Amit Shah and he accepted our request, which is a matter of happiness for all workers of the party, added Poonia.
Chandigarh, Nov 25 : Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) national Convener and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will visit Punjab on Saturday to support protesting teachers, it was announced on Thursday.

During his two-day visit to Punjab this week, while giving eight guarantees to the teachers for reforms in the education sector if his party comes to power, Kejriwal had appealed to Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Channi that he should accede to the demands of qualified unemployed teachers who have been fighting for jobs for a long time so that they can call off their strike.

Kejriwal had warned the government that if the Channi government did not address the issue of the struggling teachers immediately, he himself would be compelled to join the dharna of these unemployed teachers.
Kolkata, Nov 25 : A day after West bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the national capital and urged the latter to withdrew the decision to extend the territorial jurisdiction of BSF in her state, a PIL was filed at the Calcutta High Court challenging the Home Ministry's decision, terming it as against the federal structure of the country.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) recently extended the jurisdiction of the Border Security Force (BSF) up to 50 km inside the international borders in West Bengal, Punjab and Assam. The West Bengal Assembly had on November 16 passed a resolution against the Centre's decision, becoming the second state after Punjab to oppose the move in the state legislature.

The public interest litigation (PIL) filed at the Calcutta High Court said the decision to increase the territorial jurisdiction of BSF is against the federal structure of the Indian Constitution. The petitioner also said that the MHA decision will reduce the power of the state.

Pleading for the petitioner, advocate Sabyasachi Chattopadhyay said, "Initially we thought the Chief Minister would do something against this unconstitutional move, but she is doing nothing. She is going to Delhi, but doing nothing. This is an issue that goes against the federal structure of the country. We have questioned the constitutional viability of the law." The division bench of Chief Justice Prakash Srivastava directed the Director General of BSF to inform the court about the case. The next hearing is scheduled on December 14.
Chennai, Nov 25 : A court in Tamil Nadu's Tiruppur district has sentenced a 29-year-old man to double life imprisonment for raping and forcibly marrying a minor girl.

The incident occurred in 2016 when the man was 24 years old and the minor girl 14.

The man, a relative of the girl, raped her while she was alone at home and was taking a bath. Later his parents and his aunt threatened the parents of the girl with dire consequences if they did not agree for the girl to be married off to him.

The marriage was solemnised on February 17, 2016, after which the minor girl's mother approached the all-women police station at Udumalpet. Police charged him under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offenses (Pocso) Act, the Indian Penal Code, and Child Marriage Act and filed the charge sheet before the Mahila court.

Mahila Court judge, Sugandhi, sentenced the person with double life imprisonment under the Pocso Act, seven years rigorous imprisonment for criminally intimidating the minor girl, and two years for child marriage.

The court sentenced his parents to two years rigorous imprisonment for conducting child marriage.

Also slapping a fine of Rs 30,000 on him, the court directed the state government to pay a compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the girl.

The girl's parents and the man's aunt were acquitted.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Thursday conducted searches at the premises of a suspect in Shahdol district in Madhya Pradesh in connection with the Lanjhi forest IED blast case in Jharkhand in March this year.

The NIA stated that the agency has carried out searches at the premises of the accused in Banshukli Chauraha in Shahdol district.

During the search, a mobile phone, a handwritten diary and other incriminating materials were seized.

The case was originally registered at the Toklo police station in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district in March under several sections of IPC, UAPA, Explosive Substance Act, and CLA Act relating to the IED blast at Lanjhi forest area, which resulted in the deaths of three personnel of Jharkhand Jaguar, besides causing grievous injuries to three others, including one ASI/RO of CRPF.

The NIA took over the probe on March 24 and on September 7 the probe agency had filed a chargesheet against 19 accused.

Further investigation in the case is underway, the agency added.
"Hey, this is Ankur Chawla, and you know what, he is one of those who survived the 26/11 attacks." No matter what you do subsequently in life, there's always one incident that defines you. For me, it was 26/11.

The day began like any other working day, although, ironically, it was my off day. I was at the iconic Harbour Bar of Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace. It was my first job, so I didn't really mind being called to work on my off day.

It was a dream job for a greenhorn who had come from Delhi to Mumbai with stars in his eyes, all set to make a mark as a young hospitality professional with the potential to rise to the top.

The day was moving slowly and I was chit-chatting with one of the regulars, talking about the lifestyle of the city's rich and famous set. Suddenly, we heard a loud popping sound, as if the cork of a bottle of vintage champagne had been released accidentally.

I was overcome by the fear that it could be the bottle of Dom Perignon, the exquisite champagne on display outside the bar. I feared that I would be penalised for it and lose a hefty amount from my modest stipend, so I rushed out of the bar, but when I came near the door, I saw a man toppling over, his white shirt turning red from the blood oozing out of his shoulder.

That was when I realised that he had been struck by a bullet. It was my first encounter with a dying man.

A number of rumours had been swirling around the hotel moments before I ran into the dying man. Some said a group of guests had got embroiled in a fight. Others said gang wars had broken out in the city. Some even insisted that Dawood was back. As the situation kept unfolding, we were running like headless chickens trying to make sense of the chaos.

Funnily, even in that state of siege, some of the guests managed to retain a wry sense of humour. On spotting this regular guest leaving the bar with his glass of single malt in hand, I stopped him and offered to help him carry the glass. He replied: "Son, I may not be alive tomorrow and I doubt if I will get this malt in heaven; allow me to romance it, please." His response made me numb, but today, it inspires me to live life to the fullest till the last minute. We started evacuating from Harbour Bar and went to the Japanese restaurant, Wasabi, on the floor above, and then through the back areas we finally reached The Chambers, where we all were supposed to meet and hide the guests.

It was inspiring to see how the Taj staff took charge of the situation and how our seniors took tough decisions, though they knew at the back of their heads that their lives were also in danger. What surprises me till this day is that although every staff member knew about the back door exit, none of us even thought of running away, leaving the guests to fend for themselves.

Gathered at The Chambers, with information coming in from all over the place, the suspenseful silence punctuated by continual gunshots and vibrations from the explosions, we took a collective decision around 2 a.m. to evacuate from the staff doors in the back areas. Different batches were made and a human chain from the back area of The Chambers to the staff exit was created by the staff members.

I was in the third batch. All of a sudden, we heard a burst of gunshots. That was when, as we learnt later, the terrorists had come in from different sides and started shooting randomly. When we heard the gunshots, we started running in whichever direction we could and that's exactly when I was overcome by the feeling that any one bullet could strike me down.

This was the time when we lost most of our colleagues, including chefs, who were hiding behind the kitchens or in the walk-in refrigerators. We ran towards the linen rooms and hid ourselves right under the uniforms. Throughout, I was talking to my co-workers, and kept learning about people we knew being felled by the terrorists.

One of my closest friends, who was with us a couple of hours earlier, was no more and the news about others kept pouring in. In the next few minutes, after escaping a bullet narrowly, I could see my life and my dreams come crashing down. The only thing I wanted to do was to meet my family once. That was all I could think about.

In the morning, around 8 a.m., we were evacuated by the commandos and I can never forget the breath of fresh air, and the comforting sense of being alive after all.

Today, as I look back, I feel there is nothing more true than the old saying, "If it doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger." That day changed forever my way of looking at life and most importantly, living life. I love what I do now; I cherish each moment much more than I used to; I take bolder decisions. I now know the value of life and how easy it is to lose it.

The only thing certain about your life is inevitable death, and we don't know when it will come. Before it comes, do something that will make you happy and content when you finally are on your deathbed.

(Ankur Chawla, a beverage entrepreneur, is the author of the best-selling book '14 Hours: An Insider's Account of 26/11 Taj Attacks', published in English and Marathi. He is also a TedX and Josh Talks speaker)
New Delhi, Nov 25 : The Delhi High Court on Thursday sought a detailed affidavit in connection with the last year's riots in northeast Delhi, following the police's submission that charge sheets have been filed in 361 out of 758 cases.

Among these charge sheets, 67 have been framed as of October 4, the Delhi Police told the bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh.

While hearing a batch of pleas related to the riots, the bench sought the affidavit from Delhi Police after Jamiat Ulema-i-Hind told the court that the last status report filed by Delhi Police does not have many details.

The bench adjourned the matter for further hearing on January 28, 2022.

Police also informed the court that 62 cases that pertained to major incidents like murders were transferred to the Crime Branch, which had undertaken an investigation by employing 3 dedicated Special Investigating Teams, being continuously monitored by the superior officers.

A case of larger conspiracy behind the engineering of the communal riots in Delhi is being investigated in Special Cell, it said.

The riots broke out in northeast Delhi in February 2020 after clashes between anti-CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) and pro-CAA protesters took a violent turn. The time of the mayhem coincided with then US President Donald Trump's maiden trip to India.

Over 50 people had died in the riots. Several posts had then gone viral on social media, mainly on Facebook, adding fuel to the fire.
Hyderabad, Nov 25 : The Telangana Police on Thursday busted another inter-state drugs trafficking racket with the seizure of 1,820 kg of marijuana (ganja) from a truck at Abdullapurmet on the outskirts of Hyderabad.

Special Operations Team (SOT) of Rachakonda Police Commissionerate arrested five peddlers and seized the contraband being transported from Sileru in Andhra Pradesh to Maharashtra.

According to police, the ganja was being transported from Sileru to Maharashtra via Narsipatnam, Rajahmundry, Kodad, Suryapet, Choutuppal, and Hyderabad.

Police seized 182 packets of ganja, a lorry, a car, Rs 41,000 cash, and seven mobile phones, all worth over Rs 3 crore from their possession.

Acting on specific information, sleuths of SOT, LB Nagar Zone along with Abdullapurmet police apprehended the drug peddlers. While four of them are from Maharashtra, the truck driver is from West Bengal.

Main accused Sanjay Laxman Shinde, a resident of Osmanabad district of Maharashtra is absconding. He was running the racket along with his relatives Sanjay Balaji Kale, Abhiman Kalyan Pawar and their friends Sanjay Chowgule and Bharat Kalappa. They were using Shek Rahidul, a native of West Bengal, for driving the truck to illegally transport ganja from Sileru agency area in Andhra Pradesh to Maharashtra.

Rachakonda Police Commissioner Mahesh Bhagwat said the ganja packets were hidden under the organic compost bags. He said the accused were using the car as a pilot vehicle for the truck carrying the narcotic drugs.

The accused told the police that they were purchasing ganja at Rs 8,000 per kg and selling the same to customers in Maharashtra at Rs 15,000 per kg.

He said this was the largest quantity of ganja seized so far this year in Rachakonda. The police have seized over 5,000 kg of the contraband.

Hyderabad, Cyberabad and Rachakonda police commissionerates, which cover the city and its suburbs and excise department have been running intensive campaign against drugs since last month following direction of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao to deal firmly with the menace.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : India is willing to supply Covishield and Covaxin vaccines to all the countries, said Union Health Minister Mandaviya at a meeting with the ambassadors of Latin American and Caribbean nations on Thursday.

He said, "India is driven by the philosophy of 'Vasudaiva Kutumbakam' which has inspired us to gift COVID-19 vaccines, HCQs and other medical necessities to all our friends. Further, India is willing to supply Covishield and Covaxin to all the countries." Mandaviya in his address underlined the need to strengthen the public health system to fight outbreaks in the future. He stated, "India has been able to fight COVID-19 under a 'whole of government' approach where provincial and local governance provided a fillip to the efforts of the Government of India".

Explaining India's strategy of curbing the pandemic, he said of the 6 vaccines approved in India, 2 are indigenously developed. Nearly 1.2 billion doses have been administered with 82% of Indians receiving at least one dose of the vaccine and 44% of Indians being fully vaccinated.

The Minister thanked the representatives of the countries for easing people to people contact by recognising india's vaccines. Vaccination in India is recognised by 110 countries at present. "Mutual recognition of vaccinations increases ease of travel for tourism and business thereby boosting economic recovery the world so desperately needs," he said.

Highlighting how India helped other countries throughout the pandemic, he said, "Being the Pharmacy of the World, India has generously supplied HCQ tablets and other medical equipment to 27 countries. Under the Vaccine Maitri initiative, 6.63 crore doses were sent to 95 countries." Speaking on the possible areas of convergence, Mandaviya noted that more than 70 million teleconsultations have been recorded in eSanjeevani -- India's flagship telemedicine portal. He said that with India's expertise in Information Technology, India could quickly deploy the CoWIN platform for its vaccination programme. He added that India has already shared the technology with partner nations willing to adopt the technology and will help all nations looking to scale up their vaccination.

The Minister also focused attention on India's triumphant march towards Universal Health Care. The four pillars of Ayushman Bharat: envisioning 1.5 lakh Health and Wellness Centres at the primary level, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana that provides insurance to targeted population categories, the Health Infrastructure Mission with an outlay of Rs 670 million that will strengthen India's public healthcare system along with diagnostic and surveillance capabilities, the Digital Mission which will provide all Indians with a unique health ID and make their medical history available to approved clinicians in seconds.

He said, "Under Prime Minister Modi, India's healthcare is witnessing a revolutionary transformation which can be adopted by her friends." The Union Minister exhorted the assembled nations to study the possibility of an exchange programme for health professionals. Besides skill upgradation and exposure to specializations of health in the American continent for Indians, students of these countries would have high quality world-class medical practices in India in the fields of Cardiology, Oncology, Nephrology, Neurology, Ophthalmology. He also highlighted the possible areas of co-operation in medical tourism.

The event was officiated by Paraguay ambassador Fleming Duarte. Ambassador of Chile, Juan Angulo, Ambassador of Mexico, Federico Salas, Ambassador of Colombia, Mariana Pacheco offered their thoughts on behalf of the formation and thanked India for her valuable contribution in fighting the pandemic.
New Delhi, Nov 25 : India's decision to release 5 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic reserves, along with similar moves by some other countries, may not be enough to curtail rising fuel prices, analysts said.

Lately, crude oil from strategic reserves have been released by a select few countries to counter the rising prices. Similarly, India will release 5 million barrels of crude oil from its strategic petroleum reserves.

However, experts said that this release from the reserves won't fully serve the purpose.

In technical parlance, strategic reserves are typically underground stores where countries store a sizable portion of their fuel requirements in order to fulfil its demand in case of any exigency or crisis.

At present, global benchmark crude oil is trading at around $82 a barrel.

"The market has already discounted the news of the release of crude from strategic reserves. Prices came down by $8-10. But this move won't be enough to curb rising global fuel prices," said Sriram Iyer, analyst at Reliance Capital.

"The US, China, Japan and India combined released around 70-80 million barrel of crude oil from their strategic reserves, while the market expected it to be 100 million barrel," Iyer added.

Besides, analysts pointed out that the market will now keep a sharp eye on the 'OPEC+' meeting, which would decide on production guidance. The meeting is scheduled to be held in early December.

"Decisions that would be taken in the meeting will trigger the market accordingly. However, the overall sentiment remains bullish," Iyer said.

For the near term, resistance for Brent crude is seen at $85-87 a barrel, and for New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) futures at $83-85 a barrel, he said.

"The announcement on strategic reserves is just a diplomatic move to pressurise OPEC+ countries ahead of their meeting. Strategic reserves are normally for emergencies, and price fluctuation is typically not considered as an emergency," said Ajay Kedia, Head of Kedia Advisory.
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : The Karnataka sessions court on Thursday increased the quantum of sentence of two convicted terrorists in the Chinnaswamy stadium blast case from seven years to rigorous life imprisonment.

Two blasts occured at the stadium in Bengaluru just before the Indian Premier League (IPL) clash between Royal Challengers Bangalore and Mumbai Indians on April 17, 2010, leaving 15 people injured. A third bomb was disposed outside the stadium. The match had begun one hour late on the same day.

The two accused in the case -- Ahmed Jamali and Aftab Alam -- had earlier pleaded guilty in the sessions court. The court had sent them to jail for seven years in June 2020.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), Sandeep Patil, said, "We had appealed against the decision in the high court. Allowing our appeal, the high court had remitted the matter back to the session court for fresh consideration. The sessions court has now increased the quantum of punishment to rigorous imprisonment for life." The police at the time had said that the blasts were caused by low-intensity crude bombs triggered by timers.
Gandhinagar, Nov 25 : In a curtain raiser event for the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit (VGGS) -- scheduled to be held in January next year, Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel on Thursday met top business leaders in Delhi.

The three-day summit will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 10, 2022. VGGS is being organised on the theme of "Atmanirbhar Gujarat to Atmanirbhar India".

On Thursday, Patel met MD of Maruti Suzuki Kenichi Ayukawa, Avaada energy private limited chairman Vinit Mittal, PI Industries MD and vice chairman Mayank Singhal, JCB CEO Dipak Shetty, Urban company CEO Abhirajsinh Bhal, DCM Shri Ram Industries chairman and senior MD Ajay Sharma and OYO hotels and homes managers.

Kenichi Ayukawa of Maruti Suzuki spoke about the company's Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Gandhinagar and company's investment of Rs 16,000 crore in Gujarat.

Avaada energy private limited chairman Vinit Mittal expressed interest to include Gujarat in company's plan to invest Rs 20,000 crore in non-conventional energy sector in the next 5 years.

OYO is associated with 750 hotels in Gujarat. PI Industry MD and vice chairman Mayank Singhal showed willingness to participate in the VGGIS 2022 and invest.

Patel invited everyone to the upcoming Summit and invest in Gujarat. He also said Gujarat has emerged as a thriving and vibrant economy in the last two decades under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi.

"PM Modi came up with the unique thought of organising Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit in 2003. In less than two decades, the Summit has become a global knowledge-sharing and networking platform," Patel said.

He also spoke about Dholera Special Investment Region, Dedicated Freight Corridor, Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, GIFT City, Dream City, and other mega projects that are poised to take Gujarat's growth to the next level.

"Gujarat's reputation as a business-friendly state across national and international geographies is driven by our robust industrial infrastructure. Its proactive policymaking, including ease of doing business, has made it the most preferred business destination of India and the world alike," said Patel.
Jaipur, Nov 25 : Six more school students were among the 17 new cases of Covid reported in Jaipur, raising worries among parents.

Two of the students are from a government school, two from a private school, and the two others were taking online classes from home.

Two days back, 12 students of the Jaishree Periwal school had tested positive.

Earlier, three students from the same school had tested positive as well as two from the SMS school and one from the Neerja Modi school.

The All Rajasthan Parents Forum, looking at the increasing number of students being infected by Covid - 25 in this month, has urged Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and Education Minister B.D. Kalla to issue directions for the start of the online classes.

All schools and colleges have started with 100 per cent occupancy in Rajasthan from November 15. Many schools have stopped running online classes due to which students are forced to go to schools.

Is the state government waiting for a bigger corona explosion, asked the Forum officials.

Nitisha Sharma, another parent, shared the tweet of All Rajasthan Parents Forum and said "very prompt action needs to be taken ..v sensitive issue".

Many other parents have raised a demand to start the online classes at the earliest.

On Wednesday, new Education Minister Kalla attended the cabinet meeting with a set of proposals and collected feedback from education officials. However, it was informed that Gehlot will discuss the matter with health officials and District Collectors and then decide on new guidelines.
Chennai, Nov 25 : The Tamil Nadu government will open 500 Kalaignar canteens named after the former Chief Minister, Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi, state Food Minister R. Sakkarapani said on Thursday.

In his address at a meeting in New Delhi, attended by Union Food Minister Piyush Goyal, on the model community kitchen scheme to address malnutrition and hunger in the country, he also asked the Central government to sponsor the 650 Amma canteens under National Food Security Act.

"Approximately Rs 3.5 lakh is spent for a kitchen every month. To run this scheme and to sustain it successfully, we request the Union government to provide 100 per cent assistance under the National Food Security Act 2013, to extend all the needy people," Sakkarapani said.

The previous AIADMK government had set up 650 Amma canteens through local bodies across the state to provide food at subsidised rate to the poor and needy. These canteens are also run in all government medical college hospitals and government hospitals located in the district headquarters for the benefit of the patients' attendants and bystanders.

The canteens serve idli at Re 1, pongal and rice at Rs 5, curd rice at Rs 3 during daytime, and chapati (2) and dal curry at Rs 3.

The minister said that during floods and calamities, Amma canteens provided food free of cost.

He also said that around 2.15 crore people benefitted from Amma canteen between June 1 and November 18 including construction workers and migrant workers.
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Thursday directed the deputy commissioners to intensify the Covid vaccination drive to improve the state's second dose coverage.

At a virtual meeting with the deputy commissioners to review the progress of the vaccination drive in the state, Bommai said, "The state has achieved 90 per cent coverage of first dose and the extent of coverage of second dose stands at 57 per cent. The second dose coverage should touch 70 per cent by the end of December." Bengaluru Urban district tops the list of vaccination, while Kalaburagi is at the bottom.

"The deputy commissioners should devote at least one hour daily for the vaccination programme besides constituting teams to visit the villages to convince the people to get vaccinated, Bommai said.

The Chief Minister also cautioned against any complacency in vaccination drive in the backdrop of drop in Covid cases in the state.

"The cases are again on the rise in many countries. We should not leave any scope for a possible third wave in Karnataka," he added.
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : In a major relief to Bengaluru police chief and other officers, the Karnataka High Court on Thursday stayed a probe ordered against them in connection with Sex CD scandal.

A single judge bench of Justice Sreenivas Harish Kumar issued the order stalling the process of investigation against Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant, DCP M.N. Anuchet and Police Inspector Maruthi.

The policemen had moved the high court for quashing of investigation proceedings against them ordered by a lower court in connection with failing to register a case against a former BJP minister in the "Sex CD" case.

The 8th ACMM court, which passed the order, had also directed to submit the report by February 1, 2022.

The court passed the order of inquiry for investigation of offences under Section 166 of the IPC, holding police responsible for delays in registering a First Information Report after a victim makes a complaint.

Janaadhikara Sangharsha Parishath Co-Preident Adarsh R. Iyer has filed a private complaint against the police officers for not registering case against former BJP minister Ramesh Jarkiholi in connection with alleged sex CD scandal.

The complaint by RTI activist Dinesh Kallahalli, registered on March 17, seeks action for failing to register FIR on alleged offences of sexual intercourse by a person in authority such as then Water Resources Minister Jarkiholi.

The senior police officers were also accused of failing to carry out their duties in a disciplined manner, and acting in a prejudiced manner against complainant Kallahalli as well as the purported victim, the complaint said.

The complaint also said that the police officers "displayed gross incompetence by buckling under the pressure of the powerful ruling political class, flouting laws of the land and Supreme Court of India guidelines with impunity" and that they "brought disrepute to the independent working" of the Karnataka Police.
Dakshina Kannada, Nov 25 : Congress leader from Dakshina Kannada district, Pratibha Kulayi, has demanded that the Karnataka police should conduct an encounter against the accused in the gang-rape and murder of an 8-year-old girl.

Addressing the media at the district Congress committee office here, Kulayi said that those who raped and throttled the minor girl to death should not be spared.

"The number of heinous crimes on small children is witnessing a spike. These maniacs should be taught a lesson," she said.

"Recently, a 2-year-old girl was raped and later her body was thrown into a water tank. Now an 8-year-old girl has been gang-raped and killed. Her body was dumped into a drain. The accused should be shot," she added.

She also demanded that no advocate should take up the case of the accused persons, who should be encountered in the same way as it was done by the Hyderabad police.

"In Dakshina Kannada, politicians are divided on communal lines in matters of rape and murder. No one raises voices when the crime is committed by the persons of the same religion. They immediately react if the accused and victim belong to different religions. This attitude should be shunned and all should raise their voices against rape cases," she demanded.

The gruesome incident took place on Sunday. The minor girl went missing from the premises of a tile factory where her parents worked. After frantic search, her body was recovered from a drain attached to the factory.

The investigation revealed that when the girl was playing with her three siblings, the accused took her to a room by covering her mouth and took turns to rape her. The accused then strangulated her to death and dumped the body in drain. The post-mortem report confirmed strangulation, anal sexual abuse and excessive bleeding.
Thiruvananthapuram, Nov 25 : Kerala Women Commission member Shahida Kamal appears to be caught in a bind over her educational qualifications with a division bench of the Lok Ayukta on Thursday asking her to produce her degrees and certificates so that her honesty and integrity could be proved.

Kamal ran into trouble after Akhila Khan, who hails from the state capital, approached the ombudsman after her complaint to the state government and the police accusing Kamal of giving false educational qualifications while contesting elections and while applying to be a member of the Commission failed to evoke any response.

Kamal claims to have a PhD, but in a TV channel debate that took place a few months back, the complainant said that her educational qualifications were not correct.

Kamal, then on her Facebook page, mentioned that she took her D.Litt from the International Open University and all those who have received it use the word Dr before their names.

In her reply to the Lok Ayukta, Kamal said that she holds a doctorate in philosophy from the Kazakhstan Open University, while the state Social Justice Department had earlier stated that the doctorate is from the University of Vietnam.

The Lok Ayukta has now posted the case for December 9 and she has been asked to submit her certificates, which she did not produce on Thursday.

Kamal contested the 2009 Lok Sabha poll from Kasargode and also the 2011 Assembly elections on a Congress ticket. But, upset with the Congress for not giving her a safe seat, she quit the party a few years later. She then joined the CPI-M and they rewarded her by making her a member of the KWC, which comes with good perks.
Shillong, Nov 25 : Meghalaya opposition leader Mukul Sangma, who along with 11 Congress MLAs joined the Trinamool Congress (TMC) on Wednesday night, said on Thursday that the Congress has failed as an effective opposition in the country and the TMC would be a pan-India viable alternative opposition party.

Reliable sources said that political strategist Prashant Kishor and his team members, who have been camping in Shillong for the past two months, apparently engineered the defections.

Two West Bengal ministers and senior Trinamool leaders, Moloy Ghatak and Manas Bhunia, reached here on Thursday afternoon and held a meeting with the MLAs led by Sangma.

Ghatak and Bhunia greeted the newcomers and handed over TMC flags to Sangma and others at a simple ceremony.

State Congress President and Lok Sabha Member Vincent H. Pala said in Shillong that the desertion of the 12 MLAs is not a setback for the party, it is a new challenge and the Congress leaders know how to face the challenge.

Sangma, a former Chief Minister of Meghalaya (2010-2018), said that their potential was not exploited fully by the Congress and they were unable to be an effective opposition party in Meghalaya. "To be an effective opposition party and to serve the people as per their wishes we have joined the Trinamool Congress. Our commitment towards the people remained unfulfilled despite our meeting the central leadership on a number of occasions," Sangma accompanied by the 11 MLAs told the media in Shillong.

The 56-year-old leader said that in the 2018 assembly polls, the Congress by securing 21 seats (in the 60 member assembly) became the single largest party but unfortunately it could not form the government. Sangma along with the other MLAs on Thursday met assembly speaker Metbah Lyngdoh and lay claim to being recognised as the main opposition party.

The Speaker later said that he would have to examine the procedures about Sangma and the other MLAs' claims as per the provisions of the Tenth Schedule. The 12 MLAs who joined the TMC include four legislators from the Khasi-Jaintia Hills region and eight MLAs from Garo Hills.

The 12 MLAs are Mukul Sangma (Songsak), Charles Pyngrope (Nongthymmai), Himalaya Shangpliang (Mawsynram), George B Lyngdoh (Umroi), Shitlang Pale (Sutnga-Saipung), Dikkanchi D Shira (Mahendraganj), Miani D Shira (Ampati), Zenith Sangma (Rangsakona), Marthon J Sangma (Mendipathar), Jimmy D Sangma (Tikrikilla), Winnerson D Sangma (Salmanpara) and Lazarus M Sangma (Chokpot). The strength of the Congress, which was the main opposition party in the assembly since the 2018 polls, has now been reduced to five as other MLAs have either died or left the party.

Sangma, a physician turned politician, was upset over the appointment of Shillong Lok Sabha Member Vincent H. Pala as the state Congress President in September. He reportedly met Trinamool's National General Secretary Abhishek Banerjee in Kolkata last month triggering speculation amid a reported rift within the Congress in the northeastern state. Sangma had termed it as a courtesy meeting.

With the latest development, a triangular contest is in the offing in the 2023 assembly elections between the ruling National People's Party (NPP) led Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) in which the two-member Bharatiya Janata Party is an ally, the Congress and the TMC.

The latest political development in the northeast state is a major boost for West Bengal Chief Minister and TMC supremo Mamata Banerjee, who after the March-April assembly election success in her state, has been trying to expand her party's footprint beyond Bengal. Meghalaya is the newest state as Bengal's ruling party in its expansion mission mainly at the expense of the Congress, has made inroads in Tripura, Goa, Assam, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana.
Bengaluru, Nov 25 : The Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) in Karnataka has found disproportionate assets among 15 government officials during search operations in more than 60 locations on Wednesday, officials said on Thursday.

ACB sleuths have arrested S.M. Biradar, Junior Engineer, Department of Public Works, Javergi, Kalaburagi District and T. S. Rudreshappa, Joint Director, Department of Agriculture, Gadag district.

A total of 68 teams comprising 503 officials and staff of various police stations of ACB carried out search operations in 68 locations belonging to 15 government employees on Wednesday, a release said on Thursday.

The investigation against S.M. Biradar, Junior Engineer, Department of Public Works, Javergi, Kalaburagi district has revealed Rs 4. 15 crore worth of gold ornaments, cash, vehicles, sites and buildings have been found. Illegal assets in excess of 406.17 per cent have been found.

The ATS has found Rs 6. 65 crore worth of gold ornaments, cash, sites, buildings at the residence of T. S. Rudreshappa, Joint Director, Department of Agriculture, Gadag district. Illegal assets in excess of 400 per cent have been found.

Illegal assets in excess of, 879.53 per cent have been found with Vasudev. R.N., Former Project Director Nirmiti Kendra, Bangalore Rural District. The investigation against the accused has revealed Rs.18.20 crore worth of gold ornaments, cash, vehicles, sites, buildings, home appliances, land, bank deposits, etc.

As much as Rs 6.24 crore worth of gold ornaments, cash, vehicles, sites etc., were found at AG. V. Giri, Group-D Employee, BBMP Boys and Girls High School. Illegal assets in excess of 563.85 per cent have been found.

The investigation made till now reveals Rs 4.82 crore worth of gold ornaments, Cash etc in possession of B. Krishna Reddy, Chief Manager, Nandini Milk Products, Bangalore. Illegal assets in excess of 305 per cent have been found.

The ACB also conducted raids on retired Sub-Registrar K.S. Shivanand in Ballary and found illegal assets in excess of 198 per cent.

The raids were also conducted on Executive Engineers Srinivas K.K.S. Lingegowda, L.C. Nagaraj, Administrator, Sakala Machine, S.S. Rajasekhar, Physiotherapist, Government Hospital, Mayanna, First Division Assistant, BBMP, Sadashiva Raiappa Maralingannanavar, Senior Motor Inspector, Adavi Siddheshwar Kareppa Masti, Development Officer, Nathaji Peeraji Patil, Line Mechanic Grade-2, and Revenue Inspector Lakshminarasimhaiah.

The ACB claimed that, investigation depends on the explanation from the concerned officials about these assets. The document verification work and information collecting on the value of the assets, the gold ornaments they possessed, and other bank deposits of the accused government employees is continued.
Shillong, Nov 25 : Meghalaya Chief Minister, Conrad K. Sangma, and Ambassador of Japan to India, Satoshi Suzuki, on Thursday inaugurated the three-day Cherry Blossom Festival at the Polo 5th Ground here.

The festival, which could not be held last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, coincides with the annual blossoming of pink cherry flowers in most parts of the state capital and many other parts of the mountainous state.

The first edition of Shillong Literary Festival, which is also a part of the Cherry Blossom Festival, was also launched on the occasion.

Various competitions, including singing and dancing, fashion shows, local wine-making, and Japanese and Korean food preparation, among other events, would be held during the three-day festival.

Addressing the inaugural function, Suzuki said that he was impressed by the different facades of the state potrayed through the festival and also informed that cherry blossom or 'Sakura' is the national flower of Japan, which is also a source of inspiration for the Japanese people.

Meghalaya has a potential to attract more tourists, especially from different parts of the world, due to its unique landscape and environment, he said.

Suzuki also informed that Japan is again starting the TITP (Technical Intern Training Programme) to facilitate international workers to work for up to five years in Japan.

"India and Japan have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) on a basic partnership framework for operation of the specified skilled worker (SSW) system under which the Japanese government accepts foreign nationals who have a certain level of expertise and skill," the Japanese envoy said.

The SSW is a new status of residence created by Japan in 2019 under which skilled Indian nationals can obtain jobs and stay in Japan.

Suzuki also said that Japan is proud of being a close partner to northeast India based on historical ties, trust and friendship.

Sangma said that the northeast region has immense potential and talent, and the region is a good platform for enterprising people.

"As Meghalaya would be celebrating its 50 years of attaining statehood early next year, a series of events and programmes would be undertaken to enable the youth to showcase their talents," he said.
Gandhinagar, Nov 26 : A self-proclaimed Ramayana storyteller in Gujarat has threatened the Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel to dethrone him if he doesn't provide him one crore demand within eleven days.

It hasn't been even two months since Bhupendra Patel has held the reigns of the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The person who calls himself Batuk Morari Bapu alias Mahesh Bhagat from Banaskantha and proclaiming to be a Ramayana storyteller has demanded Rs. One crore from the Gujarat Chief Minister.

His video demanding the money from Patel went viral on Thursday. In this video, Mahesh asks the Chief Minister to furnish him with the money.

"Myself, Batuk Morari Bapu alias Mahesh Bhagat from Vav, Banaskantha, I am asking you, the Gujarat Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, to provide me Rs. One crore in eleven days, by the fifth through whatever method you wish. If you don't, then thereafter no one from Patel community will sit on that chair and you will get killed in an accident. Today is the 25th, so send me the money as 'Dakshina' by the 5th," he was seen as saying in the video.

"Remember not a single rupee less should reach me. And then, Patels will restfully reign over Gujarat. But if you don't, then friend, I will throw you out from your throne within three months," added Mahesh.

Thereafter, at the end of the video, Mahesh makes some noise, while seemingly casting a spell on the watcher.

In his video, he has also provided his cell phone number.

It should be noted that Morari Bapu (not this one) is an altogether a different Ramayana storyteller, who is much revered in the state.
Jerusalem, Nov 26 : Israel has announced a ban on entry of travellers from seven African countries, after a new Covid-19 variant was detected in South Africa.

Amid reports of the heavily mutated variant known as B.1.1529, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Health Minister Nitzan Horwitz on Thursday decided to list South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia and Eswatini as "red countries," Xinhua news agency reported.

"Foreigners from these countries will not be able to enter Israel," the Prime Minister's office said in a statement.

Israeli citizens who return home from trips to these countries will need to stay in a designated quarantine motel for seven days, even if they are fully vaccinated, it said.

They will be released after two negative PCR tests. Travellers who refuse to be tested will need to stay in quarantine for 12 days, according to the statement.

Scientists in South Africa said they have detected the new COVID-19 variant and are still studying its implications.
Match & Cover LLC, a national interim executive talent service headquartered in San Jose, CA, announced today that it has received the prestigious National Women's Business Enterprise Certification from the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC).

Our company was created to deliver an entirely new Talent-on-Demand work model to bring experienced leadership and more flexible work to broader audiences, said Tonya J. Long, CEO and Chief Talent Officer of Match & Cover. This reinforces alignment with our clients goals while making it easier to do business as we provide the highest value service with our interim executive placement offerings, now with the added benefit of being a 100% women-owned diversity supplier.

WBENCs national standard of certification requires a meticulous process, including an in-depth review of the business and a site inspection, confirming the business is at least 51% owned, operated and controlled by women. By including women-owned businesses among their partners, corporations and government agencies demonstrate their commitment to fostering diversity. Many Fortune 500 companies have women's business development programs, including 80 of the top 100.

WBENC is known for its world-class standard of certification of women-owned businesses across the United States. said Vanessa Fernandez, Match & Covers head of Client & Talent Success Enablement. A business that makes it through the rigorous WBENC certification process is prepared to handle whatever it takes to meet client demands, so this certification will resonate with companies that demand high quality and value diversity.

About Match & Cover:

Match & Cover LLC is an interim executive leadership platform that matches on-demand available talent to cover the needs of our clients. Whether for parental leave, extended medical LOA, or as supplemental coverage to deliver major transformation projects, we make it easier for employers to bring high-quality executive talent on board for shorter durations of time. For more information, visit http://www.matchandcover.com.

About WBENC:

Founded in 1997, WBENC is the nations leader in womens business development and the leading third-party certifier of businesses owned and operated by women, with more than 13,000 certified Womens Business Enterprises, 14 national Regional Partner Organizations, and over 300 Corporate Members. More than 1,000 corporations representing Americas most prestigious brands as well as many states, cities, and other entities accept WBENC Certification. For more information, visit http://www.wbenc.org.
As we work through this second year of COVID, we feel its especially important to recognize the contributions of our staff, said AMG President, Dacy Cavicchia. They are essential in every way, and we honor and appreciate their resilience, strength, professionalism, and dedication.

Its said, feeling grateful and not expressing it is like wrapping a beautiful present and not giving it. For the second year in a row, AMG is wrapping and giving the gift of gratitude to its team. The second Thanksgiving On Wheels is happening this week, a time when AMG contributes to the Thanksgiving dinners of its 50 employees. The company is ensuring it will be a holiday to be grateful for by providing each team member across its five North Carolina and South Carolina offices with the foundation of their Thanksgiving feast: a fully cooked turkey with gravy, and two pint-size side dishes of beans and mac n cheese.

As we work through this second year of COVID, we feel its especially important to recognize the contributions of our staff, said AMG President, Dacy Cavicchia. They are essential in every way, and we honor and appreciate their resilience, strength, professionalism, and dedication.

CEO and Founder Paul Mengert and Vice-President May Gayle Mengert agree that a culture of gratitude is pivotal to the success of the company they originated in 1985. AMG has a long and proud history of supporting communities, including raising money for local food banks, Mengert said. This is a reminder to our internal communityour staff across the Carolinas who give so much both at work and to area nonprofitsthat they matter, we count on them, and we appreciate them for all they are and do for us and our clients. We have so much to be thankful for: especially our hard-working, dependable employees.
Generate sales leads by maximizing your advantages and broadcasting them to the target audience. The more often a business is in the public eye in a positive light, the more sales leads will come.

Successful businesses understand how they find consumers and turn them into customers. Actual SEO Media, Inc. can offer some tips about lead generation that may help businesses optimize their current system.



People, People, People

For businesses starting out or businesses dipping into a new market, one of the best ways to generate leads is to get to know the people that could become potential customers.

1. LinkedIn

Build a presence on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a business-friendly social media platform that allows people to network with others or even broker new deals. Investing in a Premium membership will also allow the account holder to see everyone who has viewed the business profile.

2. Customer Reviews and Case Studies

Businesses can acquire a wealth of information from customer reviews and case studies. Search for studies relevant to the business's products or services to help those items stand out to the crowd. Reading testimonials from previous customers will also aid in figuring out what was done right and what can improve. Not to mention, keeping a grip on the company's online reputation and management will save from future hardship.

3. Referrals

Regardless of what the business specializes in, spread the word. Ask for referrals from family, friends, and acquaintances. Let people know what the business does and what it offers. Even if the people you tell don't need the services, they may know someone.

4. Frequency

Always follow up on potential leads. It usually takes more than once to turn a "potential" lead into an actual one. After making the first contact, set time aside a week or two later to touch base with them again.

Be Everywhere

Make the business visible to its potential clientele. Be active online and in the community. The more people see and hear about a business's branding and marketing, the more they can trust it.

1. Local Events

Whether the business attends or sponsors a local event, it's one way to interact with the community. Set up a table, hand out pamphlets, or hold a giveaway. Buy uniforms for a Little League team or have a banner at a local community garage sale.

Regardless of which way a business decides to interact with the local community, it's always good to show up for the events in person. It allows for people to see and speak with the business representative themselves and know the business better.

2. Local Publications and Articles

Although one way to gain visibility is to buy ad space in local newspapers, there are more cost-effective ways. There are many free publications available to the public. It's just a matter of finding ones that'll fit with the business's niche.

Businesses can also invest in article writing and blog posts about a topic relating to their business. Whether it's to inform or give general tips to the community, it's another way to get the business's name and brand out there.

3. Community Service and Volunteering

Choose a group that's related to the business. Volunteer with them to get the word out and build a positive reputation. The more people see that the business cares, the more the word will spread.

Always Be Available

People are always in a hurry and want quick answers. Ensure that the business website has a phone number and email available. It's even better if there's a live chat function that allows users to ask quick questions anonymously.

Even speaking with customers can help tailor a business's lead generation to a specific customer niche. Knowing what drew customers in the first place is beneficial. With this information, a business can separate leads for each marketing push.

Harness the power of social media services and platforms. A website won't generate leads on its own. Having social media accounts linked to it will attract potential users on the wider web and increase exposure.

Search Engine Optimization

Speaking of websites, one of the best ways to continuously generate leads in the long term is search engine optimization (SEO). Optimizing a website to appear further up Google's search results page will allow users to see the company more often. By targeting a niche set of keywords, users searching those words are more easily led to a relevant business's website.

As a leading SEO company in Houston, Actual SEO Media, Inc. helps clients to expand their online presence. By using a variety of SEO techniques and utilizing Google's pay-per-click ads, the company aims to maximize clients' search engine optimization and widen their clients' scope of recognition. For more information, follow the company on Facebook and LinkedIn, contact the office at (832) 834 - 0661, or by email at: info@actualseomedia.com.
More than thirty trees, wreaths, and swags adorn the Franklin County 11/30 Visitors Center for the 2021 Festival of Trees.

Franklin County Visitors Bureau (FCVB) is spreading holiday cheer with the 2021 Festival of Trees, through December 3. Decorated trees, wreaths, and swags are displayed in the lobby and second floor Great Room of the 11/30 Visitors Center, formerly the 1865 National Bank of Chambersburg. Visitors can vote for their favorite tree, wreath, or swag as well as participate in the silent auction. Keep track of the voting here. All proceeds of voting and the auction will benefit the Cumberland Valley Breast Care Alliance, which is in its 25th year of service.

2021 decorators include: the shop, Cumberland Valley School of Music, Mr. Phab Photos, Renfrew Museum & Park, Yoga with Melissa, Martins Potato Rolls, Conococheague Institute, Chambersburg Frontier Girls #576, Penn State Mont Alto Student Government Association, Coyle Free Library, Council for the Arts, Rotary Club of Chambersburg, OSI, Totem Pole Playhouse, Middletown Valley Bank, Carly Patla  Iron Valley Real Estate, ReMax Prestige Shippensburg and Carlisle, Franklin County Certified Tourism Ambassadors, Chambersburg Hearing, Shafer Equipment Co., Chambersburg Quilt Guild, Greater Waynesboro Chamber of Commerce, Boys and Girls Club of Chambersburg and Shippensburg, Cumberland Valley Breast Care Alliance, Greencastle-Antrim Chamber of Commerce, Willian F. Sellers Funeral Home, The Pet Store, YMCA of Chambersburg, Conococheague Audubon, F&M Trust, Dile Family, Marco, and Twin Bridge Campground.

Along with the festively decorated trees, wreaths and swags, Festival of Trees offers:



Holiday train display, courtesy of Cumberland Valley Model Railroad Club

Old-fashioned Christmas programming in the video vault.

Coloring contest for children with a first prize of $50 and three honorable mentions of $20.

Take-away button wreath ornament

Letter-writing to Santa, followed by a reply from Santa

Book signing with C. Lee Ryder, author of Black Clover, a local familys struggle to unravel a family tragedy.

Christmas Trivia Contest on December 3 @ 6 PM with a $100 cash prize for the winner.

Festival of Trees is open Monday through Friday from 8 AM to 4:30 PM, except Thanksgiving Day and November 26. Hours for Small Business Saturday, November 27 are 9 AM to 3 PM. Sunday hours are 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM. The final day of Festival of Trees, December 3, is Candle Night in downtown Chambersburg. The streets are lined with luminaries and the sounds and smells of the holiday season.

Admission to Festival of Trees is free. To view Festival of Trees, outside the regular hours, please contact FCVB at 717.552.2977 or 866.646.8060 to make an appointment.

The Franklin County Visitors Bureau invites all to explore history, arts and architecture, recreation, natural beauty, fresh foods, and the warm hospitality of communities like Chambersburg, Greencastle, Mercersburg, Shippensburg, and Waynesboro. Franklin County PA is located just north of the Mason Dixon Line and is an easy drive from Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh. For more information, visit ExploreFranklinCountyPA.com regularly or contact the Franklin County Visitors Bureau at 866.646.8060 for information on 11/30 Visitors Center activities.
4th Annual Perio-Endo-Ortho Symposium A Dental Conference Benefitting a Great Cause

A wide variety of dental professionals from the Mid-South and beyond gathered for the 4th Annual Perio-Endo-Ortho Symposium on Friday, September 24, 2021, at the Southaven Campus of Compel Church.

It was a very good turnout, said Dr. Pradeep Adatrow, owner of Advanced Dental Implant and TMJ Center and organizer behind the Perio-Endo-Ortho Symposium. We were glad to welcome everyone who was there.

The theme of the symposium was A Dental Conference Benefitting a Great Cause, and attendees were able to earn up to eight hours of required continued education credits for dental professionals in Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas while supporting a local charity organization.

The event, which saw more than 200 dentists, dental hygienists, and dental assistants, raised $15,000 in support of Trinity Health Center, a faith-based nonprofit organization in Horn Lake dedicated to providing healthcare for the working uninsured in Desoto County. All registration proceeds from the conference were donated to the organization by Adatrow.

I chose Trinity Health Center this year because they are doing a very important service for underprivileged people in Desoto County who do not have access to medical care, said Adatrow. Trinity Health Center is able to provide this very important service on a sliding scale at a highly subsidized rate.

Featured speakers of the 4th Annual Perio-Endo-Ortho Symposium included Dr. Cory Glenn, whose comprehensive presentation focused on everything from 3D printed crowns to digital orthodontic aligners to full-arch guided surgery; Dr. Sreenivas "Sree" Koka, who spoke to guests on the subject of what really matters in life; Dr. Nathan Hamman, who presented an array of common orthodontic problems and solutions; and Dr. Wayne McElhiney, who offered cautionary advice and in-depth analysis of opioid addiction and prescription writing in a three-hour presentation. Adatrow and Hamman served as hosts of the conference alongside Dr. Andrew Abide, owner of Abide Endontics.

About Advanced Dental Implant and TMJ Center

Advanced Dental Implant and TMJ Center provides personalized and specialized Dental Implant and TMJ care for the Memphis Area and in Southaven, MS. The Founder, Dr. Pradeep Adatrow is a board-Certified Periodontist and Prosthodontist. Along with a devoted team of dental hygienists, assistants, and administrative staff Dr. Adatrow provides treatment with the patients as his primary focus. Please visit our website at http://www.advanceddentaltmj.com or call us at (662) 655-4868 to schedule a TMJ consultation.
District Pointe This strategic investment into West Palm Beach provides the new headquarters for Verdex and space for multiple Class A office tenants while opening up to the possibility of developing multifamily residential on the excess land. said Bjarne Borg, Chairman and CEO of Index Investment Group

Index Investment Group and Verdex Construction formed District Pointe LLC, a joint venture to purchase a 65,760 square foot office building in West Palm Beach for $13.4 million. Located at 1501 Belvedere Road in West Palm Beach, the property has operated as a single-tenant user since its construction in 1983 and has been occupied by its former owner Rinker/CEMEX.

The building will be rebranded as District Pointe and completely renovated into a state of the art, modern office hub for large scale office tenants and the new U.S. headquarters for Verdex. The name was derived from its position as the gateway location between the revitalized West Palm Beach Warehouse District and the Palm Beach International Airport. The property was purchased off-market with the help of the team at Colliers with Executive Managing Director Mark M. Rubin and Director Bastian Laggerbauer, the closing was handled by John Renaldo of Jupiter Inlet Title.

This strategic investment into West Palm Beach provides the new headquarters for Verdex and space for multiple Class A office tenants while opening up to the possibility of developing multifamily residential on the excess land. We are very excited about this opportunity. said Bjarne Borg, Chairman and CEO of Index Investment Group

We are thrilled about the continued growth of our company in this phenomenal location with proximity to the Palm Beach International Airport and direct access to I-95 and the West Palm Beach area. We look forward to further revitalizing the area and building the community said Rex Kirby, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Verdex.

Index Investment Group is a privately held company with its North American Headquarters located in Jupiter FL, founded in Sweden by Bjarne Borg and Fredrik Alama in 1998. The company has made numerous significant investments in multifamily rental communities, senior living as well as industrial/logistics facilities along the East Coast of the United States. The Jupiter-based real estate investment company has ongoing and completed 33 developments in the U.S. with over 8,400 units and over 6.8 million square feet of commercial space across Sweden and the U.S.

Verdex Construction was founded by Rex B. Kirby, Jr. a 40-year veteran of the construction industry and in only seven years has grown the company into one of South Floridas top-10 construction companies.

About Index Investment Group

Index Investment Group is a dynamic real estate investment group headquartered in Jupiter, Florida with major investment initiatives throughout North America including apartment communities, industrial/logistics and senior living communities. Index Investment develops intelligently designed properties throughout the East Coast of the United States with a focus on Florida and contributes to the community through valuable and meaningful investments. For more information about Index Investment Group, visit http://www.indexinvest.com.

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Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the lawsuit against Renoir HM, LLC, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The San Francisco employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a lawsuit against Renoir HM, LLC alleging the company violated Labor Code  2699, et seq. seeking penalties for DEFENDANTs alleged violation of California Labor Code  201, 202, 203, 204, 210, 221, 226(a), 226.7, 227.3, 351, 510, 512, 558(a)(1)(2), 1194, 1197, 1197.1, 1198, and 2802. The lawsuit against Renoir HM, LLC is currently pending in the San Francisco County Superior Court, Case No. CGC-21-595913. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here.

The complaint alleges Renoir HM, LLC failed to pay employees for all the time they were under Defendant's control. This, allegedly, includes the time Plaintiff and other Aggrieved Employees had to submit to mandatory temperature checks and symptom questionnaires for COVID-19 screening prior to clocking in for the day. To the extent that the time worked off the clock did not qualify for overtime premium payment, Defendant allegedly failed to pay minimum wages for the time worked off-the-clock.

PAGA is a mechanism by which the State of California itself can enforce state labor laws through the employee suing under the PAGA who do so as the proxy or agent of the state's labor law enforcement agencies. An action to recover civil penalties under PAGA is fundamentally a law enforcement action designed to protect the public and not to benefit private parties. The purpose of PAGA is not to recover damages or restitution, but to create a means of "deputizing" citizens as private attorneys general to enforce the Labor Code.

For more information about the lawsuit against Renoir HM, LLC, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is a labor law firm with law offices located in San Diego County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County, Sacramento County, Santa Clara County, Orange County and San Francisco County. The firm has a statewide practice of representing employees on a contingency basis for violations involving unpaid wages, overtime pay, discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination and other types of illegal workplace conduct.

***THIS IS AN ATTORNEY ADVERTISEMENT***
By breaking free of the traditional boundaries between applications, Microsoft Loop facilitates fluid collaboration in the hybrid workplace.

Messaging Architects, an eMazzanti Technologies Company and Microsoft expert, explains the new Microsoft Loop productivity app in a new article. The informative article first explains how Loop crosses application boundaries to facilitate collaboration in the hybrid workplace.

The author then relates how Loop users collaborate without jumping back and forth between applications and no longer need to worry about multiple file formats. He then explains how Microsoft will make Loop available both in Teams and as a standalone app. He concludes by discussing the utility of Loop Components, Pages and Workspaces.

By breaking free of the traditional boundaries between applications, Microsoft Loop facilitates fluid collaboration in the hybrid workplace, stated Greg Smith, Vice President of Services Delivery at Messaging Architects.

Below are a few excerpts from the article, Microsoft Loop Smooths Collaboration in the Hybrid Workplace.

Loop in Teams vs. Standalone Loop App

Continuing the theme of flexibility, Loop will be available to users in a couple of different ways. Beginning this month, Microsoft 365customers will be able to use various Loop components in Microsoft Teams chats and other Office apps. Additionally, Microsoft will release a standalone Loop app.

Microsoft Loop Components

Loop components (also referred to as live components) are the single blocks of productivity on which colleagues collaborate. These include items such as a list, note or task. Users create them in whatever Office app they wish and then share them by embedding them in a chat, document, meeting, or email. Edits appear in real time along with the initials of the editor.

Loop Pages

A Loop page provides a place to organize a group of related components. Think of it as a single document that includes elements from multiple applications. For instance, users no longer need to open Excel to edit a spreadsheet, then Outlook to view a related email and Word to work with item descriptions. Instead, the page includes all those components in one space.

Loop Workspaces

A Loop workspace looks like a project board that includes all pages and components related to a project. People can track the entire project from one location, checking progress, joining a discussion and collaborating both synchronously and asynchronously.

Timeline for Loop Availability

Microsoft has already begun rollout of some Loop components across Microsoft 365 apps. More components will become available for public preview in Teams, Outlook, and OneNote in the coming months. And, while Microsoft has not announced a date for the rollout of the standalone Loop app, insiders envision a summer 2022 timeframe.

As Microsoft continues to develop productivity and security tools, business leaders reach out to the Microsoft experts at Messaging Architects. They guide businesses through configuring Microsoft apps for optimal use and even help them use features not yet discovered.

Have you read?

Microsoft Read Aloud Feature Improves both Accessibility and Productivity

Track Changes Tips to Speed Collaboration in Microsoft Word

About Messaging Architects

Messaging Architects specializes in effectively managing and securing an organizations most precious asset, its information. With over 20 years of information management and technology consulting experience, the Messaging Architects team has provided corporations, educational intuitions, health care facilities and nonprofits with methodologies, procedures, and technology to keep their data organized, compliant and secure.

About eMazzanti Technologies

eMazzantis team of trained, certified IT experts rapidly deliver increased revenue growth, data security and productivity for clients ranging from law firms to high-end global retailers, expertly providing advanced retail and payment technology, digital marketing services, cloud and mobile solutions, multi-site implementations, 247 outsourced network management, remote monitoring, and support.

eMazzanti has made the Inc. 5000 list 9X, is a 4X Microsoft Partner of the Year, the #1 ranked NYC area MSP, NJ Business of the Year and 5X WatchGuard Partner of the Year! Contact: 1-866-362-9926, info@emazzanti.net or http://www.emazzanti.net Twitter: @emazzanti Facebook: Facebook.com/emazzantitechnologies.


Sample image being used as a part of the Advent-Neighbors national advertising campaign. (Image courtesy of United Methodist Communications.)

To assist people seeking an escape from the holiday blues and connection to the true source of joy and love, United Methodist Communications, the global communications agency for the denomination, has launched their Advent-Neighbors national advertising campaign.

After 20+ months of a pandemic, many individuals are looking for ways to find meaningful connections with others. In the bustle of the Christmas season, its not uncommon for people to experience stress, woes from unmet expectations and feelings of depression and isolation. The advertisements share that The United Methodist Church provides a way to hear a voice of positivity, and experience community and connection in a meaningful way this holiday season.

The Advent-Neighbors campaign will reach over twenty targeted markets such as Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth and Indianapolis. Placements will include a mix of social media, paid search and display ads. Each advertisement will direct people to one of two limited-time landing pages at UMC.org/Joy and UMC.org/JoyEnFamilia to start their first steps with The United Methodist Church.

The Christmas season is a time when people are more open to experiencing something spiritual, shared Jennifer Rodia, Chief Communications Officer for United Methodist Communications. We hope that these messages will encourage them to connect and find community for the holiday season and beyond.

During the summer, the agency launched a series of TikTok video ads for the first time. Each ad focused on a specific persona and their need to connect. This test proved successful with nearly three million video views. Building off of that momentum, the Advent-Neighbors campaign will also reprise popular TikTok spots and offer adapted versions for other media.

New York Citys Times Square area, often called the crossroads of the world, will serve as a major exposure point for The United Methodist Church.

With the increase in vaccine availability, the return of Broadway and heightened tourism, Times Square has seen a significant surge in its pedestrian traffic, said Poonam Patodia, Chief Marketing Officer. Having The United Methodist Churchs message shared here allows us to reach a large number of people from across the nation and the world. We want people to know that were there for them, even in the bustle of this metropolitan city.

Throughout the year, United Methodist Communications implements a series of ad campaigns. Each generates awareness of The United Methodist Church among those who are not affiliated with a church who may be looking for community with others. They serve as an invitation to connect with a local United Methodist church to experience what it offers individuals whether they choose to participate in-person or online.

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About United Methodist Communications

As the communications agency for The United Methodist Church, United Methodist Communications seeks to increase awareness and visibility of the denomination in communities and nations around the globe. United Methodist Communications also offers services, tools, and resources for communications ministry. Discover more about the agency at Resourceumc.org/Communications. Learn how to support this communications ministry work at ResourceUMC.org/GiveUMCom.

Media contact:

Aaron Crisler 615.742.5103

PressCenter@UMCom.org
New Honda vehicle owners in Newfoundland can drive their Honda with peace of mind for longer with Honda extended warranty options from Steele Honda in St. John's.

Customers buying a brand-new Honda vehicle in St. John's and other nearby cities and towns can look forward to years of driving their new Honda with peace of mind with extended warranties offered by Steele Honda.

Newfoundland's No.1 Honda dealership, Steele Honda, offers multiple extended warranty options covering new Honda vehicles for up to eight years or 2,00,000 kilometers.

The Steele Honda dealership in St. John's currently offers up to 10 warranty coverage options which include:



Three-year/60,000 km Manufacturer's Warranty for items such as emission controls, body finish, and more

Five-year/100,000 km Extended Warranty*

Six-year/100,000 km Extended Warranty*

Six-year/160,000 km Extended Warranty*

Seven-year/130,000 km Extended Warranty*

Seven-year/160,000 km Extended Warranty*

Seven-year/200,000 km Extended Warranty*

Eight-year/200,000 km Extended Warranty*

Honda Flexible Warranty - First Period of Coverage: Up to four years or 100,000 km*

Honda Flexible Warranty  First Period of Coverage: Up to five years or 120,000 km*

The extended warranty plans offered by Steele Honda are applicable at any authorized Honda service center in Canada, and the U.S. Customers can also avail of the Honda Plus plan that includes 24/7 roadside assistance, seven days a week and 365 days a year. The service or repair covered under these warranties is handled by trained Honda technicians using genuine Honda parts.

The Honda Flexible Warranty plan provides the option to add warranty coverage up to eight years/200,000 kilometers, whichever occurs first.

Interested parties may make detailed inquiries on the extended warranty plans offered by the Steele Honda dealership by visiting their website at http://www.steelehonda.com. Customers interested in learning about the full terms and conditions, including warranty exclusions and restrictions, may contact Steele Honda via phone or text at 709-579-1999. Steele Honda is located at 547 Kenmount Road.
Left to right: George Nanchoff of Renegade Brands, Dr John McKeon of ASL, Bill Sherman of Renegade Brands, Robert Yeggy of VARY Petrochem, LLC, alongside Obie Hydrick and Adam Short of Renegade Brands Dr. John McKeon, explained that ASL are delighted to announce our partnership with the ISSAs Global Biorisk Advisory Council. This is a unique collaboration, to empower and educate people across the globe on the urgent issue of health in the indoor environment and how it impacts on well being.

The asthma & allergy friendly Certification Program, which is jointly operated by Allergy Standards Limited (ASL) and the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA) was thrilled to participate in the International Sanitary Supply Associations (ISSA) Show North America 2021 that took place from November 15  18 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Dr. John McKeon, CEO of Allergy Standards Limited and Dave Morrissey, CIO of Allergy Standards Limited were in attendance on behalf of the Certification Program. They were among more than 10,000 cleaning industry professionals who gathered, applying strict COVID-19 protocols, to join the ISSA North America Show, taking place for the first time in two years.

ISSAs annual event is where leaders of the worldwide cleaning industry gather to network, transfer knowledge, and create innovative cleaning solutions to better serve the global community.

A major theme at this year's show was the new mantra of Cleaning for Health rather than just cleaning for appearance. Removing asthma and allergy triggers at source is key to achieving a healthier home, workplace or school environment, and our 'air aware' clients at the show included 3M, Bona, Sanitaire and Renegade Brands.

Renegade Brands, the Certification Programs newest client, launched their SWEAT-X Free and Clear as the first laundry detergent to earn the asthma & allergy friendly Certification. Their CEO, Bill Sherman stated, "Renegade Brands is pleased to introduce our new CERTIFIED asthma & allergy friendly Sweat X Free and Clear Laundry Detergent at the ISSA Show North America 2021 alongside the Certification Program and Allergy Standards Ltd. We can now scientifically demonstrate that SWEAT-X Free and Clear removes 99% of allergens and irritants, reduces allergen exposure, and contributes to a healthier indoor environment."

The asthma & allergy friendly Certification Mark was proudly displayed at the show, and participants were able to visit Renegades booth to learn more about this product and the mission of the Certification Program to improve the lives of those impacted by asthma and allergies. We celebrated the news at the Renegade booth, conducting interviews, meeting with industry professionals and editors, alongside Renegades team of executives to share this partnership with the worldwide cleaning industry.

Allergy Standards Limited (ASL), the scientific and international standards body which operates the Certification Program alongside the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America (AAFA), also announced their partnership with GBAC, the Global Biorisk Advisory Council a division of ISSA, on a unique educational program. Patricia Olinger (Executive Director), along with Gavin Macgregor-Skinner (Senior Director), represented GBAC to share this exciting news, which was announced at the ISSA media center in the exhibition hall. Dr. John McKeon, explained that ASL are delighted to announce our partnership with the ISSAs Global Biorisk Advisory Council. This is a unique collaboration, to empower and educate people across the globe on the urgent issue of health in the indoor environment and how it impacts on well being.

For press materials, interview quotes, and high-resolution photography for the Certification Program and more information about our CERTIFIED client partners, please contact Sarajane Sparks, PR/Marketing for the Certification Program.

About the asthma & allergy friendly Certification Program

The asthma & allergy friendly Certification Program is a unique, groundbreaking collaboration between the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America and Allergy Standards Limited. This program helps people make informed purchases for a #healthierhome. The Program tests household products against strict standards. Products passing these tests, earn the CERTIFIED asthma & allergy friendly mark. Certified products include air cleaners, bedding, cleaning products, flooring, paints, vacuum cleaners, washing machines and more. Visit aafa.org/certified for more information.
Signature Auto Group's Bay Ridge Car Leasing Headquarters "We expect car inventory to improve in 2022 and 2023 as semiconductor manufacturing arrives in North America" - Signature Auto Group

Signature Auto Group, a premier online car leasing company, with offices in both Brooklyn, NY and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is excited to see semiconductor manufacturers opening new factories and supply chains in the United States and the rest of North America. All this in an effort to combat the current global chip shortage which has taken a toll on car inventory across the globe. With automotive and technology prices skyrocketing across the board, new factories in the United States will help to alleviate supply shortages.

The automotive industry has experienced a multitude of issues stemming from semiconductor shortages, such as manufacturing delays and part shortages. As demand for new vehicles continues to rise, prices across the board have increased, for both leasing and financing of new cars. Due to this, the used car market has seen an increase in prices as well. In an effort to alleviate these inflated prices, companies like General Motors and Ford are partnering with chip manufacturers like Qualcomm and GlobalFoundries on new designs of chips that are more modern than the current chips and would be made in North America.

Signature Auto Group New York is excited about these automotive industry developments. With new chip production set to begin in North America, car inventory is expected to increase, thus decreasing vehicle pricing, for leasing and financing. Signature Auto Groups team of leasing agents in both Brooklyn, NY and Fort Lauderdale, Florida will be able to offer a wider variety of makes and models for lease and purchase.

In the meantime however, while the global chip shortage is still a concern, Signature Auto Group has introduced its car lease exit program because many lessees cars may be worth more than anticipated at the start of their lease when the residual value was pre-determined.

The Car Lease Exit Program is simple and easy to enter. The steps are as follows:



Visit https://signatureautoworld.com/contact-us-auto-leasing-company/

Enter contact information

Enter cars make, model, mileage, and lease terms

Signature Auto Groups leasing team will reach out with custom vehicle lease exit options

If the vehicle qualifies, there is no additional fee to exit your lease

Using the information provided, the leasing team at Signature Auto Group locates a vehicle leases buyout price, and thus determines if the lease is eligible for termination and if money can be made in the process for the lease owner. Customers can either walk away with this money or trade their car towards a new vehicle lease through Signatures fully online car leasing website. Due to factors surrounding the global car market, there may be certain situations in which car lessees may need to pay to exit their lease.

Signature Auto Group New York recognizes the importance of transparency when leasing a car in 2021. The Signature team prides itself on providing customers with all the financial information that comes along with leasing a new car in New York, Florida, or the Tri-State Area. Leasing a car has a lot of benefits, and Signature Auto Groups online leasing service allows customers to take full advantage of the freedoms of car leasing!

To shop lease deals on all makes and models, please visit https://signatureautoworld.com/car-lease-deals/page/2/

About Signature Auto Group New York

Signature Auto Group is an online car leasing company, based in New York and Florida. The companys talented, loyal, and motivated staff go above and beyond to support clients before, during, and after leasing a vehicle  a claim most other companies simply cannot make. Signature Auto Group boasts extensive inventory including many makes and models of vehicles, with numerous specials being offered throughout the year.
THEMA RUS has launched Love Nature, a wildlife and nature brand with linear and streaming channels available in over 135 countries, on Russias MTS TV-services.

Love Natures 4K linear TV channel will now be available to MTS subscribers in IPTV and on the KION multimedia platform.

In Russia and CIS countries, Love Natures linear TV channel and its VOD offering will be distributed by THEMA RUS.

Love Nature first launched in Russia in 2019, and adding MTS to its roster of broadcast partners in the region expands Love Natures presence to subscribers of the three largest operators in Russia, which also include Tricolor and Rostelecom.

Natalya Kabikova, managing director of THEMA RUS, said: The channel is appreciated by viewers all over the world because of its Ultra HD footage and the wildlife stories that touch your soul and truly captivate. The viewers of MTS TV-services now have a wonderful new source of vivid emotions.

Added Mikhail Goryachev, director of linear broadcasting and operator projects development at MTS PJSC: MTS is constantly expanding the list of TV channels available to our viewers with interesting HD content. And Love Nature will take its rightful place among other channels of similar topics. 4K quality will give the viewers a new look at wild nature and the opportunity to get new emotions from touching it on the screen.

Chiara Mckee, VP EMEA Love Nature, commented: The expansion of Love Nature in Russia continues to be key to our global strategy and is a true testament to the high-quality content about wildlife that we have to offer. Launching on MTS continues the amplification of the brand allowing us to share captivating wildlife stories with a significant Russian audience.

Love Nature offers viewers exclusive content from around the globe and shows animals in their natural habitat. Its documentaries and series include rare species of animals such as Hector's dolphins, endangered yellow-eyed penguins and South American spider monkeys. Additionally, Love Nature works with animal rescue organisations around the world to produce series, such as the Lilongwe Wildlife Trust in Africa, which is profiled in Malawi Wildlife Rescue and the Vancouver Aquarium, featured in the series Wild Pacific Rescue.

The launch of Love Nature in the packages of MTS TV-services expands the operator's partnership with THEMA RUS: earlier, viewers got access to the French-language TV-channel with Russian subtitles TV5MONDE and JSTV tv-channel in Japanese. Both channels are represented by THEMA RUS in Russia and CIS.
The Eagles will go on tour next year with each show featuring their Grammy Award-winning, "Hotel California." Tickets go on sale soon.

ADVERTISEMENT

Don Haley, Joe Walsh, and Timothy Schmidt, along with newer bandmates, country star Vince Gill , and Glenn Frey's son, Deacon, announced the 2022 tour on Wednesday.

Deacon and Gill joined the band in 2017 in the wake of the death of Glenn Frey, a guitarist for the Eagles, who died at age 67 in January 2016 of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, acute ulcerative colitis and pneumonia, according to a band statement.

The tour will run from Feb. 19 - June 26 with concerts set in Savannah, Ga.; Charlotte, N.C.; Orlando, Fla., Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Tampa, Fla.; Raleigh, N.C.; Atlanta and Austin, Texas.

Tickets will go on sale next week, with pre-sales starting on Dec. 2 and regular sale on Dec. 3.

"Each show will feature 'Hotel California,' played from beginning to end, accompanied by an orchestra and choir, along with an additional set of the band's greatest hits," the rock legends announced.
Athens, GA (30605)

Today

Cloudy skies with periods of rain this afternoon. High 71F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall may reach one inch..

Tonight

Light rain early. Then remaining cloudy. Low 39F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.
As the COVID-19 delta variant continues to spread across the nation, questions about booster shots, hospitalizations, and vaccine hesitancy leave many frustrated. As part of The Red & Blacks health news coverage, we are publishing weekly reports on news relating to COVID-19 and its recent statistics.

Major updates

COVID-19 cases decreased at the University of Georgia compared to last week, according to the universitys reporting system. UGA reported 23 new cases over the week of Nov. 15-21 compared to the 29 last week. The surveillance testing positivity rate decreased this week to 0%, with no positive cases being detected through surveillance testing.

According to The Hill, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said on Sunday that as the winter season approaches, an increase in COVID-19 infections is expected. He urged people to get vaccinated.

Due to fewer people wearing masks, respiratory illnesses such as influenza and respiratory syncytial virus have been spreading across the nation.

The deadline for covered University of Georgia employees to be vaccinated has been extended to Jan. 4, 2022, from the previous deadline of Dec. 8, 2021, according to an ArchNews email sent on Thursday. The new deadline was announced by the White House on Thursday.

This extension will give UGA's covered contractor employees additional time to get vaccinated. Some covered contractor employees have been alerted, according to the ArchNews email, while others are still being identified and notified.

Appointments can be scheduled here. Due to vaccination status being verified on-site, individuals should bring their original vaccine card to the appointment.

Employees covered by this policy include those who work on or in connection with a federal contract, or who work in a covered contractor workplace.

Georgias hospitals have about 22% of their intensive care unit beds left for sick patients. From Nov. 7-13, nearly all of COVID-19 cases in the southeastern U.S. were delta variant cases, according to the CDC.

The majority of people hospitalized with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Data breakdown: University of Georgia

The university conducted 599 surveillance tests during the week of Nov. 15.

Of the total positive cases this week, seven of them belonged to employees and 22 belonged to students.

There were four positive tests at the University Health Center. There were zero positive tests through UGA surveillance testing, four positive tests from UGA community members reporting from testing sites in Athens, and 15 positive tests from UGA community members reporting from other testing sites.

Students that test positive for COVID-19 off-campus are required to report it through DawgCheck, UGAs monitoring tool. Because students may have tested positive off-campus and not reported it, the actual number of COVID-19 cases in the UGA community may be higher.

For the week of Nov. 8-14, the UHC administered 408 vaccines, a significant decrease from the 537 administered last week. Cumulatively, the UHC has administered 30,624 vaccines.

Students and faculty may book a vaccine appointment through the UHC Vaccine Portal or get vaccinated at any University System of Georgia school. Students may also get tested for COVID-19 at the UHC with walk-in appointments.

Data breakdown: Athens-Clarke County

From Nov. 19-24, the county reported 52 new confirmed cases, compared to the exact same number of cases from Nov. 13-18, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health. The countys seven-day average positivity rate was 4.6%. The World Health Organization recommends communities maintain a positivity rate below 5%.

This week, ACC reported zero confirmed COVID-19 deaths.

According to the Georgia Geospatial Information Office, the number of current hospitalizations in Region E  which includes ACC and several surrounding counties  decreased slightly last week. On Nov. 24, there were 26 hospitalized COVID-19 patients, compared to 35 on Nov. 17.

According to the Georgia DPH, about 46% of the county is fully vaccinated.

Data breakdown: Georgia

Statewide, the weekly rate of new confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased.

According to the DPH, Georgia reported 6,673 confirmed COVID-19 cases between Nov. 19-24. This is an increase of about 480 from the 6,189 cases between Nov. 13-18. The states seven-day average positivity rate on Nov. 24 was 3.7%.

The number of confirmed deaths in the state decreased. Georgia recorded 143 confirmed COVID-19 deaths between Nov. 19-24, compared to the 161 between Nov. 13-18.

According to the DPH, almost 5.3 million Georgians have been fully vaccinated, or about 51% of the state. In comparison, the U.S. has a current full vaccination rate of 58%. Approximately 6 million Georgians, or 58% of the state, have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Currently, the CDC says Clarke Countys level of community transmission is moderate.

The CDC has also released guidelines advising vaccinated individuals to still wear masks when in public, indoor settings.
Brattleboro, VT (05301)

Today

Rain likely. High 56F. Winds S at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall near a quarter of an inch..

Tonight

Cloudy with occasional rain...mainly this evening. Low 36F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. Rainfall around a quarter of an inch.
PORTLAND  The Brainerd Place mixed-use development is continuing with the demolition portion of the project likely to be completed before the end of 2021, with new businesses moving in as early as next year.

The $40 million project, which includes construction of 241 rental units and 116,000 square feet of commercial space on the former Elmcrest Hospital property, was approved by the Planning and Zoning Commission in the summer of 2020.

Since then, work has been underway to prepare the site for the knocking down more than 20 existing structures, including some vacant houses on Perry Avenue and the former hospital buildings. AES Remedial of Southington is carrying out the razing.

Portlands Economic Development Planner Mary D. Dickerson said the goal is to have the demo portion of the project done before the end of the year, and that final remedial testing is taking place now.

Theres a lot going on, Dickerson said. Its a building-by-building process.

Once demolition is completed, things will start to progress quickly. Theres a lot of prep work, Dickerson explained.

Eversource, the state Department of Transportation, and other entities with electrical or plumbing lines have already visited and worked out their plan for the site, Dickerson said.

Traffic engineers have prepped Marlborough Street for eventual modifications to the roadway, including the addition of a stop light and turning lanes in the area of the development.

If people have seen those orange markers, thats all part of the project, Dickerson said.

Developers are also already working on leasing out commercial spaces. Dickerson said that Starbucks will be the first new building to be built on the site, and that it should be open for business sometime in 2022.

Newly-elected First Selectman Ryan Curley said he is glad to see the project moving along. I think were all excited to have the project moving forward, he said.

Periodic updates on the project are posted to the Economic Development Offices Facebook page.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP)  Denmark has joined other European nations in offering a third COVID-19 vaccination shot to everyone over the age of 18 amid a rise in coronavirus cases.

The Danish Health Authority said Thursday the decline in immunity is also happening for people in the younger age groups.

Helene Probst, deputy head of the government agency, said revaccination is offered at the same interval to everyone over 18 years of age.

Denmark, like many other countries in Europe, has seen an uptick in infections, with health authorities saying the numbers of cases and hospitalizations have risen faster than expected.

When we see the epidemic flare up right now, it is primarily due to the transition from summer to autumn and winter, and at the same time we have an open society with only a few restrictions. Combined with the fact that the effect of the vaccines decreases over time, it is expected that the infection will increase, Probst said in a statement.

In Denmark, which already has offered booster shots to older people and the vulnerable, the third jab will now be offered to people six months after the second shot. Vaccination in the Scandinavian country is voluntary.

According to official figures, 88.4% in Denmark has gotten the first shot while 86.4% has been given the second jab.

Sweden recommended Wednesday that everyone between the ages of 18 and 65 should get a booster shot against COVID-19 six months after having received the second jab.

On Wednesday, the Danish government said it would seek support in parliament to reintroduce mandates for wearing face masks in public places and expand the use of the countrys COVID-19 digital pass. Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said that the delta variant is far more contagious, and that challenges us.
CANAAN  Former state representative Brian Ohler, an Army veteran, is one of nine people being inducted into the state Veterans Hall of Fameclass of 2021.

Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz and state Department of Veterans Affairs Commissioner Thomas J. Saadi recently announced the names of this years class of the hall, which recognizes distinguished veterans who have made significant contributions to their communities after leaving military service.

I was at a loss for words when the VA commissioners office called me a couple of weeks ago, Ohler said. There was a mix of emotions; all the things they were praising me for are things Im passionate about  the military, civil service and public service.

I never thought it would receive such praise, and Im humbled and grateful for the recognition. And to be in the company of the other class members, to read about what theyve done, its amazing. Im so honored and thankful.

Ohler served from 2001 to 2013, first in Baghdad, from 2003 to 2007. In 2011, he volunteered to serve in Afghanistan as an infantry soldier.

Ohler was wounded in each of his three tours, and has three Purple Heart medals. When he returned from the Army in 2013, he got involved in local service right away, he said.

Coming home, for a lot of people who have served in the military, is hard, he said. Its hard to find a place in society. I always relied heavily on my passion to help others, and there have always been missions I can lend a hand to.

Ohler was elected to represent the 64th House District in 2017, and served one term. He is a past commander and life member of North Canaan VFW Post 6851, the Military Order of the Purple Heart and the Disabled American Veterans.

He is the associate director of safety and engineering for Hartford HealthCare at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, where he has worked for three years.

Most recently, I was appointed by the commissioner of Veterans Affairs to sit on the Qualifying Commission Review Board, Ohler said. So basically, on a case by case basis, we look at veterans who have had an other than honorable discharge, and if their cases are appealed, we are able to give them their critical care and medical benefits, that they werent able to get because of their discharge. That board was started with I was a state representative, and it passed into law during the last legislative session and became law in October.

Bysiewicz and Saadi will be joined by leaders of the states veterans community at the induction ceremony, which is scheduled for 5 p.m. Dec. 3 at the CT National Guard Armory Drill Shed. Each veteran will receive a commemorative medallion and certificate recognizing their induction.

Others to be honored are Gerald Augustine, Army, Middletown; Paul Barry, Marine Corps, East Hartford; John Bevins, Navy, Waterbury; Stanley Borusiewicz, Marine Corps, Naugatuck; Carlita Cotton, Air Force, Mansfield; William Currlin, Army, Middlefield; James Shelmerdine, Army, East Hartford; and Brendan Sniffin, Air Force, Danbury.

Since 2005, the Connecticut Veterans Hall of Fame has formally recognized veterans in our state who, after discharging from military service, have distinguished themselves through a life of service at the local, regional and state levels as leaders in veterans organizations, in public service, and as volunteers and community advocates. These men and women have enriched their communities through their selfless commitment and application of their knowledge and talents, to bettering the lives of others. Being able to publicly recognize and honor these fine veterans each year is truly one of the highlights of serving as Commissioner as it is these honorees who embody the true meaning of service to our nation and to our communities, said Saadi.

For more than 16 years, the Connecticut Veterans Hall of Fame has recognized our veterans, who sacrificed everything as they served their country and continue to give back to their local communities. While each of these brave men and women come from different backgrounds, they all share the same characteristics - courage, strength, pride, and selflessness. Congratulations to this years inductees. Thank you to the 2021 class for their bravery and their continued leadership and commitment to bettering our communities and state, said Bysiewicz.
DETROIT (AP)  The FBIs confirmation last week that it was looking at a spot near a New Jersey landfill as the possible burial site of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is the latest development in a search that began when he disappeared in 1975.

A number of theories have emerged about Hoffa since he was reported missing, though many of them have been tied to book releases. From serious to scurrilous, here are some of the best:

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Theory: Hoffa was killed on the orders of alleged New Jersey mob figure Anthony Tony Pro Provenzano. His body was ground up in little pieces, shipped to Florida and thrown into a swamp."

Who put it forth: Self-described mafia murderer Charles Allen, who served prison time with Hoffa and participated in the federal witness-protection program, told the story to a U.S. Senate committee in 1982.

Outcome: The FBI never found enough evidence to support the claim and questions were raised about Allen trying to sell the story to make money.

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Theory: Probably the most infamous had Hoffa buried under Section 107 of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Who put it forth: Self-described hit man Donald Tony the Greek Frankos in a 1989 Playboy magazine interview.

Outcome: The FBI found nothing to support the claim and didnt bother to show up when the stadium was demolished in 2010.

When that information came to our attention we batted it around, but we were all convinced in the end that this guy was not reliable, FBI agent Jim Kossler said then. We were able to prove to our mind that what he was telling us couldnt have happened because he either couldnt have been there or he was in jail at the time.

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Theory: Hoffa was abducted by either federal marshals or federal agents, driven to a nearby airport and dropped out of a plane, possibly into one of the Great Lakes that surround Michigan.

Who put it forth: Former Hoffa aide and strong-arm Joseph Franco in the 1987 book Hoffas Man.

Outcome: Other than Francos word, there was nothing to support his claim.

A Chicago Tribune review of the book put it this way: Former New York Times reporter Richard Hammer, who helped Franco with the book, candidly writes in the introduction that the stories have the ring of truth. Maybe, but they also reek of something else.

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Theory: Hoffa was killed by one-time ally Frank Sheeran at a Detroit house. Key parts of the narrative became the basis for the 2019 movie The Irishman."

Who put it forth: Sheeran.

Outcome: Bloomfield Township police ripped up floorboards at the house in 2004, but the FBI crime lab concluded that blood found on them was not Hoffas.

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Theory: New Jersey mob hit man Richard The Iceman Kuklinski killed Hoffa in Michigan, drove the body to a New Jersey junkyard, sealed it in a 50-gallon drum and set it on fire. He later dug up the body and put it in the trunk of a car that was sold as scrap metal.

Who put it forth: Kuklinski, who contended in his 2006 book, The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, that he received $40,000 for the slaying.

Outcome: The former chief of organized crime investigations for the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice told The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, that he doubted the claim.

They took a body from Detroit, where they have one of the biggest lakes in the world, and drove it all the way back to New Jersey? Come on, Bob Buccino said.

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Theory: Hoffa was killed and his body was buried beneath a swimming pool in Bay Countys Hampton Township.

Who put it forth: Richard C. Powell, who used to live on the property and who was serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 1982 homicide in Saginaw County.

Outcome: Police used a backhoe to demolish the pool and dig beneath it in 2003, although no trace of Hoffa was found. At one point, police brought Powell to the scene handcuffed and shackled. Then-Bay County Prosecutor Joseph K. Sheeran told the Bay City (Michigan) Times that Powell didnt have any connection to Hoffa at all and that the convict just wanted a few moments of fame.

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Theory: Hoffas killers buried him beneath the 73-story Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit.

Who put it forth: Marvin Elkind, a self-described chauffeur and goon for mob bosses, in the 2011 book The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob.

Outcome: The building, home to General Motors' headquarters, stands and the claim has never been taken seriously.

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Theory: Hoffa was buried in a makeshift grave beneath a concrete slab of a barn in Oakland Township about 25 miles north of Detroit.

Who put it forth: Reputed Mafia captain Tony Zerilli in the online Hoffa Found. Zerilli was in prison for organized crime when Hoffa disappeared, but he claimed he was informed about Hoffas whereabouts after his release.

Outcome: The FBI and police in 2013 spent two days digging at the site that no longer had the barn, but found nothing.

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Theory: Hoffas body was delivered to a Jersey City landfill in 1975, placed in a steel drum and buried about 100 yards away on state property that sits below an elevated highway.

Who put it forth: Journalist Dan Moldea, who has written extensively about the Hoffa saga, as a result of interviews with Frank Cappola. Cappola, who died in 2020, says his father owned the landfill and buried the body.

Outcome: To be determined. The FBI obtained a search warrant to do a site survey, which it completed last month and is analyzing the data. The agency hasn't said whether it removed anything from the site.

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This story was first published on Nov. 26. It was updated on Nov. 25 to correct that Michigan's Hampton Township is in Bay County, not Oakland County.
The video of Ahmaud Arbery's shotgun death was a shocking piece of evidence that suddenly brought the Black man's killing into the national consciousness.

But the murder convictions of the three white men who chased him may have been secured as much by their own words to investigators the day of the shooting.

Greg McMichael, who was in the bed of a pickup truck when his son killed Arbery, told police the Black man "was trapped like a rat" and he told Arbery: "Stop, or Ill blow your f---ing head off!

Statements like that allowed prosecutors to give context to the short video that didn't show the entire shooting and had little of the five minutes that the men chased Arbery.

Its those statements that screwed the defense more than the video. If they had never talked to police and they said we saw him taking something from the property and running  theres an OK shot the jury might have acquitted them," said appellate attorney Andrew Fleischman, who followed the trial from Atlanta.

WHAT THEY SAID:

The shooter, Travis McMichael, his dad, Greg McMichael and neighbor William Roddie Bryan all spoke extensively and candidly with Glynn County investigators just hours after Arbery was killed in their Brunswick, Georgia, neighborhood in February 2020.

They told police they werent sure exactly what Arbery had done wrong, which would later be a big blow to their defense that they were making a citizen's arrest.

The citizen's arrest law, largely repealed by lawmakers after Arbery's death, required a person to see or have immediate knowledge of a crime being committed or have reasonable suspicion that someone is fleeing a felony in order to justify a citizens arrest.

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," Greg McMichael said, according to a transcript of the interview that Glynn County police Sgt. Roderic Nohilly read in court.

Bryan 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?

In an interview with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Bryan said he wanted to take a photo of Arbery to show police, but couldnt point to any crimes Arbery had committed.

I figured he had done something wrong, Bryan said. I didnt know for sure.

The statements allowed prosecutor Linda Dunikoski to methodically pick apart the defense's arguments.

Nobody was talking about a citizens arrest. And I dont mean using the magic words citizens arrest. I mean no ones saying, We saw the guy commit a burglary and we were going to hold on to him so we could turn him over to police because he committed this crime,'" Atlanta defense attorney Page Pate said.

DEFENSE CASE

That left the attorneys for the men to struggle to explain away their statements.

The evidence suggests that Roddie Bryan legitimately struggles to find the right words, Bryan's lawyer, Kevin Gough, told jurors in his closing argument Monday.

Travis McMichael, testifying in his own defense, said he was in shock when he first spoke to police, calling the shooting the most traumatic event of his life.

Greg McMichael's lawyer suggested maybe he never shouted at Arbery: "Stop, or Ill blow your f---ing head off like he told police because the remark wasnt recorded on the cellphone video of the shooting or the 911 call Greg McMichael made to police. Both of those recordings covered only a small part of the five-minute chase that ended in Arberys death.

You only have a handful of defenses to deal with what is basically a confession, Pate said.

FAMILIAR FACES

Greg McMichael was a former investigator in the Glynn County district attorney's office and may have felt like he could navigate trouble among his acquaintances and friends.

It worked for a while. The men weren't charged for more than two months  only after the video of the shooting surfaced and the case was turned over to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. State agents charged the men two days later.

This is just a case of a client who talked himself out of trouble and those statements later turned out to put him back into it, Fleischman said.

Phone records show Greg McMichael called his former boss, District Attorney Jackie Johnson, just after the shooting. Johnson handed off the case to an out-of-town prosecutor, who cited the citizen's arrest law in recommending no charges. A third prosecutor was reviewing the case when the video surfaced and handed it off to the state.

Johnson was indicted on a felony charge of violating her oath of office and a misdemeanor count of obstructing police for her role in the investigation. Authorities have released little information on Johnson's actions other than to say she never disclosed that she asked the second prosecutor to advise police in the immediate aftermath of Arberys killing.

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Jeffrey Collins contributed to this report.
SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP)  Human error is believed to be the most likely cause of the fiery bus crash in Bulgaria that killed 44 people, including 12 children, early Tuesday, a Bulgarian official said Thursday.

The bus, which officials said had 52 people on board, mostly nationals of North Macedonia, was one of four returning from a trip to Istanbul. Turkey. It hit a highway guardrail in western Bulgaria, caught fire and was reduced to a charred shell. Officials said the passengers were trapped as both exits were blocked.

An investigation is under way into the cause of the accident, which has sent a shockwave of grief across the neighboring Balkan countries.

On Thursday, Borislav Sarafov, deputy chief prosecutor and head of Bulgarias national investigation service, ruled out a terrorist act, adding that investigators also established there had been no blast.

Speaking at a press conference in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital, Sarafov said that for the time being the leading version (of events) is human error.

The guard rail on the motorway where the accident happened is dangerous and is among the main causes for the crash, he said. He added that investigators are examining whether poor organization of highway traffic such as lane marking, lack of proper signs and reflectors could have contributed to the crash.

Lead investigator Marian Marinov said the bus driver had tried to stop before hitting the guard rail, but instead drove into it, likely because it was dark and raining.

Witnesses have said that immediately after the first hit fire broke out and the bus was quickly filled with smoke, he said.

No one could exit from the front door because of the strong fire there. All gathered in front of the second door in the middle of the bus, but it was blocked by the guard rail, he said.

Sarafov said forensic investigators have so far found a total of 44 bodies, one fewer than the 45 officials initially reported. He called the discrepancy a mystery and added that investigators were trying to establish whether one passenger had moved to another of the buses or had survived the crash.

Seven people are known to have survived  five citizens of North Macedonia, one Serb and one Belgian. They were taken to Sofias Pirogov emergency hospital and are in stable condition.

One of them, who broke a window to escape the burning bus, testified to prosecutors that eight people had jumped out, said Siyka Mileva, spokesperson for the chief prosecutor.

Sarafov said Thursday that the victims died of suffocation from fire smoke and not from the impact of the crash. The official added that soot particles were found in their respiratory systems.

Bulgarian Interior Minister Boyko Rashkov told reporters at the crash site Tuesday that he had never seen something more horrifying. The bodies have to be identified by DNA testing.

Media in Bulgaria and North Macedonia have described it as the deadliest bus crash in both countries histories.

Authorities in North Macedonia have revoked the license for the travel company that organized the trip and banned its traveling operations. Also, two customs officers were suspended because they allowed the bus involved in the accident to pass the border without a vehicle license.

In North Macedonias capital of Skopje Wednesday, hundreds of elementary school pupils converged outside Ismail Qemali school to pay tribute to six classmates killed in the accident.

What happened was something no one would want  (its a) big tragedy, Metush Memedi, a teacher from the school said. We have five children from one family. Two of them were in ninth grade, one in eighth grade, one in sixth, and one girl in second.

Visar Ganiu, mayor of the municipality of Chair in Skopje, said 16 of the crash victims hailed from his district.

I want to express condolences to the families, friends and colleagues of all those who lost their lives in the tragic accident, Ganiu said. We are hurting with them as well.

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McGrath reported from Bucharest, Romania. Konstantin Testorides in Skopje, North Macedonia, contributed.
BRIDGEPORT - During his 21 years as a city police officer Christopher Martin has appeared in court many times. But on Wednesday, he was in court to face his own criminal charges.

Martin is accused of stealing $500 during a drug arrest he participated in. He is charged with second-degree larceny and tampering with evidence.

Martin did not enter pleas to the charges as he stood before Superior Court Judge Peter McShane. The judge continued the case to Dec. 7.

Martin and his lawyer, Alex Gulash, declined comment as they left the Golden Hill Street courthouse.

On Nov. 11, Martin was part of a federal and statewide task force investigating large-scale drug trafficking in the city, according to police.

Following a three-month investigation police said the task force moved in and arrested two Waterbury brothers, Luis and David Pacheco, who the task force had information were moving large quantities of cocaine into the city. Police said they seized nearly four pounds of cocaine and a quantity of cash.

During the processing of one of the suspects vehicles, police said an inspector from the States Attorneys Office observed that $500 previously documented in the vehicle had been removed. Operations were immediately halted and a search for the money commenced.

Police said a second inspector saw Martin move a quantity of cash from his sock to his pants pocket. Martin was subsequently found to be in possession of $500 in cash, police said.

Martin was arrested on site by the Bridgeport Police Department. He was released on $10,000 bond.

The Bridgeport Police Department took immediate action by arresting him upon becoming aware of his actions, said Acting Police Chief Rebeca Garcia. She said Martin immediately submitted his resignation prior to being suspended without pay.

The Bridgeport Police Department will not and does not condone officers who violate their oath of office by engaging in criminal activity, Garcia said.
Union Defense Minister Rajnath Singh, who is in Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur district, on Thursday said that India has never attacked any country first. However, he said, if provoked, he will not leave them, citing Pulwama and URI strikes.

"We never attacked any country of the world. We never captured even a single inch of any country, but when someone attacked we did surgical strikes. We will not leave them will never spare them," Rajnath Singh said.

The Defence Minister said that Pakistan is trying to attack in Jammu and Kashmir. But stated that they are getting a befitting reply. "Our neighbouring country is trying to attack in Jammu and Kashmir but our paramilitary jawans are giving a befitting reply," he said.

He stated that Pulwama and URI are the biggest examples of such replies. Moreover, he warned, "We are able to do attacks in your soil too."

Rajnath Singh said that the defence corridor, whose foundation stone was laid down by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will strengthen the country. The centre has decided to set up two defence Industrial corridors in the country- one in Uttar Pradesh and the other in Tamil Nadu.

The UP Defence Industrial corridor has nodes at Aligarh, Agra, Jhansi, Chitrakoot, Kanpur and Lucknow. For the Jhansi node, the stage government has made around 1,034 hectares of land made available.

Bharat Dynamics Ltd is setting up a plant for the propulsion system for ATGM (Anti-Tank Guided Missiles). It will be spread over 183 acres of land in Jhansi.

The Defence Ministry has taken several initiatives to make India self-reliant in the defence sector. These include the issue of positive indigenisation lists, promotion of startups under the Innovations For Defense Excellence (iDEX) initiative. Earmarking of 64% of capital procurement budget for the domestic industry, speeding up of capital acquisition process and setting up of Defence Industrial Corridors among others.
Outcounting NASAs discovery of 301 exoplanets, astronomers from the University of Los Angeles, California (UCLA) have found a whopping 366 new potential alien worlds. According to a release by the University, the exoplanets were found using the data from the Kepler Space Telescope and an algorithm developed by a UCLA postdoctoral scholar. Interestingly, the highlight of the discovery is a planetary system comprising a star with two orbiting gas giant planets. Each of these planets is roughly the size of Saturn and are located unusually close to one another, as per the findings which have now been published in the Astronomical Journal.

UCLA astronomers have identified 366 new exoplanets. 



With less than 5,000 known exoplanets, "the identification of hundreds of new ones is a significant advance." https://t.co/gOA7rJFb9k  UCLA (@UCLA) November 23, 2021

The discovery of these hundreds of exoplanets is being considered a significant advancement as the number of outer worlds found to date is just over 4,500. Erik Petigura, co-author of the research and a UCLA astronomy professor said as per the release-

Discovering hundreds of new exoplanets is a significant accomplishment by itself, but what sets this work apart is how it will illuminate features of the exoplanet population as a whole.

Meanwhile, the real credit for the discovery of this new batch of exoplanets goes to lead author Jon Zink, who used data from the K2 mission of NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and coupled it with the planet detection algorithm he developed. Petigura further said, "The catalog and planet detection algorithm that Jon and the Scaling K2 team devised is a major breakthrough in understanding the population of planets" adding that this will sharpen the understanding of the processes through which a planet forms and evolves.

Since identifying new planets is a challenge as many factors mimic planetary signatures, Zink's algorithm helped overcome this challenge by distinguishing between noise and real planets. The astronomers reportedly analysed 500 terabytes of data comprised of 800 million images of stars and cataloged 361 new planets. However, Zink said that more stars need to be studied in order to understand what type of stars have exoplanets orbiting them and what factors determine planet formation. This discovery comes a day after NASA confirmed the discovery of 301 new exoplanets.

NASA's discovery of 301 new exoplanets

NASA on November 22 had confirmed the existence of 301 new exoplanets, although none were confirmed to be located in habitable zones around their stars. NASA had also used data from the Kepler Telescope's K2 mission along with machine learning methods to make the discoveries. Tap here to read more.

Discovery Alert!

We are adding a whopping 301 exoplanets (worlds beyond our solar system) to the list of confirmed planets! "These 301 discoveries help us better understand planets and solar systems beyond our own, and what makes ours so unique. https://t.co/hIwCVbMTBO pic.twitter.com/vmKanvLo6c  NASA Exoplanets (@NASAExoplanets) November 22, 2021

Image: UCLA
Late dictator Moammar Gadhafi's sons, Seif al-Islam Gadhafi ineligible to run for the presidential elections scheduled for December 24, can appeal the decision in court in days ahead. Libya's High National Elections Commissions moved Seif-al-Islams name on the states list of the 'ineligible candidates' released by the country's High National Elections Committee over his criminal record. Gadhafis son was sentenced to death by a Tripoli court in 2015 for using violent tactics and oppression against the Libyan protesters in a 2011 uprising against his fathers regime.

Although that ruling was called into question by Libyas rival authorities Seif Gadhafi was disqualified because of a criminal conviction for which he was found guilty and was convicted.

The International Criminal Court had declared Gaddafis son as wanted and had asserted that he must be tried in the court of law for crimes against humanity. One of the 25 candidates, while Seif-al-Islam can appeal the decision, he joined some of the country's prominent figures such as former Prime Minister Ali Zeidan and Nouri Abusahmain, former head of the General National Congress of Libya, according to report. After several years of hiding, Seif-al-Islam made an appearance as he filed for candidacy to contest for the presidency just 10 days ago.

The elections in Libya are backed by the UN to bring an end to the political turmoil. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on the people of Libya to inculcate a spirit of national unity and overcome any trailing differences ahead of the landmark presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled to take place in the North African country.

Eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar announces candidacy

Just a week ago, Libyas powerful eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar announced that he will run in Libyas presidential elections due next month. In a televised speech, Haftar asserted that countrys elections are the only way out of the severe crisis that Libya has plunged into. Commander of the Libyan National Army (LNA) has been the ex-CIA asset and is backed by Russia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

He retired from his role as head of the LNA in September to contest for the Presidency. Haftar is expected to head to the electoral authority to formalize the process for the elections that he called a landmark move to mend the oil-rich country ravaged by the 2011 NATO-backed uprising to topple longtime dictator Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Libya is split into government in the east, backed by Haftar, and an UN-supported administration in Tripoli in the West.
China is mulling to work with Iran to push back at the policy of unilateral actions and also to underscore the principle of non-interference in internal affairs of sovereign nations. As per Sputnik, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a conversation with Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Wednesday, 24 November that Beijing is ready to cooperate with Tehran to resist the policies of unilateral sanction and harassment in a bid to defend international justice and impartiality.

Wang was quoted by the news agency as saying, China is ready to cooperate with Iran to resist any policy of unilateral action and harassment, uphold the principle of non-interference in internal affairs and defend international justice and impartiality during the meeting which took place in a video format. Chinese Foreign Minister also said that Beijing had no intention to impose its own development model. However, Wang added that the country hopes to set an example for Iran to ramp up the countrys development while maintaining its independence.

Reportedly, Wang noted that China welcomes Irans support for the global development initiative that was proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping. During the same meeting, the Chinese and Iranian ministers exchanged views on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal along with the negotiations around the removal of US sanctions on Tehran.

As per the report, Wang said, China understands the reasonable demands of Iran and supports Tehran in protecting its legitimate rights and interests. In the current situation, all parties should make joint efforts to maintain the tendency to resume negotiations and promote consensus at the Vienna talks.

Iran hailed Chinas role in nuclear talks

In response, the Iranian Foreign Minister reportedly hailed China for the latters constructive role in the resumption of nuclear deal negotiations in Vienna. Furthermore, Wang and Abdollahian agreed to cooperate in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic while overcoming its impacts. Chinese Foreign Minister reportedly said that the authorities in the country will transfer a batch of Coronavirus vaccines to Tehran, in a gesture of friendship with Iranian nations.

Chinese state media, Global Times separately reported that Wang denounced the so-called summit for democracy proposed by the United States and said that it is organised to instigate division under the banner of democracy, which goes against the trend of the times and is doomed to fail. Reportedly Abdollahian also expressed Irans strong disagreement with unilateralism, bullying, double standards and interference in China's sovereignty and internal affairs.

(IMAGE: AP)
In a major breakthrough, the European Union (EU) drug regulator, on Thursday authorized Pfizer/BioNTechs Coronavirus vaccine for use on children between ages 5 to 11 years. The decision comes days after American and Israeli regulators gave a green signal to kid-size dose (1/3rd of adult shots) of the vaccine. Notably, the decision by the European Medicines Authority (EMA) would now enable the vaccine to reach millions of elementary school kids across the continent which is now battling a resurgence of the COVID infection.

Israel begins vaccinating kids

Earlier this week, Israel commenced COVID vaccination for children. According to a report by the Times of Israel, the Zionist state began the vaccination process on Monday afternoon and soon after, over 24,000 slots were booked for the next day. Notably, a mild dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine (kids-sized-dose) will be used for immunisation purposes.

Speaking in the aftermath, the countrys Coronavirus czar Salman Zarka, said that it was a celebration day for children and parents who can not protect their children. Furthermore, he said that the vaccination would help children in resuming their normal lives as well as facilitate their protection against respiratory infection.

The disease is mild [in children], but there are cases where the disease can continue with long-term symptoms such as insomnia and muscle aches, Zarka warned. He further added, Along with protecting children, the vaccine provides a solution to a normal and uninsulated life. It will help parents get back to normal.

Meanwhile, on November 3, the team belonging to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) deliberated upon the same, discussing at length whether the jabs would be beneficial to all 28 million children in the country. A final recommendation from the American health body came hours after, giving a final clearance to the Pfizer/BioNTech shots.

(Image: AP)

(With inputs from AP)
Removed just hours after being declared as Sweden's first-ever female prime minister, now-ousted Magdalena Andersson that replaced former Prime Minister Stefan Lofven says that she hopes to return to power. A coalition government should resign if a party chooses to leave the government. Despite the fact that the parliamentary situation is unchanged, it needs to be tried again, Swedens ex-Prime Minister said as the 349-seat Swedish Parliament waits for the next political steps in instating the head of the government after Andersons Green partys 74 billion kronor ($8.2bn) budget related to reforms was rejected, Swedish broadcaster SVT reported.

Do not want to lead govt that 'questions' its legitimacy, says ousted Swedish PM

Anderson stepped down from her role after suffering a budget defeat in less than 12 hours plunging the country into political uncertainty. Her governments coalition budget proposal was rejected in favour of the opposition right-wing populist Sweden Democrats with Neo-Nazi roots that received a majority with 154-143, Associated Press reported. The approved budget aims to reduce taxes, increase police salaries and increase money in Sweden's judiciary system.

"There is a constitutional practice where a coalition government resigns when a party leaves it. For me, it is about respect, but I also do not want to lead a government where there may be grounds to question its legitimacy," Andersson said at a news conference. "We have a united party behind us saying we can not sit in a government that implements a policy [the Sweden Democrats] negotiated. We must look our voters in the eye and feel pride," Marta Stenevi, Green Party spokesperson said as the party chose to resign from the government, according to Associated Press.

Swedens largest party Green Party abandoned the two-party minority government and Andersson was removed. At least 117 politicians voted in favour of Andersson, meanwhile, 174 rejected her appointment. Over 57 Swedish lawmakers abstained from the voting process while just one remained absent.

Green Party said it was in its best interests to scrap the support for Anderson over the budget approval from the opposition party. Although, the ousted Swedish Prime Minister says that she is still interested in leading a social Democrat one-party government. Swedish Parliamentary Speaker Andreas Norlen on Wednesday stated that he will hold an emergency meeting with Swedens party leaders "to discuss the situation and decide accordingly how to proceed. Anderson on Nov. 24 stressed that despite that she lost her role as Swedish leader, the decision was in the best interests of the party after the budget defeat.
After the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association (PPDA) announced a nationwide strike from November 25, effective 6 am in the morning, citizens in large numbers in Islamabad swarmed the petrol stations to purchase the fuel, blocking the pumps until late last night, ANI reported citing the local Pakistani news outlets. Heavy traffic jams, chaos, and the rush was witnessed across Pakistan earlier yesterday ahead of the countrywide petrol strike.

People waited for several hours in long queues, many of whom were waiting to stock the petrol as it remained unclear when the strike was expected to end. Petrol pumps across Pakistan were shut starting today in defiance and protest against the Imran Khans governments failure to increase the dealers profit margin. In populous Pakistani cities of Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, people were seen stranded outside the fuel stations waiting to refill their motor vehicles, according to the footage that emerged on social media.

On his official Twitter handle, Pakistans Federal Minister of Energy Hamad Azhar said: We are in touch with the Petroleum Dealers Association. A summary of the review of their margins has already been submitted to the ECC and will be decided at the next meeting.

A large number of people rush to the Petrol pumps to refuel tanks of their bikes & cars in #Islamabad . Pakistan Petroleum Association announced #strike from 25 November 2021 till to acceptance of their demands.

Govt said "People don't need to worry,"#Pakistan #Petrol pic.twitter.com/zvXoHlfYD0  Adnan Hameed (@Pak986) November 24, 2021

Petrol pump strike in Pakistan pic.twitter.com/weebjnSelo  Nair an (@Nairan22024511) November 24, 2021

Imran Khan gov't failed to act on dealers' profit margin promised three years ago, say dealers

PPDA Chairman Abdul Sami Khan refused a definite answer on when the association might call off the strike when contacted by Pakistans leading newspaper Dawn. "The strike will begin at 6 am tomorrow," he told the paper. Meanwhile, Pakistans petrol dealers held a meeting about the strike at Faletti's Hotel in Lahore. They accused the Imran Khan-led government of bluffs, stressing that the government had promised to increase dealers' profit margin three years ago but did not act on it.

The association had previously decided to hold a strike on November 5 but had withdrawn after Pakistans Minister for Energy Hammad Azhar visited them along with a a committee led by Petroleum Secretary Dr Arshad Mahmood and agreed to fulfill the demands. "The government had agreed to raise the profit margin by six per cent and sought time till November 17 to implement the decision."
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has held talks with the Taliban administration to run Kabul airport, going up against Qatar in a diplomatic tussle for influence with Afghanistan. According to Reportwire, several UAE officials have held a sequence of discussions with a group of Taliban members in recent weeks to debate upon the possibilities of operating the airport. Notably, the Kabul International Airport serves as the main link between the conflict-hit country and the rest of the world and played a pivotal role in August's evacuation missions.

While Turkey had initially offered to manage the airport, it later subsided stating that its troops could not take the onus in an atmosphere where security is provided by Taliban. Taliban, which had by then declared the Islamic Emirate further asserted that they wanted Ankara to only provide technical support. Interestingly, Turkish troops had been providing security to the countrys main airport for the past six years.

Taliban renamed the airport in September

Earlier in September, the Taliban rechristened the International airport in the capital city of the war-torn country. The airport, which earlier went by the name 'Hamid Karzai International Airport', on the order of the insurgent group, was renamed by the name 'Kabul Airport', as per the Afghan media. After the Taliban stormed into Kabul on August 15, forcing the Ashraf Ghani-led government to surrender, the airport became an epicentre of chaos, where thousands every day were seen in misery, some so desperate to leave the war-torn country that they clung on to the wheels of the airplanes flying out and as soon as the plane took off, fell to their death. Besides, a few others lost their lives in the firings of the Taliban which the extremist group falsely claimed did not lead to casualties while the pictures of blood-soaked people lying on the ground that surfaced after the said firings depicted a different story.

There has, however, been no case of firing, or other chaotic incidents reported after the Taliban gained control of the Kabul airport following the withdrawal of the last batch of US troops from Afghanistan on August 31. On the other hand, there has been less cause for Afghans to visit the airport as civilian flight operations are far from full scale.

Image: AP
United States has welcomed India's announcement to transform current equalisation levy with that of a new multilateral approach. Further, both the nations have committed to continue working together via constructive engagement on the issue, the US Department of Treasury stated on November 24. These transformations will lead to a tax system that will be considered to be more fair, stable and capable of meeting the demands of a global economy in the twenty-first century.

Nearly 137 nations from the OECD-G20 Inclusive Framework, which comprise roughly 95% of global GDP, had signed a significant agreement last month, on a two-pillar package of international tax reforms that are to be enacted in 2023. As per a press release from the US Department of Treasury, In support of that agreement, the United States supports India's announcement of their agreement to a transition from the existing India equalization levy to the new multilateral solution, and India and the United States have committed to working together through constructive dialogue on this matter.

US supports Indias announcement of their agreement to a transition from the existing India equalization levy to the new multilateral solution, and India & US have committed to working together through constructive dialogue on this matter: US Department of Treasury pic.twitter.com/a3Ckzeb5W9  ANI (@ANI) November 24, 2021

Further, the release reads that this agreement is a sensible solution that will allow nations to concentrate on their collaborative action over the execution of the iconic OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework deal. The agreement even focuses on the implementation of a new multilateral taxation system, as well as the revocation of trade measures taken in response to India's equalisation levy 2020. Overall, the political agreement demonstrates the working commitment between the US and India to achieve a common ground and to enact far-reaching international changes that benefit the economies and public budgets.

India and the US joined OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework on October 8

Furthermore, India and the US have decided that similar terms would be applied under the Joint Statement of October 21, between the two nations in relation to India's 2% equalisation levy on e-commerce supply services supply and the US trade action. As per an official announcement, the transition phase which will be applicable would run from April 1, 2022, until Pillar One is implemented, or March 31, 2024, whichever comes first.

India and the United States joined 134 other OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework members, which include Austria, France, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom, on October 8 of this year, by signing the Statement on a Two-Pillar Solution to Address Tax Challenges Arising from Digitalization of the Economy.

(Image: AP/ PTI)
BJP Mocks Rahul Gandhi As 12 Meghalaya Congress MLAs Support TMC; Says 'age On His Side'

After 12 out of 17 Congress MLAs in Meghalaya decided to support TMC on Wednesday, BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya took a dig at Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi. In a swipe at the former Congress president, he contended that it was "unfair" to blame the former and that he has "age on his side". Taking recourse to a defence usually adopted by the Congress party to sidestep its failures, Malviya reckoned that this development had very little significance as the next Meghalaya Assembly election was due in 2023.

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IMF Rebuffs Imran Khan Govt's Borrowing Request Amid Rising Financial Woes In Pakistan

Amid the ongoing financial woes in Pakistan, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has rejected Islamabad's request to keep the door open for borrowing from the central bank and also did not agree on any meaningful accountability of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), reported ANI, citing The Express Tribune. As per the Pakistani Daily, the central bank's profit would not be delivered to the federal government in full unless the SBP obtains cover to back its monetary liabilities. At least 20% of the state bank's profit would henceforth be retained in the IMF central bank's coffers until the desired cover is obtained, reportedly.

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Delhi Air Pollution: AQI Slips To 'very Poor' Category At 330; Prediction For 24 Hours

After a slight improvement the day before, Delhi's air quality dipped again into the 'very poor' category on Thursday, November 25. Delhi's Air Quality Index (AQI) was 330 (overall), according to the System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research (SAFAR)-India. For the previous ten days, Delhi had been reporting 'very poor' air quality, with a break on Wednesday when the national capital's AQI was recorded at 280 in the 'poor' category.

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Survey: 54% People Don't Want Cryptocurrencies To Be Legalised In India

Around 54 per cent of people covered in a pan-India survey did not favour legalising cryptocurrencies in the country and instead pitched for treating them as digital assets held overseas, digital community platform LocalCircles said in a report. LocalCircles said the study received more than 56,000 responses from people residing in 342 districts of the country, while the number of responses to individual questions differed. In response to a question on how India should handle cryptocurrencies from a regulatory standpoint, 8,717 responses were received.

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PM Modi To Take Part In Constitution Day Celebrations At Parliament & SC On Nov 26

Commemorating Constitution Day on November 26, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the programmes that will be organised in Parliament and Vigyan Bhawan. The itinerary stated that after President Ram Nath Kovind's speech to mark the day, the nation will join him in reading the Preamble of the Constitution of India. The ceremony is set to begin at 11 am in the Central Hall of Parliament while Lok Sabha Speaker and Om Birla Vice President Venkaiah Naidu will address the programme.

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Sharad Pawar 'shocked' After Param Bir Singh Apprehends Threat From Mumbai Police

Addressing a press conference in Satara on Wednesday, NCP supremo Sharad Pawar expressed his shock at Param Bir Singh's claim that he faces a threat from Mumbai Police. Denying rumours that he has fled the country, the former Mumbai Police Commissioner's lawyer Puneet Bali informed the Supreme Court on Monday that his client is ready to appear before the CBI in a period of 24 hours. This revelation came after the apex court had refused to grant the IPS officer any protection unless he discloses his location.

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Pak Petroleum Dealers Launch Nationwide Strike Against Imran Khan Govt Over Profit Margin

After the Pakistan Petroleum Dealers Association (PPDA) announced a nationwide strike from November 25, effective 6 am in the morning, citizens in large numbers in Islamabad swarmed the petrol stations to purchase the fuel, blocking the pumps until late last night, ANI reported citing the local Pakistani news outlets. Heavy traffic jams, chaos, and the rush was witnessed across Pakistan earlier yesterday ahead of the countrywide petrol strike.

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China Warns US Against Providing 'Taiwan Independence' A Platform, Says 'it Will Hurt You'

Aggravated at Biden administration's invitation to Taiwan for the "Summit for Democracy and excluding China on Wednesday threatened the US for providing a platform to the "Taiwan independence" forces, and bolstering and emboldening them. There is but one China in the world, the government of the People's Republic of China is the sole legal government representing the whole of China, Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, Zhao Lijialn, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said at a state presser. One China principle is a widely-recognised norm of international relations, the Chinese minister reminded the US, adding that "Taiwan has no other international status in the international law than being part of China.

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US Blacklists Foreign Entities From Pak, China And Russia Over National Security Issue

The US on Wednesday, Nov. 24 blacklisted twenty-seven foreign entities and individuals including from China and Pakistan, adding them to the Military End-User (MEU) list for engaging in activities that are a threat to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States. Sixteen entities and individuals operating in China and Pakistan were blacklisted based on their contributions to Pakistans unsafeguarded nuclear activities or ballistic missile program. It is to mention that one entity based in Russia was also banned.

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'Covaxin Has 65.2% Efficacy Against Delta Variant', Says Bharat Biotech After Lancet Study

Indian Pharma major Bharat Biotech has issued a statement after a Lancet study stated that two doses of Covaxin are 50 per cent effective against symptomatic COVID-19. In its statement, Bharat Biotech has said that the effectiveness result of 50 per cent achieved during the peak COVID-19 Selta variant in India in a high-risk study that was conducted on physicians and healthcare workers in a hospital environment provides insights into the efficacy and effectiveness of Covaxin.

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The Secretary-General of the United Nations met with Colombian President Ivan Duque in Bogota on Wednesday to mark the fifth anniversary of the peace agreement with the former rebel FARC guerilla.

In the presidential residence Casa de Narino, Antonio Guterres said the peace process was a "historic opportunity" for the victims of the conflict that spanned for five decades.

"Do it for the victims, who should be in the center of the truth, justice, reparation and not-repetition process," he said.

Duque said the groups that have splinted from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), that lay down arms in 2016 have since then been deemed "terrorist organizations."

The conflict between the Colombian government and the FARC started in the 1960s as an uprising over land rights leaving around 220,000 people dead and millions displaced.

The end of the civil war brought the former guerrilla movement into the mainstream, with FARC transformed into a political party called Comunes.

IMAGE: AP

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
US military has awarded a USD 591 million contract to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense LLC to supply approximately 1,669 Joint Light Tactical Vehicle trucks, 868 JLTV trailers, and associated kits and parts to the government of Lithuania as a part of the US-Lithuania Defense Cooperation Strategic Roadmap signed between the two countries in 2019. The plan entailed the security cooperation priorities the United States and Lithuania agreed to focus on from 2019 to 2024.

Work will be performed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with an estimated completion date of Aug. 31, 2023, the US Department of Defense informed in a release. The military vehicles will also be provided to the governments of Slovenia, Montenegro, Iceland, and Brazil, the release added.

The US also handed Boeing Co., in Pennsylvania a contract to procure six MH47-G renew rotary-wing aircraft and eight spare ship-sets in support of US Special Operations Command. Carahsoft Technology Corp in Reston was asked to secure product support for current licenses subscription software maintenance for the Army Enterprise with the deadline for Nov. 30, 2022. A separate contract to replace an existing taxiway at Joint Base Andrews was also awarded.

US-Lithuania step up security cooperation in Baltic Sea region

The US and Lithuania agreed to strengthen the existing defense cooperation in training, exercises, and military exchanges for the security of the Baltic Sea region. The US, as per the defense pact signed with Lithuania, would be providing support to improve maritime domain awareness in the Baltic Sea, which includes intelligence-sharing, surveillance, and early-warning capabilities in the region.

The Lithuania-US defense roadmap was the first of these agreements to be signed that would also shape the two countries upcoming military staff talks. The Baltic Sea region favours the maritime status quo with Russia, and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania face the maritime threat on its facilities, territorial waters, exclusive economic zones, or other littoral areas. Since 2014, the United States has invested nearly $80 million for defense security cooperation in Lithuania, and Lithuania has committed more than $200 million in national funds to purchase US defense articles.
In this Sept. 8, 2017, photo, North Korean women gather for a prayer meeting at a home near the city of Chaoyang in northeastern China's Liaoning province.

UPDATED 7:01 ET on 2021-11-29

Police in China are calling on North Korean women who entered the country illegally and then married Chinese husbands to apply for temporary ID cards that will allow them to stay in China, sources told RFA.

The ID cards would in theory shield these women from being forcibly repatriated to North Korea and keep their families together. But many of the women are afraid to give personal details about their families in North Korea to the Chinese government, sources said.

RFA reported last week that Beijing was in the process of repatriating more than 1,100 detained undocumented North Koreans. Only a fraction of this group were women with Chinese husbands, but their detention has drawn renewed focus to an issue that local authorities have long ignored.

The spouses and children of women have pleaded with authorities for their release, arguing that their families should not be broken up and that the wives and mothers face execution upon their return to North Korea.

A Chinese citizen of Korean descent told RFAs Korean Service Nov. 18 that police in Hebei announced in August that North Korean women who have lived in China for more than five years and are married with children are eligible for the ID cards.

The news that women in the same marital situation could apply for temporary ID cards that would protect them from such a fate has spread among the ethnic and undocumented Korean communities in northeastern China.

But the government has not issued an official declaration on the matter, leading some people to think that the call from local police might be a trick to get the women to give up their personal information and acknowledge their undocumented status, sources said.

These days in some areas of Hebei province, there are many women who escaped North Korea who are visiting their local public security bureau to submit their personal information to get temporary IDs, the source said.

But in order to get the IDs, the women must visit the bureau to be photographed and submit detailed personal data, including their places of birth and home address in North Korea, the address of their workplaces and family relationships, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

Because the government has not issued an official declaration on the matter, some undocumented North Koreans are fearful that the call from local police is a ruse to get the women to give up their personal information and acknowledge their undocumented status, sources said.

The Chinese citizen of Korean descent said there has been no written documentation backing up the polices stated policy and no advertisements or coverage in the media.

In many cases, the police call to deliver the information directly to Chinese men who are known to be living with undocumented North Korean women. In some areas the police even visit their families to deliver the information verbally, the source said.

Police tend to know where all the married North Korean escapees live in their communities, according to the source. In general, they leave them alone as long as they keep quiet and do not cause problems in the community.

Many of the escapees are saying that getting the ID cards is a dream come true, but they are still reluctant to submit such deeply personal information, the source said.

Some of the women are expressing extreme caution, saying that it might be more dangerous to give sensitive information to the police than to continue living in hiding, the source said.

Despite these doubters, many North Korean escapees have gone in to apply. One woman, in the city of Shenyang in nearby Liaoning province, east of Hebei, told RFA that when she applied, she had to take mug shots, submit her fingerprints, and provide information on her families in both China and North Korea.

When I first heard the surprising news that the police were issuing ID cards to North Korean refugees, I couldnt believe it was true, because previously they thought of us as criminals, she said, under condition of anonymity for security reasons.

It was only after several North Korean women I know applied for the ID themselves that I finally began to hope that I could get one too, the woman said.

Her anxious days are not over, however. While she knows many women who have applied for the IDs, none of them have yet received one, she said.

RFA attempted to contact the press attache's office of the Chinese Embassy in Seoul but there was no answer.

The United Nations recently published a letter it sent to the Chinese government in August expressing concern about the fate of the 1,170 North Koreans believed to be in Chinese custody in preparation for repatriation.

It said that forcible repatriation was a violation of the principle of non-refoulement, which prohibits returning asylum seekers to their home countries to face persecution.

RFA reported in July that the 50 North Koreans were loaded onto buses in the Chinese border city of Dandong and taken across the Yalu River. Sources said many Chinese onlookers showed hostility to the police, warning that they were effectively sending the refugees to their deaths.

Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fled to China to escape a mid-1990s famine, with about 30,000 making their way to South Korea. As many as 60,000 North Koreans remain in China, despite having no legal status. Some have married Chinese nationals.

RFA reported in August that police had begun actively arresting North Korean spouses of Chinese nationals after a long period of time in which they were treated leniently.

Beijing claims it must return North Koreans found to be illegally within Chinese territory under two bilateral border and immigration pacts. Rights groups, however, say that forced repatriation is a violation of Chinas responsibility to protect the escapees under the U.N. Refugee Convention.

There are as many as 30,000 unregistered children of North Korean women and Chinese men, according to the Department of States 2020 Trafficking in Persons Report. The report noted that the children are stateless and vulnerable to exploitation.

Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Authorities in North Korea are cracking down on residents wearing leather trench coats, saying that it is disrespectful to emulate the fashion choices of the countrys leader Kim Jong Un, sources in the country told RFA.

Leather trench coats became popular in 2019 after Kim appeared on TV wearing one. At first, real leather coats imported from China were snapped up by rich people who could afford them, but soon garment makers began to import fake leather to make them domestically.

Soon almost every North Korean marketplace was selling them and many young men could be seen sporting faux leather slickers of their own.

To put a stop to the cheap imitations, and the cheap imitators who wear them, literal fashion police patrol the streets to confiscate the jackets from sellers and citizens sporting the look.

But another TV appearance by Kim and his cohort this year popularized the look with a new demographic, a resident of the city of Pyongsong in South Pyongan province, north of the capital Pyongyang, told RFAs Korean Service Nov. 21 on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

During the military parade at the 8th Party Congress in January of this year, the Highest Dignity and all the high-ranking officials were shown wearing leather coats also, said the source, using an honorific term to refer to Kim.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un waves during a ceremony for the 8th Congress of the Workers' Party in Pyongyang, North Korea January 14, 2021 in this photo supplied by North Korea's Central News Agency Credit: KCNA via Reuters.

The leather-clad officials included Kim Jong Uns sister Kim Yo Jong, who many believe may be the next in line to lead the country, and several other powerful women, according to the source.

So now the leather coat has become a symbol for powerful women too, the source said.

As leather coats began to be recognized as a symbol of power, private clothing merchants asked trading company officials to import synthetic leather since September of this year.  They copied the design of the leather coats worn by the Highest Dignity and the officials and now they are being sold in the marketplace, said the source.

But the police in Pyongsong recently started their crackdown, confiscating the coats from sellers and people wearing them in public, according to the source.

Young men protest, saying they bought the coats with their own money and there is no reason to take them away, the source said.

The police respond to the complaints, saying that wearing clothes designed to look like the Highest Dignitys is an impure trend to challenge the authority of the Highest Dignity. They instructed the public not to wear leather coats, because it is part of the partys directive to decide who can wear them, the source said.

Though the leather trench coat look is a recent trend, North Koreans have been wearing leather jackets since at least the early 2000s, a resident of the northwestern province of North Pyongan told RFA.

That was when South Korean films began to spread in provincial cities, and the leather jacket worn by the South Korean actor Jang Dong-gun became all the rage and is still in vogue, said the second source, who requested anonymity to speak freely.

South Korean actor Jang Dong-gun poses for photographers in front of his portrait in Hong Kong January 14, 2002 to promote his action movie "Friend." Credit: Reuters

As the demand for leather jackets has increased, finished leather jackets imported from China as well as those made domestically have been sold continuously in the marketplaces, said the second source.

Leather trench coats, however, have become more popular than leather jackets ever since Kim Jong Uns TV appearances in cowhide, according to the second source.

Rich entrepreneurs are able to import the fabric for the coats by placing an order with state-run trading companies who have partially resumed maritime smuggling, the second source said.

Though North Korea and China officially stopped trading at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in January 2020, official smuggling, or covert trade by state run firms in items that are not allowed by U.N. and U.S. nuclear sanctions, partially resumed in April of this year.

A recent Chinese customs document obtained by RFA confirmed that North Korea imported various fabrics from China, including dozens of meters of synthetic leather this month.

When these leather coats became popular, the law enforcement authorities went after the companies that made the coats that look too much like the Highest Dignitys. They also go after people wearing them in public, the second source said.

Residents protest against the crackdown asking how there could be anything impure about the choice to wear a leather coat.

Leather coats in North Korea are prohibitively expensive. Those made of real leather cost about 170,000 won (U.S. $34), and about 80,000 won ($16) for fake leather.

The average North Korean monthly salary in 2018 was about 4,000 won (U.S. $0.66), according to the Korea Joongang Daily, a South Korean newspaper.

Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Talk of war is again in the air. When Russia massed thousands of troops along its border with Ukraine last spring, reports and rumors swirled that the Kremlin might launch a big new offensive seven years after it seized control of Crimea and fomented a separatist war in the Donbas region that continues to this day.

Several months later, the same fears have surfaced with even greater force. Media including The New York Times and Bloomberg have cited U.S. officials as warning that Russia might attack this winter, with some saying a potential invasion could be "on a scale far greater" than in 2014.

The buildup of forces is evident in western Russia and also in Crimea, according to satellite images.

It's impossible to ascertain exactly what Russia's intentions are -- or even whether President Vladimir Putin has made any specific plans or is, at this point, creating options. But here are some of the most important questions about the tense situation -- and some possible answers.

Is there really a threat of major new Russian military action?

Yes -- or at least, the evidence suggests it.

U.S. intelligence officials and senior figures in Ukraine's military have suggested that as many as 92,000 Russian troops are massed to the north and east of Ukraine -- many in the area around Yelnya, near Russia's border with ally Belarus -- and in Crimea, the peninsula that lies south of mainland Ukraine.

Amid Russia's build-up, CNN this week quoted sources in U.S. President Joe Biden's administration as saying it was considering sending military advisers and new equipment including weapons to Ukraine.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Washington had "real concerns" about the Russian military moves and a possible new offensive, which he warned would be a "serious mistake."

While Moscow has dismissed talk of a potential Russian invasion as "groundless," comments from an array of officials and analysts close to the Kremlin have sent a different and more dire message: that Russia may take action if Washington and the West do not address its ever more assertively stated concerns about the situation in the Donbas and, more broadly, NATO ties with Kyiv and Western military activity in Eastern Europe, the Black Sea, and elsewhere.

When Russia has launched offensives in the past, such as in Crimea and the Donbas in 2014 and in Georgia in 2008, it has claimed to have been provoked. And in recent weeks, Moscow has repeatedly accused Kyiv and the United States and its allies of provoking it, including with what NATO says have been long-planned exercises in Eastern Europe and routine naval missions in the Black Sea.

Meanwhile, the increased concerns about Russia's intentions toward Ukraine do not stem from troop movements alone. In the past six months, Putin and several other senior officials have published incendiary articles about Ukraine, questioning its right to exist as an independent state and dismissing its democratically elected political leadership as "ignorant and unreliable."

The secretary of the Kremlin's Security Council, close Putin associate Nikolai Patrushev, asserted recently that what awaits Ukraine was an "Afghan scenario," citing what he claimed was instability caused by weapons imports from the West and the purported danger of the country imploding. He cited no specific evidence.

And in a statement this week, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service denounced what it called U.S. "provocations" and ominously warned that "we observed a similar situation in Georgia ahead of the events of 2008" -- when Russian forces drove deep into that country and then backed the independence declarations of two breakaway regions, leaving large numbers of troops in both of them.

In addition to sending signals to the West, such remarks may serve to ready Russians for potential new military action, analysts say.

"This is in large part aimed at a Russian domestic audience ahead of launching some major operation," Mykhaylo Honchar, president of the Center for Global Studies Strategy XXI, a Kyiv-based think tank, told Current Time.

Why now?

Russia's leadership may believe that it could take advantage of a volatile climate in the region, where Moscow's own actions have contributed to recent tensions. Some analysts contend that this could make it easier for Russia to strike at Ukraine without meeting the kind of unified response it might at a calmer time.

Poland has been grappling with an influx of migrants, mostly from the Middle East, who have been lured to neighboring Belarus with promises of easy passage into the European Union. Even as it's engaged in its own standoff with the EU over judicial independence, Warsaw has described the migrant crisis as an operation to destabilize Europe concocted by Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka with Putin's blessing, a claim both Minsk and Moscow deny.

At the same time, Moldova has accused Russia of blackmail as it struggles to maintain energy supplies amid a natural-gas crunch, with Moscow saying the poorest country in Europe is not paying its bills. Critics also say Moscow has sought to demonstrate Europe's reliance on its gas supplies as it ratchets up the pressure for Germany to approve the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would allow more Russian gas to bypass Ukraine en route to Europe.

Three are also worries that Moscow is seeking to increase tensions by claiming that NATO exercises and other military operations are deliberately provocative and show that the West is not willing to adhere to "red lines" cited by Putin.

In an interview with RFE/RL's Romanian Service, NATO Deputy Secretary-General Mircea Geoana said that "everything we do near the Black Sea and on NATO's eastern flank is of a purely defensive and absolutely transparent character."

Meanwhile, Russia's "red lines" have been shifting ominously in recent weeks and months, amounting to Kremlin demands that are increasingly unacceptable to NATO, Washington, and the West -- and perhaps most of all to Ukraine, which Putin has made clear he does not want to be able to choose its partners or conduct its foreign policy as a sovereign country.

In the past, Russia made clear that NATO membership for Ukraine was a "red line" -- but recently it has been warning against any expansion of the alliance's military cooperation with Kyiv.

Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis, wrote on Twitter that in her assessment, "Moscow's military intimidation is posturing for assurances of neutrality" of Ukraine, adding that "if that doesn't happen, a military invasion is on the table."

The show of force comes as the Kremlin seeks a new summit between Putin and Biden. Recent remarks suggest that Moscow might use such a meeting to press its case for sweeping "security guarantees" from the West, possibly including a pledge that Ukraine would never join NATO.

What would Russia's goals be?

Increased influence in Ukraine, for one thing.

When Russia fomented unrest in the Donbas and backed forces that have held swaths of Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions since the conflict there erupted in 2014, it was widely seen as an effort to leverage control over a relatively small part of Ukraine into powerful influence on the country's government and foreign policy, including making certain it would never join NATO.

But as the Donbas war drags on with little or no progress toward implementation of Minsk-2 -- a 2015 peace plan that could deeply undercut Kyiv's power if carried out in accordance with the Kremlin's wishes -- Putin may fear that goal will never be achieved, leaving Russia with control over a piece of Ukraine but far short of the real prize -- as much control over the country as possible.

In an article in Politico last week, Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation think tank, quoted a former Russian lawmaker and diplomat as saying that "to get [the] Donbas but lose Ukraine would represent a defeat for the Kremlin."

"The current buildup of forces suggests Moscow now believes that defeat is forthcoming," Charap wrote. "Unless it escalates."

"Russia might well be prepared to attack far deeper into Ukrainian territory and has the military capability to do so."

While many analysts say that an attack aimed to take over all of Ukraine is extremely unlikely, some believe that Russia might seek to seize territory in eastern and even central Ukraine, possibly moving to control a swath of the south from the Russian border and the Donbas to Crimea, which it already holds.

Others think that Moscow would be more likely to limit itself to an escalation of the simmering war in the Donbas, which has killed more than 13,000 people since 2014, in a bid to force concessions from Kyiv without staging an open invasion that could lead to severe bloodshed and international opprobrium.

What does Russia stand to lose?

If Russia were to openly launch a new invasion of Ukraine, a strong Western reaction would be bound to follow. At a minimum, analysts argue, Moscow could expect a new round of sanctions and the almost certain collapse of Nord Stream 2, which Russia has expended great resources on and clearly sees as an economically and geopolitically crucial project.

If Russia were to invade Ukrainian cities with ground troops, a desperate fightback by Ukrainian forces -- now far more experienced and better equipped than they were seven years ago -- could lead to hundreds or even thousands of Russian soldiers returning home in body bags, a prospect that could give Putin pause as he seeks to build his legacy and possibly to remain president for years to come.

"There is no way that the [Russian] High Command cannot know that there would be many soldiers coming home crippled, wounded, or as 'Cargo 200s' -- the dead," author and analyst Mark Galeotti wrote recently in The Moscow Times.

"Nonetheless, if need be, the Russians could certainly build up a commanding force around Ukraine, and if Putin is willing to brave the international sanctions and condemnation and domestic outrage such a bloody war would generate, then an invasion can go ahead."

Galeotti wrote that "if Putin really does fear Ukraine's westward drift and, especially, the danger that NATO forces would begin to be emplaced in the country...then he may feel that delay will only make an eventual strike harder. Better to move sooner than later."

"Then again, maybe this is all another piece of political theater to try and force Kyiv to negotiate with Moscow on its terms," he added.

Is Putin bluffing?

That's not clear yet. But a look at Russia's past actions could potentially help parse the situation today and predict what might happen this winter.

Since Moscow's seizure of Crimea and the start of the Donbas war, Western analysts and intelligence officials have warned more than once of a potentially imminent new Russian attack. No such offensive materialized amid the buildup last spring, and it ended up looking less like a prelude to a wider war than like a show of force ahead of negotiations with Biden's administration and NATO exercises in Europe.

That may suggest that the current buildup, which in large part comprises forces that have remained in border areas since the previous moves in the spring, is part of Moscow's policy of maintaining pressure on the West -- as Putin suggested in recent remarks -- and putting teeth behind its claims to be deeply concerned about NATO movements near its borders.

"Putin's regime is operating on a razor's edge, because it wants to launch Nord Stream 2 and if it starts even a covert military operation then this will ultimately mean the end of [that project]," Honchar said. "I think the main idea here might be just to show that Russia can do this."

Carmen Valica of RFE/RL's Romanian Service and Vladimir Mikhailov of Current Time contributed to this report
Bulgarian officials say that "human error" on a "dangerous stretch" of highway is the most likely cause of the fiery bus crash this week in western Bulgaria that killed at least 44 people, all of them from North Macedonia and many of them children.

The announcement came on November 25 as the authorities revised downward the confirmed death toll, to 44.

They said they were still searching for another passenger who may have transferred during a gas-station stop before the accident to one of three other buses in the convoy.

A deputy chief prosecutor and chief of Bulgaria's national investigation service, Borislav Sarafov, announced in Sofia that investigators had ruled out a terrorist act and established that there was no explosion.

He said that as the investigation continued, "the leading version [of events] is human error."

Sarafov said the guard rail on that stretch of the Struma highway "is dangerous and is among the main causes for the crash."

A lead investigator, Marian Marinov, said evidence suggested the bus driver had tried to brake before striking the guard rail and noted that it was raining at the time.

The bus was one of four traveling together from Istanbul to Skopje in North Macedonia.

At least 12 of the victims were children, and most were tourists from North Macedonia.

Photos shortly after the 2 a.m. crash near the village of Bosnek, near Sofia, showed the bus engulfed in flames with thick plumes of smoke blanketing the highway in both directions.

"Witnesses have said that immediately after the first hit fire broke out and the bus was quickly filled with smoke," Marinov said.

The Macedonian government declared three days of mourning, including the cancellation of all public events, while Bulgaria's government declared one day of mourning.

With reporting by AP
More than 100 Afghan citizens, the first to be offered refuge by North Macedonia since the fall of Kabul, arrived at Skopje airport late in the evening of August 30. The evacuation was carried out in response to fear of retribution by the Taliban, who took control of Kabul on August 15. The government said it expects to accommodate 780 Afghans in North Macedonia, but Prime Minister Zoran Zaev announced that 1800 could be sheltered if needed.
Russia says it is prepared to mediate efforts to repair relations between Armenia and Turkey following reports earlier this week of a request by Yerevan to facilitate such a rapprochement.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a press briefing on November 25 that normalization between the neighbors "would undoubtedly contribute to the improvement of the general situation in the region."

Former Soviet republics Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a six-week conflict last year over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region that had been under ethnic Armenian control for nearly three decades.

NATO member Turkey threw its weight behind Azerbaijan in the war, which ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire in November 2020 that allowed Azerbaijan to regain control over parts of Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territory, with Russian peacekeepers on the ground.

Turkey has kept its border with Armenia closed for nearly three decades, due to what it said was Armenia's occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani territory, an issue that was resolved by the cease-fire deal.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin will host Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev for talks in Sochi on November 26, amid a small flareup of violence between the South Caucasus neighbors.

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vahan Hunanian told RFE/RL this week that Yerevan had informed Moscow that it was ready for normalization with Ankara without preconditions and asked for its mediation in the process.

"Our country is ready to further promote this process [of Armenian-Turkish rapprochement] in every possible way," Russian spokeswoman Zakharova said. "The launch of this process, as we believe, would undoubtedly contribute to the improvement of the general situation in the region."

She added that Russia was "taking all measures to restore economic ties and transport links in the region."

Pashinian and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan issued public statements in August citing reciprocal "positive signals" for normalizing relations through multiparty regional talks including Russia.

On November 23, Pashinian reiterated Yerevan's readiness to normalize its relations with Ankara.

But he warned that such a process could not take place if Turkey continued to condition a rapprochement on the creation of a corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its western Naxcivan exclave via Armenia.

One point of the tripartite agreement that ended the war includes the "unblocking of regional economic and transport links." Such a corridor would give Ankara long-sought direct land access to its Turkic cousin through Naxcivan, with which Turkey shares a border.

"We want to normalize our relations with Turkey," Pashinian said. "We cannot discuss any corridor issue. But we want to discuss opening of regional transport links."

In an interview earlier this month with Le Figaro, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan accused Ankara of setting new conditions for a dialogue with Yerevan, including such a corridor, which he called unacceptable.
An Armenia court has opened a controversial trial against a human rights activist from the minority Yazidi community over comments he made in an interview, despite international concerns about his prosecution.

Prosecutors accuse Sashik Sultanian, the head of the Yazidi Center for Human Rights, of "inciting ethnic enmity between Armenians and Yazidis," a mostly Kurdish-speaking religious group.

The probe against Sultanian was launched in October 2020 after he conducted an interview with the Yezidinews.am website in June that year. He has been restricted from leaving Armenia for six months.

In the interview, Sultanian said that Yazidis faced discrimination, their rights were not protected, and they were unable to develop their culture, language, or practice their religion.

He also claimed Yazidis were underrepresented in local government structures, that Armenians seized Yazidi property, and the community was not allowed to develop economically.

Prosecutors argue that Sultanian's statements don't fall under human rights advocacy and protected speech "since all allegations mentioned in the interview do not correspond to reality."

Sultanian says his comments were not directed against the Armenian people, but rather the government. The interview was deleted on the day of publication at his request.

Several international and national human rights organizations have denounced the proceedings against Sultanian as an assault on freedom of speech that will have a chilling effect on those who stand up for minority rights.

Armenian authorities have obligations to ensure human rights defenders can freely carry out their activities without any restrictions, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatovic said in a letter to Armenia's top prosecutor last week.

"This is all the more important when such legitimate speech addresses the treatment of minorities and is aimed at protecting and promoting their rights," she said.

In June, Human Rights Watch called on the Armenian authorities to drop the charges against Sultanian, saying his opinions were protected free speech.

UN special rapporteurs on human rights defenders, minority issues, and freedom of expression have also called on Armenian authorities to drop the case.

"It is not incitement to hatred or violence to raise human rights concerns about the treatment of minorities," the UN experts said in August. "We call on Armenia to drop these criminal charges, which appear designed simply to intimidate Mr. Sultanian and others who stand up for minority rights."

There are only an estimated 1.5 million Yazidis in the world, most of whom live in northern Iraq. There are smaller populations in Syria, Turkey, and in the European diaspora. There are about 40,000 Yazidis in Armenia, where they make up the largest minority group.

Sultanian's next hearing is scheduled for January 26.
Some 200 migrants attempted to break through a fence on the Polish-Belarus border late on November 24, the Polish Border Guard said, amid continuing tensions at the European Union's external border.

Brussels has accused Belarus of trying to destabilize the bloc by bringing thousands of men, women, and children from the Middle East and pushing them to cross into the EU through Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Minsk's action is seen as retaliation for sanctions imposed by the EU on the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka following its brutal and sometimes deadly crackdown against protesters who accuse the authoritarian leader of stealing an election in August 2020.

The fresh incident near the village of Czeremcha is part of a series of daily clashes between groups of migrants helped by Belarusian soldiers and Polish border forces.

"They were trying to break through the border, attacking the border," Border Guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska told the media on November 25. "They were throwing branches and stones and the attempt was stopped by our officers."

Michalska said the migrants had flattened a section of the fence with logs in their bid to get across. Five migrants have been hospitalized after suffering from exhaustion, she said.

Top EU officials say they're readying a fifth package of sanctions against Belarus for mounting what it called a "hybrid attack against the bloc.

As tensions rose, Belarusian authorities last week cleared migrant camps at the border and allowed the first repatriation flight to Iraq in months.

On November 25, the Belarusian Security Council claimed the authorities had detained more than 11,500 illegal migrants this year, with around 5,000 deported from the country.

Security Council head Alyaksandr Volfovich was quoted by Russian news agency RIA Novosti as saying that an Iraqi evacuation flight scheduled for November 25 to fly out migrants had not yet taken place, with around 200 migrants waiting at the airport.

With reporting by Reuters and RIA Novosti
Tents set up last week by Iranian farmers in a dry river bed in Isfahan, Iran's third-largest city, to protest against water cuts have been set on fire by riot police, and shots could be heard in the area.

The site was being "cleaned up" by the city's municipality after the tents were set on fire overnight by Iranian security forces, reports said.

The protest movement started in Isfahan on November 8 and a number of demonstrators set up tents in the dried-up bed of the Zayandehrud River that passes through Isfahan last week.

On November 18, thousands of people joined the Isfahan rally to protest against water cuts and the drying up of the river.

Last week, images broadcast on state television and videos published on social networks showed farmers and others from across Isfahan Province gathered in the dry river bed and elsewhere in the city, chanting slogans such as "Give Zayandehrud River back."

First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber said that meetings were being held over the issue to try to resolve the water problem in Isfahan and elsewhere.

Similar protests have been held across Iran in recent years.

In July, deadly rallies broke out in the southwestern province of Khuzestan amid widespread water shortages.

The Iranian Meteorological Organization has estimated that 97 percent of the country is experiencing drought to some degree.

Mismanagement by the authorities has also been cited as a main cause for the water crisis.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the European Union needs to be ready to increase sanctions against Russia if the situation worsens near either the Ukrainian border or the Belarus-Poland border.

She issued the call for EU unity and an implied caution to Moscow during a meeting in Berlin with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and ahead of a phone call later in the day with Ukraine's president.

European and U.S. officials blame Moscow for stoking and supporting Belarus's "hybrid" campaign to spark a migrant crisis at its border with the EU and warn of Russian troop buildups near Ukraine, where Moscow-backed separatists are in their eighth year of a war against the central authorities.

At Merkel's meeting with Morawiecki, the two discussed the acute crisis as thousands of third-country migrants camp out on EU member Poland's border with Belarus in hopes of reaching the European Union.

Merkel said she thinks Poland is "doing everything possible" to avoid any further escalation on its border, where hundreds of migrants were reportedly forced back after Belarusian security troops helped breach a border fence earlier on November 25.

Merkel, who will soon give way to successor Olaf Scholz, expressed Germany's "full solidarity" with Warsaw as it confronts the border crisis.

The Belarusian Defense Ministry repeated on November 25 that Belarusian and Russian air forces were jointly patrolling the country's western border, cooperation that began last week.

Morawiecki said Poland would not give in to "political blackmail" regarding the border crisis and said the EU must prepare additional sanctions targeting Belarus, including on trade.

He said his country was "protecting" Germany and the entire EU from a major wave of migrants.

Merkel also issued a warning on the situation in western Russia and Ukraine, where reports for weeks have suggested a Russian troop buildup is under way.

Merkel said de-escalation was always the preferred option but added, "Any further aggression against the sovereignty of Ukraine would carry a high price."

A spokesman for Merkel, Steffen Seibert, later said that the German leader had spoken by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to "emphasize" to Kyiv her support for Ukraine's "independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity."

She said any effort to undercut Ukrainian independence "would not go without consequences."

Seibert said, via Twitter, that they also discussed the situation at the Belarus-EU border.

Russia this week launched military drills in the Black Sea, south of Ukraine, saying it needed to sharpen the combat-readiness of its conventional and nuclear forces because of what Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called "the growing activity of NATO countries near Russia's borders."

Meanwhile, Ukraine launched its own exercises near its northern border to increase preparedness for a potential spillover of the Poland-Belarus border situation.

U.S. President Joe Biden on November 24 reiterated "unwavering support" for Kyiv as reports suggested there was a debate over possibly boosting weapons supplies to Ukraine.

Moscow has called allegations of a buildup near its border with Ukraine "groundless."

Russia seized Ukraines Crimean Peninsula in March 2014, and has been backing separatists in eastern Ukraine in an ongoing conflict that has claimed more than 13,200 lives since April 2014.

With reporting by AP and Reuters
Moldovan lawmakers have approved budget amendments that will allow the national energy company to pay energy dues to Russia's state-controlled Gazprom and avert a new energy crisis in the Eastern European country.

Following the November 25 vote, some 1.4 billion Moldovan lei ($79 million) was allocated to Moldovagaz to pay the Gazprom debt.



Gazprom told Moldova on November 22 that it would cut off gas to the country in 48 hours if it did not pay tens of millions of dollars for recent deliveries.

Moldovagaz head Vadim Ceban confirmed that the state energy company received such a notification from Gazprom, saying the sum amounted to 1.3 billion Moldovan lei.

Gazprom on November 24 agreed to postpone the deadline but expected the payment by November 26.

Last month, Chisinau declared a state of emergency and started buying gas from countries other than Russia after its contract with Gazprom, the largest supplier of natural gas to Europe, expired at the end of September, and the two sides failed to agree on details and pricing of a new long-term deal.

But in a breakthrough on October 28, the Moldovan government and Gazprom announced a new price formula for a five-year agreement to keep gas flowing.



Some observers have said Moscow was using energy against the impoverished country sandwiched between EU member Romania and Ukraine for electing pro-Western President Maia Sandu last year in a vote that rejected Russian-backed incumbent Igor Dodon.

Russia rejected the accusations, saying the hike was purely commercial and reflected global markets.

With reporting by AFP, Reuters, and TASS
YEREVAN -- Poland has donated a total of 201,640 doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca anti-COVID-19 vaccine worth nearly $660,000 to Armenia as the country struggles with a low inoculation rate that has seen only 20 percent of its 2.9 million people fully vaccinated.

Poland's embassy in Yerevan said on November 25 that the donation was made by the Polish Foreign Ministry to Armenia's Health Ministry.



Armenians have until now been inoculated with Russian and Chinese vaccines, as well as those from AstraZeneca and Moderna.

After spiking last month and the first half of this month, the number of daily coronavirus cases reported in Armenia has begun to slowly decrease over the past several days, but remains relatively high.

The Health Ministry on November 25 reported 592 new cases and 40 coronavirus-related deaths.

More than 7,400 people have died in Armenia from COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic in March last year.

Health Minister Anahit Avanesian on November 25 also announced the start of a campaign to administer booster shots to those who were fully inoculated at least six months ago.



Vaccination in Armenia is not compulsory, but the government has introduced some administrative measures in an attempt to speed up the slow pace of its immunization campaign launched in April.

From October 1, virtually all public- and private-sector employees refusing vaccination have been obliged to take coronavirus tests twice a month at their own expense.

Earlier this month, the government revealed plans to make such mandatory testing weekly and introduce a mandatory health pass for entry to cultural and leisure venues.
Poland's Internal Security Agency (ABW) says a 66-year-old Polish man who is suspected of spying for Russia has been detained.

The counterintelligence agency announced on November 25 that the suspect was arrested three days ago in Warmia-Masuria, just north of the capital, Warsaw.

It said documents were seized in a property search and alleged that the suspect was working for Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), an indirect successor to the former KGB.

He has rejected the charges and remains in 90-day pretrial custody.

A local report said the man could face 10 years in prison if convicted.

The Polish security agency said the case was linked to the arrest of another suspect, in May, who has been charged with spying for a foreign intelligence service.

Reports in May suggested a 43-year-old suspect was accused of providing "information and materials" to Russian secret services.

Based on reporting by dpa
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic have left a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi talking up weapons sales and the prospect of a crucial gas deal for Belgrade.

Vucic has publicly pleaded with the Russian side to offer "favorable" pricing on a new 10-year natural-gas deal to replace the current agreement that expires at the end of this year.

The two men did not appear to achieve a clear breakthrough on November 25, but Putin professed optimism.

"I think we will be able to agree [on a new contract], we will assign our business entities to finish this work," Putin reportedly told Vucic. "In any case, we will find a solution that will definitely be acceptable for our Serbian friends."

Vucic is said to be requesting 3 billion cubic meters of gas a year in any new deal, but the sides have so far disagreed over the amount that market rates should factor into the price.

Serbia, a candidate country for EU accession although progress is mired in delays, is also one of Russia's closest European allies.

The two cooperate on weapons deals in addition to political and diplomatic support from Moscow for Belgrade's refusal to recognize the independence of former province Kosovo.

Vucic has sought to maintain constructive relations with Moscow while aggressively courting China and avoiding irrevocably harming relations with the European Union.

Vucic left the Sochi meeting boasting of military-technical cooperation with Russia.

He alluded to the early arrival of tactical weapons and said he "prayed that certain things arrive in Serbia more quickly," without specifying.

"There will be other important major things of strategic interest for Serbia in the future, and not in the distant future," Vucic said.

"So we will have the first things before the end of the year in Serbia," Vucic said, according to Serbian Pink TV. "These are not strategic, but tactical things are very important." It said he cited anti-tank weapons in particular.

With reporting by Reuters
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis has sworn in Nicolae Ciuca as prime minister, hours after lawmakers overwhelmingly endorsed Ciuca's three-party coalition to end a two-month political stalemate.

The new coalition's center-right National Liberal Party (PNL), the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD), and ethnic Hungarian UDMR control around two-thirds of the seats in the 466-seat legislature. The Ciuca-led cabinet was endorsed by a 318-to-126 vote.

Iohannis nominated Ciuca, the caretaker defense minister and retired army general, three days ago in the latest push to break through the political impasse.

At the swearing-in ceremony, Iohannis said the "political crisis is over" but added that the country of around 19 million people still faced many challenges.

"The pandemic is not over. The energy crisis is not over, it is only taking on new forms," Iohannis said. "All this requires a solid government, with a consistent majority in parliament, and now there is this government."

Ciuca vowed to put aside differences to rule in "the interest of Romanians."

"We who are in front of you today have gone through things that separate us and we have found things that unite us," Ciuca, a military veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, said. "We are determined to put an end to the tense situation we are going through."

The PNL pledged last week to install a cabinet by November 25.

Romania, one of the European Union's poorest members, has been in political paralysis since a PNL-led centrist coalition government fell apart in September, threatening an economic recovery and the fight against the deadliest surge in COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic.

Critics say that although nominally led by the Liberals, the leftist PSD, which is the single-largest party in parliament following general elections in December, will hold sway over the new government.

Ciuca, 54, was first nominated by Iohannis to form a minority Liberal government in October, but he gave up when it became clear that PNL would not be able to garner sufficient support in parliament.

Romania, which has the second-lowest vaccination rate in the 27-member EU, has been battling a rampant fourth wave of COVID-19 infections that saw at its peak last month with some 500 deaths per day in the country of 19 million.

Almost 1.8 million infections have been registered since the start of the pandemic and more than 55,000 people have died of the coronavirus in Romania.

With reporting by Reuters, G4media.ro, and Hotnews.ro
Russia's Supreme Court has begun hearing federal prosecutors' arguments aimed at shutting down one of the post-Soviet world's most prestigious human rights organizations, International Memorial.

The case was brought under controversial "foreign agent" laws increasingly used to shutter civil-sector and media groups in Russia.

Police detained at least three picketers who appeared separately outside the court in Moscow to express opposition to the closure request.

One held a sign saying, "We are Memorial," while another had scrawled on her sign: "You cannot kill the memory of the people! We survive in poverty, powerlessness and [with] almost no hope."

Both sides presented arguments to the court before proceedings were adjourned until December 14.

About 50 people were reportedly allowed into the Supreme Court building but the judge warned them not to record the proceedings.

Russian Prosecutor-General Igor Krasnov claims that Memorial International has systematically violated the law by failing to appropriately label its materials.

A separate claim by Moscow authorities targets the Memorial Human Rights Center, the local group that is among Russia's oldest rights groups and works under the umbrella of Memorial International.

A Moscow city court on November 23 heard pretrial arguments in that "foreign agent" case but quickly adjourned until November 29. The court said it would give Moscow prosecutors more time to address questions presented by the defense lawyers for Memorial Human Rights Center.

Memorial has called the actions of the Russian authorities "political pressure" and countered that "there are no legal grounds for liquidation."

Russia's so-called "foreign agent" legislation was adopted in 2012 and has been modified repeatedly.

Memorial is among several news outlets and rights organizations to have been labeled "foreign agents" in what is seen as a historic crackdown on civil society and critics of the government.

The Memorial Human Rights Center was put on the list in November 2015.

International Memorial, a standalone group and the umbrella group for Memorial Human Rights Center and more than 70 other organizations, including 10 operating outside Russia, was added to the "foreign agents" registry five years ago.

In the decades since it was founded in the dying years of the Soviet Union, Memorial has produced hallmark indicators of the rights situation and elsewhere through lists of political prisoners, and documenting historical and ongoing injustices.

In a joint statement on November 18, two Russian Nobel Peace laureates -- the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Novaya gazeta newspaper editor in chief Dmitry Muratov -- said attempts to close Memorial had "caused anxiety and concern in the country, which we share."

Marija Pejcinovic Buric, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe, a pan-European rights body, said last week that the "foreign agents" legislation "stigmatizes" NGOs, media, and individuals and "has had a repressive impact on civil society in Russia over recent years."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed Aleksandr Kalashnikov as director of the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), the Kremlin said in a statement, after disturbing videos of torture and rape inside a jail were leaked.

Putin replaced Kalashnikov with Arkady Gostev, a former deputy interior minister.

Kalashnikov has also been subjected to Western sanctions over the jailing of Kremlin critic Aleksei Navalny. He served as prison chief for only two years.

The reason for Kalashnikov's dismissal was not specified, but it came after dozens of videos of torture from inside a prison in the central city of Saratov were published recently by Russian human rights group Gulagu.net.

"The incidents of torture in the colonies and pretrial detention centers of the Saratov region and other regions, which received a wide public response, became the main reason for Kalashnikov's resignation," an unnamed source told Interfax news agency.

The videos were smuggled out of the prison by a former inmate, Belarusian IT engineer Syarhey Savelyeu, who has since fled Russia and asked for asylum in France. Russia placed Savelyeu on a wanted list last month, but then removed him from it.

Earlier this month, FSIN said it had dismissed 18 officials in the Saratov region in connection with the videos and opened several investigations.

The Kremlin had previously called for the case to be investigated.

Russia's huge prison network has long been known as a place of torture and sexual violence inflicted on inmates, according to human rights groups, but the videos cast new light on abuses.

With reporting by AFP
TASHKENT -- Uzbek police outside the capital have forced dozens of practicing Muslims to shave off their beards, a practice that has been criticized by domestic and international rights organization for years.



RFE/RL correspondents reported on November 24 that in recent weeks police in the city of Yangiyul, 20 kilometers from Tashkent, have summoned men and forced them to shave their beards.



A local activist, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that 22 men had their beards shaved in Yangiyul alone over the past month.



"Only religious men are forced to shave their beards," he said, adding that the practice appeared "systematic."



Men who spoke with RFE/RL said police don't target those who grow a beard for fashion, but only practicing Muslims.



"The police say that we supposedly look like terrorists," said one resident of Yangiyul. "We grow beards as this is considered in line with the traditions and practices of the Prophet Muhammad. They violate our rights."



A local police official denied authorities were forcing men to shave their beards.



There have been frequent reports in recent years of police targeting men with long beards in Uzbekistan, in what is considered an effort to combat radical Islam in Central Asia's most populous country.

In May, a video circulated on the Internet allegedly showing a police official in the eastern city of Namangan instructing his subordinates to single out men with beards and force them to shave while documenting the process, taking the men's pictures before and after shaving.

In June, police in the eastern city of Angren reportedly forced dozens of practicing Muslims to shave off their beards.



Authorities have rejected the reports, saying that in some cases citizens were asked to shave off their beards in order to have an appearance corresponding with their pictures in identification documents.



In December 2020, the U.S. State Department removed Uzbekistan from the special observation list for violations of religious freedom, on which the country had been since 2018, saying the government no longer engaged in or tolerated "severe violations of religious freedom."
Weather Alert

...WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 5 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 4 AM EST SUNDAY... * WHAT...Southwest winds 25 to 35 mph with gusts up to 45 mph expected. * WHERE...Eastern Essex County in northern New York, parts of northern Vermont, and areas just east of and along the spine of the Green Mountains in Vermont. * WHEN...From 5 PM Saturday to 4 AM EST Sunday. * IMPACTS...Gusty winds could blow around unsecured objects. Tree limbs could be blown down and a few power outages may result. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...The strongest gusts will occur this evening into the overnight, then lessen to 25 to 35 mph early Sunday morning. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Use extra caution when driving, especially if operating a high profile vehicle. Secure outdoor objects. &&

...Gusty winds expected this morning for portions of the North Country... Gusty winds in excess of 40 mph are expected across the northern slopes of the Adirondacks and the northern Champlain Valley through the remainder of this morning. They will abate a bit after noon, though it will continue to be breezy through the rest of the day. Winds will again strengthen this evening with a cold frontal passage. Affected locations include but are not limited to Malone, Chazy, Ellenburg Depot, Alburgh, and Swanton. These winds may cause a few branches to come down.
For more than a dozen years in the 1920s and 30s, Carlsbads most famous building had a secret.

In the concrete-walled cellar of the ornate Twin Inns hotel and restaurant, proprietor Eddie Kentner ran a hidden speakeasy for thirsty guests during the Prohibition era. Now, nearly 100 years later, another speakeasy has opened in the same spot.

The Charles Kenneth, a 44-seat cocktail club accessible only via password, opens Friday night, July 7. The underground bar is named for Charles Kenneth Ruiz, the late grandfather of speakeasy proprietor Rob Ruiz.

The 39-year-old Carlsbad chef holds a 20-year lease on the historic building, which has been home to his all-organic, sustainably sourced restaurant, The Land & Water Company, since 2014.

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Ruiz discovered the vacant space four years ago while remodeling the interior of the 130-year-old building. As a boy growing up in Oceanside, hed heard tall tales about the speakeasy but his doubts were put to rest when he found old liquor bottles, coins, mason jars and other items during the cleanup.

A rustic version of the Charles Kenneth opened in November 2015, but closed just two months later because of paperwork related to its liquor license. Now, a new and much-improved Charles Kenneth is back to stay.

_________________________________

The Charles Kenneth

What: Speakeasy cocktail bar with 44 seats

Where: Secret downstairs location at The Land & Water Company restaurant, 2978 Carlsbad Blvd., Suite 110, Carlsbad

Hours: 6:30 p.m. to midnight Sundays-Thursdays. 6:30 p.m.-2 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays

Admission: Via password only

Online: thecharleskenneth.com

_________________________________

Speakeasies have been a hot trend in the U.S. for the past 10 years as diners and drinkers seek out new hospitality experiences. Most are what Ruiz calls the Las Vegas glitz version with elegant fixtures, luxurious seating and faux antique decor.

The Charles Kenneth, by contrast, aims for authenticity. While the bar has air-conditioning and a modern bar set-up, the modest chairs, tables, 1920s-era lamps and furniture are exactly what guests wouldve encountered in the old days. A Victorian saloon mirror behind the bar dates to 1878, Ruiz said.

The walls are decorated with three portraits of Ruizs grandfather, a decorated Navy captain and fighter pilot who served in World War II, the Korean War and Vietnam. Theres also a portrait of Gerhard Schutte, the Carlsbad land speculator who built the ornate Queen Anne mansion in 1887.

After the Schuttes sold out in the early 1900s, the building became a hotel and restaurant known as the Twin Inns. Two giant chicken sculptures once flanked the buildings entrance promoting its famous fried chicken.

The buildings original plans dont show the basement space, Ruiz said, but when Prohibition went into effect on Jan. 17, 1920, Kentner imagined a new use for the three-room area.

The two back rooms housed a bar and gambling tables. The front room, known as the slaughter room where the chickens were killed and plucked, had a small window, where a lookout was stationed on weekend nights to watch for the police.

If he spotted anything, he could flip a switch that rang a bell behind the bar. That gave the staff time to hide the liquor bottles in a crawl space and flip over the table tops. If police did arrive, theyd find visitors sipping tea and only tins of tea leaves behind the bar, Ruiz said.

During its heyday, before the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the Twin Inns speakeasy is said to have hosted many famous celebrities, including Babe Ruth and Amelia Earhart.

Cory Volkening, 30, is bar manager at The Charles Kenneth. The Encinitas native said much care has gone into creating a retro experience for visitors. Each guest will get a history tour when they arrive and the space has a posted list of 1920s-style rules. Guests must dress sharply and refrain from flash photography. Gentlemen must remove their hats and must not approach ladies without an introduction by the bartender.

Theres no beer or wine at The Charles Kenneth. As during Prohibition, cocktails are the specialty. Mixed drinks were all the rage at speakeasies because the syrups, bitters, tinctures and liqueurs masked the acrid taste of the moonshine and bathtub gin, Volkening said.

Ruiz said hes heard a loud roar from speakeasy fans who were eager for the return of the Charles Kenneth. In the two months it was open last year, there was usually a 100-person waiting list on weekend nights.

Hed hoped to have it open sooner but getting it historically right was important. His restaurant is named after the first business established on the spot in the 1880s, the Carlsbad Land and Mineral Water Company.

Ruiz is famed for his passion about preserving history, protecting family-run farms and saving the worlds declining fisheries. Last year, he was one of 12 people honored with the 2016 World Oceans Award. The prize, given by the London-based Blue Marine Foundation, honored his three-year campaign to save Mexicos endangered vaquita porpoise and to promote the use of shrimp caught without the use of entangling gill nets.

Editors Note: Due to permitting issues, the Charles Kenneth speakeasy was closed until further notice on July 8. For details on a reopening date, consult the clubs website at thecharleskenneth.com.

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To get to the Secret Room, diners must be led through the dining room, past the new kitchen, through a door, down a staircase and through a second door. Situated near the restaurants wine cellar, the room has the look and feel of an old-school New

pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com
San Onofre Beach, where a shark bite left a 35-year-old woman fighting for her life, is one of Southern Californias Californias white shark hot spots, said Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology and director of the Shark Lab at Cal State Long Beach.

Tagging data, fishermens catch and beachgoer observations all indicate that the popular San Diego surf spot, along with Ventura, Santa Monica Bay and Huntington Beach, has long been a nursery for the ocean predators.

These are areas where young white sharks occur, Lowe said. We know that based on known fishing records dating back to the 1930s.

Shark bites at the site seem to bear that out. More than half the shark attacks that have occurred in San Diego County since 2004 took place at San Onofre, according to figures from the Shark Research Committee, a nonprofit organization that shark attacks on the West Coast. As of Saturday there have been 11 shark attacks in the county in that time, including six at San Onofre.

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Other reports from San Onofre and surrounding areas also confirm that white sharks are regular visitors. Recent videos showed sharks breaching in the water beyond the surf break, and in 2010 a paddle boarder captured GoPro footage of a baby white shark circling his board. In nearby San Clemente, at least three fishermen landed white sharks from the shore or pier between 2013 and 2016.

As alarming as shark encounters may seem, theyre rarely a threat to people, said Nicole Nasby Lucas, a researcher with the Oceanside-based Marine Conservation Science Institute. Mature white sharks prefer the open ocean, or marine mammal rookeries at the Farallon or Channel Islands. The younger sharks feed exclusively on fish, and dont start hunting seals or sea lions until theyre about 10 feet long, scientists said. So its unusual for one to bite a human, as it did on Saturday.

Generally its not a threat for people, because they only eat fish, as juveniles, she said. It could be the only time there would be danger from a juvenile would be if you are swimming in a school of fish.

Young white sharks tend to swim just outside the surf break, but sometimes come closer; Lowe said he has caught them in water ranging from 12 feet to just three feet deep.

Smaller sharks can definitely get into that shallow water, he said.

While the baby sharks favor the three northern beaches, he said juveniles from 1 to 3 years old - about six to nine feet long  often gravitate to San Onofre.

If those other places are the nursery, lets think of that as preschool for white sharks, he said.

Lowe said its not clear why the sharks linger there, but said San Onofres abundant food supply could be part of it.

Its a very productive habitat, (with) stingray, halibut, croakers and barred sand-bass, usually species that are living on the bottom, Lowe said. These are species that are easy for them to catch.

As seals and sea lions have recovered from near extinction, white sharks, which hunt marine mammals as adults, have also flourished. Stingrays, a favored prey of juveniles, are also on the rise, Lowe said.

It seems like the number of juvenile (white sharks) is going up, so from everything we tell, the population is healthy and increasing, Nasby said.

With sharks swimming alongside people, beachgoers should be predator smart and avoid remote locations, murky water and river mouths, which can deposit decaying animals that may attract sharks, Lowe said.

Millions of people go in the water each year without incident, so they need to be aware, but they dont need to be afraid to go in the water, he said.

Note: a previous version of this article misidentified the prey of juvenile white sharks. The young sharks often eat stingrays.

deborah.brennan@sduniontribune.com Twitter@deborahsbrennan


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(Photo : Wikimedia Commons) The six crewmembers of Expedition 50 celebrate Thanksgiving Day aboard the International Space Station Nov. 24 with a traditional meal of turkey, stuffing, potatoes and vegetables  all from rehydrated packages brought to the station on resupply ships.



Astronauts aboard the International Space Station celebrate Thanksgiving Day in microgravity, which is a bit different from what they are used to here on Earth. The space station will host seven crew members this holiday after the Crew-3 mission arrives on November 11.

"I'm going to do whatever I can to show how thankful I am for my crewmates," NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei said in a NASA video shared from the space station on Monday. "It's wonderful having all of these folks up here. We haven't been up here together that long, but wow it sure has been wonderful already."





Thanksgiving Celebrations in Space

Astronauts have been celebrating holidays since the days of the Apollo mission. According to NASA, the first Thanksgiving in space was celebrated on November 22, 1973, by Skylab 4 astronauts who shared two meals at dinnertime. But it was not until November 23, 2000, when the first Thanksgiving in the ISS was celebrated.

Since then, astronauts aboard the space station have been celebrating the holiday every November. The largest Thanksgiving hosted in the ISS was in 2009, wherein 12 astronauts from the US, Russia, Belgium, and Canada celebrated the holiday in the space station.

ALSO READ: Sleeping in Space: Microgravity Changes the Sleep Structure of Astronauts in Space





Celebrating Thanksgiving Aboard the ISS: Just Add Water

Given the conditions in low-Earth orbit, astronauts can not have the usual way of celebrating Thanksgiving or any holidays inside the space station. So, how do they host a Thanksgiving dinner in space?

Like their everyday food, their Thanksgiving dinner items were shipped to space in labeled foil packages, according to Space.com. More so, they only need to add water in their food packages in preparing them, unlike here on Earth that usually takes a lot of effort. Over the years, space veterans have shared their experience in the ISS, like NASA astronaut Dr. Andrew Morgan.

According to CNN, Morgan spent the entirety of the holiday in the space station in 2019 alongside crewmates Christina Koch, Jessica Meir, Alexander Skvortsov, Oleg Skripochka, and Luca Parmitano.

Despite their busy schedule, they still find time to come together for a special meal that weekend and share what they were thankful for at that time. They shared packaged smoked turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes, smoked salmon, and cranberry juice in terms of food. Morgan shared that the cranberry juice retained the shape of the can it came in, given the conditions they were in.

Meanwhile, the menu in 2020 Thanksgiving included cornbread dressing, smoked turkey, green beans, and mashed potato. Although Japan does not celebrate Thanksgiving, JAXA astronaut Soichi Noguchi also brought some Japanese party food with his crewmates. This included special seafood prepared by a Japanese high school student on Earth and curry rice and red bean rice.

Last year's celebration was also the second time NASA astronaut Mike Hopkins celebrated Thanksgiving Day in space. He said that the holiday means spending time with the family; the only difference is that he is spending it with his international family and felt very blessed for that experience.



RELATED ARTICLE: Life in Space: Michael Lopez-Alegria Shares How Astronauts Eat; Describes Way to Prepare, Eat Food While Floating Above Earth

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.
Jessica Sharkey has been teaching for 19 years. This one is the hardest.

Not only is the fourth-grade teacher at Bishop Elementary School again facing a roomful of wriggling, masked children every day, but as many as six have been absent in a given week, making it difficult to keep all students caught up as COVID-19 surges around them in rural Inyo County. The county has had the states the highest coronavirus case rate for much of the fall.

With challenges like having students out in quarantine for extended periods, Sharkey, whose school is in Bishop Unified School District at the northern end of the county, says the past several months have been emotional and draining.

You know more is being asked of us and you dont have more hours in the day, said Sharkey. You are trying to be here for all of these kids and be here emotionally and physically.

Inyo, a vast, rugged county of 18,000 that adjoins the Nevada border and includes Death Valley as well as eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada and towering Mount Whitney, has struggled like a number of Californias rural counties with the pandemic ravages that affect schoolchildren and adults alike. In September and October, while much of the state saw cases taper off, Inyos case rate continued to soar  surpassing even the peak of last winters surge, which in most places marked the worst period of the pandemic.

In October, the county reported a larger number of pediatric and adult cases, by far, than any other month. As of Wednesday, Inyos case rate has fallen to a seven-day average of 43 cases per 100,000 people per day, but it remains among the highest in the state and is well above the state daily average of 12 cases per 100,000 people.

County hospitals, with 29 beds total, have struggled to appropriately isolate COVID patients, said county Deputy Director of Public Health Anna Scott. Staff levels have been strained. With limited specialist and intensive care resources in the county, and neighboring rural counties struggling as well, severely ill patients have been transferred to hospitals as far away as the Bay Area, Los Angeles and western Nevada, officials said.

Once we start getting a little strained in our hospital systems, we are concerned about (being able to) move people out fast enough if we have higher severity cases that need a higher level of care, said Scott.

It got so bad that on Oct. 26 the countys public health officer imposed a mask mandate for nearly all indoor public settings for the first time since Californias statewide mask mandate was lifted in June. Such restrictions have been commonplace in the Bay Area and much of the state for months, but the mandate drew objection from some residents who complained at Board of Supervisors meetings about government heavy-handedness, often referencing conspiracy theories.

Youve heard repeatedly from the public, trying to wake the board up out of a slumber concerning government overreach with COVID masks, PCR tests and pseudo-vaccines, resident Wes French said during the boards public comment session on Nov. 16. He compared vaccine and public health mandates to human experimentation.

Other residents, however, backed the mask mandate, including Frances Hunt, who wrote the board that it was a small price to pay.

The mask mandate supports our goal of keeping businesses open and allowing kids to attend schools, she wrote.

County Supervisor Matt Kinsley asked the county health team to explain what caused the spike. Dr. James Richardson, the county health officer, did not have a specific answer, but said the recent drop in cases was likely due to people wearing masks.

Scott, the deputy health director, said in an interview that the countys situation likely is tied to factors including the highly transmissible delta variant, school reopenings and larger community events in the summer compared to last spring. While the county sees increasing compliance with the new mask mandate, We are hearing some reports of individuals who are observing that people are not always wearing their face coverings in indoor public settings, Scott said.

The countys many visitors, who come for its phenomenal outdoor recreation, may have also have contributed to the spread, she said. Death Valley National Park, for example, saw a nearly 50% increase in visitors this year through August compared to the same stretch of last year, though it is not quite back to pre-pandemic levels.

About 63% of Inyo residents 5 and older are fully vaccinated, according to county figures updated Monday. That is slightly lower than the states 5-and-older vaccination rate of 67%, and significantly lower than the Bay Areas most highly vaccinated counties. In Marin County, 87% of residents 5 and older are fully vaccinated, and in San Francisco its 80%.

But Inyos vaccination rates are higher than some other, mostly rural, counties that currently have lower case rates. In Kings and Madera counties, for example, less than 50% of residents 5 and older are fully vaccinated, yet both counties have lower case rates than Inyo.

Rural counties like Inyo, with their limited health care resources, face unique challenges with patient loads that while not numerically large by metropolitan standards still strain the local capabilities, said Dr. Joy Engblade, chief medical officer and hospitalist at North Inyo Hospital, which serves Bishop  Inyos largest town, with a population just under 4,000  and surrounding communities.

We have to do a lot more and different triages than you would have to do in the city, Engblade said. She often faces a situation in which, she said, I kind of have to have a crystal ball to think if this person is going to get worse quickly.

During the height of the surge, the county tried to keep the hospital patient load down by using an oxygen delivery program for patients residing within 30 minutes of the Bishop hospital who could get by with smaller amounts of oxygen.

The goal is to decrease exposure for everyone involved  the patient, their family, and all of our staff  so if the patient needs a little bit of oxygen and are otherwise mentally alert and doing OK and [they] live fairly close to the hospital, we try to discharge them home, said Engblade.

Other challenges include patients, especially older longtime residents, who are reluctant to be transferred out of the area when their condition warrants more elaborate care.

They dont want to be put on a ventilator or die alone in a far-off hospital, Engblade said.

One patient, whose children went to local schools, stays in her mind. He didnt want to be transferred. He just wanted to try and fight it, and you know I had to stay and watch him die, slowly over two weeks.

It is not the volume of death that is difficult, it is the connectedness we have to the patient, Engblade said.

Drought Map Track water shortages and restrictions across Bay Area Check the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Areas largest water districts.

The cases in the schools also have been painful. Infections have risen this fall, along with the spike in cases in the adult population, said Scott.

Between when children returned to school in August and Nov. 10, 4.8% of Bishop Unifieds 1,941 students tested positive for COVID. By comparison, San Francisco Unifieds positives were 1.8% of students. The first letter to Bishop Unified parents announcing an exposure at school came four days into the school year. The district has sent out close to 100 more of these parent notifications as of this week.

What we are seeing is a lot of transmission within households and schools even though schools have a lot of safety measures in place, said Scott. It is somewhat perplexing because all the schools have good protocols in place, but they only have so much control.

County health officials work closely with the school districts on state public health guidelines, Scott said, but they dont control activities away from school.

According to Bishop Unifieds superintendent, Katie Kolker, students have mostly complied with wearing masks, as mandated by the state for all schools.

The district has on-site COVID testing three times per week and beefed up contact tracing.

We have tried really hard to be as least restrictive as possible while keeping students in seats, but the contact tracing has been overwhelming and hard to keep up with as infections have escalated in the community, Kolker said.

Despite pandemic-related absences for both students and staff, school goes on.

I cant stop teaching, Sharkey said.

As case rates drop, Scott predicts two possible scenarios for the winter in Inyo  one more hopeful and the other darker.

On the rosy side my projection is that were increasing our vaccination rates, week by week, and many people have potentially some natural immunity from this outbreak so we are hoping to keep our case rates low throughout the winter, she said. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

County officials will continue to urge cautious behavior, she added, in hopes of avoiding the bleaker scenario: We could easily bump our case rates up again as people get together and celebrate through the winter season (based on) what we saw last year.

We are hoping it wont spike to that level again.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Catherine Ho contributed to this story

Katie Licari is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: katie.licari-kozak@sfchronicle.com
Bicyclists buckled their helmets, tightened the straps of their cycling shoes and double-checked that their homemade baked goods, store-bought confections and alcoholic beverages were safely packed to survive the 4-mile uphill trek to a Los Gatos summit for an annual Thanksgiving Day potluck on Thursday morning.

The loosely organized tradition  which has roots dating back roughly 30 years  brought more than 100 local bicyclists, hikers and runners to the Kennedy Trail in the Sierra Azul Open Space Preserve, and through steep, weaving up dirt trails roughly 2,000 feet to the top, overlooking the region.

By 8:30 a.m., dozens of cyclists at the trailhead were filing past rangers with Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, wishing the park rangers Happy Thanksgiving and thanking them for keeping participants safe and keeping the area clean. Some people riding electronic bicycles were turned away at the start by rangers, who pointed them to a sign prohibiting e-bikes on district lands. Participants stretched, snapped selfies and fist-bumped friends and relatives as they rolled through the trailhead. At the summit, people gathered to break bread  and share homemade tamales with one another and relish their feat.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

Richard Jacinto, 59, told The Chronicle the annual gathering started organically and has grown every year, with the exception of last year, when the coronavirus pandemic canceled the festivities. Hes been participating since the early 2000s and called the annual gathering an ad hoc social event that people just know to show up for every Thanksgiving morning. Among the items riders have brought in recent years are lechon (roasted pig), tamales, turkey, mashed potatoes, beer kegs and more.

With a lightweight collapsible table affixed to his backpack, plus a flask and homemade stuffing balls made of chorizo packed in his backpack, Jacinto said he made sure to prepare food that would work well cold and you can easily haul.

Three friends who mountain-bike together in the Bay Area region settled on packing three turkey drumsticks, one for each of them, to scarf down once they reached the summit to celebrate, said Los Gatos resident Michael Nguyen, 36. His friend Tim Wong, who was ringing in his 36th birthday, said he was expecting his first Turkey Day ride to be like a party on wheels and said he hopes the event turns into a new tradition. Their friend Tony Tren, 41, of Morgan Hill, packed a box of powdered miniature doughnuts from Safeway.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

Thought itd be fun to go out and get some exercise in before I stuff myself, Tren said with a smirk.

With a GoPro strapped to her chest, Los Gatos resident Mallorey Gatti, 34, said she frequently completes long-distance rides of 8 to 20 miles every weekend, but said it was her first time completing the Thanksgiving ride. She brought canned rose wine for the occasion.

I think its just a big victory to be able to wake up early on Thanksgiving morning, spend time with friends and do something thats kind of hard  were going up a couple thousand feet in the morning, Gatti said. I think thats really cool.

Stephen Lam/The Chronicle

Richard Mitchell, 63, of Santa Clara was welcomed by a chorus of people shouting Sparky! when he rolled through the trailhead on his Ibis HD3 bicycle, outfitted with a horned lizard affixed between the handlebars. Mitchell, known by his nickname in the local biking community, said he has done the steep ride to the top of the summit for 30 years.

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.

Hes missed one or two rides since the tradition started, but said the holiday gathering is a community staple that he considers a fellowship.

He said the road is super hard to climb on his bike and the views are beautiful, but its the people who make the ride so special.

You can see views of Oakland, you can see the Bay Bridge, you can see San Francisco. Today is going to be epically clear, Mitchell said. And of course, we see all of our friends. ... Its hard. If you go up this hill, youre going to face some hardships. And we all know that, and thats why were here.

Lauren Hernandez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hernandez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ByLHernandez
The job of a bar pilot on San Francisco Bay is to take control of a huge ship and guide it out past the underwater rocks and sandbars until the ship is safely at sea. Then the pilot climbs down a rickety rope ladder to a pilot boat to wait for an incoming ship in order to complete a round trip.

The wait between outgoing and incoming vessels can be up to eight hours on a 105-foot pilot boat 11 miles outside the Golden Gate, drifting and rocking in the waves in the dark of night and in all weather. There is time to dream, and one of Capt. Russ Nyborgs dreams during a long career as a tugboat captain and bar pilot was to get his sea legs onto dry land that he would turn into a vineyard.

That became a reality when Nyborg bought 40 acres in Mendocino County and planted 10,000 Zinfandel vines in rows as straight as the route he used to take on a ship. He had brought in the fall harvest at Whaler Vineyard in Ukiah, and made sure the crush was done and the vineyard put to rest, before going in for heart valve surgery. He died Oct. 14 with a view of the bay from his hospital room, said his daughter Tara Larwood. He was 84.

He was the kind of person that so many people wanted to be, Larwood said. He did so many cool things, but he was always quiet about it.

Probably the coolest was to respond to a teaser in Herb Caens column that famed actor Sterling Hayden was looking for a crew to sail his yacht Wanderer to Santa Barbara from Sausalito in 1959. Nyborg got the job, and only when out on the water did he learn of Haydens true plan to sail to Tahiti in order to escape a marriage gone bad. Nyborg made the full round trip.

Inger Mattern 2003

His adventures as a bar pilot were less dramatic, which is exactly what you want in that job. He was elected to two terms as president of the San Francisco Bar Pilots, a partnership of 60 captains regulated by a state board of commissioners.

Russ was known as a pilots pilot, said Capt. Ann McIntyre, business director of the San Francisco Bar Pilots. He was a strong advocate for having an independent and qualified person control the navigation of the ships in San Francisco Bay.

Russell Marinus Nyborg was born March 16, 1937, in New Haven, Conn., and was raised in Madison, a town on the north shore of Long Island Sound. His father, Einar Nyborg, had emigrated from Norway, and his mother, Ruth Laurizen, was from Denmark.

His introduction to ocean life was not a favorable one. As a teenager he got a job crewing on a yacht but jumped overboard after watching the captain beat a deckhand. He then spent a long night in the water evading the captain, who was hunting him down in a dinghy.

Unfazed, he got a job crewing on an ore carrier working the Great Lakes soon after he graduated from high school in 1957. From there he enrolled at the Maine Maritime Academy, but that did not suit him. After painting the cannon, he was commanded to strip it and paint it again, his daughter said. After three rounds of this, he decided there were other ways to go to sea.

His plan was to ship out and make it around the world, but there was the issue of his high school sweetheart, Ann Barber. She said she was headed to California and boarded a Greyhound. He made the same trip by sea, as a deckhand, and met her in Sausalito, where they were married in 1961.

They got an apartment with a view of the water on Bridgeway, and Nyborg took a job as a tugboat mate for the Red Stack Co., which was owned by Crowley Maritime. His education was on the job as he rose from mate to captain and pilot, the top position on a tugboat.

Inger Mattern 2003

In 1972, Nyborg bought acreage in Mendocino without giving his wife the courtesy of seeing it first. She said, if you love it enough to commute two hours each way from your shipping job to your ranch job, go ahead and get it, his daughter recalled.

He did, and the family, by then daughters Tara and Inger and son Einar, were uprooted from Mill Valley to an old ranch house with two barns in rural Ukiah. The nearest neighbor was half a mile away. But the move took. All three kids now operate their own ranches in Ukiah and work together at Whaler Vineyard, producing a few thousand cases of Whaler Vineyard Flagship Zinfandel each year, along with Cabernet and Syrah.

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 wine tasters visited the ranch, Nyborg would throw in seagoing stories to any visitor who asked about the winery name or the nautical equipment everywhere.

His son, Einar, was so taken with the stories that he also became a tugboat captain and bar pilot, making the same long commute as his father.

Bar pilots work seven days on and seven days off, and among the duties of a senior pilot is to train apprentices on the job in the ships bridge. Among those Nyborg trained was Capt. Nancy Wagner, who became the first female bar pilot in the United States, in February 1990.

Russ used to tell me that a pilot is the conductor of an orchestra, said Wagner, from her home on Maui. You are working with the ship captain, the crew, the tugboat that assists the ships movement, and the line handlers at the dock. You are making beautiful music.

Nyborg retired to his ranch in 2008 but could not shake the romance of the sea. Eventually he moved with his wife to Point Arena, to a home on a hill with a view of the waves crashing below.

Survivors include his wife of nearly 60 years, Ann Nyborg of Point Arena (Mendocino County), daughters, Tara Larwood and Inger Mattern, and son, Einar Nyborg, all of Ukiah, and nine grandchildren.

A celebration of life is pending.

Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@samwhitingsf
More than 50 evacuees from Afghanistan have arrived in New Hampshire so far, according to two resettlement agencies in the state that have received help from volunteers in getting them situated.

Theres one family thats been placed with a Concord family living in their in-law apartment, Chrissie Ferrara, a program manager at Ascentria Care Alliance, told the Concord Monitor. We're looking at that as a model and asking the community to get involved and possibly house people if they have the space.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Friday blamed foreign interference over his governments decision to switch alliances from Taiwan to Beijing for anti-government protests, arson and looting that have ravaged the capital Honiara in recent days.

But critics also blamed the unrest on complaints of a lack of government services and accountability, corruption and Chinese businesses giving jobs to foreigners instead of locals.

Honiaras Chinatown and its downtown precinct have been focuses of rioters, looters and protesters who have demanded Sogavare, who has intermittently been prime minister since 2000, to resign.

The National Parliament building, a police station and businesses have been set alight during two tumultuous days in which police failed to control the mob.

Sogavare angered many in 2019, particularly leaders of the Solomon Islands most populous province, Malaita, when he cut the countrys diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Malaita leaders complain their island has been unfairly deprived of government investment since the change.

A plane carrying Australian police and diplomats arrived late Thursday in Honiara, where they will help local police efforts to restore order, Australia's Defense Minister Peter Dutton said.

Sogavare said he stood by his governments decision to embrace Beijing, which he described as the only issue in the violence, which was unfortunately influenced and encouraged by other powers.

External pressures were a very big ... influence. I dont want to name names. Well leave it there, Sogavare said.

Im not going to bow down to anyone. We are intact, the governments intact and were going to defend democracy, he added.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne did not agree that other countries had stirred up the unrest.

We have not indicated that at all, Payne said.

Weve been very clear. Our view is we dont want to see violence. We would very much hope for a return to stability, she added.

Local journalist Gina Kekea said the foreign policy switch to Beijing with little public consultation was one of a mix of issues that led to the protests. There were also complaints that foreign companies were not providing local jobs.

Chinese businesses and (other) Asian businesses ... seem to have most of the work, especially when it comes to extracting resources, which people feel strongly about, Kekea said.

Protesters had been replaced by looters and scavengers on Friday in Chinatown, Kekea said.

Its been two days, two whole days of looting and protesting and rioting and Honiara is just a small city, Kekea said of the home to 85,000 people.

So I think that theres nothing much left for them to loot and spoil now, she added.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday committed troops, police and diplomats to help local police restore order and protect critical infrastructure.

Australia would not assist in the protection of the National Parliament and the executive buildings, in a sign that Australia was not taking political sides.

Some observers argue Australia intervened quickly to avoid Chinese security forces moving in to restore order.

But Morrison said Sogavare had asked for help because he trusted Australia.

The Solomon Islands reached out to us first ... as family because they trust us and weve worked hard for that trust in the Pacific, Morrison said.

That is our region and were standing up to secure our region with our partners, our friends, our family and allies, he added.

Sogavare requested assistance from Australia under a bilateral security treaty that has existed since 2017, when Australian peacekeepers last left the Solomon Islands.

Australia led an international police and military force called the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands that restored peace in the country after bloody ethnic violence from 2003 until 2017.

Morrison questioned whether Chinese citizens and businesses were being targeted. He described the unrest as a bit of a mixed story and noted Chinatown was the scene of rioting before Australias 2003 intervention.

China, meanwhile, expressed serious concern about recent attacks on some Chinese citizens and institutions, without providing details.

We believe that under the leadership of Prime Minister Sogavare, the Solomon Islands government can restore social order and stability as soon as possible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Thursday.

He said that economic and other cooperation since the establishment of diplomatic relations has benefited both sides.

Any attempts to undermine the normal development of China-Solomon relations are futile, he said.

Dutton said a plane carrying 23 federal police officers and several diplomats flew from the Australian capital Canberra to Honiara late Thursday.

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.

Up to 50 more police as well 43 defense force personnel with a navy patrol boat were scheduled to arrive on Friday.

The Australian force would also be equipped to provide a medical response, Dutton said.

Its certainly a dangerous situation on the ground. Weve seen the rioting thats taken place, the arson and the general disorder thats there at the moment as well, Dutton said.

So theres a lot of work for the police to do on the ground, he added.

Sogavare declared a lockdown Wednesday after about 1,000 people gathered in protest in Honiara, demanding his resignation over a host of domestic issues.

The protesters breached the National Parliament building and burned the thatched roof of a nearby building, the government said. They also set fire to a police station and other buildings.

Sogavare ordered the capital locked down from 7 p.m. Wednesday through 7 p.m. Friday after saying he had witnessed another sad and unfortunate event aimed at bringing a democratically elected government down.

Despite an announcement from the Solomon Islands police force that they would be conducting increased patrols through Honiara amid the lockdown, protesters again took to the streets Thursday.

Local media reported that many of the protesters were from Malaita, whose premier, Daniel Suidani, has been at odds with Sogavare, whom he accuses of being too close to Beijing.

Suidani said he was not responsible for the violence in Honiara, but told the Solomon Star News that he agreed with the calls for Sogavare to resign.

The Solomon Islands, about 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of Australia, were the scene of bloody fighting during World War II.

After it was captured by the Japanese, U.S. Marines landed on the island of Guadalcanal in August 1942 to open a campaign to wrest back control. They were successful, though fighting in and around the Solomon Islands continued through the end of the war.

___

Rising reported from Bangkok.
OGDEN, Utah (AP)  A Utah teenager has been sentenced in the death of an grocery store owner fatally shot during an attempted robbery.

Satnam Singh was beloved by his customers and neighbors and was working that night because he picked up a shift of one of his employees, the Standard-Examiner reported.

He was known for helping people in need. He offered advice. He cared about their lives, victims rights attorney Heidi Nestel said.

Antonio Gianny Garcia, 16, pleaded guilty to felony illegal discharge of a firearm and aggravated robbery in Singhs death as part of a deal with prosecutors. He got two sentences of five years to life, to be served consecutively. Though the teenager's case moved through the adult court system, he will be held in the juvenile detention system until he turns 21, then get a parole hearing to determine his sentence in the adult system.

Prosecutor Letitia Toombs said she and all involved agreed to the plea bargain because it would give Garcia more of a chance to make amends. At a sentencing hearing Tuesday, the teenager said he wants to eventually prove he can change.

I am sorry for all the pain and suffering I have caused, Garcia said. My intentions were not good (but) I never planned on taking the life of a good man.

Charging documents said Garcia, 15 at the time, entered Super Grocery late the night of Feb. 28, pointed a gun at Singh, 65, and said This is a stickup. Singh moved away from the counter and Garcia fired four shots, hitting Singh three times.

Garcia later told police that when Singh moved away from the counter, he thought the shopkeeper was going for a gun and he acted on instinct."

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.

Defense attorneys said Garcias father was deported when he was young and he was abused by a man who dated his mother. The teen had also used amphetamines the day of the shooting.

Singhs wife and three daughters are still wrestling with his death and want to see a lengthy sentence, Nestel said.

His wife told her it's hard to breathe every day.
San Francisco Police on Wednesday released body camera, building surveillance footage and 911 calls documenting two officers shooting a man who rushed at them with a knife inside a residential hotel in SoMa on Friday.

The man, Ajmal Amani, 41, died from his injuries at San Francisco General Hospital.

Amani suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, had completed mental health diversion and treatment after past criminal charges, and lived in a city-rented residential hotel room, according to his former lawyer, case manager and a property manager. He came to the U.S. on a visa in 2014 after working for more than five years as an Afghan interpreter for U.S. military special forces, said deputy public defender Scott Grant, who represented Amani. His background was first reported by the San Francisco Standard.

Police identified the officers involved as John Quinlan, who shot four rounds from a gun, and Danny De Leon Garcia, who fired an extended range impact weapon, also known as a bean bag gun, three times.

We recognize that our sworn duty as law enforcement officers impose no more solemn obligation on us than to honor and respect the sanctity of human life, Police Chief Bill Scott said during a virtual town hall on Wednesday. We also know that, as police officers, we are sometimes required to use force  including deadly force at times  in the performance of our duties.

Scott said the police department was in touch with Amanis family to offer condolences. The District Attorneys Office, the Police Department Investigative Services Division, SFPD Internal Affairs, the Department of Police Accountability and the Medical Examiner are investigating.

The incident began just after 8 a.m. Friday at the Covered Wagon Hotel at 917 Folsom St. Amani lived in a city-rented room at the hotel, according to a manager of the private property who asked to remain anonymous.

Since April 2020, the Adult Probation Department has rented 22 rooms  less than a third of the hotel  for clients involved in the criminal justice system. Nonprofit Recovery Survival Network manages the rooms and clients.

Building video-surveillance footage, which does not capture audio, shows Amani walking through a hallway carrying a knife with a 6-inch blade in his hand around 8:04 a.m. He appears to be yelling and gesticulating at two building employees, one holding a broom between himself and Amani as the employee backs into an open doorway.

At 8:05 am, a building employee called 911 and told a dispatcher a man was in the building with a knife. The caller said they wouldnt stay on the phone while the man has a knife to my face, before the line disconnected. During a follow-up 911 call, Amanis case manager told a dispatcher Amani was having a really bad episode and mentioned he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Officers Quinlan and De Leon Garcia arrived at the hotel at 8:10 a.m. and talked with the two employees, body camera footage shows. One employee said Amani came at me and simulated his actions by holding a large knife over his head. The person told officers Amani said, Im going to stab you right now, Ill kill you and he was very violent.

The two officers entered the hallway and spotted Amani at the other end as he ducked around the corner. They called out his name and said they wanted to talk to him, body camera footage shows.

Nobody wants to hurt you, one officer said.

Dont talk to me, shut the f up, Amani responded. Leave me the f alone.

The officers held their weapons unholstered and ready, but pointed at the ground. After about a minute, just before 8:15 am, Amani emerged from his room around the corner, knife in hand, and rushed down the hallway at the officers, according to videos. An officer yelled at him to stay back as they retreated. Within five seconds, Amani closed half the distance and both officers fired their weapons. Amani fell to the ground, his legs moving as he made unintelligible sounds.

Let me see your hands! an officer yelled. We want to help you, but we need to hear your voice, OK?

More officers arrived. After more than two minutes, they approached, procured the knife, handcuffed Amani, and began giving medical aid until paramedics arrived.

David Elliott Lewis, a tenant advocate who has trained police on how to handle situations with mentally ill people through SFPDs Crisis Intervention Team, told The Chronicle the incident was extremely distressing. Lewis questioned Scott during the town halls public comment about why the officers appeared to fire the lethal and non-lethal weapons at the same time and why it took so long to render medical aid.

Police explained that in officer pairs, one carries an extended range impact weapon and the other a gun to offer cover. Scott said he could not judge from the videos whether the officers fired at exactly the same time. He also said officers are trained to make a plan before they approach an armed suspect.

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.

Recovery Survival Network director Lou Gordon would not release any more information Tuesday. He said the organization had provided services for a very long time and nothing like this has ever happened.

Grant said he has been utterly devastated by the death of Amani, whom he was very close to. Grant said Amani suffered incredible trauma both before his service due to violence and during his service, including seeing his fellow soldiers get killed and being shot multiple times.

In 2019, police arrested Amani for allegedly injuring a San Francisco Recreation and Park Department park ranger with a box cutter. The ranger described Amani as being in a clearly altered mental state, Grant said, quoting the preliminary hearing.

Amani was booked on attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and charges related to carjacking, according to court records. Grant said a judge threw out the attempted murder charge immediately.

A judge released Amani into residential treatment in April 2020 and ordered him into mental health diversion in June 2020. Amani remained in treatment until February 2021 and completed diversion in August  the same week the Taliban took over Kabul. Grant said the progress Amani made was the most impressive Ive ever seen of a client and his trauma was among the worst Ive ever seen in a job where Ive seen a lot of that.

Mental health diversion requires a treatment plan when someone graduates. The Department of Public Health couldnt comment about what care if any Amani received because of patient privacy laws. More than 1 in 5  approximately 22%  of people incarcerated in San Francisco County Jail at any given time in 2018 were diagnosed as seriously mentally ill, according to the health department.

Police shot and killed another man who charged at officers with a knife in October 2020, body camera footage showed. The numbers of officer-involved shootings, use of force incidents and pointing of firearms have decreased in recent years, police data shows.

Its our goal to not have these incidents and to have better outcomes, Scott said.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench
Nobody wakes up on a Saturday morning thinking: "This is the day I might not survive  that I might never see home or family again." In all my years, its a thought that has never crossed my mind: not even a whisper of maybe  it could be. We go about our business as if we are immune from the dangers that surround us, never giving survival a second thought  until in an instant we find ourselves entirely at the mercy of things totally out of our control.

On Saturday, Aug. 15, 2020, I found myself in one of those situations. Fortunately, all the stars lined up for me on that day and I can honestly say I am VERY happy to be sitting here relaying my story from the relative comfort of my studio.

On that Saturday morning, I stuffed everything Id need for the day in my day pack, grabbed my camera gear, said my goodbyes and headed for the East Fork Lakes Trailhead in the Trinity Alps, which is located in the Canyon Creek Lakes drainage. My aim was to re-visit this pretty and somewhat isolated basin, maybe find some new wildflowers to photograph, and then spend some time documenting a beautiful relict population of quaking aspen found not too far below the lakes.

The East Fork Lakes Trail is not for the faint of heart. Most casual hikers avoid it because, after leaving the trailhead, it quickly turns straight uphill and remains steep for a couple of miles until it breaks out into the country around Bucks Ranch and then flattens out a bit in the area below East Fork Lakes.

Courtesy of Ken DeCamp

At 10:30 a.m. it was already 97 degrees. I was hot and thirsty, so I stopped on the far side of the last creek crossing below East Fork Lakes. I dropped my pack and camera in the shade of some willows, grabbed my water bottle, and then stepped down to the edge of the creek to fill it with cold water. I took a long drink, refilled my bottle, replaced the cap, and stepped back up onto the bank next to my pack. I put the bottle back into the side pocket, hoisted the pack onto my back, and then stooped down to grab my camera.

It was at this point that, in an instant, my day came crashing down around me. As I turned to start back up the trail, I found myself face to face with a juvenile black bear. It was a shock to me, and I believe the same for the bear.

In the moment it took for the bear to react and take a swipe at me, all I remember is that I ducked. A paw caught me above my left eye: a claw ripping down through my forehead and eyelid. The force of the blow spun me around and threw me down into the creek head first. I vaguely remember the blow as my head hit the rocks. I was knocked unconscious.

I am not entirely sure how long I laid there in the creek  maybe 10 or 15 minutes. But when I finally came to, I found myself almost entirely in the water where it was actually washing over my eye and part of my mouth. Two inches lower, and I would have drowned.

At first, as I struggled to sit up, nothing registered except the pain in my head. Blood was pouring from the wound. I also had a major concussion, which made it hard to come to grips with the seriousness of the situation.

When I was finally able to gather myself together, I crawled out of the creek and up the bank on my hands and knees, soaking wet, my left eye bleeding profusely and my head pounding. Survival mode set in, and all I could think about was trying to staunch the bleeding and get on my feet so I could get back to my truck.

I pulled a handkerchief out of my camera bag and held it to my eye and started back down the trail. Even with the handkerchief and pressure, I could not stop the flow of blood, which had me very concerned because I am on blood thinners.

Once on the downhill side of the creek, I saw signs that the bear had walked right over me and headed down the trail for about 20 yards before moving down into the brush along the creek. It dawned on me that the bear hadnt even messed with me while I was out. To this day, I consider myself very lucky that it wasnt hungry.

With my limited vision I struggled to follow the East Fork Lakes Trail back to Bucks Ranch. It was extremely difficult and at about this time my headache grew significantly worse and I began to get very dehydrated. I stopped long enough to drop my pack and dig out my water bottle. I drank maybe 1/4 of the water, slung my pack back up and continued on.

Courtesy of Ken DeCamp

It was only about ten minutes later that tremendous waves of nausea overtook me and I had to sit down. I remained seated for a few minutes and then it hit me. I threw up until I experienced nothing but dry heaves.

I sat there for several minutes trying to stop the blood flow and regain a little composure before I stood up and started walking again. Just past Bucks Ranch, the trail disappeared into the trees and deep shade. It was at this point that I lost the path because I just couldnt see through all the blood and sweat. Everything was swimming before me, even in my good eye.

It is fortunate that I know this part of the Trinity Alps so well because, even in the condition I was in, I knew how to get back to my truck, trail or no trail. Since I couldnt see very well and had lost the trail, I knew I had to take the route of least resistance, which meant sliding on my back side down the steepest parts of the ridge through any opening I could find, all the while fighting nausea and a severe concussion headache.

It took me almost six hours to get back down to the road. By that time, I was beyond exhausted and very sick. At one point I laid down at the edge of the road and nodded in and out of sleep for about half an hour before I finally got up and started up the road to my truck.

Over and over again I could walk only 25 or 50 yards before the headache and nausea overtook me and I would have to rest. I dont know how many times I had to throw up on the way out, but it was at least several dozen. It took me over an hour to walk the quarter-mile to my truck.

In my state of mind, all I could think about was getting to a hospital before it became impossible for me to keep moving. I set my sights on Mercy Hospital in Redding and after about two hours finally made it to the emergency room parking lot. I got out of my truck, began walking towards the entrance, and pretty much collapsed.

Courtesy of Neal Herbert, NPS/Courtesy of Ken DeCamp

Excellent emergency room doctors and nurses took me in immediately and for three days initially and several days afterwards took excellent care of me. They stitched up my wound, settled the pain to manageable levels, and monitored me closely.

It is now almost five months later and I am still dealing with slight vision problems in my left eye. Ive been fitted with new scleral contact lenses that have helped immensely, and Im doing recommended eye exercises designed to alleviate my problems with depth perception.

All-in-all, things are pretty much back to normal. I count myself very fortunate and I can deal with the vision problems. In the end I survived, and that is what really matters.

There is no way to prepare properly for the possibility of something like a bear attack happening to any of us, but what it all boils down to something my dad told me many years ago: You do what you have to do  no matter what the situation  because you ALWAYS have to come home.

An experience like this wont keep me from returning to my backcountry adventures, in the Trinity Alps or anywhere else. Life is too short and there is too much to experience to ever be fearful of something like this happening again.

If there is a lesson to be learned it is this: Always be aware of your surroundings and never take your safety for granted.

Ken DeCamp had a 38-year career in Fire, Land Management Planning, and Public Affairs with the USDA Forest Service. Hes the author of Wildflowers of the Trinity Alps: Including the Marble Mountain Wilderness, Russian Wilderness & Trinity Divide.
ROME (AP)  National Geographic magazines famed green-eyed Afghan Girl has arrived in Italy as part of the Wests evacuation of Afghans following the Taliban takeover of the country, the Italian government said Thursday.

The office of Premier Mario Draghi said Italy organized the evacuation of Sharbat Gulla after she asked to be helped to leave the country. The Italian government will now help to get her integrated into life in Italy, the statement said.

Gulla gained international fame in 1984 as an Afghan refugee girl, after war photographer Steve McCurrys photograph of her, with piercing green eyes, was published on the cover of National Geographic. McCurry found her again in 2002.

In 2014, she surfaced in Pakistan but went into hiding when authorities accused her of buying a fake Pakistani identity card and ordered her deported. She was flown to Kabul where the president hosted a reception for her at the presidential palace and handed her keys to a new apartment.

Italy was one of several Western countries that airlifted hundreds of Afghans out of the country following the departure of U.S. forces and the Taliban takeover in August.

In a statement announcing Gullas arrival in Rome, Draghis office said her photograph had come to symbolize the vicissitudes and conflict of the chapter in history that Afghanistan and its people were going through at the time.

It said it had received requests by those in civil society, and in particular by non-profit organizations working in Afghanistan backing Gulla's plea for help to leave the country.

Italy organized her travel to Italy as part of the wider evacuation program in place for Afghan citizens and the governments plan for their reception and integration, the statement said.
LUXOR, Egypt (AP)  Egyptian authorities were unveiling Thursday a renovated ancient promenade in the city of Luxor dating back 3,000 years, the latest government project undertaken to highlight the countrys archaeological treasures.

Egypt has struggled to revive its tourism industry, battered by years of political turmoil following the 2011 popular uprising that toppled longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak, and more lately, the coronavirus pandemic.

The ancient walkway  known as the Avenue of the Sphinxes, but also dubbed the Way of the Rams and the Path of the Gods  connects the famous Karnak and Luxor temples in what was the city of Thebes, which used to be Egypt's capital in antiquity. It is believed to have been the path that pilgrims trod to visit the temples and pay tribute to their deities.

Lined with statues of rams and sphinxes on pedestals, the ancient road in Luxor, which sits on the banks of the Nile River and is located about 650 kilometers (400 miles) south of Cairo, stretches for several miles and had been under excavation for more than 50 years.

President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi attended the made-for-TV event, a late evening ceremony that nodded to an ancient fall holiday, along with other senior officials.

Mohamed Abd el-Badei, a top Egyptian archeology officials, said the oldest ruins along the pathway are six structures built by Queen Hatshepsut, Egypt's only woman pharaoh, that date to 1400 B.C.

He said that according to hieroglyphics on the walls of one of the temples, the ancient holiday was known as Opet" and was marked by parades and dancers in celebration of the bounty that the Niles annual flooding brought to the fields. There was also a flotilla of sacred boats that made their way to the temple, according to the transcriptions.

Thursdays event is the second glitzy ceremony this year to honor Egypt's heritage. In April, the government hosted a procession to mark the transfer of some of the famous mummies from the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo to the newly built museum south of the Egyptian capital.
HONG KONG (AP)  A renowned Chinese fashion photographer has apologized for her past work after online critics called it insulting to the Chinese people and fashion house Dior removed one of her photos from a show in Shanghai.

Chen Man acknowledged the criticism of her earlier work, including Young Pioneers, a series of images of a young model with backdrops of major landmarks such as China's massive Three Gorges Dam or with an image of the country's first lunar orbiter flying out from under her dress.

The criticism was reported by the state-owned Global Times newspaper, which said that comments on social media had called her work implicit child pornography and insulting the young pioneers, the name of a Communist Party-affiliated youth organization.

I have reflected deeply and blamed myself for my naivety and ignorance at the time. I think that I must still formally apologize to everyone, Chen wrote this week on her social media account.

Im a Chinese person, born and raised, I deeply love my motherland," she wrote. And I know, deeply, that as an artist, I have a responsibility to the mission to record and spread the Chinese peoples culture.

She joins numerous Chinese and foreign celebrities, brands and artists who have made public apologies following criticism of their work in state media. Some have been boycotted for refusing to apologize or if the apology is deemed insufficient.

Chen's apology came more than a week after Dior was attacked over the photo at its exhibition in Shanghai, which pictured a model of Asian descent with tan, freckled skin and darkened eyelids holding a Dior purse.

Critics deemed the photograph contrary to East Asian beauty standards of fair skin and said it perpetuated Western stereotypes of Asian faces, such as slanted eyes.

At least one photo editor has praised her work in the past for creating an aesthetic that was neither aping Western magazines or Japanese and South Korean ones. And in 2019, the Global Times described Chen as China's answer to U.S. photographer Annie Leibovitz, calling her a "shining star with a unique perspective.

Dior removed the photograph, adding that it was part of an art project and not an advertisement. In a statement on its Chinese social media account, Dior said it respects the feelings of Chinese people and strictly abides by Chinese laws and regulations.

Other luxury brands have previously been embroiled in controversies in China. In 2018, a Dolce & Gabbana advertisement sparked public outrage after the Asian model in the ad was instructed to eat spaghetti, cannolis and pizza with a pair of chopsticks. The videos were later removed.

Chen's social media post said she accepted criticism of her work including that for a certain brand, but didn't specify Dior.

The photograph taken down from the Shanghai exhibit was shot in a similar style to a series of covers Chen did for British fashion magazine i-D that featured 12 young Chinese women from different ethnic minorities. Many of the women did not fit what has become a common definition of beauty in China  some had small eyes and others had freckles.

Ding Yining, a photo editor at Sixth Tone, praised Chen's work in a 2018 article for the state-backed English-language features website.

From her works, it would seem that Chen prefers female models with narrow, single-lidded eyes and a sense of traditional East Asian elegance, Ding wrote.

Chen told Sixth Tone that as a professional visual artist, I believe that I should help more people recognize the face of modern Chinese beauty with greater confidence.

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Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan.
KAYA, Burkina Faso (AP)  Mariama Sawadogo sits in a small studio, translating notes from French to the local language of Moore and scribbling talking points in the margins. Transmission, prevention, vaccination  Sawadogo hits these topics in her bimonthly radio show on Zama FM, interviewing doctors and nurses about COVID-19 and testing callers on their knowledge.

Many guests and listeners in Burkina Faso call her aunty as she gently guides them to the right answers and awards prizes such as soap and washing buckets.

Sawadogos voice has become a familiar sound for nearly a million people in her town of Kaya and beyond, northeast of the capital in this West African country, where many feel the government has let them down during the pandemic. Hungry for any information about the virus, mothers huddle together outside to tune in to Sawadogo's show, sharing rare mobile phones in slivers of shade while their children play nearby.

Tests, vaccines and public messaging often miss many of the countrys 20 million residents, despite a $200 million budget for virus response efforts. In a region where women are responsible for family work and community relationships, theyve stepped up to provide a collective authoritative voice, make and deliver supplies, and find ways to support their families through the economic crisis.

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This story is part of a yearlong series on how the pandemic is impacting women in Africa, most acutely in the least developed countries. APs series is funded by the European Journalism Centres European Development Journalism Grants program, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AP is responsible for all content.

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They didnt help us, Mamounata Ouedraogo said of the government. If we expected to get our information from them, we would never have any.

Like Sawadogo, she lives in Kaya, one of the last safe havens in the conflict-plagued country, where tens of thousands of displaced people have sought shelter as violence that spilled over from neighboring Mali in 2015 escalates and jihadi attacks encroach on major towns. Ouedraogo listens to all of Sawadogos shows and said shed know little about the virus without them.

Norbert Ramde, head of Burkina Fasos doctors' association, said diseases like malaria, AIDS and tuberculosis are higher priorities for the government and medical community  and beyond disease, jihadis are the biggest threat.

Do you want us to take all the resources to combat COVID-19 and forget about this? he said. We have to invest in that, too.

But Burkina Faso was hard hit when the pandemic struck last March, recording some of Africas highest infection numbers and death rates. Officials implemented curfews, sealed the landlocked countrys borders, and closed mosques, churches, schools and markets. Many residents protested and, after just a few weeks, most restrictions were lifted.

The priority for the government is to convince the population, not to take some measures which will be very aggressive, said Dr. Brice Bicaba, the government epidemiologist who leads Burkina Fasos coronavirus response.

He said officials have opted to work through community leaders and local associations to get residents to understand the dangers of the virus and police their own behavior, rather than reimpose restrictions and risk protests and conflict  a concern for Burkina Fasos young government since an uprising ousted the longtime president in 2014.

Part of the millions for virus response went toward flyers, radio and TV messaging, and other community engagement measures, in addition to the creation of labs and the purchasing of medical supplies and tests, according to Bicaba and budget documents.

But many health professionals and citizens said those messaging efforts arent reaching all the people they need to. In Kaya, officials held one public meeting in December to provide general information, but locals said they would have preferred door-to-door visits to better explain preventative measures and give specifics on how the virus is contracted.

Messages also werent always translated into local languages, a significant problem since most people don't speak the country's official language, French, regularly.

Even in the capital, Ouagadougou, which is 60 miles (85 kilometers) from Kaya, messaging hasnt been widespread, with billboards and signs about masks, handwashing and vaccination scarce.

In Ouagadougou, Zenabou Coulibaly Zongo spends her own money making soap and buying hand sanitizer for mosques, markets and health centers. At the start of the pandemic, Zongo, now 63, was hospitalized with bronchial pneumonia. She paid out of pocket for two weeks worth of oxygen treatments at a private clinic, where she watched others die from respiratory problems.

It was a wake-up call, because I envisioned coronavirus spreading like it did in Europe, she said.

Now, despite her asthma putting her more at risk, Zongo delivers her soaps and uses her visits to instruct people about COVID-19 and vaccines. During a recent visit to a mosque, some people told Zongo, who is highly regarded in her community as the founder of the Council of Burkinabe Women, that they didnt know vaccine shots were free until she provided the information.

Health experts say governments must take the lead, but that community engagement serves as the bedrock of emergency responses.

Community organizations are key to filling these remaining gaps, as central government support may not suffice, said Donald Brooks, CEO of Initiative: Eau, a U.S. aid group assisting in Burkina Fasos pandemic response.

Many both inside and outside Burkina Faso don't trust the virus data provided by the government  15,514 cases and 265 deaths  noting a lack of testing and a health system the U.N. has called among the worlds weakest.

Many people dont come to hospitals and instead die at home, so likely arent included in official counts. And the government already was struggling before the pandemic with the humanitarian crisis fueled by jihadi violence linked to al-Qaida and the Islamic State group, preventing people from accessing health clinics and virus testing.

Amid the chaotic atmosphere  with the military struggling to stem the violence and an ultimatum from the opposition to the president  misinformation has flourished. Sawadogos radio presence serves as a leading voice to fight it. She hears from cynical listeners who say the pandemic was created to mislead Black people and that the vaccine will sterilize them. Some outright accuse her of lying.

But the mother of three boys is accustomed to naysayers and skeptics. In 2007, she left her first husband despite a strong cultural aversion to divorce, in part because he wouldnt let her work as an Islamic woman. She wanted to be financially independent so she went to night school and became an accountant.

Her internship was at Radio Zama, where her bosses sensed a strong radio presence after she recorded some ads. So in 2016, she started hosting shows. When the station got funding from the European Union for the virus show, she was a natural choice.

Youre on Zama FM. How are you doing? Sawadogo greets callers. Whats your name, and where are you calling from? She speaks to guests and listeners like family.

Sometimes after the show, people will call me personally and say Our family didnt believe in the disease, but since they have been listening, they now believe, Sawadogo said. "When you realize that thousands of people listen to your voice, you realize that they consider what you say, youre just proud.

That keeps her going through long days as she also takes care of her boys, prepares meals and endures long waits to see her husband. He sells grain in the countrys Sahel region; they see each other just once every two weeks.

Women in the community say Sawadogo, 44, is doing more than just teaching people about COVID-19  shes a role model for them and their daughters in a society dominated and controlled by men.

Sawadogo urges her whole community to tune in, but focuses on women in particular  theyre the healers and caretakers when people fall ill with coronavirus, just as they were during West Africas Ebola crisis from 2014 to 2016. Her listeners say if the host was a man, he wouldn't take the time and care she does to encourage them.

As a woman, she raises the name of women, said Zenabou Sawadogo, 31, a mother of six, including two girls who listen to the show with her.

Families in Burkina Faso are grappling not just with COVID-19, but also with the countrys escalating violence and collapsing economy. Zenabou Sawadogos husband has been unable to work mining gold because jihadi fighting has cut access to sites, meaning he cant earn a living and they cant afford to send their 11-year-old daughter to school.

Some families have had to cut back on feeding their children  from three meals a day to two or even one. Women who used to sell clothes and food in neighboring Ivory Coast cant because borders are closed. And during the pandemic, more women have been asking for aid from private banks that help impoverished people.

Burkina Fasos latest coronavirus struggle involves vaccination. Despite being part of COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to provide shots to developing nations, the nation was one of the last countries in the world to receive shots.

The government delayed the work needed get the vaccines: paperwork, waivers and distribution plans. It finally gave the first vaccines in June. By the end of October, about 284,000 people  less than 1.5% of Burkina Faso's population  were fully vaccinated, according to World Health Organization figures.

Vaccine hesitancy runs so deep in Burkina Faso that even radio host Sawadogo has yet to receive a jab, though she interviews doctors who advise all citizens to be immunized against COVID-19 and urges her listeners to do so.

She worries about links between the shots and rare blood clots in women, widely publicized during a fumbled rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe. She said even though a nurse reassured her, she's not yet convinced it's safe.

"If your blood clots, the result is death, she said. I want to be vaccinated, but the issue of blood clots frightens me.

Zongo, the soap-maker in the capital, also isn't vaccinated, insisting she first wants to finish medication shes taking from a recent accident. Both women are part of a widening gender gap that experts fear means African women are the world's least vaccinated population.

But Zongo and Sawadogo say theyll eventually be vaccinated and theyll continue to spread their messages about the pandemic and advocate for women.

A woman  whether shes European, or American, or South American, whoever she is  I see her as a phoenix," Zongo said. "No matter how hard youre hit, you must be able to get back on your feet, always able to get back on your feet, like the phoenix that rises again from the ashes.

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This story is part of a yearlong series on how the pandemic is impacting women in Africa, most acutely in the least developed countries. APs series is funded by the European Journalism Centres European Development Journalism Grants program, which is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. AP is responsible for all content.

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Follow APs multiformat Africa news on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Africa

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See the full series on how the pandemic is affecting women in Africa: https://apnews.com/hub/women-the-eyes-of-africa
TUKWILA, Wash. (AP)  Authorities say two people were shot Wednesday night outside a shopping mall in Tukwila, Washington.

KOMO reports the shooting happened after 6:30 p.m. outside Westfield Southcenter. Police say a man and a woman were injured and taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle with critical injuries.
TIRANA, Albania (AP)  Albanian prosecutors said on Thursday that they have launched a murder investigation into the deaths of four Russian tourists at a local beach resort last month.

The four Russians  a married couple, their daughter and son-in-law  were found dead in a hotel sauna in the village of Qerret, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of the capital Tirana, on Oct. 15.
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Alert: Official from United Arab Emirates accused by human rights groups of torture elected as head of Interpol
This photo gallery highlights some of the most compelling images made or published by Associated Press photographers in the Middle East, Afghanistan & Pakistan Region between Nov. 18-24, 2021.

This weeks selection includes scenes from across the region, including daily life in Afghanistan. Israel returned the bodies of two Palestinians after withholding them under its controversial policy of holding the remains of Palestinians killed while reportedly carrying out attacks. A South African immigrant to Israel was laid to rest after a Palestinian man opened fire in Jerusalems Old City. Britains Prince Charles and his wife, Camilla visited the Giza Pyramids in their first tour since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
NANTUCKET, Mass. (AP)  President Joe Biden on Thursday wished Americans a happy and closer-to-normal Thanksgiving, the second celebrated in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, in remarks welcoming the resumption of holiday traditions by millions of U.S. families  including his own.

As we give thanks for what we have, we also keep in our hearts those who have been lost and those who have lost so much, the president said in a videotaped greeting recorded with first lady Jill Biden at the White House before their trip to Nantucket, Massachusetts, for the holiday.

On the island, the Bidens visited the Coast Guard station at Brant Point to meet with personnel there and virtually with U.S. service members from around the world. Im not joking when I say Im thankful for these guys, the president said when asked what he was thankful for, referring to the Coast Guard members standing ramrod straight before him on the grounds as he departed.

Reporters were kept out of the room for Bidens virtual remarks, apparently because of tight space in the building. Well-wishers waved and cheered as Biden's motorcade navigated the island's narrow paved and cobblestone streets to and from the Coast Guard compound.

Biden, whose late son Beau was a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, said he has watched U.S. service members in action around the world, from the South China Sea and Iraq and Afghanistan to South America. He said when foreigners wonder what America is, they don't see us here, meaning civilians. They see them, he said of members of the Coast Guard and the other branches of the U.S. military. It makes me proud.

From Nantucket, the Bidens also called in to the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade, briefly bantering on air with NBC broadcaster Al Roker. Shut out a year ago, spectators again lined the route in Manhattan as some 8,000 participants joined the parade. Parade employees and volunteers had to be vaccinated against COVID-19 and wear masks.

The extended first family went traditional for their Thanksgiving menu: roasted turkey, stuffing using a grandmother's recipe and other fixings. Dessert was three kinds of pie, and  in no surprise to those who followed Biden in and out of ice cream shops on the campaign trail  chocolate chip ice cream.

Biden and his wife started spending Thanksgiving in Nantucket since before they were married in 1977 because they were looking for a way out of choosing whose family to spend it with. They did not visit in 2015 following Beau's death earlier that year from brain cancer at age 46, or in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic put the kibosh on big family gatherings.

Biden instead dined at home in Delaware last year with just his wife, daughter Ashley and her husband.

But this year, the president joined the millions of Americans who are celebrating the holiday with big groups of loved ones. Biden's entire family flew up with him Tuesday night on Air Force One to resume the Thanksgiving tradition: his wife; son Hunter and his wife, Melissa and their toddler son Beau; daughter Ashley; and grandchildren Naomi, Finnegan, Maisy, Natalie and young Hunter, as well as Naomi's fiance, Peter Neal.

The president has credited the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines with helping ease the return of family gatherings this holiday season, although a resurgent virus has fueled an increase in new infections in the U.S. The president and first lady both have had their full vaccine dose, and a booster.

Naomi Biden and her fiance rode bicycles along on a local path just before her grandfather's SUV departed the secluded home where the family is staying. The sprawling compound is owned by David Rubenstein, a billionaire philanthropist and co-founder of the Carlyle Group private equity firm.

Biden's visit, his first as president, is markedly different from his previous holidays here when he was a U.S. senator and later vice president. Then, he might have been seen walking around downtown.

Biden lost much of his freedom to move around on his own when he became president and now travels with a large group of security personnel, White House and other officials, and journalists. His every public move is closely watched by the U.S. Secret Service and other law enforcement.

Jill Biden was heard telling the Coast Guard members she would see them again Friday night at Nantucket's annual Christmas tree lighting, another Biden tradition.

We're all going together, she said of her family. The tree lighting ceremony is where Beau Biden proposed to his wife, Hallie, in 2001. They were wed on the island the following year.

Biden is expected to return to the White House on Sunday.

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Associated Press writer Calvin Woodward in Washington contributed to this report.
CHICAGO (AP)  A Chicago woman was shot to death on Wednesday, just steps away from a memorial to her 14-year-old son who was fatally shot over the weekend on the same sidewalk where his mother was found.

Delisa Tucker was shot in the chest on the same street where Kevin Tinker was killed on Sunday, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Chicago Police have not said if they believe the two shootings are connected and nobody has been arrested in either shooting. But the death of the 31-year-old Tucker, who lost her son over the weekend and her brother to gun violence two years ago, left the Roseland community on the city's South Side where she lived distraught about the shootings just days apart.

Its just sad that this whole family, basically, to be killed over time, said Pastor Donovan Price, who said he consoled Tucker at a vigil for her son Sunday night. Im devastated."

Police have not made any arrests in either either shooting. On Wednesday morning's shooting of Tucker, they said when they responded to a ShotSpotter alert, they found her lying on the sidewalk, but could not locate anyone on the block who said they saw the shooting.

On Sunday, her son, an eighth grader, was on the same sidewalk when he was shot several times. Chief of Detectives Brendan Deenihan said it was unclear if the boy was the intended target.

The deaths come toward the end of what has been one of the city's deadliest years in recent years. According to the police department's statistics, there have been 729 homicides in the city as of Nov. 21 compared to 702 for the same period last year and the number of shootings incidents has climbed to 3,221 this year compared to 2,960 for the same period last year.

And the Roseland area has been hit particularly hard by gun violence, with the police department statistics showing that the district that includes Roseland has seen 62 homicides this year compared to 42 during the same period last year.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  Two courthouse murals that were taken down last month in Columbia amid concerns that they depict an attempted lynching, a white man pointing a gun at a Native American man and enslaved people building the courthouse have a new home.

The murals are headed to the private Columbia College, where Sidney Larson, the late artist who painted the murals, taught for more than 50 years, The Columbia Daily Tribune reports.
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP)  Pope Francis is arranging to transfer a number of migrants to Italy from the east Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus, where he is opening a three-day visit next week, a Cypriot government official said on Thursday.

Government spokesman Marios Pelekanos told The Associated Press the Vatican is now making the arrangements with Cypriot authorities. There are no specifics yet as to how many migrants will leave the island or about the logistics of their trip since the pontiff will travel to Greece immediately after his Cyprus visit.

The Vatican spokesman didnt immediately respond when asked to confirm the pope would indeed bring migrants back to Italy or was otherwise arranging for their travel off Cyprus.

The ITA Airbus 320 that is bringing the pope and Vatican delegation from Rome to Nicosia on Dec. 2 will not travel onto Greece on the second leg of the trip, according to the ITA press office. That could suggest that any transfer of migrants from Cyprus to Rome could actually occur without the pope on board, since he is to travel on to the Greek capital of Athens on Dec. 4 aboard a different aircraft.

The pope made headlines in 2016 when he brought a dozen Syrian Muslims back with him aboard his return flight to Rome following a trip to the Greek island of Lesbos that hosts a large migrant reception camp.

Cyprus said earlier this month that it would seek European Union approval to stop processing asylum claims from migrants amid a surge of new arrivals that the country says is unable to cope with.

The Cypriot government is also pressing the EU to relocate a number of asylum seekers living in Cyprus to other member countries of the bloc and strike agreements with third countries to take back their citizens who have had their asylum applications rejected.

Cypriot authorities say 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.

Asylum seekers comprise 4% of the population in the islands south  four times the average of other EU front-line states.

Migrants say conditions at a reception camp just outside the Cypriot capital Nicosia are deteriorating since it currently houses nearly double its maximum capacity of 1,200 people.

Schadrach Mvunze from the Democratic Republic of Congo said what he and others at the camp want is somewhere where they can live in peace, whether it's in Cyprus or elsewhere.

Cyprus has welcomed us ... If they are unable to welcome us, they can also even send us perhaps to France, to Canada, to England," Mvunze told The Associated Press, which visited the camp on Thursday. They can scatter us all over Europe to make us more comfortable.

Nigerian Daniel Idu who crossed from the breakaway north to apply for international protection in the south said all he asks is a chance to lift his aging mother and young son out of grinding poverty.

If I have the opportunity to meet with the pope, I will ask for just one thing and that is to settle here and probably have a better job to support my family, he said.

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Associated Press writer Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP)  Ethiopias government on Thursday warned the United States against spreading false information as fighting in the countrys yearlong war draws closer to the capital, Addis Ababa, while thousands protested outside the U.S. and British embassies.

Ethiopias war is not only against forces from the countrys Tigray region but also with colonialism of the powerful states of the West, government spokesman Kebede Desisa said.

Some Ethiopians were outraged this week when a U.S. Embassy security message warned its citizens of possible terrorist attacks in the country. The U.S. has also repeatedly told its citizens to leave immediately, warning there will be no Afghanistan-style evacuation if the wars chaos reaches the capital.

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who announced this week he was going to the battlefront to direct the army, once cast the conflict as a law enforcement operation against the Tigray leaders who had long dominated the national government before a political falling-out.

Now he calls it an existential war and appeals to fellow Africans for support in a struggle against Western intervention.

I am here to protest against foreign atrocities which have been planned to dismantle the sovereignty of Ethiopia, said one of Thursdays protesters, Worku Taddesse.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the conflict that erupted in November 2020, and close to a half-million people in Tigray face famine conditions under a months-long government blockade. The Tigray forces say they are pressuring Abiys government to lift the blockade but also want the prime minister to step aside.

Ethiopias government earlier this year designated the Tigray forces as a terrorist group, further complicating mediation efforts by the U.S. and African Union for a cease-fire.
BRUSSELS (AP)  Concerned by the misuse of political advertising to undermine elections, the European Union on Thursday unveiled plans to help people better understand when they are seeing such ads online and who is responsible for them.

The proposals, aimed at ensuring fair and transparent polls or referendums, would also ban political targeting and amplification techniques used to reach a wider audience if they use sensitive personal data like ethnic origin, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation without a citizens permission.

Digital advertising for political purposes is becoming an unchecked race of dirty and opaque methods, European Commission Vice-President Vera Jourova said. A myriad of data analytics and communication firms work daily with our data to try to figure out the best way to convince us to buy something or vote for someone or not to vote at all."

She said people must know why they are seeing an ad, who paid for it, how much, what micro-targeting criteria were used. New technologies should be tools for emancipation, not for manipulation."

The commission, the EUs executive branch, hopes that the 27 member countries and the European Parliament will have debated and endorsed the proposals in national law by 2023, in time for Europe-wide elections the following year.

Companies like Facebook and Google, the two dominant players in the digital ad industry, would face fines if they failed to comply.

Facebook, which has faced heavy criticism for its lack of transparency on political ads, welcomed the move.

We have long called for EU-wide regulation on political ads and are pleased that the Commissions proposal addresses some of the more difficult questions, in particular when it comes to cross border advertising, the company, which recently renamed itself Meta, said in a press statement.

Google said in a blog post that it supported the proposals and recommended the commission clearly define political ads and spell out responsibilities for tech platforms and advertisers while still keeping the rules flexible.

Twitter, which banned all political ads in 2019, said it believed that political reach should be earned, not bought" and noted that it has also restricted and removed micro-targeting from other types of ads like cause-based ones.

Under the EU plan, political ads would have to be clearly labelled, and prominently display the name of the sponsor, with a transparency notice that explains how much the ad cost and where the funds to pay for it came from. The material would have to have a direct link to the vote or poll concerned.

Information must be available about the basis on which a person, or group of people, is being targeted by the advertisement, and what kind of amplification tools are being used to help the sponsor reach a wider audience. Ads would be banned if such criteria cannot be met.

Jourova told reporters that the sensitive data that people decide to share with friends on social media cannot be used to target them for political purposes. She said that either companies like Facebook are able to publicly say who they are targeting, why and how or they will not be able to do it.

The system would be policed by data protection authorities in each of the EU member countries. National authorities would be required to impose effective, proportionate and dissuasive fines when the rules are broken.

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Kelvin Chan contributed from London.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)  The holiday tree is towering over the main square in this central German city, the chestnuts and sugared almonds are roasted, and kids are clambering aboard the merry-go-round just like they did before the pandemic. But a surge in coronavirus infections has left an uneasy feeling hanging over Frankfurt's Christmas market.

To savor a mug of mulled wine  an uncomplicated rite of winter in pre-pandemic times  masked customers must pass through a one-way entrance to a fenced-off wine hut, stopping at the hand sanitizer station. Elsewhere, security officers check vaccination certificates before letting customers head for the steaming sausages and kebabs.

Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. Merchants who have opened are hoping for at least a fraction of the pre-pandemic holiday sales that can make or break their businesses.

Others arent so lucky. Many of the famous holiday events have been canceled in Germany and Austria. With the market closures goes the money that tourists would spend in restaurants, hotels and other businesses.

Jens Knauer, who crafts intricate, lighted Christmas-themed silhouettes that people can hang in windows, said his hope was simply that the Frankfurt market stays open as long as possible.

While Christmas is 40% of annual revenue for many retailers and restaurateurs, with me, its 100%, Knauer said. If I can stay open for three weeks, I can make it through the year.

Purveyors are on edge after other Christmas markets were abruptly shut down in Germany's Bavaria region, which includes Nuremberg, home of one of the biggest and best-known markets. Stunned exhibitors in Dresden had to pack up their goods when authorities in the eastern Saxony region suddenly imposed new restrictions amid soaring infections. Austria's markets closed as a 10-day lockdown began Monday, with many stall owners hoping they can reopen if it's not extended. The Czech government on Thursday closed Christmas markets as part of measures to counter a record surge in cases.

Markets usually attract elbow-to-elbow crowds to row upon row of ornament and food sellers, foot traffic that spills over into revenue for surrounding hotels and restaurants. This year, the crowds at Frankfurts market were vastly thinned out, with the stalls spread out over a larger area.

Heiner Roie, who runs a mulled wine hut in the shape of a wine barrel, said he's assuming he will see half the business he had in 2019. A shutdown would cause immense financial damage  it could lead to complete ruin since we haven't made any income in two years, and at some point, the financial reserves are used up.

But if people have a little discipline and observe the health measures, I think well manage it, he said.

Next door, Bettina Roie's guests are greeted with a sign asking them to show their vaccination certificates at her stand serving Swiss raclette, a popular melted cheese dish.

The market "has a good concept because what we need is space, room, to keep some distance from each other," she said. In contrast to a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, they have their building and their walls, but we can adjust ourselves to the circumstances.

The extended Roie family is a fifth-generation exhibitor business that also operates the merry-go-round on Frankfurt's central Roemerberg square, where the market opened Monday.

Roie said it was important to reopen so that we can bring the people even during the pandemic a little joy  thats what we do, we bring back joy.

The latest spike in COVID-19 cases has unsettled prospects for Europe's economic recovery, leading some economists to hedge their expectations for growth in the final months of the year.

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London, has cut his forecast for the last three months of the year in the 19 countries that use the euro from 0.7% to 0.5%. But he noted that the wave of infections is having less impact across the broad economy because vaccinations have reduced serious illnesses and many companies have learned to adjust.

That is cold comfort to Germany's DEHOGA restaurant and hotel association, which warned of a hail of cancellations and said members were reporting every second Christmas party or other special event was being called off.

Other European countries where the pandemic isn't hitting as hard are returning to old ways. The traditional Christmas market in Madrid's Plaza Mayor, in the heart of the Spanish capital, is slated to open Friday at the size it was before the pandemic.

It will have 104 stalls of nativity figures, decorations and traditional sweets in a country where 89% of those 12 or older are fully vaccinated. Last year, it had half the number of stalls and restricted the number of people allowed in the square. Masks and social distancing will remain mandatory, organizers said.

In Hungary's capital of Budapest, Christmas markets have been fenced off and visitors must show proof of vaccination to enter.

Gyorgy Nagy, a producer and seller of handmade glazed crockery, said the restrictions initially stirred worries of fewer shoppers. But business has been good so far.

I dont think the fence is bad, he said. At the beginning, we were scared of it, really scared, but I think its fine. ... I dont think it will be a disadvantage.

Markets opening reflects a broader spectrum of loose restrictions in Hungary, even as new COVID-19 cases have exceeded peaks seen during a devastating surge last spring. More infections were confirmed last week than in other week since the pandemic started.

A representative for the Advent Bazilika Christmas market said a number of its measures go beyond government requirements, including that all vendors wear masks and those selling food and drinks be vaccinated.

Bea Lakatos, a seller of fragrant soaps and oils at the Budapest market, said that while sales have been a bit weaker than before the pandemic, I wasnt expecting so many foreign visitors given the restrictions.

I think things arent that bad so far, she said this week. The weekend started particularly strong.

In Vienna, markets were packed last weekend as people sought some Christmas cheer before Austria's lockdown. Merchants say closures last year and the new restrictions have had disastrous consequences.

The main sales for the whole year are made at the Christmas markets  this pause is a huge financial loss, said Laura Brechmann who sold illuminated stars at the Spittelberg market before the lockdown began. We hope things will reopen, but I personally dont really expect it.

In Austria's Salzkammergut region, home to ski resorts and the picturesque town of Hallstatt, the tourism industry hopes the national lockdown won't be extended past Dec. 13 and it can recover some much-needed revenue.

Last winters extended lockdowns cost the tourism board alone 1 million euros ($1.12 million) just in nightly tourist tax fees during that period  not to mention the huge financial losses sustained by hotels, restaurants and ski resorts.

Overall, I do think that if things open up again before Christmas, we can save the winter season, said Christian Schirlbauer, head of tourism for the Dachstein-Salzkammergut region. But it will depend on whether or not the case numbers go down.

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Emily Schultheis reported from Vienna, and Justin Spike from Budapest, Hungary. Aritz Parra contributed to this report from Madrid.

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Follow APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
BANJUL, Gambia (AP)  Investigators with Gambias Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission delivered a final report to the president Thursday, identifying and recommending prosecution for those most responsible for crimes and human rights abuses committed during the 22-year rule of former President Yahya Jammeh.

After receiving the report, President Adama Barrow said he hoped the commission will be one of his legacies as a leader of Gambia.

Following his election in 2016, Barrow vowed to right the wrongs of the past, especially widespread abuses under previous leader Jammeh. The commission was mandated to establish an impartial historical record of abuses committed from July 1994 to January 2017, when Jammeh fled into exile after losing elections. More than two years of hearings that led to the report documented human rights abuses and horrors that occurred under Jammehs rule.

Its submission comes just before Gambias 2 million people are set to vote in presidential elections on Dec. 4, in which Barrow is running for re-election against five other candidates.

After submitting the report, Commission chair Lamin J. Sise said that the individuals involved in perpetrating the violations and abuses must be held accountable for their crimes and their names are mentioned expressly in the relevant sections of the report.

The commission found that the abuses resulted in the deaths of 240 to 250 Gambians and non-Gambians in the hands of (the) state or its agents.

Sise did not mention the names of those the commission has recommended for prosecution, however, Jammeh is likely among them, according to experts.

The evidence is in ... We have the truth," said Baba Hydara, whose father Deyda Hydara was a newspaper editor killed in 2004.

Now we need justice, he said. Justice for my father, justice for all of Jammehs victims, and justice for Gambian society as a whole.

The Gambia National Human Rights Commission called on the government to commit to implementing the recommendations of the report.

The government now has the duty to take the next important step, the national human rights watchdog said in a statement issued today and seen by The AP. We hereby urge the President, to consider and share the report with all relevant stakeholders ... and put in place all the necessary mechanisms, institutions, processes, and resources to implement all the recommendations fully and adequately within a realistic timeframe.

Similar calls were reiterated by Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International, urging the Barrow administration to make sure that victims get redress.

Jammeh is likely at the top of the list of former officials whose prosecution is recommended, Reed Brody of the International Commission of Jurists, who works with Jammehs victims, said.

Witnesses with first-hand knowledge implicated Jammeh in murder, torture, rape and the other terrible crimes cited by the commission," said Brody.

"This report begins the countdown to the day Yahya Jammeh will have to face his victims. Whether its in The Gambia or before an international court, it will be very difficult now for him to escape justice, he said.

The commission's report will not be made immediately public.

Barrow, who received the report in Gambia's capital, Banjul, now has six months to release a paper on how to implement the recommendations submitted by the commission. He promised Thursday that justice will be done.

I assure (victims families) that my government will ensure that justice is done, but I urge them to be patient and allow the legal process to take its course, said the Gambian leader. He promised that his white paper would be filed within six months. He will, in the mean time, share copies of the report with the countrys lawmaking body, U.N. Secretary-General and the African Union.

In the interim, I advise all Gambians to exercise restraint, Barrow reiterated.

A recent rapprochement between Barrows National Peoples Party and the former governing party has cast doubt on the authorities willingness to right the wrongs of the past in making sure justice is served.

Barrow sought an alliance with Jammehs former party in September, a move denounced by rights activists. Jammeh, however, has formed a rival party, with many of his supporters hoping he will return from exile.

Jammeh, who seized power in 1994 in a bloodless coup, was voted out of office in 2016 after opposition parties created a coalition with Barrow as the main candidate.

After initially agreeing to step down, Jammeh resisted and a six-week crisis saw neighboring West African countries prepare to send in troops to stage a military intervention. Jammeh was forced into exile and fled to Equatorial Guinea aboard a plane with his family and many belongings.

The 56-year-old Jammeh still has considerable support in the tiny West African nation, despite the abuses under his rule.

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Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal.
HONOLULU (AP)  Citing threats to Honolulu's drinking water, the Sierra Club of Hawaii and other groups on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden and military leaders to shut down tanks that provide an important fuel reserve for U.S. forces in the Pacific.

Enough is enough. We've lost all faith in the local Navy command, said Wayne Tanaka, the director of the Sierra Club of Hawaii, at a rally and news conference.

The military built 20 fuel tanks, each the equivalent of 25 stories tall, during World War II near Pearl Harbor on top of an aquifer that supplies drinking water to one-quarter of Honolulu.

The call to shut them down comes after a series of recent revelations about fuel leaks associated with the Red Hill fuel tanks or Pearl Harbor.

Tanaka called the tanks an unacceptable threat to the drinking water supply for 400,000 Oahu residents.

Navy Region Hawaii said in a statement that it is committed to safeguarding the environment and drinking water while protecting national security.

We will closely monitor all aspects of the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility to ensure the safety of our operations, it said.

On Monday, the Navy said 14,000 gallons (52,995 liters) of a water and fuel mixture leaked into the Red Hill facilitys lower tunnel from a fire suppression system drain line. No fuel leaked into the environment.

Last month, Honolulu Civil Beat reported that officials waited months to report a January leak at Pearl Harbor to the state Department of Health amid concerns it would hamper its ability to secure a state permit for the Red Hill tanks.

Hawaiis four-member congressional delegation has asked the Department of Defenses inspector general to investigate the January leak, saying they want to know whether the Navy properly investigated and notified state authorities.

The state health department last month fined the Navy more than $325,000 for Red Hill operations and maintenance violations.

A 2014 fuel leak prompted the Navy to sign an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Health Department to upgrade the tanks and better prevent and detect leaks.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  A man from Vincennes has been sentenced to three years probation for his part in the Jan. 6 riot during which the crowd stormed the U.S. Capitol.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols spared Jonathan Ace Sanders prison time after Sanders pleaded guilty this month to one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. Three other charges were dropped as a result.
ISTANBUL (AP)  Interpol on Thursday elected a contentious official from the United Arab Emirates as its new president during the international law enforcement bodys annual General Assembly held in Istanbul.

Maj. Gen. Ahmed Naser al-Raisi, inspector general at the United Arab Emirates interior ministry and a member of Interpols executive committee, was elected for one four-year term, the global policing body announced. He has been accused by human rights groups of involvement in torture and arbitrary detentions in the UAE.

Another contentious candidate, Hu Binchen, an official at Chinas ministry of public security, was elected to join Interpols executive committee as a delegate from Asia. Hu was backed by Chinas government, which is suspected of using the global police body to hunt down exiled dissidents and of disappearing its citizens.

The Lyon, France-based agency acts as an intermediary for national police services seeking to hunt down suspects outside of their borders. Al-Raisi and Hus election comes as the international body has come under criticism that its red notice system is being used to go after exiled dissidents or political enemies instead of criminals. Interpol's charter however, prohibits the use of police notices for political reasons.

Interpol said al-Raisi was elected following three rounds of voting and received 68.9% of the votes cast in the final round.

Its an honor to have been elected to serve as the next president of Interpol," the global police agency quoted al-Raisi as saying.

Interpol is an indispensable organization built on the strength of its partnerships. It is this collaborative spirit, united in mission, that I will continue to foster as we work to make a safer world for people and communities," he said.

The vote for president was closely watched since the first-ever Chinese president of the body, Meng Hongwei, vanished midway through his four-year term on a return trip to China in 2018. It subsequently emerged that he had been detained and accused of bribery and other alleged crimes.

Al-Raisi is accused of torture and has criminal complaints against him in five countries, including in France, where Interpol has its headquarters, and in Turkey, where the election was held.

His election was met with joy in the UAE but drew angry responses from two Britons who filed the complaints.

This is a sad day for international justice and global policing, said Matthew Hedges, a British doctoral student who was imprisoned in the UAE for nearly seven months in 2018 on spying charges. Hedges says he was subjected to torture and months of solitary confinement.

Ali Issa Ahmad, a soccer fan who says he was tortured by the UAE security agency during the 2019 Asia Cup soccer tournament said: "I will not stop my fight for justice for the torture and abuse I suffered under Al-Raisis watch. I hope that Interpol will not allow him to abuse any other people.

Their lawyer, Rodney Dixon, said his clients would redouble their efforts to seek justice for their torture and pursue Gen. al-Raisi in national courts wherever he travels in his new position.

Hedges was pardoned by UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but Emirati officials still insist Hedges was spying for Britains MI6 intelligence agency, without offering definitive proof to support their claims. He, his family and British diplomats have repeatedly denied the charges.

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which regroups legislators from around the world, expressed concern over Hu's election to Interpol's executive committee, saying it gives China a green light to continue using Interpol as a vehicle for its repressive policies. There was no immediate comment from Beijing.

In the UAE, now hosting the Expo 2020 worlds fair in Dubai and marking the 50th anniversary of its founding, Emirati officials celebrated al-Raisis selection. Interior Minister Saif bin Zayed Al Nahyan said it demonstrated the worlds confidence in the UAE.

Al-Raisi praised UAEs leaders, saying with their guidance and expertise, the UAE has become one of the safest countries in the world. He pledged to modernize Interpols technology, promote women and meet new challenges like climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

I will also continue to reaffirm a core tenet of our profession  that police abuse or mistreatment of any kind is abhorrent and intolerable, he said in a statement on his website. The credibility and standing of Interpol and global law enforcement is our most important asset.

Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, an activist with the Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, warned al-Raisis election represents the beginning of a dangerous era, with authoritarian regimes now able to dictate international policing.

No one is safe from the abuse of Interpol and authoritarian regimes, Alwadaei said in a statement.

Al-Raisi replaces Kim Jong Yan from South Korea, a vice president who was swiftly elected as a replacement to serve out the rest of Mengs term.

Although Interpols secretary-general runs Interpol on a day-to-day basis, the president plays a role in supervising the police bodys work and guiding its overall general direction. The president chairs Interpols general assemblies and meetings of its Executive Committee.

The post of secretary-general is currently held by Juergen Stock of Germany.

Meanwhile, Interpol also said Valdecy Urquiza of Brazil was elected to the post of vice president for the Americas, while Garba Baba Umar of Nigeria was elected vice president for Africa.

About 470 police chiefs, ministers and other representatives from more than 160 countries attended the three-day meeting. Each country attending has one vote.

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Suzan Fraser reported from Ankara. Jon Gambrell contributed from Dubai.
RABAT, Morocco (AP)  Israels defense minister said Thursday he hopes a better nuclear deal will come out of upcoming talks between world powers and Iran, but that Israel is hedging its bets and building up its military capabilities.

Benny Gantz spoke to reporters at the close of a two-day visit to the Moroccan capital of Rabat, where he met with top Moroccan intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials. Among the issues discussed was Iran.

Our obligation concerning Iran is to influence our partners and maintain an ongoing conversation, Gantz said. Our second obligation is to build up military power, which is something important in and of itself.

Nuclear talks between Iran and world powers are set to kick off next week in Vienna.

Iran has steamed ahead with its enrichment of uranium since the United States withdrew from a landmark nuclear agreement with world powers in 2018. Israel was deeply opposed to that agreement, and Israeli officials now say Tehran is closer than ever to developing nuclear arms.

Iran says its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes and has blamed the breakdown of the agreement on the Trump administration's decision to withdraw from it and restore crippling sanctions. The Biden administration has said it hopes to negotiate a return to the deal.

Israel is widely believed to be the only nuclear-armed country in the Middle East, though it maintains a policy of ambiguity about its own program.

Gantz said that Israel must work in concert with the U.S. and avoid making the issue of Irans nuclear program a partisan one.

A good agreement is one that will plug the holes in the previous agreement in the fields of nuclear development, missile launching systems, breakout time and what Iran is doing in the region, Gantz said.

Gantz's visit was the first official visit by an Israeli defense official to one of its new Arab allies. Israel and Morocco normalized relations last year as part of the so-called Abraham Accords and this week signed a defense agreement.

The defense minister visited Rabat's sole functioning synagogue, Talmud Torah, and was welcomed by leaders of the small Jewish community. The cantor recited prayers for the welfare of the king and for Israel and its armed forces. On display was a framed picture of King Mohamed VI, the Moroccan flag and the Israeli flag  an addition to the synagogue since the signing of the accords last year.

Even when it's difficult, we need to strive for peace," Gantz said to a group that included Moroccan and Israeli military officers. We must always been the strongest in the region.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP)  The Kansas Supreme Court has agreed to consider an appeals court decision overturning the conviction of a day care worker in the death of a 9-month-old.

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the Douglas County District Attorneys Office is seeking to have the murder conviction against Carrody Buchhorn reinstated.
LONG BEACH, N.Y. (AP)  A Long Island emergency room will reopen Friday after resolving staffing shortages related to the state's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers.

Mount Sinai South Nassau closed the Long Beach Emergency Department this week amid a state mandate requiring the suspension of unvaccinated staffers working under temporary religious exemptions.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  A Maine university plans to use a federal grant to pilot a nutrition program for older residents who live in low-income housing.

The University of New England received the $900,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Administration for Community Living. The university said the project will seek to address food security and health and well-being of seniors in the state.
ARIZONA CITY, Ariz. (AP)  An Arizona City man who is prohibited from carrying guns was arrested for allegedly bringing a firearm into a sheriff's substation.

Authorities allege the 38-year-old man entered the sheriff's substation in Arizona City to respond to a harassment complaint that had been filed against him. Staff noticed he was carrying a handgun in his front pocket near his waste, which he gave to a deputy upon request.
MOUNT RAINIER, Md. (AP)  A Maryland man has been sentenced to more than two years in prison after selling pit bull puppies online but failing to deliver the animals to buyers.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that Fonjeck Eric Azoh, 42, of Mount Rainier, received his sentence in U.S. District Court in Washington.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  Production numbers show there's a good chance that a Thanksgiving turkey came from Minnesota, especially if you live in the Midwest.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says Americans should eat about 46 million turkeys on Thanksgiving. Minnesota farmers generally grow about 45 million turkeys a year on more than 500 farms, or nearly 18% of the countrys turkey supply, according to the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
PHOENIX (AP)  Maricopa County officials have created new rules for billboards that will let them double in size and height and for existing static billboards to be converted to ever-changing electronic displays.

The Arizona Republic reports that scientists and residents have complained the new rules will brighten the Phoenix metro areas dark skies.

Digital billboards are allowed in many cities in the Phoenix area, but werent previously allowed in the county.

Its difficult to know exactly how this will change the landscape of billboards across Maricopa County.

The rules apply only to unincorporated county land, and much of the land along freeways and highways is within city limits, such as the land alongside State Route 51, which is in Phoenix. The digital billboards could come to county islands along with the area just outside cities and towns, such as in Anthem.

The initial request for changes came three years ago from a billboard company, Becker Boards, and the company has been working since to try to appease opposition groups by adding stricter rules on where and when the digital billboards are allowed.

The rules approved on Nov. 17 will only allow the billboards along existing freeways within 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) of a city or town, for example, and will not allow them within scenic corridors, such as along the Carefree Highway or certain mountain preserves. The billboards must be dimmed at sunset and turned off completely by 11 p.m. through sunrise. They also must have technology meant to keep light from traveling upward.

A consortium of astronomers in the state, the Phoenix-area chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association, and many residents still said they opposed the changes. Cities jumped on to oppose the proposal late, too.

Scientists from the Arizona Astronomers Consortium wrote to the county in September warning of the detrimental impacts more digital billboards would have on scientific research and investment in the state.

Rolf Jansen, a member of the consortium and professor at Arizona State University, told The Republic the horizontal glow from the billboards would affect observatories hundreds of miles away.

Luke Edens of the Phoenix-area chapter of the International Dark-Sky Association told officials that their decision will affect the entire region, even if the billboards are allowed only near cities, because of whats known as sky glow, or a general increase to the brightness of the sky.

Bill Lally, the attorney representing Becker Boards, told county officials that the rules will force billboard companies to tilt lights downward and have protective technology that lessens light pollution. The new rules will require even static billboards, some of which have lights pointing upward, to change to only have lights pointing downward.

Before the changes, the county allowed billboards up to 300 square feet (28 square meters) and 30 feet (9 meters) tall. The rule change allows for billboards up to 672 square feet and 70 feet tall.
BERLIN (AP)  Germany's outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed her full solidarity Thursday with Warsaw over Poland's tense border situation with Belarus.

Merkel reiterated her accusation that Belarus was carrying out a hybrid attack by luring migrants to the country and then sending them to the Polish border in an effort to destabilize both Poland and the European Union as a whole.

Therefore full solidary with Poland on the one hand, and on the other hand I want to of course express very clearly that this is an issue between the European Union and Belarus, and that's why everything that happens bilaterally needs to be coordinated, she told reporters after a meeting in Berlin with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Her comments were seen as a response to Polish criticism that she had failed to coordinate with Warsaw before recently reaching out to Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko. After Merkel's call, Belarus began repatriating some migrants back to Iraq.

Merkel said the EU would impose additional sanctions on Belarus if no progress is seen.

She also stressed the role that Belarus' close ally Russia could play in putting pressure on Minsk. That sentiment was echoed by Morawiecki, who said that there was a cordial request (to Putin) to exert influence on the situation in Belarus.

Morawiecki said trade sanctions would be a powerful instrument against Belarus.

Separately, Merkel lamented that Putin had refused her suggestion for a summit on the situation in Ukraine.

I greatly regretted that neither the Russian president nor the Russian foreign minister were prepared to hold one more high-level meeting under the Normandy format before the end of my time in office, Merkel said, referring to the four-way talks between Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

Such talks have been staged repeatedly over the years to resolve tensions between Ukraine and its neighbor Russia, with limited success.

This would have been a good signal that all sides are interested in a solution to the Ukraine issue, Merkel said. This, sadly, didn't happen.
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. (AP)  Deluges along Mississippis coast have damaged the states current generation of oysters two years after fresh water from a Louisiana flood control structure all but wiped out live adults on reefs. Fresh water also has hurt baby oysters in southeast Louisiana but doesn't appear to have been a big problem in Alabama.

Mississippi oyster farmer Anita Arguelles said that at one point, fresh water was killing half of the small seed oysters that she and her husband buy to grow in raised cages at their French Hermit Oyster Co. farm off Deer Island  and those that survive were stunted.

It has reduced the crop by at least 30% ... because they're either too small or they're dead, Arguelles said.

What we're seeing is a preponderance of runts, she said. And they fill buckets with dead oysters each time they harvest live ones big enough to sell.

Another oyster farmer in the same area reported less serious damage. We lost a little bit more than we usually do, said Sam Yates of High Tide Oyster Co. But as far as a terrible loss, no, it wasnt really a bad year.

At a high school in Bay St. Louis where students raise oysters to help restore Mississippi reefs, cages that might hold fist-sized clumps of oysters after a good summer and fall held only a few small babies in mid-November. Most of the recycled shells held only silt where tiny youngsters called spat had attached themselves at a hatchery.

These are bad signs  oysters in raised cages typically grow much faster and fatter than those on the ocean floor. They can reach adult size in less than a year in Mississippi, where those growing on the bottom would need two or three years. That's because the water around them carries more food and because people regularly remove predators, competitors, and algae, silt and oyster waste that could slow the bivalves' growth by reducing the water's flow.

This year's low salinity will definitely hurt this year's hatch and development of wild oysters, Rick Burris, chief scientific officer for the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources, said in an interview.

Louisiana biologists did observe some spat mortality, said Carolina Bourque, head of the oyster program for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. It's hard to say just how much, especially with sampling only once a month, she said.

Because it takes years for wild oysters to mature, it may be a while before any effect on oyster reefs is clear.

Rains didn't appear to affect Alabama as much. Our spat seem to be fairly good, said Kevin Anson, fisheries section chief in the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

Mississippi's coast has had an insane amount of rain this year, said Eric Sparks, director of the Coastal Research and Extension Center at Mississippi State University. For instance, National Weather Service figures show the Gulfport-Biloxi Airport got 2.8 times its normal rainfall in both April and August. From April through August, that station got nearly 71 inches (1.8 meters), more than double the average.

Some splashed straight into the Mississippi Sound and some arrived via streams and rivers. And it came at critical times: during spring, when oysters spawn, and summer, when fragile youngsters start growing.

In Louisiana, a wet spring across the state  especially in Calcasieu Lake and east of the Mississippi River  slowed growth and killed some oysters, Bourque said.

Mississippi hasn't allowed dredging on public reefs since 2018 because 96% of the oysters on them died when fresh water from the Bonnet Carre Spillway poured into the sound in 2019, Burris said in an interview.

That also hurt Louisiana's oysters. Louisianas last public harvest east of the Mississippi River was from fall of 2018 into spring 2019, Bourque said.

With favorable environmental conditions and enough oyster larvae carried in from reefs where oysters are still spawning, it should have taken three to five years for Mississippi's reefs to return to health, Burris said.

He said fresh water from historical rainfall in our localized area will reduce the number of baby oysters this year and slow their growth. He wouldn't predict the size or length of this year's setback, saying annual reef assessments will evaluate that.

Mississippi's reefs had also been hit hard in 2011 by water from the spillway, which was created to avoid high water damage to levees protecting New Orleans.

That earlier untimely opening killed 80% to 85% of the oysters then growing, Burris said.

The 2011 opening was reflected in federal data as an abrupt drop from 726.4 to 123.7 tons (658.9 to 112.2 metric tons) for 2010 and 2011 landings in Mississippi.

Harvests plummeted again from 544 tons in 2016 to less than one-third of that in 2017 and to 9.5 tons (8.62 metric tons) in 2018, the federal figures showed.

Those likely resulted from 2016 and 2018 spillway openings coupled with the agencys management strategy of harvesting no more than 30% of available resource, Burris said in an email.
DETROIT (AP)  Adam Hollier is a lieutenant in the Army Reserves, a paratrooper, Detroit native, a Democrat and a Black man. He is also a state senator who represents a majority-Black district that stretches across the northeastern edge of his economically battered and resilient hometown. That critical mass of Black voters, Hollier argues, ensures he has a chance to be elected and give voice to people who have long been ignored by the political system.

Rebecca Szetela is a lawyer who describes herself as an independent, and a white woman who chairs Michigans new Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission. Its job is to redraw the lines of legislative seats to promote more partisan competition in a state where Republicans have dominated the Legislature for decades. One of the best ways to do that, and empower minority voters, Szetela and other commissioners argue, is putting some of the majority-Black neighborhoods in Holliers district in other seats, where they may have more say over Michigan's leadership.

For Hollier's 2nd Senate District, that means some of its Detroit neighborhoods would be grafted on to mostly white districts, and his own seat would stretch across Eight Mile Road, the infamous boundary between Detroit and its first-ring, majority white suburbs. Its Black voting-age population would drop to 42%.

Hollier, like other Black lawmakers, is furious, saying that move jeopardizes Black elected officials. By and large, Black people vote for Black people and white people vote for white people," Hollier said. "Its just the reality. Its got nothing to do with me. Draw maps that majority-Black communities can win.

Whether Hollier is right is at the heart of a heated debate over how to ensure racial and ethnic minority communities can elect the officeholders of their choice. The fight is complicated and wonky  like most surrounding the once-a-decade redistricting process. But the stakes are clear: Black, Latino and Asian Americans are underrepresented in state legislatures.

For decades, the widely accepted strategy was to group together Black voters so they comprised a majority in a statehouse or congressional district. That principle was enshrined in the federal Voting Rights Act, which requires the creation of districts with a majority or plurality of Black  or other minority racial or ethnic group  voters in places where the white population has a history of preventing them from electing their chosen representatives.

That strategy was reinforced by partisan politics. Republicans have been happy to draw districts with large numbers of Black voters because Black voters overwhelmingly favor Democrats. The effect was to pack Democrats into just a few districts and leave other parts of the state more safely Republican.

But politics has changed dramatically since the law was passed in 1965. Now, only 18 of the 53 members of the Congressional Black Caucus were elected in districts that are majority African American. Rising Black politicians like Rep. Antonio Delgado and Rep. Joe Neguse represent heavily white areas in New Yorks Hudson River Valley and Boulder, Colorado respectively.

I think were in a new age now," said Bakari Sellers, an African American former South Carolina state legislator. If youre talented enough, you can win in a 30-35% Black district. ... We can be more competitive around the country.

But thats a hard sell to some lawmakers and advocates pushing to put more people of color in statehouses and Congress. Black legislators make up less than 10% of state legislators in the U.S., although 14.2% of the population is Black, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Latinos are 18.7% of the population and just 5.3% of state lawmakers. Asians comprise 2% of legislators but 7.2% of the population.

In Nevada, Latino and other activist groups opposed maps drawn by the Democratic-controlled Legislature because the plan spread Latinos broadly around the states congressional and legislative districts to increase the odds of Democratic victories. In Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers asked a commission to propose maps to counter ones drawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature. But Black and Latino Democrats objected to the commission's maps because they would scatter minority voters across several districts.

I get what Republicans have done, completely, but Im not willing to sacrifice Black representation and brown representation, Im just not, said Sen. Lena Taylor, one of two African American Democrats in the Wisconsin state Senate, who voted against her partys map.

The other, Sen. LaTonya Johnson, disagreed, saying the Democratic plan was far better than the alternative: I dont believe that the maps proposed would block Black candidates of choice, but I would rather have to fight harder for my seat than have my community suffer another 10 years under a Republican gerrymander."

The risks in balancing the racial composition of districts were illustrated in this months Virginia elections. Two Black Democratic delegates narrowly lost their seats in districts that are still majority African American  but had recently been redrawn to have fewer Black voters. Control of the House of Delegates will come down to two other races that are in recounts.

Jonathan Cervas, one of the experts who redrew the Virginia districts in 2019, said the aim was to rectify what a court had found was discrimination against Black voters. He argued that the Voting Rights Act does not guarantee Black legislators will always be reelected. The problem is the Democrats had a bad election, Cervas said.

Still, the shift toward unpacking districts is likely to lead to turnover in legislatures and Congress. In North Carolina, a new GOP-approved map cut the share of Black voters in Democratic Rep. G.K Butterfields district from 45% to 38%. The nine-term African American congressman announced his resignation this month and called the new map racially gerrymandered.

At the other extreme, Democrats filed a lawsuit this month alleging that Alabama Republicans improperly packed Black voters into the states 7th Congressional District, making it home to nearly one out of every three African Americans in the state.

One quarter of Alabamas population is Black, but the 7th is the sole district represented by an African American in Congress, Rep. Terri Sewell. It is also the only Democratic-held district in the state. A more even distribution of Black voters, Democrats argue, might help then win a second.

Increasing competition is one of the goals of Michigan's commission, which voters created in 2018 after decades of partisan gerrymandering controlled by Republicans. The commission also is tasked with considering representation of minority communities and following the Voting Rights Act.

It is advancing maps that would cut the number of majority-Black districts from two to zero in Congress and from roughly a dozen to as few as three in the Legislature, pending final votes. Commissioners argue that there is evidence that Black candidates can still win elections. In 2020, for example, racial minorities won 19 of 20 legislative seats where Black people constitute at least 35% of the voting-age population.

What we have done is taken those areas and divided them into multiple districts so that theres actually more districts where minority voters will be able to elect their candidates of choice, which should actually have the effect of increasing the representation among the African American community, Szetela said.

But Republicans and others, including the state's civil rights director, predict legal troubles ahead.

Jamie Roe, a GOP consultant tracking the redistricting process, noted Michigan has had two majority-Black congressional districts since at least the 1960s  whether drawn by legislators or courts.

They have opened themselves terribly to a Voting Rights Act challenge, he said.

___

Riccardi reported from Denver.
WARSAW, Poland (AP)  Polands Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the European Union nation will have no ambassador in Israel for the time being, bringing the mission level down to that of Israel's mission in Poland.

The traditionally sensitive bilateral relations soured in the summer after Poland adopted legislation seen as banning claims for restitution of some seized property, including that of Holocaust victims. Israel protested.
ALBUQUEQUE, N.M. (AP)  Albuquerque police have made an arrest in connection with an October shooting during an alleged road-rage incident in Old Town.

Police arrested 29-year-old Joshua Butler on Wednesday. They say witnesses saw a road-rage incident involving a minivan and Chevy pickup. They say the minivan stopped in the road, the driver got out and threw a piece of drywall that hit the pickup's driver's side door. Witnesses then heard a gunshot and the man fell to the ground.
ROME (AP)  Pope Francis has declared five Catholic priests who were killed during the Paris Commune revolutionary government that took control of Paris in 1871 were martyrs who were killed out of hatred for the faith.

The martyrdom declaration means that the five priests can be beatified, the first big step toward possible canonization, without the Vatican having to confirm a miracle attributed to their intercession.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP)  Paola Gambini arrived at Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies by ambulance on July 29, with a nearly full-term pregnancy and a COVID-19 diagnosis, gasping for air.

I remember the EMTs telling us, you called at the right time, because they immediately put me on oxygen, she said.

From July 1 through September, about 260 COVID-19 positive pregnant patients were hospitalized at Winnie Palmer, said Dr. Lori Boardman, assistant vice president and chief quality officer.

AdventHealths South Central Florida division saw a spike in COVID-19 patients during the summers delta surge as well. It admitted 113 pregnant women with complications from COVID-19 from July 1 to Nov. 11, more than half the number hospitalized throughout the entire pandemic, said Dr. Kathryn Berryman, who specializes in maternal-fetal medicine.

Nationwide, from January 2020 to Nov. 15, 2021, over 145,000 pregnant Americans tested positive for COVID-19, and over 24,000 were hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As of Nov. 15, 229 pregnant people with COVID-19 have been reported dead.

Pregnant and recently pregnant people are at risk because they have weaker immune systems than the average person, Boardman said.

Growing, though limited, evidence finds the vaccines benefits outweigh its risks for mothers and their babies, according to studies shared by the CDC on its website. In contrast, COVID-19 increases the risk of severe outcomes and preterm birth compared to pregnant people without COVID-19, according to an analysis of 77 studies published September 2020 in the BMJ, a medical research journal. It is unlikely babies will catch COVID-19 from their parents, the CDC said.

Yet despite the evidence, less than four in 10 pregnant people aged 18-49 were fully vaccinated during or before pregnancy as of Nov. 13, according to CDC data.

If I would have gone back in time and knew what I know now, I would have definitely gotten vaccinated, Gambini said. I dont want other pregnant women thinking, Im a superhero, Im taking these vitamins ... Ill be OK, COVID wont get me, because thats exactly what I thought, and its not true.

FIGHTING COVID-19

At first, it was just a fever. But about a week after Gambinis diagnosis, she couldnt catch her breath and her fiance, Michael Hazen, called 911. Her lungs were full of fluid.

Doctors performed an emergency C-section so they could better administer life-saving treatment to the 32-year-old. A girl was born preterm, before week 37 of pregnancy. They named her Lilliana.

Gambini held Lilliana for a brief moment before her fiance took her, and Gambini was transferred to Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center. There, a ventilator breathed for her; when that wasnt enough, doctors used an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to pump her blood outside her body and oxygenate it there before putting it back in. The staff told her fiance at multiple points that she might not make it.

I feel blessed I left in one piece ... The nurses would tell me ... youre one of the lucky ones, she said.

She held her daughter once when she was born, and once when her medical team arranged a visit for her birthday. Other than that visit, they interacted only over FaceTime.

I just counted down the days, she said. I remember them telling me, Youll be home by Thanksgiving, and I remember looking at Michael, and Im like, Im making it before Halloween, and Im going to watch my baby dress up. And I did it.

After 85 days, she came home. She dressed Lilliana up as a pumpkin.

Gambini has now spent about a month at home with her baby. She is on oxygen, and struggles physically after spending so long in bed; she lost about 80 pounds, and her muscles atrophied. Doctors had to give her a partial hysterectomy in the hospital to stop internal bleeding.

I planned on having more babies. ... Ive always wanted to be a mom. So for me to wake up and them tell me, we have to take your uterus out, that was the hardest thing for me to hear, she said. Shes my rainbow baby, my one and only.

Shes getting better, though, and her goal is to be off oxygen by Christmas. She said she wants other people who have spent time in the hospital to know that recovery is possible  but she also hopes that other moms and moms-to-be dont end up there.

FIGHTING MISINFORMATION

One big barrier to preventing pregnant women from catching COVID-19 is misinformation about vaccines, said Boardman and Berryman. They urge doctors to continue talking to unvaccinated patients.

Were not seeing any increase in birth defects or things like that as a result of comparing vaccinated women to unvaccinated women, Boardman said. I still think some of those concerns just remain in place, despite talking about what we do know, as well as what we dont know.

A Kaiser Family Foundation survey published in November found that 17% of Americans believe pregnant women should not get the COVID-19 vaccine, and 22% are unsure.

State Rep. Angela Angie Nixon, D-Jacksonville, blames politicians for spreading falsehoods about COVID-19.

Nixon caught COVID-19 while pregnant herself. Pregnant Black and Hispanic people have the lowest rates of COVID-19 vaccination and are also at the highest risk for complications during pregnancy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

I know what it was like to fear for your life. Black women are four times more likely to have issues related to pregnancy, couple that with catching COVID, it only gets worse, she said. Its just a shame that they are politicizing this.

DeSantis signed legislation Thursday that allows employees at private companies to opt-out of vaccine mandates if they are pregnant or planning to become pregnant. The legislation also put several other restrictions on vaccine mandates.

Nixon said this legislation is ridiculous because it falsely implies vaccination harms pregnant people.

It was a real slap in the face, particularly for pregnant people, Nixon said. Theyre spreading untruth.

In addition, a page on the Florida Department of Healths website differs from the CDC on this issue.

It has a page on high-risk populations that states that pregnant people are known to be at risk with severe viral illness, but to date data on COVID-19 has not shown increased risk. However, it links to a CDC statement that states it as a fact that pregnant or recent pregnant people with COVID-19 are more likely to get severely ill than non-pregnant people.

The Florida Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment on why it phrases the risk differently than the CDC.

As for whether its OK for pregnant people to let their guard down now that the summer wave has subsided in Florida, Boardman reminded everyone the delta wave also started after a period of low positivity rates. She said COVID-19 vaccines and boosters will likely become vital during pregnancy like flu shots are now.

(Do) not be lulled into a false sense of security, and realize that this is going to be part of the world we live in, to take those precautions to help prevent what happens to these moms, Boardman said.

Berryman agreed that though COVID-19 cases are low right now, the pandemic will inevitably continue to follow a trend of a surge, then a valley, then a surge again, and pregnant women will be especially vulnerable without vaccination.

I have yet to find a pregnant patient who regretted getting vaccinated, Berryman said. They universally said ... Im so glad I got it. I only have patients who regret not getting it.
CANBERRA, Australia (AP)  Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Friday blamed foreign interference over his governments decision to switch alliances from Taiwan to Beijing for anti-government protests, arson and looting that have ravaged the capital Honiara in recent days.

But critics also blamed the unrest on complaints of a lack of government services and accountability, corruption and Chinese businesses giving jobs to foreigners instead of locals.

Honiaras Chinatown and its downtown precinct have been focuses of rioters, looters and protesters who have demanded Sogavare, who has intermittently been prime minister since 2000, to resign.

The National Parliament building, a police station and businesses have been set alight during two tumultuous days in which police failed to control the mob.

Sogavare angered many in 2019, particularly leaders of the Solomon Islands most populous province, Malaita, when he cut the countrys diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Malaita leaders complain their island has been unfairly deprived of government investment since the change.

A plane carrying Australian police and diplomats arrived late Thursday in Honiara, where they will help local police efforts to restore order, Australia's Defense Minister Peter Dutton said.

Sogavare said he stood by his governments decision to embrace Beijing, which he described as the only issue in the violence, which was unfortunately influenced and encouraged by other powers.

External pressures were a very big ... influence. I dont want to name names. Well leave it there, Sogavare said.

Im not going to bow down to anyone. We are intact, the governments intact and were going to defend democracy, he added.

Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne did not agree that other countries had stirred up the unrest.

We have not indicated that at all, Payne said.

Weve been very clear. Our view is we dont want to see violence. We would very much hope for a return to stability, she added.

Local journalist Gina Kekea said the foreign policy switch to Beijing with little public consultation was one of a mix of issues that led to the protests. There were also complaints that foreign companies were not providing local jobs.

Chinese businesses and (other) Asian businesses ... seem to have most of the work, especially when it comes to extracting resources, which people feel strongly about, Kekea said.

Protesters had been replaced by looters and scavengers on Friday in Chinatown, Kekea said.

Its been two days, two whole days of looting and protesting and rioting and Honiara is just a small city, Kekea said of the home to 85,000 people.

So I think that theres nothing much left for them to loot and spoil now, she added.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday committed troops, police and diplomats to help local police restore order and protect critical infrastructure.

Australia would not assist in the protection of the National Parliament and the executive buildings, in a sign that Australia was not taking political sides.

Some observers argue Australia intervened quickly to avoid Chinese security forces moving in to restore order.

But Morrison said Sogavare had asked for help because he trusted Australia.

The Solomon Islands reached out to us first ... as family because they trust us and weve worked hard for that trust in the Pacific, Morrison said.

That is our region and were standing up to secure our region with our partners, our friends, our family and allies, he added.

Sogavare requested assistance from Australia under a bilateral security treaty that has existed since 2017, when Australian peacekeepers last left the Solomon Islands.

Australia led an international police and military force called the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands that restored peace in the country after bloody ethnic violence from 2003 until 2017.

Morrison questioned whether Chinese citizens and businesses were being targeted. He described the unrest as a bit of a mixed story and noted Chinatown was the scene of rioting before Australias 2003 intervention.

China, meanwhile, expressed serious concern about recent attacks on some Chinese citizens and institutions, without providing details.

We believe that under the leadership of Prime Minister Sogavare, the Solomon Islands government can restore social order and stability as soon as possible, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Thursday.

He said that economic and other cooperation since the establishment of diplomatic relations has benefited both sides.

Any attempts to undermine the normal development of China-Solomon relations are futile, he said.

Dutton said a plane carrying 23 federal police officers and several diplomats flew from the Australian capital Canberra to Honiara late Thursday.

Up to 50 more police as well 43 defense force personnel with a navy patrol boat were scheduled to arrive on Friday.

The Australian force would also be equipped to provide a medical response, Dutton said.

Its certainly a dangerous situation on the ground. Weve seen the rioting thats taken place, the arson and the general disorder thats there at the moment as well, Dutton said.

So theres a lot of work for the police to do on the ground, he added.

Sogavare declared a lockdown Wednesday after about 1,000 people gathered in protest in Honiara, demanding his resignation over a host of domestic issues.

The protesters breached the National Parliament building and burned the thatched roof of a nearby building, the government said. They also set fire to a police station and other buildings.

Sogavare ordered the capital locked down from 7 p.m. Wednesday through 7 p.m. Friday after saying he had witnessed another sad and unfortunate event aimed at bringing a democratically elected government down.

Despite an announcement from the Solomon Islands police force that they would be conducting increased patrols through Honiara amid the lockdown, protesters again took to the streets Thursday.

Local media reported that many of the protesters were from Malaita, whose premier, Daniel Suidani, has been at odds with Sogavare, whom he accuses of being too close to Beijing.

Suidani said he was not responsible for the violence in Honiara, but told the Solomon Star News that he agreed with the calls for Sogavare to resign.

The Solomon Islands, about 1,500 kilometers (1,000 miles) northeast of Australia, were the scene of bloody fighting during World War II.

After it was captured by the Japanese, U.S. Marines landed on the island of Guadalcanal in August 1942 to open a campaign to wrest back control. They were successful, though fighting in and around the Solomon Islands continued through the end of the war.

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Rising reported from Bangkok.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP)  Romanian President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday swore in a new coalition government led by a Liberal former army general and declared an end to a months-long political crisis that had gripped the Eastern European nation.

The vote in parliament approving the new administration, which passed overwhelmingly, caps a protracted political crisis that prompted an unlikely partnership between the center-right National Liberal Party and the leftist Social Democrat Party  former political rivals and Romanias two biggest parties.

Newly-appointed Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca, a former defense minister, will lead the new three-party coalition which is comprised of the Liberals, the Social Democrats, and Romanias small ethnic Hungarian party UDMR.

At the swearing in ceremony, Iohannis said that the political crisis is over but other problems still face the country.

The pandemic is not over. The energy crisis is not over, it is only taking on new forms, Iohannis said. All this requires a solid government, with a consistent majority in Parliament, and now there is this government.

Ciuca, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, said in parliament Thursday that members of the coalition would set aside pride and political differences in the interest of Romanians.

We who are in front of you today have gone through things that separate us and we have found things that unite us, Ciuca said. We are determined to put an end to the tense situation we are going through.

The countrys 20 ministries will be shared among the parties. Together, the three parties control around two-thirds of the 466-seat legislature.

Part of the deal between the new coalition partners, which included social spending hikes requested by the Social Democrats, is that the prime ministerial role is rotated every 18 months. Ciuca will first hold the position after which a Social Democrat premier will replace him.

Social Democrat Party leader Marcel Ciolacu acknowledged on Thursday rising energy prices and noted that Romania has been hard-hit by the pandemic. Romania needs a new path, he said.

Its time to prove to Romanians that they can have a government that works for them, Ciolacu said.

Since early September, Romania, a European Union country of around 19 million, has been in political turmoil after former Liberal Prime Minister Florin Citu fired the justice minister from its junior coalition partner USR for not signing off on a regional development fund.

USR, which expressed transparency concerns about the funds, reacted by quitting the three-party coalition. Citus government was then ousted on Oct. 5 in a no-confidence motion filed by the Social Democrats, and supported by USR.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP)  The Association of Salvadoran Journalists says some news outlets have reported receiving alerts Wednesday from Apple Inc. warning of possible spying on the part of the Salvadoran government.

The association said it had been informed of alerts sent to 23 journalists, including some at the investigative news outlet El Faro and newspapers like Diario El Mundo, El Diario de Hoy, La Prensa Grafica.

El Faro said that alerts had been sent to 12 of its journalists, two civic activists and two opposition politicians.

The civic group Cristosal said its executive director, Noah Bullock, had received an alert and called it an attack on privacy, an attack on freedom of expression.

Apple did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the alerts.

The New Ideas party of President Nayib Bukele  whose Twitter profile now jokingly lists him as CEO of El Salvador  brushed off the accusation.

New Ideas legislative leader Christian Guevara wrote in his Twitter account that No matter how much the people at El Faro want it, there is no persecution. There is no repression. There is is no harassment. There is no censorship. There are no political prisoners. There is nothing. They should change their dealer, he's selling the the stuff that makes you paranoid.

On Tuesday, Apple announced it is suing Israels NSO Group, seeking to block the worlds most infamous hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apples products, like the iPhone.

Apple said in a complaint filed in federal court in California that NSO Groups spyware, called Pegasus, had been used to attack a small number of Apple customers worldwide.

NSO Group has broadly denied wrongdoing and said its products have been used by governments to save lives.

Its the latest blow to the hacking firm, which was recently blacklisted by the U.S. Commerce Department and is currently being sued by social media giant Facebook.

Concern among the Salvadoran opposition and outside observers has grown this year as Bukele has moved to consolidate power.

Voters gave the highly popular presidents party control of the congress earlier this year. The new lawmakers immediately replaced the members of the constitutional chamber of the Supreme Court and the attorney general, leaving Bukeles party firmly in control of the other branches of government.

The U.S. government in response said it would shift its aid away from government agencies to civil society organizations.
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  A new coronavirus variant has been detected in South Africa that scientists say is a concern because of its high number of mutations and rapid spread among young people in Gauteng, the country's most populous province, Health Minister Joe Phaahla announced Thursday.

The coronavirus evolves as it spreads and many new variants, including those with worrying mutations, often just die out. Scientists monitor for possible changes that could be more transmissible or deadly, but sorting out whether new variants will have a public health impact can take time.

South Africa has seen a dramatic rise in new infections, Phaahla said at an online press briefing.

Over the last four or five days, there has been more of an exponential rise, he said, adding that the new variant appears to be driving the spike in cases. Scientists in South Africa are working to determine what percentage of the new cases have been caused by the new variant.

Currently identified as B.1.1.529, the new variant has also been found in Botswana and Hong Kong in travelers from South Africa, he said.

The World Health Organization's technical working group is to meet Friday to assess the new variant and may decide whether or not to give it a name from the Greek alphabet.

The British government announced that it was banning flights from South Africa and five other southern African countries effective at noon (1200GMT) on Friday, and that anyone who had recently arrived from those countries would be asked to take a coronavirus test.

U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said there were concerns the new variant may be more transmissible than the dominant delta strain, and the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective" against it.

The new variant has a constellation of new mutations, said Tulio de Oliveira, from the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, who has tracked the spread of the delta variant in the country.

The "very high number of mutations is a concern for predicted immune evasion and transmissibility, said de Oliveira.

This new variant has many, many more mutations," including more than 30 to the spike protein that affects transmissibility, he said. "We can see that the variant is potentially spreading very fast. We do expect to start seeing pressure in the healthcare system in the next few days and weeks.

De Oliveira said that a team of scientists from seven South African universities is studying the variant. They have 100 whole genomes of it and expect to have many more in the next few days, he said.

We are concerned by the jump in evolution in this variant," he said. The one piece of good news is that it can be detected by a PCR test, he said.

After a period of relatively low transmission in which South Africa recorded just over 200 new confirmed cases per day, in the past week the daily new cases rapidly increased to more than 1,200 on Wednesday. On Thursday they jumped to 2,465.

The first surge was in Pretoria and the surrounding Tshwane metropolitan area and appeared to be cluster outbreaks from student gatherings at universities in the area, said health minister Phaahla. Amid the rise in cases, scientists studied the genomic sequencing and discovered the new variant.

This is clearly a variant that we must be very serious about, said Ravindra Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge. It has a high number of spike mutations that could affect transmissibility and immune response.

Gupta said scientists in South Africa need time to determine if the surge in new cases is attributable to the new variant. There is a high probability that this is the case," he said. South African scientists have done an incredible job of identifying this quickly and bringing it to the world's attention.

South African officials had warned that a new resurgence was expected from mid-December to early January and had hoped to prepare for that by getting many more people vaccinated, said Phaahla.

About 41% of South Africa's adults have been vaccinated and the number of shots being given per day is relatively low, at less than 130,000, significantly below the government's target of 300,000 per day.

South Africa currently has about 16.5 million doses of vaccines, by Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, in the country and is expecting delivery of about 2.5 million more in the next week, according to Nicholas Crisp, acting director-general of the national health department.

We are getting in vaccines faster than we are using them at the moment, said Crisp. So for some time now, we have been deferring deliveries, not decreasing orders, but just deferring our deliveries so that we dont accumulate and stockpile vaccines.

South Africa, with a population of 60 million, has recorded more than 2.9 million COVID-19 cases including more than 89,000 deaths.

To date, the delta variant remains by far the most infectious and has crowded out other once-worrying variants including alpha, beta and mu. According to sequences submitted by countries worldwide to the worlds biggest public database, more than 99% are delta.

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Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  South Korea on Thursday said it will launch a task force to consider outlawing dog meat consumption after the countrys president offered to look into ending the centuries-old practice.

Restaurants that serve dog meat are dwindling in South Korea as younger people find dog meat a less appetizing dining option and pets are growing in popularity. Recent surveys indicate more people oppose banning dog meat even if many dont eat it.

In a statement, seven government offices including the Agriculture Ministry said they decided to launch the group comprising officials, civilian experts and people from related organizations to deliver recommendations on possibly outlawing dog meat consumption. It said authorities will gather information on dog farms, restaurants and other facilities while examining public opinion.

As the number of families with pet animals has risen rapidly and public interest in animal rights and welfare has grown in our country, there have been increasing voices saying that its difficult now to see dog meat consumption as just traditional food culture, Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, the countrys No. 2 official, said ahead of the statements release.

The government says the initiative, the first of its kind, doesnt necessarily guarantee the banning of dog meat. The joint statement noted that public awareness of the basic right (to eat preferred foods) and animal rights issues are tangled in a complicated manner when it comes to dog meat consumption.

The seemingly vague stance drew quick protests from both dog farmers and animal rights activists.

Farmers say the task force's launch is nothing but a formality to shut down their farms and dog meat restaurants, while activists argue the governments announcement lacks resolve to outlaw dog meat consumption.

Ju Yeongbong, general secretary of an association of dog farmers, accused the government of trampling upon the peoples right to eat what they want and farmers right to live.

Lee Won Bok, head of the Korea Association for Animal Protection, called the governments announcement very disappointing because it didnt include any concrete plans on how to ban dog meat consumption.

We have deep doubt about whether the government has a resolve to put an end to dog meat consumption, Lee said.

About 1 million to 1.5 million dogs are killed each year for food in South Korea, a decrease from several millions about 10-20 years ago. Thousands of farmers currently raise a total of about 1 million to 2 million dogs for meat in South Korea, according to Jus organization.

Ju said the farmers, mostly poor, elderly people, want the government to temporarily legalize dog meat consumption for about 20 years, with the expectation that demand will gradually taper off. Lee said animal rights organizations want a quicker end of the business.

South Korea is the only developed country where people eat dogs, an act that is undermining our international image, Lee said. Even if the K-pop band BTS and the (Korean drama) Squid Game are ranked No. 1 in the world, foreigners are still associating South Korea with dog meat and the Korean War.

Lee accused many farmers of animal cruelty and other illegal activities when they raise and slaughter their dogs. Ju said that activists exaggerated such information, and that it only applies to a small number of farms.

According to Lee, dogs are consumed as food in North Korea, China and Vietnam as well as in South Korea.

In September, President Moon Jae-in, a dog lover, asked during a meeting with the prime minister if its time to carefully consider a ban on dog meat consumption, sparking a new debate over the issue.

Dog meat is neither legal nor explicitly banned in South Korea.
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP)  Six parents have filed a lawsuit alleging that Springfield Public Schools doesn't have the authority to require masks.

The Springfield News-Leader reports that the parents argue that the mask mandate in place since August is a legal overreach and infringes on the rights of parents.
AURORA, Colo. (AP)  A 17-year-old boy was fatally shot while exchanging gunfire with a former police officer in suburban Denver Wednesday night, police said.

Investigators believe the shooting happened after the 36-year-old former officer got into an argument with a group of teens over careless driving in a residential neighborhood in Aurora, police said. Sometime during the argument, both the 17-year-old and the former officer pulled out guns and fired shots at each other, police said.
Members of Native American tribes from around New England are gathering in the seaside town where the Pilgrims settled  not to give thanks, but to mourn Indigenous people worldwide who've suffered centuries of racism and mistreatment.

Thursdays solemn National Day of Mourning observance in downtown Plymouth, Massachusetts, will recall the disease and oppression that European settlers brought to North America.

We Native people have no reason to celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims," said Kisha James, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag and Oglala Lakota tribes and the granddaughter of Wamsutta Frank James, the event's founder.

We want to educate people so that they understand the stories we all learned in school about the first Thanksgiving are nothing but lies. Wampanoag and other Indigenous people have certainly not lived happily ever after since the arrival of the Pilgrims, James said.

To us, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning, because we remember the millions of our ancestors who were murdered by uninvited European colonists such as the Pilgrims. Today, we and many Indigenous people around the country say, 'No Thanks, No Giving.'

Its the 52nd year that the United American Indians of New England have organized the event on Thanksgiving Day. The tradition began in 1970.

Indigenous people and their supporters will gather at noon in person on Coles Hill, a windswept mound overlooking Plymouth Rock, a memorial to the colonists arrival. They will also livestream the event.

Participants will beat drums, offer prayers and condemn what organizers describe as the unjust system based on racism, settler colonialism, sexism, homophobia and the profit-driven destruction of the Earth before marching through downtown Plymouth's historical district.

This year, they'll also highlight the troubled legacy of federal boarding schools that sought to assimilate Indigenous youth into white society in the U.S. as well as in Canada, where hundreds of bodies have been discovered on the grounds of former residential schools for Indigenous children.

Brian Moskwetah Weeden, chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribal Council, said on Boston Public Radio earlier this week that Americans owe his tribe a debt of gratitude for helping the Pilgrims survive their first brutal winter.

People need to understand that you need to be thankful each and every day  that was how our ancestors thought and navigated this world," Weeden said. Because we were thankful, we were willing to share ... and we had good intentions and a good heart.

That wasn't reciprocated over the long term, Weeden added.

That's why, 400 years later, were still sitting here fighting for what little bit of land that we still have, and trying to hold the commonwealth and the federal government accountable, he said.

"Because 400 years later, we dont really have much to show for, or to be thankful for. So I think its important for everyone to be thankful for our ancestors who helped the Pilgrims survive, and kind of played an intricate role in the birth of this nation.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP)  When the U.S. government allowed so-called hero pay for frontline workers as a possible use of pandemic relief money, it suggested occupations that could be eligible from farm workers and childcare staff to janitors and truck drivers.

State and local governments have struggled to determine who among the many workers who braved the raging coronavirus pandemic before vaccines became available should qualify: Only government workers, or private employees, too? Should it go to a small pool of essential workers like nurses or be spread around to others, including grocery store workers?

Its a bad position for us to be in because you have your local government trying to pick winners and losers, if you would, or recipients and nonrecipients. And hence by default, youre saying importance versus not important, said Jason Levesque, the Republican mayor of Auburn, Maine, where officials have not yet decided who will receive hazard pay from the citys American Rescue Plan funds.

A year and a half into the pandemic, such decisions have taken on political implications for some leaders as unions lobby for expanded eligibility, with workers who end up being left out feeling embittered.

It sounds like its about the money, but this is a token of appreciation, said Ginny Ligi, a correctional officer who contracted COVID-19 last year in Connecticut, where the bonus checks have yet to cut amid negotiations with unions. Its so hard to put into words the actual feeling of what it was like to walk into that place every day, day in, day out. It scarred us. It really did.

Interim federal rules published six months ago allow state and local COVID-19 recovery funds to be spent on premium pay for essential workers of up to $13 per hour, in addition to their regular wages. The amount cannot exceed $25,000 per employee.

The rules also allow grants to be provided to third-party employers with eligible workers, who are defined as someone who has had regular in-person interactions or regular physical handling of items that were also handled by others or a heightened risk of exposure to COVID-19.

The rules encourage state and local governments to prioritize providing retrospective premium pay where possible, recognizing that many essential workers have not yet received additional compensation for work conducted over the course of many months," while also prioritizing lower income eligible workers.

As of July, about a third of U.S. states had used federal COVID-19 relief aid to reward workers considered essential with bonuses, although who qualified and how much they received varied widely, according to an Associated Press review.

A list of hazard and premium pay state allocations as of Nov. 18, provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures, shows funds have typically been set aside for government workers, such as state troopers and correctional officers.

In Minnesota, lawmakers still have $250 million in aid set aside for hero pay, but they've been been struggling with how to distribute it. A special committee was unable to come up with a compromise plan, instead sending two competing recommendations to the full legislature for consideration.

I think every time we take another week, were just delaying the whole process and I think the fastest way is to get them over to the Legislature, said Republican state Sen. Mary Kiffmeyer, a member of the committee, during a meeting last month.

Minnesota Senate Republicans want to offer a tax-free bonus of $1,200 to about 200,000 workers who they say took on the greatest risk, such as nurses, long-term care workers, prison staff and first responders.

But House Democrats want to spread the money more widely, providing roughly $375 to about 670,000 essential workers, including low-wage food service and grocery store employees, security guards, janitors and others.

Earlier this week, after it appeared that a political impasse was easing over another issue, Democratic House Speaker Melissa Hortman told Minnesota Public Radio that she believed an agreement can be reached on front-line worker pay, noting there's a pretty natural middle ground" between the dueling proposals.

Connecticut has yet to pay out any of the $20 million in federal pandemic money set aside by state lawmakers in June for essential state employees and members of the Connecticut National Guard.

As negotiations continue with union leaders, the Connecticut AFL-CIO labor organization has stepped up pressure on Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont, who is up for reelection in 2022, to provide $1 an hour in hazard pay to all public and private sector essential workers who worked during the pandemic before vaccinations became available.

The governor needs to reevaluate his priorities and show that these workers who put themselves and their lives at risk are a top priority. I think its really the least he can do for these workers, said Ed Hawthorne, president of the Connecticut AFL-CIO. These workers showed up for Connecticut. Its time to governor to show up for them.

Max Reiss, Lamont's spokesperson, said the figures cited by organized labor are just not feasible.

In the meantime, he said, the administration is in negotiations with state employee unions, classifying the work state employees did during the pandemic and determining whether they may have shifted to other responsibilities that were more or less risky, which could also affect whether they receive more or less money.

We want to recognize the workers who kept going into work every day because they had to and there was not a choice. And those range from people working in state-run health care facilities to people who needed to plow our roads during severe weather and work in-person jobs," he said. The next piece is that you have to come up with the determination as to who all those people were. And theres a verification process to that.

In some states like California, cities are in the process of determining how to fairly distribute some of their federal funds to to help essential private sector workers who may not have received extra pay from their employers.

Rachel Torres, deputy of the political and civil rights department at United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 770, said her union is urging cities to follow the lead of Oxnard and Calabasas, which voted this year to provide grocery and drug store workers with payments of as much as $1,000.

It really should not be a competition among essential workforces. There should be moneys available for many workers, Torres said.

David Dobbs and his fellow firefighters in Bridgeport, Connecticut, are upset their city has yet to provide them with a share of the $110 million it received in federal pandemic funds. Mayor Joe Gamin, a Democrat, said in a statement that he supports the concept of premium pay but that the matter is still being reviewed to make sure any payments comply with federal rules.

Weve demonstrated a commitment to this partnership. And I think we feel a little betrayed by the city right now, when when theyre not dealing with us, when they came into this windfall, said Dobbs, president of the Bridgeport Firefighters Association, which gave up pay raises in the past when the citys budget was tight. Imagine loaning your friends a decent amount of money and then hitting the Powerball and not making things right.

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Associated Press writer Steve Karnowski in Minneapolis contributed to this report.
By Carly Wipf

Bay City News Foundation

In 2015, Bay Area journalist Jaya Padmanabhan took a trip to India to investigate the local literacy movement. Her topic of interest: Kerala, a state in Southern India with the highest literacy rate in the country and a rich Communist history.

Padmanabhan pored over documents in libraries, discovering that Kerala's socialist movement, which began in the 1930s, allowed for the advancement of women's literacy and a better life for workers.

Six years later, her unpublished manuscript inspired by her research and travels has won an international Page Turner Writing Award.

To qualify for the Page Turner Awards, writers submit the first 10 pages of their writing project before a judging panel of industry experts, who then help winners connect with potential book deals and literary agents. The novel-to-be titled "Bloom of a Drunken Coconut" is being reviewed by publishers, but Padmanabhan has yet to secure a contract.

"I have come to the point that I feel that the manuscript is ready, and it's out, and now, it's a waiting game. I'll see what happens," Padmanabhan says. "The Page Turner Award has been very affirming ... I'm so pleased that the judges thought enough about my work to pick me."

Padmanabhan began her writing career in the early 2000s. After receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology from Women's Christian College in Chennai, India, in 1983, she came to the United States to pursue a master's degree in computer science, which she received from San Jose State University in 1994. She worked in the technology sector for several years before realizing writing was her calling.

She was a writer and editor at India Currents before joining the San Francisco Examiner as a columnist in 2016. Her ongoing column, "In Brown Type," discusses local policy, government and business, often in relation to communities of color. She is also director of programs at Ethnic Media Services, an organization that supports ethnic media groups and reporters across the Bay Area.

While she writes about contemporary politics as a journalist, her latest work of fiction reflects on the real-life struggles of toddy tappers -- individuals that extract sap from coconut trees to ferment into a local liquor -- and women living in India during the Communist uprising of the 1940s and '50s. She spotlights how reading rooms were essential to both the diffusion of Communism in India and the educational empowerment of women and workers.

Reading rooms were small spaces where people read literature and the news. Women would often go to these rooms in secret. They were also meeting grounds for people to safely exchange ideas as the Communist movement gained traction.

"I've always been fascinated with the idea that Kerala, with its Communist government, has the highest literacy rate in India," Padmanabhan says. "Investigating the literacy movement inevitably took me to reading rooms, where there was some level of gender equality."

According to a National Statistical Office survey conducted July 2017-June 2018, the state of Kerala has a 96.2 percent literacy rate. Unlike other parts of India, the disparity between men's and women's literacy in Kerala is far less: The literacy rate for women is 95.2 percent and for men, 97.4 percent.

A revolution of women's literacy

"This brought me to reckoning with the idea that there existed a version of Communism that encouraged women's literacy," the writer adds.

"Bloom of a Drunken Coconut" follows protagonist Leela, a bookish woman who uses her intimate knowledge of plants to heal people in her village. Leela and other women in her village gather in reading rooms and collaborate on how to push back against capitalist greed. Leela's life is rocked by the Communist revolution as she sees firsthand how the government is exploiting workers when her son takes up work as a toddy tapper.

The novel's characters come face-to-face with stinging police brutality and injustice. It is up to Leela to use her plant knowledge to deploy magic and healing to save the town -- if she can. According to Padmanabhan, the narrative is just as much about mankind versus nature as it is about the people versus government corruption.

"Shaping Leela's character was so much fun and required a lot of research every step of the way," Padmanabhan says. "She embodies the idea of what literacy means to me."

While the female characters were inspired by women visiting historical reading rooms, the coconut tree climbers in the story, including Leela's son, were based on stories Padmanabhan heard from a veteran toddy tapper named V.A. Narayan.

When she visited his home in 2015, she was greeted with a photo of Joseph Stalin hung reverently above his front door. Narayan, who was 90 years old at the time, told her he joined the Communist Party in the 1940s to fight for better wages.

"They had pushed against the corruption of local leaders, who were trying to extract money from toddy tappers," says Padmanabhan. "It is a dangerous business: You have to climb these coconut trees whether it rains or shines twice a day, and toddy is sold in local liquor stores, so there's a huge demand for it."

Unsung laborers in India

Padmanabhan said many books set in India focus on poverty, but she hopes to reverse that trend and showcase the unsung toddy-tapper workforce in Kerala.

"India is a lot more than what has been published," she says. "I don't think even a lot of Indians know about the extent of [toddy-tappers'] struggles. So I want to draw attention to this community."

The first 10 pages of "Bloom of a Drunken Coconut" are available to read on the Page Turner Awards website. Padmanabhan said elements of the story, including the title of the book may change throughout the editing process.

Padmanabhan's other award-winning work is also featured in PBS Next Avenue, Forbes, Medium (Elemental and The Bold Italic) and India Currents. In India, she published a short story collection called "Transactions of Belonging" and has won five fiction awards for short stories. Padmanabhan currently lives in Los Altos Hills and is the mother of two adult twin daughters.

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.
At the event

Due to the complicated development of the Covid-19 epidemic , this year's forum was held in both face-to-face and online form. 177 young intellectual delegates in the country and 16 countries and territories brought to the forum a lot of ideas and enthusiastic discussions with the desire to contribute to the implementation of the Resolution of the 13th National Party Congress.

Moreover, they expected to participate in the National Digital Transformation program by 2025, with orientation to 2030 approved by the Prime Minister.

Among the forum participants are Tran Manh Hung, from Swedens Ericsson, an expert in data science, artificial intelligence, computer science; Le Bac Viet from Temple University School of Medicine in the US, a specialist in cancer research, gene reproduction, and Bui Ba Chinh, Director of the National Barcode Center and Nguyen Truong Phi from the Department of Technology Application under the Ministry of Science and Technology.

At the forum, the delegates focused on proposing solutions on four main contents. In the content of creativity ignition, the delegates discussed basic research topics for the development of science, technology and innovation as well as the application of science and technology in optimizing and improving production efficiency sustainably and biomedical, life science, and human research.

In the application and technology transfer content, the delegates talked about technology application, transfer in energy and environment and the application and technology transfer in urban development.

In the content of connection of young intellectuals to develop the digital economy and national digital human resources, the delegates discussed the promotion of digital transformation in production, business, governance and innovation.

In respect of the development and commercialization of digital transformation solutions, the delegates focused on the growth of digital health - education projects, promotion of Vietnamese cultural and human values in the digital era, and development of innovation and creativity networks.

At the end of the forum, recommendations of the fourth global forum of Vietnamese young intellectuals are expected to contribute to the countrys development.

Moreover, it is hoped to form scientific research groups under the Global Network of Young Vietnamese Intellectuals after the event. Scientific research topics and programs of research groups ordered by ministries, localities, organizations, and enterprises would be published.

The event organizer hoped that through this forum, young Vietnamese intellectuals at home and abroad will have discussions about their vision and mission to contribute to the national digital transformation by 2025 with the orientation to 2030. Through the forum, young intellectuals will contribute to the promotion of the national digital transformation and developing Vietnam into a modern and prosperous country.

By Bich Quyen - Translated by Dan Thuy
New Delhi, Nov 25 (IANS) The Centre on Thursday told all the states and Union Territories to be cautious about international passengers travelling from or through Botswana, South Africa and Hong Kong in view of a new Covid variant detected in South Africa.

In a letter to the states, Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said, "It has now been reported by NCDC that multiple cases of a Covid-19 variant -- 8.1.1529 -- have been reported in Botswana (three), South Africa (six) and Hong Kong (one). This variant is reported to have a significantly high number of mutations, and thus has serious public health implications for the country in view of the recently relaxed visa restrictions and opening up of international travel.
He said, "India is driven by the philosophy of 'Vasudaiva Kutumbakam' which has inspired us to gift COVID-19 vaccines, HCQs and other medical necessities to all our friends. Further, India is willing to supply Covishield and Covaxin to all the countries."

New Delhi, Nov 25 (IANS) India is willing to supply Covishield and Covaxin vaccines to all the countries, said Union Health Minister Mandaviya at a meeting with the ambassadors of Latin American and Caribbean nations on Thursday.

Mandaviya in his address underlined the need to strengthen the public health system to fight outbreaks in the future. He stated, "India has been able to fight COVID-19 under a 'whole of government' approach where provincial and local governance provided a fillip to the efforts of the Government of India".

Explaining India's strategy of curbing the pandemic, he said of the 6 vaccines approved in India, 2 are indigenously developed. Nearly 1.2 billion doses have been administered with 82% of Indians receiving at least one dose of the vaccine and 44% of Indians being fully vaccinated.

The Minister thanked the representatives of the countries for easing people to people contact by recognising india's vaccines. Vaccination in India is recognised by 110 countries at present. "Mutual recognition of vaccinations increases ease of travel for tourism and business thereby boosting economic recovery the world so desperately needs," he said.

Highlighting how India helped other countries throughout the pandemic, he said, "Being the Pharmacy of the World, India has generously supplied HCQ tablets and other medical equipment to 27 countries. Under the Vaccine Maitri initiative, 6.63 crore doses were sent to 95 countries."

Speaking on the possible areas of convergence, Mandaviya noted that more than 70 million teleconsultations have been recorded in eSanjeevani -- India's flagship telemedicine portal. He said that with India's expertise in Information Technology, India could quickly deploy the CoWIN platform for its vaccination programme. He added that India has already shared the technology with partner nations willing to adopt the technology and will help all nations looking to scale up their vaccination.

The Minister also focused attention on India's triumphant march towards Universal Health Care. The four pillars of Ayushman Bharat: envisioning 1.5 lakh Health and Wellness Centres at the primary level, the Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana that provides insurance to targeted population categories, the Health Infrastructure Mission with an outlay of Rs 670 million that will strengthen India's public healthcare system along with diagnostic and surveillance capabilities, the Digital Mission which will provide all Indians with a unique health ID and make their medical history available to approved clinicians in seconds.

He said, "Under Prime Minister Modi, India's healthcare is witnessing a revolutionary transformation which can be adopted by her friends."

The Union Minister exhorted the assembled nations to study the possibility of an exchange programme for health professionals. Besides skill upgradation and exposure to specializations of health in the American continent for Indians, students of these countries would have high quality world-class medical practices in India in the fields of Cardiology, Oncology, Nephrology, Neurology, Ophthalmology. He also highlighted the possible areas of co-operation in medical tourism.

The event was officiated by Paraguay ambassador Fleming Duarte. Ambassador of Chile, Juan Angulo, Ambassador of Mexico, Federico Salas, Ambassador of Colombia, Mariana Pacheco offered their thoughts on behalf of the formation and thanked India for her valuable contribution in fighting the pandemic.

--IANS

avr/bg
Purplle.com, one of Indias largest online beauty destinations, raises $65Mn, bringing Premji Invest to the cap table. This investment comes weeks after a $75Mn funding, led by Kedaara Capital, alongside Sequoia Capital India and Blume Ventures. The infusion will accelerate the companys growth to build a multibillion-dollar company from India.

Within the year, the company grew its brands to 1000+ with over 50,000 products across categories like make-up, skincare, haircare, personal care, fragrances, and grooming appliances. With a strong focus on new customer acquisition, the company grew its marketing investments by 2X to build brand Purplle. While doubling new customer acquisition, Purplle has very strong retention with 65-70% of revenue coming from returning users. Elite, Purplles loyalty programme, contributes to 25% of the platforms revenue.

Speaking on the investment, Manish Taneja, Co-founder, and CEO, Purplle.com, said, We are very pleased to welcome Premji Invest to our cap table. The investment will leapfrog our efforts to offer women personalised beauty experiences, expand our wide range of innovative products, and drive penetration across the country. We plan to rapidly scale our private brands business and continue to build differentiated beauty brands with entrepreneurs. We will leverage exclusive Indian and international brand partnerships and fast-track acquisitions. Investments in content and community will be a key focus. We have nurtured some of the sharpest minds and will continue to build talent. With this strong year, we are well-positioned to build one of the largest beauty tech company from India.

Premji Invest supports the growth of Indias booming consumer, financials, technology, and manufacturing eco-system. Investments of Premji Invest are across sectors like consumer, financials, technology, and manufacturing and includes companies such as Fab India, ID foods, Lenskart, Policy Bazaar, Flipkart, First Cry, Best Value Chem and Shubham Housing.

On investing in Purplle, Atul Gupta, Partner at Premji Invest, said, Manish, Rahul and Suyash have built a very strong operating team with a customer-first approach. Democratising beauty will continue to be a dominant theme in India and customers today are looking for products that specifically cater to their skin and personal health and enhance their beauty. Purplle continues to build on that promise by integrating the requirements of the customer through careful analysis of customer usage data with unique and differentiated products and a great customer experience. We are excited about this partnership and look forward to working closely with the Purplle team

Technology has been a significant growth driver and Purplle will continue to invest aggressively in advancements. This, through building customised beauty profiles, virtual try-ons and recommendations through virtual beauty advisors, enabling personalisation of the online beauty journey.

Since its launch in 2012, Purplle has built a community-led platform backed by great quality, affordable beauty products. It has grown its Gross Merchandising Value (GMV) by 6X in the last three years and is currently at 1200 Cr run rate. Purplle plans to deliver 6-8X growth in the next 5 years.
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SP wants the London court to rule that the letter has no legal effect. A decision on that is not due for a while yet, but if he succeeds, assets in his name could pass to his daughters Vinoo and Shanu on his death. Meanwhile, a court in the Swiss canton of Lucerne said the case between SP and his brothers is on hold, pending a decision on who will represent his interests. Although the Swiss bank is a tiny part of the familys overall assets, the case raises broader ownership questions. The three brothers frame it as a power grab by SPs daughters, who they said are using their fathers weakened state to go against his long-held wishes. The mansion belonging to the Hinduja brothers on Carlton House Terrace in London, just down the road from Buckingham Palace. Credit:Bloomberg SP had one mantra that nobody owns anything, everybody owns everything, Radhamohun Gujadhur, an adviser to the brothers, said in an interview. Anyone doing differently is speaking under their own illusions or to further a selfish private agenda. The group structure has withstood the challenges of Shanu and Vinoo Hinduja who disagree with their own fathers vision of the group. Shanu didnt want to comment on the dispute while Vinoo declined requests for comment. Ashok said he couldnt comment on the record. Charles Stewart-Smith, a spokesman for the brothers, declined interview requests, referring to an earlier statement by them saying the efforts go against our founders and familys values.

Another London lawsuit from 2018 shows how the feud could touch other family assets. That fight was over $US1 billion in assets held at the Swiss bank by a company tied to Ashok Leyland, one of the groups most high-profile listed companies and the worlds third-largest manufacturer of buses. Loading Opaque holding structures  through trusts and offshore entities  make it difficult to determine ownership of the conglomerates companies. For instance, the brothers shares in IndusInd Bank in Mumbai, among the largest privately-owned banks in India, are held in an entity registered in Mauritius. Even the brothers domiciles complicate matters. SP and Gopichand live in London, Prakash resides in Monaco, and Ashok in Mumbai. The groups organisation that worked for the brothers may not for third and fourth generation Hindujas now taking the reins. These old structures in the new world that theyre in are going to come apart, said Nigel Nicholson, a professor at London Business School and author of Family Wars. The notion that one can maintain unity with woolly notions of common ownership without clear governance structures is tricky.

For instance, SPs 31-year-old grandson Karam, appointed the Swiss banks CEO last year, has a different take on the ownership of his firm. SP is the founder and has always been the sole shareholder and continues to be of this institution, he said. In the absence of an overarching agreement, members of our family have individual shareholdings. Ashok Hinduja wants the group to stick to its age-old motto that everything belongs to everyone and nothing belongs to anyone. Credit:Peter Morris The brothers adviser disagrees. The Hinduja group doesnt have any individual ownership and this includes the bank, said Gujadhur.

Karam has renamed the bank SP Hinduja Banque Privee, although on the Hinduja Group website it is still called Hinduja Bank Switzerland. Housed in a modest building at the foot of Genevas old town, the bank headquarters has a simple blue door and a small brass plaque engraved with its new name. In the interview there, Karam said he can appreciate that the timing of the banks re-branding may seem provocative given the ongoing legal battle. But the board endorses the move and it reflects the legal status quo, he said. The bank is small by Swiss private banking standards, with about 2.43 billion Swiss francs ($3.6 billion) in client assets. Nevertheless it has become a lightning rod for the dispute, with Karam hinting that the fight has tinges of misogyny since the SP branch is dominated by women. Its shocking; I simply cannot understand the animosity that exists toward the SP branch of the family, the Columbia University graduate said. It makes you wonder how even such wealthy and somewhat Westernised and powerful individuals, what their views truly are, maybe, toward women. I dont know. Its all I can think of. Karams mother, Shanu, who is the Swiss banks chairwoman, said her ascension at the firm is instructive, showing her fathers opposition to the sidelining of women.

Traditional Indian family businesses often keep daughters out of key roles, but for the brothers adviser, Karams accusations of misogyny are flat-out wrong. Vinoo and Shanu are on the boards of several of the groups companies, and if there was any truth to those misogyny claims I dont think they would have been named to those boards, he said. The sisters were removed last year from all their directorships of Group companies aside from the Swiss bank, a spokesman for them said. What really sparked the feud remains a mystery to those not in the inner circles of the family, but some warn about its implications for the group. The moment you start thinking of division, that this part you look after, that part I look after, it belongs to you, it belongs to me, it belongs to my other brother, then you cannot continue for too long, Hinduja Group General Counsel Abhijit Mukhopadhyay said in a law firm podcast last year. Loading The Hindujas arent new to controversy. In the 1980s, they were investigated on allegations they took bribes to help Swedish gun-maker Bofors secure an Indian contract. The case was later thrown out of court. In the early 2000s, they were entangled in the UKs cash-for-passports scandal, having donated money for the Millenium Dome when SP was applying for British citizenship. More recently, Prakash has been investigated for suspected tax evasion by Geneva prosecutors, an allegation he denies.
Online retailer Kogan has been slapped with a strong protest vote against the companys executive pay following a tumultuous year for the business that has seen its share price decline 60 per cent since January.

At its annual general meeting held on Thursday, the company was smacked with a large 41.7 per cent vote against its remuneration report, constituting a second strike and bringing about a vote to spill the companys board. This was not passed, however, with just 3 per cent of shareholders voting in favour.

CEO and founder Ruslan Kogan has set up an in-house delivery system for his retailer. Credit:

This marks the second year the company has received a strike at its AGM, with 43 per cent of shareholders voting against last years remuneration report following a controversial decision to issue executives Ruslan Kogan and David Shafer with $112 million in share options.

It caps off a torrid year for the business, which has seen its share price slide to around $8 from highs of $25 last October following significant inventory and warehousing issues, which drove a steep fall in profits over the 2021 financial year.
2. Who is affected? Chip shortages are expected to wipe out $US210 billion of sales for carmakers this year, with production of 7.7 million vehicles lost. Never seen anything like it, Elon Musk, Teslas chief executive officer, tweeted. Samsung warned that it saw a serious imbalance in supply and demand globally. TSMC forecast the shortages could extend into 2022. Some broadband providers were facing delays of more than a year when ordering internet routers. Apple said in April that supply constraints were affecting sales of iPads and Macs, which it said would knock $US3 billion to $US4 billion off its third-quarter revenue. In July, it added iPhones to the list. Nintendo said that shortages were slowing production of its Switch gaming device. Toyota Motors suspended output at 14 plants in September.

3. What is a chip? Its the thing that makes electronic items smart. Made from a material, usually silicon, that semi-conducts electricity, the chip performs a variety of functions. Memory chips, which store data, are relatively simple and are traded like commodities. Logic chips, which run programs and act as the brains of a device, are more complex and expensive. These often carry names like Apple or Nvidia, but those companies are actually just the designers of the semiconductors, which are manufactured in factories called foundries.

4. Why is it so hard to compete? Manufacturing advanced logic chips requires extraordinary precision, along with huge long-term bets in a field subject to rapid change. Plants cost billions of dollars to build and equip, and they have to run flat-out 24/7 to recoup the investment. But its not just that. A factory also gobbles up enormous amounts of water and electricity and is vulnerable to even the tiniest disruptions, whether from dust particles or distant earthquakes. 5. Who are the big manufacturers? * TSMC pioneered the foundry business  purely manufacturing chips for others  with government support in the 1980s and now produces the most-sophisticated chips. Everyone beats a path to its door to get them; its share of the global foundry market is larger than its next three competitors combined. * Samsung dominates in memory chips and is trying to muscle in on TSMCs gold mine. Its been improving its production technology and winning new orders from companies such as Qualcomm and Nvidia.

* Intel is the last US heavyweight in the field, but its business is heavily concentrated in manufacturing its own-brand chips that serve as the central processing unit (CPU) for laptops and desktop computers. Production delays have made it vulnerable to rivals, who are winning share using TSMC to produce their designs. Intel unveiled an ambitious bid in March to regain its manufacturing lead and break into the foundry business by spending $US20 billion to build two new factories in Arizona. Its also looking to buy other chipmakers. Sony PlayStations are hard to find in stores amid the global chip shortage. * Smaller manufacturers include US-based GlobalFoundries, Chinas Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. (SMIC) and Taiwans United Microelectronics. But theyre at least two to three generations behind TSMCs technology. Famous names such as Texas Instruments, IBM and Motorola, all US companies, have exited or given up trying to keep up with the most advanced manufacturing. 6. Hows the competition going? The two giants are spending heavily to cement their dominance: TSMC said in April it would ramp up its capital expenditure over the next three years to $US100 billion, including about $US30 billion on capacity expansion and upgrades in 2021, from a record $US17 billion last year.

Samsung is earmarking about $US151 billion for a decade-long project to catch its Taiwanese rival, part of a broader plan by South Korean companies including SK Hynix to spend roughly $US450 billion to build the worlds largest chipmaking base. China is pushing hard to catch up as part of its efforts to reduce its reliance on US technology, spurred by US moves to restrict access to American intellectual property such as software and gear for designing chips. But China has a long way to go. Loading For instance, in the automotive sector, Chinese chip design companies still arent able to come up with the advanced chips that serve as the brains for todays ever-smarter cars. China pledged again this year to boost spending and drive research into cutting-edge chips as part of its new five-year economic blueprint. While it didnt give specifics, SMIC has announced plans for a $US2.35 billion plant with funding from the city of Shenzhen. The facility could begin production by 2022 and eventually churn out each year about half a million 12-inch wafers, which are used to fabricate chips. By comparison, TSMC shipped about 12.4 million such wafers in 2020.

7. What about outside Asia? Loading The US., which still leads the world in chip design, is seeking to encourage companies to build or expand advanced factories domestically to address what Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called a risk to national and economic security. In a report released in June, President Joe Biden recommended Congress appropriate at least $US50 billion to support semiconductor research and production in the US. (A bill that easily passed the Senate the same day included $US52 billion.) His administration will play a role in formulating tax incentives for a proposed $US12 billion TSMC plant in Arizona and a $US17 billion facility Samsung is planning to build in Texas. Similarly, European Union officials are exploring ways to build an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe, possibly with assistance from TSMC and Samsung, as part of its goal to double chip production to 20 per cent of the global market by 2030.

The UK is investigating California-based Nvidias $US40 billion deal to buy British semiconductor designer Arm Ltd. on both national security and antitrust grounds. 8. Wheres the technology headed? As 5G mobile networks proliferate  driving demand for data-heavy video and game streaming  and with many people working from home, the need for more powerful, energy-efficient chips is only going to grow. TSMC and Samsung are thus working to make transistors increasingly microscopic so more can fit into a single chip. Even small improvements can deliver substantial cost savings when multiplied across the full scale of something like Amazon Web Services, a cloud computing provider. The rise of artificial intelligence is another force pushing innovation, since AI relies on massive data processing. More efficient designs also will help develop the so-called internet of things  a universe of smart or connected devices from phones to light switches to refrigerators. 9. How does Taiwan fit into all this?

The island democracy emerged as the dominant player in part because of a government decision in the 1970s to promote the electronics industry. It was aided by a technology transfer deal with RCA Corp., the former US electronics giant, and the trend in the West toward outsourcing. Loading Matching its scale and skills now would take years and cost a fortune: Boston Consulting Group and the Semiconductor Industry Association estimated it would take more than $US1 trillion over 10 years for the US to achieve complete manufacturing self-sufficiency in chips. Chinese President Xi Jinping has plans to invest $US1.4 trillion through 2025 in key technologies including semiconductors, and appointed a top deputy to lead the initiative. Political tensions could disrupt the race, however. The Biden administration has signalled it will continue efforts to restrict Chinas access to US technology -- including that used in Taiwans foundries. More ominously, the US could face difficulties if it found itself cut off from them. China has long claimed the island as a renegade province and threatened to invade to prevent its independence.
One big advantage, said Primarys chief experience officer, Cap Watkins, is people feel recharged on Monday. The companys voluntary attrition rate has fallen slightly to 7 per cent this year, even as workers in the United States are quitting jobs at record levels .

Primarys staff of 60 hasnt taken pay cuts and workers arent expected to extend their hours during the four days when they work. They occasionally do some work on Fridays, but are not expected to, and the day is meeting-free companywide. Thursdays have become known as Friday junior and Thri-day.

By December, the new schedule was working so well that Primary decided to extend it indefinitely.

In May 2020, as the pandemic sent stress levels through the roof, an online childrens clothes retailer called Primary started an experiment that it hoped would prevent its staff from burning out: It gave everyone Fridays off.

Primary is part of the latest wave to experiment with a work schedule that has been proposed for decades but has never quite caught on. Driven by the flexible work arrangements and bonus days off that were introduced during the pandemic, concern for burnout and empowerment of employees in a tight labor market, companies are embracing a shorter workweek.

Kickstarter, Shake Shack and Unilevers New Zealand unit are among those that have experimented with the four-day workweek, or have announced plans to. And after an experiment in Iceland supported the idea that the system improves worker well-being without reducing overall output, a majority of the countrys workers have now moved to shorter workweeks, or will gain the right to.

Four-day weeks have felt tantalisingly close before. Richard Nixon, then US vice president, in 1956 predicted a four-day workweek in the not too distant future. US President Jimmy Carter in 1977 said a four-day workweek would conserve energy amid the oil crisis, and considered urging companies to adopt it. In 1978, The Washington Post proclaimed, Ever since the beginning of the 1970s, the four-day workweek has seemed to be just around the corner, but this time it looks for real. That same year, Douglas Fraser, president of the United Auto Workers in the US, said a shorter week was absolutely inevitable.

What happened? Economic stagnation and recession in the 70s and 80s likely undercut any momentum, as did a corporate focus on efficiency, globalisation and the diminishing power of labor. A March 2020 study by Gallup found that just 5 per cent of US workers typically work four-day weeks.

But the current conditions have set the stage for a future where such schedules are common.
The state that comes closest to Victorias strict vaccine exclusions is NSW. However, in NSW, children under 16 years of age who are not fully vaccinated can generally follow the rules for vaccinated people, as long as they attend certain business premises with a fully vaccinated member of their household. This rule is expected to end on December 15. The Victorian government intends to extend its lockout of the unvaccinated throughout 2022. Fiona Russell, a paediatrician specialising in epidemiology and vaccination, said vaccine mandates had played a role in encouraging the adult population in Victoria to be immunised against the virus to protect the wider community. But she said excessively applying the same rules to young teens risked further amplifying the difficulties they had experienced during the pandemic, particularly the social and mental health implications.

Children have suffered so much, they really should not be caught up in this, Professor Russell said. At no time should [coronavirus] vaccines be mandated for under-15s, that is my personal view. Professor Russell said while children could transmit the virus, the onus should be on parents and adults around them to be vaccinated. Children are coming back out of lockdown with social anxiety and all sorts of things, she said. They should feel supported and a part of society and not excluded in any way. Thats extremely important. Professor Russell said the focus should be on ensuring the Australian adult population was vaccinated and that test, trace, isolate and quarantine measures were up to scratch. The Australasian Society for Infectious Diseases has also voiced its opposition, tweeting on Wednesday it did not support COVID-19 vaccine mandates for any child under 16 in Australia.

Asked about the scientific evidence around vaccine mandates for children, Professor Danchin said she believed the same result could be achieved through using face masks, social distancing and screening through regular testing. You can manage the risk and reduce disease transmission by other measures, she said. If that means that that child needs rapid antigen testing before they attend an indoor function or indoor game, you can manage the risk, without mandating that theyre excluded. Loading Meanwhile, infectious diseases expert Robert Booy said holding young teenagers to the same vaccination rules as adults in Victoria was overreach, when children were at much less risk of serious illness and death from COVID-19. Following heated backlash from Victorian principals and parents, who raised concerns that unvaccinated students faced being excluded from end-of-year milestone events, schoolchildren were given some reprieve from mandates on Monday.

Unvaccinated 12 to 15-year-olds are now free to attend camps, graduation ceremonies and school excursions including at swimming pools and adventure parks, as long as a teacher is present. The three paediatricians interviewed by The Age were also strongly opposed to mandating vaccines for children aged 5 to 11. Professor Booy urged caution on any rush to vaccinate primary school students against the virus, warning it might take months to know whether the risks of the coronavirus jab outweigh the benefits for young children. About 3 million young children have been vaccinated against the virus in the United States and the University of Sydney professor said at least three weeks follow-up on these children was needed to be confident they were not reporting any adverse side effects.

As of Thursday, 93.6 per cent of Victorians aged 12 and over have now had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. In Victoria, more than 85.7 per cent of people aged 12 to 15 have received at least one dose and 77.1 per cent are fully vaccinated. On Wednesday, public health experts said Victorias lockout of unvaccinated people should end when vaccine rates top 90 per cent, with some warning the threat of indefinitely banning people from cafes and cinemas is contributing to radicalisation. Loading Premier Daniel Andrews said earlier this week there were no immediate plans to mandate vaccinations for children aged between 5 and 11, however he could not rule this out entirely. Its too early for us to be definitive about what itll mean for that age group, he said.
Innocent until proven guilty an eroded concept

A Senate committee found that the common law presumption that a person is innocent until proven guilty was being eroded by stealth in Commonwealth and State laws. Using a computer, the committee found more than 300 provisions in Commonwealth legislation which placed a persuasive burden of proof on defendants instead of the prosecution, with evidence suggesting such provisions were as prevalent, and more, in State and territory laws.

Tippling tales

In Alaska, the Anchorage city council voted unanimously for vehicles of drunken drivers to be confiscated, an ordinance the mayor said was the first of its kind in the US. A person convicted twice within five years could lose their car for at least 30 days. Meanwhile, in the English town of Bude a magistrate refused a late-night drinks licence planned by the End of the World Society by ruling: The end of the world is not a special occasion.

Local-content rule on radio may go

The Australian Broadcasting Tribunal was set to do away with a rule that forced commercial radio stations to play a minimum of 20 per cent Australian-performed music. The tribunal called for public comment on its proposal to drop-Standard Three of its Radio Program Standards, which set the quota. The standard had first been set in 1973 at 10 per cent. Strong opposition was expected from Actors Equity and the Musicians Union.
While it may be true 3000 feral horses is better than 14,000 horses, the best way to protect our native animals from becoming extinct is to have no horses in Kosciuszko National Park. In the National Parks and Wildlife Service report on the Wild Horses Management Plan there was constant reference to the requirement, imposed by the Wild Horses Heritage Act, to preserve horses in the Park. Unfortunately, the Act circumvents the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 and constrains the NPWS. The legal objects of the Act are clear. The law requires that our public National Park Estate is managed for the conservation of nature, biodiversity, ecosystem processes, Aboriginal cultural heritage, significant landforms and fostering public appreciation of such. It does not require preserving feral animals. The WHH Act should be culled.

Peter Olive, Marrickville A more immediate action to stop the uncontrolled increase in feral horses would be to geld (chemically or physically) all the stallions. Richard Kirby, Campbelltown Theres no such thing as balance, Minister Barilaro, when it comes to feral horses in Kosciusko National Park. All horses must go if were to preserve the delicate mix of native plants and animals which Australia just cant afford to lose. Alison Orme, Marrickville Tolls system needs to be a fair route When Adrian Dwyer wrote that we were asking the wrong question about a northbound toll on the Harbour Bridge, I thought he was suggesting that the Bridge toll be scrapped altogether given the debt was repaid some years ago (Journey towards a fairer road toll system, November 25). No, he wants tolls in both directions.

He says what is needed in Sydneys world-class motorway network is a toll which reflects the cost of the journey not the cost of the individual road and proposes a fairer price model would be based on the distance travelled. However, he goes on to modify this principle by nominating three geographic zones in which different rates would be charged per kilometre. There is a view that after the initial cost of building a motorway has been covered, the toll should be removed with ongoing costs funded from taxes and registration fees. If tolls are to be retained forever, any different rates would have to be justified before users can decide if such a scheme would be fairer. The devil will be in the detail. Judith Campbell, Drummoyne Instead of dealing with the growing issue of crowded backstreets and the closure of main roads around tollways to force people into paying outrageous tolls, Adrian Dwyer believes we need to be more efficient at collecting tolls for all of Sydney not just those who choose to use the tollways. The Epping highway was an efficient five-lane highway servicing access to the city. The Lane Cove Tunnel should have been an enhancement of access with four additional lanes, instead, the Epping highway was reduced to one lane in either direction to force people to use the tunnel and pay a toll. This has been repeated across Sydney to encourage use of tollways. Its not efficient, not fair and certainly not the government working for the people. It is certainly enhancing a program for governments partners in this money-making venture. Shane Hogan, Riverview Dwyer shows how successful toll roads have been in delivering a quality highway network faster than taxpayer funding. We now need to introduce fair tolls to promptly fund a longer, better, safer, quicker, less destructive tunnel from Katoomba to Hartley that will provide real-time savings for the freight and tourist traffic between the Central West and Sydney. Those not in a hurry can still use the windy, rainy, snowy, icy, foggy Great Western Highway surface road. Russell Brown, Medlow Bath

Compassion needed Amendments to the voluntary assisted dying bill before NSW Parliament are just a cynical attempt to delay the inevitable by those who wish to impose suffering rather than offer choice to people who are dying (Broad support for assisted dying as vote on bill is due, November 25). Politicians who seek to obstruct the will of their electorate by introducing spurious amendments that have been debated again and again in every Australian state that has passed this legislation, must be called out for their lack of compassion. David Pieper, Darlinghurst Teen vaccines Now the health advice says its not OK for an unvaccinated teenager to visit their sick grandparents, do their Christmas shopping in store, or have a tutor visit their house to improve their learning level, but it is OK to party at end of year functions (They deserve to be able to party: Unvaccinated teens granted exemption, November 25). It is an absurd exemption that not only defies the existing health advice but commonsense. How do governments expect people to comply with the health orders when they bend to political pressure so easily? People over 16 have been able to receive vaccines for months. If they are not yet vaccinated it is by choice, not lack of opportunity. Gary Bigelow, Teralba Likely outcomes of this decision: an increase in COVID-19 cases, an increase in hospitalisations, an increase in nurses needed to care for them, further strain on the health system leading to a commensurate decrease in elective surgery cases. Ah, the privileges of youth. Lets not consider the older population. Angela Williamson, Exeter

Hawaiian postcard We all think that olden days were golden days and, since we all like to believe that national and state had greater respect for one another back then, politics looks nobler through the retrospectoscope (Morrison faces an uphill battle, November 25). True or false, Niki Savva has clearly reminded us that such courtesies do not pertain nowadays. But theres an aspect of the Did the PM tell the Opposition Leader that he was going to Hawaii? contention which has, apparently, escaped comment. What sort of disdain is implicit in Scott Morrisons seeming belief that it was reasonable and sufficient to text Anthony Albanese, from his plane just as it was about to take off for America? Why was that not done far earlier and more respectfully? Or are the critics right: the PM really wanted to sneak off, undetected? John Carmody, Roseville Alternative measures We continue to read and hear Anthony Albanese being criticised as leader of the ALP. Has anyone stopped to think that an ALP government led by Albanese could not be any worse than our present debacle in Canberra (Letters, November 25)?

Robyn Lewis, Raglan Recently, several correspondents have suggested that Tanya Plibersek take over the leadership of the Labor Party from Albanese. I dont recall Plibersek expressing a desire to seek the job, but just six months or less from the election, that is all that the Opposition and the country need: division, recriminations, infighting and another change of leader. Morrison and the Coalition would be laughing all the way to the bank. Jane Jilek, Castlecrag

Perhaps it is in the timing and post 2021 Parliament rising that Albanese is keeping his powder dry. Lord Nelson achieved success against the French and Spanish by splitting the attacking fleet in the Battle of the Trafalgar. Nelson Mandela once stated: Everyone can rise above their circumstances and achieve success if they are dedicated to and passionate about what they do. Albanese is dedicated, will have a plan and realises best not to go too early. Stephen Wilson, Kangaroo Valley How soon we forget All those readers getting a laugh from the idea of Craig Kelly as prime minister should remember that Donald Trump became the president of the USA (Letters, November 25). Heather Lindsay, Woonona Telling it how it is

Thank God for Jacqui Lambie for telling One Nation, and the anti-vaxxers, how it is (Letters, November 25). It should have been our Prime Minister making this speech. Instead, he is attempting to win their favour by defending their demonstrations and ensuring they vote for him. He is a non-leader. If only he had Lambies strength of character, her passion, good sense and honesty then Australians would have a leader we could be proud of. Robyn Purvis-Smith, Killarney Vale Anti-hero Pauline Hanson is now a bone fide cartoon character  why am I not surprised. I think, though, making her a superhero is pushing the envelope a smidgen too far (Pauline Hanson as superhero? These cartoons could be the future, November 25). Elizabeth Kroon, Randwick Mugs to marketing I begrudgingly acknowledge the Halloween horse has well and truly bolted in this country, but now we seem to have imported something called Black Friday and the sale that goes with it. What is the point? No cultural significance whatsoever in Australia. Another triumph of marketing. Wendy Young, Glebe
A $5 million funding promise from Prime Minister Scott Morrison, impassioned support from local Labor MP and now Opposition Leader Chris Minns, and a 10,000-signature petition were not enough to save it in 2019 when the council closed the facility after discovering pool water leaking into the bay. Loading A groundswell of voices calling for the salvation of the pool came up against those who saw it as a money pit, and an opportunity to build something elsewhere. Repeated motions to demolish it have been quashed. It was the galvanising factor in the formation of Georges River Residents and Ratepayers, a local party featuring Ms Mort that puts the pools reinstatement on a campaign footing. Its fate has also been wrapped into the campaigns of Ms Morts rivals at the December 4 council elections. Blakehurst ward councillors Sam Elmir and Sandy Grekas are both calling for the complex to be razed, remediated and replaced with green space.

My position on the matter has always been that I always look at it from a financial perspective and what it means for the council, and I just want value for money, Cr Elmir said, adding he wanted to see a pool at Jubilee Stadium  the home of NRL club the St George Illawarra Dragons  and Carss Park returned to open space. What the experts have made pretty clear time and time again is you just dont build outdoor 50-metre pools any more ... theyre losing money. An artists impression of a proposed new harbour pool at Beare Park in Elizabeth Bay. Credit:Andrew Burges Architects RMIT University academic Ian McShane, who has researched the cultural, economic and infrastructural factors of suburban pools, said while the historical value of such facilities loomed large, their functionality was open to question. However, the associate professor said they were an important part of Australian culture. I certainly wouldnt like to see them disappear and go completely indoors, or be completely privatised. The publicness of the facility has a role to play, he said.

The prospect of a cool-down in the open air has become attractive election fodder for other council candidates across Sydney. As pandemic restrictions eased, western Sydney mayors called for pools to be opened to give struggling ratepayers some reprieve. The reopening of Balmains Dawn Fraser Baths, said to be the citys oldest public pool, became the threshold for inner west residents to resume some sort of normality. Deposed Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne was there, having entwined the pools $8 million restoration with his eventful leadership after referring his own council staff to the NSW Auditor-General in March over repeated delays to its reopening. Former Inner West mayor Darcy Byrne at Dawn Fraser Baths in September. Credit:Kate Geraghty If the last lockdown has taught us anything its that the community values public pools as highly as assets like schools and hospitals, the Labor councillor said, gearing up to reclaim his mayoral mantle by spruiking the past terms revamp of Dawn Fraser and Ashfield pools.

Now its time to invest in Leichhardt Pool. If Im returned as mayor, Ill deliver $10 million to secure the future of Leichhardt Park Aquatic Centre, including a new landscaped water play park with BBQs and shaded recreation space, as well as replacing the Olympic pool, which is at the end of its life cycle. He has also promised to bring privately operated pools in the former Marrickville Council area back into the fold. Perhaps the most grandiose pledges have been from those looking to take Town Hall, with Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore aiming to add another term to her 17-year tenure by spruiking the prospect of harbour baths at Pyrmont, Elizabeth Bay, Barangaroo, Rushcutters Bay and the Glebe foreshore. An artists impression of one of the network of lagoon-style pools proposed as part of Sydney lord mayoral candidate Yvonne Weldons urban billabongs concept. Credit:Habit8 The announcement prompted an outcry from the Sydney Liberal candidates, who had already announced their plans to expand the number of harbourside pools, while the first Aboriginal lord mayoral candidate, Yvonne Weldon, described Cr Moores plan as elitist.
Former deputy NSW police commissioner Catherine Burn now holds a senior position in Australias most secret spy agency, which can be revealed after the Australian Secret Intelligence Service made the historic decision to disclose the identities of its two deputies.

Ms Burn, who was overlooked for the job of NSWs top cop four years ago, was appointed ASISs deputy director-general of capability and corporate management in April 2018.

ASIS, the Australian equivalent of Britains MI6 or the United States CIA, is responsible for the collection of covert intelligence overseas. It was formed in 1952 but its existence remained hidden until 1972  and the work of its agents rarely sees the light of day.

Catherine Burn is now deputy director-general of ASIS. Credit:Daniel Munoz

Up until now, the agency has only ever revealed the identity of its director-general, which is currently Paul Symon, and revealing the identity of any other officials in the agency would have been a criminal offence.
More than 100 Australian soldiers and police officers will be sent to the Solomon Islands after protesters defied a government-imposed lockdown to set fire to buildings in the capital, Honiara.

The unrest has been triggered by disputes over the countrys leadership and diplomatic switch from Taiwan to China.

A building burns next to the Parliament building in Honiara on Wednesday. Credit:AFP/Charley Piringi

The first Australian Federal Police officers departed for the Pacific nation on Thursday afternoon with others to follow in coming days, accompanied by a patrol boat.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare requested Australia send help to bring the riots under control, invoking a 2017 security arrangement, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison accepted.
The practical effect of the religious freedom bill which Prime Minister Scott Morrison presented to Parliament on Thursday remains unclear but its symbolic power in Australias culture wars is undeniable.

For religious conservatives who have lost a number of historic recent battles against progressives on social policy, it promises to turn the tide that has been flowing against them recently.

After it was overwhelmingly supported in a popular vote, the Federal Parliament passed same-sex marriage in 2017. After lagging other states, NSW legalised abortion last year and the Parliament is now debating a bill on assisted dying.

In this climate religious groups feel their views are being ignored. Presenting the bill, Mr Morrison three times referred to cancel culture which he says is driving people of faith from the public sphere. Many people from various religious traditions are concerned about the lack of religious protection against the prevalence of cancel culture in Australian life.

The Herald agrees with Mr Morrison that it is important to engage in civil debate and that discrimination on religious grounds is abhorrent. People of faith deserve the same respect as the 30 per cent of Australians with no religious beliefs. As Mr Morrison said, The protection of what we choose to believe in a free society is essential to our freedom. In a liberal democracy, it is like oxygen.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has introduced the contentious Religious Discrimination Bill into the lower house, describing it as a sensible and balanced bill.

This bill is a protection from the few who seek to marginalise and coerce and silence people of faith because they do not share the same view of the world, Mr Morrison said.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison introducing the Religious Discrimination Bill into the House of Representatives on Thursday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

He said the bill would provide protection for people of faith for the first time at a national level, overcoming inconsistencies in laws across Australia, and filling gaps in NSW and South Australia where there are no religious discrimination protections.

A Sikh should not be discriminated against because of the turban they wear, nor a Maronite because of the cross around their neck, nor a Muslim employee who keeps that prayer mat in the bottom drawer at the desk at work, nor a Hindu couple who was seeking to rent a property, nor a Jewish school seeking to employ someone of their faith if that faith is their preference and the publicly stated policy of their school, Mr Morrison said.
Australians have softened their support for more ambitious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade after a United Nations summit where world leaders disagreed on a global deal to tackle climate change.

Support for a stronger 2030 emissions target fell to 49 per cent among voters nationwide in a survey conducted last week, down from 57 per cent one month ago and 52 per cent the previous month.

Asked if the government was doing enough after its $250 million support for electric vehicles and funding for new technologies in recent weeks, 28 per cent of survey respondents said the policies were about right for now. Credit:Fairfax Media

But the exclusive survey, conducted for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age by research company Resolve Strategic, shows one-third of voters believe the federal government should do more on climate policy.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison told the UN climate summit in Glasgow earlier this month Australia would cut emissions by 35 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels, although the official target is a reduction of 26 to 28 per cent.
NSW Police Minister David Elliott has committed to staying in state politics as Premier Dominic Perrottet works to prevent his MPs being poached ahead of the federal election.

Mr Elliott had been touted as a potential candidate for the federal electorate of Greenway in north-western Sydney, but has not nominated for preselection and sources close to the minister say he is committed to the Perrottet government.

Premier Dominic Perrottet (right) with Minister for Police and Emergency Services David Elliott. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Mr Perrottet is losing Bega MP and former transport minister Andrew Constance, who is contesting federal preselection for Gilmore, as well as Holsworthy MP Melanie Gibbons.

Ms Gibbons revealed last month that she planned to resign from her NSW seat and contest the Liberal preselection for the federal seat of Hughes, held by United Australia Party leader Craig Kelly.
NSW will abandon masks, QR codes and vaccination certificates in retail settings and restaurants, while school closures will end, as Premier Dominic Perrottet prepares to further ease COVID-19 restrictions ahead of Christmas.

Density limits will be scrapped from pubs and restaurants, while masks will only be compulsory on public transport, at airports and for unvaccinated indoor hospitality staff.

The additional freedoms will kick in when NSW reaches its 95 per cent double dose vaccination target or from December 15, whichever comes first, as the state moves to a COVID-normal future.

Masks will no longer be required in retail settings after NSW reaches the 95 per cent double dose vaccination target or December 15, whichever comes first. Credit:Renee Nowytarger

Under changes to the recovery road map, QR code check-ins will only be required at high-risk venues including pubs, nightclubs, hospitals, gyms, hairdressers and beauty salons, funerals and indoor music festivals with more than 1000 people.
Senior government minister and veteran Richmond MP Richard Wynne has confirmed he will not contest the 2022 election for his inner-Melbourne seat, the fourth Labor MP to announce their exit.

He will stay on as Minister for Planning, Housing and Child Protection until the Victorian state election in 12 months time.

Senior government minister Richard Wynne. Credit:Simon Schluter

Mr Wynne has held the seat of Richmond  which also covers Abbotsford, Collingwood, Fitzroy and Clifton Hill  since 1999 and his exit will pave the way for an intense campaign that could see Labor lose its grip on the seat.

Although Labor has long been under threat from the Greens in Richmond, Mr Wynne extended his majority in the seat at the 2018 state election.
The Japanese ambassador to Australia has called for democratic allies to speak with one voice when pushing back on Chinas coercive activities over Taiwan as his country draws attention to potential military threats in its neighbourhood.

Japan has its own territorial dispute with China over the Senkaku Islands, north-east of Taiwan, and is wary of the worsening security situation in the region.

Healthy debate is necessary, ambassador Shingo Yamagami told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

At the same time, any country ought to come up with a consistent and united policy on diplomatic and security issues of such significance.
New York: The rape took place in a Syracuse, New York, park in 1981 and was described in raw detail in a memoir published nearly 20 years after it occurred, as the man convicted of the crime struggled to rebuild his life after his release from prison.

The book, titled Lucky, launched the career of author Alice Sebold, who later rose to international fame with The Lovely Bones, a novel that also centres on sexual assault and sold millions of copies.

Anthony Broadwater, centre, gazes upward after Judge Gordon Cuffy overturned the 40-year-old rape conviction that wrongfully put him in state prison for 16 years for Alice Sebolds rape. Credit:AP

The man who was convicted of the attack, Anthony Broadwater, had always maintained he was innocent. On Monday, he was exonerated, as a state judge, his defence lawyers and the Onondaga County district attorney agreed that the case against him had been woefully flawed.

Its a long day coming, Broadwater, 61, said Tuesday, recalling the years of stigma and isolation he faced as a registered sex offender.
Abloy UK has been awarded a three-year contract with Thames Water, valued at an estimated 750k, to upgrade existing locking systems between now and June 2024.

Thames Water is the UKs largest water and wastewater company, serving 15 million customers across London and the Thames Valley.

Cylinders and padlocks

Products specified for the project include padlocks and a range of cylinders, which will be used to secure a variety of areas and assets. These include treatment plants and pumping stations on applications such as hatches, doors, and gates. They'll be used at over 22 sites in North and East London including Coppermills and Abbey Mills.

Abloy cylinders combine flexibility with security, to provide unbeatable performance and meet the BS EN 1303 standard for Cylinder Locks. Abloy padlocks use a unique rotating disc principle and are renowned for their endurance and maximum resistance against physical attack, offering durability in even the severest of climatic conditions.

Access control and keyless solution

There is also the future potential to implement a PROTEC2 CLIQ access control system and BEAT keyless solution that combines a digital key, mobile application, and a heavy-duty, Bluetooth padlock, all managed with the visual Abloy OS user interface.

Simon Jeff, Market Developer for Critical Infrastructure at Abloy UK, said, We are delighted to have secured a contract of this size with such a prominent and well-respected company such as Thames Water, and look forward to successfully implementing the new locking systems over the next three years.
This column originally published on Nov. 26, 2014.

Thanksgiving comes around once a year, but what if we adopted the mindset that every day was Thanksgiving and were intentional about the people and things in our lives that were thankful for?

When I was a kid, my dad started a family tradition at Thanksgiving dinner that I have carried on with my family. After we say grace, we go around the table and share what we are thankful for over the past year. We share appreciation for one another, our health, colleagues, jobs, friends and family, many of whom are at the table. Its a pep talk of sorts and the afterglow of sharing gratitude visibly does wonders for everyones emotional well-being. (Plus, it makes me feel like my dad is still with us in a way.)

Related: 3 Reasons You Should Adopt an Attitude of Gratitude

Each year a family member or friend shares with me that they needed that little Thanksgiving pep talk. I bet your employees, colleagues, family and friends could use a pep talk too. Give them one. The bonus for you is that it will have a positive impact on your organizations bottom line. Here is why.

Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino conducted a research study examining a universitys fundraisers (fixed salary employees). She divided the employees into two groups. Group one made fundraising calls seeking alumni donations the same as they had on previous days. Group two, which worked on a different day, was given a brief pep talk, in person, by the director of annual giving where she let them know just how grateful she was for their hard work.

Over the course of the ensuing week the employees in group two who received her thanks made 50 percent more calls than those in group one who didnt. Just a few words of kindness that took only a couple of minutes and the results were game changing. Consider how that can relate to your people and your business. If you arent expressing thanks to your people youre missing out on the best zero-cost form of workplace motivation on the planet. Not just on Thanksgiving, but every day.

Heres the kicker: Gratitude isnt just good for your staff, its good for you too.

Two notable researchers on gratitude, Robert Emmons (U.C. Davis) and Michael McCullough (Univ. Miami), conducted a study where they took three groups of people and asked them to write about things that happened to them each week. Group A was told to write down things that happened that they were grateful for. Group B was asked to write down things that frustrated them. Group C wrote about things that affected them without any emphasis on the positive or negative.

At the conclusion of the 10-week study, participants in Group A (the gratitude group) reported to be happier, exercised more and took less trips to the doctor that those in Group B, who documented their frustrations.

If youre like a lot of folks, youre probably keeping Group As list on Thanksgiving and Group Bs most other days of the year. What should you really be doing?

Related: Don't Be a Turkey in How You Communicate Appreciation to Your Staff

A few years ago, during my turkey-induced post-dinner food coma, I thought about my dads tradition and realized that if I wanted to feel gratitude more often I had to practice it more often. Daily practice is really the only way to make something a habit and research has shown it takes anywhere from 30 to 60 days to install a new habit. As a result, I created The Daily Game Plan, which is an easy way for busy people to keep track of their daily schedules and their daily gratitude.

Think about it, exercise daily and your muscles grow. If you flex your gratitude muscles, they will grow too. It should become as automatic as brushing your teeth every morning. Along with brushing my teeth, my gratitude practice called 5 by 9 is automatically scheduled into my morning routine.

I set the goal of sharing positive feedback, appreciation or thanks to five people before I begin my workday at 9 a.m. each morning. I do not start my workday until Ive done this. I encourage you to do the same. Thank or share positive feedback with five people before 9 a.m. Here are several strategies you can use.

1. Keep a list of what youre grateful for and proud of about yourself. You cant give away something you dont first possess. In other words, to be grateful for others you must first feel gratitude for yourself.

2. Send a thank-you note or a card. Yes, you can send an ecard, but the added personal touch of snail mail has greater magnitude. (It also helps cultivate relationships and keeps you top of mind.)

3. Smile and dial. Instead of always mailing the thank yous, call some of the people you chose and tell them what you were going to say in a letter.

4. Schedule a lunch meeting. Take someone to lunch and thank or express your appreciation of that persons contributions to them face to face.

5. Start keeping a list. When you get good at developing gratitude you wont have time to thank everyone every day. Choose five people a day. Add all the others to your list for future days.

Telling people you appreciate them is good. Showing them is better. Be specific when explaining what you respect, admire and appreciate about them. We have so much to be thankful for not just on Thanksgiving but every day.

I'm very thankful for you, the Entrepreneur community, for being a part of my life and for allowing me to be a part of yours. Ill ask you what Im about to ask my family Thursday afternoon: What and who are you thankful for this year?

Related: 5 Powerful Ways to Give Thanks to Your People

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
The Wilton Library is excited to participate in GivingTuesday on Tuesday, Nov. 30. More information will be available through the librarys social media outrach and on the librarys website. Visit www.wiltonlibrary.org for more details.

Annual holiday book sale beginning

Holiday shoppers will find all kinds of great bargains at the Wilton Library annual Holiday Book Sale in the gallery, starting at noon on Thursday, Dec. 2. This popular annual sale features a large assortment of pristine books in all categories, including childrens and teens, art, history, cookbooks, classics, biographies, and more. This years, 2021, sale also includes a huge collection of small gift books in about 20 different categories, which are perfect for stocking stuffers, plus brand new stationery, and art supplies, puzzles, and other gift items. The inventory is replenished frequently. People, who are bargain hunters are encouraged to shop early, and often for the items at the event. All proceeds will benefit the library. The sale continues during regular library hours through Sunday, Jan. 2. The regular library hours for the library are: Mondays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Visit the website for the library at, www.wiltonlibrary.org, for more information.

Stroll into the library

The Wilton library will welcome visitors during this years Wilton Holiday Stroll on Friday, Dec. 3, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Library staff will be handing out special gift bags with sweet treats outside our front entrance, while supplies last. All people are invited to shop for gifts at the annual Holiday Book Sale at the library, purchase an ornament from the Giving Tree at the library, and buy Hanukkah Gelt presents, which are also in the form of chocolate candy, and which are in gold tin foil, for the Childrens Library. All proceeds from the sales, will benefit the library. Visitors may also cast votes for the Community Favorite entry in the Baker & Builders Gingerbread Competition - Police Edition, part of the event.

Hanukkah fun for kids

Children will enjoy Zooming Hanukkah Hoopla: Stories and Fun, on Thursday, Dec. 2, from 4:15 to 5 p.m. In this Zoom presentation, special guest Cantor Harriet Dunkerley from Temple Bnai Chaim reform synagogue in Redding, will teach children all about the Festival of Lights. They will hear stories, sing songs, and get the opportunity to see a variety of menorahs. Children who have a menorah at home are encouraged to have it on hand to share. Registration required. Zoom link will be sent out by the day of the program. For children in the kindergarten, and up grades. Visit www.wiltonlibrary.org to register.

The current state of U.S. healthcare

All people, who want to learn more about myths, misconceptions, and uncomfortable truths about the U.S. healthcare system, and what to do about it, is invited to the presentation that The Long and Short of Healthcare in the U.S., which takes place on Thursday, Dec. 2, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. in The Brubeck Room of the library. Discussion leaders Mike Boswood, who will also be speaking about, the long of it, and Joe Magnano, who will be speaking about, the short of it, have decades of experience in the health care business, and insurance industries. Their mission is to provide a framework for understanding the United States health care system, and to give consumers advice about how to deal effectively with its challenges. Registration is required. Visit www.wiltonlibrary.org to register.

The Brubeck Brothers Quartet plays

The Trustees of Wilton Library invites the Wilton community to a very special online music concert. A Special Concert Broadcast Featuring the Brubeck Brothers Quartet takes place on Sunday, Dec. 5, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. on Zoom. This concert is being offered completely free as a gift of thanks to the Town for the holidays. The concert was recorded earlier in the summer of 2021, in The Brubeck Room of the library, before a limited size, and live audience in conjunction with the various festivities surrounding the dedication of The Brubeck Collection at Wilton Library. Musicians Chris and Dan Brubeck, sons of jazz legend Dave Brubeck, head a dynamic, versatile band with guitarist Mike DeMicco and pianist Chuck Lamb. Although the quartet's style is rooted in straight-ahead jazz, their concerts reveal an inherent ability to explore and play odd time signatures while naturally integrating the influences of funk, blues and world music. The concert and The Brubeck Collection dedication event were sponsored by Fairfield County Bank, FCB. Registration is required in order to receive the Zoom invitation link for the event. Visit www.wiltonlibrary.org to register.

Talking about jazz music great, composer, pianist, father, Dave Brubeck

To continue the celebration of the recent ribbon cutting, and ribbon cutting ceremony for The Brubeck Collection at the Wilton Library, and the late jazz music great, composer, pianist, and father, Dave Brubecks birthday. All people are invited to the online conversation. On Monday, Dec. 6, Dave Brubecks Time Out: A Conversation Between Author/Music Historian Stephen Crist, and Musicologist Gil Harel will take place from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Professor Stephen Crist of Emory University in Boson, and Gil Harel from Naugatuck Valley Community College, NVCC, in Waterbury, Connecticut, sat down to discuss Dave Brubeck's iconic album Time Out as well as Brubeck's music and life. Some may recall Gils excellent Bach to Brubeck presentations with one of Dave Brubecks four sons, Chris Brubeck, at the Wilton Library, from June 2020, amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their discussion was recorded in October in the library's new archive room in conjunction with the ribbon cutting for The Brubeck Collection at Wilton Library. There will be a recorded broadcast of the ribbon cutting ceremony as an introduction, starting at 6:30 p.m., with the Crist/Harel program beginning around 7 p.m. Registration required in order to receive the Zoom invitation link. Visit www.wiltonlibrary.org to register, and for more information. The Brubeck Collection is named after Brubeck. Catherine Brubeck Yaghsizian is Dave Brubecks daughter. Dan Brubeck is also one of Dave Brubecks four sons. Tish Brubeck is the wife of Chris Brubeck. Darius Brubeck, and Matthew are also Dave Brubecks sons.

The library will be closed for Thanksgiving Day holiday, on Thursday, Nov. 25. Visit www.wiltonlibrary.org for information and to register for any of the librarys virtual programming, for information about the librarys Digital Library at the library, or any of the databases at the library. For those Wilton residents, who need a library card to access the Digital Library, call the circulation desk at the library at 203-762-6334. If anyone has questions about accessing, or using the Digital Library, email the email address for the reference desk at the Wilton Library at reference@wiltonlibrary.org.
MIDDLETOWN  Hundreds of volunteers and dozens of local businesses and organizations worked to provide more than 800 Thanksgiving meals for families in need this holiday through the annual Middletown Community Thanksgiving Project.

Over the past few weeks, food items and monetary donations were collected from dozens of local businesses and organizations in order to create the food baskets. On Tuesday, between the hours of 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., 839 Thanksgiving meals were distributed, according to event coordinator Lara SantaMaria.

The meals came in baskets filled with turkey, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, corn, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, bread and pie. Close to 100 baskets were delivered by the Rotary Club to disabled or home-bound individuals, and the rest were picked up in the Fellowship Church parking lot at 1002 Saybrook Road.

SantaMaria has spearheaded the event for the last 10 years. She said that there were a few additional challenges this year, including the national shortages of turkeys and truck drivers. We were worried for quite a while there, but it worked out.

The project needs a refrigerated truck in order to keep the food fresh before it is distributed. This year, Jukonski Truck Services allowed use of a truck and driver to make it happen.

Turkeys were donated from multiple sources, including close to 250 from the Middletown Police Department.

We couldnt do it without the Middletown Police Department, SantaMaria said. Theyre the only reason we can hand out turkeys.

Overall, she is pleased with this years project. It was very successful, SantaMaria said.

She added that so many canned items were collected this year that extras could be added to each basket. They were very full boxes this year thanks to generous donations, SantaMaria said.

Close to 200 volunteers helped package and distribute the baskets. Theyve been doing it for years, SantaMaria said. They love doing it.

SantaMaria explained why she loves participating. Its so gratifying to be able to help people, she said. Its just nice to be able to help people that wouldnt otherwise have that Thanksgiving.

Thats why last year, even with the COVID-19 pandemic in full force, the group still put on the event. The basket pick-up was drive-through only, and less volunteers could help in order to keep them socially distanced.

We did what we could because we still wanted to help, SantaMaria said.

Changing the routine because of the coronavirus ended up improving the operation. We did drive-through again this year because it went so well last year, she said.

To find out how to help with next years event, visit the Middletown Community Thanksgiving Project Facebook page.
CT State Police / Contributed

Since Connecticut State Police began its Thanksgiving holiday traffic enforcement on Wednesday, there have been more than 1,800 calls for service and eight driving under the influence arrests.

State police said between 12:00 a.m. Wednesday and 11:59 p.m. Wednesday, troopers responded to 1,841 calls for service.
BRUSSELS (AP)  The European Union warned member countries Thursday that they risk undermining the 27-nation blocs COVID-19 travel and access certificate system with new restrictions that some are putting in place to try to thwart a surge in cases.

At the same time, the EU's executive branch, the European Commission, recommended that a COVID safe-country list with about 20 countries outside Europe currently on it should be dropped from March and that all travelers with World Health Organization endorsed shots be allowed in.

Anxious to defend the free movement of goods and people so vital to business, EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said there is an obvious risk that differing approaches between countries could endanger confidence in the COVID certificate system, and harm free movement in the Union.

The World Health Organization says coronavirus infections jumped 11% in Europe in the last week, the only region in the world where COVID-19 continues to rise. The WHOs Europe director, Dr. Hans Kluge, warned that without urgent measures, the continent could see another 700,000 deaths by the spring.

Many countries have begun tightening rules on people who are not vaccinated to try to encourage them to get shots to better halt the spread of the virus. Austria even plans to make vaccines obligatory from next February.

As winter closes in and coronavirus restrictions are ramped up, tens of thousands of people have rallied around Europe in recent weeks in protest against the tightening of measures and against the requirement for COVID-19 certificates.

The EUs COVID pass contains proof that the holder has either been vaccinated, has in the past recovered from the disease, or has recently tested negative.

But some German states are now demanding proof of vaccination and daily negative tests. From next month, Italy will require proof of vaccination or having recovered to access a host of free-time activities over the holiday season. Tests will no longer be enough.

Holders of (an) EU certificate should, in principle, not be subject to additional restrictions, wherever they come from in the European Union. Restrictions such as additional tests or quarantine, for instance, Reynders, the justice commissioner, told reporters.

The commission says scientific evidence shows that vaccine immunity begins to diminish after about 6 months. But its recommending that certificates should continue to be accepted as valid for 9 months after the first shot.

Some countries want booster shots to be mandatory for the certificates to be valid. France, for example, wants to require them on certificates for people over 65, while neighboring Belgium does not think its necessary yet.

The commission is not proposing any period of validity for boosters at the moment, Reynders said.

Brussels also wants to end the EU's safe-country list for non-essential travel. Like other countries, the United States has been on and off it as the pandemic spread in waves. That is set to change from March 1, if the 27 member countries agree.

Now we are moving away from this country-based approach to an individual approach," EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said. All people that are vaccinated can come into the European Union.

Travelers who have had EU-approved vaccines would simply be able to enter, while those with other WHO-endorsed shots would also have to submit a negative PCR test as well. But certificates that these travelers present must not be more than 9 months old.

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Frank Jordans in Berlin, and Colleen Barry in Milan, Italy, contributed to this report.

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Follow all of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israeli authorities appear to have put plans to build a large Jewish settlement at an abandoned airport in east Jerusalem on hold, at least for now, a rights group said Thursday.

Plans for the Atarot settlement called for building 9,000 housing units marketed to ultra-Orthodox Jews in an open area next to three densely populated Palestinian communities, one of which is behind Israel's controversial separation barrier.

Hagit Ofran of the Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said a district planning committee meeting at which the project was expected to be approved has been cancelled, meaning the plan is off the table for now. A local committee had voted in support of it on Wednesday.

Deputy Mayor Fleur Hassan-Nahoum said she was not aware of any move to shelve the project.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which Israel also seized in that war.

Israel views all of Jerusalem as its unified capital and says it needs to build housing to address the needs of a growing population.

The Palestinians view the continual expansion of Israeli settlements as a violation of international law and an obstacle to peace, a position with wide international support.

The Biden administration has repeatedly criticized settlement construction, saying it hinders the eventual resumption of the peace process, but Israel has continued to advance settlement plans.

More than 200,000 Israeli settlers live in east Jerusalem and nearly 500,000 live in settlements scattered across the occupied West Bank. Israel's current prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is a strong supporter of settlements and is opposed to Palestinian statehood.

There have been no substantive peace talks in more than a decade.
Published: 25 November 2021

Nights spent by residents increased in October 2021

Overnight stays by resident tourists exceeded the level of October 2019 preceding the corona crisis by 18 per cent. Overnight stays by non-resident tourists decreased by 54 per cent compared to October 2019. The total amount of overnight stays was 1.66 million, which was 1 per cent less than two years ago. These figures are preliminary data from Statistics Finlands statistics on accommodation establishments and they have been collected from accommodation establishments with at least 20 beds or caravan pitches with electricity connection.

Monthly overnight stays at accommodation establishments, 20192021

Overnight stays by business travellers still below the level of 2019

The recovery of tourism is illustrated by comparison with the year before the corona crisis started in 2020. For leisure trips, overnight stays by resident tourists increased by 36 per cent from October 2019. In turn, overnight stays by resident business travellers decreased by 8 per cent. Overnight stays by non-resident leisure travellers were 52 per cent less than two years ago and 56 per cent less by non-resident business travellers.

Changes in overnight stays (%) by month and trip purpose, 2021/2019

Examined by region, overnight stays decreased most compared to October 2019 in Uusimaa, by 24 per cent. Compared to October last year however, overnight stays increased in all regions with the exception of Central Ostrobothnia, where overnight stays decreased by 22 per cent.

Change in overnight stays in October by region 2021/2020,%

Occupancy rates of hotel rooms high in several regions

Among the regions, the highest occupancy rates of hotel rooms were measured in Pirkanmaa, 64.4 per cent, and in Southwest Finland , 60.7 per cent. In Helsinki, the hotel room occupancy rate was 45.5 per cent, 70.3 per cent in Tampere, 65.6 per cent in Turku, 65.2 per cent in Oulu and 33.3 per cent in Rovaniemi.

In October 2021, the realised average price of a hotel room was EUR 100.95 per day for the whole country. Twelve months earlier, it was EUR 90.85. There was a total of 55,094 hotel rooms available in Finland, which was 4,415 more than in October 2020.

Hotel room occupancy rate and the monthly average price

Overnight stays increased by 13.8 per cent in January to October 2021

In January to October 2021, a total of 14.5 million nights were spent in Finnish accommodation establishments. This was 13.8 per cent more than in the corresponding period one year earlier. In all, 13.28 million overnight stays were recorded for resident tourists and 1.22 million for non-resident tourists. The number of nights spent by resident tourists increased by 25.3 per cent and nights spent by non-resident tourists declined by 43.0 from the previous year.

Among the most important countries of inbound tourism to Finland, overnight stays by Swedes increased most in absolute numbers, by 45,700 nights. This was 49.8 per cent higher than in the year before. The biggest drop was seen in overnight stays by Russians, down by 225,400 nights. Their overnight stays were 89.8 per cent down on January to October 2020.

The biggest group of non-resident tourists were Germans with 188,000 overnight stays. The second largest group was Swedes with 137,000 overnight stays. The third largest group was Estonians with 125,000 overnight stays , and fourth were U.S. tourists with 62,000 overnight stays. The fifth largest group was Dutch tourists (46,000 nights), sixth was Britons (41,000 nights), seventh French (41,000 nights) and eight was Italians (39,000 nights).

Change in overnight stays in January-October 2021/2020, %

Source: Accommodation Statistics. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Sofia Pitkanen 029 551 3037, Ossi Nurmi 029 551 2984, liikenne.matkailu@stat.fi

Head of Department in charge: Hannele Orjala

Publication in pdf-format (405.0 kB)

Updated 25.11.2021

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Accommodation statistics [e-publication].

ISSN=1799-6325. October 2021. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 11.12.2021].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/matk/2021/10/matk_2021_10_2021-11-25_tie_001_en.html
Approximately 30 migrants were caught by the authorities, in the past 24 hours, hidden in trucks with goods checked at the border with Hungary, four of them being found in the toolbox of a truck.

Thus, six Afghan citizens, asylum seekers in Romania, were found hidden in a truck driven by a Bulgarian citizen, at the Varsand Border Crossing Point (PTF). The truck was loaded with ceramic tiles that were transported to Austria.

According to the Arad Border Police, similar cases were recorded at the Nadlac II border crossing point, where 15 migrants were discovered hidden in two trucks, driven by a Turkish and a Romanian driver, transporting aluminum rollers and various goods to Germany and the Czech Republic.

"During the verifications, the border police established that the two groups were made up of citizens from Afghanistan and Pakistan, asylum seekers in Romania," the Arad Border Police informed on Thursday.

Four migrants from Pakistan and Afghanistan were also found in the Nadlac border checkpoint area.

Also, five migrants were caught near the border close to the Curtici town, and following the investigations "it was established that they intended to cross illegally into Hungary."

In Bihor County, at Bors II crossing point, in a truck driven by a Bulgarian citizen, which transported drinks to Russia, four Afghans, asylum seekers in Romania, were found hidden in the toolbox of the semi-trailer.

In all cases, border police are conducting investigations, Agerpres informs.
The Government members led by Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca have been sworn in, on Thursday, in front of President Klaus Iohannis, in a ceremony that took place at Cotroceni Palace.

During the ceremony at the presidential palace there were Marcel Ciolacu, the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Senate deputy president Alina Gorghiu, the chairman of PNL (National Liberal Party), Florin Citu, the leader of the national minorities parliamentary group, Varujan Pambuccian, the chairman of the Constitutional Court, Valer Dorneanu and state and presidential councilors.

The decree regarding the appointment of the Government led by Nicolae Ciuca was published on Thursday in the Official Gazette.

President Klaus Iohannis signed this decree on Thursday, after the new Cabinet cleared the select committees in Parliament.
The Cotroceni Presidential Palace will light up in orange today to observe the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, agerpres reports.

The Presidential Administration says in a press release that it is joining the "Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now!" campaign on International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. As part of the campaign, which runs from November 25 to December 10, flagship institutions around the world will light up in orange, the colour symbolising the fight against violence against women.

According to the Presidential Administration, the 16 days of activism dedicated to this campaign are designed to raise public awareness and increase public information on violence against women and on gender discrimination, and, as a sign of solidarity, the Cotroceni Presidential Palace will light up in orange at 18:00hrs, EET.In Romania, domestic violence continues to be an alarming problem, made worse by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Romanian Police General Inspectorate, in 2020 approximately 27,000 cases of domestic violence were reported, with 80% of the victims being girls and women."It is extremely important that the victims immediately report any type of aggression, and that each reported case of domestic violence is being dealt with responsibly. At the same time, we have a responsibility, each of us, not to be indifferent to this worrying phenomenon and to encourage the victims to seek help. Public authorities and the public need to work together and develop actual strategies to deter these acts of violence and protect the rights of victims," reads the release of the Presidential Administration.In Romania, the campaign "Orange the World: End Violence against Women Now!" is organised by the International Soroptimist Union of Romania (USIR) and the National Agency for Equal Opportunities for Women and Men (ANES), as part of this year's homonymous global United Nations campaign.
Newly installed Health Minister Alexandru Rafila declared today that the administration of the third COVID shot is important especially for the countries with a vaccination coverage of 70 - 80 percent, while in Romania, where this indicator is just around 40 percent, the top priority is rolling out the first two doses.

"We are talking about the third booster dose, while more than 60 percent of Romania's population has not yet had the first two doses. The priority - and this is the WHO's position - is to vaccinate as much of the population as possible. The third dose is very important for countries with a vaccination coverage of 70 - 80 percent, but for countries where this indicator is 35 - 40 percent it's not the third dose that is top important, but vaccinating those who haven't yet taken the needle, because this is why we record serious cases and deaths," Rafila told a news conference.

Asked about his opinion about the possibility of mandating a booster dose for people traveling to EU countries, Rafila pointed out that this is a proposal from Greece and that it is being analyzed at EU level.

He also mentioned that in December 2020 he got the disease, received the first vaccine dose in March and the second one in April, but not the third.

"Of course, we also need to discuss the doses that are given to children or teenagers up to the age of 18 and whether these provisions apply to them too. If this is something acceptable for adults, because perhaps these parents do not necessarily want to vaccinate their children with the third dose. Things need to be discussed. We need scientific evidence to certify the necessity of these doses, including for those who have recovered from the disease," the Health Minister said.

In his view, the vaccine developed at the end of 2020 could currently have less than 50 percent efficacy for the Delta strain, compared to 90 percent efficacy for the original strain. The intensity of the pandemic waves subsides as herd immunization is achieved by either vaccination or by disease, added Alexandru Rafila.

"Certainly, this disease will become endemic at some point. Now it's epidemic, we have a wave of infection and at some point we will have a circulation of these viruses that will produce a relatively small number of cases in the population. And possibly we will have so-called seasonal epidemic outbreaks, which we could counteract by vaccination, especially for at-risk categories," the Health Minister specified.
The new Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, said on Thursday, upon taking on his term that transparency and sincerity in communication are essential for "regaining confidence" in authorities and the health system.

Rafila said that he wishes for involvement in the decision process of all important actors in the society, whether it is about employers or unions and specified that decisions from the Ministry of Health will not be "authoritarian", but will involve a "participatory" mechanism.

"We must change what has happened in the last year and a half, because in the last year and a half we had an authoritarian behavior," he said.

Rafila added that he will support depolitization and that he is not concerned in any way about the political membership of those who work in the Ministry, but rather of their professionalism and their human nature. Furthermore, he highlighted that he is deeply affected by the hundreds of casualties that were registered daily in Romania.

"It seems incredible that a country in the EU to register the highest number of casualties and we need to be prepared to do what we can so that this does not repeat and to give hope to the people that during 2022 we will also find the road towards normalcy," he also said.

Alexandru Rafila thanked Cseke Attila, who led the Ministry of Health, ad interim, for seriousness and professionalism, adding that he did a lot of important matters, even if he did not publicly communicate them. According to Rafila, these actions will allow to find the best solutions in order to avoid a new pandemic wave, similar to the fourth wave.

"What currently interests us is the partnership with the people that work in the health system, on the one side, and we are also interested in finding the best option, so that we will have the support of the population for public health measures," Rafila declared.
Newly invested Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca "firmly" condemns violence against women and abusive, discriminatory behavior which he considers "intolerable" for a democratic society.

"I strongly condemn violence against women and abusive, discriminatory behavior which is intolerable for a democratic society based on respect for the rights and freedoms of the citizens. The sustained efforts of civil society, together with state authorities, to combat this phenomenon have continued and must be further sustained. The fight against abuse and aggression must be unrelentingly continued by supporting the projects carried out by non-governmental organizations and the more active engagement of state institutions," Ciuca wrote in a Facebook message on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

According to the Prime Minister, the protection of human rights, the fight against violence and abusive, discriminatory behavior, the punishment of those guilty of this phenomenon are responsibilities assumed under the governing program.

"These are firm commitments of the government which I assume with all conviction from the first day of my term as Prime Minister. The citizens expect from the government respect, truth, empathy, fair laws and their correct enforcement. The Executive I will lead as of today has the responsibility to come up with immediate social and economic measures putting the Romanian citizen at their center," Nicolae Ciuca wrote.
President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday at the Cotroceni Palace that putting together the governing coalition has been a far from easy process that required "putting down many egos".

"It wasn't easy. I don't think anyone imagines it was easy for parties that had fought against each other until yesterday to come together in a grand coalition. This required putting down many egos - small and big - for finding common ground and get to today's vote of confidence," the head of the state said after the swearing-in of the new Cabinet.

Iohannis also had a message for the members of the freshly installed government.

"Expectations are high. The Romanians are waiting for you to start addressing the problems listed in the governing program. People are fed up with crises, they are fed up with promises, they want to see facts, they want to see results. I invite you to deliver," Iohannis said.
President Klaus Iohannis on Thursday signed the decree for the promulgation of the Law on Certain Steps to Study Jewish History and the Holocaust.

The law provides for the introduction of the school subject "History of the Jews. The Holocaust" in the framework plans of high school and vocational education, as well as the establishment and awarding of the Constantin Karadja prize.

The piece of legislation stipulates that this school subject is included in the framework plans of high school and vocational education as part of the common core starting with the 2023-2024 school year.

"Teachers who teach the 'History of the Jews. The Holocaust' subject can benefit from professional training and specialized training courses, in the country or abroad," the law states.

According to the law, the National Museum of Jewish History and the Holocaust in Romania, in collaboration with the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania - Mosaic Cult and the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, at the proposal of the Honorary Council, award the annual Constantin Karadja prize on the occasion of October 9, "Holocaust Day".

"The Constantin Karadja prize is awarded to Romanian and foreign citizens, institutions, associations, foundations and other non-governmental organizations in the country and abroad, for special merits in presenting and promoting the history, culture and traditions of the Jewish communities in Romania, the knowledge internally and internationally of the contribution of this national minority to the evolution and modernization of the Romanian society and over time, protecting the memory of Holocaust victims, developing education and research programmes on the Holocaust in Romania, as well as promoting the fight against anti-Semitism," the law reads.
PNL (National Liberal Party) leader Florin Citu on Thursday morning announced that the coalition signed a governing agreement, specifying that it was "a normal agreement."

"It was a normal thing to do, we've signed an agreement of the governing coalition. You saw the content in the previous days, it was published in the media. (...) It's a normal agreement," said Citu.
USR (Save Romania Union) Deputy Dan Barna told the joint sitting of Parliament that President Klaus Iohannis is the "godfather of the collaboration" between PSD (Social Democratic Party) and PNL (National Liberal Party).

During the meeting for the inauguration of the Government, the USR vice-chair congratulated the PSD leader, Marcel Ciolacu, "for the acquisition." He also said that this is the first time that the PNL "willingly and unforced by anyone" is handing over the government.

"It's not a small thing to take the PNL out of government from the position of first violin and put it back as an annex of PSD. And it is not a small thing to convince the winning team to snatch the defeat from the clutches of victory. Because this is what the colleagues from the winning team have done these days. They threw the result of last year's elections on the window and lined up nicely behind your party. You've succeeded, Mr Ciolacu, in something that Ion Iliescu himself was not able to do, you pushed PNL out of history and you have it now in PSD's chest pocket," said Barna, Agerpres informs.
Prime Minister-designate Nicolae Ciuca said his Government will provide predictability and guarantee Romania's stability and development through all measures it will take, agerpres reports.

"Today we are in a moment long awaited by all Romanians, one in which we can finally offer predictability and guarantee Romania's stability and development through all the measures we will take for the good of the citizens," Nicolae Ciuca said on Thursday in Parliament's joint sitting for the investiture vote on the Government proposed by him.
Prime Minister-designate Nicolae Ciuca told Parliament's sitting on Thursday that the Government will ensure observance of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, and, externally, will have as strategic objective Romania's accession to the Schengen Area and consolidation the regional security pillar profile in NATO and the role in the EU.

"We aim for Romania's foreign policy to be coherent, predictable and based on three fundamental pillars: strengthening Romania's role in the European Union, strengthening its NATO profile and strengthening its strategic partnership with the United States. (...) Internationally, Romania's accession to the Schengen Area is a strategic objective with strong implications for the entire security architecture of the EU," Ciuca told Parliament's sitting for the Government investiture.

He added that within NATO "the aim will be to strengthen the profile of the regional security pillar".

"At the same time, externally, our country will continue to actively support the integration efforts in the European Union of the Republic of Moldova and the pro-democratic reform program, based on the Strategic Partnership for European Integration of the Republic of Moldova. Our support is based on the community of language, history and culture, as well as the vision of the common space from the perspective of European integration," the prime minister-designate mentioned.

In regards to justice, Ciuca mentioned that it is necessary to ensure observance of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, "especially considering the priorities arising from Romania's obligations as a member state of the European Union".

"Justice is the power of the state called to achieve an efficient, accessible, impartial and independent public service. A modern, efficient, accessible and quality justice system, adapted to the needs of citizens and the private environment is an important premise for economic development and stability, social development of the country," Ciuca added, Agerpres informs.
National chairman of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Marcel Ciolacu confirmed on Thursday having signed a political agreement among PSD, the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) and the national minority MPs, saying that he was "firmly convinced" that this alliance would last, agerpres reports.

Asked how the prime ministers would rotate on May 25, 2023, Ciolacu said: "Let's get to May 25 first."

He added, however, that he was "firmly convinced" that the alliance would last until then.Asked why the agreement was not signed publicly and if he is ashamed of this alliance, Ciolacu replied: "Has anyone said that?.""I do not remember having signed any public agreement so far," Ciolacu added, noting that he would give details to the press after Parliament cast its vote of confidence on the incoming government.PNL national chairman Florin Citu announced on Thursday morning the signing of a governing agreement of the coalition, calling it a "normal agreement.""That was normal; an agreement of the governing coalition was signed. You saw the content the other day, it was in the media. (...) It is a normal agreement," Citu said.The political agreement among PSD, PNL, UDMR and national minority MPs was signed on Thursday at a ceremony hosted by the office of the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies that had not been publicly announced.
Mayor of Sfantu Gheorghe city Antal Arpad from the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) declared on Thursday that the solidarity tax proposed by his formation could funnel about 1.4 billion euros annually into the state coffers.

The proposition is for a 1 percent tax charged on companies with a yearly turnover higher than one hundred million euros, a category that mainly includes multinationals.

Antal Arpad said that the ruling coalition has not yet approved the proposal, but that UDMR has no intention to give up this project.

"The proposal hasn't yet been agreed in the coalition. (...) We believe that in these times of social, economic, health crisis and so on, it's the rich who must stand in solidarity with the poor and not the poor should be in solidarity with the poor. With this in mind, we consider that the companies with a turnover of at least 100 million euros can shoulder the burden with Romania's population, these are mainly multinationals. If you look at the list, you'll see that the top 20 spots are held by companies in the car-manufacturing sector, energy, trade and so on, these are mostly multinational companies," Antal Arpad told a press conference.

According to him, the 1.4 billion euros collected from the solidarity tax could help cover the state budget deficit.

"We consider that 1 percent of turnover charged as a solidarity tax over a limited period of 2 or maximum 3 years could help the country's budget cope with the social expenditure the Romanian society needs so badly. We are talking at this moment about 316 companies, so 316 companies meet this turnover criterion of at least 100 million euros, and 1 percent of their turnover means almost 1.4 billion euros per year. So, just figure that 1.4 billion euros means almost 7 billion lei, whilst we are running a deficit of 5 billion, we are hard-pressed because we are 5 billion lei short next year, but this could be a solution. We still want this tax to be enforced," said Antal Arpad, who is also the leader of UDMR Sfantu Gheorghe.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took to Twitter today to congratulate Nicolae Ciuca on his investiture as Prime Minister of Romania.

"We will work together with the new Romanian government to find solutions against the pandemic and to implement the National Recovery and Resilience Plan," the EU's chief executive wrote.

The members of the government led by Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca took the oath of office on Thursday before President Klaus Iohannis, in a ceremony held at the Cotroceni Palace, after securing the Parliament's backing by a vote of 318 to 126.
In late 2021 the Swedish Air Force ordered two of the new GlobalEye AEW (airborne early warning)/ELINT (Electronic Intelligence) system to replace its two 1990s era Erieye AEW systems carried in a smaller twin-turboprop Saab 340 aircraft. Both the Erieye radar and associated electronics were designed and built in Sweden. The Erieye AEW system was also available in the Brazilian EMB 145 twin-jet regional aircraft. This 21-ton aircraft is used for Erieye AEW by Brazil, Mexico, and Greece. Most Erieye AEW export customers used the Saab 340 or the larger (22-ton) Saab-2000 turboprop regional airliner.

Globaleye entered service in 2019 and uses the upgraded Erieye ER radar which can detect aircraft over 400 kilometers distant and do so in greater detail. Erieye ER can detect and track more aircraft at one time and better deal with ECM (electronic countermeasures) carried on detected aircraft. Another new feature is the ability to detect ballistic missile launches as well. Globaleye includes a maritime search radar as well in addition to more SIGINT (Signals intelligence) equipment for detecting and identifying a wide range of radars and ECM equipment. Since a combined AEW/maritime search/SIGINT system is heavier and needs more space, as well as operating farther from land, Globaleye is carried in the larger 45-ton Global 6000 aircraft which has a cruising speed of 900 kilometers an hour and endurance of about ten hours. Like the basic Erieye system, Globaleye can be carried in any number of similar twin-engine jet or turboprop aircraft. The two GlobalEye aircraft for Sweden will apparently use the Global 6000 aircraft so the aircraft can stay in the air longer over the Baltic Sea, where Sweden must deal with an increasingly aggressive and well-equipped Russian air force and navy.

While Sweden was the first customer for the Erieye system, the UAE (United Arab Emirates) was the first to order GlobalEye, based on their experience with two Erieye systems they ordered in 2009. The Erieye system is built around an Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) radar which consists of thousands of tiny radars that can be independently aimed in different directions. This is like the AESA radar used on the American JSTARS aircraft, a system that could locate vehicles moving on the ground. The Swedish AESA is cheaper because it's built like a long bar, mounted on top of the aircraft. This means the radar can only see, in a 120-degree arc, off both sides of the aircraft. A 60-degree arc in the front and back is uncovered. The Erieye ER radar can spot large aircraft out to nearly 500 kilometers, and more common fighter-sized aircraft at about 400 kilometers. The UAE used their Erieye aircraft to manage air campaigns, including the one underway in Yemen since early 2015. The primary use for UAE AEW aircraft is to deter an attack by Iran and if that does not work, to manage an aerial campaign against Iran.

With all that in mind, the UAE ordered new Globaleye systems in 2015, while Globaleye was still in development. Given the UAEs experience with the reliability of Erieye, it seemed a good idea to be first in line for the new version. Globaleye completed development and testing in 2019 and the UAE received the first one in early 2020.

At the end of 2020 the UAE ordered two more GlobalEye AEW systems for about $500 million each. All six of the UAE GlobalEye systems use the Bombardier 6000 jet which can stay in the air longer and proved effective in detecting Iranian air and naval activity in the Persian Gulf. The UAE also backs a wider program to link ground and air-based surveillance radars of GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE) into a cooperative surveillance network that would provide all GCC members with better information on that is going on in the skies over their nations and the Persian Gulf in general. Saab told the UAE that they could help with integrating Globaleye data into the new GCC system because both Erieye and Globaleye were designed to be used by NATO members and integrated into the joint NATO air defense system. The 2020 recognition of Israel by the UAE makes possible the incorporation of Israeli data into the GCC system as well.

The first two UAE Erieye systems were carried in the 13-ton Saab 340 airliner, which had a cruising speed of 290 kilometers an hour and was able to stay in the air about five hours per sortie. This was the aircraft used when Erieye was introduced in the late 1990s. Saab had been working on a lightweight AESA AEW radar since the 1980s, as was Israel and the United States. The Erieye ER used in Globaleye was a major upgrade, as well as the addition of maritime search and SIGINT capabilities.

The UAE appreciated the Globaleye using a Canadian Bombardier Global 6000, which is a business jet that normally carries 13 passengers plus a crew of two. The Globaleye version can carry a payload of 2.6 tons which is sufficient to cover a maritime search radar, the Erieye AEW radar and other electronic sensors.
November 23, 2021

In November 2020, the Company communicated that three of the Companys subsidiaries in Switzerland received a notification from the Bundesanwaltschaft (Public Prosecutor Office) in Bern. It concerned a suspicion that from 2005 till 2012 these subsidiaries failed to take all reasonable and necessary organisational measures to prevent the commission of acts of active bribery of foreign public officials during said period.

On this matter, the Swiss public prosecutor has now issued an investigation termination order and a criminal penalty order against the three Swiss subsidiaries, requiring them to pay a total amount of 7.0 million CHF (c. USD 7.6 million).

Erik Lagendijk, Chief Governance and Compliance Officer said: The fact pattern and compliance shortcomings prior to 2012 that led to the Swiss penalty are also covered by the legacy resolutions the Company concluded in the Netherlands (2014), the United States (2017), and Brazil (2018). The termination of the investigation and penalty now also close this old issue in Switzerland on a full and final basis. Today and for many years now, the Company has been implementing substantial measures to ensure that it operates with integrity and fully in line with laws, regulations and with its compliance standards. These measures were also recognised by the Swiss Public Prosecutor Office.

Corporate Profile

The Companys main activities are the design, supply, installation, operation and the life extension of floating production solutions for the offshore energy industry over the full lifecycle. The Company is market leading in leased floating production systems, with multiple units currently in operation.

As of December 31, 2020, the Company employs approximately 4,570 people worldwide spread over offices in our key markets, operational shore bases and the offshore fleet of vessels.

SBM Offshore N.V. is a listed holding company headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It holds direct and indirect interests in other companies.

Where references are made to SBM Offshore N.V. and /or its subsidiaries in general, or where no useful purpose is served by identifying the particular company or companies SBM Offshore or the Company are sometimes used for convenience.

For further information, please visit our website at www.sbmoffshore.com.

The Management BoardAmsterdam, the Netherlands, November 23, 2021

Financial Calendar Date Year Full Year 2021 Earnings February 10 2022 Annual General Meeting April 6 2022 First Quarter 2022 Trading Update May 12 2022 Half Year 2022 Earnings August 4 2022 Third Quarter 2022 Trading Update November 10 2022

For further information, please contact:

Investor RelationsBert-Jaap DijkstraGroup Treasurer and IR

Mobile: +31 (0) 6 21 14 10 17 E-mail: bertjaap.dijkstra@sbmoffshore.com Website: www.sbmoffshore.com

Media RelationsVincent KempkesGroup Communications Director

Mobile: +377 (0) 6 40 62 87 35 E-mail: vincent.kempkes@sbmoffshore.com Website: www.sbmoffshore.com

Disclaimer

This press release contains inside information within the meaning of Article 7(1) of the EU Market Abuse Regulation. Some of the statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are statements of future expectations and other forward-looking statements based on managements current views and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results, performance, or events to differ materially from those in such statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results and performance of the Companys business to differ materially and adversely from the forward-looking statements. Certain such forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as believes, may, will, should, would be, expects or anticipates or similar expressions, or the negative thereof, or other variations thereof, or comparable terminology, or by discussions of strategy, plans, or intentions. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in this release as anticipated, believed, or expected. SBM Offshore NV does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update any industry information or forward-looking statements set forth in this release to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Nothing in this press release shall be deemed an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any securities.

Attachment

Source: SBM Offshore N.V.
MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif., Nov. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kinecta Federal Credit Union proudly hosted its 48th Annual Holiday Food Drive at Jesse Owens Park in Los Angeles on Sunday, November 21. Kinecta made Thanksgiving a little brighter for over 1,000 deserving families selected by Los Angeles-based community organizations by giving them each a bag of traditional Thanksgiving food items along with a $75 grocery store gift card to help complete their holiday meal.

"The holiday season is known as a time of giving and each year Kinecta enthusiastically conducts activities to support the communities where we work and live," said Latrice McGlothin, Executive Director, Kinecta Community Foundation. "As food insecurity rises amid the COVID-19 pandemic, we are delighted to make this holiday season a little easier for deserving families in need. We thank our employees, the community, corporate sponsors, members and individual donors for their support in helping to make our 2021 Holiday Food Drive a success!"

During November, Kinecta collected monetary donations raising over $55,000 from corporate sponsors, members, employees and individual donors. At the event, cars lined up to safely receive their goodie bags in a drive thru environment hosted by more than 75 Kinecta volunteers, including employees, family, friends and vendors, joined by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, prominent Watts activist & Parents of Watts founder, Dr. Sweet Alice Harris, and LA Galaxy forward, Cameron Dunbar.

The 48th Annual Holiday Food Drive successfully supported families selected by community organizations, including: Al Wooten Jr. Youth Center, Athens Park Tiny Tots, Centro de Ninos, Inc., City of Hawthorne Project Gobble, Community's Child, Drew League, El Centro Del Pueblo, El Nido Family Center, Epiphany Church El Monte, Good Faith Baptist Church, GRYD, Hawthorne President's Council, Jefferson Elementary, Jesse Owens Park Community, King/Drew Magnet Medical High School, LAPD Cadets - Southeast Division, Metro LA Region of Los Angeles Church of Christ, N. Pasadena Church of Christ, Our Lady of Victory Elementary School, Parents of Watts, Richstone Family Center, Salvation Army of Compton, South Bay Family Health Center, St. Albert the Great, St. Lawrence Elementary School, St. Odilia's Elementary School, Thomas House Family Shelter, VFW El Monte Post 10218 and Watts/Century Latino Organization.

Special thank you to this year's sponsors that donated $1,000 or more:Affinity Trusts; Appraisal Solutions; Big 5; Cook Solutions Group, Inc.; Cox Automotive; CU Direct; CU Revest; DiVenture Marketing Group; Entrust Datacard; Experian; First American Mortgage Solutions, LLC; Forsyth Howe O'Dwyer Kalb & Murphy; GoodLeap; Iron Mountain Record Management; iSpace; Land Gorilla, Inc.; LPL Financial; Mrs. Cubbison's Foods; Open Lending; Servion, Inc.; Ralphs/Food 4 Less; Styskal, Wiese & Melchione; Skechers USA, Inc.; SWBC; and Symitar.

During 2020 employees of Kinecta and its subsidiaries volunteered over 4,560 hours, donated more than $634,000 to charitable causes and participated in over 145 community events. To learn more about Kinecta's community outreach programs and activities, visit https://www.kinecta.org/community/

About Kinecta Federal Credit UnionKinecta Federal Credit Union is the country's 35th largest credit union, with assets of $6.5 billion and over 270,000 member-owners. Our 800+ employees serve members from 32 branches, a variety of specialty offices, and highly responsive call centers on both coasts. Banking the Southern California area for more than 80 years, with recent expansion to Northern California, New York, and New Jersey, Kinecta offers its members a full range of financial products through the Credit Union and its subsidiaries, Kinecta Wealth Management and Kinecta Insurance Services. Daily Breeze readers have named Kinecta a top South Bay credit union for the past 10 years, and Kinecta was voted Easy Reader's 2020 "Best of the Beach" Credit Union.

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Buy Photo U.S. Forces Korea senior leaders serve Thanksgiving meals for Korean Augmentation to the U.S. Army trainees at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, on Nov. 25, 2021. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)

CAMP HUMPHREYS, South Korea  The Super Bowl of Thanksgiving meals for U.S. troops, which included 3,097 pounds of turkey, was served by a bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation in South Korea on Thursday.

In addition to the turkey, the lavish meal throughout U.S. bases in South Korea included 2,088 pounds of roast beef, 1,251 pounds of steamship beef, 654 pounds of rib-eye steak and 2,449 pounds of ham, according to the 2nd Infantry Division fact sheet.

Sixty Army culinary specialists and 298 contractors prepared the meal for the roughly 28,500 troops, civilian employees and their families with U.S. Forces Korea.

Ice sculptures and cakes greeted the line of U.S. and South Korean troops at the Spartan Warrior Restaurant, a dining facility at Camp Humphreys.

Culinary specialists went through extra lengths to decorate the dining facility because the soldiers are away from their families, according to Sgt. 1st Class Michael Hanspard, a culinary specialist and restaurant manager.

Buy Photo Reps. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, left, and Sarah Jacobs of California, right, serve Thanksgiving meals with a South Korean service member at a dining facility at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, on Nov. 25, 2021. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes) Buy Photo Thanksgiving Day diners were met by ice sculptures and a cake at the Spartan Warrior Restaurant at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, on Nov. 25, 2021. (David Choi/Stars and Stripes)

This is a culinary specialists Super Bowl every year, Hanspard told Stars and Stripes on Thursday. This is what we want to throw down on. We really take pride in what we do, in terms of presentation and the taste of the food.

A delegation of five House representatives  Democratic Reps. Mark Takano of California, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, Colin Allred of Texas, Sara Jacobs of California and Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina -- also helped serve meals to the troops.

Come get your vegetables, Slotkin, a member of the House Armed Services Committee and a former CIA analyst, shouted as she served mixed vegetables to a line of service members.

It was great to meet some of our service members, Takano, chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said to Stars and Stripes. Its always a great pleasure to take the Thanksgiving holiday with members of Congress, who give up time with their families, to come and be with our troops, who are also giving up time with their families.

Mace, a member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee and a graduate of The Citadel Military College of South Carolina, toured the facility and stopped to chat with fellow South Carolinians.

Its just an honor to spend time with our soldiers who are stationed overseas, many of them dont get to go home that frequently, Mace said. Its an honor to be out here with our men and women in uniform who do so much for us.

The delegation visited Japan earlier in the week and met with U.S. troops stationed on Okinawa. There, they warned about Chinas rising regional influence.

Theres a growing sense of a new reality with China, a stronger China, a more equipped China, a China that is closing the innovation gap, Takano told Stars and Stripes on Tuesday.
Corey Mink (right) holds 3-month-old daughter Charlotte for the first time as wife Julie and daughter Olivia, 4, welcome him home in time for the holidays at Naval Station Mayport on Nov. 24, 2021. (Fran Ruchalski, The Florida Times-Union /TNS)

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (Tribune News Service)  Travis Hensley gave a final salute, then became the first to bound down the gangway of the USS The Sullivans on its homecoming, his seabag with him as he hit the pier at Naval Station Mayport.

Within seconds, the bag was replaced in his arms with 3-month-old Alexander, 1-year-old son and wife Bryanna, greeting them with hugs after returning from a 7-month world cruise with Britains Royal Navy.

I am elated to see my new son and the rest of my family, the chief petty officer said Wednesday just in time for Thanksgiving. Alex is great and I missed him so much. He looks so cute in his sailors suit. It is perfect timing and I am grateful for the holidays.

We are just overwhelmed, so excited and feeling so blessed that hes coming home, his wife said. Hes meeting his new baby too, so we are just so excited to have him home and get back to life. We are going to celebrate Thanksgiving and just spend time as a family.

Further down the pier, Jessica Nelson and her children spotted husband/father Anthony Nelson on an upper deck. Minutes later, it was a hug-fest after a 7-month absence at sea.

I am pretty happy to see everybody and glad to be home, especially this little one, said Nelson, a logistics specialist, as he gazed at 9-month-old daughter Brynlee. I am super happy for that and glad to be home for the holidays, be with the kids and eat lots of food, right guys?

Her second word was Dadda, added Jessica, joined by their other children Blake and Bryce. I am so excited for him to hear her say Dadda in person. She absolutely knows her daddy, doesnt she?

Historic name, historic deployment

The 505-foot-long ships name honors the memories of the five Sullivan brothers who died when a Japanese torpedo sunk their light cruiser 79 years ago.

The guided-missile destroyer is the second U.S. Navy vessel to honor George, Francis, Madison, Joseph and Albert Sullivan, all killed on Nov. 13, 1942, as the USS Juneau sank during the battle for Guadalcanal. The brothers served on the same ship despite a Navy wartime policy to separate family members.

To honor them, the current ship flies a red-bordered white flag with five gold stars on it, flapping stiffly in the wind under the American flag on its main mast as it came in Wednesday.

Escorted in by a Navy fireboat after its 57,500-mile deployment, the 30-year-old Arleigh Burke Class ship pulled up quayside with a shamrock decorating its aft funnel as a sailor dressed as a leprechaun waved with his 310 crewmates as they docked.

The Sullivans and Dutch frigate HNLMS Evertsen were deployed in May to work with the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeths strike group, part of multinational operations and joint training exercises, the Navy said. Along with the Royal Navy Type-45 destroyers that embarked with the Queen Elizabeth, the Sullivans provided air defense protection for the strike group.

The destroyer and her 280-strong crew have made a significant contribution, both in the pre-deployment exercising off the coast of Scotland last spring and throughout the CSGs deployment since May, according to a U.K. Ministry of Defense statement.

USS The Sullivans played a key role in numerous exercises from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean and back, including countries like Japan, Republic of Korea and Singapore, as well as NATO.

Cmdr. James Diefenderfer Jr. said they were very fortunate to be part of that deployment, saying it was decades in the making.

It shows the partnership and that we are allies through and through from here all the way across the world, Diefenderfer said. We proved that, sailing all the way to Guam and back and its a significant event.

So thankful to be home for holidays

This means everything to the crew to get home in time for Thanksgiving, the commander said.

Seeing the skyline of Jacksonville as we were coming in was a little surreal, like Oh yeah, this is the end and weve finished the deployment and coming home safe, he said. Then seeing all the families on the pier, there were a lot of not-dry eyes on board as they started to cheer for us. I appreciate all the families coming out.

Awaiting the arrival along with hundreds of family members on the sunny, chilly day was Garry Cohn, the Navy League of the United States liaison with this destroyer. He also served on the first USS The Sullivans just before it was decommissioned in 1965. So he is happy that the latest ship and its crew just had a historic deployment and made it home for Thanksgiving.

I wish I could have been aboard that ship. Its an opportunity of a lifetime: a world cruise, he said. I never had the opportunity. ... I am so proud of the men and women who serve aboard the ship.

As the ship hove into view in the channel, family members cheered and waved as the crew lined every deck. One boy carried a sign with a list for his returning father: Hug and kiss me, play with me, read to me, but first, kiss Mommy! Another boy ran down the pier, waving multiple Navy and U.S. flags as he yelled Hes never leaving again!

On the decks, many sailors had bouquets of flowers as welcome-home gifts, brought out earlier by tugboats. Some on cellphones spotted spouses or family and waved at them, while Julie Mink was searching for her husband, Electronic Technician 1st Class Corey Mink.

We are excited and nervous and happy and tears are starting to come, every emotion you can think of, Mink said, holding his newborn daughter, Charlotte. We are thankful; definitely thankful, with good timing.



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A migrant from Afghanistan warms himself on a fire at a migrant camp in Lesbos, Greece. (Giorgos Moutafis/The Washington Post)

PARIS  At least 31 migrants are presumed to have died while trying to cross the English Channel from France to Britain on Wednesday, making it one of the deadliest incidents on a dangerous route.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said the dead included five women and a small girl, while two people survived. One person was still missing Wednesday night, as a search-and-rescue operation involving several ships and helicopters continued.

"Today is a [day of] great national mourning for France, and for Europe, and humanity," Darmanin said.

Both French and British officials focused the blame on human traffickers. Four suspects who might be connected to the incident had been apprehended, Darmanin said.

The Organization for Migration said Wednesday's drowning amounted to the largest known loss of life in the Channel since the U.N.-affiliated group started recording data in 2014. At least 15 more people have died while trying to cross at other points in 2021.

Since 1999, more than 300 migrants have died attempting to cross, according to the Institute of Race Relations, a British think tank.

Wednesday's incident occurred off the coast of Calais, France, in the Dover Strait, where the Channel narrows to 21 miles across. That's one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. It can also be dangerous for people in small flimsy boats when hammered by strong currents and high winds.

Wednesday's weather forecast, though, was for fairly calm seas and light and variable winds. Local fishermen told Reuters that more migrants than usual had tried to undertake the crossing, to take advantage of the conditions, though the water remained extremely cold.

Officials on Wednesday did not release any information about the nationality of those who drowned. Aid workers say many of the people who try to make the journey are fleeing conflict  in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Eritrea, Yemen and elsewhere. Some want to get to Britain to reunite with family, or because they speak English and hope that will help them find work.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex called the incident a "tragedy" and condemned human traffickers who "exploit the distress and misery" of migrants.

French authorities opened an investigation into "aggravated manslaughter" and other potential charges, AFP reported.

French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement that "France will not let the Channel become a cemetery." He called for more action at the European level, including an emergency meeting of European ministers and an "immediate reinforcement" of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency's resources.

From Downing Street, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called the drownings "appalling."

"What this shows is that the gangs who are sending people to sea in these dangerous crafts will literally stop at nothing," Johnson said.

He added that efforts to slow the human smuggling by France, with $70 million in new funding by Britain to help patrol the beaches, "haven't been enough."

"Our offer is to increase our support, but also to work together with our partners on the beaches concerned, on the launching grounds for these boats," Johnson said.

"Because there is no doubt at all that the gangs concerned, unless they are shown that their business model won't work, that they can't simply get people over the Channel from France to the U.K., they will continue to deceive people, to put people's lives at risk and, as I say, to get away with murder," he continued.

In his statement, Macron defended French efforts to date, saying that more than 1,500 traffickers had been caught in the region since the beginning of the year.

France's interior minister also called the British government's spending on stopping Channel smugglers "minimal."

Drowning at sea in the English Channel is not the only way that migrants have died trying to reach Britain. Others have been killed trying to board trucks, containers and trains, traveling either via ship or through the Channel Tunnel.

In 2019, 39 Vietnamese migrants were found dead in a shipping container, having suffocated on their journey by sea ferry and truck hauler, from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Purfleet in southeast England. Two of the smugglers were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 20 and 27 years.

Pham Thi Tra My, 26, was among the victims. She sent a heartbreaking text message to her mother when she was in the container, en route to England. "Mom, I love you. I'm dying, I can't breathe," she wrote.

Nearly three times as many migrants have crossed by sea this year compared with last year. Earlier this month, 1,185 people ventured across in a new daily record that the British Home Office described as "unacceptable."

The influx of migrants has turned into a point of contention in the post-Brexit tussle between Paris and London.

Conservative Party lawmakers have urged the British government to "take back control" of the Channel. Critics have compared the scene to the U.S.-Mexico border, decrying what they see as a too-soft approach to illegal immigration.

In response, Home Secretary Priti Patel recently authorized tough new tactics to push boats back toward France. That policy, however, has not been implemented. Such aggressive moves could violate maritime law and endanger lives, if migrant vessels were unseaworthy and in distress.

Natalie Elphicke, a Conservative lawmaker for Dover, called Wednesday's incident an "absolute tragedy" and said it highlighted why "saving lives at sea starts by stopping the boats entering the water in the first place."

"As winter is approaching the seas will get rougher, the water colder, the risk of even more lives tragically being lost greater," she said.

Pro-Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, now a host on GB News, has warned that Johnson's government is ignoring the crossings and opening England's beaches to illegal immigration.

In a column in the Daily Telegraph on Monday, Farage warned, "the migrant crisis is out of control, and the Prime Minister doesn't seem to care."

As it turns out, Farage himself was out in a boat in the English Channel on Wednesday, filming migrant vessels and tweeting, as he prepared for an evening broadcast.

Ahead of its exit from the European Union last year, Britain deployed military drones to surveil people in dinghies trying to cross. On the other side, French police have cleared makeshift camps where hundreds of migrants had lived on the northern coast, while aid workers urge authorities to find housing alternatives.

Responding to the increase in recent crossing attempts, a sporting goods company last week stopped selling kayaks in its shops in northern France.

Adam and Booth reported from London. Ellen Francis in London contributed to this report.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic pose during their meeting in Sochi, Russia, Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo/AP)

MOSCOW - A Russian prosecutor Thursday called on the Supreme Court to abolish one of Russias most prominent human rights groups, the International Memorial Society, part of a comprehensive crackdown on all such groups in the country.

The International Memorial Society is renowned for researching and memorializing the Soviet-era executions and imprisonment of dissidents. Its human rights wing, Memorial Human Rights Center, exposes the current abuses by Russian authorities and played a leading role in revealing military atrocities during the two Chechen wars in the mid-1990s and early 2000s.

Under the tightening authoritarian rule of President Vladimir Putin, Memorial has been under pressure for years, but the bid to close it down shocked global human rights advocates and observers of Russia.

Both wings of the organization have been declared foreign agents, and must meet onerous requirements, including putting foreign agent warnings on all published materials, as well as tough reporting rules on finances.

Prosecutor Dmitry Vagurin on Thursday accused the International Memorial Society of deliberately and systematically concealing its foreign agent status by failing to tag all items with the necessary labels, Russian media reported.

He argued that liquidating the group was a proportionate measure. The organization argues it has taken strenuous efforts to meet requirements.

The prosecution argued that Memorial violated the rights and freedoms of citizens, namely the right to freedom of information.

Memorial advocate Grigory Vaipan told the court that prosecutors had found an insignificant share of Memorials materials that did not carry the label.

Human Rights Watch spokeswoman Tanya Lokshina recently called the move to shutter Memorial an outrageous assault on the jugular of Russias civil society, and European diplomats have expressed their alarm.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned the move on Twitter earlier this month, saying, Russia must end the lawsuits and stop misusing its law on foreign agents to harass, stigmatize, and silence civil society.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Monday he was stunned by the moves to close the organization, while the European Unions foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said it would be an irreparable loss.

The Memorial Human Rights Center was declared a foreign agent in 2014, a tag its supporters say recalls the stigmatizing Soviet-era designation enemy of the state.

The other wing, the International Memorial Society, was placed on the register of foreign agents in 2016 and has since faced police raids and repeated court fines over improper labeling claims.

Lokshina said Russian authorities last year broadened the law on foreign agents, meaning that almost any activist or civic organization could be declared a foreign agent. Authorities use the law as a tool of repression to restrict space for civic activity and penalize critics, including human rights groups, she added.

The court Thursday adjourned the hearing until Dec. 14.

Memorial was founded In the late 1980s - during the final years of the Soviet Union - by some of Russias most renowned rights advocates, including Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov, a physicist-turned-dissident who had been arrested and exiled from Moscow by Soviet authorities in 1980.

The organization began setting up branches in 1987 and was formally established in January 1989, after Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachevs reforms.

At that time and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a mood swept the country that the abuses of the KGB secret police in Soviet times must be remembered, so that such crimes would never be repeated.

In August 1991, Russians tore down a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, a former head of Soviet intelligence. After the fall of the Soviet Union, access to the KGB archives was opened up, although for personal materials, scholars needed to obtain permission from prisoners or their relatives.

Memorial delved into the archives, painting a comprehensive portrait of lives of people consigned to the gulag, or Soviet prison camp system, and Soviet-era abuses.

As president, Putin, a former KGB officer, has curbed freedom of speech and civil liberties, and launched a far-reaching crackdown on the opposition and political activists. He has also changed the constitution so that he can now rule until 2036.

Critics of the regime, such as Putins main political rival Alexei Navalny, who was poisoned in a failed state assassination attempt according to the State Department, have been jailed. Navalnys political organization was declared extremist and banned. Major opposition figures were also barred from running for elections.

Activists, human rights lawyers and independent journalists have fled into exile to avoid imprisonment, and members of religious groups such as the Jehovahs Witnesses have been branded extremists, raided and jailed.
Amid another pandemic surge in Michigan, federal officials granted a request from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to send staff to support beleaguered hospital workers.

The aid comes as Michigan remains a national pandemic hot spot: Approximately 1 in 5 hospitalized Michiganders has COVID-19, and the state continues to lead the nation in cases.

"In the last seven days, no other state or territory has reported a higher inpatient bed utilization than Michigan," reads a portion of a report issued this week by the state health department.

The federal plan involves sending two, 22-person military teams from the U.S. Department of Defense to hospitals in Dearborn and Grand Rapids. The teams include doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists. They are due to arrive Monday for a 30-day stint in the state.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs also opened up beds at its Detroit hospital for local COVID-19 patients, granting a request for help from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. Michigan also will receive an additional 800 monoclonal antibody therapies, a successful method for treating people already infected with the coronavirus.

Im grateful that the federal government has granted our request to provide much-needed relief to the health care personnel who have remained on the frontlines of this pandemic, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement.

Right now, our doctors and nurses are reporting the vast majority of their patients are unvaccinated or have not yet received a booster dose. We can all do our part to help reduce the strain on our hospital systems by getting vaccinated, making an appointment to get a booster dose, and continuing to take precautions to keep ourselves and loved ones safe.

The federal medical teams are going to Beaumont Health in Dearborn and Spectrum Health Butterworth hospital in Grand Rapids. The Dearborn hospital reported a 94% bed occupancy rate, while Butterworth reported a 92% rate.

Leaders from both institutions thanked the state and federal governments for help during this crisis.

The virus has exhausted our teams and resulted in unprecedented staffing challenges at Beaumont Health and health systems across the state," said Beaumont Health CEO John Fox.

"This pandemic is not over by any means. We ask everyone to please get vaccinated. And, if youre eligible, get a booster shot."

Hospital leaders pleaded for this assistance earlier in the week.

"Across the state, resilient and dedicated healthcare workers in hospitals stand ready to care for emergency medical needs, but the reality is most hospitals throughout the state have more patients in their emergency departments than they do available rooms and staff to care for them," read part of a statement issued by the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

"This results in long wait times, patients being placed in hallways or conference rooms, and diverting patients away from a hospital because there is no physical room or medical staff available to accept more patients."

Whitmer and her administration have repeatedly called on Michiganders to get vaccinated, wear masks and follow other mitigation measures. But they have eschewed mandates for months, despite previously arguing for their efficacy.

Now, Whitmer and Department of Health and Human Services Director Elizabeth Hertel say most Michiganders have the ability to get a vaccine and a vaccine booster, when eligible, and to wear masks. It falls on them to do so.

Hospitals are at capacity across the state, particularly in Metro Detroit and West Michigan, and this is taking a tremendous toll on our health care workers, Hertel said in a statement.

We are working hard to give them support, but they also need every Michigander to do their part by getting vaccinated, wearing a mask in public indoor settings regardless of vaccination status, social distancing and staying home and getting tested if they have symptoms.

Boosters are crucial for people who are more than six months out from their last vaccine dose, according to state and federal health experts. The necessity for boosters is demonstrated in the relatively small but increasing number of breakthrough cases in Michigan. State data shows between Oct. 14 and Nov. 12, 28% of cases, 29% of hospitalizations and 25% of deaths were among people who were fully vaccinated.

About 55% of eligible Michigan residents are fully vaccinated, according to the state health department. Although Michiganders 5 through 11 years old recently became eligible for the vaccine, less than 13% have gotten their first dose.

Michigan reported nearly 1,000 ongoing outbreaks this week, including 140 new outbreaks tied to schools.



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U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., departs from the Senate Chambers in the U.S. Capitol on July 21, 2021, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/TNS) (Anna Moneymaker, Getty Images/TNS)

WASHINGTON (Tribune News Service)  When progressive House Democrats fought a vote to pass aid for Israels Iron Dome defense shield, the outrage among both mainstream Democrats and Republicans boiled over.

Florida Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch asserted that the opposition permitted the dismantling of the one Jewish state in the world.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee labeled the progressives as anti-Israel radicals.

In the end, just 4% of House Democrats  eight in total, along with one Republican  Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie  voted against the $1 billion defense appropriation in September.

But in the two months since then, the Senates taken no action to finalize passage.

And Jewish Democrats are largely blaming one man: Rand Paul.

That same level of outrage has not been directed toward this one senator: Rand Paul, said Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. Rand Pauls hold is far more consequential than those eight no votes put together.

This week, the JDCA blasted an email to its national list of around 25,000, lambasting Paul and urging its members to mobilize against his position.

Every Democratic Senator supports this funding, but Israel still has not received this crucial aid because of Republican obstruction.

Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell are abdicating their responsibility to stop Rand Paul from blocking these funds, demonstrating their blatant hypocrisy on this issue, reads the missive.

A second group, Democratic Majority for Israel, has also targeted Paul this week.

Paul objected to unanimous consent passage of the funding in an attempt to extract a condition that the $1 billion for Israel come out of the $3.6 billion remaining allocated for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, which the U.S. military departed in August. (In the Senate, any single senator can hold up another senators request.)

That money was appropriated before the Talibans takeover of the country and Paul wants to ensure those dollars arent spent on a faction that America was at war with for 20 years.

President Joe Bidens administration has frozen Afghanistans assets and said it would continue to deny the Taliban funding, but hasnt ruled out eventually sending money to the regime depending on its actions and commitments it makes to the international community.

The only people standing in the way of funding Iron Dome are the Democrats who are absurdly blocking Dr. Pauls GOP-supported efforts to fund it with money that would otherwise end up in the hands of the Taliban, said Paul spokeswoman Kelsey Cooper.

The JDCAs Soifer calls that position baseless and laughable, noting that the remaining funds allocated to Afghanistan are being used primarily for finalizing Americas withdrawal and the resettlement of Afghan refugees.

It is not going to the Taliban, she said.

And if many Republicans support Pauls move, they arent vocalizing it.

A spokesman for Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell did not respond to an inquiry on whether hes spoken to Paul about releasing his hold on the funding. And Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told Politico last month if Pauls hold isnt released theyll just have to use the legislative process. Theres probably 90-plus votes for this, he said at the time.

The most likely outcome? The Iron Dome funding gets stuck into a larger end-of-the-year omnibus spending bill that will ultimately pass at the end of December.

Paul hasnt indicated hed go so far to object to this process and risk shutting down the government over funding. Israels Iron Dome defense system protects its people from more than 90 percent of rockets launched by Hamas, according to one estimate.

Soifers central argument is that the continued U.S. role in that defense shouldve been expedited sooner.

2021 McClatchy Washington Bureau.

Visit at mcclatchydc.com.

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UPDATE 12.40pm: Judith Collins has been ousted as leader of the National Party.

Collins has confirmed the news on Twitter, saying she is now pleased to say she is just the MP for Papakura again.

Its been a privilege to take over the leadership of NZ National Part during the worst of times and to do so for 16 months, she says on Twitter.

It has taken huge stamina and resolve, & has been particularly difficult because of a variety of factors. I knew when I was confided in by a female colleague regarding her allegation of serious misconduct against a senior colleague, that I would likely lose the leadership by taking the matter so seriously. If I hadnt, then I felt that I wouldnt deserve the role. I didnt ask for the allegation to be given to me.

I am proud of the support I received from Dr Shane Reti, a man of principle, and I will continue to advocate, not only for Papakura, but for those who have no voice.

A big thank you to the wonderful staff in the National Leaders Office, my Papakura Office, National Party members & my wonderful colleagues. Im so pleased that I can spend more time with my family & friends & I will not miss the gruelling media schedule.

According to Stuff, the National leader has been rolled after a caucus meeting this morning following last nights demotion of Tauranga MP and former leader Simon Bridges.

Bridges was demoted and stripped of all portfolios over allegations of an inappropriate comment made five years ago at a party function.

It's understood the comment was made to Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean, who today wouldn't comment to media.

RNZ political editor Jane Patterson has confirmed that Dr Shane Reti is the interim leader of the National Party.

More to follow

PREVIOUSLY: 11.30AM: The National Party are still locked in a caucus meeting following last night's chaos.

Simon Bridges was demoted and stripped of all portfolios over allegations of an inappropriate comment made five years ago at a party function.

It's understood the comment was made to Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean, who today wouldn't comment to media.

Both National Party leader Judith Collins and Bridges are expected to speak in separate press conferences after the caucus meeting.

Earlier today, National MP Simon O'Connor said Collins must resign and there must be a change of leadership immediately.

He told Morning Report he will not work with Collins and will hand over all his portfolios.

Bridges also hit back this morning saying Collins would go to any length to hold on to her leadership of the National Party.

"What we saw yesterday was truly desperate stuff from Judith Collins."

Follow all the latest news on it here:

EARLIER:

National Party leader Judith Collins is speaking to media after a backlash to her sudden demotion of Simon Bridges.

Collins was due to be joined by deputy leader Shane Reti, along with Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean, who made the complaint in early 2017.

Collins demoted Bridges to the back benches over a five-year-old complaint about lewd comments at a party function.

Bridges hit back this morning saying it was "truly desperate stuff" from Judith Collins who would go to any length to hold on to her leadership.

MP Simon O'Connor, who is Bridges' brother-in-law, says there must be an immediate change of leadership, saying: "The way that this has been handled is just outright appalling".

National MP Barbara Kuriger says she had lots of questions, and the state of the party is pretty disappointing.

-RNZ.
The MP at the centre of last nights allegation of serious misconduct against Tauranga MP Simon Bridges, which ultimately led to the demise of National leader Judith Collins today, has spoken out.

Jacqui Dean, the MP for Waitaki, says in a statement that comments made by Bridges five years ago have resurfaced in her mind recently but that Bridges has reiterated his apology.

About five years ago, Simon Bridges made remarks that upset me at the time, says Dean.

They were not about me, but they were inappropriate and not something I wanted to hear.

At the time there was an apology, but subsequently it has continued to play on my mind and with the recent reviews that have occurred in Parliament the feelings have been brought back up.

What matters to me is that all of us have a clear understanding of what behaviour we should expect in a modern workplace environment.

Simon and I have spoken a number of times over the past few hours and he has reiterated his apology.

In a statement last night, Collins announced that Bridges had been demoted and relieved of his portfolio responsibilities due to the allegation.

However, after a caucus meeting this morning, Collins was issued with a motion of no confidence, says new interim leader Dr Shane Reti.

He says the caucus was "concerned" with the content of the media release issued by Collins last night and the process.

That motion was successful and Collins confirmed she was no longer leader of the National party on her Twitter account.

Dean is now hoping for privacy regarding the incident.

As Im sure can be appreciated, the publicity around this has been upsetting and I ask that my privacy is respected on this, she says.
A further two schools in the Bay of Plenty have positive Covid-19 cases among students.

Tauranga Intermediate School and Te Puke High School have sent letters to parents and caregivers today detailing cases of Covid-19 among their student base.

In a letter addressed to parents and whanau this morning, Tauranga Intermediate principal Cameron Mitchell confirms a student has tested positive and is currently self-isolating.

A confirmed case has been identified in our Tauranga Intermediate School community, reads a post on the schools Facebook page.

Students and staff who are part of Tawa House at the school are considered close contacts. The student was not a bus user, so those using the bus for school are not considered close contacts either.

The school has remained open under official advice from the Ministry of Health.

I have spoken with the Ministry of Health this morning and their advice was that we stay open, says the principal in the Facebook post.

Our school is staying open based on international and local evidence and experience, the risk of Covid-19 transmission within school settings is considered low. This means that it is no longer necessary for the school to immediately close when a case has been identified as infectious while at school.

All Tawa students who have been in class and in the hall with the affected case have been contacted and asked to go home and isolate.

They will all receive direct instructions from the Ministry of Health later today regarding testing requirements and will not return to school until they have completed their isolation and testing requirements.

Cameron also asks students and parents to be vigilant for Covid-19 symptoms, get vaccinated if possible and that speculation on social media remains at a minimum.

I realise that these are stressful times for everyone and (I) encourage families to be pragmatic in their approach.

Tauranga Intermediate principal Cameron Mitchell has advised parents the risk remains low. Image: Google Maps.

A letter from Te Puke High School to parents confirms a year 13 student at the school has tested positive.

However, the student was not infectious when at school.

These are the latest cases of Covid-19 to be linked to schools in the Tauranga area.

Yesterday saw cases at Mount Intermediate School and Te Puna School communicated to parents and students. Aquinas College have also had a positive case associated with an adult volunteer of a sports team.

The risk to all schools is still considered low and the Ministry of Health informed SunLive this morning they are working with schools in the area to facilitate the best public health measures.
White Ribbon Day - an international day that encourages people to stand up against violence towards women and children started early this morning in Mount Maunganui.

To mark the day, a dawn service was held at the Mauao summit next to the memorial for Monica Cantwell, a British backpacker who was murdered here more than 30 years ago.

Buddy Mikaere organises the ceremony each year to remember Monica, and all women and children who suffer violence and abuse.

The service was attended by more than 30 people, including Tauranga City Council commissioner Anne Tolley, and Tauranga Womens Refuge manager Hazel Hape.

Anne read out New Zealands shameful statistics, saying one in three New Zealand women had suffered violence from an intimate partner, and one in five had been subjected to some form of sexual abuse. With many of these crimes going unreported, the figures were likely to be much higher.

This is not acceptable, and we must ask ourselves, is this the New Zealand we want to live in?

She adds that violence did not always take the form of physical abuse, but included psychological and emotional abuse towards women.

Hazel Hape tells the group that front line workers at the Refuge see first-hand how widespread domestic violence is within the region.

I spent most of yesterday supporting a wahine who had nearly been strangled to death in front of our two babies, she says.

People turn away, or rather not talk about it, but we have to.

Tauranga Womens Refuge manager Hazel Hape speaking at the dawn service.

She acknowledges that White Ribbon Day was started by men who wanted to help stem the tide of femicide and abuse towards women, and she welcomed the tane who had come to attend today.

The perpetrators can change, she says.

Often it comes through generations but change is possible so we have to support those men too, as well as protecting our women. It is not just up to us in the field, or the police, but every single person in the community - mum, dad, koro, aunties, cousins, friends - look around you and if you see violence, dont just turn away and tell yourself its their business.

Its your business too. We all have responsibility for changing these terrible statistics.

Hazel placed white flowers from the Mamuka bush that surrounds Monicas memorial. With two pohutukawa trees guarding the spot, when Waiari and Peri Kohu lead the waiata, a tui landed near the memorial.

Buddy says it is a day to reflect on what role we can play.

The tribute to Monica Cantwell on Mauao.

It is a beautiful spot to show Monica and her family that we will always remember her, and all the other women killed, he says.

And that we are trying to do better - theres so much more that needs to be done. Its a good day to reflect on how we can do better and what can we do to address these high levels of violence against women, says Buddy.

This evening a fundraising dinner and auction is being held at The Tauranga Club on Devonport Road. Guest speaker is Phil Paikea, a former gang member who was violent towards his girlfriend.

Phil will talk about how he turned his life around and now works as an anti-violence advocate with male perpetrators.

To read about Phils story click here.
The Reserve Bank has raised the official cash rate for the second time in two months to counter growing inflation pressures and signalled more rises next year.

It raised the OCR by 25 basis points (a quarter of a percentage point) to 0.75 per cent, as expected, because of strongly rising prices, a hot housing market, and tight labour market.

The RBNZ's Monetary Policy Committee acknowledges the current outbreak of Covid and the dampening effect of lockdowns on the economy, but says it was worried inflation, which it forecast would head towards six per cent a year, would get entrenched.

"These immediate relative price shocks risk generating more generalised price rises given the current domestic capacity constraints."

It says the underlying economy was strong and performing above "its current potential", in other words in danger of overheating.

The RBNZ started its tightening cycle last month lifting the OCR from a record low, saying the economy no longer needed the emergency stimulus.

It says it needed to remove the stimulus of low rates to meet its target of maximum employment and inflation anchored around two percent.

"Further removal of monetary policy stimulus is expected over time given the medium term outlook for inflation and employment," the committee says.

In attached economic and financial forecasts, the RBNZ signalled a timetable of OCR rises to around 2.5 per cent over the next two years.

The ANZ and ASB banks were quick out of the blocks, raising some of their deposit and lending rates by some or all of the OCR increase.

Economists say the RBNZ statement was balanced and less aggressive than might have been expected, and the economic and interest rate forecasts generally in line with the consensus.

"It is still comparatively early days, but the resilience being shown by the NZ economy to date has likely increased the comfort of the RBNZ that Covid-19 has not caused a significant degree of economy-wide or labour market scarring," says ASB senior economist Mark Smith.

He expects a steady series of rate rises to take the cash rate to 2 percent by the end of 2022.

However, Infometrics senior economist Brad Olsen called the RBNZ decision "birdbrained" and its policy approach "spineless".

"Inflation is set to remain higher for longer, at a time when all signs point towards the need to remove emergency monetary stimulus and dampen rampant demand," says Brad.

"Today was the day for a proactive 50 basis point raise."

The lack of action now raised the risk the RBNZ would have to be more aggressive with rate rises next year, he says.

The New Zealand dollar and wholesale interest rates eased as the RBNZ action and statement was not as hawkish as some had been betting.

- Gyles Beckford/RNZ
National MP Simon Bridges has spoken about the allegations against him that ultimately led to the end of Judith Collins' tenure as leader, saying he is not ruling out taking another tilt at the leadership.

Bridges was demoted and stripped of all portfolios last night over allegations of an inappropriate comment made to Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean five years ago at a party function.

Collins today lost a vote of no-confidence and Dr Shane Reti was named as interim leader.

Speaking afterwards, Bridges clarified his version of the events surrounding the allegations.

"Five or six years ago the National Party caucus had a full day at Premier House, he says.

At lunchtime I was out talking with a number of members of Parliament and at some point Jacqui Dean joined that. We discussed our wives, our children, I can remember talking about the fact I had two boys, and I wanted a girl.

"I engaged in some old wives' tales about that and how to have a girl and I entirely accept and am regretful of that day because I acknowledge that some of what I said was clearly inappropriate."

He says he has since apologised to Dean.

"Bill English, who at that time was deputy Prime Minister called me into his office and discussed this. He made clear that Jacqui Dean was offended, deeply offended, by what had been said. I was unaware of that but very regretful and apologised for that and learned a valuable lesson at that time.

"I then went and apologised fulsomely to Jacqui Dean and she accepted that apology. I regret what I said - I wasn't aware of its impact on Jacqui. Now I have certainly been made aware of its significant effect."

He says he had offered an apology again today, and shared her desire for a modern inclusive workplace and work environment.

He says Collins made a mistake in issuing the press release last night.

"I said it was a desperate move, he says.

I stand by that, that's my view, and she shouldn't have sent out that press release.

"I made it clear this morning... that I didn't have confidence in Judith Collins. I was - let's put it euphemistically - very unhappy with the press release last night. There had been a very brief, very poor process from Judith Collins where I had not been informed of what the matter was.

"I thought it was a poor process, I thought it lacked any due process coming from a lawyer."

He would not rule out taking another tilt at the leadership, saying he would consider it over the next day or two.

"I want to consider that over the next day or two. I think today in particular I'm an older, possibly wiser guy than I was - certainly five or six years ago, but even a couple of years ago when I was leader of the National Party.

"I do think I have a sense of what New Zealand needs at this time but let's think that through. I'm going to think that through over the next day.

He gave assurances his statements over the past days about having no intention to stand for the leadership had at that time been genuine.

"There wasn't a vacancy, he explains.

I was genuine in my clear statements ... about not having an intention to stand with where things were at. That's changed. I'm going to consider it.

"I work with anyone, I think, within reason. I could work with various coalition partners if that was the privilege that National had - and we're a wee way from that at this time, and I could work with my caucus colleagues."

He says Collins' leadership was during a time of rebuilding and she deserved some credit for that.

"I've been the leader of the National party, it's a tough job, and I acknowledge - although we've had many many differences - Judith Collins in doing that role, and giving it her all.

"I think it will be remembered as a difficult time, we weren't as on top of the issues that matter to New Zealanders and the solutions as perhaps we could have been, but it was also a time of rebuilding and Judith deserves some credit for that."

He also has some warnings for whoever it was took over her role however.

"I do know the toll it takes and I do know that National is building off a very low base ... there is a huge amount of work to do for whoever becomes the leader.

"We've repeated mistakes a number of times ... I think the new leader of the National Party will have to think through how they best deal with the board and the current president."

Dean has also issued a statement regarding the recent events. She says Bridges apologised at the time of the incident "about five years ago" but that his "inappropriate" remarks had continued to play on her mind.

She says Bridges has reiterated his apology in the past few hours.
'Committee of experts meets for first time in two months to consider the implementation of the 'Covid passport' in Andalucia The region's High Impact Public Health Alerts advisory council last met on 28 September

The Junta de Andalucias 'committee of experts' will meet this Friday (26 November) for the first time since 28 September, fundamentally to consider the requirement of a Covid vaccination certificate to access certain facilities, services or events.

However, the regions High Impact Public Health Alerts advisory council, is not expected to discuss capacity or opening hour restrictions on businesses despite the steadily rising coronavirus incidence rate and number of new daily infections which this Thursday touched 1,000 in 24 hours, the highest figure in a day since mid-September.

Fridays meeting will start at 11.30 am at the Palacio de San Telmo in Seville, and during the session the adoption of "preventive" measures will be addressed, such as the requirement of the so-called "Covid passport" for access to certain events or to hospitals and nursing homes. Such a measure would, however, need the endorsement of the regions top court, the TSJA.

Ahead of the meeting the regions Health minister, Jesus Aguirre, confirmed that the evolution of the pandemic in Andalucia was "worrying" although "not alarming", given that it was not being reflected in hospital pressure.

The application of new "restrictive measures" is not foreseen at Friday's meeting. Andalucia as a whole has remained at health alert Level 0 since 21 October, with the abolition of capacity limits and opening hours in shops, the hospitality sector and activities of all kinds.
The Costa del Sol, with 68%, has the lowest vaccination rate against Covid in Andalucia In Fuengirola, only 62% of the population has the complete guideline. Torremolinos, meanwhile, has 68.6% of its citizens vaccinated, while in Marbella, Benalmadena and Estepona the figure is 72%

Vaccinate, vaccinate and vaccinate. It is the phrase that public health experts repeat the most often as a means of coping with the coronavirus pandemic. But, despite the fact that both Spain and Andalucia have a very high percentage of people vaccinated against Covid, there are some areas where it could be improved

One of them is in the Costa del Sol health district, which with 68 per cent of the population vaccinated, has the lowest percentage in Andalucia. It is a figure much lower than the regional average, which on 23 November was 80.5, while that of Malaga province as a whole was 76.2 per cent, according to data from the Andalusian Institute of Statistics and Cartography (IECA).

It is significant that of the more than 400,000 people in Andalucia over 12 years of age who have not yet received a single dose against SARS-CoV-2, just over half live in Malaga.

Cordoba is the province where the most people have been Covid jabbed (83 per cent), followed by Jaen (82.7), Granada (81.5), Seville (81.5), Cadiz (81.3), Huelva (81.3) and Almeria (80).

Of all the age groups, those in their thirties are the most reluctant to receive the vaccine, followed by those in their twenties. In contrast, the highest percentage of vaccination occurs in the age group over 80.

Foreign citizens

Sources from the Junta de Andalucias Ministry of Health explained to SUR that the lower vaccination coverage against the coronavirus on the Costa del Sol is likely due to the fact that many foreign citizens reside in the area. They indicated that some of these people did not wanted to be jabbed to protect themselves against the virus and that also, some are likely to have been vaccinated in their countries of origin during visits over the last year.

As of 23 November, in the Costa del Sol health district, 382,632 people had been vaccinated. The age group with the most people with the complete schedule was those over 80 years of age (96.9 per cent), followed by those from 70 to 79 (90.5 per cent), 60 to 69 (86.4 per cent), 50 to 59 (85.8 per cent), 40 to 49 (77.8 per cent), 30 to 39 (65 per cent), 20 to 29 (62.5 per cent), and 12 to 19 (72.4 per cent).

On a town-by-town level in Fuengirola, only 62 per cent of the population has the complete guideline, a percentage that drops to 55.9 in the age group 20 to 29 years old. Torremolinos, meanwhile, has 68.6 of its citizens vaccinated, while Marbella and Benalmadena stand at 72 per cent and Estepona 72.1.

Situation by health districts

The Malaga health district with the highest vaccination coverage against Covid is La Vega, with 82.3 per cent. Next is the health district of Malaga (81.8 per cent). It is followed by the Serrania (80.3), Axarquia (78.1) and Valle del Guadalhorce (74.1) health districts.

In all of them, the same trend is repeated, the older age groups have the more people vaccinated and, it the rate decreases in the groups from 30 to 39 and 20 to 29. As they are mostly young and healthy individuals, the perception of the risk of getting sick in case of infection is lower, which makes them less receptive to being vaccinated.

Adolescents protected

However, in the 12 to 19 age group, the number of vaccinated does rise. In Malaga province, there are 81.9 per cent of people vaccinated in that age group. In the fact that there are many more adolescents protected against coronavirus than twenty-somethings and thirty-somethings. Parents play an important role, making their children aware of the convenience of receiving doses against Covid.
Swansea University has been awarded a Queens Anniversary Prize in recognition of its Materials Science and Engineering research that is leading a revolution in renewable energy technologies, particularly solar electricity and heat generation and storage.

The official announcement of the Prize-winners was made at a reception at St Jamess Palace today (Thursday 25 November 2021), and will be followed by a Prize-winners reception and dinner at the Guildhall City of London on 16 February 2022.

The Queens Anniversary Prizes are awarded every two years and recognise the work carried out by UK universities and colleges which showcases quality and innovation and delivers real benefit to the wider world through education and training.

The University has been awarded the prize for the work of SPECIFIC, an academic and industrial consortium established in 2011 to research the development of efficient low-cost photovoltaic technologies that convert solar energy into electricity. In the ten years since SPECIFIC was founded, its achievements include:

The worlds first dye-sensitised solar cell deposited directly onto a steel substrate which is a critical enabler to large-scale manufacture of building-integrated photovoltaics.

A reduction of the time to provide low-cost solution processable photovoltaics from 30 minutes to 2.5 seconds.

New methods that reduce the manufacturing time for dye-sensitive solar cells from several hours to less than two minutes.

The UKs first energy positive classroom demonstrating that solar energy can power and heat buildings.

Collaborative projects with 211 businesses and 128 research and academic partners in 17 countries.

Six spin out companies creating jobs and supporting an innovative pipeline for steel building materials.

Working with two local housing associations to develop 18 low carbon homes for social housing tenants.

SPECIFIC is also applying technology around the world by building solar powered buildings in India and working with Mexican textile screen printers to produce solar modules on flexible materials. In South Africa, it is using photovoltaic and solar thermal technologies to dewater sludge at a treatment plant and is also creating solar powered classrooms in Zambia.

The Vice-Chancellor of Swansea University, Professor Paul Boyle said:

We are delighted that Swansea University has been announced as a recipient of the Queens Anniversary Prize, a highly prestigious national honour that recognises the exceptional work of our researchers in materials science and engineering. This award acknowledges the power of our local, national and international partnerships, as we work together to transform the construction industry, tackle fuel poverty and drive Wales and the worlds transition towards net zero.

Professor Dave Worsley, Head of Materials Science and Engineering said:

This is an incredible honour and a true recognition of the incredible university and industry partnership between Swansea and Tata which is driving local, national and international decarbonisation opportunities and ensuring that as we transition from fossil fuels to renewables no one is left behind. This prize is for the teams of researchers, scientists, engineers and business professionals who have worked together so well for the last decade and are poised to support the just transition and accelerate our journey to a net zero Wales and then a net zero world.

Sustainability spokesman for Tata Steel in the UK, Martin Brunnock, said:

The work which SPECIFIC is doing on new coatings for steel and active buildings is central to Tata Steels product development and construction strategy.

It is really exciting to see how the active buildings we have delivered together are working in the UK and India and the recognition through this Queens Anniversary Prize is testament to the long standing research, training and skills work pioneered and led by the Materials Department at Swansea. We very much look forward to the next stage of our net zero journey together.
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Delivery of Thun Empower

Thun Tankers are proud to inform that we have taken delivery of Thun Empower.

The vessel is the fourth E-Class tanker in a series of four gas powered, high quality vessels built by Scheepswerf Ferus Smit B.V in the Netherlands. Upon delivery, the Thun Empower will be trading within the Gothia Tanker Alliance network. Thun Tankers is part of the Erik Thun Group, a company owned by the Kallsson family since 1938. For decades we have designed increasingly economic and energy efficient quality ships, using in-house knowledge to provide our customers with sustainable and cost efficient transport solutions. The E-class vessels are a further evolvement of Erik Thuns existing fleet and focus on efficiency, environmental care and customers needs has been essential when developing the new vessels. The vessels are built to the absolute latest design meeting and often exceeding existing and forthcoming regulations. The new vessels reduced fuel consumption with an increased cargo intake, less exhaust emissions and lowered noise levels are a few examples of that.  This series of tankers provide our clients with the dynamics of always having climate smart high quality tankers in the right position at the requested time. - Joakim Lund, CEO, Thun Tankers BV.  We always strive to meet our customers various demands with the best solution available for the time being, as their sustainable Swedish partner over generations. - Johan Kallsson, Managing Director at Erik Thun AB.




ISWAN looks back on an extraordinary year for seafarers

With calls and messages to its 24-hour helplines more than tripling last year as a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Seafarers Welfare and Assistance Network (ISWAN) has had a unique insight into the challenges faced by seafarers around the world.

ISWANs helpline team handled over 20,000 calls and messages from seafarers and their families seeking help and support between April 2020 and March 2021. The organisations 2020-21 Annual Review highlights some of the key issues seafarers have faced and how ISWAN has been able to help. Almost a quarter of the cases handled by ISWAN over this period involved financial or debt problems as seafarers the world over found themselves unable to secure work at sea and families struggled to make ends meet. In response to this crisis, through relief funds administered by ISWAN more than US $272,000 in grants were awarded to those in desperate need. Another particularly common issue was repatriation, as many seafarers and maritime students found themselves stranded abroad due to travel restrictions. With the help of ISWANs team in India, over 1,800 seafarers were safely returned home. In the Philippines, around 2,000 crew members left stranded in Manila, unable to get home due to the national lockdown, received daily deliveries of food from ISWANs regional team. ISWANs helplines, which include SeafarerHelp and Yacht Crew Help, received twice the usual number of calls and messages relating to suicides or suicidal thoughts in 2020-21, highlighting the significant mental stress seafarers have been under and the need for increased mental health support in the industry. In its wider work, ISWAN has delivered 75 Maritime Mental Health Awareness Training sessions to senior officers, shoreside staff, ratings, and those interested in becoming Mental Wellbeing Champions. The training seeks to equip participants with the necessary skills and confidence to recognise the early signs of mental health problems and to initially respond to concerns arising on board. ISWAN has also been trialling social engagement initiatives with a number of shipping companies as part of its Social Interaction Matters (SIM) project, which is due to enter its third phase soon. ISWANs Chief Executive Officer Simon Grainge said: In a year dominated by the pandemic, ISWAN adapted well to the new working environment and enthusiastically stepped up to meet the increased demands on its services from seafarers as they struggled with their own challenges. However, none of this has been achieved alone. ISWAN is enormously grateful for the sustained commitment of its funders who have enabled our work to continue, and our colleagues in the other maritime welfare organisations that have collaborated so effectively with us. The pandemic has yet to run its course and seafarers are still being asked to go above and beyond the call of duty, so ISWAN will do the same  supporting them in the best way we can.




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(Photo : Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels) (Photo : 3CX) (Photo : 3CX) (Photo : 3CX) (Photo : Yan Krukov from Pexels) (Photo : Pavel Danilyuk from Pexels)

Tools are needed in everything, and without them, life would be a little harder for people who work on hands-on experience, particularly those on the frontlines of most businesses present in the different industries today.

Contact centers are one of the most important services for businesses. They make the world functional and connected despite the distance, focusing on global scale operations that let a company connect to their international clientele.

Platforms and software are a few of the modern tools that help in the everyday life of people, ensuring that they get the best they can out of every situation. It is the same case for Contact Centers, as they relay the concerns and issues of a customer to find a solution and communicate with them, providing a hands-on experience even at a remote setup.

Here is the top 5 best contact center operations software of 2021:

#1 3CX

Contact Center Operations Software's top bets include 3CX, a global company that has focused on bringing the freedom of communication to all its users, from contact center agents to customers that utilize products for their needs.

With the latest release of V18, 3CX introduced a platform that brings a fully-integrated customer-focused communications system and helps in bridging the communication gap between agent and customer.

The company brings a lot of services and benefits to the table, having a massive portfolio since 2005, with more than 25,000 partner companies and 12 million users that rely on its services and offers.

3CX brings one of the best in class audio quality, performance, and reliability while helping retain high levels of customer service even in a remote setup. The company helps in eliminating extra costs, as it delivers an all-in-one solution.

The company offers competitive pricing and focuses on bringing a service that is transparent and affordable.

Who Is 3CX?

3CX is a company that develops open standards communications solutions that brings innovation in business connectivity and collaboration, aiming to replace the proprietary PBXs (Private Branch Exchange). The company offers cutting costs from telephone companies, helps in boosting employee productivity, and improves customer experience services.

The company's software solution includes free mobile applications for Android and iOS, video conferencing, website live chat, SMS, and Facebook message integration as a complete communications package.

3CX has as many as 600,000 customers who use its services globally, and it includes top names like McDonald's, Hugo Boss, Plaza Antwerp, Harley Davidson, Wilson Sporting Goods, Pepsi, and more. The company is known globally for service quality and availability, and its services cannot be missed in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Africa, Russia, and Australia.

Contact Center Features

Call queues, IVR

Advanced call reporting

Integration with leading CRM apps

Live chat

Agent training tools including listen-in, whisper, and barge

Web and Windows communications client

Corporate chat

Business FB and SMS integration

3CX includes a full range of call center software features such as call queues, IVR, advanced call reporting, and agent training tools (including listen-in, whisper, and barge) targeted to improve customer experience and agent efficiency.

Thanks to its unique 3CX Live Call feature, customers can quickly reach out to agents and receive more personalized assistance by converting a live chat conversation to an audio or video call in just one click. Regardless of the complexity of the issue, the agent is always fully equipped to assist the customer on the spot without redirecting the call to someone else. What's even better is that access to these features requires no extra spending.

Moreover, 3CX can easily integrate with other applications, software, and systems. These include popular Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) integrations that help centralize all internal and external communication and customer records.

Since an agent knows who is calling before even taking the call, the communication can be tailored to the specific client on the line, offering a great angle and boosting customer satisfaction and sales.

3CX also includes features aimed to improve business agility and agent mobility. Agents can easily access the system via browser extensions, Windows Desktop app, Web Client, or iOS and Android apps and stay on the line regardless of where they are.

3CX doesn't require special hardware, so whether at home, at work, or on the move, employees can always stay connected using any device active online.

Pricing Model

With the above-mentioned benefits, the company confidently equips the contact centers around the world with a feature-rich business communication system capable of transforming their customer service and driving their sales through the roof. Without taking a hit on their budget, 3CX delivers a well-rounded communications package that can be tailored according to individual company needs.

What's even better is that the call center features require no extra spending as they are part of the default package.The company promises to deliver as much as 80% savings compared to its competitors, as businesses are free to choose their own SIP trunks, cloud providers, and hardware they prefer and avoid unnecessary additional expenses.

Together with its transparent pricing and pricing model based on the number of simultaneous calls, any business can drastically cut down on spending and improve its scalability. Additionally, the subscription of 4SC is available for free perpetually to ensure that the start-ups and smaller businesses can get on their feet before any investment is required. You can get started right away!

Benefits

Advanced Customer Service Features - 3CX helps businesses advance their customer service, giving the best possible assistance to those that require it.

CRM Integrations Available - 3CX can be easily integrated with popular CRM systems helping agents to get to know the customer before taking the call.

Open Platform - 3CX is open platform meaning that it doesn't lock you into any particular vendor for IP phones or SIP trunks.

Easy To Deploy and Manage - Whether installed on premise or hosted, 3CX is a breeze for any admin to set up and configure. The 3CX management console equips the admin with all the tools required to add users, phones, etc. while having a bird's eye view of all operations.

Mobility - Working from anywhere is no longer a problem as 3CX allows the option of a web client and mobile apps for agents to respond to customer queries from anywhere

3CX offers both a mobile and desktop app for its V18, and it remains one of the top software in this list, apart from the service of the company in general. Its applications and readily-available systems for app integration make the system accessible from anywhere at any time. They are as follows:

3CX Android App

3CX iOS App

3CX Web Browser Extensions for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge

Windows Desktop Application

PBX for Linux and Raspberry Pi

PBX Hosting for Google, Amazon, and Microsoft Cloud

Wordpress Live Chat Plugin

With the above-mentioned benefits, the company aims to bring a service to contact centers to help them start despite having no huge investments yet, connecting the worldwide service it requires. The main focus of every contact center is to deliver on the service they bring, which 3CX brings to the table, focusing on their mission for every customer that approaches.

The products of the company focuses on a massive suite of options that would fit a lot of systems that a company prefers to use. This is helpful in the different requirements of the company which they can integrate to whatever service they aim to debut as they start.

3CX is a partner for all needs in a contact center, having a lot of satisfied customer reviews that attest to the system they provide, complementing the years they have in bringing these services to different clients, from the small-scale to large enterprises.

#2 UJET

UJET is one of the most unique contact center operations software globally, and that is because it has focused its business on being in the modern setup in the cloud. Everything is wireless now, and even in the digital world, many businesses are converting to cloud centers to avoid waiting for a particular application to be downloaded and installed.

What's great with the cloud is that it avoids taking up massive space in a computer system, meaning that companies can save on space by adding services from companies like UJET.

Who Is UJET?

UJET believes that its customers and consumers have evolved, so they focus on a light platform that is not bothersome for its clients to use. One of the main focuses of UJET is that it "unifies the enterprise," focusing on different industries for which it aims to provide its service to help in bringing contact center operations as a primary focus.

Benefits, Services, and Features

Cloud Service Platform for Contact Center Operations Software

Brand Experience across sales, marketing, and support

Integrates channel switching between voice, digital, and self-service for consumers in one service

#3 Revenue.io

Revenue.io is unique in its way. It is because the company has sided with technology and innovation to power its software. It aims to help people do what they want regarding communications and integration. The company relies on AI or artificial intelligence to power its platform that caters to customers, assisting anyone who needs it.

Who Is Revenue.io?

The company offers high-performing teams that provide real-time guidance in everything they do, focusing on self-learning experiences and assistance to buyers. It helps in growing the company in a way that has not been seen before.

Because of the company's focus on artificial intelligence, Revenue.io helps the contact center agent or representative to grow in the modern industry where digital integration and evolution are a constant phenomenon experienced by different companies. Moreover, it helps in giving a better learning experience on the job.

Benefits, Services, and Features

AI System to Help the Job, being one of the top powered platforms on the list

Focuses on Revenue Growth to help the team and eventually, the company

Data Analysis and Review with the help of AI

Problem solving and solution with the use of AI

Enhanced Assistance platform

#4 CallRail

CallRail focuses on the "call tracking" technology, which sets the company apart from its competitors in the industry and in this list. The feature is a fairly advanced one, and it gives them the edge of providing answers and helps those that think they do not need it but end up requiring the assistance after all.

Who is CallRail?

CallRail is a business established in 2011, bringing a service that aims to help assist those who need it. It also generate leads that help drive growth concerning different services and industries. The focus of CallRail is to find the customer before the customer finds them, and it has proven to be effective for the company to adapt, something that has made their presence known in the industry.

Of course, the company offers other features and services, and it does not shy away from technology available for today's industry.

CallRail remains one of the top contact center operations software in the market today, having as much as a 200-person workforce that has partnered with a whopping 180,000 companies globally to deliver its active software.

Benefits, Services, and Features

Focuses on call tracking technology that Leads to Customer Service

Marketing and Sales Driven approach to Contact Center Operations

Provides impactful leads for a service provided by its client

Helps in tracking web forms as well

#5 NICE CXone

Another cloud contact center that focuses on experience and delivering the customer's needs, NICE CXone (formerly NICE InContact), debuted its product to be one of the top services in the market today, going alongside tech giants in the list. The company's focus sets it apart from existing contact center operations software because it focuses more on the experience of a customer, making its services different from the approach of others.

Who is NICE CXone?

NICE CXone focuses on a service that prioritizes its customers first, having a transaction that would make a customer want to patronize it again because of its assistance features that help in the concern they initially brought up. Customer Loyalty is one of the focuses of NICE CXone, and it does so with its cloud contact center platform that features a different experience from others in this list.

The company helps respond faster, smarter, and better than other services, bringing a helpful approach to the customer who asked for assistance. The CXone platform of the company integrates all the customer service needs of the company and the contact center operations management software.

Benefits, Services, and Features

Customer loyalty and engagement is the main focus of the company

Provides helpful tools to both contact center agent and customer to accommodate their needs and requirements

One-on-one customer interactions are the main strength of the company

Boasts of large CX partnerships in the industry



Interaction and communication are everything in a contact center company. Even though they have found a solid and sturdy foundation for their contact agents and a good call line, having the wrong software can trigger a domino effect in their service.

To have good software can contribute highly to the company's overall performance, ensuring that the technology would do its best to improve the focus of the agent and customer.

Software like 3CX helps bring assistance to a customer, provide the necessary details they need, and help the company close off and address a concern that requires excellent customer service. The software helps empower the industry of contact centers, make their service meaningful, and provide the best for its consumers or customers.

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Kai Wenzel from Unsplash) Hundreds of Google Employees Oppose Company's Covid Vaccine Mandate

Google employees have disapproved of the company's widened COVID-19 vaccination mandate in a signed manifesto. The issue has brought a lot of challenges to the tech giant which will soon request its workers to come to the physical workplace.

Google Employees Oppose COVID Vaccine Mandate

According to a report by NBC News, all US-based companies consisting of 100 or more employees are required to have them fully vaccinated or at least COVID tested earlier this year, per President Joe Biden's announcement.

Google previously asked its over 150,000 workers to upload their vaccination status by next month, Dec.3. The search engine firm added that regardless of whether the employee will work at home or the office, he/she should be vaccinated.

Per Google VP of Security, Chris Rackow thru an email, vaccinating their employees will allow them to have a safer physical workspace to deal with. This would also minimize the spread of the virus across several places.

Rackow said that Google has been following what the Biden Administration wanted. He initially gave Nov. 12 as the deadline to pass the employees' requirements regarding the decision. However, there were some exemptions such as underlying medical conditions and religious beliefs which would boil down as a case-to-case basis.

The report wrote that at least 600 Google employees signed the manifesto which tackles withdrawing the company's decision on the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Related Article: Google Announces All Returning Employees Must Be Fully Vaccinated Against COVID-19

Moreover, they urged others to oppose the decision from the tech giant, citing that they should not allow the decision to dictate to them whether they want to get vaccinated or not.

As the deadline for the return of the workforce gets nearer, many workers argued that it should not be implemented in all companies.

"As we've stated to all our employees and the author of this document, our vaccination requirements are one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running. We firmly stand behind our vaccination policy," a Google spokesperson said.

Google CEO is Requiring Vaccinations For Office Returnees

In another report from CNBC, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in July that he would require all workers to get vaccinated, especially those who are set to return to the physical workplace soon.

A few months later, Pichai stated that more employees were slowly returning to the office. Around October, he said that he would still allow workers to work from home even those who do not want to receive vaccine shots.

The manifesto included that Google decided to encourage its workers to get vaccinated. For instance, the company's VP of data centers Joe Kava said that there would be a $5,000 incentive bonus for vaccinated employees in the office.

Tech Firms on Employees' Vaccination Status

Last September, Apple requested that its US-based workers should submit a report about their vaccination statuses. The Cupertino giant said that the employees should "voluntarily" inform them regarding their vax condition regardless of whether they are remotely working or not.

Last month, Adobe announced that its employees should comply with the vaccination requirements until Dec.8. If they are not able to follow the policy, they would be placed on unpaid leave.

Read Also: #TechTimesLifeHack: Thanksgiving Day COVID-19 Guide: How to Protect Family From Infection, Especially Elders

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Photo by China Photos/Getty Images) Military soldiers stand guard as the Shenzhou VI spacecraft, sitting atop of the LM-2F carrier rocket, is moved towards the launching pad in Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on October 7, 2005 in Jiuquan of Gansu Province, northwest China. China will launch its second manned space flight on October 12 from the center, after a crucial ruling Communist Party meeting concludes in Beijing October 11. The Shenzhou VI will carry two astronauts and orbit the earth for five days, according to state media. (Photo : Photo by RODGER BOSCH/AFP via Getty Images) A radioactivity warning sign stands in front of the headgear at Steenkampskraal (SKK) rare-earth mine on July 29, 2019, about 80Km from the Western Cape town of Vanrhynsdorp. - SKK has been confirmed as one of the highest grade deposits of rare-earth minerals in the world. The rare-earth minerals are used in the manufacture of powerful magnets, which are used in electric vehicles, wind turbines, robotics, and many other applications.

China's space program is now working on a powerful nuclear reactor, which is believed to be more efficient than NASA's. The Chinese government explained that this new technology would be used in the upcoming Mars missions of the country.

Related Article: NASA's ExoMiner Confirms Hundreds of New Exoplanets Outside the Solar System

When it comes to efficiency, China said that it is 100 times more efficient than the device that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would launch this coming 2030 on Earth's natural satellite.

On the other hand, China's new nuclear reactor could generate more than 1 megawatt of electric power. This new space tech is just one of the countries efforts to enhance its space activities.

As of the moment, China is one of the leading countries regarding out-of-this-world activities. Recently, we reported that China is now 20 years ahead of the United States in terms of Mars exploration.

China Space Program's Nuclear Reactor

According to South China Morning Post's latest report, the new nuclear reactor technology is a part of the project launched with funding from China's central government.

Also Read: Blue Origin NS-19 Mission Details New Passengers Including Alan Shepard's Daughter, GMA's Michael Strahan, and MORE

This space innovation was already being worked on by the Chinese space program way back in 2019. As of the moment, the exact launch date and technical details of the new powerful reactor are not yet disclosed by the Asian country.

But, two involved scientists confirmed that the prototype machine's engineering design is already finished. On the other hand, some essential components were also built to enhance the new nuclear reactor.

"Nuclear power is the most hopeful solution. Other nations have launched some ambitious plans. China cannot afford the cost of losing this race," said one of the anonymous Chinese space experts involved in the project.

Will the New Nuclear Reactor Have Issues?

China explained that since the new nuclear space tech is quite ambitious, the project might still have some challenges as it nears its launch date.

As of the moment, the Asian country was only able to launch one nuclear device into space, which is a small radioactive battery on Yutu 2.

With this in hand, it is clear that China is further advancing in the ongoing space race. National Defense even reported that it is now catching up with the U.S.

In other news, space experts said that Mars terraforming could soon be possible.

For more news updates about China's new nuclear reactor and its upcoming space tech advancements, 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 : Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images) Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, speaks during the Satellite 2020 at the Washington Convention CenterMarch 9, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo : Photo by Hannibal Hanschke-Pool/Getty Images) BERLIN, GERMANY DECEMBER 01: SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Award 2020 on December 01, 2020 in Berlin, Germany.

Elon Musk's new tweet reply shows that he agrees to the idea of ditching crypto exchange services (CEXs). As of the moment, people can't without or make any transaction using their digital coins if they don't have Binance and other giant CEXs.

Because of this, crypto fans are not able to get the full value of their investment since CEXs deduct some fees on your transactions. Since cryptocurrency exchanges are centralized services, this means that they act like middlemen.

Because of this, various developers are trying their efforts to make digital coins independent from CEXs. However, you still need to remember that this is far from reality right now.

Elon Musk Says YES to Ditching Crypto Exchanges

According to Futurism's latest report, the Twitter user MyDoge CTO explained that the main goal of the so-called Dogecoin Wallet is to make cryptocurrencies independent from Binance, Robinhood, and other crypto exchanges.

Also Read: 'Lord of the Rings' Crypto Project Ended by J.R.R. Tolkien's Estate and WIPO

"The core focus of the @MyDogeOfficial vision is to break the dependence on CEXs like Binance and Robinhood and let #shibes take custody of their own coins!," said Twitter account.

The core focus of the @MyDogeOfficial vision is to break the dependence on CEXs like binance and robinhood and let #shibes take custody of their own coins!  MyDoge CTO (@MyDogeCTO) November 23, 2021

On the other hand, another Twitter user, @westcoastbill, retweeted the post, saying that the situation should be if it is not your keys, then you can't benefit from the cryptocurrencies.

Exactly  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 24, 2021

This is the Twitter post where Elon Musk replied, saying that it is "exactly" the needed situation when it comes to crypto transactions. The reply of Tesla's CEO was able to generate more than 700 comments, 9,000 likes, and 580 retweets.

If you want to know more details about it, you can visit this link.

Best CEXs Right Now

Business Insider provided the list of the most trusted crypto exchange services this 2021. Binance and Gemini are the leading CEXs when it comes to Editor's Ratings. On the other hand, here are the other digital coin exchange services you can rely on:

Coinbase

Kraken

CEX.IO

Bittrex

In other news, El Salvador announced that he wants to create the first Bitcoin City in the world. On the other hand, a New York-based investment firm predicted that the top crypto could soon trade at $500,000. However, this estimation would still depend on the actual blockchain market.

For more news updates about cryptocurrencies and other similar topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Crypto Miners are Moving Out of Kazakhstan Due to Electricity Shortage

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Stephen Lam/Getty Images)

Apple CEO Tim Cook has spoken out about the company's recent move into "right-to-repair", and the executive's stand is pro the venture, saying that it "feels good" to give people manuals and parts. The long-time Apple CEO after Steve Jobs has said that everyone who knows that they are capable of fixing their Apple devices has a chance to do so, but is still welcome to Apple Service.

Apple's Self-Repair Program: Tim Cook Says He Supports It

An interview by KLTA Los Angeles reporter, Rich DeMuro, has discussed the right-to-repair and the stand of the Apple CEO regarding this in a conversation. Here, Apple's Tim Cook said that it "feels good" to be giving people the manuals, parts, and needs they require for fixing their devices on their own, as a DIYer or home professional.

Cook said that people could be experts on their rights, with some having hands-on experience on tech devices, and refers to them as the "Popular Mechanics" crowd. Several people that also DIY fix their own devices are trained to do so, and this is what the Apple CEO acknowledges in the recent interview and ventures by the Cupertino giant regarding self-repair.

Read Also: Apple Sues NSO Group, the Maker of Spyware Pegasus, Due to Privacy and Security Violation

Tim Cook: Apple Service Still Open for Fix, Tweaks

As discussed in the interview, Tim Cook said that despite the new Apple self-repair program being launched by the company and coming soon, Apple's Services are still open for those that need it. The CEO still recommends that people go to AASPs for their needs and problems with their gadgets for better assistance and repair to be done.

Apple: Right to Repair and MORE

Apple started its support for the US government's pressure to allow people to fix their own devices without necessarily voiding warranties or requiring them to have them delivered to their service providers. The right-to-repair adherence of the company has been first this early November, and it gained the support of popular content creators that focus on fixing Apple devices.

Different manuals and parts for the right-to-repair focus of Apple for its devices and company are coming by 2022, and it would bring the requirements that a person should need when opening up their devices. From the Mac down to the iPhones, the right-to-repair is here to bring a guide for all that wants to DIY or parts for those professionals already.

It takes a massive stand of companies like Apple to go into right-to-repair, especially with its CEO Tim Cook which has initially shunned the idea of having the fix outside an Authorized Apple Service Provider (AASP). However, the CEO came to realize that not all that want to fix their Apple devices are DIYers, and some are engineers or licensed ones that know their ways around these devices.

Related Article: Apple Shazam Can Now Identify Songs Better Due to Update for iOS Users

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Written by Isaiah Richard

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : by Leon Neal/Getty Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - AUGUST 09: In this photo illustration, A woman is silhouetted against a projection of a password log-in dialog box on August 09, 2017 in London, England. With so many areas of modern life requiring identity verification, online security remains a constant concern, especially following the recent spate of global hacks.



The UK is now banning universal default passwords for IoTs or the Internet of Things devices under its new law. What's more, hefty penalties are awaiting firms who will disobey and fail to comply.

UK Bans Universal Default Passwords for IoTs

The United Kingdom Parliament passed the new law, which expressed distaste for default passwords, to prevent them from being reset after restoring the device to factory settings, as per the report by Gizmodo.

Instead, the bill that goes by the name The Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill or PSTI is now requiring tech firms to use unique passwords for IoT home devices.

The UK Minister for Media, Data, and Digital Infrastructure, Julia Lopez, said in a statement that that cyberattacks or hackers are attempting to "break into people's smart devices" on an alarming daily basis.

Lopez further noted that consumers have a false sense of security when it comes to the products that are being sold in the market. Instead, these devices are actually "putting many of us at risk of fraud and theft."

Meanwhile, according to the news story by BBC, a recent study from the consumer watchdog called "Which?" showed that smart home devices are exposed to thousands of cyberattacks, which compromises the security of homeowners.

To be precise, there are potentially about 12,000 attacks on IoT devices every single week, the recent research claims.

That said, a security expert told BBC that banning default passwords is the "first step" to further avoid these kinds of attacks.

In addition to that, another report by cybersecurity firm Symantec last 2020 also showed that the universal passwords of IoTs are exposing home devices to cyberattacks.

The study went on to reveal that 55% of the IoT attacks used the default password of "123456." On the other hand, 3% of the hacking incidents were infiltrated by another universally used password, "admin."

Default Passwords and Fines

All that said, the PSTI bill of the UK seeks to increase the security of smart home devices by punishing tech firms that would use universal default passwords.

The steep fine that the British nation is imposing is no joke.

In fact, companies found disobeying the new security standards in the region will have to pay a whopping $11.2 million or 10 million in Euros.

Not to mention that the penalty could be more expensive as there is also an option to base it on the global revenues of the tech firm of up to four percent.

Read Also: UK Watchdog Questions Apple and Google About How They Access the Age Range of its Users

UK Law Requires More Security Updates Transparency

On top of that, the new law also requires tech firms to be more transparent regarding both the security patches and updates of their smart home products.

It is to note that the bill further claimed that only 20% of IoT firms are practicing transparency for their security updates. As such, the new law is about to change those figures.

Related Article: North Korea-Backed Hackers Allegedly Modify Malware to Breach US, UK, and Other Countries

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Written by Teejay Boris

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Crypto market manipulation may have criminal consequences in the future in South Korea as the Asian nation's regulator wants the National Assembly to make manipulators criminally liable for the act.

Examples of crypto market manipulation cited by South Korea's Financial Services Commission include insider trading and price manipulation.

With the last meeting of the South Korean parliament scheduled for Dec. 9, it is unlikely that any law related to crypto market manipulation will be passed by then.

The Financial Services Commission also wants certain forms of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to be taxed. The South Korean capital of Seoul is already set to start taxing crypto gains that go over $2,100 beginning next year.

Crypto Market Manipulation Should be Criminally Punishable

Crypto market manipulation should be criminally punishable under the law, according to South Korea's Financial Services Commission (FSC).

The commission submitted a report to the National Assembly which expresses the committee's desire to "bring criminal liability to unfair behavior in crypto markets such as price manipulation and insider trading," per a report by CoinDesk.

In response, the National Assembly has then told the FSC to create a draft bill due in a month. With the last parliamentary meeting scheduled to take place on Dec. 9, it is unlikely that the draft bill will be ready by then.

The commission's "call for punishments relative to the gains obtained unfairly, with minimum one year in prison and fines three to five times the illicit gains." Gains that amount to more than $4.2 million should be punishable by five years in person, according to the FSC.

Taxes on Crypto Gains, NFTs

Aside from criminal liability for crypto market manipulation, the FSC also wants certain types of NFTs to be taxed. The CoinDesk report notes that the FSC is going back on previous statements that showed NFTs would be exempted from such taxes.

CoinDesk also notes that the South Korean capital, Seoul, will implement a 20% tax on crypto gains that go beyond $2,100. This is set to begin next year, but there are calls for the deadline to be extended.

South Korean Government vs. Crypto Exchanges

In 2018, it was reported here on Tech Times that the South Korean government was planning on taxing Bitcoin exchanges.

Fast forward three years later, and in June of this year, it was reported that crypto exchanges in the country could sue the government for banking requirements that have been described as unconstitutional.

Related Article: [Breaking] South Korea Crypto Exchanges Could Sue Government for Alleged 'Unconstitutional' Banking Requirements

That does not seem to have deterred the South Korean government, as it suspended over 60 crypto exchanges in September.

According to a report by SlashDot, crypto exchanges were required to have themselves registered by Sept. 24.

Read Also: South Korean Toilet Pays Users Digital Currency for 'Taking Care of Their Business'

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Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) In this file photograph taken in March 12, 2007, a two-week-old boy eyes his new world. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt announnced, April 3, 2007 that for the first time, mothers-to-be will have a guarantee that the NHS will provide them with a full range of birthing choices - including home births - and a midwife they know and trust to care for them. (Photo : Photo credit should read BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images) TOPSHOT - Britain's Prince William, Duke of Cambridge carries his newly-born son, Britain's Prince Louis of Cambridge from the Lindo Wing at St Mary's Hospital in central London, on April 23, 2018. (Photo by Ben STANSALL / AFP)



The U.K.'s planned baby genome sequencing would involve thousands of newborns once it begins. This challenging medical ambition was already proposed by Matt Hancock, the United Kingdom's Health Secretary, way back in 2019.

Based on his statement, it seems his idea is to sequence the genome of all the newborn babies in the U.K. He even excitedly described the health program as a "genomic revolution," which could lead to preventive, predictive, and more personalized health care.

Yes, genome sequencing is an amazing medical innovation if done without any mistake. It can allow experts to cure possible diseases or prevent illnesses after a baby is born, leading to long-term health benefits as the child grows up.

To give you more idea, here are other major details of the planned baby genome sequencing project of the United Kingdom.

U.K.'s Baby Genome Sequencing Program

According to The Wired's latest report, the U.K. government's new genome sequencing called the "Newborn Genomes Program," will be controlled by the country's National Health Service.

Also Read: This New Heart Cell is Linked to Heartbeats, Diseases Concerning Cardiovascular Activity

This new health project would specifically find genetic conditions that are treatable by interventions and current medication treatments, such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia and pyridoxine-dependent epilepsy.

The Newborn Genomes Program plans to sequence the genomes of between 100,000 and 200,000 newborn babies. When it comes to recruitment, the government said that the babies should be at least 18 months before they are allowed to participate.

The outcome's information would be provided to the parents as soon as possible. You can visit this link to see more details.

Health Experts Still Debate if Genome Sequencing is Really Needed

News Medical reported that baby genome sequencing is still one of the most debated topics in the health industry.

Various experts still question if this medical activity is really necessary for newborns.

Although many researchers are saying that it is beneficial for people, some critics claim that genome sequencing involves a lot of personal data.

They claimed that there are no grounds to justify this activity since it acquires people's sensitive body information even before they can provide consent.

A new NHS advice states that anti-depressant pills should be people's last resort in other news. On the other hand, Google employees are now rejecting the company's COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

For more news updates about genome sequencing and other similar health topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: Cancer Causing Benzene Found on Old Spice, Secret Body Spray Components, Voluntary Recall from P&G

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Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) A passenger looks at his phone while waiting aboard a United Airlines plane before taking off from George Bush Intercontinental Airport on May 11, 2020 in Houston, Texas. Air travel is down as estimated 94 percent due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and major U.S. airlines are taking a major financial hit with losses of $350 million to $400 million a day and nearly half of major carriers airplanes are sitting idle. (Photo : Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) A plane comes into land at Heathrow Airport on March 16, 2007 in London. A US government agency has announced that winter in the Northern Hemisphere this year has been the warmest since records began. Air travel continues to be a major source of debate; attempts to slow climate change with radical policies are being tabled by scientists and politicians. Hybrid buses, which use a combination of diesel and electric power.



Airlines are currently expected to use electric planes on their commercial flights. This innovation would be the zero-emission effort of various travel agencies across the globe.

Related Article: Vineyard Wind 1, the First US First Commercial-Scale Offshore Wind Farm, Breaks Ground

However, is it possible to use a battery-powered aircraft in commercial air travel? First, you need to remember that various airlines have airplanes carrying hundreds of passengers.

Right now, electric planes are already operating, but they can only carry less than one hundred individuals. If travel agencies want to have commercial airplanes relying on batteries, manufacturers need to use advanced battery models that can actually lift more than one hundred passengers.

Now, some travel agencies signed a pact to decrease greenhouse gas emissions during the recent United Nations Climate Summit, which happened in Glasgow.

Airlines to Have Electric Planes?

According to ABC News' latest report, various travel companies promised that they would soon have net-zero carbon emissions. These include Alaska Airlines, as well as other United States carriers.

If this is true, then they need to let go of the aircraft models that rely on regular fuel.

Also Read: Cryptomining Agencies in Kazakhstan Ready to Invest in Renewable Energy to Avoid Electricity Restrictions

"Sustainability is a place that we all realize we have to scale," said Alaska Airlines' Senior Vice President of Sustainability, Birkett Rakow.

But, if airlines want to have electric commercial plane models, the aircraft should be integrated with batteries that are more efficient and larger than those used in electric vehicles. If you want to see more details, you can visit this link.

Advanced Electric Planes Right Now

CNBC reported that one of the most advanced electric planes right now is developed by Rolls-Royce.

The luxurious automaker's new Spirit of Innovation electric aircraft is currently the fastest battery-powered plane. Based on the latest test flight, the new airplane achieved a whopping 387 mph.

In other news, the new Tesla delivery policy change states that your order could be canceled if you continue delaying deliveries. On the other hand, 7,000 EV chargers are expected to arrive in Europe.

For more news updates about electric vehicles and other similar innovations, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images) Democratic presidential candidate former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden pauses as he speaks during the AARP and The Des Moines Register Iowa Presidential Candidate Forum at Drake University on July 15, 2019 in Des Moines, Iowa. Twenty Democratic presidential candidates are participating in the forums that will feature four candidate per forum, to be held in cities across Iowa over five days.

The United States government has added more Chinese companies to its trade blacklist. The government says that the reason behind it is that these companies have the potential to undermine the country's national security.

Out of a total of 27 companies added to the blacklist, 12 of which are Chinese companies. The other companies on the list come from places like Japan, Singapore, and Pakistan.

U.S. Adds More Chinese Companies to Blacklist

The U.S. government has added 12 more Chinese companies to its trade blacklist, according to a report by CNN. The companies are seen to have the potential to undermine the national security of the country and have been added to the blacklist by the Commerce Department.

Aside from the 12 Chinese companies, companies from Japan, Pakistan, and Singapore have likewise been added to the trade blacklist. A total of 27 companies have been added.

The blacklisting of the one dozen Chinese companies is "part of an effort to prevent emerging U.S. technologies from being used for quantum computing efforts that would support China's military."

The Commerce Department also said that it is concerned about "China's 'ability to break encryption or develop unbreakable encryption.'" Several Chinese companies added to the list were put there to contribute to Pakistan's nuclear activities.

The latest one dozen additions to the trade blacklist of the U.S. comes after seven Chinese businesses with ties to the military were added to a list that limits any dealings with the companies in April.

Early this year, the Defense Department likewise blacklisted a number of Chinese companies, including Xiaomi.

Related Article: US Places Top Chinese Artificial Intelligence Firms On Trade Blacklist

China Responds to the Addition of Companies to Blacklist

China has responded to the addition of 12 Chinese companies to the U.S. trade blacklist.

China's Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian said that the U.S. has abused its power to suppress businesses from the country, according to CNN.

Lijian also emphasized that the Asian nation will "take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies."

NSO Group Added to Blacklist

This is not the first time this month that the Commerce Department has made headlines for blacklisting companies.

Early this month, the Commerce Department added the NSO Group had been added to what is known as the Entity List. The Entity List contains the companies whose activities the U.S. believes to be against the country's foreign policy interests and national security.

NSO Group is known for being the company behind the Pegasus spyware. This specific type of spyware can infect people's devices without prior notice and provides other people with access to passwords, messages, and photos found in the device. Pegasus can do all this without leaving any trace, according to a report by The Verge.

Read Also: US Economic Blacklist Finds Chinese Supercomputers Linked to Military Weapons: They Possibly Collect Sensitive Info

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Written by Isabella James

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) A visual representation of the digital Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin on December 07, 2017 in London, England. Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Lightcoin have seen unprecedented growth in 2017, despite remaining extremely volatile. While digital currencies across the board have divided opinion between financial institutions, and now have a market cap of around 175 Billion USD, the crypto sector coninues to grow. (Photo : Photo illustration by Edward Smith/Getty Images) LONDON, ENGLAND - MAY 30: In this photo illustration, a visual representation of Bitcoin cryptocurrency is pictured on May 30, 2021 in London, England. Bitcoin is a decentralised digital currency, which has been in use since 2009.

The search engine giant announced that Crypto mining hackers have set their eyes on Google Cloud consumers. The tech firm confirmed that most compromised Cloud accounts involve crypto thefts.

Related Article: Fake NFT Drop on Discord: Gaming Firm to Repay Buyers $1.1M Worth of Crypto

Because of this, the Google cybersecurity action team released a report explaining the mining hacking content within the breached Cloud accounts.

As of the moment, the cryptocurrency market is further expanding as more investors arrive. Many companies, such as Tesla, started investing in various digital coins, believing that these blockchain tokens would provide long-term financial benefits.

Recently, TechTimes reported that a new crypto project called "Lord of the Rings" has arrived. On the other hand, El Salvador announced that he wanted to create the first Bitcoin city.

All these details show how the crypto industry further grows. However, it also attracts cybercriminals and other malicious actors because of its success.

Crypto Hackers Now Targeting Google Cloud

According to The Guardian's latest report, almost 100% of the compromised Google Cloud accounts are linked to crypto mining thefts.

Also Read: Microsoft Windows Users at Risk: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities Appear After Failed Patch

"86% of the compromised Google Cloud instances were used to perform cryptocurrency mining, a cloud resource-intensive for-profit activity," said the search engine giant.

In Google's latest cybersecurity report, the company explained why the current crypto mining hacks are quite alarming. The company said that the hackers were able to deploy their crypto mining hacking software in just 22 seconds.

What Google Recommends

As of the moment, Google advised its Cloud consumers to do the usual security measures that it has been suggesting for the past few years in its other services.

These include using two-factor authentication and signing up to the search engine giant's Work Safer Security program. You can view this link for more details.

On the other hand, PYMNTS reported that hackers are also eyeing small blockchain investors via their mobile gadgets. As of the moment, people might still see more malicious campaigns in the crypto industry as it expands.

For more news updates about cryptocurrency hackers and other malicious actors, 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 : unsplash/ Souvik Banerjee) pinterest

Pinterest has settled a lawsuit alleging that executives in the company enabled discrimination in the workplace. The financial details of the settlement between the social media platform and the shareholder were not shared publicly.

Pinterest Settled Lawsuit

As part of the settlement, Pinterest is releasing its former employees from nondisclosure agreements in cases of discrimination.

The social media company, which became popular for sharing images, is also committing $50 million to different reforms to increase equity and inclusion across the company and its product, according to NBC News.

Seth Magaziner, who acted on behalf of the Employees' Retirement System of Rhode Island, which is the shareholder of Pinterest that filed the lawsuit, said that they pushed for the reforms to support the employees with a fair and safe workplace and to strengthen the company's brand and performance by ensuring that it is inclusive and diverse.

The reforms target the allegations of Aerica Shimizu Banks and Ifeoma Ozoma, two previous employees of Pinterest who went public last year with accusations of discrimination at the company.

Also Read: Pinterest's New Feature Adds Pins From WHO, CDC To Curb Vaccine Misinformation

Ozoma, who helped lead public policy and social impact at the company, said that her colleagues published her personal information online without her knowledge, a process that is called doxxing.

The incident happened after she suggested that Pinterest add an advisory warning to the contents from Ben Shapiro, a political commentator.

Banks, who led the public policy and social impact operations at the company's Washington office, said that her manager lied to her when she was negotiating her salary and appeared in front of colleagues. Both of them did the same level of work as their manager yet they made less money, according to CNET.

Two months after the two women came forward, Francoise Brougher, the former Chief Operating Officer of Pinterest, sued the company and said she was given unfair feedback and was paid less. She was fired after telling the co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann, about the complaints.

Brougher settled with Pinterest for $22.5 million, according to The New York Times.

After the allegations went public, the shareholders sued the company, saying that executives had breached their duty by allowing or ignoring the long-standing discrimination and retaliation issue at Pinterest.

Pinterest Promises to Make Changes

Now, Pinterest promised to create a workplace that is free of discrimination and that they will form an office of an ombudsman to respond to the employee complaints, according to The Verge.

The company also stated that it will conduct a pay equity audit across all employees twice a year and take the necessary steps to maintain equity.

The company is updating its policy to ban doxxing, and it has created a process to escalate the complaints of harassment, retaliation, or discrimination involving members of the executive team or the board.

Pinterest's commitment not to enforce the nondisclosure agreements reflects work that Ozoma has done in California with a new law called the Silenced No More Act.

Ozoma has been lobbying legislators to pass Senate Bill 331 since she left Pinterest. The bill would protect employees who speak out about discrimination and harassment, even if they need to sign a nondisclosure agreement. The Silenced No More Act will go into effect on January 1, 2022.

In 2014, it was revealed that Pinterest was the most loved social media platform, despite having a lot of internal issues.

Earlier this year, Pinterest removed weight loss advertisements after it was revealed that the platform had negative effects on the mental health of its users.

Related Article: Pinterest Announces Three-Day Online Event For Creator Workshops

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images) SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft onboard takes off during the Demo-1 mission, at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on March 2, 2019. - SpaceX's new Crew Dragon astronaut capsule was on its way to the International Space Station Saturday, March 2, 2019, after it successfully launched from Florida on board a Falcon 9 rocket. With only a dummy named Ripley on board. (Photo : Photo by Bill Ingalls/NASA via Getty Images) In this NASA handout image, A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the company's Crew Dragon spacecraft is launched from Launch Complex 39A on NASAs SpaceX Demo-2 mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley onboard, Saturday, May 30, 2020, at NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Demo-2 mission is the first launch.

Russia's Nauka, the country's science module, removed the cargo ship Progress MS-17 so that new modules could dock in the International Space Station.

Related Article: Elon Musk to Pass a 'Great Filter' When Making Life Multiplanetary in Mars, Discusses SpaceX's DART Importance

The departure of the rocket happened on Thursday, Nov. 24. Now, a new docking port is expected to arrive at the international space laboratory to welcome its replacement.

This shows that Russia is leveling up its space industry, which other countries are also doing right now. With the current space race further expanding, many government-backed space agencies and independent space companies are making their own efforts to have more efficient space missions.

Recently, TechTimes reported that China's space program plans to launch a new powerful nuclear reactor outside the planet. This tech is expected to make the country's Mars missions more efficient.

Russia's Nauka Removes a Cargo Ship

According to Space.com's latest report, the Progress MS-17 left Russia's Nauka at exactly 6:22 a.m. on Nov. 14. This rocket is expected to be destroyed or burned as it enters Earth's atmosphere.

Also Read: NASA's ExoMiner Confirms Hundreds of New Exoplanets Outside the Solar System

On the other hand, Anton Shkaplerov, a Russian cosmonaut, confirmed that there a replacement space module is already being prepared by the country.

"The space station is ready to receive the Prichal module! The #ProgressMS17 undocked from the Nauka module, vacating the docking port for the Node Module," said the astronaut via his latest Twitter post.

The @Space_Station is ready to receive the #Prichal module!



The #ProgressMS17 undocked from the Nauka module, vacating the docking port for the Node Module. The Progress has removed a docking unit adapter, which ensured docking of Soyuz and Progress spacecraft with the Nauka. pic.twitter.com/R9JWpxuNFN  Anton Shkaplerov (@Anton_Astrey) November 25, 2021

He added that Progress MS-17 left the space module and removed a docking unit adapter used to dock Soyuz in Russia's Nauka module. You can view this link to see more details.

Replacement of Progress MS-17

The upcoming space module to replace Progress MS-17 is the so-called Prichal, which is a 4-ton compartment, which has six docking ports.

It would use these ports to connect with Russia's Nauka module this coming Nov. 26. On the other hand, its remaining five docking ports would allow more space laboratories of the country in the near future.

In other news, Blue Origin NS-19 confirms new passengers.

For more news updates about Russia's space activities and other related stories, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

TechTimes own this article

Written by: Griffin Davis

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
An ugly fight over an audit that found the city of Zachary paid two vendors $3.5 million without having contracts in place has died down some, but the city councilman most upset about the matter has made clear he is not giving up on his quest for answers.

Well find out the truth eventually, vowed Councilman Lael Montgomery.

The vendors that were collectively paid $4.1 million for maintenance and utility services between July 2019 and May 2021. Of that, $3.5 million was paid out without a contract; the city has since entered into contracts with both companies.

The vendors were doing water meter reading, utility maintenance and equipment repair and lift station and water well maintenance and repairs. Zachary supplies gas, sewer and water to its residents.

Tuesday nights Zachary City Council meeting was Montgomery's first chance to question Mayor David Amrhein and his top staff in person about the investigative audit since it was released Nov. 10.

Audit calls out Zachary for paying $4 million without contracts; city council members outraged After an audit found the City of Zachary paid two vendors nearly $4 million for work without having a contract in place, some on city council 

The audit revived a longstanding feud between Amrhein and Montgomery.

Montgomery immediately called for the mayor to step down and criminal investigations to be launched.

"I know that if the FBI and State Police came in and investigated they'll find criminal elements in this," he told The Advocate. "You can't give away $4 million without paperwork."

Amrhein defended his actions, saying the money paid to the vendors was formally priced and agreed upon upfront, despite there being no formal contracts in place at the time of the review.

The Louisiana Legislative Auditors Office, which conducted the audit, found no indication of anything illegal and District Attorney Hillar Moore agrees.

The feud escalated on social media with Montgomery waving a handgun seemingly in response to heated exchanges he got in with Amrhein's son on Facebook. The son said he was weighing whether to file a criminal complaint against Montgomery, but to date has not. Montgomery said he felt threatened and was making use of his constitutional right to protect himself and his family.

+3 Zachary councilman posts video with gun as fight with mayor over audit gets personal The political fallout over a recent audit questioning why the city of Zachary paid vendors millions of dollars without written contracts has e

By contrast, Montgomery and the mayor were on good behavior Tuesday night, but there was clearly little love lost.

The primary new information that emerged were the names of the vendors: H&H Projects, owned by Wade Holden of Denham Springs, and McLeod Electric, owned by Alvin McLeod.

Theyve been doing business with the city for the better part of 20 years, the both of them, explained Deanna Mankins, chief financial officer for the city, who fielded most of Montgomerys questions.

Any of these businesses or persons donated directly to the mayors campaign? Montgomery asked.

Yes, the mayor responded.

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Who? Both of them? Montgomery followed.

Yes, replied Amrhein.

A review of campaign finance records going back to 2010, the year Amrhein was elected mayor, shows the following contributions: Wade Holden: $961.08, in-kind contribution for campaign workers in November 2018; H&H Projects LLC: $1,000 contribution in October 2014; and McLeod Electrical, $500, in-kind contribution for food for a campaign event, May 2013.

Amrhein at first would not release the names of the vendors for fear of potentially harming their businesses.

Zachary paying vendors millions without contracts? Not criminal, says state auditor It's unlikely a criminal investigation into whether the city of Zachary illegally paid two vendors nearly $4 million for work without having c

A couple other council members asked minor questions about the audit, but Montgomery did most of the talking.

Some of Montgomerys questions proved dry holes. For instance, he asked for a detailed copy of the audit, longer than the eight-page version released publicly. Mankins said thats all there is and all she expects to get.

Montgomery also asked for documents connected to Louisiana public-bid law. H&H and McLeod, however, are providing professional services, so they dont fall under the state bid law.

There was no requirement for a public bid for the work that they do, Mankins explained.

While state law does call for bids for projects costing $250,000 or more, the two companies did a wide array of small projects that fell well under that threshold but added up to millions over time, she noted.

Other Montgomery questions, however, yielded more, including that H&H uses city office space, that both companies have used city vehicles, though they dont keep those vehicles overnight.

The price we get per hour is cheaper because we let them use some of our equipment, Amrhein explained.

Another source of confusion arose from the citys failure to keep timesheets on H&Hs work locating utility lines for residents. H&H charges the city for 120 hours each week, the equivalent of three employees, rather than submitting individualized timesheets, something the auditors investigated.

Mankins said such timesheets are not required.

Im trying to figure out how three people can work 40 hours a week for 23 months and never miss a day, Montgomery said doubtfully.

Mankins answered that H&H does not necessarily use the same three people all the time.

Thats the beauty of hiring a contractor. You hire them to do a job and they provide the labor, Mankins said. So if one person was sick, theyd send somebody else out to do that.
Baton Rouge native Shalanda Young was nominated by President Joe Biden Wednesday to play a leading role in formulating the nations budget policies.

Biden announced his intent to name Young as director of the Office of Management and Budget, where she has been serving as acting director since March.

She would be the first Black woman to lead OMB, one of the most pivotal posts in government. Biden called the agency the nerve center of our government.

As a senior advisor to Biden, Young plays a critical role in implementing the presidents plans in the executive branch as well as his efforts to use legislation to upgrade the nations economy, help workers, address global warming, and ease poverty.

+2 Shalanda Young, who grew up in Clinton and Baker, sworn into Biden cabinet Shalanda Young was sworn-in as the Office of Management and Budget's deputy director March 26 by Vice President Kamala Harris.

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The U.S. Senate confirmed Young as deputy director in a bipartisan 63-37 vote on March 23. She faces another Senate confirmation to her new post.

Biden also tapped Nani Coloretti as OMBs deputy director.

Born in Baton Rouge, raised in Clinton, Young holds a masters degree from Tulane University and a bachelor of arts degree from Loyola University New Orleans. She came to Washington, D.C. in 2001 as a Presidential Management Fellow with the National Institutes of Health. She became a staffer on the U.S. House Appropriations Committee, where she eventually became staff director. As Clerk and Staff Director for the House Appropriations Committee, Young oversaw the $1.3 trillion annual appropriations bills, necessary disaster aid, and major aspects of COVID-19 related spending.

Young lives in Washington with her family, including her newborn daughter Charlie.
African journalism heavyweight Dr. Walter Rubusana was a Lovedale Missionary School superstar who paved the way for Nelson Mandela's political career. Steven Biko, one of South Africa's most significant political activists was a student at the Lovedale Missionary School along with Nelson Mandela. Tiyo Soga was South Africas first indigenous Black African to be ordained and work for the Presbyterian Church in 1857, he also attended Lovedale Missionary School.

In 1824 Scottish Presbyterian missionaries John Bennie and John Ross of the Glasgow Missionary Society founded the city of Lovedale South Africa and later in 1841 the Lovedale Missionary School. Lovedale Missionary School later changed names to Lovedale College, then Lovedale Public FET College in 2002.

In 1835 British Kaffraria governed by Lieutenant General Sir Benjamin D'Urban restricted the Xhosa tribe to specifically designated areas. The new territory was named from British Kaffraria to the Province of Queen Adelaide however the land acquisition was never cleared with the British Colonial Office in London.

In December 1836 the land acquisition restricting the Xhosa tribe was nullified. In 1840, the Lovedale Mission school started building on land donated by Mgolombane Sandile Xhosa King of the Ngqika and Rharhabe tribes.

Most Black schools were run by missionaries with some state aid in South Africa. Many of the educated black South Africans could only attend mission schools per the 1953 the Bantu Education Act policy of apartheid.

But before the Bantu act Mission schools were intergraded, with blacks, whites and coloreds studying in the same classrooms using religious instructions to spread Christianity and attract new converts.

Lovedale Mission School Journal of Gifted Land Gifted South Africans in the fields of Journalism, Activism, and Ministry.

Lovedale Mission Press was established as a small printing press at Tyumie Mission in 1823 but the press was destroyed during the Frontier War of 1834-1835 and a second press was established in 1839, which was in turn destroyed during the War of the Axe 1846-1847. The current Lovedale Mission Press dates from 1861 to present.

Among the earliest works produced were hymn books, school reading books and other Christian literature. Reverend Dr. James Stewart became one of its most influential missionaries teaching journalism at the Christian school and theological seminary that enrolled native black and colored Africans.

The monthly South African newspaper Isigidimi SamaXosa or The Kaffir Express founded by Scottish missionary and physician the Reverend Dr. James Stewart in Lovedale, South Africa by the Lovedale Missionary Institution Press in 1870 introduced printing and book-binding enrolling black and colored South Africans to learn the trade.

An English Kaffir Journal written in English and the Xhosa language was a very popular series. In 1888 the Kaffir Express changed its name the to Christian Express and in 1922 changed its name again to the South African Outlook Periodical published in Mowbray, a Southern suburb of Cape Town, South Africa and Lovedale, Eastern Cape South Africa.

The newspaper was very important because two early black African journalism Titians Walter Rubusana, Elijah Makiwane and John Tengo Jabavu were Stewart's proteges who started out working as translators of the bible, writers of indigenous language religious literature and printing assistants.

Mpilo Walter Benson Rubusana was a co-founder of the Xhosa language newspaper publication, Izwi Labantu and South African Native National Congress which later became the African National Congress.was the first Black politician elected to office in colonial South Africa.

South African writers Archibald Campbell Mzolisa Jordan, Herbert Isaac Ernest Dhlomo, and female South African writer Victoria Swartbooi were also famous graduates of Lovedale Mission school.





Lovedale College Activists.

Steve Biko was one of South Africa's most significant political activists and a leading founder of South Africa's Black Consciousness Movement and was a student at Lovedale Missionary School. His death in police detention in 1977 led to his being hailed as a martyr of the anti-Apartheid struggle.

The brutal circumstances of Biko's death caused a worldwide outcry and he became a martyr and symbol of black resistance to the oppressive Apartheid regime. As a result, the South African government banned a number of individuals (including Donald Woods) and organizations, especially those Black Consciousness groups closely associated with Biko.

The United Nations Security Council responded by finally imposing an arms embargo against South Africa. Biko's family sued the state for damages in 1979 and settled out of court for R65,000, then equivalent to $25,000.

"The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity." -Steve Biko

South African activist and politician Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki served as the second president of post-apartheid in South Africa for nine years from 1999 to 2008. His middle name Mvuyelwa is Xhosa and means he for whom the people sing.

Mbekis father also studied at Lovedale College, he was a leading figure in African National Congress activities in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. Mbeki began his education at Lovedale College in 1955 but when his schooling at Lovedale was interrupted by a strike in 1959, he completed his studies at home.

"Both the family circumstances of my upbringing and the fact of apartheid oppression which impacted in us as young people made it inevitable that like others of my generation, I would have to be involved not in politics, but in the liberation struggle." - Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki

In November 1870, Stewart wrote an editorial for the Kaffir Express: Our aim is to scatter ideas in the moral wastes and desert places of human ignorance and to aid general missionary work in South Africa.





Lovedale Mission School Black Ordained Ministers.

Tiyo Soga was a writer for the Lovedale newspaper, Indaba, he was also South Africas first Black minister to be ordained and work for the Presbyterian Church in 1857. Elijah Makiwane was the second ordained Black minister to work for the Presbyterian Church.

Classically trained at the Lovedale Missionary School along with his trips to Scotland, Soga was the first black South African to translate the Bible and the classic Christian parable written by John Bunyan in 1678, Pilgrim's Progress into the South African Xhosa language.

Sogas translation of the bible and Pilgrim's Progress to Xhosa helped to transform black Africans as they discovered Jesus Christ and entered into a right relationship with God. His translations were influential in spreading the Presbyterian Church message throughout South Africa.





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But its the essential decency of the battle-hardened, trilby-wearing Detective Chief Inspector Fred Thursday in ITVs Endeavour that has finally made Allam, now 67, a household name, and which seems to resonate with him most of all. Actors can relish playing detectives, those hawk-like observers of human nature  as thespians themselves have to be. Allam sees Thursday, the seen-it-all-before mentor to the young Endeavour Morse in this Inspector Morse prequel, as a homage to his parents hard-pressed, hard-working generation that had been through immense poverty and two world wars.

Like John Thaw and Alan Rickman before him, Allam has become the discerning womans crush with that youthful mane of hair and a distinctive silky baritone that makes him recognisable even under a ton of make-up. Like Thaw and Rickman, he also seems uncomfortable with adulation and sets out to live as normal a life as possible. You wont get flouncy stardom from him.

The consummate chameleon, he has also played a vicious, fork-tongued politician alongside Peter Capaldis foul-mouthed spin doctor in The Thick Of It and earned a whole new female following for his womanising author in the film of Posy Simmonds graphic novel Tamara Drewe.

Roger Allam has looked into the heart of darkness many times during his 46-year career. The actor has played every villain from Adolf Hitler and Javert  nemesis of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables  to that arch-scoundrel Robert Maxwell in the forthcoming film Tetris.

The eighth and latest season of Endeavour begins 50 years ago in 1971 to a soundtrack of Wont Get Fooled Again by The Who, which ushers in a subversive new decade. At that time, Allam was in his last year at school: Christs Hospital in Horsham, which he has described as strange and odd and an Eton for paupers, where the pupils wore (and still wear) Tudor uniforms. Born in the East End of London, where his father was vicar of the Hawksmoor-designed church St Mary Woolnoth, Allam would play on bomb sites before becoming a scholarship boy at 10. His parents were education obsessed, seeing it as the way to better yourself.

There he enjoyed a great tradition of music  I was in the choir  and remarkable facilities, although the events of the world outside seeped through only in newspapers in the school library, with no television allowed. He first fell in love with theatre, he says, when he saw a Christs Hospital house production of Pinters The Birthday Party. The play seemed just like the school itself then: strange rules and always the potential for violence, so it made perfect sense to me, he says. From 1970, he started going to see Laurence Olivier at Londons Old Vic in school holidays for 15p  the price of a Tube ticket, recalls Allam, who has won three Olivier Awards.

There were, he recalls, good sides as well as bad sides to the school, like everywhere. And the atmosphere seemed to relax and change in the 1960s. But if you didnt address a senior boy as sir, they hit you  that was the punishment. I was terrified when one boy got hit on the head with a wooden boot brush by another. It was culturally allowed, if you like.

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We used to get caned by the teachers as punishment; your housemaster could make you change into your pyjamas so that it hurt more. Yet such corporal punishment was rife in many, if not most, boarding and day schools then, memorably captured in Lindsay Andersons 1968 film If.
Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Plans for a sunny summer full of hot days lazing on the beach are far less likely now that a La Nina weather pattern has taken hold over the Pacific Ocean, bringing a stream of wet easterly trade winds to Australias eastern seaboard. The Bureau of Meteorology declared on November 23 that a La Nina event was in full swing, with climate scientists saying it would bring cooler temperatures, more rainy days and higher risks of extreme weather. The La Nina is likely to hold until at least January, and weather experts are warning the increased rainfall will heighten the chance of flooding, with soils already saturated and rivers and catchments full. In fact, its already shaping up to be the countrys coolest spring since 1999 and the wettest spring since 2011. As a giant island, Australia cops weather from all directions. One of the main drivers of our climate, particularly for those living in eastern parts of the country, periodically roars out of the Pacific. Whether its an El Nino bringing extreme droughts or a La Nina whipping up severe tropical cyclones and floods, farmers and firefighters and almost everybody else have cause to keep a wary eye on subtle temperature changes in the waters to Australias north-east. The equatorial Pacific is the place where these climate-driving beasts to our east are created. The Pacific accounts for about a third of the Earths surface area and so the complex interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere have a big sway over the global climate. Both the El Nino and La Nina are ends of a weather spectrum but they are collectively known to scientists as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO). And they play a key role in shaping Australias weather. A La Nina phase, at the cooler end of the ENSO flux, is holding sway after another wet summer last year. And, as humans load up the atmosphere with ever more greenhouse gases, these interactions and their impacts are beginning to change in ways scientists are trying to grasp and to forecast for the future. More frequent and extreme El Ninos and La Ninas, however, seem unavoidable. In the future, we have more chances of storms, extreme rainfall and flood events, University of NSWs Climate Change Research Centre Associate Professor Andrea Taschetto said. Its happening. We know global warming increases the chance of extreme events: bushfires, temperatures and droughts.

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So, what are El Ninos and La Ninas and what are their impacts on the ground? What can we expect from this summers La Nina? And how will these natural fluctuations change in the long term? A Peruvian fishing community carries its patron saint during a Catholic celebration. In the 1600s, fishermen in Peru coined the term El Nino (little boy or "Christ child) to describe a weather event that left them low on seafood around Christmas time. Credit:Getty Images Where did the names Nino and Nina come from? As with many natural phenomena, these gained a name before people understood what was really going on. El Nino, or little boy or Christ child in Spanish, was how Peruvian fishermen in the 1600s came to describe the appearance of relatively warm currents off the South American Pacific coast, often around Christmas. Since migrating fish prefer the more nutrient-rich cooler waters, El Ninos were associated with poor catches. In an early case of gender balance, the opposite phase was dubbed La Nina or "little girl", making for fuller fishing nets.

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As global communications improved, scientists began to identify relationships across the big ocean basins. Among those was Gilbert Walker, head of observatories in then British-ruled India, who applied maths to understand what drove the monsoons and their feast or famine characteristics. In recognition of his work, later scientists would dub the typically east-to-west winds across the surface of the equatorial Pacific a Walker Circulation. The strength of the Walker Circulation itself is gauged by surface air pressure differences between the French colony of Tahiti and Darwin, known as the Southern Oscillation index, or the SO in ENSO. By the late 1960s, Walkers work was linked to the changes in the Pacific, and El Nino began to enter the scientific lexicon. The issue, though, remained relatively obscure for general readers. An article from The New York Times headlined Drought, bushfires, floods  blame oscillation ran on the front page of The Sydney Morning Heralds February 28, 1983 edition, not long after the Ash Wednesday fires had scorched much of South Australia and Victoria earlier that month. Among The Age's first mentions came on March 16 that year, in a short article on its front page that blamed an unusual weather phenomena known as El Nino after almost all 17 million adult seabirds mysteriously disappeared from Christmas Island in the Pacific. Coral bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 was attributed at least partly to an El Nino. Credit:Jason South How do you identify an El Nino or La Nina? El Ninos and La Ninas are actually quite common. They occur in a cycle that ranges from two to eight years. The former is slightly more frequent. Events usually last nine to 12 months but some, particularly La Ninas, can linger for two years in a row.

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Australia has experienced 18 La Nina events since 1900 and 12 have coincided with flooding in eastern states. The average rainfall from December to March in La Nina years is 20 per cent higher than the long-term average. What scientists have settled on for determining whether conditions are in the neutral, El Nino or La Nina phase is the location of relatively warm or cool water in equatorial Pacific. They divide the Pacific into sections for the purposes of delineating changes in conditions. The section of those waters straddling the International Date Line dubbed Nino 3.4 is the window they focus on. If waters exceed a certain cool threshold level for at least three months, a La Nina is declared; if the temperatures are warmer than usual by that same rate, its El Nino time. It can also be neither, or neutral. Just what the threshold is varies slightly between agencies. For Australia, the necessary exceedance is 0.8 degrees celsius, while for the USs National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, 0.5 degrees suffices. The weather bureau uses multiple NOAA satellites and drifting buoys, and a base period of 1961 to 1990 to set its standard, says its climate prediction services manager Andrew Watkins. The reason we use 0.8 degrees was from research done by BOM staff many years ago, looking at the best value that matches Australian impacts, which are mostly in our winter and spring, he says. I suspect NOAA uses 0.5 degrees because their impacts are at different times of year to ours, so it better matches their needs. The Pacific Ocean, stretching from eastern Australia and Asia to the west coasts of the Americas, covers about a third of the Earths surface  and is where La Ninas and El Ninos are formed. Credit:Getty Images Why does it matter if it's warmer or cooler in the middle of the deep blue sea? The worlds oceans are absorbing most of the heat were emitting globally. During La Nina years, the ocean absorbs more heat; in El Nino events, the ocean processes suck in less heat and may even give it back. Convection or rainfall and cloud cover tend to follow the warm patches, as you can see on the diagrams below. There are three phases of the ENSO pattern, as conditions seesaw between El Nino and La Nina and the neutral stage in between.

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During neutral phases of ENSO (above) the easterly trade winds draw up cooler water in the east while warm waters build up to Australias north. The winds loop around, across the ocean surface and then up into higher levels of the atmosphere and then back around again in a cycle. When its a La Nina (above), those trade winds are stronger than usual and the warm patch, where air is more likely to rise and create clouds and rain, is pushed closer to Australia. That typically translates into above-average rain in winter and spring for eastern Australia, and a more active than normal tropical cyclone season (which can also bring rain far inland or down the eastern coast). On the flip side, with the El Nino (above), those winds stall or even reverse, leading to warmer water building up in the central Pacific. Air tends to descend rather than rise over eastern Australia, suppressing rainfall and reducing the number of cyclones (whereas over the Americas, theres likely to be more rain). El Ninos are associated with drought, although drought is not always caused by an El Nino. As with those Peruvian fisherfolk, the impacts are far-reaching. El Ninos also typically mean very dry spells in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, for instance, while the southern US is wetter than normal.

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Movement leader and Reignite Democracy founder Monica Smit told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald she had heard from multiple people forced into quarantine at Howard Springs Quarantine Facility. If there is misinformation out there, its because the government and mainstream media fail to report on stories that are sent to them, so the people are left to their own devices to find truth, she said. Anti-lockdown activist Monica Smit. The Vic Freedom Movement Events Telegram channel, which has co-ordinated anti-lockdown protests across Melbourne for months, on Thursday claimed a cover up was silencing people in Indigenous communities from speaking about the situation. Other popular figures in the movement told followers there has been a media blackout in the Northern Territory, pleading for people to share their content, so it spreads internationally.

The Voices of First Nations Instagram page has a link to the website for micro-party Informed Medical Options Party (IMOP), which opposes compulsory vaccinations and fluoride in water and stood candidates at the 2019 federal election and last years Queensland election. The partys cultural advisor, Max Dulumunmun Harrison (Uncle Max), a Yuin man, was billed as a speaker at this Saturdays rally against mandatory vaccines and passports in Sydney alongside United Australia Party candidate Craig Kelly. Max Dulumunmun Harrison. Credit:Glenn Campbell A spokeswoman for IMOP denied the party ran the Instagram account and said they were investigating the situation. Head of Indigenous Studies at Macquarie University, Professor Bronwyn Carlson said the posts were an example of Blackfishing, in which white supremacist and right-wing groups attempt to claim Black support.

It gives cred to the protests in terms of being connected to Traditional Owners, and therefore somewhat approved to do so  a form of cultural appropriation of authority, she said. Social media is a hunting ground for the alt-right, and Indigenous people give them a particular platform, where they cant be accused of being racist or centred on white supremacy. Yet they are. They care little for Indigenous lives or deaths. Wurli-Wurlinjang Health Service, on behalf of the traditional owners of Binjari and Rockhole, said people were hurt by the untruths being spread. We are in lockdown because were in the biggest fight of our lives. Were trying to keep safe. Were trying to do the right thing by the community and Katherine. We dont need people out there creating another flood for us. We dont appreciate outside people making comments that are untrue. People on social media saying our people are being mistreated need to realise their comments are hurting the very people they claim to care about. We want people to respect our privacy and show respect for our feelings, it said.

Northern Land Council Chairman Samuel Bush-Blanasi said anti-vaxxers were spreading wrong and hurtful information. Its important that we dont listen to them. We applaud the Northern Territory Government for their response to this crisis. We are strong people, we need to band together to help each other to fight this virus. A National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation spokesman said the defence force supported vaccination in Northern Territory areas affected by COVID-19 outbreaks, and claims of forcible vaccinations were false. Northern Land Council Chair , Samuel Bush-Blanasi. Credit:Glenn Campbell

A Defence Department spokesman said social media posts claiming the Australian Defence Force was forcibly vaccinating or detaining members of the Australian community were false. Loading Claims currently gaining prominence within various social media communities are deliberate disinformation based on a theme that has spread globally, been localised for effect, and results in significant and unwarranted concern among residents, he said. Minister for Indigenous Affairs Ken Wyatt on Wednesday condemned attempts by outsiders to peddle dangerous misinformation. People spreading anti-vax propaganda, falsifying imagery and content, and drumming up fear and mistrust in health and support services should be ashamed of themselves, he said. More often than not, these people are wholly unconnected to the remote communities at risk.

Labor senator Malarndirri McCarthy said NT communities were feeling deeply hurt by the outrageous comments and disgraceful lies that are being spread about them on social media. While people sharing this info may be thinking they are showing solidarity with First Nations communities, in actual fact it is leading to more trauma and stress for families who are simply trying to get through this difficult time with COVID in their communities. Loading Conservative commentator and former Alice Springs deputy mayor Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said she spent most of Thursday fielding calls from people concerned about lies being spread online about communities near Katherine. People are being treated with respect and nobody is being held down and forced to be given the COVID-19 vaccination. Nobody is being forced against their will, she said in a video on her Facebook page. I have seen absurd allegations about this being about a land grab and or genocide. This is completely and utterly untrue  Likening it to Stolen Generations is an insult.

Loading NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner on Thursday described those who spread misinformation as tinfoil-hat wearing tossers. Of the ADF he said, they arent carrying weapons, they are carrying fresh food for people. I urge people not to worry about the insane, unhinged stuff spreading online and overwhelmingly comes from people who dont live here and know nothing about us. If anybody thinks we are going to be distracted ... by tinfoil-hat wearing tossers sitting in their parents basements in Florida, then you do not know us Territorians.
Former minister John Eren has become the fifth Labor MP to announce they will not be standing at next years state election, as Premier Daniel Andrews flagged further potential retirements.

The member for Lara made the announcement on Friday afternoon and cited health reasons and a desire to spend more time with family as the reasons for his departure from politics.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, flanked by Labor MP John Eren. Credit:Eddie Jim

It has been two years since I was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease, he said.

This diagnosis along with challenges brought about by the COVID pandemic has made me place a greater focus on my health and wellbeing and that of my family and friends, to value the ability to spend quality time with them.

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Mr Eren, who emigrated to Australia from Turkey as a child and grew up in the high-rise commission flats in North Melbourne, said his career was an example of the opportunities Australia afforded to migrants.

In a statement, Premier Daniel Andrews praised Mr Erens values and advocacy.

The best people in public life are those who live their values. John has been an unrelenting advocate for good, secure jobs in Geelong, as well as stable skills and training pathways for the local workforce of the future, he said.

I wish John and his family the very best for the future. Im grateful for his friendship and support, just as Im grateful for his contribution to the Parliament, the Government and his local community.

I know well keep seeing him live his values for years to come.

Mr Eren was first elected to Victorias Legislative Council in 2002 as the member for Geelong Province. He was later elected to the Legislative Assembly in 2006 as the member for Lara.

His announcement comes a day after senior government minister and veteran Richmond MP Richard Wynne confirmed he would not contest the 2022 election for his inner-Melbourne seat. He will stay on as Minister for Planning, Housing and Child Protection until the election in 12 months time.

Former attorney-general Jill Hennessy had confirmed a day earlier on Wednesday that she would not contest next years election. Yan Yean MP Danielle Green and Ringwood MP Dustin Halse also confirmed on Wednesday that they would stand aside in 12 months time.
A cache of guns and explosives discovered on the north-western outskirts of Sydney risked becoming a catastrophic event said police, who arrested an alleged doomsday prepper over the haul.

Investigators seized 39 guns, seven improvised explosive devices, pipe bombs, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest, 250 kilograms of explosive chemical ammonium nitrate, silencers and a range of other weapons and chemicals.

Police seized 39 guns, improvised explosive devices and a range of bomb-making equipment at a property in north-west Sydney. Credit:Police Media

NSW Police Detective Superintendent John Watson, drug and firearms squad commander, said the scale of the arsenal at the rural Kurrajong property was alarming.

There is no doubt in our minds this matter posed a significant risk to this individual, his family but also the community at large, Superintendent Watson said.
A dedicated ferry service from Blackwattle Bay to Barangaroo will be introduced as one option for commuters left stranded by the crippled inner west light rail, with the NSW government still unable to confirm when the tram service will return.

Transport Minister Rob Stokes on Thursday said three new targeted bus services would also be introduced to improve transport options as preliminary work continues on the repairs of the 12 cracked trams.

A view over the light rail track leading into Jubilee Park. Credit:Brook Mitchell

The ferry, which will not operate on the public transport Opal network, will run every 30 minutes and be able to carry 45 passengers at the COVID-19 capacity.

Sizeable cracks were discovered last month in all 12 trams servicing the inner west light rail, which runs from Dulwich Hill to Central Station, forcing the closure of the line for up to 18 months.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton says the investigation into missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay has been one of the most complex and challenging investigations hes ever been briefed on, as the questioning of a Caroline Springs man enters its third day.

Speaking on radio station 3AW on Thursday morning, Mr Patton said he was confident the investigation would be resolved fairly soon, three days after officers from the missing persons squad took Greg Lynn, 55, into custody. No charges have been laid.

The four-wheel-drive impounded by police on Monday and, inset, missing campers Russell Hill and Carol Clay. Credit:Nine News

You have to chase every rabbit down every rabbit hole. You cant leave one lead. The professionalism thats been displayed by [investigators] has been amazing, Mr Patton said.

This has been one of the most complex investigations that Ive ever been briefed on.
Take-up of first and second doses in Victoria has slowed considerably since late October. About 20,000 doses were delivered on Thursday, compared to more than 100,000 during peak days in September and October. Vaccination sites run by the Victorian government, including the mass hubs, have so far delivered more than 4.8 million COVID-19 vaccine doses. But Royal Australian College of General Practitioners president Karen Price said Australia was now in the eye of the storm when it came to the vaccination program. Dr Price said the third dose, set to be widely delivered to adult Australians six months after their second, was going to be critical in determining how many people ended up catching COVID-19 next winter.

She said some booster doses were likely to be delivered opportunistically to patients coming in for other appointments, but because the Pfizer vaccine comes in multi-dose vials, GP clinics would still have to run some vaccination clinics. Im confident that general practice can do this, she said. But weve also got to be mindful that general practice has been under a lot of pressure and the sustainability of general practice needs to be carefully thought through too. People queue for COVID-19 vaccinations at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre in June. Credit:Eddie Jim Australian Medical Association Victorian president Roderick McRae said it was a good thing that nurses would return to public hospitals ahead of the Christmas period, when people planned to take leave. Deploying nursing staff to the vaccination centres had depleted hospitals of key staff at a critical time in the pandemic, he said.

Those who were still working in the public hospitals had to work harder and longer, more overtime, and it led to the fatigue and exhaustion. However, Dr McRae warned that Victorians may now have a difficult time getting their booster shot within six months of their second COVID-19 dose, given that pharmacists and GPs were turning away from the program due to inadequate federal funding. The pharmacists are no longer interested in providing vaccinations because theyve suddenly noticed theyre not making enough money. General practitioners have suddenly realised that the Commonwealth government is not rebating patients sufficiently to make it a viable business opportunity for them, he said. Everybody needs to get their third dose six to seven months after the second dose and we need there to be minimal obstacles in order to get that dose.

Loading The Pharmacy Guild of Australia has been warning that Victoria faces a shortage of pharmacists willing to deliver booster jabs because they do not receive enough money from the federal government to cover costs of the program. On Thursday, a Victorian government spokeswoman called upon the Commonwealth to provide more support to pharmacies so workers at state-run sites can get back to other areas of the under-pressure health system. Across the country, nearly 580,000 people are eligible to receive a booster shot, with demand set to increase in coming months. The federal government says it has enough Pfizer to meet all current and future demand for first, second and booster doses, and is still seeing strong interest in the vaccination program from pharmacies.

Loading A spokesman for federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said the Commonwealth has supported the delivery of over 2.25 million doses through community pharmacies and will continue to support their work. We pay for not only [for] the vaccines and the vaccinations, but also provide a bonus payment where both doses are completed in the same venue. We are not aware of any ongoing support from Victoria for pharmacy vaccination. The federal government has entered an agreement with Moderna to supply booster vaccines and has an advance purchase agreement with Novavax, which may also seek to apply for booster shots if the vaccine is approved by the Therapeutic Goods Administration.
The new owner of Melbourne CBDs oldest surviving shop and dwelling has vowed to restore it to its former glory after purchasing the fragile, 171-year-old cottage for more than $1.8 million.

In a frenetic auction held on Thursday beside Russells Old Corner Shop, Melbourne investor Yan Qin prevailed over a keen rival bidder to buy the humble premises for $1.875 million.

Melbourne citys oldest still-standing shop and residence, Russells Old Corner Shop. Credit:Justin McManus

The heritage-listed, two-level shop and residence, built in 1850 before the gold rush, has been owned by the same family since 1899.

In that year, it was bought by Valletto Azzopardi, whose granddaughter, retired actor and teacher Lola Russell, 99, lived most of her life there.
Victorias travel permit system and the regional border bubble have been scrapped as the state recorded 1362 new coronavirus cases and seven deaths on Friday.

There are 308 people in hospital with COVID-19 in Victoria, including 46 in intensive care with an active case of the virus and 53 still that have been cleared of the virus. Of those in hospital, 26 people were on a ventilator.

Victorias travel permit system has been scrapped. Credit:John Russell

Victoria now has 10,887 active cases.

The domestic permit system for entry into Victoria ended at 6pm on Thursday night, with unvaccinated Australians now able to enter the state.
Liberal MP Bridget Archer has backed a crossbench push to establish a federal integrity watchdog, leading to chaotic scenes in Parliament and the government forced to rely on a technicality to block debate despite a majority of MPs voting for it.

Independent MP Helen Haines described Ms Archer as the absolute lioness of the 46th Parliament for her actions in crossing the floor.

Liberal MP Bridget Archer crossed the floor to support debate of crossbench MP Helen Haines federal integrity bill. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Bridget knows exactly what happens when you break ranks, but she fundamentally believes in the whole Menzies dictum of being a member of the Liberal Party, she said after the votes.

Many [other backbenchers] talk about working inside the tent, many of them posture around believing in things like an integrity commission. But when push comes to shove, they dont do what the Liberal Party says it can always do and thats cross the floor on any vote that they like.
Under the current mechanism, the chief health officer issues health orders allowing Victoria to quarantine return travellers, mandate masks in certain settings, and isolate positive COVID-19 cases. The proposed Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021 would instead empower the premier and the health minister of the day to declare a pandemic and issue such health orders. As the government continued its belated negotiations, unions representing almost 110,000 health workers on Thursday made a public plea with the crossbench to ensure there was certainty come December 16. Otherwise, Danny Hill, secretary of the Victorian Ambulance Union, said COVID-19 cases could overwhelm hospitals which were already stressed and crush the system completely.

Addressing the upper house members who complained of being initially excluded in the drafting of the bill, Mr Hill was unmoved. Cry me a river. We have a pandemic on at the moment, and we desperately need your help and assistance, he said. Lisa Fitzpatrick, the Victorian secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, accused some MPs of playing sport with peoples lives, said she had discussed the bill with two crossbenchers. There are some that havent returned my call or my text, she said. Mr Barton confirmed he had spoken to both unions, who mounted a very strong argument supporting the draft legislation.

Jeff Bourman, of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, has been highly critical of the governments handling of the pandemic bill and refused a last-minute approach from Labor, but said he was contacted by Ms Symes and Mr Foleys office on Thursday. Whilst I am not negotiating, I do appreciate them checking in, Mr Bourman said on Twitter. On Saturday, more than 10,000 people rallied against vaccine mandates and the pandemic bill following intense debate and criticism of the crossbenchers who supported it. Independent MP Catherine Cumming, a prominent figure in Saturdays freedom march, has been open to negotiations but fiercely opposed to vaccine mandates. She said she wanted them scrapped for all settings, which the government would not relent on.

Mr Barton, from the Transport Matters Party, and Mr Hayes, from Sustainable Australia, want improved oversight of the proposed regime, including the establishment of a joint parliamentary committee with a non-government chair and majority to scrutinise government decisions during a pandemic. They want to give the Ombudsman jurisdiction to review pandemic decisions and judicial appeal rights to anyone detained by a pandemic order. They will ask for a sunset clause and a disallowance provision that would enable either house of parliament to scrap a pandemic declaration or order. Another request from Mr Barton and Mr Hayes was to provide certainty on when vaccine certificates in settings such as retail and restaurants would be wound back, now that the state has fully vaccinated 90 per cent of people aged over 12. Premier Daniel Andrews on Thursday said it was too early to provide a date for that requirement to lift.

We want to be able to provide that timeline, but its got to be based on health advice, Mr Andrews said on Thursday. Loading The government thought it had secured a working majority in the upper house to support the bill by working closely with Reason Party MP Fiona Patten, Andy Meddick from the Animal Justice Party, and Greens leader Samantha Ratnam. But that was scuppered by the return to Parliament last week of Mr Somyurek, who vowed to tip the vote against his former party. Shadow treasurer David Davis, leader of the opposition in the upper house, said the business community should be more closely consulted on the proposal. He said he ultimately hoped the crossbench would block the bill.
A council in Melbournes outer west, which is among the local government areas with the highest number of COVID-19 cases, is still not holding face-to-face meetings because some councillors remain unvaccinated.

Melton City Council will continue to hold its meetings online until May, three councillors have confirmed.

The council is unable to meet in person as some councillors are not vaccinated. Credit:Eddie Jim

Victorian councils can meet in person provided all councillors are double vaccinated.

But Melton councillor Sophie Ramsey, who is double vaccinated, said the council was still meeting online because of the unvaccinated status of some councillors.
Solomon Islanders defied a government-imposed security lockdown and protested in the capital for a second day on Thursday, setting fire to buildings in the citys Chinatown amid violence potentially sparked by disputes over Taiwan allegiances.

Honiara was put into lockdown after protesters demanding the Prime Ministers resignation set fire to parts of Parliament and several other buildings on Wednesday.

Buildings burn in Honiaras Chinatown, in the Solomon Islands on Thursday. Credit:Screenshot ZFM 99.5

In a national address, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare called the riots a sad and unfortunate event aimed at bringing a democratically elected government down and announced a 36-hour lockdown to allow authorities to investigate.

Hundreds of citizens took the law into their own hands today, he said, claiming they had been led astray by a few unscrupulous people whom he did not name but said would soon face the full brunt of the law.
Every Spark-Ignited Internal Combustion Engine Ever Produced Has Been Damaged By Gasoline







The shocking truth about gasoline's destructive nature

By Marc J. Rauch

Exec. Vice President/Co-President

THE AUTO CHANNEL







How do you like the headline of this story? "Every Spark-Ignited Internal Combustion Engine Ever Produced Has Been Damaged By Gasoline."

It's a pretty damming statement, isn't it? Well, I'll be damned if it's not true. Every gasoline-powered internal combustion engine ever produced and put into service has been damaged by gasoline. What's more, every single diesel-powered internal combustion engine ever produced and put into service has been damaged by petroleum diesel fuel.

Of course, it's really no big deal; the inherent nature of the internal combustion engine is that it will be damaged after it's put to use. Gasoline and diesel fuel are corrosive, they leave behind filthy deposits that turn to clogging goo, and the igniting of gasoline and diesel in the engine cylinders create thousands of explosions during every minute of operation...so how could every single gasoline or diesel-powered engine put to use not be damaged?

It's a no-brainer, right?

So if this is such a no-brainer, such an obvious statement of...the obvious, you may be asking yourself why I even sat down to write this story?

Here's why: A short while ago, I was directed by one of our readers to a message posted on the Facebook page for a group called American Energy Alliance. The post stated, "As I handed it (my car/engine) over, I asked the mechanic how many of the engines he works on have been damaged by ethanol. His reply: All of them."

As far as I could tell, the quote was not attributed to any specific person, and it provided no other details related to the situation that the quote refers to. It's not important if the situation was true or not because it is typical of the overly exaggerated, puerile, ignorant claims made by the oil industry against ethanol. However, the quote was linked to a story written by Jared Meyers, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for the Criminally Insane (just joking, that's a reference to Mel Brook's "Blazing Saddles")...he's a fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.

The story was originally published on Forbes.org, and is titled "Politicians Love Burning Food For Fuel." It supposedly details a conversation of some sort that took place between Mr. Meyers and Robert Bryce, a fellow fellow at the Manhattan Institute for the Criminally Insane (sorry, I couldn't help myself - whenever I hear or read "Institute for..." it makes me think of Mel Brooks). Robert Bryce is a fellow fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a senior fellow, at that!

Robert Bryce is a fraud and a liar. He has been spewing his anti-ethanol nonsense for years. In 2013, I wrote a 60+ page rebuttal to his cesspool work "Gusher Of Lies." I use the word cesspool instead of seminal because the book stinks like a filled cesspool.

You can read Mr. Meyers' Forbes story by CLICKING HERE, and you can read my rebuttal to Bryce's book by CLICKING HERE. I've given Mr. Bryce numerous opportunities to challenge my rebuttal or to recant or update some of his stale claims from a decade ago with corrected information but he has chosen to not do so.

As for the author of this article, Jared Meyers, I'm bewildered why anyone would title an article with a patently false statement, except as a joke or as sarcasm (as I did with my headline of this editorial). But in reading the article I find no evidence of intended humor or sarcasm. There is only stupidity; the kind of stupidity that matches the empty claim made about ethanol damaging every engine that the fictitious mechanic ever encountered.

By the way, for those with a scorecard, this is not the first absurd anti-ethanol editorial published by Forbes. This past April they published a work of junk written by Steven Salzberg, titled "Why Are We Growing Corn To Fuel Our Cars? Three Reasons Why Ethanol Is A Bad Idea." Mr. Salzberg is supposed to be a distinguished professor. Based upon the nonsense he wrote about ethanol he must be looking to be an extinguished professor by committing integrity-suicide. If you have the opportunity to visit the Forbes website and read this editorial you will undoubtedly come across my multiple comments after reading Salzberg's fairytale. I was my usual delightful self, of course.

The good thing about the anti-ethanol claims made by fellas like Messes Meyer, Bryce, and Salzberg (yes Messes, not Messrs.) is that they are either so devoid of simple common sense, or so obtusely complicated, that they are rather easy to refute - as you would learn if you read my long rebuttal to Mr. Bryce's book. (hahahaha, fellas makes me think of the old Jerry Lewis comedy "Cinderfella")

The upshot of what I'm getting at is that it's an absolutely asinine thing for the oil industry and its whores to blame ethanol for causing the same problems that gasoline causes, with even greater regularity and more severe consequences. Engine problems did not suddenly occur with the advent of E10. The automobile profession and automobile repair shops didn't suddenly spring up in the past two decades. Gasoline has been damaging engines for as long as gasoline has existed. The alarming aspect of this is that there are too many mechanics out there who don't know this; they think that gasoline is a magical elixir of engine health and vitality.

Now, allow me to turn my attention to this American Energy Alliance thing. This group like several others is nothing more than a disingenuous decoy for the oil industry. Similar to American Council For Capital Formation, AEA is a shill for the oil industry. In AEA's "about us" page they state that they have no ties to any political party, and it has no interest in supporting the agenda of any particular political party. The presumption is that they favor what's right for America and Americans in total. I say it's code for "AEA wants to screw all of America and all Americans, regardless of race, color, creed, religion, or political party." They want what's right for OPEC, foreign oil dictators, terrorists, and un-American American businessmen.

To AEA, ACCF and all these others, I ask, if gasoline is so good and so harmless to engines and humans and the environment and our economy then why do you need to rely on ridiculous lies and gross over-exaggerations to condemn ethanol?

The fact is that every spark-ignited internal combustion engine ever produced and put into use has been damaged by gasoline, and every single person working for the petroleum oil industry is working to undermine our country, our security, and our health.
Cheyenne, WY (82001)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High 38F. Winds WSW at 25 to 35 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 33F. Winds WSW at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph.


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3 Victorian Labor MPs Announce Decision to Step Down at Next Election

Three state Labor MPs have announced on the same day that they will not be contesting the next Victorian election in late 2022.

Jill Hennessy, former state attorney-general and member for Altona, Danielle Green, the member for Yan Yean, and Dustin Halse, the member for Ringwood, all issued statements on Facebook on Nov. 24.

No matter how precious your family is, politics can blind you to their needs if youre not careful. And life is short, Hennessy wrote on Facebook.

After some reflection, I came to the view that making the commitment to serve another four-year term was incompatible with the other important priorities in my life, especially if I wanted to give them all the best of me, she added, praising Premier Dan Andrews leadership since winning election in 2014 and his work pushing infrastructure and social justice programs.

(L-R) Victorian MPs Gavin Jennings, Jill Hennessy, and Premier Daniel Andrews speak to the media in Melbourne, Australia, on Nov. 22, 2017. (Scott Barbour/Getty Images)

Green, who has served for 20 years under three different premiers, announced her retirement from politics over concerns around her work-life balance.

It has been an honour and privilege to represent the people of Yan Yean and to have served in the Parliament of Victoria since 2002, she wrote on Facebook.

During the seven years of the Andrews Labor government, the Premier, Treasurer and ministers have listened to my advocacy on jobs, schools, TAFE, health, roads, public transport, community safety, creative industries, sport and much more, she said.

Elected to Parliament almost two decades ago, with my youngest son still at primary school, it was my family and loyal network of friends who kept the home fires burning. It is now my turn to support them.

Halse revealed he had informed Premier Andrews and the state secretary of the Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) of his decision to stand down at the next election.

I would like to thank the Labor Party for encouraging me to stand again in November 2022its deeply humbling. A big thanks also to Daniel Andrews and my parliamentary colleagues for their encouragement, support and trust, he wrote on Facebook.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews (right) speaks during question time in the Legislative Assembly at the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, on Sept. 7, 2021. (AAP Image/James Ross)

Being a candidate for the Victorian Legislative Assembly requires a wholehearted four-year commitment. Our community deserves no less than a representative who is certain to be in it for the long haul. And, at this time, I cannot offer that absolute certainty, he said.

Victorias next election is due on Nov. 26, 2022

While the Labor government does hold 55 of the 88-seat Legislative Assembly, Premier Dan Andrews has had to weather several disruptions to his Cabinet over the past year.

In September 2020, Jenny Mikakos resigned as health minister and from Parliament immediately after the premier made comments contradicting her views on the handling of the states hotel quarantine system.

Meanwhile, ongoing investigations into branch-stacking in the Victorian ALP have seen several MPs resign from Cabinet while still remaining in Parliament, including Adem Somyurek, Marlene Kairouz, Robin Scott, and more recently, Luke Donnellan.
Annie Polite puts on a button for Ahmaud Arbery outside the Glynn County Courthouse as the jury deliberates in the trial of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery on Nov. 24, 2021 in Brunswick, Georgia. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Ahmaud Arberys Father On Guilty Verdicts: All Lives Matter

Marcus Arbery, the father of Ahmaud Arbery, who was fatally shot on a residential street last year, issued a message of unity following the guilty verdicts of three Georgia men on Wednesday, saying: All lives matter.

For real, all lives matter, not just blacks, we dont want to see nobody go through this, Marcus Arbery said outside the courtroom, shortly after a Georgia jury found all three men guilty in the killing of his son following two days of jury deliberations.

I dont want no daddy to see their kid get shot down like that, he said. So hey, lets keep fighting, lets keep doing it and making this place a better place for all human beingsall human beings. Everybody. Love everybody.

All human beings should be treated equally, he added.

Ahmaud Arberys father Marcus Arbery, center, leaves the courtroom after Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley read the jurys verdict the trial of Greg McMichael, his son Travis McMichael, and neighbor, William Roddie Bryan, in Brunswick, Georgia on Nov.24, 2021. (Stephen B. Morton-Pool/Getty Images)

Moments earlier, the three mena father and son Gregory McMichael, 65, and Travis McMichael, 35, and their neighbor William Roddie Bryan Jr., 52were convicted of murder, with the jury dismissing a self-defense claim.

They faced nine counts each in Arberys death, including malice murder, felony murder, and aggravated assault.

The younger McMichael was found guilty of all nine charges, while his father was found guilty of all but one charge, malice murder.

Bryan was found not guilty of one count of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault, but the jury found him guilty of three counts of felony murder and three other charges.

The three men now face maximum sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole. They were also indicted on separate federal hate crime charges including attempted kidnapping and interference with rights.

Defense lawyers have said they will appeal.

This combination of booking photos provided by the Glynn County, Ga., Detention Center, shows, from left, Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and William Roddie Bryan Jr.. (Glynn County Detention Center via AP, File)

Reacting to the guilty verdicts, Arberys mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, expressed her relief in front of the courthouse.

Its been a long fight, its been a hard fight, but God is good, Cooper-Jones said. Early into tell you the truth, I never saw this day back in 2020. I never thought this day would come, but God is good.

You know him as Ahmaud, I know him as Quez, he will now rest in peace, she added.

President Joe Biden said in a statement that the convictions showed the U.S. criminal justice system is doing its job, though Arberys murder was a devastating reminder of how far we have to go in the fight for racial justice in this country.

Instead, we must recommit ourselves to building a future of unity and shared strength, where no one fears violence because of the color of their skin, Biden said.

Vice President Kamala Harris meanwhile accused the defense counsel of setting a tone that cast the attendance of ministers at the trial as intimidation and dehumanized a young black man with racist tropes.

The jury arrived at its verdicts despite these tactics, she said.

Ahmaud Arbery was a son. He was a brother. He was a friend. His life had meaning. We will not forget him. We honor him best by continuing the fight for justice, Harris added.

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
Modern ambrosia, a sort of dessert that teeters toward fruit salad, leans on packaged and canned foodsbut it wasn't always so. (AS Food studio/Shutterstock)

Ambrosia Before the Cool Whip

Earlier recipes for the creamy fruit salad, now a Southern holiday staple, reveal a lighter sideand a lesson in American food history

If youve ever been to a church potluck in the Deep South or Midwest, youre undoubtedly familiar with ambrosia. If youre unacquainted, its a syrupy sweet, quivering mass of canned fruit, non-dairy whipped topping, coconut, and miniature marshmallows, a sort of dessert that teeters toward fruit salad (or vice versa). It often appears at Thanksgiving and Christmas tables, and, as you might imagine, people have strong opinions about the dish. Its something you love or hate, with little room for the in-between.

There are countless variations, with every cook convinced theirs is the best way to prepare the dish. What one cook might consider essential, another cook might consider an offensive adulteration. Most recipes call for canned pineapple and mandarin oranges, dried sweetened coconut flakes, and non-dairy whipped topping. Maraschino cherries appear in many recipes, and some cooks swap canned fruit cocktail for the mandarin oranges and whipped cream. Cottage cheese, sour cream, bananas, and chopped pecans number among the more unorthodox additions.

Its a dish that leans on packaged and canned foodsbut it wasnt always so. In many ways, ambrosia salad exemplifies a distinct shift in American food culture from the fresh to the processed.

Steamships and Railcars

The first versions of the dish began to appear in the 1860s, and its popularity gained momentum well through the turn of the 20th century until it became a mainstay of American kitchens. Named after the food of gods in Greek myth, ambrosia promised to be not only delicious but almost celestial in its taste, too.

The earliest version of the recipe was published in Dixie Cookery (1867) by Maria Massey Barringer, which called simply for sprinkling oranges with a bit of sugar and layering them with freshly grated coconut. By the 1880s, recipes had shifted to include pineapple and sometimes rum, Madeira wine, or sherry, but the essence remained the same: fresh fruit, fresh coconut, and the slightest sprinkle of sugar.

An increasingly globalized supply chain fueled the popularity of ambrosia as, rather suddenly, fruits that had once been rare became more accessible. Steamships brought fresh coconuts from the tropics, while citrus fruits came by rail from California and Florida to middle America. These fruits, so commonplace in grocery stores today, still had an air of the exotic. Using them together made the dish seem distinct and extraordinary, which is why it still holds a cherished place at the holiday table 150 years later.

Around 1920, ambrosia began to shift, with newer recipes incorporating cherries, whipped cream, and marshmallows. Marshmallows were trending in 1920s American kitchens, much in the way matcha seems so popular today. Cooks incorporated them into just about everything: fruit salads, creamy desserts, and even, oddly, savory dishes, such as baked lima beans. They seemed a natural addition to ambrosia, and worked so well that, a century later, few recipes feel complete without them.

World War and Food Chemists

During World War II, the canned food industry boomed. Manufacturers were under pressure to supply the war front and increased production of canned foods to meet that need. However, when the war ended, the processed food industry needed new customers and started to market directly to homemakers, promising that canned foods liberated mothers from the tedium of cooking from scratch. Then, canned fruit quickly replaced fresh in ambrosia.

By the mid-1960s, when chemists at General Mills invented Cool Whip, the dish bore little resemblance to the original. Instead, what was once delicate, simple, and marked by its distinct freshness became a dish noted for its use of processed and canned foods.

Making Ambrosia the Traditional Way

Whether you love or hate the modern style of ambrosia, the earlier versions of the dish are worth making. You start by segmenting fresh oranges so that only the supreme, or the flesh of the orange absent of its peel, pith, and membranes, remains. If youve never segmented an orange, it can be a touch tricky.

First, slice away the oranges peel and pith with a sharp paring knife, then slide your knife against the orange flesh, freeing each segment from the membrane. To the bits of orange, add chopped fresh pineapple and freshly grated brown coconut. A coconut reamer is perfect for this purpose; however, you can also substitute dried unsweetened coconut if you dont have one. Lastly, sprinkle the fruit with sugar. Sugar not only enhances the fruits sweetness, but it also encourages them to release their juices. As a result, the flavors meld together more seamlessly.

Traditional ambrosia is best eaten the day you make it. It can keep in the fridge for up to 3 days, but it loses a bit of its perkiness and freshness when stored too long.

Fresh Ambrosia Salad

Fresh citrus fruit and pineapple shine in this traditional version of ambrosia, which is graced by clouds of freshly grated coconut. Fresh coconut gives the dish a pillowy softness; however, you can substitute 2/3 cup dried, unsweetened coconut flakes in a pinch. This recipe is adapted from Miss Corsons Practical American Cookery and Household Management (1886) by Juliet Corson.

Serves 6

4 navel oranges

2 cups chopped fresh pineapple

2 cups finely grated fresh coconut

2 tablespoons rum (optional)

1/4 cup sugar

Working one at a time and using a sharp paring knife, slice the bottom and top quarter inch off of the oranges. Set each orange firmly on your cutting board, and then slice away its peel and white pith, exposing the fruits flesh and taking care not to cut too deeply into the fruit.

With the peel gone, hold the fruit firmly but gently, and slice the flesh away from the papery, transparent membrane. Discard the peel, pith, and membrane, and then place the remaining fruit into a large bowl.

Add the pineapple to the bowl, and then fold in the grated coconut. Sprinkle with rum and sugar. With a gentle hand, fold the ingredients together until evenly distributed, and then tip the salad into a serving bowl or serve it in individual dishes.

You can store ambrosia in a tightly covered container in the fridge for up to 3 days; however, its best consumed the day you make it.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) speaks as Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) listen during a press conference in Washington on July 15, 2019. (Alex Wroblewski/Getty Images)

Anti-Police, Prison Rhetoric Unpopular With Biden, Democrat Lawmakers

Since the death of George Floyd during the summer of 2020, progressives have pushed for sweeping new changes to policing in the United States, spawning movements like Defund the Police. But these movements are far from popular, and President Joe Biden and a wide range of Democratic lawmakers have rejected the rhetoric entirely.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Minn.), a progressive congresswoman elected during the wave of Democratic victories in 2018, made news recently when she defended a proposed bill that would empty federal prisons within 10 years, with no exception for extremely violent offenders, drug lords, or sex traffickers.

The Tlaib-endorsed bill, called the BREATHE Act, asks the Department of Justice to draw up a roadmap for prison abolition. The bill demands the full decarceration of federal detention facilities within 10 years and a moratorium on all new federal prison, jail, immigrant, and youth detention construction.

Tlaib and other members of the Squad, a group comprised of young leftist progressives Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), have adamantly pushed for anti-police and anti-prison initiatives.

Following the death of Daunte Wright in 2021, Tlaib called for no more policing, incarceration, and militarization, a call that was echoed by Omar and Pressley.

During the height of anti-police protests, many of which devolved into riots, during the summer of 2020, New York Citys Democratic mayor Bill DeBlasio proposed a $1 billion cut to the New York Police Departments approximately $6 billion budget.

But New York Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who was outspoken in her defense of the Defund the Police movement, rejected the proposal.

Defunding police means defunding police, Ocasio-Cortez said in a 2020 statement. It does not mean budget tricks or funny math. It does not mean moving school police officers from the NYPD budget to the Department of Educations budget so the exact same police remain in schools.

After the Democrats saw disappointing returns in the 2020 House elections, some blamed anti-police rhetoric for the failure. But Ocasio-Cortez continued to defend the movement.

I believe the path toward justice is a long arc. Safety is not just an officer with a badge and a gun, the self-described democratic socialist congresswoman said.

Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, whose district was an epicenter of anti-police agitation during the summer of 2020, has also been outspoken in defense of defunding the police.

At the height of the 2020 protests and rioting, Omar encouraged people to stay on the streets and show them we mean action.

Though the momentum of the movement has died down, Tlaibs newest controversy shows that the sentiment remains very much alive among progressives.

But anti-police and anti-prison sentiments are far less popular with Biden, Democratic senators, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

Biden Rejects Defunding Police, Tlaibs Bill

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki responded to a question asking whether Biden supports Tlaibs proposed legislation.

The president does not support abolishing prisons, Psaki said. He thinks measures like that will make us less safe and he would not support legislation that includes it.

This response fits into a larger effort by Biden to distance himself from anti-police sentiments without alienating voters who hold those sentiments.

His presidential campaign, which ran during the height of rioting across the United States, was anxious to show Biden as a moderate in order to allay the fears of middle Americans that Biden would follow along with progressive anti-police rhetoric.

No, I dont support defunding the police, Biden told CBS during his presidential campaign.

Rather, Biden called for conditioning federal aid to police based on whether or not they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness; and, in fact, are able to demonstrate they can protect the community and everybody in the community.

Biden also gave his endorsement to efforts to increase social spending at the state and local level, but without defunding or replacing police departments.

Any effort to overhaul policing through federal legislation, such as Tlaibs BREATHE Act, would have to go through Biden before becoming law. Bidens stated position against such efforts would pose a challenge to progressives hoping to actually make substantial changes at the federal level.

Senate Dems Vote to Defend the Police

Before any legislative overhaul of policing gets to Biden, it would have to get through the Senate. But senators of both parties have rejected the rhetoric.

During amendment votes on the Democrats $3.5 trillion budget bill, which has since been reduced to $1.85 trillion, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) put forward an amendment to grant extra federal funding to police departments.

Sending a clear message to progressives in the House, all 50 Democrats joined with all 50 Republicans to vote in favor of the proposal in a rare show of unanimity.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), whose vote is essential to Democratic policy goals, has spoken out forcefully against anti-police rhetoric.

In a November 2020 post on Twitter, Manchin wrote: Defund the police? Defund, my butt. Im a proud West Virginia Democrat. We are the party of working men and women. We want to protect Americans jobs & healthcare. We do not have some crazy socialist agenda, and we do not believe in defunding the police.

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), another critical swing voter, has also confirmed her opposition to the movement.

But the movement is even unpopular with the Senates foremost leftist progressive, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Sanders has signaled his support for efforts to reform police departments across the U.S., but rejected efforts to defund or abolish the police.

Asked whether he agreed with the Squads calls for no more policing, incarceration, and militarization, Sanders responded curtly, No, I dont.

Prominent Black Caucus Members Reject Defund the Police

Though leftist progressives allege that Defund the police movements are for the benefit of minorities, who they claim are unfairly targeted by police, their position is not shared by the Congressional Black Caucus.

I told some friends that [Defund the Police is] probably one of the worst slogans ever, said Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.), chairwoman for the Black Caucus, during a Washington Post live broadcast in 2020.

Police officers are the first ones to say they are law enforcement officers, theyre not social workers. What we have done in our country is, we have not invested in health, social, and economic problems in communities. We leave the police to pick up the pieces, Bass said. She represents Los Angeles. In my city, for example, on any given night, we have over 40,000 people who are homeless. Why should the police be involved with that?

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) has also spoken forcefully against anti-police rhetoric.

I know what Im talking about, Im out here with the voters everyday, Clyburn said during an interview with Medhi Hasan. I can tell you, Defund the Police is a non-starter, even with black people.

Clyburn blamed the rhetoric for the Democrats poor House returns in 2020, and has called for progressives in the party to drop the issue.
App That Helps Hire Unvaccinated Employees to Expand in California

A new San Diego-based app that helps hire unvaccinated employees announced on Nov. 23 that they will be expanding throughout the rest of California.

Called PublicSq., the digital platform launched just two months ago and has already seen thousands of users and over 320 businesses sign up, paving the way for freedom-loving Californians to support businesses that support them.

The app seeks to connect freedom-loving Americans with local communities, reliable information, and the businesses that share their values, according to its website.

Earlier this month, PublicSq. hosted a job board featuring 65 different businesses that are hiring employees regardless of their COVID-19 vaccination status, after thousands of San Diegans lost 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.

We still believe in a bright future for California, but well only achieve that bright future if we say a resounding NO to oppressive mandates, government coercion, and cancel culture, and say YES to liberty, free speech, and an economy that allows for everyone to participate, regardless of their personal medical choices, CEO and founder of PublicSq. Michael Seifert said in a statement. Were excited to provide a platform for freedom-loving Californians that allows them to live their lives on the foundation of their values.

Aside from launching statewide, PublicSq. has since enabled a new group feature that will allow users to communicate on the app in their own communities without fear of getting censored, a common occurrence that has been happening on mainstream social media platforms.

Let Them Choose will be building a local group for every school district in California on PublicSq., Sharon McKeeman, founder of Let Them Choose, an advocacy group against mandates on students, said in a statement. In the past, we were de-platformed by Facebook, and now many families avoid important topics in fear of being censored. We are thankful PublicSq. has created a space to dialogue openly and connect locally.

As a mother who is not on social media, I am excited to use PublicSq. to connect with other parents in my school district, Lauren Hernandez of Huntington Beach said in a statement. That way, we can stay updated and informed, without being censored. This app/website will allow us to stand up for our kids together.

As expansion continues, new businesses and features are being added weekly, app makers said.
Visitors take photos outside the Wynn casino resort with a view of the Grand Lisboa (top C) casino resort building in Macau, China, on March 5, 2019. (Anthony Wallace/AFP via Getty Images)

Are Companies, Investors Aware of Their China Risk?

Commentary

The earnings of companies within the S&P 500 Index are currently 90 percent correlated with Chinas gross domestic product growth, according to Bank of America analysts. In 2010, that correlation was zero.

Thats an astounding statistic.

Its not unfathomable once you dive into what it means. The S&P 500 consists of the 500 largest U.S.-based publicly traded companies. Companies of this sizethink multinationals such as Intel and Starbucksmust have generated sales from Chinese customers. One cant become one of the 500 largest companies without operating in the worlds No. 2 economy.

It does raise a question, however: Are companies equipped to manage the risks of operating in China, and are they adequately disclosing such risks to investors?

Ten years ago, the Chinese market was immaterial to corporate revenues. Today, its a major driver.

China is a market with unique risks. They pose real challenges for companies and shareholders.

Shares of casino operator Wynn Resorts tumbled by 25 percent from Sept. 10 to Sept. 21, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced restrictions on casino operations in the gambling hub of Macau. Nike saw its stock drop by 12 percent between March 16 and March 25, as it was censored on Chinese social media after releasing a statement of concern about forced labor harvesting cotton in Chinas Xinjiang region. And Nike has historically been a proponent of Beijings policies.

Those are examples causing quantifiable detriment to investors.

There are also issues that dont directly correlate to stock price movements. Chinas draconian lockdowns during the CCP virus pandemic have harmed restaurant operators such as Yum China Holdings and Starbucks, as well as hospitality firms such as Marriott International. That effect is still ongoing.

On Marriotts third-quarter earnings call on Nov. 3, upon being asked about the risks of operating in China by a Wall Street analyst, Marriott Chief Executive Anthony Capuano said, Well, how much time do we have?

Japans SoftBank Group, whose subsidiary, Vision Fund, owns several technology startups in China, including ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing, recommended in September to be more cautious about investing in China. Beijings crackdown on technology firms has forced SoftBank to write down its holdings by more than $50 billion.

Theres no singular type of China risk. Obviously, the CCPs regulatory whims are a risk. Chinas lack of judicial independence is another. Not to mention the CCPs politics and its views on U.S. businesses in China. The countrys own domestic companies are also becoming increasingly fierce competitors to foreign incumbents. Lastly, Chinas economy poses a macro riskits slowdown hurts mining companies exporting natural resources and farmers exporting agriculture.

In the Nov. 15 issue of Barrons, the financial newspaper compiled a list of China sensitive S&P 500 companies based on the percentage of their annual sales are derived from China.

The top 10 companies on that list, in order, are casino operators Wynn Resorts (with 70 percent of its sales coming from China) and Las Vegas Sands, chipmakers Qualcomm and Texas Instruments, fiber optics firm IPG Photonics, computer hardware maker Western Digital, chipmaker NXP Semiconductors, radio and wireless technology maker Qorvo, semiconductor firm Broadcom, and glassmaker Corning (with 33 percent of its sales deriving from China).

Im not here to argue that all companies need to exit China. Perhaps some should. Others, with the right framework, could see their profits outweigh the risks. But all of them need to ask if they have the resources, know-how, and expertise to properly assess, identify, and mitigate the risks of operating in China. And they need to be independent enough to give objective assessments.

Even if theyre equipped with the resources, are companies properly disclosing such issues to investors? China is a hot topic of discussion on corporate earnings calls. Its no longer good enough for corporate CEOs, CFOs, and COOs to say, We are monitoring the situation in China.

A paragraph on the risk of doing business in China in a companys SEC filing is too vague. Companies need to tell investors how theyre monitoring and what contingencies and hedges are in place to deal with political, regulatory, or economic changes specific to China. Managing business in China should span functional departments and executive management.

Risk isnt a one-way street. With risks, there are also opportunities. But companies and shareholders need to get smarter and be better informed.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
An Interpol logo shown at Interpol's Global Complex for Innovation in Singapore on Sept. 30, 2014. (Reuters/Edgar Su)

As CCP Official Joins Interpol, International Legislators Urge Revoking Extradition Treaties With China

Global parliamentarians called on governments to revoke extradition treaties with China for fear the communist regime will use the international law enforcement body to chase down dissidents across borders, as Chinas nominee won a key Interpol seat.

The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) on Nov.25 elected Hu Binchen, an official at Chinas Ministry of Public Security, as an Asia delegate in its 13-member Executive Committee during Interpols annual General Assembly meeting in Istanbul.

Hus election gives the Chinese regime a green light to continue using Interpol as a vehicle for its repressive policies globally and places thousands of Hong Kong, Uyghur, Tibetan, Taiwanese, and Chinese dissidents living abroad at even graver risk, said the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) in a Thursday statement.

The Chinese regime has repeatedly abused the INTERPOL Red Notice to persecute dissidents in exile, according to the IPAC.

Fifty politicians of the group lodged their objections at Hus candidacy in a joint letter on Nov.15. They claimed that the Chinese regime sent Hu to continue expanding its long arm of policing abroad, citing a human rights advocacy group Safeguard Defenders report.

The report, titled No Room to Run, examines how the regime was refraining from making its Interpol Red Notice requests public, putting thousands of activists and dissidents at risk of arrest, detention, and extradition to China. According to the report released on Nov.15, the international cooperation department, in which Hu works as a senior official, is responsible for chasing down alleged fugitives overseas through legal or illegal means.

The international cross-party group of parliamentarians is now deeply concerned by Hus election,

We reiterate our call for all governments to revoke extradition treaties with the PRC and Hong Kong, IPAC said. Activists, dissidents, and exiles living abroad must be protected from harassment and intimidation from the PRC authorities.

Rights group Hong Kong Link president Gloria Fung expressed her concerns, in a previous interview with The Epoch Times, over Beijings misuse of the organizations database after Hus election.

Safeguard Defenders director Peter Dahlin warned in a post on Thursday, saying, a fox is now placed in charge of watching the sheep.

#Breaking. Chinas #HuBinchen elected to @INTERPOL_HQ Executive Committee. A fox is now placed in charge of watching the sheep. A disgrace that will increase Chinas abuse, and which will undermine trust in #INTERPOL in general.https://t.co/Do3Cq3auTi  Peter Dahlin (@Peterinexile) November 25, 2021

The former president of Interpol Meng Hongwei is currently serving a 13-year jail term in China. The senior Chinese security official vanished in 2018 during a home visit. Meng later reappeared in court and was accused of accepting bribes, though his wife, who was granted political asylum in France, denied the charge.
Smoke rises from burning buildings during a protest in the capital of Honiara, Solomon Islands, on Nov. 25, 2021, in this image made from aerial video. (Australian Broadcasting Corporation via AP)

Australia Deploys Federal Police, Defence Force to Solomon Islands Amid Unrest

Australia will deploy Defence Force personnel and federal police to the Solomon Islands in the Pacific to calm the situation amid unrest that has seen businesses in the Chinatown district of the capital, Honiara, set on fire.

This comes after a planned protest in Honiara on Wednesday led to public disorder that saw the destruction of a leaf hut adjacent to the Parliament, a police station, and a high school.

Further unrest on Thursday, reported by witnesses who posted photos to social media, showed smoke billowing and destruction in the Chinatown district.

The situation remains volatile with reasonably large crowds on the move, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters on Thursday afternoon, adding that the Solomon Islands local police force were stretched.

We have received reports of more buildings burning on the main road in the centre of Honiara, including a large commercial building and a bank branch. And there is increasing number of people on the streets, Morrison said.

Earlier this afternoon, I received a formal request from the prime minister of the Solomon Island, Minster Sogavare, under our 2017 Bilateral Security Agreement, under article 2, clause 1, for assistance for the provision of safety and security of the Solomon Islands and to support the Solomon Islands police force, he said.

The detachment of 23 AFP officers who left on Thursday will support riot control, while the 50 further officers will provide security support at critical infrastructure.

Their mission is expected to last for weeks, Morrison said, who advised the prime ministers of New Zealand, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea of Australias intentions.

Our purpose here is to provide stability and security to enable the normal constitutional processes, within the Solomon Islands, to be able to deal with the various issues that have arisen, he said.

It is not the Australian governments intention in any way to intervene in the internal affairs of the Solomon Islands, that is for them to resolve.

Morrison noted that Australias security support did not extend to the Solomon Islands Parliament or the executive buildings of the government, which was the responsibility of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force.

The primer minister stressed that Australias deployment did not indicate any position on the internal affairs of the Solomon Islands.

The protesters are reportedly mostly from the Solomons most populous region, Mailata Province, whose renegade leader, Premier Daniel Suidani, has vehemently protested the governments decision in September 2019 to drop diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of mainland China.

Suidani has stood firm in his support for Taiwan, despite pressure from federal colleagues and Beijing.

However, the Australian prime minister said he had not received any advice that the unrest was connected to any larger geopolitical concerns, namely the change of diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to China.

When pressed on the matter, Morrison said that it was not for Australia to be seeking to guide them on those matters.
Australia Prepares to Rapidly Train Cyber Defense Experts

Australia will be bolstering its defence on the digital front by offering paid traineeships for students wanting to fast track their careers as cyber security specialists.

Growing rates of criminal and state-linked cyber actors have seen the nation prioritise its cyber defensive and offensive capabilities.

In particular, Australia has passed new legislation that could see the government install software on the systems of private businesses in response to cyber-attackswhile threatening any cyber actors with swift retaliation.

The taxpayer-funded program will provide a new National Certificate III in Information Technology (cyber security) qualification to help fill 7000 jobs by 2024 in an industry expected to generate $7.6 billion for the economyall without the need to receive a university degree.

Coding education specialist Junior Engineers and job provider Asuria have partnered to run the program, which will involve placing participants with nationally recognised qualifications together with host employers.

Thanks to the governments range of employment programs, together, Asuria and Junior Engineers will be able to directly address the cyber security skills shortage, fast-tracking suitable candidates into ready and waiting roles, while giving Australians the opportunity to embark on exciting new careers by gaining skills that will last them a lifetime, chief executive and chair of Asuria Con Kittos said.

The training program will pay students while providing real-world training and experience in cyber security risk management and incident response. First courses are expected to open in early 2022.

This comes amid growing concern that government capabilities may be insufficient in protecting the nation against cyber threats, particularly against critical infrastructure.

Rachel Noble, director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate, said a quarter of all cyberattacks on Australia had targeted energy, water, telecommunications, health services, and other key infrastructure. This included attempts from cyber actors to gather intelligence or implant bugs and malware capable of denying, degrading, or disrupting the vital services at their discretion.

Director-General of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) Rachel Noble speaks during a Parliamentary inquiry at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Jul. 29, 2021. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Speaking alongside the head of the Australian Cyber Security Centre, former director of the United States National Security Agency, Keith Alexander, expressed concern that government capabilities are incapable of adequately defending some sectors.

I think the biggest problem that I faced in government, and that we face today, is governmentsnot just ours, but yours as wellcant see attacks on the private sector. Yet the government is responsible for defending the private sector, Alexander said.

Of note, Australia and other parts of the world have seen attacks ranging across industries, including government, hospitals, food producers, communications, media, and educational institutions.

While some involve independent ransomware attackers, others have seen offensive action from state-based actors, such as the Russia-linked SolarWinds attack and the China-linked Microsoft email server attack.
Australian Govt Celebrates $16.5 Billion Gas Project Despite Climate Groups Outcry

The go-ahead for a $16.5 billion (US$12 billion) offshore gas project off the coast of Western Australia (WA) has become a cause of celebration for the government whilst simultaneously drawing severe criticism from environmental groups.

Following a merger between the oil and gas portfolios of resource giants BHP and Woodside, $2.1 billion (US$1.5 billion) has been allotted to initiate the development of 8 subsea gas wells in Scarborough375 kilometres (233 miles) off the coast of Karratha in WA.

An estimated total 314 billion cubic metres (11.1 trillion cubic feet) of dry gasequivalent to 126 million Olympic sized swimming poolswill eventually be pumped through 430 kilometres (270 miles) of pipeline for onshore processing.

Speaking at a Business Council of Australia address, Prime Minister Scott Morrison expressed excitement over the projects initiation.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks during a media conference in Sydney, Australia, on Oct. 15, 2021. (Brendon Thorne/Getty Images)

I assure you that all our Government warmly welcomes Mondays announcement of the final investment decision to approve the $16.5 billion Scarborough development, Morrison said.

I did a bit of a jig out of the Chamber the other day.

The federal government earlier this year released 21 new areas for oil and gas exploration in parts of the coast, which included the Carnarvon Basinhome of the Scarborough gas field.

The 21 release areas available for offshore oil and gas exploration as part of the 2021 Offshore Petroleum Exploration Acreage Release. (Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources)

This comes amid growing demand for gas as governments worldwide, including Australia, have labelled the resource as indispensable in providing firming power to intermittent energy generation, such as wind and solar, amid a rapid transition to renewable sources.

The United Kingdom, and other parts of Europe, have been struggling to secure sufficient gas supply following significant dips in wind generation, exacerbated by a confluence of factors, risking an energy shortfall as the region heads into winter.

Read More UK Energy Crisis Shows Danger of Net Zero Emissions Policies: Aussie Senator

Australia itself has been scurrying to explore new oil and gas resources amid a shortfall on the east coast and southern states that could see reserves run dry as early as 2024, affecting close to 90 percent of Australians.

An expert in electrical grid systems and University of Melbourne Engineering Professor Iven Mareels previously told The Epoch Times that, while he believed it critical Australia set forth on the path to net zero emissions, gas would play a pivotal role in the process.

Most gas-fired power plants probably can run on hydrogen as well, so you can switch them over to something more renewable afterwards, Mareels said, mentioning some of the environmental advantages gas held over traditional coal-fired power generation.

A report by CSIRO (pdf) has also found that gas for domestic power generation reduced emissions by an estimated 31 or 50 percent when compared with coal, depending on the type of turbine used.

And they can act quickly, and that is important, Mareels said. The coal-fired power plant cannot compensate for the vagaries of [solar] and wind, but the gas-fired power plant can. If wind drops, gas can drop in almost immediately and pick it up where the wind left off. And the battery can do that, but only for a very short period of time.

Scarborough Draws Climate Criticism

However, the decision to pursue further gas production angered environmental groups following commitments made by Australia and 196 other countries at the 26th United Nations (U.N.) international climate summit, COP26, to move away from fossil fuels.

Australias Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrives for the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 at SECC in Glasgow, Scotland, on Nov. 1, 2021. (Phil Noble / Pool / Getty Images)

The Conservation Council of WA (CCWA) has estimated the Scarborough project would produce an additional 1.6 billion tonnes of emissions over its lifetimeequivalent to building 15 new coal power stations.

CCWA said the project was the most polluting fossil fuel project proposed in Australia and would increase WAs total emissions by around 4.4 million tonnes per year.

Climate activists have also continued to block a road leading to the onshore processing plant set to handle gas from Scarborough, with two women and a man chaining themselves to concrete barrels in vehicles over several days.

Climate change communications organisations, the Climate Council, suggested Australias recently announced target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 was not backed up by its actions.

It is abundantly clear that the Morrison governments net zero by 2050 commitment was designed to mislead and always included expansions of gas from WA, a Climate Council spokesperson said.

The International Energy Agency has made it very clear that there can be no new coal, oil and gas fields if we are to limit temperature increases to below the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees.

The 6th report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released earlier this year had declared a code red against the continued use of coal, oil, and gas due to concerns man made carbon dioxide emissions had been a driving factor in climate change.

Woodside is trying to convince Australians that Scarborough is clean when nothing could be further from the truth. Liquified gas contributes strongly to global warming, and it slows down the adoption of crucial renewable and zero emissions energy, the spokesperson said.
Clinical staff draw up AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines at the Claremont Showgrounds Covid-19 Vaccination Clinic in Perth, Australia on May 3, 2021. (Paul Kane/Getty Images)

Australian Man Apologises to Health Staff for Self-Injecting COVID-19 Vaccine

The Northern Territory man who self-injected a COVID-19 vaccine at a clinic in Coolalinga, southeast of Darwin in Australias north, has apologised to health workers for his actions, NT News reported on Thursday.

In a statement, he explained that he was not against vaccines, but rather the vaccine mandate, and accepted that his actions may have come across as threatening.

This comes after the man, who did not wish to be named, allegedly entered the Coolalinga clinic to receive his second COVID-19 shot on Tuesday in an agitated state.

According to NT Police Commissioner Jamie Chalker, the man indicated that he was not happy with the process and caused a disturbance. He pushed one of the hands away of one of our staff and grabbed the needle and injected himself with the vaccine, Chalker said.

Chalker called the behaviour inappropriate and not something that should be tolerated. He added that the man had been issued with an infringement notice for disorderly behaviour.

However, the man later told NT News that he did not assault anyone and did not push the staff members hand, saying that the nursing staff took three steps back when he grabbed the needle to inject himself.

He had written under duress on the consent form, and staff had refused to vaccinate him unless the comment was removed from the form. He therefore grabbed the syringe and injected himself.

When he came to the clinic for his first jab, he said he had also written under duress on the form, but the staff had gone ahead with the inoculation that time.

I am not in any way shape or form an anti-vaxxer, he said. I am fully vaccinated against measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, Hep A and B, and so on.

Protesters march across Victoria Bridge during a rally against a mandatory Covid-19 vaccine in Brisbane, Australia, on Oct. 1, 2021. (Dan Peled/Getty Images)

However he stressed that people should have the right to choose, and that in the case of the COVID-19 vaccine, he was coerced into it, only because his human right to travel freely in his own country had been taken away.

He had been desperate to see his son, who lives interstate, and needed to be vaccinated to do so.

I was not willing to sign my consent without it reflecting the coercion used to make me consent, and I stand by that action, he said.

Despite this, he conceded that his behaviour was not fair on the staff.

Although I did not touch, assault, or threaten to assault, I can imagine how threatening I appeared when I grabbed the syringe from the table, he said.

He apologised to Coolalinga Clinic staff for his aggressive actions and praised them for their professionalism.
A mother and her child pose in a room in a temporary apartment of the Home association in Paris on November 22, 2016. (GEOFFROY VAN DER HASSELT/AFP/Getty Images)

Australias Northern Territory Government Pledges $7.5 Million for New Domestic Violence Crisis Facility

The Northern Territory (NT) government will spend $7.5 million (US$5.4 million) over five years on a new accommodation centre in Palmerston, about 20km from Darwin, which will provide critical support to women and children fleeing domestic violence.

In a media release on Thursday, Minister for Families and Urban Housing Kate Worden said the government funding would ensure the facility can provide 24-hour support to up to 49 women and children at any one time.

As a Government, we acknowledge and understand that fleeing your home can lead to homelessness and housing vulnerability. This is why we are funding a new crisis accommodation centre that provides a home and a safe place from which to move your life forward. Crisis accommodation needs to be the springboard that allows women to regain control of their lives and rebuild, she said.

With construction set to be completed in 2023, the facility will provide semi-independent crisis accommodation, as well as longer-term housing for female and child victims of domestic violence.

Worden said the Labor government has made tackling domestic violence one of their top priorities and that the funding is part of an overall Northern Territory Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Framework 2018-2028, a 10-year strategy to reduce domestic, family, and sexual violence.

According to the framework document, the NT has the highest rate of domestic, family, and sexual violence in Australia, with police officers and emergency personnel attending to more than 61 incidents on a typical day.

In 2015, there were 1,730 victims of domestic violence per 100,000 people, which is approximately three times higher than any other jurisdiction and four homicides due to domestic violence per 100,000 people, also the highest of any jurisdiction.

In addition, at least one child is subjected to domestic violence every day of the year in the Territory.

The Palmerston facility will assist women and children in re-establishing their independence, facilitate trauma recovery and provide access to training, parenting and employment opportunities. It will also foster a learning and supportive environment for their children.

The Australian Government, along with the Salvation Army, are also contributing a joint $5.9 million (US$4.9 million) to the construction of the facility.

National General Manager, Family Violence, Salvation Army, Lorinda Hamilton, said that the Salvation Army welcomes the Territory governments continued investment in combating family violence in the Territory.
A man blocks a rail line in support of Wet'suwet'en protesters who were arrested by the RCMP in northern B.C., in Toronto on Nov. 21, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Christopher Katsarov)

BC Coastal GasLink Pipeline Conflict Gets International Attention While Some Warn of One-Sided Information

The conflict in northern B.C. over the Coastal GasLink pipeline caught greater international attention on Nov. 22 when Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio chimed in, posting on Twitter a video of RCMP officers confronting indigenous activists opposed to the pipeline. After setting up a blockade to protect their land, community, and sacred headwaters Wedzin Kwa from Coastal GasLinks planned fracked gas pipeline, the Wetsuweten Nation has faced militarized raids from the RCMP. We must protect the rights of land defenders, DiCaprio said in the tweet. The post drew rebuke from B.C. Liberal MLA Ellis Ross, a former chief councillor of the Haisla Nation, who told DiCaprio on Twitter: You have no idea what youre talking about. Give me a call. Ill tell you the other side of the story as an aboriginal leader who was on the front of this project from day one, said Ross.

The confrontation on Nov. 18 was the third time in three years that the RCMP has enforced a court order against blockades set up by supporters of the Wetsuweten Nation hereditary chiefs opposed to the construction of the liquefied natural gas pipeline.

The Wetsuweten are governed by both a hereditary chief system and elected band councils.

The pipeline has the support of 20 elected First Nation governments along the route, including the elected governments of the Wetsuweten Nation and Haisla Nation. But its opposed by the Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs and environmental activists, whose protests against the pipeline spread to other parts of the country in early 2020, in many cases with protesters holding blockages on railroads.

Blockade

The 670-kilometre pipeline would transport natural gas from Dawson Creek in northeastern B.C. to Kitimat on the Pacific coast. Almost all of the route has been cleared and nearly one-third of the pipeline has already been installed.

Members of the Gidimten clan, one of five in the Wetsuweten Nation, set up blockades on the Morice Forest Service Road south of Houston, B.C., on Nov. 14 despite a 2019 court order not to do so. On Nov. 18, the RCMP enforced the injunction and arrested 14 people and another 15 the next day. Two journalists were among those arrested, prompting an open letter from the Canadian Association of Journalists to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to condemn the arrest.

In a statement on Nov. 18, RCMP Assistant Commissioner Eric Stubbs said significant efforts to facilitate meaningful dialogue had failed and a breakup of the blockade was necessary so that Coastal GasLink workers stuck in their camp, including Wetsuweten band members, could get out, as their provisions were at critical levels. The journalists were among 11 people who had barricaded themselves inside structures and were given the opportunity to leave before police forced open the door and began to arrest those inside, Stubbs said in a Nov. 22 statement. He noted it was only at that point that the individuals then identified themselves as journalists and that the RCMP did not arrest anyone for being a journalist or detain anyone for performing their job. All those arrested at the protest site were released with conditions on Nov. 24.

 Long and Complex Processes of Consultation

On Nov. 14, the elected government of the Wetsuweten First Nation issued a statement saying, We want to make it absolutely clear that the actions of a few members of the Gidimten Clan who claimed to evict Coastal GasLink and the RCMP  do not represent the collective views of the Clan or of most Wetsuweten people.

We went through long and complex processes of consultation with our members, government, and the industry before agreeing to participate [in the pipeline]. Despite numerous opportunities to work together, the small group of hereditary chiefs who oppose the project  refused to engage and neither they, nor their non-Indigenous supporters, have offered any meaningful alternatives.

Over a year earlier in 2020, the B.C. and federal governments had reached a Memorandum of Understanding with the Wetsuweten hereditary chiefs that called them equal to the governments of B.C. and Canada, and the B.C. provincial government gave the hereditary chiefs $7.22 million to support the implementation of Wetsuweten title and rights. Immediately thereafter, five elected band councils of the Wetsuweten Nation said they were unaware of the proceedings apart from one preliminary meeting. They said the MOU lacked any semblance of credibility and called for its withdrawal. Playing Catch-Up

Ken Coates, Munk Senior Fellow in Aboriginal and Northern Canadian Issues with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, says provincial and federal governments are playing catch-up, as attempts by B.C.s First Nations to gain treaties were rebuffed for decades, from 1870 to 1990.

For 120 years they stalled and did everything they could to stop it from actually happening. So what happened is British Columbia and Canada are basically facing a problem of their own creation, Coates said in an interview.

Coates, however, said the MOU was unhelpful to the extreme and a step backward.

How would you like it if there was somebody out there presenting themselves as representing your decision and youve not formally agreed that they will be the ones doing that work for you?  Well, youd kind of be appalled.

Coates doubts those holding solidarity protests have the full picture.

The national story thats getting out there is very, very one-sided, and I dont think theres any other case in recent memory where essentially a small group of hereditary chiefs to be sure has garnered all of the attention away from the elected officials, he said.

Hereditary chiefs have a very clear cultural role and political role within their communities. That part is unchallengeable. The question is, are the current hereditary chiefs exercising that properly?

A communications account called Gidimten Checkpoint has shared the pro-hereditary chief, anti-pipeline message in recent weeks. The Epoch Times reached out to its admin on Facebook for an interview but without success. However, an unnamed admin on the account messaged back to say: The people involved in the land defence project are not protesters. The people holding rallies and actions in support of the land defence, are protesters The supporters who have been on the land [are] assisting in upholding Anuc niwhiten (Wetsuweten Law).

E normous Division 

Chris Sankey, a B.C. indigenous supporter of the energy industry, recently tweeted: These Activists from outside Canada, who are collaborating with University Professors and Non Government Organizations from Ontario & British Columbia are not our friends. Nobody in their right mind would seek to damage their own people and Canadians at large.

Coates said its not up to outsiders, including himself, to tell the indigenous people what they should do.

[Its] environmental colonialism. So environmentalists have become the 21st-century equivalent of the missionaries. Theyre going up there and telling indigenous people what to do and what to believe, he said. These people can think for themselves.  The intervention of outsiders has actually created enormous, enormous division that is really hurting the communities.
Office of Management and Budget acting Director Shalanda Young answers questions during a Senate Budget Committee hearing in Washington on June 8, 2021. (Greg Nash/Pool/Getty Images)

Biden Nominates Shalanda Young to Head White House Budget Office

President Joe Biden on Wednesday tapped Shalanda Young to head the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

Young has continued to impress me since being confirmed as the agencys deputy director and being promoted to acting director, Biden said in a video statement announcing the pick.

Before Biden entered office, Young was clerk and staff director for the House Appropriations Committee.

As is typical for the Biden administration, the White House noted Young would be the first black woman to lead OMB if confirmed by the Senate.

The upper chamber voted 6337 to approve her as deputy director in March.

Shalanda will not only be a tremendously qualified director, shell also be a historic director, Biden said. If confirmed, she will join the most diverse presidential cabinet in history, he added.

OMB helps presidents craft budgets and makes sure agencies are running smoothly.

Bidens last nominee to head OMB, Neera Tanden, faced significant opposition due to her public criticism while president of the Center for American Progress of senators from both parties.

Tanden withdrew her nomination in early March, telling Biden that there is no path forward to gain confirmation.

That was one of the few times Biden hasnt seen a nominee confirmed. The president in September withdrew the nomination of David Chipman to head the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives because of his controversial comments regarding gun ownership restrictions.

Nominees need a simple majority to be confirmed.

The Senate is divided evenly between Republicans and Democrats, but many of Bidens nominees have received some GOP support.

Biden also nominated Nani Coloretti, a senior vice president at the Urban Institute and a former Obama administration official, to serve as OMBs deputy director.

If confirmed, Coloretti would be one of the highest-ranking Asian American, Native Hawaiians, or Pacific Islanders serving in government, the White House said.

No lawmakers indicated opposition to Young after Bidens announcement, while many said they support the pick.

Good call by @POTUS. Shalanda Young is hardworking, fair, and experiencedand shes the right person to lead the Office of Management and Budget, Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said in a statement.

Having worked with her in the House, I know Shalanda Young to be a strong and respected leader. Her historic nomination is well deserved, and I look forward to working with her when confirmed, added Sen. Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.).
US President Joe Biden meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Nov. 15, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Bidens China Trade Policy Should Be Revised, Put More Effective Pressure on Beijing: Experts

News Analysis

Tariffs on products and goods imported from or exported to China have undeniably sent a strong message to Xi Jinpings regime about its chronic human rights abuses and violations of the terms of its World Trade Organization (WTO) membership.

Though theyre well-intentioned and have had some effect on Beijings conduct, it may be time to consider revising the U.S. approach and applying pressure in a more targeted manner attuned to economic realities, experts said this week. That may be preferable to scrapping tariffs altogether.

During the U.S.China trade war, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on more than $300 billion worth of Chinese imports in response to Beijings unfair trade practices. In recent remarks, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen mentioned the possibility of easing or eliminating tariffs. U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai also said in October that some Trump-era tariffs would be unwound. While such a step may seem consistent with a domestic free-market and anti-protectionist approach, it might also reduce pressure on Beijing to modify its authoritarian behavior, some experts point out.

Charles Trzcinka of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, who has studied and taught in China going back decades, questions the economic benefits of tariffs.

Americans pay tariffs to the government. So it hurts them. It is especially a problem for American farmers who produce cheaper food than anyone in the world, Trzcinka said.

For example, Indiana farmers can produce at a lower cost, including shipping, than Chinese farmers can. We are just better at corn, soybeans, and pork than they are. We have more technology and bigger operations.

But the flip side of the coin is that a blanket reduction or removal of tariffs would eliminate an important tool with which the U.S. has put pressure on Beijing to modify some of its more egregious behavior. Thats why some observers favor a nuanced strategy that retains elements of a protectionist policy as part of a more targeted, tailored approach.

Clete Willems, a partner at the corporate law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and a deputy director of the White House National Economic Council during the Trump administration, sees tariffs as a core enforcement mechanism of the WTO, and questions the possibility and desirability of scrapping them altogether.

The WTO system is set up so that when a member state is found not to be compliant, the system envisions other members putting tariffs in place to induce compliance. Tariffs are the preferred tool to get a country to follow through with its obligations, Willems said. If economists think that tariffs arent the way, then they have a problem with the entire international trading system.

Nor can we completely discount the effectiveness and success of tariffs when it comes to pressuring Beijing to modify its conduct in recent years.

I think that tariffs have been a mixed bag in terms of effectiveness. Theyve worked to a certain extent, though there are a lot of problems they havent solved, Willems said.

Willems cited agriculture as one area in which the Chinese regime has changed its behavior in response to tariffs. In January 2020, the Trump administration and Beijing signed the phase one trade deal, under which China agreed to buy an additional $200 billion in U.S. goods over a two-year period, including $32 billion in agricultural products. As a result, Willems noted, agricultural exports from the U.S. to China this year have hit record highs.

As of October, China had reached 83 percent of its target in relation to U.S. farm buys, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Intellectual property and financial services were other areas that saw improvement following the deal, he said.

Theyve changed some behavior, and they never would have done it without tariffs, Willems said.

Hence, giving up on protectionism altogether, as Yellen implied might happen, may not be the best idea. But a smarter, more targeted strategy could work.

One approach, which Willems and colleagues advocated during his tenure at the National Economic Council and which he believes could still prove effective, is for not just the United States, but a coalition of countries to stop taking a specific import from China, namely steel.

If enough countries stop taking Chinese steel, then this would create a global price differential, and it would no longer be feasible for China to maintain its industry. You would have a market price and a China price. This might get China to take some of its excess inventory off the line, Willems said. Then you would no longer have that steel flooding the rest of the global markets.

In such a scenario, the price obtained outside China would be more aligned with market norms and expectations. The coalition countries would trade steel at market prices, he said.

Im hopeful that President Biden may still go in that direction. I believe theyre considering this as an option, he said.

Because the market is so distorted, it does call for some trade actions. Call it protectionism or something else. A coalition of countries need to act together to apply pressure.

National Security and IP Issues

Anyone making a case for free trade between China and the West must anticipate obvious objections concerning the ongoing human rights crisis in China, including Beijings deepening suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong, repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and persecution of dissidents and other religious and ethnic minorities.

Yet another issue, acknowledged even by those who dont feel that tariffs make the best economic sense, is that unrestricted trade with China opens the door wide for all manner of abuses and theft of intellectual property (IP).

Trzcinka has a unique perspective on the IP concerns that arise in this context. In 1987, he ran the very first MBA program in China. This experience made him highly aware of Beijings loose understanding of what contracts entail and of the regimes propensity to flout contracts, Trzcinka said.

American companies often complained about Chinese stealing technology. I got into many arguments with CEOs about Why trade with these people? Usually the answer was, Because the market is big. So the tradeoff is the cost of lost technology and manufacturing processes versus the gain in profits, he said.

According to a 2017 IP Commission report by the National Bureau of Asian Research, the annual cost of IP theft to the U.S. economy could be as high as $600 billion, with China being the primary culprit.

If discussions about a reciprocal lowering of tariffs between China and the United States advance to the next stage, national security and IP are the two issues of paramount concern that must be addressed in detail and weighed against the certain economic gains. These are among the more persuasive reasons for not completely abolishing trade protectionism vis a vis Beijing.

Shielding Workers From Consequences of Easing Tariffs

If the decision is ultimately made to follow through on Yellens recommendations and reduce or eliminate tariffs, its also extremely important to anticipate the effects on U.S. workers.

Without the tariff wall, U.S. enterprises may be able to get iron, steel, and other raw materials from China at lower cost and will be able to produce more cheaply and efficiently, which in turn means selling to customers at lower prices, said Lawrence White, a professor at New York Universitys Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Nineteen out of 20 economists will tell you that tariffs are impediments to trade, and that when there are impediments, bringing them down is generally a good idea. It is even better when the impediments put up by our trading partner also come down, White said.

But White stressed that America as a society would need to take steps to cushion the impact for domestic workers that might result from a reduction of tariffs. Better training for workers, enhanced mobility, direct income subsidies, and subsidies for those who wish to move to locations where jobs are more plentiful, are all measures that White sees complementing the reduction of tariffs and making it more of a win-win proposition.

We will be able to sell them more stuff: soybeans, banking services, specialized machinery that we are good at producing, Boeing jet airplanes, or more U.S. branded cars, whether its Cadillacs or Chrysler Jeeps or Ford 150 pickup trucks. These are all highly desirable, branded goods that we could sell more of in China in a less restricted, and restrictive, trade environment, White said.

But reaping these benefits in full does depend to a large extent on ameliorating the bottlenecks plaguing U.S. ports in recent weeks, he said.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a news conference after meeting with students at James Denman Middle School on Oct. 1, 2021, in San Francisco, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

California Governor Sued Over Endless State of Emergency

SANTA CLARA, Calif.California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing yet another lawsuit. This time, the Orange County Board of Education, Childrens Health Defense, and Childrens Health Defense California Chapter are collectively suing Newsom for what theyre calling an endless state of emergency during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The organizations are arguing that Newsoms own statements prove his emergency powers are no longer justified. They filed the lawsuit on Nov. 23.

Here, Gov. Newsom has made numerous statements about the status of our state and the status of the COVID-19 danger here in the state of California. He has very clearly articulated that the conditions have greatly become much better, Robert Tyler, president of Advocates for Faith & Freedom, told NTD Television.

During a Nov. 22 press conference, Newsom said there are signs of improvement.

We saw a few weeks ago, some troubling signs with case rates going up, positivity rates going up, hospitalizations, ICUs going up. That said, in the last 10 or 11 days, weve seen some stability, some good signs. That is good news, Newsom said. In fact, today, we claim to have the lowest positivity rate in the United States of America, 1.9 percent.

Under the law, a state of emergency should end at the earliest possible date that conditions warrant. On Nov. 10, Newsom extended the state of emergency for a third time, this time until March 31, 2022.

When you look at the state statute, the state requires imminent peril to the health and safety of the citizens here, Tyler said. How can the governor have any idea whether theres going to be imminent peril two weeks from now, three weeks from now, or three months from now?

The plaintiffs are arguing that the governor rules by fiat, without giving people an opportunity to give opinions to balance it out. Theyll be asking the court for an expedited trial.

Newsoms office hasnt responded to a request for comment.
California Sued Over Law Forcing Appointment of Minorities and LGBT to Corporate Boards

A conservative think tank filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against California to halt a law that will force quotas on publicly held corporations headquartered in the state, requiring them to appoint board members based solely on their race and sexual orientation.

The legislation at issue is the fruit of last years race riots that caused more than $2 billion in property damage and were organized nationwide by Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

The lawsuit, National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) v. Weber, was filed on Nov. 22 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

Defendant Shirley Weber, a radical left-wing academic before entering politics, is being sued in her official capacity as California secretary of state. Until January of this year, the San Diego-area Democrat was a member of the California State Assembly, where she championed AB 3121, a law creating a task force to develop proposals to pay reparations to blacks to compensate them for having ancestors a century and a half ago who were enslaved.

California has an ugly past, and its systemic injustice needs to be confronted, she said when her bill became law last year.

The NCPPR is a pro-free market research and shareholder advocacy organization. Its being represented in the legal proceeding by Sacramento-based Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which argues that the new law, known as AB 979, perpetuates discrimination by treating people based on their immutable characteristics, and not as individuals.

Since 2020, the state law known as SB 826 has required that all publicly held corporations headquartered in California meet a quota of female board members or face fines. PLF client and shareholder activist Creighton Meland is challenging SB 826 in the same U.S. district court. The state tried to have the case dismissed but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit unanimously determined that a shareholder of a California company has standing to sue over the law.

Beginning next year, AB 979 will require the affected corporations to meet an additional quota for board members based on race and sexual orientation.

When signing AB 979 into law on Sept. 30, 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said he did so to advance racial justice.

When we talk about racial justice, we talk about empowerment, we talk about power, we need to talk about seats at the table, Newsom said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The NCPPR disagrees about using government coercion to enforce diversity.

The problem is these diversity quotas apply to all businesses across every industry in perpetuity, regardless of whether there is any specific evidence of discrimination, the organization states in its legal complaint.

These laws, which dole out benefits and impose burdens on the basis of race, sex, and sexual orientation, are unconstitutional.

PLF attorney Daniel Ortner said that by the end of the current year, all publicly traded corporations headquartered in California will be required to have one racial minority or LGBT individual on their board.

Whats happening is the state of California has decided that they can intervene and force private companies to impose race quotas and sex quotas and all kinds of quotas, he told The Epoch Times in an interview.

But the Supreme Court regards quotas as invidious because all they care about is ones membership in a classtheyre not treating you an individual anymore  and that is deeply, deeply, deeply contrary to the Constitution and to the ideals of equality under the law that the Constitution stands for.

Under AB 979, any publicly held domestic or foreign corporation whose principal executive offices  are located in California must have a minimum of one director from an underrepresented community on its board by Dec. 31, the petition states.

By Dec. 31, 2022, a corporation must have a number of directors with given characteristics, depending on the boards size. If a corporation has five to eight directors, at least two will have to be members of an underrepresented community. A corporation with nine or more directors will have to have at least 3 members from an underrepresented community.

A director from an underrepresented community is defined as an individual who self-identifies as Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Alaska Native, or who self-identifies as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender.

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) welcomed the new lawsuit.

Its a shame that this horrible law ever passed Californias legislature, said NAS communications director Chance Layton.

Laws like these often begin with good intentions, but quickly get out of hand. If this law is left to stand, we might as well throw in the towel on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Layton told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

Race or sex discrimination should never be practiced by an American government. Californias legislature  have already shown their desire to discriminate and act with prejudice last year in the fight over Proposition 16. That ballot measure was defeated, thankfully, because regardless of what those in power believe, the people understand that allowing the state to discriminate based on unchangeable attributes of individuals is fundamentally wrong.

When she was an Assemblymember last year, Weber introduced the legislation that would become Proposition 16, which would have repealed the state constitutions ban on race-based and sex-based affirmative action, according to Ballotpedia.

Webers office didnt respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
Boxes containing Janssen COVID-19 vials sit stacked in a refrigeration unit shortly after their delivery to Louisville Metro Health and Wellness headquarters in Louisville, Ky., on March 4, 2021. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)

Canada Fully Approves J&J COVID-19 Vaccine for Adults

Johnson & Johnson announced Wednesday that Canadas health agency has given full approval to its single-shot COVID-19 vaccine for people aged 18 years and above, making it the first to fully approve the vaccine globally.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals said in a statement on Wednesday that Health Canada has approved its vaccine, following a study that shows it to be 85 percent effective in preventing severe disease and protects against COVID-19 related hospitalization and death starting 28 days after the injection.

This marks the first major regulatory approval for its vaccine, said Paul Stoffels, vice chairman of the executive committee and chief scientific officer for Johnson and Johnson.

Mathai Mammen, global head for Janssen Research and Development, said he is delighted by Health Canadas decision to approve the companys vaccine.

As vaccination rates continue to climb, a vaccine that prevents severe disease and protects against COVID-related hospitalization and death will help ease the strain on healthcare systems and is an important option for people in Canada and around the world, Mammen said.

Health Canada had previously approved the use of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine under an interim order.

Last month, Canada also approved the Pfizer-BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine to be used in children aged 5 to 11, an age group that was previously ineligible for a vaccine. On Nov. 9, the country also authorized booster shots of the Pfizer vaccine for people aged 18 years and above.

In October, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) also authorized booster shots of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine in the United States for all individuals aged 18 years and older, which may be administered at least 2 months after the first shot.

On Nov. 19, the FDA also authorized COVID-19 vaccine boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna for all people aged 18 and older. Both the Pfizer and Moderna booster vaccines may be administered 6 months after the primary series of doses. Prior to that announcement, booster shots of both vaccines had been available in cases of certain high-risk profiles.
China Fines Two Livestreamers $14.6 Million for Tax Evasion

Chinese authorities fined two top livestreamers a total of $14.6 million for income tax evasion, foreshadowing more scrutiny of the booming sector in the e-commerce industry.

In Hangzhou, the capital city of e-commerce hub Zhejiang Province, Zhu Chenhui was fined $10.3 million, and Lin Shanshan was fined $4.3 million. Both livestreamers failed to report personal income as business income, according to a statement released on Nov. 22 by the provincial tax authority.

Each livestreamer was ordered to pay twice the amount of outstanding taxes in addition to the penalties associated with tax evasion, according to a separate statement released on the same day.

Zhu and Lin apologized publicly for tax evasion later that day, stating that they decided to suspend livestreaming without announcing a potential return date.

Livestreaming marketing has risen in popularity over the past two years among brands such as LOreal, Nike, and Dyson, as well as online buyers. Most Chinese e-commerce platforms now offer the option for the purchase and sale of products via livestreaming.

Zhu has more than 15 million followers on Weibo, Chinas Twitter-like microblogging network. She was accused of converting personal wages and compensation into the incomes of multiple sole proprietorships that she established in 2019 and 2020, allowing her to evade $4.75 million in tax.

Lin, who has 9.6 million Weibo followers, used a similar tactic to evade $2.05 million in taxes, according to the authorities.

The tax authority said it detected the irregularities through big data analysis. It is also investigating advertising strategist Li Zhiqiang for assisting in the planning and execution of the tax evasion.

The tax office has used big data and identified other popular livestreamers who may dodge taxes, and these specific instances are under investigation, the authority added.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, watching livestreamers on more traditional e-commerce platforms like Alibabas Taobao became a preferred method of shopping for many of Chinas 1 billion internet users.

According to livestreaming monitoring outlet Huitun, Zhu is the third most popular livestreamer on Taobao, and Lin ranks sixth.

The penalty case comes two days after Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba and Tencent, were fined by the State Administration for Market Supervision for failing to report 43 prior acquisition deals, citing the anti-monopoly legislation. Each violation carried a fine of $78,000.

Chinese authorities have been restricting the countrys booming internet sector for months, targeting an array of companies over issues from anti-monopoly to data security.

Meanwhile, the ruling Communist Party has been clamping down on major celebrities and online influencers who it has deemed unacceptable.

Earlier this year, prominent actress Zheng Shuang was fined $46 million for tax evasion, barred from social media and appearing on television.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping (top C), Premier Li Keqiang (R), and NPC Chairman Li Zhanshu applaud during a speech at the second plenary session at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on March 8, 2021. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Chinas Plenary Session Reveals Xi Jinpings Tenuous Hold on Power: Scholars

The Chinese regime released the summary of its plenary session on the afternoon of Nov. 16, five days after the session ended, a near-week delay that is uncommon for the publication.

Scholars commented that ongoing struggles between factions within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) caused the delay. Though the Chinese regime is a one-party dictatorship headed by Xi Jinping, groups of senior officials and generals who are loyal to previous leaders are challenging his rule.

Scholars are divided on whether Xi will be able to maintain his position as a lifelong ruler. If he does hold power, he may not be able to control the regime the way he wants.

Xi Jinping wants to be the second Mao Zedong, Feng Chongyi, a professor on China studies at the University of Technology Sydney, told the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times on Nov. 16. Mao headed the CCP until the end of his life and has been idolized in modern China.

Yet, while Mao had widespread support from his followers, Xi has no shortage of enemies. The officials, who are loyal to [former CCP leaders] Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, are in strong opposition and are trying their bests to prevent Xis next possible term.

Its not confirmed that Xi Jinping can take another term, Lee Yeau-tarn, a professor at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies at National Chengchi University, told the Chinese Epoch Times. Before the 20th CCP rubber stamp conference, his priority is fighting his political opponents.

However, U.S.-based China affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan told the Chinese Epoch Times on Nov. 16 that the content of the plenarys summary portrayed Xi in a positive light. Tang said this is the road being paved for Xis third term in 2022.

From the content summary confirming CCP former leader Deng Xiaopings achievements, I feel Xi made compromises with his political opponents in which he agreed to change the current CCPs power structure, Tang said. He agreed to give some powers to the opponents.

Deng was Maos successor. He limited the Chinese leaders term of office from lifetime to two terms, which totals 10 years.

A Chinese policeman blocks photos being taken outside Zhongnanhai, which serves as the central headquarters for the CCP, in Beijing, on April 11, 2012. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

Struggling Factions

The CCP holds the plenary session every year. The sixth plenary session, which was held from Nov. 8 to Nov. 11 in Beijing, was characterized as struggling.

Chinese state-run media described this years plenary as a hot debate. Feng said that Debate is the tricky word that Chinese state-run media use to report the officials are having bad arguments. He said it means the factions could not come to an agreement on issues facing the CCP.

In the plenarys summary, the CCP announced that it is facing a more and more complicated and difficult environment out of China, and extremely heavy and hard tasks to control the COVID-19 pandemic and develop the economy and society inside China.

On Nov. 8, the first day of the plenary, the CCPs mouthpiece Peoples Daily published a front page editorial, citing corrupt officials as one of the CCPs challenges. The article quoted Xi as saying, Theres no iron-cap prince when it comes to anti-corruption.

Iron-cap prince is a Chinese term to describe officials who have so much power that they are never held accountable for their actions.

The Peoples Daily further quoted Xi as saying, The corruption is getting worse and worse, and will definitely disintegrate our party and our regime in the end.

Some scholars believe that this Peoples Daily editorial as well as the delay of the plenarys summary, which needed to be approved by all attendees, show that the CCPs factional struggling is intensifying.

Xi worries far more about the political conflicts than the Chinese peoples livelihood and foreign affairs, Lee said. Any intensified conflicts will worsen the factions strugglings.

The Chinese regime is facing a wide range of difficulties. It has several interests such as: the U.S.China trade dispute; the South China Seas sovereignty disputes with over a dozen countries; unifying the de facto independent country Taiwan; changing the free Hong Kong to a communist city; suppressing Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols, and Chinese dissidents; controlling Chinese peoples beliefs; maintaining its power in Chinas turbulent society; surviving from the recession economy; and clamping down on Chinese peoples freedom.

The Chinese regime is more and more isolated in the international community, Yen Chien-Fa, deputy executive officer of Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, told the Chinese Epoch Times on Nov. 11. Not only the United States, the whole world is against it.
Chinese Regimes Local Debts Reach Record High, Equivalent to 52 percent of GDP

The Chinese communist regimes Ministry of Finance released the local governments bonds and debt balances for this year on its website on Nov. 23. As of the end of October, the local government debts balance was $4.64 trillion.

Mainland Chinese media Securities Times and Tencent Finance jointly released the China Cities Debt Ratio Ranking, showing that most major cities in China have debt ratios exceeding 200 percent, and the debt ratios of some cities in underdeveloped regions are particularly high. In 2020, 85 cities had debt ratios exceeding 100 percent. Beijing and Guangzhou have debt ratios exceeding 200 percent. The debt ratio of Guiyang is as high as 929 percent, making it the most indebted city in mainland China.

According to Wall Street, investment bank Goldman Sachs issued a report on Oct. 29 indicating the total debt of Chinas local government financing vehicles (LGFV) has surged from $2.5 trillion in 2013 to $8.3 trillion at the end of 2020. According to a Bloomberg report, this figure is equivalent to 52 percent of Chinas gross domestic product (GDP) and is higher than the official total amount of the Chinese regimes outstanding debt.

The Goldman Sachs report also pointed out that about 60 percent of Chinas local government financing platforms that issued bonds to raise funds have used the money to repay debt due from 2020 to 2021, rather than for new investment.

Taiwanese economic expert Huang Shicong told the Chinese language Epoch Times that many local government debts in mainland China are tied to real estate. Real estate has developed rapidly in the past years because the local governments have been maintaining and pushing up the prices of real estate and housing. A lot of local government finances come from selling land and borrowing. Some local governments even invest in real estate.

Meanwhile, Chinese regime Premier Li Keqiang mentioned the new downward pressure (decline) on the Chinese economy in a meeting in Shanghai on Nov. 22. The third time in less than a month.

Huang said that once Chinas entire economy declines and real estate declines, the so-called demand expansion method of borrowing to pay off old debts will be affected. The Evergrande debt crisis, that detonated the entire real estate industry in China, has not only impacted the housing market, but also the finances of local governments.

Frank Tian Xie, a professor at the Aiken School of Business at the University of South Carolina, said in an interview with the Chinese language Epoch Times that local debt is a bit out of control. Now that the local governments are in deficit, the central government cannot help. The local governments are unscrupulous in borrowing on a large scale, and the central government has no way to restrain it.

Xie pointed out that when a normal government has such a large fiscal deficit, it should cut projects and staff, and find ways to tide over the difficulties. The Chinese regime doesnt care at all and continues to maintain a huge establishment. The ruling Chinese Communist Party does not have truly independent finances. Although it is now accounting independently, the finances are in fact unified, which means that governments at all levels are working together to carve up the property of the Chinese people.

Li Xinan and Li Jing contributed to the report.
The flag pole of the Australian Parliament is seen behind the roof of the Chinese Embassy in Canberra, on Sept. 17, 2021. (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Chinese Regimes New Ambassador to Australia Confirmed

The Chinese regimes next ambassador to Australia is Xiao Qian, Beijings current envoy to Indonesia.

According to The Australian, Xiaos nomination has been agreed to by the Morrison government and comes after the exit of wolf warrior Cheng Jingye, whos tenure saw him adopt a more confrontational style of rhetoric against Australia.

Xiao has also demonstrated a willingness to attack critics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

In September, he wrote in the Jakarta Post that Washingtons recent calls for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 was a political farce.

The so-called origin tracing investigation of the U.S. government by its intelligence community is clearly politicising the issue of origin tracing, he wrote in his op-ed. Such a practice disturbs and sabotages international cooperation on origin tracing and on global fight against the pandemic.

Chin Jin, chair of the Federation for a Democratic China, warned in 2007 that regardless of who the ambassador was, under the CCP regime, their personal views would be sidelined for the interests of the communist regime.

Chinas Ambassador to Australia Cheng Jingye at a press conference at his residence in Canberra. Australia on April 7, 2021. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

The incoming ambassador will continue the policy of consistent persuasion and seduction to undermine the U.S.-Australia alliance in particular, and to consolidate Australia-China relations, he wrote in an op-ed.

Chinas huge purchasing capacity for Australias raw materials and its seemingly enormous domestic markets will be used as effective tools to lure Australia closer to China in dealings with future international or regional relationships and conflicts of interest, he said.

In the process, Chinas total lack of democracy, and its appalling record on human rights are completely overlooked. Trade and money are thought to be more important.

The former ambassador, Cheng Jingye, served in Australia from 2016 until October 2021.

He was the public face of Beijings wolf-warrior diplomacy in Australia and began making headlines in April 2020 after Australias Foreign Minister Marise Payne publicly called for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19.

Chengs response was to make veiled threats and warn the federal government that pushing for an inquiry could see Australia-China bilateral trade suffer.

What followed was an economic coercion campaign that saw the Chinese authorities roll out a series of measures to disrupt key Australian exports, including barley, coal, cotton, hay, logs, meat, rock lobsters, and wine.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg estimated on Sept. 6 that the measures contributed to an AU$5.4 billion (US$4 billion) drop in exports in the year to June 2021.

At the same time, however, exporters have been moving to alternative markets, which saw trade exports to other parts of the world increase by $4.4 billion.

Cheng also rounded on federal members of Parliamentincluding using a Nazi slur against Senator Eric Abetzwho were critical of Beijing during a public inquiry into the Foreign Relations Bill. That law resulted in the cancellation of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) agreement between Chinese authorities and the state of Victoria.

Under Chengs leadership, the Chinese Embassy in Canberra also leaked a document containing 14 grievances against Australia. The laundry list of complaints allegedly contributed to strained bilateral tiesthey included the ban on Huawei from the Australias 5G network, foreign interference laws, media reporting on China, and Australias negative stance on the BRI.
Eric Serge Herbert wearing an Extinction Rebellion shirt arrives at the Brisbane Magistrates Court after being arrested for disrupting coal trains in Brisbane, Australia on Nov. 6, 2019. (AAP Image/Glenn Hunt)

Climate Activist Jailed After Stopping Trains Near Worlds Biggest Coal Port

An environmental activist involved in a multi-day long operation to block the passage of coal trains near the worlds largest coal export port in New South Wales (NSW) has been jailed for 12 months.

The 22-year-old, Eric Serge Herbert, pleaded guilty to obstructing a rail locomotive, attempting to hinder the working of mining equipment, and attempting to assist in the obstruction of a rail locomotive.

Herbert participated in an organised operation by Blockade Australia which lasted 11 days, halted railway operations on 20 occasions, and led to the arrest of over 20 members with some potentially facing 25-year jail sentences.

[Herbert] has this afternoon been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, 6 months no parole, for taking nonviolent direct action as part of the Blockade Australia mobilisation in Muloobinba/Newcastle, a Blockade Australia wrote in an update.

He was arrested once during the first week of the mobilisation after he stopped a coal train for 5 hours by climbing on top of it.

Hazmat-clad activist for Blockade Australia halts coal trains near the Port of Newcastle, Australia on Nov. 11, 2021. This is the eighth action to block the rail since Nov. 8. (Blockade Australia)

Blockade Australia described the sentence as unprecedented and an overreach of power. The group also expressed concern that those involved in the process were relatives of politicians who had previously expressed support towards coal production.

The sentencing magistrate was Janine Lacy, wife of NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham, the group said.

Shadow Minister for Climate Change Pat Conroy called the protests a form of eco-terrorism.

This is a rolling blockade to distort and destroy a perfectly legal activity: coal mining that delivers billions of dollars of revenue and income to workers and families in our region, he said, reported the Newcastle Herald.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said the protesters would face charges of up to 25 years for life-threatening conduct that involved climbing trains and hanging from large tripods.

NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller speaks during a COVID-19 update and press conference in Sydney, Australia, on July 30, 2021 (Lisa Maree Williams Pool/Getty Images)

Its unacceptable, Fuller told 2GB. We understand that people have a right to protest  but if you think about the danger that some of these passenger trains on these lines are travelling at 160 kilometres an houryou think about if they dont get a notification about these tripods, I mean you could see hundreds of people die.

Following the events, police formed a new task force codenamed Touhy dedicated to intercepting individuals seeking to disrupt the railway, and composed of officers from Police Rescue, Traffic and Highway Patrol Command, Public Order, Riot Squad, and PolAir.

Since then, Newcastle Herald reported that the task force had conducted multiple raids of locations suspected to be involved with Blockade Australia.

NSW Police had previously come under scrutiny over excessive use of strength in enforcing COVID-19 lockdown measures.

Earlier in August, Fuller labelled protesters of restrictions as anarchists, right before police summoned 800 Australian Defense Force personnel to maintain public health orders as Sydney underwent a several month-long lockdown.
Conservative United Australia Party to Run Candidates in All Lower House Seats in 2022 Elections

Australian billionaire businessman Clive Palmer, chairman of the United Australia Party, has said that he will run candidates in every lower house seat for the 2022 federal elections, News.com.au reported.

Palmer said he would not rule out making his own return to politics, but for now, hes throwing his full support behind UAP leader, Craig Kelly.

Craig Kelly is our leader, and Im certainly happy to follow him and to do all I can to help, Palmer said.

Im 67 years of age now, Im retired. I only came out of this retirement to help and assist Mr Kelly and what he wants to do, and certainly, hes a courageous leader.

And hes presenting a different point of view to the Australian public, he said.

Kelly is an independent MP who resigned from the Liberal Party, one of the two major parties, in February, after he was criticised for publically stating his views on vaccine mandates and providing information on alternative methods being used to treat COVID-19 internationally.

In his resignation letter, Kelly cited concern for his constituents, not wanting them to be denied access to medical treatments for COVID-19, if their doctors believed those treatments could save their life.

Read More Aussie MP Craig Kelly Quits Liberal Party to Stand by His Conscience

Kelly, who is the current member for Hughes in New South Wales, faced a strong backlash from segments of the media and political opponents for sharing information about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine.

Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-inflammatory and anti-malarial medication, has faced both support and scrutiny after the drug was utilised by former U.S. President Donald Trump as a prophylactic against COVID-19.

Currently, the debate on the drugs use is still ongoing after the medical journal The Lancet initially published a paper condemning hydroxychloroquine before retracting it after more than 100 medical professionals raised major issues with the study. However, a study published in the American Journal of Medicine on Jan. 1, 2021 found that hydroxychloroquine helped lower mortality in the early treatment of COVID-19.

Nevertheless, the World Health Organization in March advised against the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 and it is currently not advised by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration for use in those who have contracted COVID-19.

Kellys stance earned him support from Australians disillusioned with the status quo of politics and the media reporting on the pandemic. Kelly has since appeared at freedom rallies against mandatory vaccinations.

Palmer hopes to win seats in electorates with dissatisfied voters, and has encouraged his votes to preference the Liberal Democrats, and put Labor, the LNP, and the Greens last.

Theres a large volume of Australians that are dissatisfied with the status quo in the media and in parliament, he said.

They want an alternative and they want freedom of choice.

Palmer aims to run a UAP candidate in every seat for the House of Representatives, and when pressed, said he would not be running himself, but would not rule it out.

Were going through the candidates at the moment, and weve got some excellent candidates and theyve got to be evaluated. And the executive of the party is going to make that decision, he said.

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this article.
An ambulance drives by Brigham and Women's Hospital, which was setting up a a coronavirus testing site, in Boston, Mass., on March 7, 2020. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)

COVID-19: Massachusetts Hospitals to Delay Non-Essential Procedures

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) on Nov. 23 released an order requiring hospitals facing limited bed capacity to reduce non-essential, non-urgent procedures by Nov. 29.

Gov. Charlie Baker co-issued the update (pdf) with the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association (MHA) in order to preserve hospitals ability to respond to COVID-19 and to ensure that there is acute care inpatient capacity.

The Health and Human Services (HHS) cited critical staffing shortages stemming from the pandemic, which has contributed to the loss of approximately 500 medical/surgical and ICU hospital beds across the Commonwealth.

These factors, coupled with the current high census level and annual increases in hospitalization commonly seen during the period post-Thanksgiving through January, require this concerted effort to preserve inpatient capacity, it added in a statement.

The current strain on hospital capacity is due to longer than average hospital stays and significant workforce shortages, separate and apart from the challenges brought on by COVID, Secretary of Health and Human Services Marylou Sudders said.

Any hospital that has reached its capacity and transferred patients, or has sought help from another hospital as a result, will be required to postpone any scheduled procedures that are not medical emergencies.

To be exempt from the public health order, hospitals must participate in regional Health and Medical Coordinating Coalition meetings and regularly accept transfers from other hospitals.

According to the Massachusetts Department of Health, 89 percent of medical and surgical beds, and 79 percent of ICU beds were occupied by COVID-19 patients as of Nov. 22. The website stated that 740 patients were hospitalized in Massachusetts as of Nov. 22 and 273 of these patients had reported being fully vaccinated when they contracted COVID-19.

Furthermore, 80 of the 154 patients in ICU were intubated to assist with breathing.

The Massachusetts DPH was able to authorize its commissioner to pass the order after Republican Gov. Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency on May. 28 and authorized Acting Commissioner Margret R. Cooke to prepare for, respond to, and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the order states.

More than 1,000 hospitals across the United States have also been reported to be critically short on staff, according to data released by the HHS earlier this week.

A September study conducted by Harvard found that the shortage of critical care nurses intensified during the first wave of the pandemic, which interrupted an already restricted pipeline of new nurses, limiting clinical placements, and increasing wait times for licensing exams.

Some have also voiced concerns about vaccine mandates exacerbating hospital staffing shortages, if staff choose to remain unvaccinated.

As a practical matter, this policy may result in exacerbating the severe workforce shortage problems that currently exist, American Hospital Association President and CEO Rick Pollack stated in a Sept. 9 statement.

Arkansas Piggott Community Hospital Executive Director James Magee on Sept. 25 told KAIT8 that, as a small, rural hospital, finding nursing staff is a challenge.

Mandating that [vaccine] really works a hard step on the smaller hospitals because we dont have an extra pool of nurses to draw from out there, Magee said.
Czech President Zeman Returns to Hospital After Positive COVID-19 Test

PRAGUECzech President Milos Zeman was taken back to hospital on Thursday after testing positive for the coronavirus, his office said, just hours after his release following more than six weeks of treatment for an unrelated condition.

Zeman, 77, was released to home care on Thursday morning but an ambulance took him back to the Central Military Hospital (UVN) in the evening after testing positive at the presidential retreat at Lany, west of Prague.

The hospitalization means Zeman will not for the time being appoint opposition leader Petr Fiala as prime minister, which had been planned for Friday.

The presidents program will be suspended pending the treatment of COVID-19, his office said in a statement.

Zeman has been vaccinated against the coronavirus three times and local media quoted unnamed sources as saying he showed no symptoms.

News website Seznam Zpravy quoted UVN director Miroslav Zavoral, who is Zemans main physician, as saying he had the president, who had been receiving visits during his previous hospitalization, take a test for COVID-19 after a risky contact with an employee at Lany.

He was taken to the hospital to receive treatment with monoclonal antibodies, he said.

The president was previously admitted to hospital on Oct. 10 with complications to a chronic illness that his office never specified but which doctors said was a liver condition.

He went into hospital a day after a parliamentary election in which Zemans allies, led by Prime Minster Andrej Babis, lost to a centre-right coalition and the presidents leverage over parliament was undermined.

Zeman was initially treated in an intensive care unit and doctors said the prognosis was uncertain. Parliament prepared to debate taking away his presidential duties but after several weeks the presidents condition improved.

He had said he would respect the election result and that he would appoint the centre-right leader Fiala as prime minister on Friday, with the appointment of the Cabinet to follow later.

The hospital said earlier that the president had decided to continue treatment at the presidential retreat despite suggestions from the hospital that he should stay.

The hospital said Zeman, his family, and closest colleagues had been informed about potential risks and complications and that it had recommended he be treated in a specialized medical facility.

But it said there had been a significant improvement in Zemans condition and that it respected his decision to give preference to performing his constitutional duties.

Before his hospital stay, Zeman had tried to improve relations with Russia and China, but relations soured with Moscow in a spy row and with Beijing over failed investment plans.

The incoming government intends to reinforce the countrys Western orientation and strengthen relations with democracies including Taiwan. The Chinese regime claims the island as its own, despite the fact that Taiwan is a de facto independent country, with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.

Zeman has 15 months remaining in his second and final five-year term.

By Jan Lopatka and Jason Hovet

The Epoch Times contributed to this report.
Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell sits during jury selection in her trial in a courtroom sketch in New York on Nov. 17, 2021. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)

Epstein Victims Fund Hands Maxwell Accusers Claims to Maxwell, Prosecutors

Information about women who said they were abused by late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was handed over on Nov. 24 to prosecutors and defense attorneys associated with the case of close Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who has been accused of helping to recruit and groom the women when they were underage.

The information had voluntarily been given to the administrators of a victims compensation fund. A total of 225 alleged victims submitted information and collectively received nearly $125 million.

Prosecutors fought against forcing the fund administrators to hand over details, arguing that information about women who submitted claims wasnt relevant or admissible in Maxwells upcoming trial. Maxwells lawyers argued the opposite.

U.S. District Judge Alison Nathan, an Obama appointee presiding over the high-profile case, decided this week to order the administrators to send the information to both parties. Nathan said she would review the materials first and decide whether to hold some of them back.

The information was sent to the judge on Nov. 24, and she opted to let the parties inspect all of it. It was pegged to be between 6,000 and 7,000 pages of documents by a law firm representing Jordana Feldman, the primary administrator of the fund.

In a separate order, Nathan said the materials are likely to contain information that would (i) affect the privacy and confidentiality of individuals, (ii) would risk prejudicial pretrial publicity if publicly disseminated, and (iii) are not authorized to be disclosed to the public or disclosed beyond that which is necessary for the trial in this action.

Strict guidelines will cover the materials, which either will be treated as confidential information or highly confidential information.

The former designation means that the materials cant be disclosed to anyone outside of the parties except for legal workers, experts, or potential experts or consultants. The latter designation pertains to nude, partially nude, or otherwise sexualized material, which must be introduced under seal if its filed at all in the case.

The charges filed against Maxwell include enticing a minor to travel to engage in criminal sexual activity and transporting a minor with the same intent. Her trial is scheduled to start on Nov. 29. Only people inside the courthouse will be able to watch it, per federal rules. Alleged victims, members of Maxwells family, and members of the press are being guaranteed access to the trial.

Maxwell, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, has been held since her arrest in summer 2020 due to her wealth and connections around the world. She is facing up to 50 years in prison if convicted on all charges.
Children wait in line to receive their first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 15, 2021. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

EU Regulator Backs Giving COVID-19 Shots to Children Aged 5 to 11

The European Unions drug regulator on Thursday recommended expanding the use of Pfizer-BioNTechs COVID-19 vaccine for children from 5 to 11 years old.

The decision, announced by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), cited Pfizers clinical trial data, which the company says indicates a 90.7 percent efficacy in preventing illness in the age group.

The benefits of Comirnaty in children aged 5 to 11 outweigh the risks, particularly in those with conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19, the EMA said in a statement.

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech called Comirnaty is already approved by EMA for use in adults and children aged 12 and above.

EMA recommending the Pfizer jab for young children marks the first time the EU regulator has cleared a COVID-19 shot for use in this age group. While final approval is up to the European Commission and is not confirmed yet, it typically follows EMA recommendations.

In children from 5 to 11 years old, a dose of the two-shot regimen is one-third lower than that used in people aged 12 and above. Just like in the older age groups, it is administered as two injections in the muscles of the upper arm three weeks apart.

A boy receives his first shot of the COVID-19 vaccine in Vienna, Austria, on Nov. 15, 2021. (Joe Klamar/AFP via Getty Images)

The EU joins a growing number of countries, including the United States, Canada, Israel, China, and Saudi Arabia, which have cleared COVID-19 vaccines for children in the 511 year age group and younger.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommended that practically every child in the United States between 5 and 11 get Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine.

The only exceptions to the recommendation are children with a history of severe allergic reactions to a previous vaccine dose or a component of the vaccine, or a known allergy to a component of the shot. At least 10 percent of the 28 million eligible American children have had the first dose.

Some experts, though, have said that most children dont need the shot because theyre at little risk of severe disease when they contract the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Federal officials disagree, pointing to the small number of hospitalizations and deaths among the age group and asserting the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks.

While children remain more resilient than adults to this virus, they still remain at risk. And with the help of vaccines, we can prevent COVID-19 and many other diseases that were once fatal, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told reporters.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee about the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC., on Nov. 4, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

EMA clearing the shot for young children also comes as the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that as children and adolescents are at a lower risk from the CCP virus, countries should prioritize adults and sharing doses with the COVAX program aimed at supplying the worlds poorest countries which have struggled to get vaccines.

Other countries previously announced they have decided to limit the use of COVID-19 shots based on the so-called mRNA technology to younger people after reports of possible cardiovascular side-effects.

Some U.S. advisers have also cautioned against vaccinating every child, noting that heart inflammation post-vaccination is much higher among youth than adults, particularly among young males, and that children who have recovered from the CCP virus may not need a shot.

Its safe to assume that vaccinating a healthy child would take this extremely low risk of serious disease and drive it down even lower, Drs. Nicole Saphier and Marty Makary wrote in an op-ed this week.

Theres an important exception, though: If a child already had COVID, theres no scientific basis for vaccination, they added, pointing out how none of the previously infected, including those who didnt get a jab in the Pfizer trial contracted the illness.

The CDC has recommended that people with post-infection immunity, widely known as natural immunity, should still boost their protection against the CCP virus with a vaccine.

Zachary Stieber and Reuters contributed to this report.

From NTD News
Explosion at Munitions Factory in Serbia Kills at Least 2

BELGRADE, SerbiaA series of explosions ripped through an munitions factory on the outskirts of Serbias capital Tuesday, killing at least two workers and injuring at least 16, police and media reported.

Police said the first explosion took place around 2 p.m. at a warehouse where rockets were stored in the factory, which produces several sorts of munitions. The explosion also could be heard in the capital, Belgrade.

Police said said rescuers were using drones to look for potentially more victims. Firefighters rescued five people from the rubble, they said.

State RTS television said some 40 people were inside the warehouse when the explosion took place. The injured workers have been transferred to hospitals in Belgrade with severe burns while more people remain unaccounted for.

The warehouse was completely destroyed, leaving a crater in the ground, footage from the scene showed.

The fire has been localized and residents in the area are safe, police said. Media have reported that the detonation shattered windows on homes nearby.

Dozens of firefighters were immediately dispatched to the scene, which is 15 kilometers (nine miles) south of Belgrade. Police and firefighters have sealed off the area where a thick billowing smoke could be seen. Several cars at the plants parking lot were on fire.

The factory was the scene of another explosion in 2008 when three workers were injured.
Even though the Pentagon is requiring all U.S. military personnel to get vaccinated, the Oklahoma governor is pushing back. And along that line, the commander of the Oklahoma National Guard has just released a memo saying that they will not comply with the U.S. federal governments vaccine mandates.

And in Oklahoma, this is not the only initiative that is pushing back against vaccine mandates.

A new bill that was just introduced in the state Senate would allow all workers in the state to file lawsuits against their employers for as much as $1 million if they experience any health problems from either vaccines or other forms of medical treatment that were forced upon them by their employers.

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A supporter of Lebanon's Hezbollah gestures as he holds a Hezbollah flag in Marjayoun, Lebanon, on May 7, 2018. (Aziz Taher/Reuters)

Far Right Group the Base and Hezbollah to Be Added to Australian Terror List

A neo-Nazi group dubbed the Base will be listed as a terrorist organisation in Australia alongside the entirety of the Islamist Hezbollah party.

Hezbollahs external security branch has been listed as a terrorist organisation since 2003.

Now, the government will extend that classification to the entire group.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews on Wednesday condemned the Base as a violent, racist neo-Nazi group already listed as a terrorist organisation by the Canadian and UK governments.

Listing these organisations sends a very strong message that Australia condemns the use of terrorism to achieve political, ideological or religious objectives, she told reporters in Canberra.

We cant be complacent. We know that there is a threat of terrorism here in Australia and that there is a threat of terrorism right across the world.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews speaks during a press conference at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Aug. 23, 2021. (Rohan Thomson/Getty Images)

The listing of Hezbollah and the Base will make it a criminal offence to be a member of either organisation.

Despite the listing of the two groups, Australias terror threat level will remain probable.

However, the minister said a terror attack would be more likely once international borders were fully reopened.

Andrews said both organisations were listed following advice from Australian security agencies.

We know that there are individuals actively watching what is happening in Australia; we know there is a threat posed to Australia, she said.

There are people here who have the intent and the capability to do us harm.

The minister said she was open to the prospect of listing further groups as terrorist organisations, including right-wing extremist groups.

Andrews has written to state and territory counterparts on the issue and said she would aim to finalise the listing as soon as possible.

There are 26 organisations formally listed as terrorist groups.
A nurse walks outside Beaumont Hospital in Grosse Pointe, Mich., in a file photograph. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images)

Federal Government Dispatches Teams to Michigan to Help Deal With COVID-19 Surge

The federal government is dispatching a pair of medical teams to Michigan to help the state deal with surging COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

The two teams, comprised of 22 medical personnel each, are expected to arrive next week and begin treating patients almost immediately, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). One team will go to Beaumont Hospital in Dearborn, and the other will go to Spectrum Health in Grand Rapids.

We deeply appreciate receiving this much-needed support, John Fox, Beaumont Healths chief executive, said in a statement.

In addition, the federal government has agreed to open beds at the John D. Dingell Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Detroit, with the aim of easing overcrowded hospitals.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, had asked the federal government for the medical assistance and MDHHS had requested Veterans Affairs hospitals to open beds for civilians.

Im grateful that the federal government has granted our request to provide much-needed relief to the health care personnel who have remained on the frontlines of this pandemic, Whitmer said in a statement.

The Michigan Health and Hospital Association said even more help is needed. The group has requested 150 federal specialists.

Michigan recorded 7,123 positive COVID-19 cases on Nov. 22. The state is currently the nations worst hot spot for COVID-19.

Hospitalizations in Michigan have also increased in recent weeks. Most of the patients in the states hospitals dont have COVID-19about 20 percent of patients in hospital beds this week tested positive for the virusbut the COVID-19 patients are pushing some facilities to the breaking point, officials say.

Beaumont Hospital was at 92 percent capacity as of Nov. 24, while several Spectrum Health hospitals were dealing with full or close to full capacity, according to data collected by the state. Statewide, nearly nine in 10 inpatient hospital beds were occupied.

Hospitals are at capacity across the state, particularly in Metro Detroit and West Michigan, and this is taking a tremendous toll on our health care workers, said Elizabeth Hertel, director of MDHHS.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

A rising share of the COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are among those people who are deemed to be fully vaccinated or those who have gone at least two weeks since getting the final dose of a primary series of COVID-19 vaccinations.

In the 20 days leading up to Nov. 12, 28 percent of cases, 29 percent of hospitalizations, and 25 percent of deaths were among the fully vaccinated, according to MDHHS.

In addition, hospital admissions with COVID-19 were increasing for all age groups, though the increase was highest for those aged 60 or older.

About six in 10 Michigan residents were vaccinated as of Nov. 23.

Officials say the fact that most COVID-19 patients and deaths are unvaccinated shows that the vaccines are still effective in preventing hospitalization and death. Studies and real-world data show that the vaccines become less effective over time against infection and severe disease, prompting health officials to authorize and recommend vaccine booster shots for virtually all Americans aged 18 or older.

We ask everyone to please get vaccinated, Fox said.
In this file photo taken in 2001, guerrillas of the Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) march in a military parade in San Vicente, Colombia. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

Floridas DeSantis Warns Against Removing Communist Rebels From Terrorist List: A Serious Mistake

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has criticized the Biden administration over its reported plan to remove a Colombian communist rebel group from the list of designated foreign terrorist organizations, calling it an insult to the Colombian American community in his state.

Financed by extortion, kidnapping, and a billion-dollar cocaine trafficking operation, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) waged a guerrilla war against Colombian government for more than a half-century until 2016, when the far-left rebels signed a peace deal thats still being implemented. The decadeslong conflict has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions more, including many families who settled in Florida.

In response to a recent report that the U.S. Department of State is planning to remove FARC from its international terrorist list, DeSantis called the move a reckless decision, noting that the group perpetuated countless murders, bombings, assassinations, kidnapping and attacks in the name of redistribution of wealth.

Bidens policy is an insult to members of the Colombian American community, many of whom fled that terrorist groups barbaric attacks on civilians, the Republican governor said. This is a serious mistake by the Biden administration and will hurt Floridians.

In this file photo taken in February 2001, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas guard the location of talks between Manuel Marulanda, Marxist rebel chief of the FARC, and then-Colombian President Andres Pastrana. (Luis Acosta/AFP via Getty Images)

He also argued that the move could embolden terrorist groups throughout Latin America, empower narco-traffickers, and pave the way for a revival of left-wing authoritarian Castro-Chavezism in Colombia.

DeSantiss criticism was echoed by U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in an attempt to unseat DeSantis as governor in 2022. The former-governor-turned-congressman said FARC has earned its designation as a terrorist group for causing decades of war and death.

I join Colombians across Florida and our nation, deeply troubled by reports that the State Department is considering removing FARC from the list of international terrorist organizations, Crist said in a statement. It should not earn its legitimacy from the United States without the advice and consent from the community who call America home.

Florida state Sen. Annette Taddeo, another 2022 Democratic gubernatorial candidate, also spoke against the move. Taddeo, whose mother is Colombian, recalled on Twitter that she had to flee her home country at the age of 17 because of the Marxist terrorist organization, FARC, a group of militias who kidnapped my father who was a WWII American fighter pilot.

This news is outrageous and I just hung up with the State Department to let them know just how outrageous it is, she said.

During a Nov. 23 press briefing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the status of FARC and whether its being delisted as a terrorist group.

I dont have any update on that, Psaki said. Im happy to check with our national security team and see if theres anything we can get to all of you.

The State Department has responded to The Epoch Times request for comment, saying that it has provided Congress with notification of upcoming actions it is taking with regard to the FARC, but has no further comment on those actions. FARC remains on the departments international terrorist organizations list as of the time of publication.
The Tunnel to Towers Foundation was created in honor of New York Firefighter Stephen Siller, who died responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. (Courtesy of Tunnel to Towers Foundation)

Foundation Pays Off Mortgages for Families of Fallen 1st Responders

SAN DIEGOA New York-based foundation announced on Nov. 24 that it has paid off the mortgages of eight fallen first responders in California, including San Diego police officer David Sisto, who died after suffering a medical emergency while on duty in February.

According to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, paying off the mortgages means the first responders families, who are facing the holiday season without their loved one, will always have a place to call home.

The eight California families are among the 65 families who will have their homes paid off between Thanksgiving and New Years Eve, according to the foundation.

The family of county firefighter Tory Carlon, who was fatally shot by a colleague over a workplace dispute at an Agua Dulce fire station, was also benefited.

Carlons wife, Heidi, said in a statement released by the foundation, The emotion is so overwhelming, and all that I can think of is how this would make my husband feel  knowing that this foundation is taking care of us. A thank you doesnt even seem to come close to expressing our gratitude.

Riverside County Sheriffs Sgt. Harry Cohen died last year of an apparent heart attack while training with the agencys canine unit.

His wife Lisa, who was among the beneficiaries, said in a statement, To know that the home that I shared with my amazing husband, a home we planned to retire in, a home that I feel safest in, is going to be mine without any financial worries means the world to me.

That I will get to stay in this home, gives me and my daughter the most security, forever.

Among the other California families benefiting were those of Los Angeles County Sheriffs Deputy Thomas Albanese, who died in February when his motorcycle was struck in Lakewood during an attempted traffic stop, and Pomona police officer Greggory Casillas, who was fatally shot in 2018.

The Tunnel to Towers Foundation was created in honor of New York firefighter Stephen Siller, who died responding to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The foundation supports first responders, veterans, and their families.

The foundation this year had already paid off 135 mortgages, with the additional 65 during the holiday season bringing the years total to 200 and the foundations 20-year total to 450.

This year we saw the country come together to support the Tunnel to Towers Foundation and its mission, said Frank Siller, foundation chairman and CEO, in a statement. We saw people from all walks of life join us on this quest to support our nations first responders and military families, those heroeswho are willing to lay down their lives for you or meevery single day.
Migrants gather at a transport and logistics center near the Belarusian-Polish border, in the Grodno region, Belarus, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Kacper Pempel/Reuters)

France Backs Poland Over Belarus but Warns EU Row Not Over

PARIS/WARSAWFrance assured Poland on Wednesday of European Union support in its stand-off with Belarus, but reminded Warsaw it needed to resolve a row with the bloc over its values and the rule of law.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki met French President Emmanuel Macron as part of a diplomatic effort to rally support for a tough response to what European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen called an attempt by Belarus to use migrants to destabilize the EU.

While reaffirming his solidarity with Poland, Macron reiterated concerns over the rule of law and called on the Polish government to find a solution that safeguards the core values of the European Union, his office said.

With thousands of people fleeing the Middle East and other hotspots stranded on the EUs eastern border, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are on the front line of what the EU says is a crisis engineered by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

He has denied EU allegations that Belarus has flown migrants into the country and then pushed them across EU borders.

The row came to a head in October when a Polish court ruling questioned the supremacy of EU law, which was seen in Brussels as a challenge to the blocs unity and stoked fears that Poland could eventually leave.

Morawiecki, is due to meet Germanys acting Chancellor Angela Merkel and her prospective successor Olaf Scholz on Thursday and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday.

The prime minister is now talking to the EU leaders, starting with Paris, President Macron, to keep the unity of the European Unionand be prepared for further actions, Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Marcin Przydacz told Reuters.

Ukraine Drill

Warsaw says that while the number of migrants at the frontier has fallen, repeated border-crossing attempts showed Minsk had not given up plans to use migrants as a weapon.

Morawiecki said he discussed a potential strengthening of sanctions against Belarus with Macron, whose office said he reaffirmed his desire to keep up the pressure on Lukashenko.

Exiled Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya called for the EU to do more to isolate Lukashenko and ensure that economic sanctions, imposed in July, remain strong.

Let us be firm, she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg. We must not let lobbyists block the necessary sanctions. Lets close all remaining loopholes.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin told European Council President Charles Michel in a phone call that the EUs plans for sanctions against Belarus were counterproductive, the Kremlin said on Wednesday.

 The EU hit Belarus with sanctions after Lukashenkos violent crackdown on protests against his disputed reelection last year. Diplomats say the latest package of sanctions agreed in response to the border crisis should be approved and adopted in early December, with a working deadline of Dec. 2.

As the Polish Border Guard reported more attempts by migrants to force their way across the border, Warsaws concern, shared by its neighbors, is that the months-long tensions could escalate into a wider, regional conflict.

Ukraine, which says it fears being drawn into the crisis and has accused Russia of massing its troops nearby, said it had launched an operation to strengthen its frontier, including military drills for anti-tank and airborne units.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told Reuters the EU must spell out to Russia that there would be a high price to pay if it acted against Ukraine, urging the bloc to quickly agree on how to deter Moscow.
From Waukesha to San Francisco

Commentary

The deadly actions of the past few days should serve as a wake-up call to most Americans. Being pro-criminal and anti-police is beginning to undermine the fabric of our civilization.

We have already seen a dramatic rise in murders and other crimes.

Now we have a massacre by a convicted criminal who drove a vehicle into a Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring more than 60 who had gathered to celebrate the birth of Christ and the beginning of the Christmas season. The attack in Waukesha, Wisconsin, dazed the country because it was so stunning to see such senseless killing and maiming. It was a frightening reminder that we now live in a country where we can all be at risk at any time and place.

At nearly the same time, 2,159 miles to the west, a mob was breaking into and looting stores. The open vandalism, theft, and destruction resembled a scene from the movie Clockwork Orange. Its a pattern of criminal aggression that has been building in San Francisco since the citys communist, pro-criminal, anti-law enforcement district attorney took office.

As of last reports, there have been three days of looting in San Francisco, and it has now spread to San Jose. As the looting is more widely reported, theres a real likelihood it will spread to other cities.

There has been continuous rioting and violence in Portland, Oregon, for almost two years, with Antifa as the primary activist agent.

In New York, there is a no-bail rule that allows criminals to walk out of jail faster than the police can fill out arrest reports. The result has been that the police have simply stopped arresting people for many small crimes. The mayor of a town in New Jersey, across the river from New York City, told me of similar incidents in his community. There, the police kick would-be thieves out of town rather than arrest them, because they know the local prosecutor will simply release the crooks.

The patterns of destruction resemble scenes from Ayn Rands 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. Rand believed the inevitable pattern of civilization was for the weak and predatory to make life impossible for the productive and entrepreneurial. She imagined the most competent, energetic, and productive people would withdraw from society, and civilization would subsequently collapse.

Many of our recent developments resemble Rands nightmare. Consider the collapse of the rule of law, chaos at the border, and the proposal in New York City to let 800,000 noncitizens vote in local elections. The list goes on.

The tragedy of the breakdown of civilization is: We know how to have law-abiding, safe communitiesand have had historic experience in our lifetime.

As I wrote in my new book, Beyond Biden, when George Kelling and James Q. Wilson wrote their ground-breaking Broken Windows theory in 1982, they found that if you stop small crimes and disorders, and repair damaged property, you create a positive environment that makes crime decline dramatically.

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton applied this theory with the New York City Transit Police, the Boston Police, as Mayor Rudy Giulianis partner in New York City, and finally in Los Angeles.

We know empirically that a sound program of crime prevention, that applies principles that work, leads to safety and prosperity. In 1991, New York City was disastrous, crime-ridden, and dangerous. It became saferfirst through Giuliani and then through Mayor Michael Bloomberg. By 2017, New York City had become the safest in its history.

Then, Mayor Bill de Blasio and his Big Government socialist belief in attacking the police and favoring criminals undermined the entire system (which had been protecting the innocent while pursuing the guilty).

Soon the American people are going to grow tired of being sacrificed on the altar of Big Government socialist fanaticism.

The sooner that happens, the sooner we can eliminate lawlessness and return to peaceful civilization.

From Gingrich360.com

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Gas Prices High Ahead of Busy Thanksgiving Holiday

Gasoline prices remain historically high, frustrating drivers at the pump as they head into the Thanksgiving Day holiday, with AAA predicting 48.3 million drivers heading to holiday destinations, with numbers approaching 2019 levels.

While the national average price of regular gas has eased a little in recent weeks, it was up at $3.398 a gallon on Nov. 24, which is 61 percent higher than a year ago. Since Labor Day, the price of crude oil tumbled into the mid-70s after being stuck above $80 a barrel, raising questions if this will translate into some relief at the pump for drivers.

The price of crude oil accounts for about 50%60% of what consumers pay at the pump, so a lower oil price should translate into better gasoline prices for drivers, but until global oil production ramps back up to pre-pandemic levels, this recent dip in the price of crude may only be temporary, said Andrew Gross, an AAA spokesperson.

The White House announced plans on Nov. 23 to release 50 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve in coordination with other nations in hopes of lowering fuel costs amid global shortages.

President Joe Biden said he would do what needs to be done to ease gas prices, adding that American drivers were spending much too much, and its a strain.

Some experts have questioned whether the administrations actions will have much of an impact.

The U.S. volume being discussed50 million barrelsis a drop in the bucket, amounting to only about half of what the world uses in a single day, said Chet Thompson, president and CEO of the refinery trade group American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.

He believes that Bidens order wouldnt make much of a difference in the long run, calling it a one-time, symbolic release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve isnt going to have a meaningful impact on the current energy landscape.

Despite some criticism, the Biden administration has expectations that its release of the SPR will lead to falling prices at the pump and higher approval at the polls.

The expected price decrease in the coming weeks will not likely hit the pump in time for the Thanksgiving weekend, as it will take time for the release of the strategic reserves to hit the refineries, according to several analysts.

Still, the concerns about raging prices are unlikely to deter the millions of Americans hitting the road for Thanksgiving.
Social Democratic Party (SPD) top candidate for chancellor Olaf Scholz, Greens party co-leaders Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, and Free Democratic Party (FDP) leader Christian Lindner walk after a final round of coalition talks to form a new government, in Berlin, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Germany to Remain Part of NATOs Nuclear Sharing Under New Government

BERLINGermany will remain part of NATOs nuclear sharing agreement under its new government, according to a coalition deal agreed on Wednesday, a move that will prevent a rift in the Western military alliance at a time of rising tensions with Russia.

Germany does not possess nuclear weapons, but hosts U.S. nuclear bombs that German Tornado fighter jets are meant to carry to target during a conflict.

It had not been clear how the incoming government would handle the issue, as some lawmakers in the new coalition oppose Berlins participation in the nuclear sharing deal.

The coalition agreement supported fulfilling Germanys commitments to NATO.

As long as nuclear weapons play a role in NATOs strategic concept, Germany has an interest in participating in strategic discussions and planning processes, the document said, referring to Berlins seat on NATOs Nuclear Planning Group.

The new coalition also aims to replace the German air forces aging Tornado fighter jet, the only Bundeswehr plane fitted to carry U.S. nuclear bombs.

The German air force has been flying the jet since the 1980s. The defense ministry plans to phase it out between 2025 and 2030 as it is expensive to maintain and difficult to find spare parts for.

Chancellor Angela Merkels government had intended to purchase F-18s made by Boeing as a replacement but the decision was postponed until 2022.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said last week that U.S. nuclear weapons might be moved further east if Germany dropped out of the nuclear sharing deala move that would anger Russia.

The coalition deal also included an agreement to arm the next generation of German military drones. Some Social Democrats had previously opposed doing so.

The chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan in August will be the subject to a parliamentary investigation, according to the coalition deal.

By Sabine Siebold and Markus Wacket
Officials in Waukesha, Wisconsin, confirmed that Darrel E. Brooks, 39, was the suspect involved in the parade incident on Nov. 21, 2021. (Milwaukee Police Department)

GoFundMe Removes Fundraiser Aiming to Raise $5 Million for Waukesha Suspect Darrell Brooks

GoFundMe has removed a fundraiser for Darrell Brooks, the alleged driver of an SUV that ran over dozens of people, killing six, during a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, last Sunday.

Brooks, 39, was initially charged with five counts of intentional homicide and his bail was set at $5 million by Waukesha Court Commissioner Kevin Costello.

A GoFundMe was created for Brooks in an effort to raise the money for his bail, and a screenshot of the crowdfunding page was obtained by the Daily Mail.

The GoFundMe page was initially posted by someone who identified themselves as James Norton of Waukesha.

It read, Hello everyone. On November 21st, 2021 our dear friend Darrell Brooks was arrested for allegedly driving his car into a parade, as someone who knows Darrell personally I can tell you that he would NEVER do such a thing and I know he is innocent of what he was charged with.

Clearly, there is more to the story the media is not telling us and I am seeking to raise the bail so Darrell can be released and speak his truth to his side of the story in this tragic situation that sees another black man behind bars in a purely political and racist trial, the post continued.

Norton added that there is, no excuse for this continued treatment of black Americans by prosecutors around the country, and that, everyone must be presumed innocent until proven guilty, before calling for Brooks to be treated equally as anyone else in this country would be treated and he should be released until found guilty.

The post was accompanied by the hashtags, BLM, IStandWithDarrell, NoJusticeNoPeace, and RacismIsReal.

As of Thursday, Nov. 25, the GoFundMe page could no longer be accessed and users instead find the message, Were sorry, but that campaign cannot be found. Please check the link URL and try again.

A spokesperson for GoFundMe confirmed to DailyMail that the fundraiser was removed from the platform because it violated the GoFundMe Terms of Service and that Norton has been banned from using the site.

Fundraisers with misuse are very rare, and we take all complaints very seriously. Our team works with law enforcement to report issues and assists them in any investigations they deem necessary, the spokesperson said.

The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson for GoFundMe for comment.

Waukesha Police Chief Dan Thompson said Monday there was is no evidence that Sundays crash was a terrorist attack or that the suspect knew anyone in the parade. Officials have not released a motive in the case.

Thompson identified those killed as four women ages 52 to 79 and an 81-year-old man. They were identified as Virginia Sorenson, 79; LeAnna Owens, 71; Tamara Durand, 52; Jane Kulich, 52; and Wilhelm Hospel, 82.

Thompson said police were not chasing the suspect when he entered the parade route, as had been stated in prior anonymously sourced media reports. An officer did fire shots to try and stop him, the chief said.

Brooks has two open criminal cases in Milwaukee County. In one case, filed Nov. 5, he is charged with resisting or obstructing an officer, reckless endangering, disorderly conduct, bail jumping, and battery. Records show a $1,000 cash bond was posted on Friday.

The Milwaukee County District Attorneys office released a statement on Monday detailing the pending charges against Brooks and said it was conducting an internal review of the decision involving Brooks bail recommendation

The states bail recommendation in this case was inappropriately low in light of the nature of the recent charges and the pending charges against Mr. Brooks, read the statement.

An attorney representing Brooks in a separate case told The Epoch Times that he cannot comment on the matter because hes representing him in another case.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Homeschooling is an option at any time of year, at the parents' discretion, not just at the start of school or between semesters. (Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock)

Homeschooling Advocacy Group Reports Significant Increase in Parents Pulling Children out of School

For Sandra Kim and many other parents, March 2020 feels like a decade ago.

Since that time, the structure of how children are educated has transformed after the pandemic sent everyone home.

Online learning included mastering its central platform: the Zoom video conferencing software, with teachers trained specifically for a classroom setting now attempting to synchronize a virtual learning experience.

By 2021, school board meetings throughout the United States had become controversial, with the ever-shifting COVID-19 medical policies as well as the school curriculums brought into question, possibly contributing to what has been called a dramatic rise in homeschooling.

Dr. Steven Duvall, director of research with the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), told The Epoch Times that in 2017, it was reported that 3.3 percent of homes across the country were homeschooling.

In 2019, the National Center for Education Statistics released a report stating that between 1999 and 2016, the number of homeschool families nearly doubled from 850,000 to 1.7 million students.

In Spring 2020, the U.S. Census Bureau put out the weekly Household Pulse Survey, results of which indicated that the number grew to 5.4 percent, Duvall said.

Then came the period between Spring and Fall in 2020, when the number of households with school-aged children increased from 5 to 11 percent.

In the Spring of 2021, the number reached 18 to 19 percent before the U.S. Census Bureau eventually adjusted the homeschooling levels back down to 11 to 12 percent of 32 to 33 million households with school-age children, Duvall said.

Though homeschooling has primarily been a trend of the white middle class, Duvall said that number has now expanded into more income brackets and more communities.

Its evident that the numbers are still climbing, Duvall said. Our membership continues to increase, with more inquiries about homeschooling all the time.

Kim, the media relations manager for HSLDA and a homeschooling parent, told The Epoch Times that HSLDA itself has grown by 23,500 over the past two years, representing a 28.35 percent increase.

Pushing the Education Ball Forward

Kim said she and her husband began homeschooling their three children in 2020 because of the technical difficulties that came with Zoom calls, the amount of screen time involved, and curriculums that werent moving the ball forward.

Trying to get three kids on three different Zoom calls was frankly a nightmare, because my husband and I also had Zoom calls, and the two little ones were too young to navigate it by themselves with the clicking, muting, unmuting, and turning your cameral on and off, Kim said. Then there was a lot of busywork that involved printing out exercises that we already knew how to do, or was repetitive, so it wasnt pushing the education ball forward.

HSLDA

HSLDA is a nonprofit advocacy organization located in Virginia that helps parents in the United States and abroad in the homeschooling process.

It has attorneys and education consultants to assist parents in maneuvering through varying state requirements for homeschooling.

HSLDA was established in 1983 when it was illegal to homeschool, Kim said, and over 40 years, it has worked to legalize homeschooling in all 50 states.

According to Kim, HSLDAs attorneys help parents, school officials, and legislators understand the complexity of state homeschooling laws, and its educational consultants customize guidance for parents on questions from special needs to creating high school transcripts for college.

Over the past two years, public schools have become overwhelmed with homeschoolers because, Kim said, many school administrators dont understand homeschooling law well enough to respond to parents correctly.

Because public schools get funding based on the number of students enrolled, they lose money with each child pulled out. As a result, some administrations have been known to make it difficult for parents to remove their children. This is one of the areas where HSLDA provides legal counsel.

After one family had begun homeschooling their four children, they were taken to court on allegations that their children needed government intervention based on lack of school attendance.

An attorney with HSLDA was able to show that the family followed the law and got the charge dismissed.

However, according to HSDLA, the prosecutor was initially reluctant to dismiss the case without the family presenting evidence of their childrens educational process, though the attorney eventually acquiesced.

Parent-Directed Education

Homeschooling by definition is parent-directed education, Kim said.

This encompasses a variety of avenues and resources, such as an online academy, work at home with the family, field trips, a cooperative (co-op), and teaching pods, all parent-directed.

One of the myths of homeschooling is that the parents do it all by themselves, which sounds quite overwhelming, Kim said.

However, homeschooling often involves nontraditional classroom settings, such as the co-op and teaching pod.

Co-ops can involve eight weeks of unit studies such as anatomy or Greek mythology taught by parent volunteers in church auditoriums.

Its really more like a traditional school, Kim said. Theres a Pledge of Allegiance, and then the kids break off into classrooms with different studies. Theres a PE class, and after they have lunch together, they are dismissed.

For Kims location in Virginia, this takes place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

This gives them a chance to get out of the house and meet other homeschooled kids, Kim said.

Another option is the teaching pod, she said.

A pod is a new term that came out of the pandemic, she said. In neighborhoods, parents get their kids together and form pods and pay a teacher to come in and teach. Some are formal, some are informal.

Overall, working parents such as herself and her husband have found what they once thought was impossible was in fact possible when they took the leap into homeschooling, Kim said.

We have really enjoyed the time with our children learning and relearning about everything, Kim said. We really love to be able to teach our children our loves and passions for geography, history, and learning languages.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai speaks during a session at the World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, on Jan. 22, 2020. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images)

Hundreds of Google Employees Sign Manifesto Opposing Companys Vaccine Mandate

At least 600 Google employees have signed a manifesto opposing the companys COVID-19 vaccination mandate that is said to be applicable to all 150,000 employees, office-going and remote, in line with requirements set forth by the White House.

The Biden administration had set a deadline on Jan. 4 for all employees in the country working for companies with more than 100 staff members, to get fully vaccinated or regularly tested for COVID-19. In response, Google asked employees to upload their vaccination status to Googles environmental health and safety team by Dec. 3. Many workers have been returning back to their offices after the easing of pandemic restrictions.

The manifesto asks management to create a new mandate which is inclusive of all Googlers, and requests fellow workers to oppose the mandate as a matter of principle.

I believe that Sundars Vaccine Mandate is deeply flawed, say the authors of the manifesto, CNBC reported. Such Googlers may never feel comfortable expressing their true sentiments about a company health policy and other, unrelated sensitive topics. This results in silenced perspective and exacerbates the internal ideological echo chamber which folks both inside and outside of Google have observed for years.

Regarding the uploading of individual employee vaccine details, the document said, I do not believe Google should be privy to the health and medical history of Googlers and the vaccination status is no exception.

Google has maintained its stance and said that all employees who work with government contracts, whether they work in the office or not, must be vaccinated.

As weve stated to all our employees and the author of this document, our vaccination requirements are one of the most important ways we can keep our workforce safe and keep our services running. We firmly stand behind our vaccination policy, a Google spokesperson told CNBC.

Manifesto authors called Googles leadership coercive, and also sent an open letter to Googles chief health officer, Karen DeSalvo, MD, writing that the implications are chilling for companies around the world if a market leader like Google were to implement vaccine mandates.

It normalizes medical intervention compulsion not only for COVID-19 vaccination but for future vaccines and possibly even non-vaccine interventions by extension, the document says. It justifies the principle of division and unequal treatment of Googlers based on their personal beliefs and decisions.

The workers opposition comes at a time when Google is vying to get into the health care industry among its other ventures.

Based on the data from CDC, 82.2 percent of all American adults have at least been partially vaccinated against COVID-19.

Google representatives did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times request for comment.
Indigenous Health Worker Calls Out Misinformation About Australias Northern Territory COVID-19 Response

An Australian Indigenous health worker currently in a COVID-19 quarantine facility in the Northern Territory (NT) has called online posts critical of the territory governments outbreak response disgusting.

Social media posts have attacked the NT government over the evacuation of residents from Indigenous communities, likening it to the policies used under the Stolen Generation period, where Indigenous children and young adults were taken from their families and communities under duress.

Luke Ellis, who had been assisting with the vaccine rollout in the remote Indigenous communities of Binjari and Rockhole when he contracted the virus, is now in the Centre for National Resilience (CNR) on the outskirts of Darwin, commonly known as the Howard Springs facility.

Ellis has shared his experience while in the quarantine facility in a thread on Twitter, where he said he wanted to counter what he called misinformation about the relocation of Indigenous people to the facility.

Dont know who will see this, but as Ive got plenty of time on my hands I thought I might as well counterbalance all the misinformation out there Im indigenous, currently covid positive and am currently staying at the Howard springs quarantine facility.#aboriginal #covid #nt  Luke Ellis (@lukeae88) November 23, 2021

Not everything is perfect. There are legit issues and causes for concerns about the way things are unfolding. But they are being drowned out by the crazies who are using this situation to fuel their own agenda, he said.

The social media rumours came in response to the current vaccination drive in Aboriginal communities, as well as the calling in of defence personnel to assist with testing and compliance with lockdown rules in some communities, NT News reported.

Among the claims was that army personnel were forcing residents to take COVID-19 vaccinations. In one video post, an Aboriginal man said he received a call from an elder in Robinson River who was crying after everyone in his community had been forcibly vaccinated.

In response, Ellis said in his Twitter thread that if there were soldiers with guns holding people down to forcibly vaccinate them, pictures and videos of this would have emerged by now.

Theres millions of vids of heaps of stuff that happen in indigenous communities, both the good and bad. Ive seen a hundred communities brawls on cell phone footage, he said.

The NT health worker also noted that he was not surprised that the defence forces were mobilised to help evacuate people from the Indigenous communities, noting that when he had been taken to the facility he had travelled by ambulance and small aircraft, which he said was not sustainable for the large numbers now being brought to the health facility.

Katherine (and Binjari & Rockhole) are 15kms from raaf base Tindal. The Raaf always helps out in crisis times, including floods and cyclones. The army isnt going into communities with soldiers and guns, the air force is helping out with trucks, drivers and freeing up the  Luke Ellis (@lukeae88) November 23, 2021

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Defence (DOD), who confirmed in an email that the claims of army personnel force-vaccinating and detaining people are emphatically false.

Defence personnel currently supporting Northern Territory Government authorities cannot forcibly remove residents from their homes, forcibly vaccinate residents against their will nor forcibly prevent residents from filming or photographing events in public places, DOD said.

Their response also stated that Defence is supporting the Whole-of-Government response to COVID-19, providing support as requested by states and territories through Emergency Management Australia. This support primarily focuses on COVID-19 testing, supporting measures to slow the spread of the virus and the welfare of the community.

ADF personnel serve in a supporting role to State and Territory authorities and are not empowered or authorised to conduct any law enforcement activities, the department added.

The Epoch Times also reached out to the Northern Territory Health Department for comment about the misinformation but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

Ellis had been part of the vaccination drive at Rockhole and Binjari and noted he had visited every house in Rockhole to speak to people about the vaccine.

He said people had been hesitant about the jab because of misinformation, but that in all his time in the community, not a single person was forced to have it.

What we have found though is that the people who declined in the past often want the vaccine once they discover [COVID-19] is in their community. Once [COVID-19] becomes real and tangible, it changes peoples perception of the vaccine, he said.

He also rejected claims that the Howard Springs facility was being used to incarcerate Indigenous Australians.

The camp is not used to drag away black mob, he said. He added that the camp has had hundreds of non-Indigenous people come through it, and people are being moved there from Binjari because of overcrowding and the inability to isolate with 20 to 30 people in one home.

The comments from Ellis come after Indigenous Labor Senator Malarndirri McCarthy, who is from Katherine, also raised the issue of overcrowding in Aboriginal communities when the outbreak first started in the Northern Territory, calling it a massive problem, and stressing that its very difficult for people to self-isolate in that situation.

McCarthy called on the federal government to get housing into the region.

If we could get housing in there right now, I would be pushing that straight away to the federal government and the NT government to work on that, but we obviously need the resources to do so.

Ellis said that although the food isnt great in the CNR, the camp facilities are pretty good and theres free WiFi.

Everyone has access to their phones and are in constant contact with family on the outside. Im sure my family is sick of me calling all the time, he said.

He also strongly rejected the accusation that the situation was comparable to the Stolen Generation, noting that his grandmother was a victim of the Stolen Generation, and to compare what Im going through in this camp to what she and her generation went through is disgusting.

Im in a nice room with my own aircon. Im sitting back watching Netflix on free WiFi, he said.
Student Zheng Zizan from Xian in China (R) poses for family photos after graduating with a Masters of Commerce from Sydney University on October 12, 2017. (WILLIAM WEST/AFP via Getty Images)

International Education Boosted by a Multimillion Dollar Grant in a Bid to Win Back Overseas Students

International education providers hit hard by COVID-19 will have access to a $37 million (US$26.6 million) federal government boost in an attempt to win back students next year.

The new measures would see almost $28 million (US$20 million) given in regulatory fee relief, while more than $9 million (US$6.4 million) provided in grants would go to institutions offering English language intensive courses for overseas students.

The new settings will also extend measures to protect the post-study work rights of international students and extend the temporary graduate visa from two to three years for masters by coursework graduates.

This will help ensure the rapid return of international students, Minister for Education and Youth Alan Tudge said. It provides clear incentives for institutions and students and ensures students are not disadvantaged from being prevented from coming to Australia earlier.

It is considered as part of the federal governments plan to revive the nations $10 billion (US$7.6 billion) international student market, which had collapsed following the nationwide border closure in response to the pandemic.

Australian universities shed at least 17,300 jobs in 2020 and lost an estimated $1.8 billion (US$1.3 billion) in income from international students compared to the previous year, according to figures released on Feb. 3 by Universities Australia, the nations peak body for the sector.

The funding boost comes three days after the government announced visa holders, including international students and skilled workers, would be able to travel to Australia without travel exemption from Dec. 1.

An estimated 162,000 student visas will be issued, while about 140,000 international students stranded overseas are being encouraged to return to Australian campuses next year.

Only fully vaccinated travellers are allowed to enter the border, with Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory not requiring quarantine for overseas visitors.

However, those who can prove they have not been vaccinated for medical reasons and children under 12 can travel to Australia under the new rules.

Business Council of Australia Chief Executive Jennifer Westacott said businesses would not be able to find workers and keep their doors open if the borders were not lifted.

You cant employ hundreds of Australians on a construction job if you dont have a surveyor and you cant deliver an infrastructure pipeline without engineers. Our education and training system is building a strong pipeline of talent for Australia, but it cant deliver highly skilled workers overnights, Westacott noted.

Meanwhile, Australian Industry Group Chief executive Innes Willox believed the return of skilled visa holders and students would expose the ongoing inconsistencies with our state borders and quarantine rules.

The majority of other countries have opened to the world more quickly than us, and we are competing with one arm tied behind our back, he said.

As Australias economic recovery continues, the Morrison government is also making it easier for highly skilled migrants to remain in Australia to continue working in critical sectors.

This includes improved access to permanent residence for Existing Temporary Skill Shortage (subclass 482) visa holders in the short-term stream and Legacy Temporary Work Skilled (subclass 457) visa holders who no longer meet the age requirement.

This is a special concession recognising those highly skilled migrant workers who chose to stay in Australia throughout the pandemic while continuing to address Australias acute shortages. This allows them to stay here, with a pathway to Australian citizenship, said Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs Alex Hawke.

There are currently about 20,000 people who may benefit from these arrangements.
Irvine to Divest From Companies That Dont Align With Social Values

The city of Irvine voted Nov. 24 to immediately begin divesting from companies that go against the citys social and environmental values.

The city council approved the citys 2022 investment policy by a 32 vote, with Councilmen Anthony Kuo and Mike Carroll dissenting.

Mayor Farrah Khan pushed to amend the citys 2022 investment policy, asking to divest from companies currently partnered with the city that are countering the citys environmental and social objectives, and to invest those funds in other companies.

These include fossil fuel companies such as Exxonin which the city has $5 million investedfirearm manufacturers, for-profit prisons, anti-LGBTQ organizations, and military-industrial complex entities.

It isnt particularly difficult for our city to stay away from investments in tobacco products, companies that produce firearms, and the like, Councilman Larry Agran said at the Nov. 24 council meeting. We stay away from companies that produce liquor products as well, and for good reason. Those do not conform to our values as a community.

He said that of the citys $1 billion-per-year investment, there are far better companies to invest with.

While discussing the item, Irvine City Treasurer Don Collins urged Khan to table the item and wait for further guidance from the state or federal government on what to avoid investing in, though she refused.

Im at this point waiting for the state to give us more guidance at this, Collins said at the meeting. What we found is that there are a few cities that have implemented  restrictive policies that wind down to the interpretation of an individual. So Id like to table this until the state or federal government comes out with more clear guidelines that we can follow as opposed to my interpretation or your interpretation of whats right and wrong.

Collins used Exxon as an example, saying that while theyre an oil company, they invest $1 billion per year and support over 100 entities that are looking for alternative energy sources.

While I agree with you that Exxon is behind the curve compared to some of the European counterparts, theyre aggressively moving towards renewable energy. Im not going to make a stand as to whats right and wrong here. Im just letting you know that until I see more clarity, I think we should table this, Collins said.
Vietnamese Defense Minister Phan Van Giang (L) and Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi review honor guards in Hanoi, Vietnam, on Sept. 12, 2021. (Nguyen Trong Duc/VNA via AP)

Japan, Vietnam Oppose Bids to Change Status Quo in Regional Waters By Coercion

The defense ministers of Japan and Vietnam agreed to oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by coercion in regional waters, seemingly referring to Chinas assertive activities in the East and South China Seas.

Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi and his Vietnamese counterpart Phan Van Giang discussed regional security in the regional waters in a Nov. 23 meeting, confirming the countries cooperation in maintaining the existing international order.

The meeting took place in Tokyo, a day after Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his entourage arrived for a four-day visit at the invitation of Japans Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

Both ministers reconfirmed the importance of countries complying with international law, while respecting freedom of navigation and overflight, according to the Japanese Defense Ministry.

The countries signed two agreements on cybersecurity and military medicine, in which Japan will strengthen its support for Vietnam in dealing with cyberattacks and medical-related issues.

Kishi told reporters that the cyberspace agreement aimed to address a strong sense of urgency over activities in the Indo-Pacific region that challenge the existing international order, indicating China without identifying any country by name.

He said talks with Phan Van Giang, had taken defense cooperation between the two countries to a new level.

Japan and Vietnam agreed to more actively contribute to peace and stability in the region and the international community by utilizing each others strengths and resources, Kishi told media after the meeting, reported Kyodo News.

Japan has in recent years stepped up cyberdefense cooperation with the United States, Australia, and other partners, and participated in a NATO cyberspace exercise in April. Japan has also held cybersecurity talks with Vietnam, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Japanese Defense Ministry said cyberattacks are part of rising security threats from China as it becomes more assertive in the regiona shared concern by the United States and other allies in the region.

Tuesdays agreement comes only two months after the two countries struck a deal allowing Japan to provide defense equipment and technology to Vietnam. Details of the transfer of specific equipment, possibly naval vessels, are still being discussed.

Vietnam is the 11th nation with which Japan has signed a defense equipment and technology transfer deal as Tokyo seeks to support its own struggling defense industry. Japan is also looking to expand military cooperation beyond its longtime ally the U.S., and has signed similar agreements with Britain, Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly speaks during an event at the Statehouse in Topeka. Kan., on April 21, 2021. (John Hanna/AP Photo)

Kansas Governor Signs Bill Allowing Broad Exemptions to COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has signed a bill that allows workers to be exempt from COVID-19 vaccine mandates if getting vaccinated would endanger their health or violate their religious beliefs.

The Republican-controlled legislature approved the measure in a special session on Nov. 22; the governor, a Democrat, signed it the next day.

Kelly is one of the few prominent Democrats to voice opposition to President Joe Bidens private employer vaccine mandate, and she reiterated her stance in a statement after she signed House Bill 2001.

I have been clear that I believe it is too late to impose a federal standard. States have been leading the fight against COVID-19 for nearly two years. I know there are Kansans who believe this legislation goes too far, and there are others who believe this legislation doesnt go far enough. But I was elected to lead, and leadership means seeking compromise, she said.

This bill is the result of compromise in action. Now that it is signed, we need to turn our attention towards pressing issues like growing our economy and passing my plan to Axe the Food Tax, so we can put money back into everyday Kansans pockets.

The legislation specifies that an employer who imposes vaccination requirements must exempt a worker if the worker submits a written waiver request stating that getting vaccinated would endanger their life or health or an individual residing with them, backed by a statement from a physician or other health professional; or that getting vaccinated would violate sincerely held religious beliefs.

Employers who violate the law could be sued in court by the states secretary of labor, with fines totaling up to $50,000 per violation, depending on the size of the business.

It also allows people who were fired or not hired over a refusal to get vaccinated to gain unemployment benefits, provided they submitted a waiver request and it was denied.

This is a straightforward law that clarifies for Kansas employers that they need to accept medical and religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccinations. These exemptions are the same exemptions allowed under federal law. We just took the ambiguity out of the federal law and created an enforcement mechanism, state Rep. Stephen Owens, a Republican and one of the measures sponsors, said in a statement.

Im proud of the work we did to help Kansans keep their jobs, added state Republican Rep. John Barker, another sponsor.

Only two Democrats voted for the legislation, and many voiced criticism of Kelly for signing it. Kelly is facing a reelection challenge from Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt.

I think that the governor has made a bad bargain, Democratic state Rep. John Carmichael told the Kansas City Star.

This bill is unconstitutional and places an unreasonable burden on Kansas businesses, state Rep. Cindy Neighbor, a Democrat, wrote on Twitter.
LA Approves Roadmap for Dramatic Increase in Housing Citywide

LOS ANGELESThe Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved on Nov. 24 a blueprint to zone for nearly 500,000 new housing units by 2029, as mandated by the state.

The housing crisis is one of the biggest and most pressing issues facing our city, Council President Nury Martinez said in a statement following the vote. While other cities have pushed back against their building obligations, our city has embraced this opportunity to develop one of the boldest housing plans in the nation and we hope to not only meet, but exceed, this challenge.

According to the Regional Housing Needs Assessmenta process required by the state that aims to ensure cities and counties plan for enough housingthe city must accommodate at least 456,643 new units by 2029, with at least 184,721 of them being affordable for lower-income households.

Additionally, the city needs about 23,000 new affordable units per year, but only about 1,650 affordable units have been produced per year since 2014.

The goals of the update, titled The Plan To House LA, are to increase the quantity of affordable housing, improve the quality of housing, provide greater financial stability, enhance the quality of life for all Los Angeles residents, foster inclusive neighborhoods, and end homelessness.

According to Martinezs office, the newly approved plan will allow for rezoning various areas in the city, clearing the way for the construction of 250,000 housing units within three years.

The plan also includes anti-displacement strategy studies, eviction defense programs, inclusionary zoning studies and a focus on rezoning higher opportunity areas near jobs and transit, allowing increased densities in areas previously limited to single-family-only uses.

The Plan to House LA is designed to protect the most vulnerable Angelenos from displacement, eviction, and homelessness, city Planning Director Vince Bertoni said in a statement.

According to Martinezs office, the city will now have three years to create ordinances that put the plans policies into effect.
Lee Jun-seok (R), leader of the People Power Party, the largest opposition party in South Korea, said in a lecture titled "Generation MZ, Asking for the Future of the Korean Peninsula" that he would not accept unreasonable demands made by the CCP on THAAD and other issues, at Seoul National University, on Nov. 18, 2021. (Khasub Lee/The Epoch Times)

Leader of Largest Opposition Party in South Korea: Never Accept the Unreasonable Demands of the CCP

Lee Jun-seok, leader of the People Power Party, the largest opposition party in South Korea, said recently that unreasonable demands made by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) on Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and other issues cannot be accepted. He also stressed that democratic values should take precedence over economic values in international relations.

South Koreas presidential election in March is just over three months away. In a lecture titled Generation MZ, Asking for the Future of the Korean Peninsula held at Seoul National University on Friday, Lee said that Yoon Seok-youl, the People Power Party candidate, insisted that South Korea should say what it wants to say against the CCP. Regarding North Korea, the Party insists on the principle of mutualismthat Seoul will only respond if North Korea makes changes.

Generation MZ refers to young people in their 20s and 30s who were born between 1980 and 2000. The MZ generation, which accounts for a third of the vote, is widely seen as the key to next years presidential election.

Lee Jun-seok, 36, won the support of voters for his anti-feminist ideology in June and became the leader of the People Power Partyto lead the party in next years presidential election. His rapid rise is seen as a shift in the political orientation of young South Koreans from liberal to conservative.

Addressing the CCP, which has been opposed to the THAAD deployment in South Korea, Lee stressed that South Korea should calmly judge everything based on its own independence and autonomy. The unreasonable demands of China [the CCP] are absolutely unacceptable.

Under the Moon Jae-in administration, the principle of democratic values over economic values has been greatly shaken, Lee said. International relations should be judged by principles.

He stressed that the Moon Jae-in administration has different attitudes toward different countries, especially Japan and China. To close the gap, it is very important to always judge on principle.

Citing Australia as an example, Lee said: It is a big change for Australia to calmly judge its strategic assets and emphasize human rights and freedom in its relations with China [the CCP].

When the relationship between the two countries reached a deadlock, the CCP reduced imports of Australian raw materials, and it was China [CCP] that was hit.

Recently, after the Australian government criticized the CCP for its human rights violations, Beijing took retaliatory measures such as banning the import of Australian coal. However, the retaliatory measures backfired on the CCP, leading to problems within China such as the severe electricity shortage.

China is Koreas largest consumer market, but China [the CCP] should take into account the fact that it takes 30 percent of all semiconductors from Korea. [It] should consider [Koreas] strategic position, Lee said. We should expand our supply chain outside of China.

The strategy of not making any friends in order not to offend one cannot overcome a strategic crisis.

We should show our commitment to strengthening the traditional KoreaU.S. alliance, to strengthening the multilateral cooperation system and multilateral security system, he said, adding, I shared my views with Yoon Seok-youl on this issue as well.

When Lee was asked about the People Power Partys approach to North Korea denuclearizing if he is elected, Lee stressed that there is no reason for the MZ generation to fully accept the Kim Dae-jung administrations policy, from 20 years ago, of appeasement toward North Korea, which was a total failure. The key for Kim Jong Un to secure the North Korean regime is nuclear weapons, and it is deceiving the public to claim denuclearization can be achieved in a short period of time.

It is important to adhere to the principle of mutualism.

Regarding the Moon Jae-in administration pushing to declare the end of the Korean War, Lee said, The hasty mention of the declaration at the end of the term is more a short-term political gain than a plan to complete the peace process on the Korean Peninsula.

He also said the Biden administration is very concerned about South Koreas strategy toward the CCP, so North Koreas nuclear weapons threat to South Korea and other democratic countries does not seem to be a top priority.

Khasub Lee contributed to this report.
The lobby of the Taiwanese Representative Office is shown in Lithuania, on Nov. 18, 2021. (Petras Malukas/AFP via Getty Images)

Lithuanian Lawmakers to Visit Taiwan, Deepening China Spat

TAIPEI/VILNIUSTaiwans leadership will host a group of Lithuanian lawmakers next week amid a deepening spat between Beijing and Vilnius about the Baltic states decision to allow the self-ruled island to open a de facto embassy.

Beijing downgraded diplomatic ties with Lithuania on Sunday in a show of anger over the de facto embassy move. The Chinese communist regime claims the island as its own, despite the fact that Taiwan is a de facto independent country, with its own military, democratically-elected government, and constitution.

Taiwans Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that Matas Maldeikis, leader of the Lithuanian parliaments Taiwan Friendship Group, would visit Taipei to attend a legislative forum on Dec 23, along with some colleagues and lawmakers from Latvia and Estonia. In all, 10 representatives from the three Baltic states will be participating.

The group will meet Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen along with other senior officials, the ministry added.

Maldeikis told Reuters that the six Lithuanian lawmakers traveling to the island would represent both government and opposition parties, and include a lawmaker who was sanctioned by the Chinese regime in March.

We want to send a signal to Taiwan that it has friends in this part of the world, said Maldeikis, adding that the Baltic lawmakers had also been invited to meet Taiwans prime minister and speaker of parliament.

Qu Baihua, the charge daffairs at the Chinese embassy in Vilnius, said the lawmakers trip was not a correct action.

By visiting Taiwan, you just send a wrong message to Taiwan, he told reporters on Wednesday. We oppose that, and hope they refrain from doing that.

Beijing had already expressed its anger this summer with the Vilnius governmentwhich has formal diplomatic relations with China and not Taiwanafter it allowed the island to open an office in Lithuania using the name Taiwan.

Other Taiwan offices in Europe and the United States use the name of the city Taipei, avoiding reference to the island itself. However, the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania finally opened last week.

Washington has expressed its concern about the Chinese regimes reaction and offered Vilnius support to withstand Chinese pressure.

Only 15 countries have formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

By Ben Blanchard and Andrius Sytas

The Epoch Times contributed to this report.
Los Angeles Allocates Millions to Expand Homeless Housing Services

During a recent special meeting of the Los Angeles Homelessness and Poverty Committee, committee members approved a slew of motions granting more interim housing projects and allocating millions in funding for other taxpayer-backed homeless programs.

Although we understand that interim housing solutions are not the final destination, not the panacea, we must recognize it is needed, Councilman Kevin de Leonwho is now the chairman of the committee after the dismissal of former Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomassaid during the Nov. 15 meeting.

The city will move forward with leasing a total of 347 new units of permanent supportive housing across the city. A new tiny-home village will also be built with 109 beds village in Council District 13 at 2301 W. 3rd Street, and the city will enter into a sublease agreement with Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit homeless resource founded in San Francisco, to run the site.

Several tiny home villages have recently popped up across the county as a more timely, cost-effective interim housing solution, while larger housing projects are more costly and take years to construct.

A pre-pandemic count in 2020 by Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) found that 66,436 people were experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles County, with 41,290 in the city of Los Angeles. Currently, the city has around 15,000 shelter beds and 24,600 permanent housing slots.

The city dedicated almost $1 billion to address the homelessness crisis in its 202122 fiscal year budget.

The cost to build supportive housing units for the homelessknown as the Housing First modelhas become a controversial solution to the booming crisis across the county, with critics saying there need to be more wraparound services available to address drug addiction and mental illness for individuals.

De Leon reaffirmed the states Housing First method during the meeting, saying, The ultimate goal is having permanent housing, but that he would like to see standardized data metrics to track the efficiency of outreach efforts during the boots-on-the-ground phase of offering housing services to individuals.

Now as we  acquire permanent housing, because the voters have approved initiatives in the past, they want action, so its not an acceptable option to allow individuals just to die on the streets of the city of LA.

The city also moved to ban homeless encampments in 54 areas across three districts last month, with Councilmembers Nithaya Raman and Mike Bonin the only two dissenting votes.

Residents Call for City Leaders to Address Encampments

The Los Angeles Homelessness and Poverty Committeewhich had not convened for a few weeksrejoined for a special meeting a few days after a homeless transient from Venice Beach, Brandon Washington, was arrested by the Los Angeles Police Departments Pacific Bureau and booked on a felony charge on Nov. 12.

Washingtons RV, along with a handful of other RVs, was parked outside of an upscale residential neighborhood between Abbot Kinney Boulevard and Electric Avenue, where he allegedly made threats to resident Deborah Keaton in a separate incident after ringing her doorbell.

Keaton told The Epoch Times she saw police officers removing weapons, including shotguns, from Washingtons RV as he was arrested.

It confirms everything weve been saying for monthsthat the situation has been very scary, and its not just a matter of nice people falling down on their luck, Keaton said.

Neighbors say loud music plays day and night from the RVs, and drug deals are often conducted outside of their homes, while trash has steadily built up around the areatriggering a local cleanup effort in September.

This is the seventh time Washington, 55, has been arrested in the last two years, according to inmate data. His next court date is Dec. 2.

Lt. Geoffrey Deedrick, head of the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department Homeless Outreach Services Team (HOST), told The Epoch Times weve gotten a lot of calls from residents along in the Abbot Kinney neighborhood begging for HOST to come into the area. He said he informed Steve Embrich, Los Angeles Police Department captain of the Pacific Area division, of the neighbors concerns.

About three weeks ago, I went to go look at it and some residents from the local community came and told me about all the deplorable conditions, all the crime that was going on there, he said.

Deedrick said one of the major concerns he saw when visiting Abbot Kinney Boulevard was the RVs actively dumping sewage into the street.

And so I relayed those concerns, but since it wasnt an assignment for the HOST team to go there, Im not sure what the city has done to address that, Deedrick said.

Taxpayer Cost to Build

The cost to develop in Los Angeles comes with a hefty price tag. According to city documents, the new 109-bed tiny-home village will cost nearly $1.9 million for leasing and operating services and other expenses.

In District 15, a 54-unit multifamily supportive housing project known as Avalon 1355 in Wilmington, is currently underway. The complex was previously built as a Safeway Supermarket in the 1950s. The committee voted to approve $7 million from Proposition HHH funds for the project. Another $8.6 million was authorized for a project called Beacon Landing in San Pedro.

Proposition HHH was a $1.2 billion bond passed in 2016 by voters to build 10,000 permanent supportive housing units in Los Angeles. Since a majority of the housing units slated in HHH have been stuck in development pipelines for years after it was passed, with only 489 of the bond-funded units ready for occupancy in March, Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin has urged the city to rethink its approach.

While Los Angeles someday will see thousands of new units, it will be nowhere near enough to keep pace with the crisis in our neighborhoods. Over the past five years, homelessness has jumped 40 percent in the city of Los Angeles. This year, four people per day will die simply because they remain unhoused. COVID-19 has made this catastrophe worse, Galperin wrote in a Daily News op-ed.

The committee passed other housing development projects, including a 60-month lease agreement with the Daughters of Charity Foundation to establish and operate an interim housing site at 2301 West Third Street, in Council District 13. The total construction of the project will cost nearly $5 million.

City Dedicates Millions to Homeless Engagement Programs

Part of the homeless committees new effort to increase outreach and decrease recidivism includes a transfer of $1.4 million into hiring more outreach workers through LAHSA.

Homeless engagement workers, called CARE+ Teams, would attend cleanups by the Bureau of Sanitation to ensure they are being done humanely. However, team members themselves would not be providing housing; they would be referred to the head team in each district who would be able to provide those resources.

Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez told the committee that this new strategy is more bureaucracy that weve added to facilitating this process.

And while everybody else is certainly buying into this one-trick pony solution, Im into actually sustaining the progress of the solution, Rodriguez said.

Councilman Bob Blumenfield agreed with Rodriguez.

If the outreach worker doesnt have the ability to provide the services, they only have the ability to refer them to somebody else, thats difficult, because the homeless folks get frustrated hearing from so many different outreach workers, and they lose faith in the system because theyre just told to talk to somebody else, he said.

The committee debated for an hour before de Leon amended the motion to include on-the-spot housing resources offered by knowledgeable outreach workers.

[We can] make it much more granular, so that you have outreach workers to specific locations, so that homeless people arent being contacted by 15 different outreach workers, de Leon said.

Another homeless program receiving a large grant for fiscal year 202122 is the Los Angeles County Criminal Record Clearing Project to support the City Attorneys Homeless Engagement and Response Team (HEART), which will cost around $1 million.

The program helps individuals experiencing homelessness or those at risk of homelessness to resolve outstanding infraction citations and associated warrants.

As for residents like Keaton who deal with the reality of the homeless crisis every day, she said the tiny homes are a really positive step. But the location of some of these projects, such as in residential neighborhoods, she said is terrible.

I think that the only way to, first of all, contain this issue so that theyre not spread out all over our city and also provides services to people who really do need it is to be able to actually give them the services in a consistent fashion, she said.
Children pictured in a classroom at Waterview Primary School in Auckland, New Zealand, on July 4, 2018. (Phil Walter/Getty Images)

Maths Losing out to Ideology in Australian Classrooms: Think Tank

An ongoing ideological bias against explicit instruction in maths classrooms is the biggest reason why Australias performance in the subject continues to slide, according to experts.

An analysis paper, Failing to Teach the Teacher, published by the Centre for Independent Studies, found that Australias universities were failing to teach effective instruction methods to future maths teachers.

It found that primary education bachelor courses in 27 of 31 universities had an emphasis on student-led, or constructivist instruction methods, rather than teacher-led, or instructivist approaches. The remaining four were either ambiguous or provided a range of teaching approaches.

Glenn Fahey, an education policy expert and co-author of the paper, told The Epoch Times that teachers wouldnt be effective in the workplace if what they learn during their training courses were not effective.

Whats clear is that putting teacher education in the hands of education academics appears to be not effectively preparing new teachers for the workforce, Fahey said. So what its showing to us is that education academics are out of touch with the classroom are out of touch with the evidence about what methods of instruction are most effective.

Fahey said Australias current education degrees are preparing teachers to become academics rather than becoming effective classroom teachers.

[What] we see in countries that really prioritise instructivist approaches is they focus on a lot of practice, they focus on procedural knowledge, Fahey said. So when it comes to that, but were talking about countries that do quite a lot of drilling  and doing lots of practice questions.

High-performing education systems, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and South Korea, frequently provide teacher-led instruction.

Students sit the annual Scholastic Aptitude Test at the Poongmun high school in Seoul, South Korea, on Nov. 13, 2014. (Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images)

However, this teaching method is no longer a popular idea with Australian educators and policymakers, who prefer to allow students to explore and inquire about subjects rather than have teachers guide them.

[From their view,] teachers should intend to make maths fun, make maths engaging, and use a lot of word-based problems  because they fear that students will be scared off from doing maths if they have to learn formulas, do lots of arithmetic, and do a lot of practice, Fahey said.

Tim Marchant, the director of the Australian Mathematics Science Institute (AMSI), previously told The Epoch Times that students and parents were also placing less value on the subject.

More kids in Year 8about 50 percentdont like mathematics compared to other countries, Marchant said.

While students do experience increased engagement from current teaching methods, it is only in the short term, and they will lose engagement in the long run because of failure to understand maths procedures.

This is a really good example of why Australian students really struggle with the algebra element, in particular, in high school, Fahey said. It is partly because we engage so much in those applied to real world [examples] and less abstract examples.

Kindergarten students work on an activity at Annandale Public School in Sydney, Australia, May 25, 2020. (AAP Image/Joel Carrett)

Lifting Australias Sliding Maths Standards

Fahey believes changing initial teacher education courses to focus on explicit teaching methods is the most crucial step to stopping the downwards spiral in Australian maths standards.

This is the most formative time for the practices that teachers will take to the classroom, he said.

Australia has had a shortage of qualified maths teachers for decades, with secondary school principals reporting that maths teacher vacancies are the hardest to fill.

This has resulted in maths classrooms being led by teachers who have not received formal training to teach maths.

Meanwhile, Fahey said current teaching courses only add to the problem, as schools find the need to retrain teachers away from ineffective teaching methods.

For years now, new teachers have finished their training without the knowledge and skills to be effective in the classroom, despite tougher standards and accreditation on paper, he said. Its now clear that quality assurance needs to be stepped up and be more direct.

Education Minister Alan Tudge said the report showed the need for reform in teacher education.

Teacher education faculties that are not adequately preparing student teachers to become effective classroom teachers using evidence-based practices should not be in the business of teacher education, he said.

If necessary, the government will use the full leverage of the $760 million it provides to education faculties to insist that evidence-based practices are taught.
A group of people thought to be migrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution on Nov. 25, 2021. (Gareth Fuller/PA)

More Migrants Cross English Channel After 27 Drowned

More people have reached the British shore on Thursday after the deadliest day for migrants in the English channel.

Downing Street said it illustrated the need to step up the work to dismantle the human trafficking trade between the UK and France.

French President Emmanuel Macron said he will ask the UK to provide extra help as the migrants are determined to go to the UK.

A group of people wearing life jackets and wrapped in blankets were seen huddled together onboard a lifeboat before disembarking in Dover on Thursday morning, just a day after a dinghy capsized off the coast of Calais, causing the loss of dozens of lives.

French officials previously stated there were 31 deaths but the death toll was revised down to 27, with no immediate explanation for the discrepancy.

French interior minister Gerald Darmanin said the dead included five women, one of whom was later reported to have been pregnant.

He also said two survivorsone Somali and one Iraqiwere being treated in a French hospital for severe hypothermia.

The identities and nationalities of the victims are yet to be determined.

Darmanin told French radio network RTL on Thursday that smugglers have sadly been promising migrants Eldorado in England for a few thousand euros every day for the last 20 years.

Commenting on the arrival of more illegal immigrants after the tragedy, Prime Minister Boris Johnsons spokesman said, It illustrates that we absolutely need to step up our work with our French counterparts to dismantle this horrific trade which preys on vulnerable people.

It demonstrates that it is still ongoing despite the horrific tragedy we saw yesterday, and more needs to be done, he added.

Asked if Home Secretary Priti Patel would raise the prospect of joint patrols on French beaches when speaking to her French counterpart, Johnsons spokesman said it would be fair to say that how we can provide more personnel and resource is something we would want to discuss, absolutely, adding that theres recognition on both sides that more can be done and more needs to be done urgently.

Johnson has said on Wednesday that he hoped the French would now find the renewed offer to jointly patrol the French coast acceptable.

But Pierre-Henri Dumont, the MP for the French port city of Calais, said increasing patrols will not change anything.

The MP said theres no point throwing more resources into patrolling because there is a 200300km [124186 miles] of shore to monitor 24/7 and it only takes a few minutes for smugglers to evade the patrol.

Asked what should be done, he said migrants should be allowed to apply for asylum while outside the UK but that it should be harder to find employment or housing when they arrive.

The UKs immigration minister Kevin Foster told the BBC on Thursday morning that the UK is happy to provide more resources to the French than the 54 million ($72 million) agreed upon.

And Macron said he will ask the UK to provide extra help as the migrants are determined to go to the UK.

All these men and these women dont want to stay in France. We tell them theyre obviously able to do so, and there are centres in Calais and Dunkirk where they can go, he said on Thursday, adding that the government will reinforce in fact saving them at sea, cooperate with the UK and surrounding European countries to stop the gravy train of human trafficking.

Found among a group of men sheltering across from a supermarket in Grande-Synthe, France, waiting to be picked up to go to the UK, 23-year-old Iraqi man Ali told PA new agency that the migrants who drowned on Wednesday had no chance to pass the English Channel, adding but we maybe do.

We dont have a life. We want to live like you in the UK, he said.

Ali said therere migrants there who arrived via Turkey and Belarus.

PA contributed to this report.
The Alcan Gove bauxite mine and alumina processing plant is the largest industrial undertaking in the Northern Territory, Australia on Dec. 3, 2005. (Torsten Blackwood/AFP via Getty Images)

Net Zero Target Not Zero-Sum Game for Mining Jobs: Premier Palaszczuk

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has said investment and support will continue to flow into her states mining industry despite Australias commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Global decarbonisation ambitions, recently the focus of the COP26 summit in Glasgow, did not mean a zero-sum game for the resources extraction industry in mineral-rich Queensland, the premier told the Queensland Resources Council event on Wednesday, News.com.au reported.

I am confident that our best days remain ahead of us, Palaszczuk said.

The resources sector will continue to grow and support more jobs across Queensland.

The global commitments at COP26 towards net zero emissions by 2050 are not a zero-sum game between action on climate change and mining jobs.

These commitments to net zero will make Queenslands resources sector even stronger over the long-term, she said.

The premier said Queensland had the minerals the world needed to create green energy technology, such as vanadium and cobalt, to build batteries.

Palaszczuk also spoke of the need to extract resources from under the ground while declaring that the state had an abundance of wind and solar.

As a key input for steel, Queenslands metallurgical coal will continue to support the construction of wind turbines across the world.

The Queensland resources sector has a critical role to play in ensuring that renewable energy is delivered affordably and sustainably.

Amid global efforts to shift towards green energy, Palaszczuk announced the Queensland government had approved a vanadium mine, Saint Elmo, near Julia Creek in the central northwest of the state.

I dont just want to see vanadium mined in Queensland. I want to see onshore processing and manufacturing of vanadium batteries as well.

I want to see Queenslands minerals used in renewable batteries across the nation and globally.

To further support battery manufacturing in Queensland, my government will develop a Queensland Battery Industry Strategy.

The states treasury department reported that before the COVID-19 pandemic, mining activity made up about 12 percent of Queenslands economy in the 2019 to 2020 financial year.

The states coal and bauxite reserves are among the largest in the world and are sought after internationally for their high-grade quality.

Further, LNG and mineral accounted for about 81 percent of the nominal value of Queenslands overseas merchandise exports in the financial year before the pandemic began.

The premiers announcement comes as her state is forecasted to see a fall of 11 percent in overseas exports in the 2020 to 2021 financial year before its expected to rebound by just over 9 percent the following year.
The Soyuz rocket blasts off from the launch pad at Russia's space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service photo via AP)

New Russian Module Launched to International Space Station

MOSCOWA Russian rocket blasted off successfully on Wednesday to deliver a new docking module to the International Space Station.

The Soyuz rocket lifted off as scheduled at 6:06 p.m. (1306 GMT) from the Russian launch facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, carrying the Progress cargo ship with the Prichal (Pier) docking module attached to it.

The craft successfully entered a designated orbit nine minutes after the launch and is set to dock at the station on Friday, hooking up to the new Russian Nauka (Science) laboratory module that was added to the station in July.

The Soyuz rocket blasts off from the launch pad at Russias space facility in Baikonur, Kazakhstan, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Roscosmos Space Agency Press Service photo via AP)

The new spherical module with six docking ports will allow potential future expansion of the Russian segment of the station.

Earlier this week, the Russian crew on the station started training for Prichals arrival, simulating the use of manual controls in case the automatic docking system fails.

The space outpost is currently operated by NASA astronauts Raja Chari, Thomas Marshburn, Kayla Barron, and Mark Vande Hei; Russian cosmonauts Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov; and Matthias Maurer of the European Space Agency.
Current Finance Minister and Social Democrat leader Magdalena Andersson is appointed as the country's new Prime Minister after a voting at the Swedish Parliament Riksdagen in Stockholm, Sweden, on Nov. 24, 2021. (Erik Simander /TT News Agency/via Reuters)

New Swedish PM Resigns on First Day in Job, Hopes for Swift Return

STOCKHOLMSwedens first female prime minister, Social Democrat Magdalena Andersson, resigned on Wednesday after less than 12 hours in the top job after the Green Party quit their two-party coalition, stoking political uncertainty.

But Andersson said she had told the speaker of parliament she hoped to be appointed prime minister again as the head of a single-party government, and the prospects of that happening appeared fairly strong given support from other parties.

The Green Party quit after parliament rejected the coalitions budget bill.

I have asked the speaker to be relieved of my duties as prime minister, Andersson told a news conference. I am ready to be prime minister in a single-party, Social Democrat government.

The Green Party said it would support her in any new confirmation vote in parliament, while the Centre Party promised to abstain, which in practice amounts to the same as backing her candidacy. The Left Party has also said it would back her.

While these parties were unable to agree a budget, they are united in the goal of keeping the Sweden Democrats, a populist, anti-immigration party, from having a role in government.

The Centre Party will open the door for her (Andersson) to be prime minister, its leader, Annie Loof, said on Twitter.

We will make sure, again, that Sweden can have a government that is not dependent on the Sweden Democrats.

The opposition right-wing Moderates and Christian Democrats are backed by the Sweden Democrats, but cannot command a majority in parliament.

Challenges

Andersson took over as prime minister from Stefan Lofven as head of a minority two-party coalition supported by the Left and Centre parties. But that alliance collapsed when the Centre Party refused to back the new governments finance bill.

Parliament then passed spending plans on Wednesday drawn up by three opposition parties, prompting the Green Party to quit the coalition and leaving Andersson no option but to resign.

The speaker of parliament will now decide the next step in the process of finding a new government, but will most likely put Andersson forward for a new vote in coming days.

We expect the Left, Green and Centre parties to abstain in the upcoming vote and therefore effectively approve Andersson as Prime Minister again, banking group Nordea said in a note. In other words, the political chaos is over as long as nothing more unexpected happens.

Whoever becomes prime minister faces major challenges, and a national election is due next September.

Gang violence and shootings blight life in many major cities.

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed gaps in the much-vaunted welfare state and the government needs to speed up the shift to a green economy if it is to meet its climate change goals.

The centre-left and centre-right blocs are basically deadlocked in polls.

The fact that it has taken this long for Sweden to get a woman prime minister is embarrassing for many in a country that introduced universal suffrage 100 years ago and has long championed gender equality.

Neighbouring Norway got its first woman leader 40 years ago. Sri Lanka was the first country to elect a woman premier in 1960.

Reporting by Simon Johnson and Johan Ahlander
No Quick Fix to Tackle Illegal Immigration Across English Channel: Patel

There is no quick fix to stop illegal immigrants arriving in the UK by crossing the English Channel in small boats, UK Home Secretary Priti Patel said on Thursday, one day after the deadliest incident yet in the crisis.

A dinghy carrying illegal immigrants capsized off the coast of the French port city of Calais on Wednesday, causing 27 deaths. The French prosecutors office said the dead included 17 men, seven women, and two boys and one girl believed to be teenagers.

In an urgent statement to the House of Commons, Patel said the incident was a dreadful shock and a reminder of how vulnerable people are put at peril when in the hands of criminal gangs.

A group of people thought to be illegal immigrants are brought in to Dover, Kent, by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution on Nov. 25, 2021. (Gareth Fuller/PA)

There is also no quick fix. This is about addressing long-term pull factors, smashing the criminal gangs that treat human beings as cargo, and tackling supply chains, she told MPs.

More than 25,700 people have reached the UK in small boats this year, three times the total for the whole of 2020.

New figures released by the Home Office on Thursday show that more than 37,500 asylum claims were made in the UK in the year to September, which is the highest level for nearly 20 years.

The Home Office said, The increase in applications is likely linked in part, to the easing of global travel restrictions that were in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and to an increase in small boat arrivals to the UK (of which almost all claim asylum).

In July, the UK and France announced an agreement on tackling the problem, under which the UK would pay France 54 million ($75 million) to more than double the number of police patrolling French beaches.

But following a meeting of the Cobra emergencies committee on Thursday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it is clear that French operations havent been enough and the people traffickers are literally getting away with murder.

However, Natacha Bouchart, mayor of Calais, said it is the British who are to blame and called on Johnson to face up to his responsibilities.

The British government is to blame. I believe that Boris Johnson has, for the past year and a half, cynically chosen to blame France, she was quoted by French media as saying.

Franck Dhersin, vice president of transport for the northern Hauts-de-France region, said the mafia chiefs at the top of the trafficking networks live in the UK and must be arrested.

And the mafia chiefs live in London  They live in London peacefully, in beautiful villas, they earn hundreds of millions of euros every year, and they reinvest that money in the City, he told French TV station BFMTV.

PA contributed to this report.
A homeless encampment off Ross Street in Santa Ana, Calif., on May 10, 2021. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

Orange County to Open Cold Weather Homeless Shelter

SANTA ANA, Calif.Orange County officials announced it will begin a Cold Weather Emergency Program to aid the homeless during the winter months.

Between Dec. 1, 2021, and March 31, 2022, the California National Guard Armory in Santa Ana will be providing 80 beds on a nightly basis for homeless adults.

The program is hosted by Volunteers of America Los Angeles (VOALA) and will provide meals, showers, and a bed to participants daily between 5 p.m. until the following morning at 7 a.m.

This will be VOALAs first seasonal shelter in Orange County, according to Orange County Health Care Agency Director of Operations Douglas Becht.

For over 30 years, VOALA has worked extensively with the homeless in Los Angeles County, operating seven Cold Weather Emergency Shelters at various sites, Becht told The Epoch Times.

As the program arrives in Orange County, participants and staff will be required to follow COVID-19 protocols and abide by daily screenings. COVID-19 testing and vaccines will also be made available on selected dates.

To access the shelter, the homeless must go to a pick-up and drop-off location at one of the two bus stops in Santa Ana located on Flower Street and Civic Center Drive, or on Walnut Street near First Street. Walk-ins will not be accepted.

The shelter will run seven days per week, including holidays.
A surfer heads to the water in Cow Bay, N.S., Nov. 23, 2021. Heavy rain and high winds are impacting a large swath of Atlantic Canada. ( The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan)

Parts of Atlantic Canada Cleaning up After Three Days of Heavy Rain and Powerful Wind

Work crews fanned out across eastern Nova Scotia and southwestern Newfoundland Thursday to repair roads, bridges and culverts washed out by torrential rainfall that had hammered parts of the region for the past three days.

In Nova Scotia, almost 30 roads and bridges were closed by the time the rain stopped on Wednesday.

Most of the damage was reported in Antigonish County, in northeastern Nova Scotia, and in Victoria and Inverness counties in northern Cape Breton.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said Thursday that damage from the storm is significant. Its probably at least $7 million, so it will trigger federal programming, Houston told reporters. Theres a lot of work to be done to rebuild, repair, restore.

Some communities along Cape Bretons northeastern shore were inundated by more than 200 millimetres of rain, and several washouts forced the closure of the scenic Cabot Trail at the top of the island.

In Ingonish River, N.S., on the east side of the Cabot Trail, flooding and washouts were reported amid heavy downpours that dumped 278 mm of rain on the tiny community.

This weeks storm has hit our province, our people and our transportation infrastructure hard, Nova Scotias acting public works minister, Allan MacMaster, said in a statement. Our first priority is making sure people are safe, so please check in with your neighbours, especially seniors.

MacMaster asked residents in the affected areas to stay off the roads.

I know Nova Scotians will do what they always do-come together, help their neighbours and get through this as a community, he said.

In the Port aux Basques area of southwestern Newfoundland, repairs are underway on many roads, including the Trans-Canada Highway, and a helicopter was used Wednesday to rescue some trapped residents.

With the main highway to Port aux Basques closed, the ferry service that operates between the town and North Sydney, N.S., has been forced to alter its route.

Marine Atlantic announced Thursday that it would temporarily reroute the crossing to Argentia in eastern Newfoundland to ensure people and supplies can reach the province. That route is usually offered only in the summer months.

Employees are working diligently to prepare the (Argentia) terminal to accept customers on this emergency basis, Marine Atlantic said in a statement. The first sailing between North Sydney and Argentia was scheduled to depart late Thursday afternoon.

The storm, described as an elongated area of low pressure, had stalled over the region between Monday and Wednesday. Feeding on tropical moisture in the Caribbean, it dumped record amounts of rain on many communities, including Port aux Basques, where 165 mm accumulated over the past two days.

In the Codroy Valley north of Port aux Basques, one weather station recorded 195 mm of rain. As well, a gust in the Wreckhouse area reached 141 km/h.
Screenshot from Go Fast: Official USG Footage of UAP for public release, published on March 9, 2018. (To The Stars Academy of Arts)

Pentagon to Probe UFO Sightings Near Military Sites Through New Group

The Pentagon announced late on Tuesday that it will form a new group to probe reports on the presence of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in restricted U.S. airspace.

The formation of the new division, Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group, was directed by President Joe Bidens deputy secretary of defense Kathleen Hicks.

It will lead an effort to detect, identify and attribute objects in restricted airspace, as well as mitigate any threats to military flights and national security, the Department of Defense said in a news release.

Incursions by any airborne object into our SUA (Special Use Airspace) pose safety of flight and operations security concerns, and may pose national security challenges, the Pentagon press release said.

The new group, which will succeed the U.S. Navys Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, will be overseen by the Under Secretary Of Defense for Intelligence, the director of the Joint Staff and officials from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The announcement follows a nine-page report (pdf) released by the government in June which outlined 144 observations of UAPs, of which 11 caused near misses for military pilots.

The report was issued by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in conjunction with a U.S. Navy-led UAP task force, and cited the 11 documented instances in which pilots reported near misses with a UAP as examples of current ongoing airspace concerns. Aviators are required to report such concerns upon encountering safety hazards, it notes.

UAP pose a hazard to safety of flight and could pose a broader danger if some instances represent sophisticated collection against U.S. military activities by a foreign government or demonstrate a breakthrough aerospace technology by a potential adversary, the report said.

It added, however, that defense and intelligence analysts lack sufficient data to determine the nature of UAP observed by military pilots, outlining that they could belong to explanatory categories such as foreign adversary systems, natural atmospheric phenomena, or other, amid the public speculations of extraterrestrial technology as a possible explanation in some cases.

UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security, the report stated, adding that the phenomena probably lack a single explanation.

The Pentagon in its release on Tuesday noted that the report released in June identified the need to make improvements in processes, policies, technologies, and training to improve our ability to understand UAP.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in May that members of Congress and other officials need to seriously investigate UFOs and the potential threat they pose.

Speaking to CBS News 60 Minutes, the Florida Republican described a stigma on Capitol Hill, in which some lawmakers are very interested in this topic, but some kind of giggle when you bring it up. However, he cautioned, I dont think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.

The CBS News program also interviewed former Navy Lt. Ryan Graves, who said that these objects could be technology developed by Russia or the Chinese communist regime.

The department said it will issue further details on the groups structure, resourcing, and individuals involved in the coming weeks.
The Pfizer logo is seen at the Pfizer Inc. headquarters in New York City on Dec. 9, 2020. (Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

Pfizer Sues Long-Time Employee for Allegedly Downloading Thousands of Company Files Containing Trade Secrets

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Pfizer has sued a former employee for breaching her confidentiality agreement when she allegedly downloaded thousands of the companys files, some of which contained trade secrets and confidential information, to her personal devices and attempted to cover her tracks.

In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, and obtained by NBC 7 San Diego, Pfizer accuses long-time employee Chun Xiao Li, the companys associate director of statistics in its Global Product Development group, of uploading over 12,000 files, including scores of confidential documents, to a personal Google Drive account and onto other personal devices from a company-issued laptop without permission.

The materials Li allegedly downloaded to her personal devices include a Sept. 24 presentation titled E2E Clinical Development + Submissions Playbook containing internal assessments and recommendations about the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, analysis regarding why the Pfizer and BioNTech relationship was successful compared to other partnerships, and the identification of critical data variables for drug studies and ways to manage them.

According to the complaint, Li allegedly downloaded the files between Oct. 23 and Oct. 26, 2021.

The complaint claims Li, who was hired in 2006 and worked at Pfizers facility in La Jolla, California, initially cooperated with the investigation but then notified Pfizer she was resigning from the company, effective Nov. 24, 2021.

Upon learning of Ms. Lis troubling conduct, Pfizer addressed it with her, plaintiffs wrote in the court filing. Although Ms. Li initially gave the appearance of cooperation, it turns out that Ms. Li instead has misled Pfizer about what she took, how she took it, when and why she did it, and where those files (and possibly others) can be found today.

The complaint goes on to allege that Li, went so far as to provide Pfizers security team a decoy laptop, leading Pfizer to believe it was the one she used to download the 12,000 files from her Google Drive account, but that forensic analysis later confirmed it was not the same laptop that she had allegedly used.

The lawsuit uses the fictitious names DOES 1 through 5 to refer to individuals who may have collaborated with Li.

Ms. Li (or somebody else, including potentially DOES 1-5) likely remains in possession of the actual computer that contains those 12,000 files, the lawsuit states.

Pfizer believes in robust, fair competition. It was specifically that sort of competition that led Pfizer and its competitors to develop different COVID-19 vaccines with record-breaking speed, the lawsuit states. It would be unjust to permit Ms. Li and anybody with whom she may be working in concert to trade on Pfizers successes and experience, whether at Xencor or elsewhere, by leveraging the numerous confidential Pfizer documents she took without permission and refuses to return.

Trade Secrets

The pharmaceutical giant is suing Li for misappropriation of trade secrets in violation of the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016 and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act; breach of contract; conversion; and trespass to chattel.

Pfizer is also seeking a temporary restraining order and injunctive relief.

The Epoch Times has contacted a spokesperson for Pfizer and rival pharmaceutical company Xencor for comment.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Cathy Ann Bencivengo granted a temporary restraining order requested by Pfizer and said the companys lawyers can review Lis accounts and devices.

The judge set a date of Dec. 9 for a hearing to consider a longer injunction.

Li told NBC 7 on Wednesday that she had not meant to download any of the files and has since deleted them. She also claims that the more than 12,000 files did not contain any medical research.

The former Pfizer employee, who is yet to hire an attorney, also confirmed that she will start working for Pfizer competitor Xencor, which has headquarters in Monrovia and San Diego, California.

Pfizer told NBC 7 in a statement that the company is still investigating and pursuing civil action against an employee who it believes improperly downloaded thousands of documents before a planned exit from the company.

Pfizer takes the safeguarding of sensitive and confidential information very seriously. Protecting that information is critical to scientific innovation, ultimately enabling us to deliver breakthroughs for patients, the spokesperson said.

Meanwhile, Xencor told NBC 7, Xencor is not a party to the lawsuit and does not have additional comments.

On Monday, Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said they plan to file for expanded approval from U.S. regulators for their COVID-19 vaccine after a new study indicated the shot remains effective for over four months.

Vaccinated children aged 12 to 15 saw 100 percent effectiveness against COVID-19 in an ongoing clinical trial, Pfizer and BioNTech said in a statement.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden serve food to soldiers at Fort Bragg to mark the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday in Fort Bragg, N.C., on Nov. 22, 2021. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Polyp From Bidens Colonoscopy Is Benign: White House Physician

Physician to the president Dr. Kevin OConnor said in a memo on Wednesday that results from President Joe Bidens recent colonoscopy have identified a polyp found to be a tubular adenoma.

Released with the permission of the president, OConnor said that the procedure on Nov. 19, which was previously said to have removed a benign appearing 3 mm polyp from Bidens ascending colon, had allowed for further histological examination of the polyp.

A tubular adenoma is a benign, slow growing, but thought to be potentially pre-cancerous lesion for which no further action is required at this time, OConnor said. Routine surveillance is recommended for this finding.

The top White House doctor said his recommendation is for a repeat colonoscopy in 7 to 10 years time.

Biden had a similar tubular adenoma removed in 2008.

Biden briefly transferred power to Vice President Kamala Harris on Nov. 19 as he underwent the procedure.

In addition to the colonoscopy, Biden had a physical exam and OConnor pronounced on Friday that the president was healthy and vigorous and fit for duty.

Biden, 79, is the oldest person to take office as U.S. president, leading to high interest in his health and well-being.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Flowers bloom in front of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., on March 12, 2020. (Stephen M. Katz/The Virginian-Pilot via AP)

Professor Who Defended Pedophiles Announces Resignation

A college professor in Virginia has announced plans to resign after defending pedophiles.

Allyn Walker, a professor at Old Dominion University (ODU), wrote a book that referred to pedophiles as minor-attracted people and detailed their pursuit of dignity.

Walker, who identifies as nonbinary, told the Protasia Foundation earlier this month that there are a lot of misconceptions about attractions toward minors and claimed that its not immoral to be attracted to children, provided people dont carry out sexual abuse against them. The professor has also said the descriptor of minor-attracted people is a less stigmatizing term than pedophiles.

Walkers remarks drew widespread criticism but the university initially opted to defend the professor.

An academic community plays a valuable role in the quest for knowledge. A vital part of this is being willing to consider scientific and other empirical data that may involve controversial issues and perspectives, the school said on Nov. 13.

Following increased pressure to act, though, the university put the professor on leave last week.

I want to state in the strongest terms possible that child sexual abuse is morally wrong and has no place in our society, ODU President Brian Hemphill said in a statement at the time. This is a challenging time for our university, but I am confident that we will come together and move forward as a Monarch family.

A new statement on Nov. 24 said Walker decided to resign when the professors contract runs out in May 2022.

Walker will remain on leave until that time, according to the university.

We have concluded that this outcome is the best way to move forward, Hemphill said. We hope todays action helps bring closure for our Monarch family. As we move forward, I encourage all members of the Monarch family to continue our efforts toward healing and civil discourse.

Walker said in a statement released by the school that the work on pedophiles is aimed at preventing child sexual abuse and alleged it was twisted by outside parties.

That research was mischaracterized by some in the media and online, partly on the basis of my trans identity. As a result, multiple threats were made against me and the campus community generally, Walker said.

Students had told media outlets they were shocked by what they described as sympathizing with pedophiles.

I am baffled and disappointed that an individual with those beliefs would even be allowed to have a job on our campus where children interact frequently, Grant Rimmer, a junior, told the Daily Mail.

It is okay to research, it is okay to find out this information. It is not okay to sympathize and create a term to blanket what pedophilia is, Geni Piatowski, another student, told WAVY.
Retailers Under Pressure as Organized Looting Eats Into Profits

A growing number of U.S. retailers are ringing alarm bells on organized looting that is gripping many major urban markets across the country.

Best Buy reported decent third-quarter earnings (pdf), topping market estimates. The consumer electronics retail giant found more Americans upgraded their home technologies and kitchen appliances. But the company warned some of the challenges it faces moving forward, including organized retail crime.

Across retail, we are definitely seeing more and more particularly organized retail crime, Best Buy CEO Corie Barry said on a quarterly earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts.

Barry noted that the retailer was determining how to lock up products while also ensuring a good customer experience. The Best Buy chief executive confirmed that some store locations had hired security guards.

Speaking in an interview with CNBCs Squawk Box, Barry stated that mass store thefts have been traumatic for employees as she witnessed more loosely organized groups come together and target our stores.

Volunteers help clean up the parking lot outside a Best Buy store in Chicago on Aug. 10, 2020. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Photo)

What I would really stress here is, for our employees, these are really traumatic experiences. Obviously, their safety is our first priority, she said.

They are happening more and more across the country. Its really been a horrible change in the trajectory of the business, and one we are working hard to try and stem.

Apple and Nordstrom were victims of robberies after criminals targeted stores in California. Robbers stole as many as eight expensive purses from Nordstrom in Los Angeles, while others took as much as $20,000 in merchandise from an Apple store in Santa Rosa.

A mob of thieves targeted a Neiman Marcus location and a GameStop store in Chicago on Monday. Criminals also stole about $100,000 worth of products from a Louis Vuitton store in the city last week.

Walgreens announced in October that it would be closing five San Francisco stores, citing crime sprees in the area.

Organized Looting Hurting US Retail Industry

A wide variety of brick-and-mortar retailers across the country are seeing a significant jump in shoplifting.

The Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail recently predicted that organized retail theft has cost companies approximately $45 billion in annual losses, up 50 percent from a decade ago.

The National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that organized retail crime costs an average of $700,000 per $1 billion in sales. According to the industry bodys 2020 Organized Retail Crime Survey, 75 percent of retailers reported an increase in merchandise heists. The NRFs 2021 National Retail Security Survey also highlighted that two-thirds of retailers stated that the pandemic enhanced the risk of theft for their business.

In addition to smash-and-grab efforts, criminals are changing their tactics, too.

Gail Morris, director of investigations at Williams-Sonoma, Inc., noted that culprits return stolen goods without receipts and claim it was a gift. But that is not the scheme they are employing.

They try to socially engineer care center people on the phone. They may say they have something that doesnt work and return a box of rocks because we just look at the tracking number, Morris stated. Its a scheme that has been around for years, but its easier to get away with because businesses are heavily focused on their ecommerce channels.

Officials have railed against these developments. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom called it simply unacceptable, announcing increased police presence in major retail sites.

Experts contend that criminal justice reforms in recent years have become partly responsible for shoplifting. Over the last 20 years, 40 states have raised the thresholds for the value of stolen merchandise that leads to a felony charge, effectively easing penalties for shoplifting, says the National Association of Shoplifting Prevention.

It is not only retailers concerned about the wave of thefts. U.S. households are also worried about becoming targets.

Americans Concerned About Porch Pirates

It is estimated that 92 percent of Americans will receive a package delivered for Christmas. But this generosity and convenience may also cause some concern amid the rise of porch pirates.

According to a new study by C+R Research, about a third of Americans are worried about holiday package theft.

The annual report noted that 23 percent have had a package stolen. Still, this has not deterred consumers, as 28 percent report they plan on doing more online shopping this Christmas.

Many are also taking the necessary precautions to avoid becoming victims of theft. Twenty-seven percent are sending their deliveries to work or a relatives house, while 40 percent have installed a doorbell camera or motion lights.

Two porch pirates who are wanted on suspicion of taking packages from a porch in Pierce County, Washington. (Pierce County Sheriff)

Regardless of the time of year, it remains critical for consumers to take precautions when ordering items online. Adding security features and staying home for deliveries are some of the best ways to prevent package theft in 2021 and beyond, study authors explained.

Consumers Pay Higher Prices

In the end, it is the customers pocketbook that bears the cost. The issue of organized looting forces retailers to pass the cost of lost goods onto the customers, industry experts say.

Your prices are going to go up. When its a function of retail theft, thats just money right out of the bottom line, Brad Scholz, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Grocers Association, told the Washington Examiner. It comes down to recovering the cost from their customers. Nobody likes to talk about that.

When the consumer price index (CPI) is at a more than 30-year high of 6.2 percent, this is something that shoppers cannot afford. In the meantime, more consumers are changing their shopping habits, whether frequenting stores in the daytime or heading online.
Robert Irwin Posts Funny Photo Series After His Baby Niece Takes Over the Selfie

In a series of funny photos, baby Grace Warrior, the newest member of the renowned Irwin family, can be seen grabbing the phone as her doting uncle, Robert Irwin, snaps pictures of the pair together.

Robert, 17, shared the adorable series on Instagram on Nov. 12, writing: When Grace takes over the selfie!

The sweet photos show 7-month-old Grace, entranced by the camera, relaxing with her uncle on a sofa. The post has over 360,000 likes and counting.

Baby Grace was born to parents Bindi Irwin, 23, and her husband, Chandler Powell, 25, on March 25. Robert has been excited about the newest edition to the family since the beginning and loves to show off fun times with his niece on social media.

Loving his new role as uncle, Robert, the budding photographer, recently posted a beaming selfie from an Oct. 29 adventure, captioned, More adventures with Grace Warriorluckiest uncle ever! Wrapped in a woolly sweater, bobble hat, and a big cuddle from her uncle, Grace is pictured smiling from ear to ear.

A few days later, Robert also posted pictures of Grace on a family trip to Tasmania in October.

The baby girls arrival has prompted the already-tight-knit Irwin familywho run the Australia Zoo together, the late Steve Irwins wildlife conservation legacyto spread even more of their love to family, friends, and fans on social media.

In lieu of International Day of the Girl Child, on Oct. 11, Graces grandmother and Bindis mom, Terri Irwin, posted a tribute to Bindi, Grace, and girls everywhere in a touching Twitter post.

Girls deserve equality, education, opportunity, and hope for the future, she posted. Girls should grow up to achieve their goals and become leaders in their chosen fields. We must let a girls light shine and imbue her with strength, optimism, and power. Always.

Accompanying Terris post was a sweet portrait of a smiling Bindi holding Grace, while both mom and daughter look off into the distance.

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Samsung Picks Texas City for $17 Billion Semiconductor Factory, to Create 2,000+ Jobs

Samsung announced on Wednesday that it has chosen Taylor, Texas, for its $17 billion advanced chip-manufacturing plant, which is expected to create 2,000 direct high-tech jobs.

The new manufacturing facility will produce advanced logic chips that will power next-generation devices for applications such as mobile, 5G, high-performance computing (HPC), and artificial intelligence (AI), Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said, according to a press release.

Construction is expected to begin in the first half of 2022, and production in 2024, with at least 6,500 positions for construction-related employment.

The project will be Samsungs largest investment in the country, and the largest direct foreign investment on record in Texas.

Welcome to Texas, Samsung! Samsung will build a new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor, Texas.  $17B capital investment

 Thousands of NEW jobs The largest foreign direct investment in the state of Texas EVER. pic.twitter.com/a7VhbK3B9Q  Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) November 24, 2021

The advanced Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. factory will cover more than 5 million square meters. Taylor was selected because of its proximity to Samsungs existing facilities in Austin as well as the citys accommodating infrastructure and local semiconductor ecosystem.

Besides the 2,000 jobs, the plant will support thousands of related indirect employment as well. A grant of $27 million has been awarded to Samsung by the Texas Enterprise Fund to support its creating of local jobs.

Samsungs new semiconductor manufacturing facility in Taylor will bring countless opportunities for hardworking Central Texans and their families, and will play a major role in our states continued exceptionalism in the semiconductor industry, Abbott said.

With this plant, Samsung will have invested a total of $35 billion in Texas since 1996, and $47 billion in the United States.

The three biggest global chip manufacturers are Intel, Samsung, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which leads the pack. Along with Samsung, Intel and TSMC are investing heavily in global production facilities to meet a post-pandemic surge in demand that has stretched global capacity to the max. Chips are essential in everything, from computers and home devices to automobiles, with the current shortages expected to last for a while.

With greater manufacturing capacity, we will be able to better serve the needs of our customers and contribute to the stability of the global semiconductor supply chain, Kinam Kim, vice chairman and CEO, Samsung Electronics Device Solutions Division, said in a statement.

As an incentive for choosing Taylor, 90 percent of property tax will be waived for a decade and 85 percent will be discounted for the next 10 years by the local government. Samsungs investment is expected to receive further tax cuts as the plant is located in a federal opportunity zone.

Given the business move, Taylor and Texas are now at the forefront of an industry with increasing geopolitical importance. The implications of this facility extend far beyond the boundaries of Texas, Abbott said at a press conference. Its going to impact the entire world.

Manufacturing, in the past, has always gravitated towards Asia for low-cost economical advantages. But the recent chip shortages have exposed global supply chain vulnerabilities and the need for diversification. Supply chain interruptions have resulted in critical security problems, billions lost in revenue for global manufacturers, and forced plants to furlough workers.

The White House has also called for the CHIPS Act, a $52 billion bill to be passed without delay in the House of Representatives. The CHIPS Act focuses on funding for semiconductor research and manufacturing in the United States.

Increasing domestic production of semiconductor chips is critical for our national and economic security, U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said in a statement on Tuesday.

Samsungs statement follows an announcement from Texas Instruments, which said that the company plans to invest $30 billion in Sherman, Texas, for a semiconductor wafer fabrication chip plant, creating 3,000 new jobs.

Besides this, GlobalFoundries, a multinational semiconductor contract manufacturer, is increasing investments in upstate New York, while TSMC is planning on investing about $100 billion over three years to upgrade its global manufacturing capabilities, including $12 billion in Arizona.

Analysts predict that Samsung will make cutting-edge chips of 5-nanometres or less in the new plant, in addition to its advanced logic chips. The chips will be manufactured for clients like Qualcomm, and will be capable of handling more data per area than the 14- and 28-nanometer ones currently made in Austin.

At present, Samsung has more than 20,000 employees across the United States.
Nadia Murad, a 24-year-old Yazidi woman and co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, speaks at the National Press Club in Washington on Oct. 8, 2018. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Schools Boards Rejection of ISIS Victim Event Fearing Islamophobia Is Alarming

Commentary

I can be something of a cynical man when it comes to the actions of the politically correct. I rarely find myself surprised by the self-righteous absurdities carried out by the woke. My expectations are low and the world of the hyper-liberal elites live up to them.

I still found myself utterly shocked upon hearing that the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) pulled its support from a book club event hosting Nobel Peace Prize laureate Nadia Murad. The myopic insensitivity of this move is nothing short of astounding.

Let me begin by explaining a little about the book club itself.

Toronto-based mother Tanya Lee founded the A Room of Your Own book club to offer teen girls living in poverty a safe place where they could share and discuss inspirational literature. As a person of colour and sexual assault survivor, Lee understood the challenges faced by young, urban women living in poverty. Lee found books to be a positive escape for her and wanted to share that resource with girls facing similar challenges.

Inspirational female authors were sought out and brought in to interact with club members at monthly meetings. It is hard to imagine a better way to expose troubled teens to positive role models.

Nadia Murad was scheduled to do a sit-down event with the book club this coming February to discuss her book titled, The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State.

Murads book details the horrific experiences she suffered as a young Yazidi woman in Iraq. Murads family was executed by the ISIS and she was taken hostage as a teenager. She was held as a slave in Mosul where she was tortured and repeatedly raped. Murad managed to escape and eventually settled as a refugee in Germany.

Despite these unimaginable challenges, Murad demonstrated incredible courage and strength. She became an effective advocate against human trafficking and helped bring the horrors of the Yazidi genocide into the worlds focus. She was named as the first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking by the U.N. and she ultimately won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018.

Can you imagine a more inspirational person for teenage women to meet?

Well, the TDSB felt Murad should not be speaking to Toronto teens as it would promote Islamophobia.

Murads abuse was at the hands of the ISIS. Not Islam or the general Muslim population. It is indeed important to distinguish the difference between a ruthless, fundamentalist organization and an entire faith.

One has to wonder then if the TDSB doesnt know the difference between a terrorist organization such as the ISIS and the religion followed by a large segment of society, or if they just feel the girls at the book club would be too stupid to figure out the difference. Either scenario doesnt reflect well on the TDSB.

What better way could there be for confused and curious young women to inquire about Islam versus the actions of some of its more extreme adherents than to be able to ask somebody like Murad? Murad herself has never condemned Islam itself. She is more aware than anybody that the ISIS is not representative of the faith in general. The TDSB would rob these young women of this opportunity for enlightenment.

The TDSBs snub of Murad comes on the heels of their controversial opposition to a presentation by lawyer and author Marie Henein to the same book club. Henein is an accomplished female lawyer who again, presents an ideal role model for young students.

If Murad and Henein are inappropriate role models for young women in the eyes of the TDSB, then who is? I fear the answer to that question actually, as the TDSB may manage to sink low enough to shock me again.

The judgment of the TDSB in these matters is seriously questionable. Just how ideologically driven are the members of this board? The issue cant be taken lightly considering the board represents nearly 250,000 students.

Literacy and critical thought are essential elements in education. The service being provided by Lees book club provides an immeasurable opportunity for young, impoverished women to learn the importance of books along with the inspirational authors behind them. How incredibly disconnected from their mandate of educating children must the members of the TDSB be if they could think of opposing the work of this club?

The bizarre world of the woke is no longer harmless when it can block students from exposure to some of the most successful and inspirational role models in the country. What odd and insular world will students be exposed to under the tutelage of these crazed arbiters of equity?

Stories on the ridiculous actions of extreme political correctness used to be a laughable novelty. Now, these actions are becoming harmful and the people in authority pushing this deranged ideology must be called out and removed from their positions. Our students deserve better.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
A Chinese laborer works at a construction site on reclaimed land, part of a Chinese-funded project for Port City, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Feb. 24, 2020. (Ishara S. Kodikara/AFP via Getty Images)

Sri Lanka Selects Chinese Firm to Develop New Container Port

Sri Lanka has selected a Chinese firm to construct the second phase of the Colombo Ports East Container Terminal (ECT), a move thats likely to alarm other Asian powers, given Beijings maritime Silk Road ambitions.

In a Cabinet decision on Nov. 23, Beijing-based China Harbour Engineering Co. (CHEC) was approved by Colombo to develop the strategic port terminal.

The countrys port authority in 2019 signed a preliminary agreement with Indias Adani Group and Japan to build the ECT, although that deal was scrapped in February by President Gotabaya Rajapaksas administration.

Over the past decade, China has poured money into the South Asian island, largely under Chinese leader Xi Jinpings controversial Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also called One Belt, One Road) infrastructure plan, which was announced in 2013.

The BRI initially consisted of two major componentsthe Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Roadand in recent years, others have been added, such as the Digital Silk Road, the Arctic Silk Road, the Health Silk Road, and the Space Silk Road.

The trillion-dollar global infrastructure fund has been accused of being a vehicle for the Chinese Communist Party to expand its global hegemony.

Some developing countries have struggled to pay off loans under the BRI and, in some cases, have been forced to hand over control of key assets and infrastructure to Beijing.

Case in point, in 2017, Sri Lanka handed over a major strategic portalong with 15,000 acres of landto China on a 99-year lease after its debts to Chinese state-owned firms ballooned. The Hambantota Port was acquired by China after several months of negotiations and intense pressure to clear the $1.4 billion debt.

People familiar with the tendering process told The Hindu that CHECs role in developing the second phase of Colombo Ports ECT appears to be limited to civil works.

Sri Lanka is key in the battle for influence in South Asia between India and China, which has been making increasing inroads there, given that the regime in Beijing is also involved in the construction and operation of other critical infrastructure in the country.

The island nation is a crucial staging post for much of the cargo coming in and out of India, and Chinas growing influence has alarmed New Delhi and Washington.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Super Green Pass: Italy to Impose New Limits on Unvaccinated

The unvaccinated will face heightened restrictions in Italy after the government announced that they will be barred from many leisure activities after the introduction of a super green pass.

The new vaccine passport will take effect starting Dec. 6. People must prove that they are vaccinated or have recovered from COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, to enter indoor restaurants, cinemas and theatres, sporting venues, gyms, night clubs, and more.

Current Green Pass regulations in the country allow for negative test results within 48 hours to access such venues. But from Dec. 6 to Jan. 15, a negative test will no longer suffice for the leisure activities.

The restrictions could extend beyond Jan. 15 in regions with rising CCP virus cases or related hospital admissions.

The government has also decided to make the existing Green Pass mandatory for use of urban public transport. It has acknowledged that this will be challenging to enforce, given the crowded rush-hour conditions of Italys buses and metros. For access to public transport, the Green Pass will be available to those with a negative test, not just the vaccinated, the government said.

Italys Prime Minister Mario Draghi said the new measures are necessary to curb the slow but steady rise in CCP virus cases across the country.

We are seeing the situation in bordering countries is very serious and we also see that the situation in Italy is gradually but constantly getting worse, Draghi told reporters after the cabinet unanimously approved the new restrictions.

We want to be very prudent to try to safeguard what Italians have achieved in the last year, he said, alluding to the heavy lockdown in the country in 2020.

Weve begun to return to normality. We want to conserve this normality, he added.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Tens of Millions of Red Crabs Form Scarlet Sea as They Migrate Across Christmas Island to Spawn in Ocean

Nature lovers each year flock to Christmas Island, Australia, around late November to witness a scarlet sea of tens of millions of red crabs migrating down from the forest to mate and spawn on the shoreline.

Male red crabs set out on the journey first, triggered by the first rainfall of the wet season; they are soon followed by larger numbers of female red crabs.

World-renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough described the red crab migration as like a great scarlet curtain moving down the cliffs and rocks towards the sea and considered filming the spectacle as one of his 10 greatest TV moments, said Bianca Priest, Christmas Island National Park acting manager.

Over the years, visitors have traveled from every corner of the world to witness this wildlife phenomenon.

Visitors hoping to take in the remarkable wave of red crabs may find some of the roadways blocked on their migration path for all or part of the day when the crimson crustaceans make their way to and from the ocean.

Island officials have set up barriers to funnel the red crabs toward especially-designed crab-crossing overpasses for the critters to safely traverse otherwise-perilous roadways.

These crab crossings happen to be an excellent spot for visitors to watch the river of crabs as they make their yearly mass migration.

Incredibly, their journey is perfectly timed with the tides so that, upon setting out at first rainfall, they arrive exactly in time to spawn at dawn as the high tide recedes in the last quarter of the moon.

Should that rain arrive too early, the crabs will adopt a slower pace, taking time to eat and drink along the way. Should the rain come closer to that lunar date, they move rapidly for the sea.

Should that rain come too late, some crabs will remain in their burrows until the next month.

(Courtesy of Parks Australia)

The larger male red crabs usually reach the seashore first but are soon outnumbered by females arriving. After the arduous journey, they take a dip in the sea to replenish their moisture.

The male red crabs will then make burrows, which are packed closely next to each other, and will sometimes fight other males for possession of them. After this, they are joined by the females for mating, before then taking another dip and setting out for the forest again.

The female red crabs will remain inside the moist burrows to produce their eggs until the high tide begins to recede on the specified lunar date. Laden with as many as 100,000 eggs, they return to the sea and release their eggswhich turn the shoreline into a turbid, black soup.

(Courtesy of Parks Australia)

(Courtesy of Parks Australia)

The crab eggs hatch immediately upon entering the ocean. The emerging larvae over the next month float and undergo several larval stageseventually developing into prawn-like animals called megalopae, which gather in pools for one or two days before becoming fully formed baby crabs.

Some years, few or no baby crabs will emerge from the seainstead being eaten by fish, manta rays, and enormous whale sharks visiting the island to take advantage of this annual feast, according to Parks Australia.

But once or twice every decade, a huge number will survive to replenish their populations, which set out on the long journey inland, taking around nine days to reach the safety of the plateau where they will stay hidden in rocky outcrops for the first three years of their life.

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If theres a silver lining to the pandemic, its that medical professionals observed firsthand the problems that ensued and realized that older adults needed special consideration. (Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock)

The Urgent Need to Address Ageism

COVID hit us over the head with a two-by-four, advocate on aging says

Earlier this year, the World Health Organization announced a global campaign to combat ageismdiscrimination against older adults thats pervasive and harmful but often unrecognized.

We must change the narrative around age and aging  adopt strategies to counter [ageist attitudes and behaviors], WHO concluded in a major report accompanying the campaign.

Several strategies the WHO endorsededucating people about ageism, fostering intergenerational contacts, and changing policies and laws to promote age equityare being tried in the United States. But a greater sense of urgency is needed in light of the COVID-19 pandemics shocking death toll, including more than 500,000 older Americans, experts suggest.

COVID hit us over the head with a two-by-four, [showing that] you cant keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results for seniors, Jess Maurer, executive director of the Maine Council on Aging, said in an October webinar on ageism in health care sponsored by KHN and the John A. Hartford Foundation. You have to address the root causeand the root cause here is ageism.

Some experts believe theres a unique opportunity to confront this concern because of what the country has been through. Here are some examples of whats being done, particularly in health care settings.

Distinguishing Old Age From Disease

In October, a group of experts from the United States, Canada, India, Portugal, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom called for old age to be removed as one of the causes and symptoms of disease in the 11th revision of the International Classification of Diseases, a global resource used to standardize health data worldwide.

Aging is a normal process, and equating old age with disease is potentially detrimental, the experts wrote in The Lancet. Doing so could result in inadequate clinical evaluation and care and an increase in societal marginalization and discrimination against older adults, they warn.

Identifying Ageist Beliefs and Language

Groundbreaking research published in 2015 by the FrameWorks Institute, an organization that studies social issues, showed that many people associate aging with deterioration, dependency, and declinea stereotype that almost surely contributed to policies that harmed older adults during the pandemic. By contrast, experts understand that older adults vary widely in their abilities and that a significant number are healthy, independent, and capable of contributing to society.

Using this and subsequent research, the Reframing Aging Initiative, an effort to advance cultural change, has been working to shift how people think and talk about aging, training organizations across the country. Instead of expressing fatalism about aging (a silver tsunami that will swamp society), it emphasizes ingenuity, as in we can solve any problem if we resolve to do so, said Patricia DAntonio, project director and vice president of policy and professional affairs at the Gerontological Society of America.

Also, the initiative promotes justice as a value, as in we should treat older adults as equals.

Since it began, the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and The Associated Press have adopted bias-free language around aging, and communities in Colorado, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Texas have signed on as partners.

Tackling Ageism at Grassroots Level

In the past three years in Colorado, Changing the Narrative, a strategic awareness campaign, has hosted more than 300 workshops educating the public about ageist language, beliefs, and practices. Now, its launching a campaign calling attention to ageism in health care.

Our goal is to teach people about the connections between ageism and poor health outcomes and to mobilize both older people and [health] professionals to advocate for better medical care, said Janine Vanderburg, director of Changing the Narrative.

Faced with the pandemics horrific impact, the Maine Council on Aging earlier this year launched the Power in Aging Project, which is sponsoring a series of community conversations around ageism and asking organizations to take an anti-ageism pledge.

The goal is to educate people about their own age biaslargely unconscious assumptions about agingand help them understand how age bias impacts everything around them, said Maurer. For those interested in assessing their own age bias, a test from Harvard Universitys Project Implicit is often recommended. (Sign in and choose the age IAT on the next page.)

Changing Education for Health Professionals

Two years ago, Harvard Medical School began integrating education in geriatrics and palliative care throughout its curriculum, recognizing that it hadnt been doing enough to prepare future physicians to care for seniors. Despite the rapid growth of the older population, only 55 percent of U.S. medical schools required education in geriatrics in 2020, according to the latest data from the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Dr. Andrea Schwartz, an assistant professor of medicine, directs Harvards effort, which teaches students about everything from the sites where older adults receive care (nursing homes, assisted living, home-based programs, community-based settings) to how to manage common geriatric syndromes such as falls and delirium. Also, students learn how to talk with older patients about whats most important to them and what they most want from their care.

Schwartz also chaired a committee of the academic programs in geriatrics that recently published updated minimum competencies in geriatrics that any medical school graduate should have.

Altering Professional Requirements

Dr. Sharon Inouye, also a professor of medicine at Harvard, suggests additional approaches that could push better care for older adults forward. When a physician seeks board certification in a specialty or doctors, nurses, or pharmacists renew their licenses, they should be required to demonstrate training or competency in the basics of geriatrics, she said. And far more clinical trials should include a representative range of older adults to build a better evidence base for their care.

Inouye, a geriatrician, was particularly horrified during the pandemic when doctors and nurses failed to recognize that seniors with COVID-19 were presenting in hospital emergency rooms with atypical symptoms such as loss of appetite and delirium. Such atypical presentations are common in older adults, but instead of receiving COVID tests or treatment, these older adults were sent back to nursing homes or community settings where they helped spread infections, she said.

Bringing in Geriatrics Expertise

If theres a silver lining to the pandemic, its that medical professionals and health system leaders observed firsthand the problems that ensued and realized that older adults needed special consideration.

Everything that we as geriatricians have been trying to tell our colleagues suddenly came into sharp focus, said Dr. Rosanne Leipzig, a professor of geriatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.

Now, more Mount Sinai surgeons are asking geriatricians to help them manage older surgical patients, and orthopedic specialists are discussing establishing a similar program.

I think the value of geriatrics has gone up as institutions see how we care for complicated older adults and how that care improves outcomes, Leipzig said.

Building Age-Friendly Health Systems

I believe we are at an inflection point, said Terry Fulmer, president of the John A. Hartford Foundation, which is supporting the development of age-friendly health systems with the American Hospital Association, the Catholic Health Association of the United States, and the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (The John A. Hartford Foundation is a funder of KHN.)

More than 2,500 health systems, hospitals, medical clinics, and other health care providers have joined this movement, which sets four priorities (the 4Ms) in caring for older adults: attending to their mobility, medications, mentation (cognition and mental health), and what matters most to themthe foundation for person-centered care.

Creating a standardized framework for improving care for seniors has helped health care providers and systems know how to proceed, even amid the enormous uncertainty of the past couple of years. We thought [the pandemic] would slow us down, but what we found in most cases was the oppositepeople could cling to the 4Ms to have a sense of mastery and accomplishment during a time of such chaos, Fulmer said.

Were eager to hear from readers about questions youd like answered, problems youve been having with your care, and advice you need in dealing with the health care system. Visit khn.org/columnists to submit your requests or tips.

Judith Graham is a contributing columnist for Kaiser Health News, which originally published this article. KHNs coverage of these topics is supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and The SCAN Foundation.
Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds (C) speaks with medical staff during a visit to the new Cancer Centre of Milton Keynes University Hospital in Milton Keynes, England, on March 19, 2021. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

Thousands of Unnecessary Lung Cancer Deaths Caused by COVID-19 Lockdown: UK Report

Thousands of lung cancer patients may have died unnecessarily as a result of lockdown measures imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report has said.

In a report published on Thursday, the UK Lung Cancer Coalition (UKLCC) said that improvements in survival rates that were occurring before the pandemic are now in jeopardy.

It estimates that delays in diagnosis caused by lockdown measures may result in a drop of up to 5.3 percent in five-year survival in England, from 17.6 percent for patients diagnosed between 2014 and 2018, to around 12.3 percent for those diagnosed during the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.

This could lead to more than 2,500 extra deaths in the UK, the report said.

Professor Robert Rintoul, chair of the UKLCCs clinical advisory group, said: Prior to the pandemic, real progress was being made in raising five-year survival rates. But COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on early diagnosis of lung cancer and has compromised our target of driving up five-year UK survival to 25 percent by 2025.

He said that lung cancer patients have been disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

Government guidance to stay at home with a cough, reluctance to engage with health care services during lockdown, and pressures on already over-burdened health services, have inevitably resulted in a fall in referrals and increase in late-stage presentations of the disease, he said, adding that urgent action is needed to get back on track.

A man walks up a deserted Regent Street in London on March 30, 2020. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The UKLCC has called for a fully-funded screening programme for lung cancer across the UK.

It is also calling for twice-yearly national and regional public awareness campaigns and a dedicated lung cancer helpline, to ensure easy access to support and diagnosis for patients.

UKLCC Chair Martin Grange said it has been heartbreaking to see the hard work and achievements of those involved in lung cancer care impacted so enormously by COVID-19.

We must rally together and ensure that the pre-pandemic progress in lung cancer outcomes was not in vain, he said.

According to a report from University College London published in September, a lack of face-to-face doctor visits in the UK since the start of the pandemic may result in 10,000 unnecessary deaths due to cancer.

The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that England and Wales registered 20,823 more deaths than the five-year average in the past 18 weeks. Only 11,531 deaths involved COVID-19.

Consultant Oncologist and Professor of Medicine at the University of Buckingham Medical School Professor Karol Sikora, a world-leading cancer expert, told The Epoch Times last week, What seems to be happening is that there is a higher death rate from the backlog and lack of access to health care.

Its a national scandal, he said.

Owen Evans, Jack Phillips, and PA contributed to this report.
Kyle Rittenhouse looks on after a break during his trial in Kenosha, Wis., on Nov. 9, 2021. (Mark Hertzberg/Pool/Getty Images)

Trump Meets Kyle Rittenhouse at Mar-a-Lago

Former President Donald Trump met Kyle Rittenhouse at the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, according to a photo released by Trumps spokeswoman.

Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges last week in connection to his self-defense killing of two men and wounding of another during a violent riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last year.

Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington released a photo of the former president and Rittenhouse flashing a thumbs up in front of photos from Trumps time as president.

Hes a really good young guy  just left Mar-a-Lago a little while ago, and he should never have been put through that. That was prosecutorial misconduct, and its happening all over the United States right now with the Democrats, Trump told Fox News on Nov. 23, the day before Harrington posted the photo on Twitter.

[Rittenhouse] should not have had to suffer through a trial for that. He was going to be dead if he didnt pull that trigger, that guy that put the gun to his head in one-quarter of a second he was going to pull the trigger. Kyle would have been dead.

Rittenhouse told Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday that he was extremely defamed in the aftermath of the shooting. Rittenhouse added that he has to have a security detail due to constant death threats.

I was an innocent 17-year-old who was violently attacked and defended myself, Rittenhouse told Carlson. I dont think I would be able to go out and get a job and not have to deal with harassment.

During and after the trial, misinformation about what happened on the night of the shooting was widespread. The falsehoods included claims that Rittenhouse shot three black men, traveled across state lines with a gun, and wielded an AK-47.

In a video released during his campaign for president, Joe Biden called Rittenhouse a white supremacist. All of the men Rittenhouse shot were white. White House press secretary Jen Psaki would not say on Wednesday whether Biden planned to apologize for the statement.

Rittenhouse said this week that the white supremacist one was an example of actual malice and suggested he may sue Biden for defamation.

Shortly after the verdict, Biden said in a statement that he acknowledged the decision of the jury and called for people who didnt agree with the decision to express their views peacefully. The not-guilty verdict on Friday last week was followed by a small protest on Sunday.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street to attend the weekly Prime Ministers Questions in Parliament in London on Nov. 24, 2021. (Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

UK Averse to Undue Chinese Influence in Critical Infrastructure: Johnson

Britain doesnt want to see undue influence from potentially adversarial countries in its critical national infrastructure, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday when quizzed about Chinese investment in British nuclear power stations.

At Prime Ministers Questions in the House of Commons, Johnson was asked about the proposed nuclear power station at Bradwell-on-Sea in Essex, put forward by Chinas state-owned and state-operated nuclear company the China General Nuclear Power Group (CGN).

Labour MP Matthew Pennycook said, The governments Integrated Review has concluded that the Chinese state poses a systemic challenge to our national security, and the prime minister has made it clear that when it comes to China, we must remain vigilant about our critical national infrastructure.

Pennycook asked Johnson if he could confirm that plans for CGN to own and operate its own plant at Bradwell had been abandoned.

Johnson didnt give a direct answer, saying there will be more information forthcoming on Bradwell.

But he said: Clearly, one of the consequences of our approach on critical national infrastructure in the National Security and Investment Bill is that we do not want to see undue influence by potentially adversarial countries in our critical national infrastructure. That is why we have taken the decisions that we have.

However, the prime minister reiterated his desire to maintain a positive trade and investment relationship with China.

What I do not want to do is pitchfork away wantonly all Chinese investment in this country, or minimise the importance to this country of having a trading relationship with China, he said.

Chinas involvement in nuclear power in the UK dates back to an agreement endorsed by then-Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in 2015.

CGN also has a 20 percent stake in the Sizewell C nuclear plant in Suffolk, which is due to be built by the French power firm EDF, under a deal struck six years ago. The UK governments appetite for Chinese investment in infrastructure has since soured.

Last year, the UK government reversed its position on Huawei, banning the Chinese telecoms giant from its 5G mobile phone network.

Under mounting pressure from the United States and prominent Conservative backbenchers, the government has indicated a growing appetite to cut CGN out from Sizewell.

The government announced a new financing model on Oct. 26 that shifts the financial risk to consumers and provides a mechanism to squeeze CGN out of the Sizewell C project without invoking national security laws that would likely crank up tensions with Beijing.

With the new model, EDF will be able to forge new partnerships with alternative private investors before the business secretary finally signs off on the project.

Simon Veazey and PA contributed to this report.
A General Motors factory is seen in Detroit, Mich., on Nov. 17, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Unionized Workers Wont Have to Get COVID-19 Vaccine, Automakers Decide

A major union and three large automakers announced an agreement this week that includes not mandating COVID-19 vaccination.

Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis are asking members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union to share whether theyve had a shot, but are not requiring them to do so at this time, the four parties announced in a joint statement.

In addition to encouraging members to disclose their vaccination status, the task force continues to urge all members, coworkers, and their families to get vaccinated and get booster vaccinations against COVID-19, while understanding that there are personal reasons that may prevent some members from being vaccinated, such as health issues or religious beliefs, the statement said.

The parties together formed what they called the COVID-19 Joint Task Force to hammer out a pact concerning COVID-19 vaccines and related matters.

The task force is requiring all workers to wear masks, citing the spread of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus and recent data outlining the continued high rate of transmission in some geographic areas.

COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are down significantly nationwide from the fall peak, but have risen in some regions. Michigan, where all three automakers have factories, has seen its metrics jump to the highest in the nation in recent weeks.

One of the best ways to fight this virus is by getting as many people as possible vaccinated. The more UAW members, coworkers, and their families are vaccinated and have boosters, the quicker this deadly pandemic can be vanquished, the task force said.

Officials said theyll continue monitoring the situation, including keeping tabs on federal guidelines and rules.

The Biden administration earlier this month announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all private businesses with 100 or more employees, to go into effect in early January 2022, but that mandate was blocked for now by a federal court over concerns it violates the U.S. Constitution.

The administration on Tuesday asked judges to remove the block.

UAW represents some 400,000 members, though some work for companies outside the three automakers.

When President Joe Biden in September first announced strict vaccine mandates on federal workers and contractors and private employees, the UAW said it was reviewing the details. In a statement after the private business mandate details were unveiled, the union said that it continued to encourage members to get vaccinated but understands that in some cases health related and religious related issues do not make that possible.

UAW has said it is not tracking how many members get a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ford and Stellantis previously required salaried employees not represented by a union to get vaccinated. General Motors has required those employees to disclose their vaccination status but has not imposed a mandate.
Voluntary Dying Law Clears New South Wales Lower House

A majority of New South Wales (NSW) lower house MPs have voted to give terminally ill people the right to choose to end their lives, but must now plough through more than 160 suggested changes to the proposed law.

The Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill passed by 53 votes to 36 in a second reading vote in the NSW Legislative Assembly on Thursday evening.

If the historic reform secures majority support in the upper house next year, it will make NSW the final state in Australia to embrace voluntary assisted dying.

Before it reaches the Legislative Council, the lower house is debating some 167 amendments proposed by both supporters and detractors of the bill.

MPs sat late into the night on Thursday and will continue their debate on Friday, the final sitting day for NSW parliament for the year, in a bid to send the bill to the upper house by years end.

Meanwhile, the upper house is holding an inquiry to the bill throughout December and will report back before the first sitting day of 2022.

Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, whos spearheaded the bill, on Thursday condemned amendments he said had been put forward to ensure the bill would never pass or commence.

Dying With Dignity president Penny Hackett said advocates of the reform, were not celebrating a win for the proposed legislation yet as they were used to disappointment.

While Hackett is incredibly pleased that the bill has reached this point, shes worried that the amendment process will fundamentally change the nature of the bill in ways that are detrimental to dying people.

Hackett is concerned that amendments could impose additional requirements for medical assessments, and increase bureaucratic hurdles and waiting times.

All of which is put forward in the interests of extra safeguards, but the reality is that they are designed to and will have the effect of making (the laws) very difficult for very vulnerable people to use, she said.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard was among the MPs to speak in favour of the bill on Friday.

The veteran MP had not supported euthanasia for the first 29 years of his three-decade career in parliament, but he said this bill was different.

Hazzard became emotional as he recalled holding his mothers hand and asking her to squeeze it if she wanted palliative care, knowing that death might come more quickly if she did.

His mother squeezed his hand. She died the next day.

Hazzard said that voluntary assisted dying does not remove the importance of the value of palliative care.

What it does do is give choice to those who are approaching the end of their life, to those who might suffer (what) none of us would want family members or friends or anyone to suffer, to enable that person to control their own passing.

He also said he couldnt withhold a right from NSW residents that Australians in all other states have.
Missing Chinese Citizen Journalist Who Covered Wuhan Outbreak Currently Held in Detention, Source Says

Unheard of since early last year, citizen journalist Fang Bin remains held in Wuhan awaiting court

Fang Bin, the first Chinese citizen journalist who reported on the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic in central China, is being detained at the Jiangan Detention Center in the city of Wuhan, a local official said on Nov. 24.

The official told The Epoch Times that Fangs case is in the hands of the Jiangan District Court.

This is the first time that the outside world has known of Fangs whereabouts since his arrest on Feb. 9, 2020.

As a businessman in Wuhan City, ground zero of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fang witnessed crowded hospitals and people dying from the disease during January 2020. He also saw how communist authorities were lying about the pandemic.

Despite concerns about being infected or being set upon by the authorities for revealing the truth, Fang shot video footage at hospitals in Wuhan and then, on Jan. 25, 2020, managed to publish them on YouTube, where Chinese censors were unable to reach.

Fangs videos quickly attracted worldwide attention, allowing people to understand how serious COVID-19 was. His bravery also encouraged several Chinese citizen journalists to join him.

In response to his efforts, the Chinese regime arrested Fang several times between Feb. 1 to Feb. 9, 2020.

On Feb. 9, 2020, Fang released his last video, in which he urged all Chinese people to resist the communist regime.

Hand the power of the regime back to the people, Fang said in the video.

Since then, Fang has been missing and family members refuse to say anything about him due to fear of the authorities.

Three other citizen journalistsChen Qiushi, Li Zehua, and Zhang Zhan were detained in Wuhan at various times last year. Li was released in March 2020, Zhang met her lawyer on June 8, 2020, and was sentenced to four years in prison, while Chen was confirmed alive and safe in September 2020.

Since his arrest, the authorities have not released any information about him.

A pro-democracy activist (C) from HK Alliance holds a placard of missing citizen journalist Fang Bin, as she protests outside the Chinese liaison office in Hong Kong on Feb. 19, 2020. (Isaac Lawrence/AFP via Getty Images)

Fang Is Alive

On Nov. 24, a trusted Wuhan official told The Epoch Times via phone that Fang was alive and his case needed more time to go through legal processes.

The officials name and position have been withheld for safety reasons.

Fangs case is related to the pandemic so its complicated. We [the Jiangan District Court and District Procuratorate (prosecutor)] need to do more research before we can submit our report [to Wuhan Intermediate Court]. We will apply for a postponement of the hearing, said the official.

U.S.-based Chinese human rights lawyer Wu Shaoping, who operated a law firm in Shanghai and represented dissidents and prisoners of conscience during the 2010s, has been following Fangs situation.

The court and the prosecutor are designing crimes to pin on Fang, then they can sentence him to prison based on these reasons, Wu told The Epoch Times on Nov. 24.

Wu said Fang didnt break any Chinese law.

A Wuhan resident, who supports Fang, told The Epoch Times via phone that Fangs family couldnt hire a lawyer and they have not received any legal documents from the court or the procuratorate.

Chinese law grants Fang Bin, a citizen, the right to report on the situation in Wuhan during the pandemic as a citizen journalist. He is innocent, said the resident who wanted to remain anonymous.

Fangs family is too afraid to accept help from anyone due to threats from the authorities, the resident said. They may lose their employment or money if they upset the regime and reveal Fangs status to the outside. The worst scenario is them being detained and sentenced with a designated crime.

The Epoch Times was unable to reach Fangs family members.

Medical staff in protective clothing to protect against a CCP virus patient at the Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan, China, on Jan. 25, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Qin Jin, who holds a Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Sydney, urged the international community to speak up for Fang.

We need the support from western countrys governments, politicians, United Nations, NGOs, and activists. They should urge the Chinese regime to release Fang, Qin told The Epoch Times.

Rights lawyer Wu praised Fangs bravery for risking his life to report on the pandemic.

Fang Bin showed us how serious COVID-19 was at the earliest stage. The world should speak up for him, Wu said.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus , commonly known as the novel coronavirus.
World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the sidelines of the opening of the 74th World Health Assembly at the WHO headquarters, in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 24, 2021. (Laurent Gillieron/Pool via Reuters)

WHOs Tedros Concerned About False Sense of Security From Vaccines, Warns Pandemic Not Over

World Health Organisation (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Wednesday shared his concerns over what he calls is a false sense of security that vaccines have ended the pandemic, while warning that the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet over.

Speaking on the eve of Thanksgiving at a news briefing in Geneva, Tedros said the WHO was concerned that individuals from multiple countries across the globe who have received COVID-19 shots are no longer taking precautions to protect both themselves and others against the virus.

Read More Editorial: Giving the Right Name to the Virus Causing a Worldwide Pandemic

The WHO chief also noted that at least 60 percent of all reported cases and deaths from COVID-19 globally were again coming from Europe last week.

The sheer number of cases is translating to unsustainable pressure on health systems and exhausted health workers, he said.

In many countries and communities, we are concerned about a false sense of security that vaccines have ended the pandemic, and that people who are vaccinated do not need to take any other precautions  Vaccines save lives, but they do not fully prevent transmission, he added.

Tedros also pointed toward data that suggests the efficiency of vaccines has declined over time and in the face of the Delta variant of COVID, explaining that the shots which initially reduced transmission by about 60 percent but have now dropped to 40 percent.

The WHO chief reiterated that while vaccines can lower the risk of severe reactions to COVID-19 and even death, that does not mean that a vaccinated individual is not at risk of being infected or infecting others with the virus.

We cannot say this clearly enough: even if you are vaccinated, continue to take precautions to prevent becoming infected yourself and to infect someone else who could die, Tedros said.

That means wearing a mask, maintaining distance, avoiding crowds, and meeting others outside if you can, or in a well-ventilated space inside.

The WHO chief said the organization continues to urge governments across the globe to implement a tailored approach when it comes to preventing transmission by way of public health measures such as social distancing and lockdowns.

Protests have erupted across several European countries and other Western nations over the past week as hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Governments in the EU, in particular, have started to ramp up related restrictions.

Protestors hold a banner reading Kurz must go at Maria Theresien Platz during a demonstration against COVID-19 measures and their economic consequences in Vienna, Austria on Jan. 16, 2021. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

In Austria, tens of thousands of people protested in Vienna, Salzburg, and other cities after the Austrian government announced the implementation of a nationwide lockdown amid a surge in virus cases.

Austrias lockdown began on Nov. 22, and will last for 10 days before government officials will reevaluate it. The country said it will make vaccines mandatory for everyone starting on Feb. 1, 2022.

Similar protests also broke out in Switzerland, Italy, Ireland, Croatia, France, the UK, and the French island territory of Guadeloupe, where demonstrators set police cars on fire and created road blockades.

Meanwhile, Germany is currently weighing up making COVID-19 vaccines mandatory for everyone, starting Feb. 1, 2022, because the government has failed to convince enough people to get the shots and is worried about hospital capacity.

While, Europe is again the epicentre of the pandemic, no country or region is out of the woods, Tedros said Wednesday. Its important for all countries to surge their capacities now to ensure the right measures are in place to avert the worst consequences of any future waves.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Mexican authorities said Wednesday they have found 14 clandestine graves in the northern border state of Sonora.

State prosecutors say the burial pits contained bones, some burned, and decomposing bodies.

Investigators said they cannot yet determine the number of bodies, but it is rare for drug cartels to take the trouble to dig more than one pit to bury a single body. Thus, the number of victims is likely to be at least 14.

The body dumping ground was discovered in a patch of scrubland by volunteer search teams made up of relatives of disappeared people. It is located near a highway west of the state capital, Hermosillo.

Sonora has been the scene of drug gang turf battles thought to involve factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, allies of the Jalisco cartel and a gang allied with fugitive drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero.

The announcement comes one day after police discovered three more bodies hung from a highway overpass in the central state of Zacatecas, where 10 other bodies were found last week.

The Zacatecas state public safety agency said in a statement the three bodies were found in the town of San Jose de Lourdes Tuesday.

Zacatecas has been the scene of a battle for territory among drug cartels. One week ago, 10 bodies  nine of them hanging from an overpass  were found in another town, Ciudad Cuauhtemoc, about 340 miles (550 kilometers) north of Mexico City. The 10th body was found on the pavement. All of the victims were men.

On Wednesday, the Mexican army announced that it will send almost 1,750 more soldiers and 1,650 more members of the quasi-military National Guard to perform law enforcement duties in Zacatecas.

The military will also send three helicopter gunships  a weapon that President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has expressly said he no longer wants to use or accept from the United States.

Those nearly 3,400 troops will almost double the current combined force of about 3,900 members of those forces currently stationed in Zacatecas.

Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said the number of homicides linked to organized crime in Zacatecas had roughly tripled since 2019, rising from 560 that year to a projected total of about 1,450 this year.

The Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels have been battling for control in the state, which is a key transit point for drugs, especially the powerful synthetic pain killer fentanyl, moving north to the U.S. border.

Cartels sometimes make such public displays of bodies to taunt their rivals or authorities and terrify local residents.

In the first nine months of the year, Mexico had more than 25,000 murders, a number 3.4% less than the same period a year earlier, according to federal data.
JOHANNESBURG (AP)  Liberator of Nelson Mandela? Or a leader responsible for racist murders? South Africa is engrossed in debate over the legacy of apartheid's last president, F.W. de Klerk, who died last week at 85 and is to be buried Sunday.

The controversy following de Klerk to the grave comes 27 years after the official end of the brutal regime that oppressed the countrys Black majority for generations. Stoking the furor is a video that he released posthumously in which he said he was sorry.

I, without qualification, apologize for the pain and the hurt and the indignity and the damage that apartheid has done to Black, brown and Indians in South Africa," said de Klerk, an apparition emaciated by mesothelioma cancer who nonetheless chose his words carefully.

Some South Africans were moved by de Klerk's final appearance, but many were critical, saying he avoided acknowledging that apartheid was a crime against humanity in which he was complicit.

It's the last of a series of half-baked apologies, the Rev. Michael Lapsley told The Associated Press. Its good that he apologizes for the pain and hurt, but theres no reckoning. Theres no accountability. Theres no accepting of responsibility for what happened under his watch.

An Anglican priest and anti-apartheid activist, Lapsley was hit by a parcel bomb that blew off his hands and blinded him in one eye in 1990, months after de Klerk freed Nelson Mandela and began negotiations that eventually dismantled apartheid.

De Klerks rule was one of the most violent periods of our history, Lapsley said.

As the chairman of the State Security Council, de Klerk was present at meetings where violence against anti-apartheid leaders was ordered, right up to the 1994 elections that brought to power Mandela and his party, the African National Congress, according to Lapsley and others who have studied minutes of the councils meetings.

He hopes de Klerk's death will lead to a lot of soul-searching by us as a nation about what kind of nation we want to be. We have to deal with the psychological, emotional and spiritual issues which are part of the grim legacy of apartheid."

Lapsley, who founded the Institute for the Healing of Memories to help mend the wounds of apartheid, said another problem that de Klerk contributed to is economic inequality.

Apartheid, like slavery before it, was always about profit, Lapsley said. Apartheid was always about political oppression and economic exploitation. We have slayed one monster, but we leave the other one very much intact.

Referring to studies that show South Africa is one of the worlds most unequal countries, Lapsley said, If we remain the most unequal society on Earth, our grandchildren will not live in peace.

South Africa resisted the historic wave of democracy that ended colonial-era minority rule across much of Africa in the 1960s. Mozambique, Angola and Portugal's other African colonies became independent in 1975. White-minority-ruled Rhodesia fought a war against Black nationalists, becoming majority-ruled Zimbabwe in 1980.

Apartheid, imposed in 1948, denied the vote and basic rights to South Africa's Black majority and other people of color. Resistance grew for decades, and by the 1980s the country had built up a large military and security apparatus to battle uprisings in the townships where Blacks were confined.

The South African military also fought in neighboring countries, including Angola and what became independent Namibia. South African forces raided Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique.

By the time de Klerk came to power in late 1989, South Africa was internationally isolated, convulsed by domestic violence and battling a contracting economy. The country was on a precipice from which de Klerk pulled it back by releasing Mandela and beginning negotiations.

For working together to end apartheid, de Klerk and Mandela were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. Some in South Africa feel that de Klerk should be remembered for averting catastrophe.

South Africa lost a father who served the country with distinction, said Chief Mandla Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela. He said many may not agree with his views, but he felt that de Klerk should be honored as an elder statesman.

Others, however, celebrated de Klerk's death. The Black Peoples National Crisis Committee slaughtered a sheep in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township to hail his passing.

De Klerk, who denied that the legislated separate development, exploitation, torture and murder of Black people was a crime against humanity, dies with no honor, and with the dark cloud of having maimed and traumatized families across our nation," said the Economic Freedom Fighters, an opposition party which vowed to disrupt any state funeral.

South Africa is flying its flags at half-staff for four days to honor de Klerk but is not having a state burial. De Klerk is to be buried in a private family ceremony amid tight security as there have been threats to disrupt it.

De Klerk died a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, an accolade that can never be taken away from him, wrote Mondli Makhanya, editor of the City Press newspaper. But a man of peace he was not. He was a member of the State Security Council, a body that authorized the killings and brutalization of thousands of South Africans and citizens of neighboring countries. In short, he was a killer.

A more forgiving approach toward de Klerk is urged by South African academic Adam Habib.

In a single act, he did more for humanity than most people do in a lifetime. And in his last message, he did again apologize for apartheid, this time without any qualifications, wrote Habib, director of SOAS University of London, who said that de Klerk's leadership saved South Africa from years of violence and turmoil.

"So lets remember for the moment the de Klerk who released Mandela and unbanned political parties. We dont have to forget the victims of apartheid, we dont have to ignore them, but it is only human for us to remember the kinder side of de Klerk."
LITCHFIELD Effective Nov. 24, HSHS St. Francis Hospital will allow two visitors per patient.

All visitors must continue to follow hospital-specific processes for entry into the facility. All visitors must have their temperature checked and be screened for COVID-19 symptoms and exposure. In addition, medical grade masks (non-cloth) are mandatory. Visitors must be age 18 or older, unless they are the parent of a child receiving care.



No visitors are allowed for patients under investigation for possible COVID-19 diagnosis and those confirmed positive for COVID-19.

Guidelines for specific areas in the hospital are as follows:

Emergency department:

 Adult patient: Two visitors who must remain in the patients room for duration of visit.

 Pediatric patient: Two parents and/or guardians who must stay in the patients room for duration of visit.

Inpatient units:

 Adult inpatients: Two visitors per patient per day during the hours of 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.

 Pediatric inpatients: Two parents or guardians allowed.

 Women and infants center: Two support persons during delivery who must remain the same for the duration of the hospital stay.

 End-of-life patients: Two visitors per patient per day. Please call the hospital for guidance in specific situations.

Surgery (inpatient and outpatient):



 Two visitors in the waiting room only for the duration of the surgical procedure.

Outpatient diagnostic and therapy services:



 Two visitors may accompany the patient or wait in designated waiting areas.

 Patients receiving outpatient services are encouraged to come alone whenever possible or have visitors wait outside until services are complete.

Patients with intellectual and/or developmental disability or cognitive impairments:



 Two support persons.

Visitor guidelines are subject to change at any time to address the health needs of our communities. By putting these guidelines in place, St. Francis Hospital is exemplifying its commitment to the dignity and care of all, especially the most vulnerable among us.

For more information about the HSHS St. Francis Hospital, please visit: www.StFrancis-litchfield.org.
EDWARDSVILLE  If you have been thinking about adopting a pet, the holiday season may be the perfect time to bring a new furry friend into your family.

The Metro East Humane Society, located at 8495 State Route 143, and Partners for Pets, located at 9136 Lower Marine Road in St. Jacob, are both offering a variety of adoption specials designed to encourage people to get a new pet from their shelters.

We know that a lot of people add animals into their homes as Christmas presents and we want to make sure they know that adoption is an option, Partners for Pets Executive Director Erika Pratte said. Weve got a lot of amazing pets at our facility just waiting for somebody to give them a chance.

Like many shelters across the nation, Partners for Pets had unusually high numbers in 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to spend more time at home.

In 2020, we saw a huge increase in adoptions, but thankfully we didnt see a huge increase in returns once people started going back to the workplace or doing in-person learning, Pratte said. We did notice that adoptions trended down whenever people went back to work or to school.

Weve been running a lot of adoption specials to try to motivate people to adopt animals again the way they were doing in 2020.

At the Metro East Humane Society, meanwhile, Executive Director Anne Schmidt noticed an increase in pet adoptions not long after the pandemic began.

More Information "As people went back to work during the summer months, we also saw a huge increase in intakes at Madison County Animal Control, which is next door to us. That's why our Black Friday event is so important, to encourage people to adopt rather than go through breeders." - Anne Schmidt See More Collapse

We did see a decline in adoptions as school started and as people started going back to the office, Schmidt said. The world is kind of going back to normal, but there are still so many animals that need homes.

As people went back to work during the summer months, we also saw a huge increase in intakes at Madison County Animal Control, which is next door to us. Thats why our Black Friday event is so important, to encourage people to adopt rather than go through breeders.

Black Friday at the Humane Society is slated for this Friday, Nov. 26. Thanks to Trouw Nutrition in Highland, which is the sponsor of the event, the fee for all pet adoptions on that day will be waived.

There is still an adoption process, but you can do it the day of the event, Schmidt said. We have an online photo album of all of the animals available and we have puppies, dogs, cats and kittens.

Partners for Pets is making a similar effort to increase animal adoptions during the holidays.

Weve been providing behavioral training to dogs before they go home with their new owners, Pratte said. Weve also been seeking sponsorships so that a lot of our adoption fees are completely waived or heavily discounted.

Weve got a lot of amazing partners in the community. This time of year, the Coldwell Banker Brown (Realtors) agents are sponsoring about 30 animals at varying levels of sponsorship with discounted adoption fees. In the month of December, all of our adoptions are only $25.

So far this year, Partners for Pets has found adoption homes for 1,258 pets.

Last year we went over 1,700 adoptions, but thats a pretty high number for us and that was due to COVID with a lot of people being at home and wanting to adopt an animal, Pratte said. Our goal by the end of this year is 1,400 adoptions, which is a little closer to what were used to seeing.

Pratte noted that next Tuesday, Nov. 30, is Giving Tuesday, which is a 24-hour period of giving to local nonprofits.

If anybody would consider donating to support animal welfare in their community, we would appreciate it if they would support Partners for Pets, Pratte said.

The Humane Society has had more than 1,000 adoptions so far this year at its Edwardsville facility, plus another 250 adoptions at its Highland facility at 510 W. Monroe St., which currently only has cats. Friday will be the first day that dogs are available at Highland.

Were pretty much on par this year for a normal year in terms of adoptions, Schmidt said. Last year was a little lower because we werent allowing people into our facility.

The Humane Society does animal transports with a group from Arkansas and it also gets animals from Madison County Animal Control and other local facilities.

We pull from Arkansas specifically because we dont see a lot of stray puppies in this area, which is a good thing, Schmidt said. We put them into foster families, and they will be available for the Black Friday event.

The Black Friday event at the Humane Society marks the launch of its Yappy Pawlidays fundraising campaign, where it partners with local businesses to raise money for the shelter.

The following local businesses are participating in MEHS Yappy Pawlidays campaign with supply donation boxes at their facilities:

The Swiss Gift Shop

Kindercare Edwardsville

Four Muddy Paws  Edwardsville

Davis Pet Hospital

Makers Market

Heartland Veterinary Hospital

These businesses will have monetary donation boxes at their facilities for MEHS:

Weeping Willow Tea Room

Korte Rec Center

Peacock Bakery

Tru Buy Grocery

The pandemic continues to affect operations at both shelters, although to varying degrees.

Last year around this time, we were doing all of our adoptions by curbside pickup and we werent allowing the public in, Schmidt said. Now, volunteers are welcome to come back in and were adoptions in person again.

That has helped tremendously with more animals getting adopted. We have our Edwardsville location, and our Highland location is open as well. Were back to our regular hours for both locations, which are 11:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday.

Partners for Pets is still running on an appointment-only schedule for volunteers and for people seeking pets.

We dont want to overcrowd our facility, but were slowly getting back into our in-store adoption events, Pratte said. We have returned to the Glen Carbon PetSmart once a month and the next date we will be back there is Sunday, Dec. 19. We plan on having about 50 animals available and all of our adoptions will be $25.

For more information about Partners for Pets, visit https://www.partnersforpetsil.org/, call 618-540-7387, email partners4petsadoptions@yahoo.com or visit Partners 4 Pets on Facebook.

For more information about Metro East Humane Society, visit https://www.mehs.org/, call 618-656-4405 or email info@mehs.org for the Edwardsville facility, call 618-654-6067 or email highland@mehs.org for the Highland facility, or visit Metro East Humane Society on Facebook.
ST. LOUIS  The St. Louis Area Foodbank is celebrating the Season of Giving by hosting its fourth Annual Thanksgiving Together.

We believe that no matter what youre celebrating or who you may be celebrating with, you should have a meal to gather around. Over the past three days, the St. Louis Area Foodbank and partners across the bistate region have been hard at work providing more than 3,000 families with turkeys or holiday chickens, apples, potatoes and milk along with a box full of shelf-stable holiday favorites (including stuffing mix, macaroni and cheese and cranberry sauce). These events distributed more than 145,000 pounds of fresh and non-perishable food items.



Thanksgiving Together started at one location just three years ago and has grown to 16 distributions sites including: St. Louis City (MO), St. Louis County (MO), St. Charles County (MO), Franklin County (MO), St. Francois County (MO), Jefferson County (MO), Washington County (MO), Williamson County (IL), Clinton County (IL), Washington County (IL), Madison County (IL), St. Clair County (IL), Jackson County (IL), Randolph County (IL), and Franklin County (IL) over three days.



On Nov. 22, Christs Church in St. Charles served 171 families. Keith Akerman of Christs Church describes the neighbors, honking their horns and cheering when he [the Foodbank Driver] pulled in. Ken Vogel from Matthew 25 Ecumenical Food Pantry in Clinton County, Illinois says the distribution was well received and that they served 160 families at their Thanksgiving Together event. The St. Louis Area Foodbank aims to provide 11 million meals across our region this holiday season. If youd like to help provide food and hope during the Season of Giving, Ameren is hosting a matching donation  dollar for dollar  up to $200,000. To make a donation to the Food4All' campaign:



Visit www.stlfoodbank.org/Food4All

Text Food4All to 314-860-6225



The St. Louis Area Foodbank believes that the holidays should be a time of joy for everyone. A time when families come together to celebrate their cultures, their religions, and the simple joys of life itself. Food is often at the center of these celebrations, but hunger impacts one out of six people* in the Missouri-Illinois bi-state region. (*Feeding America 'Map the Meal Gap' March 2021) Together, we can provide food and hope throughout the Season of Giving.
Be good hosts for Apec meetings in Phuket, urges Governor

PHUKET: Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew has called on all people in Phuket to help welcome visiting delegates for the APEC Informal Senior Officials Meeting (ISOM) to be held on the island early next month.



By The Phuket News

Thursday 25 November 2021, 11:52AM

Thanathip Upatising, Head of the APEC 2022 Task Force, and Pol Lt Gen Chinnapat Sarasin, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police, inspected Phuket International Airport earlier this month as part of the preparations for the APEC ISOM meetings to be held in Phuket. Photo: AoT Phuket

Thanathip Upatising, Head of the APEC 2022 Task Force, and Pol Lt Gen Chinnapat Sarasin, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police, inspected Phuket International Airport earlier this month as part of the preparations for the APEC ISOM meetings to be held in Phuket. Photo: AoT Phuket

Thanathip Upatising, Head of the APEC 2022 Task Force, and Pol Lt Gen Chinnapat Sarasin, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police, inspected Phuket International Airport earlier this month as part of the preparations for the APEC ISOM meetings to be held in Phuket. Photo: AoT Phuket

Thanathip Upatising, Head of the APEC 2022 Task Force, and Pol Lt Gen Chinnapat Sarasin, Assistant Commissioner of the Royal Thai Police, inspected Phuket International Airport earlier this month as part of the preparations for the APEC ISOM meetings to be held in Phuket. Photo: AoT Phuket

The call to be good hosts came at a meeting held yesterday (Nov 24). Photo: PR Phuket

The ISOM visit will see more than 100 meetings held on Phuket from Dec 1-3, Governor Narong explained at a meeting at Phuket Provincial Hall yesterday (Nov 24), joined by teleconference by officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Phuket has been honored to be the venue for the APEC Informal Senior Officials Meeting (ISOM) during Dec 1-3 due to the readiness of the venue as well as being a target area for visitor tourism, Governor Narong said.

I invite Phuket residents to welcome and be a good host in order to create a good image of Thailand and its people, he added.

The meeting also discussed security measures, traffic facilitation, medical and public health care, hospitality and public relations, noted a report by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department (PR Phuket).

Governor Narong said that with Thailand hosting the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting and related meetings in 2022, as host Thailand has to organise more than 100 meetings, both at the level of working groups and experts. senior officer level ministerial level and leaders in the APEC economic zone, added the report.

Therefore, in order for the meeting to go smoothly and successfully as well as presenting a good image of Thailand and Phuket In order to make the APEC meeting attendees have the best impression, Phuket Province [provincial government] has appointed a preparatory committee to make the meeting go smoothly and invite the people of Phuket to welcome and be a good host to demonstrate the potential and readiness of Phuket to welcome visitors as well, the report repeated.

Vice Governor Piyapong, also present at the meeting yesterday, joined the call for Phuket people to be good hosts.

In addressing the heads of government offices and agencies across the island, he said, The host of the APEC meeting is Thailand, but the actual host is all Phuket residents.

On this occasion, Phuket residents from all sectors are invited to join and be hosts together. Together we can keep the roads clean; manage your own areas to be clean and orderly. This is considered a welcome note in order to create a good image of Thailand and that of Phuket, he added.

The meeting yesterday followed Thanathip Upatising, Head of the APEC 2022 Task Force, and Pol Lt Gen Chinnapat Sarasin, Assistant Commissioner of the National Police, inspecting Phuket International Airport earlier this month as part of the preparations for the APEC ISOM meetings to be held in Phuket.

Joining that visit were Governor Narong along with Phuket Provincial Police Commander Maj Gen Sermphan Sirikong and Phuket Airport General Manager Monchai Tanode.

An estimated 150 people, comprising domestic and foreign dignitaries, are expected to arrive for the APEC ISOM meetings in Phuket.
Phuket police deny robbing foreigners, defend traffic checks

PHUKET: Phuket Provincial Police have defended their officers standing in front of a restaurant in Patong after a post online accused police of destroying tourism and quoting foreign tourists as being robbed.



By The Phuket News

Thursday 25 November 2021, 03:42PM

The photo that accompanied the post that accused police of destroying tourism and robbing foreigners. Photo: via Phuket Provincial Police

The response by Phuket Provincial Police, saying that the police officers were only doing their duty as traffic police, was posted online late yesterday (Nov 24).

The response came after a post on the Phuket Sandbox  SHA Plus Facebook page on Sunday (Nov 21) showed a photo of police officers in front of the Kitchen restaurant, located next door to the well known TaiPan nightclub on Rath-U-Thit 200 Pi Rd, at the intersection with Bangla Rd.

The message posted with the photo accused police officers of destroying tourism and quoting foreign tourists as being robbed, the Phuket Provincial Police noted in their response.

Phuket Provincial Police asked for information about such cases, the response noted.

It is a [police] duty to set up traffic checks according to normal duties. The order [to set up the traffic check] was clearly supported properly with the intention to reduce traffic accidents, it added.

Some tourists are not familiar with the roads and do not know the traffic laws, and because of different laws, traditions and cultures, this may cause accidents and harm to the motorists themselves or others and the property of the tourists themselves, the Phuket Provincial Police said.

This is in accordance with the regulations and laws that have given them powers [to enforce traffic laws], without discrimination regradless whether [the motorist is a] Thai or foreigner, for the peace of the people as a whole, the response said.

From October 16 to November 23 this year Phuket has seen 374,117 Thai tourists arrive on the island, of whom 2,507 committed traffic offenses, representing 0.67%, said the post.

The number of foreigners arriving in Phuket amounted to 36,549 people, of whom 129 committed traffic offenses, accounting for 0.43%, it added.

Statistics of deaths and injuries from traffic accidents in Phuket in 2019 saw 129 deaths, 117 serious injuries and 4,785 minor injuries, the Provincial Police continued in their response.

From the statistics of traffic offenses committed by tourists, it can be seen that the arrest rate of offenders is less than 1% of tourists, whether Thai or foreigners, the response said.

But when looking at the statistics of injuries and fatalities from traffic cases, it can be seen that the number of deaths and injuries is quite high. Therefore, I [or we] would like all citizens and tourists to be aware of the observance of traffic rules in order to reduce injuries [and harm done to] life and property.

Reduce risks, avoid dangers, create discipline, obey traffic rules" the post concluded.

With no single officer named as responsible for the official response to accusations of police robbing people, namely foreigners and tourists, the response was signed off with, Best wishes from Phuket Provincial Police Spokesperson Team.

Over the past week, The Phuket News has received independent reports of "heightened police activity" that appears to have been targetting foreigners in several areas across the island, including Kamala, Cherng Talay, Chalong and Rawai.
Montreal, CA (H4T1V6)

Today

Cloudy with light rain developing this afternoon. High near 7C. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 90%..

Tonight

Windy. Periods of rain this evening. Then some breaks in the clouds overnight. Low near -1C. Winds WSW at 25 to 35 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Winds could occasionally gust over 50 mph.
MOSCOW (AP)  A devastating explosion in a Siberian coal mine Thursday left 52 miners and rescuers dead about 250 meters (820 feet) underground, Russian officials said.

Hours after a methane gas explosion and fire filled the mine with toxic fumes, rescuers found 14 bodies but then were forced to halt the search for 38 others because of a buildup of methane and carbon monoxide gas from the fire. Another 239 people were rescued.

The state Tass and RIA-Novosti news agencies cited emergency officials as saying that there was no chance of finding any more survivors in the Listvyazhnaya mine, in the Kemerovo region of southwestern Siberia.

The Interfax news agency cited a representative of the regional administration who also put the death toll from Thursday's accident at 52, saying they died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

It was the deadliest mine accident in Russia since 2010, when two methane explosions and a fire killed 91 people at the Raspadskaya mine in the same Kemerovo region.

A total of 285 people were in the Listvyazhnaya mine early Thursday when the blast sent smoke that quickly filled the mine through the ventilation system. Rescuers led to the surface 239 miners, 49 of whom were injured, and found 11 bodies.

Later in the day, six rescuers also died while searching for others trapped in a remote section of the mine, the news reports said.

Regional officials declared three days of mourning.

Russias Deputy Prosecutor General Dmitry Demeshin told reporters that the fire most likely resulted from a methane explosion caused by a spark.

The miners who survived described their shock after reaching the surface.

Impact. Air. Dust. And then, we smelled gas and just started walking out, as many as we could, one of the rescued miners, Sergey Golubin, said in televised remarks. We didnt even realize what happened at first and took some gas in.

Another miner, Rustam Chebelkov, recalled the dramatic moment when he was rescued along with his comrades as chaos engulfed the mine.

I was crawling and then I felt them grabbing me, he said. I reached my arms out to them, they couldnt see me, the visibility was bad. They grabbed me and pulled me out, if not for them, wed be dead.

Explosions of methane released from coal beds during mining are rare but they cause the most fatalities in the coal mining industry.

The Interfax news agency reported that miners have oxygen supplies normally lasting for six hours that could only be stretched for a few more hours.

Russia's Investigative Committee has launched a criminal probe into the fire over violations of safety regulations that led to deaths. It said the mine director and two senior managers were detained.

President Vladimir Putin extended his condolences to the families of the dead and ordered the government to offer all necessary assistance to those injured.

Thursdays fire wasnt the first deadly accident at the Listvyazhnaya mine. In 2004, a methane explosion left 13 miners dead.

In 2007, a methane explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine in the Kemerovo region killed 110 miners in the deadliest mine accident since Soviet times.

In 2016, 36 miners were killed in a series of methane explosions in a coal mine in Russia's far north. In the wake of the incident, authorities analyzed the safety of the country's 58 coal mines and declared 20 of them, or 34%, potentially unsafe.

The Listvyazhnaya mine wasn't among them at the time, according to media reports.

Russias state technology and ecology watchdog, Rostekhnadzor, inspected the mine in April and registered 139 violations, including breaching fire safety regulations.
Submitted

MADISON  Running 4 Heroes on Wednesday at the World Wide Technology Race Track in Madisonin commemorated those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

The Metro East and Riverbend areas certainly haven't forgotten the officers who won't be joining their families around the table this year because they died in the service of their fellow citizens, said Illinois Fraternal Order of Police State Lodge President Chris Southwood at Wednesday's event.
To the Editor,

Mr Chiles certainly expresses his concern and thoughtful efforts to ease Alton's homelessness. But I doubt if our neighboring towns will want to join in solving Alton's problems. Unlike homeless in Calif, Denver, Phoenix and towns where drug addicts can sleep on the street, Alton's problems are truly economic. But our problems harken back 50 yrs when Democrats took over governments in Mad-St. Clare Counties, our Judicial Hell Hole courts, and Workmans Compensation awards; and increased taxes. They have driven away industries and good skilled workers.

These Democrat anti-business policies of destructive monetary awards have closed industries eliminating 10,000 well paid jobs and 30,000 citizens. And they ain't never coming back. This is in spite of excellent rail, river and central hiway system. Those jobs have been replaced by hardware clerks and hamburger flippers.

You can count on both hands all the new private homes built in Alton. Only subsidized and welfare paid housing are being built. Illinois' Liberal/Socialist leaning governments are driving this state towards poverty and chaos as we see in Chicago. And like there residents are moving to Indiana, Wisconsin and adjoining states. So look out Missouri, Iowa and Indiana, here we come.

Alton is faced with Illinois' high income and home taxes and its anti-business climate. That is what we must address. Mr Chiles concern and helpfulness for the homeless deserves admiration but that thoughtfulness has huge limitations over lower business, personal and property taxes. We simply must improve our business climate and welcome back industry.

Ron Jones

Alton




CHARIHO: Charihos girls and boys soccer teams both won Division II titles in dramatic fashion. The girls won in penalty kicks and the boys in the final two minutes of double overtime. The football team reached the D-III title game, as did the field hockey team. The girls volleyball team played in the D-II semifinals. Erin vonHousen was All-State in girls cross country.

STONINGTON: Stoningtons boys soccer team earned its second straight Class M state title, closing the season with 21 straight victories. The field hockey team lost in the Class S title game.

WESTERLY: Westerlys girls volleyball team reached the Division III semifinals, losing to eventual champion Scituate. The football team played in the D-II semifinals. The girls soccer team reached the D-III semifinals. Jake Serra and Kaya West were All-State in cross country.

WHEELER: Wheeler boys and girls soccer teams qualified for the Class S state tournament.

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Shares in pan-African fuel retailer Vivo Energy shot up 20 per cent today after it was snapped up by its biggest shareholder in a deal worth about $2.3billion, or 1.7billion.

The board of London-listed Vivo, which has over 2,300 petrol stations across Africa where it is licensed by Shell to sell its fuels, has unanimously recommended the takeover by Dutch commodities trader Vitol.

Vivo shareholders will receive $1.79 (1.34) in cash for each share they hold, and six cents as an interim plus special dividend.

Deal: Vivo Energy sells Shell fuels through its 2,300 petrol stations across Africa

Vivo shares rose 20 per cent to 133.80p, below the total offer which equates to about 139p per share. The stock has risen over 50 per cent this year.

The offer is the second by Vitol, which had made a lower proposal in February that was rejected by the company's board.

Netherlands-based Vitol, the largest Vivo shareholder with a 36.1 per cent stake, will also buy out Helios, the second biggest shareholder.

Vivo was founded after Shell offloaded some of its downstream business in 2011. It reported pre-tax profit of $175million last year.

Vitol, Helios and Shell operated Vivo as a joint venture before the two top shareholders bought out Shell for $250million in 2016.

'Since we founded Vivo with Helios and Shell, we have believed in the business' potential and we are excited to have it within the Vitol family, as a pillar of our strategy in Africa,' Vitol head of origination, Chris Bake, said.

Founded in Rotterdam in 1966, Vitol has about 6,600 retail sites on four continents.

Its long-standing chief executive Christian Chammas earlier this month said he would retire in 2022.

The company has performed well amid the pandemic, with shares having risen more than 50 per cent so far this year.

"Vivo's leading position in Africa means that it is well positioned to continue to capitalise on the opportunities that will arise from the fundamental growth drivers on the continent', said Vivo's chairman, John Daly.

And added: 'Vitol's proven track record of supporting Vivo's long-term growth plans will support Vivo in continuing to deliver benefits to its wider stakeholders.'
Two peers will help medical cannabis company Equinox cash in when it lists on the London Stock Exchange this year.

Equinox is one of only a few businesses licensed by the Home Office to grow cannabis in the UK.

Yesterday the company announced plans to tap Londons junior AIM exchange for the cash to help build a 20-acre site to start making cannabis  which it hopes to sell to the NHS.

Director: Lord Great Chamberlain David Cholmondeley, a descendant of Britains first Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, with wife Rose Hanbury

Equinox is targeting a significant share of the medical cannabis market in the UK, which it said could be worth 7.5billion by 2028.

The businesss founder is also known for cannabis lifestyle brand Mr Nice which is stocked in Selfridges selling cannabis-themed clothing and CBD oil.

Among its backers are Lord Cholmondeley, the Lord Great Chamberlain and a descendant of Britains first Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole. Eton alumnus Cholmondeley, 61, represents the Queen in Parliament and sits on Equinoxs board as a non-executive.

He married ex-model Rose Hanbury who is 24 years his junior, at Chelsea Town Hall in 2009 and they have three children, according to Tatler.

Another backer is the Tory peer Baroness Manzoor, 63, former chairman of Bradford health authority, who is an independent non-executive director at the firm.

Co-founder and chief executive Xan Morgan said the UK medical market will be one of the biggest in Europe and it can become a British champion.

He said: We have one of the first commercially scaled medical cannabis cultivation and production licences issued by the UK Home Office. It was one of three companies to announce IPO intentions yesterday as London was hit by float fever.

Others lining up IPOs were battery tech company Gelion and e-learning and regulatory technology firm Skillcast.

Skillcast has raised 3.5million, valuing it at 33.1million. The firm serves blue-chip companies including Schroders, Fresnillo, and British Land.

Gelion will raise 16million selling shares at 145p, meaning it is worth 154.37million. It will be listed on the exchange from Tuesday while Skillcast will float on Wednesday.

Plant-based meal replacement maker Huel has also reportedly hired Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan as advisers to look at options including a sale, but a flotation is its preferred choice.

Founder Julian Hearn is in line for a fortune worth hundreds of millions of pounds as the drinks maker gears up for a London listing that could value it at up to 1bn.
This month, in Manchester Crown Court, Judge Anthony Cross QC sounded baffled  and deeply disgusted.

How, he wanted to know, had a criminal drugs gang managed to get its hands on a 25,000 coronavirus recovery loan, backed by taxpayers and intended to help struggling small businesses?

It is a very good question. The judge will no doubt find the answer  which he has demanded in writing by the end of the month  to be deeply depressing.

Loans architect:: Chancellor Rishi Sunak (pictured), the architect of the Covid loan schemes, was fully aware of the risk of fraud

The panoply of Covid loans and support schemes have protected the economy, but they have also served as gigantic honey pots for swarms of fraudsters and chancers.

The Manchester loan fiddle emerged during the trial of five men, who had already admitted being part of a conspiracy to supply cocaine, over a plot to kidnap and rob an elderly businessman.

They were using a firm called South Manchester Plastics as a front company for their criminal activities.

One gang member applied for a 25,000 bounce back loan through the bogus enterprise. The villains were duly handed the cash, despite the fact that even a cursory check would have revealed the company had no legitimate trade and had never filed a tax return.

How utterly sickening that money intended for genuine businesses, desperate to survive the Covid lockdowns, was siphoned off so easily by a bunch of criminals.

This case is shocking, but it is far from isolated.

The granting of coronavirus loans, though well-intentioned, was so lax as to be an open invitation to fraud and other misuse.

Billions of pounds were handed to companies with minimal checking.

For once, the banks cannot entirely be blamed for this, because they were acting at the behest of the Government which had set out a deliberate policy of abandoning any attempt at stringent scrutiny.

Instead, the priority was for firms to receive their cash in double quick time.

Banks were giving a green light to loans for existing customers within a day or two, relying on self-certification and no credit checks.

The ultra-loose regime offered a golden opportunity for fraudsters, whether small-time opportunists or sophisticated organised crime.

It also left the system vulnerable to applications from firms who knew they were unlikely ever to be able to pay the money back  and from those who had no actual need to borrow but found the offer of low cost loans too tempting to resist.

Bounce Back Loans, the most common form of help, were made available in April last year for up to 50,000.

Judge Anthony Cross QC presided over a case in which a Manchester drugs gang swindled a 25,000 Covid recovery loan

In total, nearly 48billion of borrowing was approved under the scheme, which is now closed to new applications.

No less than 26billion of that will be lost to fraudsters and borrowers who cannot repay, according to public accounts watchdog, the National Audit Office.

Everyone, including Chancellor Rishi Sunak, the architect of the Covid loan schemes, was fully aware of the risk of fraud.

But this was accepted as a price worth paying in order to avert the greater evil of mass redundancies and wholesale business failures.

No one, however, can have envisaged the size of the losses that are now emerging, or that many who cynically defrauded coronavirus support schemes are likely to get off with little in the way of reprisal.

The five men in the Manchester case were found guilty, along with a sixth who pleaded guilty to drugs charges, and sentenced to a total of more than 130 years in prison.

But fraudsters know that in many cases, they are likely to suffer little more than a slap on the wrist.

Take Muneef Ihsan, 26, a young man from Rotherham, who set up three bogus companies and used them to fraudulently obtain 150,000 in Bounce Back Loans.

His 21-year-old friend, Mahir Towid Ul Haque, also took out a 50,000 Bounce Back Loan, using some of it to buy himself a Rolex watch.

So far, the only punishments meted out to the pair, whose behaviour came to light after an investigation by the Insolvency Service, are lengthy bans from acting as a director.

It is understood that no money has yet been recovered from them and that no criminal proceedings are so far underway.

The vast Covid lending lifeboat, launched by the Chancellor last year, has saved millions of genuine businesses from going to the wall and spared the economy from incalculable harm.

Even so, it is no excuse for sheer incompetence and laxity that allowed fraud to explode on such an epic scale.

Perhaps the most depressing example of this is Greensill, the collapsed finance firm that employed former Prime Minister David Cameron as an adviser. When coronavirus struck, doubts about Greensill were already being widely aired in the City and beyond.

Regardless of this, when Greensill applied to be a lender, the British Business Bank, a government body that was administering the schemes, gave its approval.

Greensill went on to provide eight taxpayer-guaranteed loans adding up to 400million to companies linked to GFG Alliance, a group of companies run by steel baron Sanjeev Gupta, who is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

MPs on the Public Accounts Committee last week found the due diligence done on Greensill was woefully inadequate and said 335million of taxpayer cash is at increased risk as a consequence.

As Meg Hillier, the committee chairman put it, the British Business Bank only had to read the papers to be aware of serious questions about Greensills lending model and ethical standards.

Bounce Back Loans, the most common form of help, were made available in April last year for up to 50,000

The Government has hired a firm called Quantexa, advised by former MI5 chief Lord Evans, to uncover corona loan fraud.

But as well as the fraudulent loans bonanza, taxpayers are also set to lose around 3.5billion on three other schemes: furlough, the self-employed safety net and Eat Out to Help Out.

In a bombshell revelation at the weekend, Jim Harra, chief executive of HMRC, admitted tax authorities will only recoup less than half of the 5.8billion paid out in error or fraud under these initiatives.

This is despite the establishment of a special task force with nearly 1,300 staff this year, at a cost of 100million.

Furlough played a valuable role in propping up the economy and is one reason the employment figures are so robust now.

But again, it spawned an explosion of fraud.

Hundreds of off-the-shelf companies appear to have been set up simply to exploit the scheme, with suggestions they have claimed millions of pounds from government coffers.

A decision to go easy on people who owe money has led to an explosion in debt to HMRC, which has risen to 42billion from 16billion pre-pandemic.

It is not clear how much of this is owed by those who wont pay and are taking advantage of forbearance on the part of the tax authorities, as opposed to people who genuinely cannot afford their bill due to the pandemic.

For some, the pandemic prompted feelings of solidarity and community spirit. For others, it presented an opportunity to gratify their greed at the expense of their fellow citizens.

And it is all the more shameful that con artists are stealing from the public purse at a time when the country is groaning under more than $2 trillion of debt and Rishi Sunak needs every penny he can find.
Ten years after the relentless rains of Hurricane Irene, Gary Glowaczewski is still paying off the federal debt he incurred because of the cruel blow nature dealt him and other Orange County farmers.

The 2011 storm submerged fields in the county's fertile Black Dirt area near the end of August, just as vegetable growers were preparing to harvest the onions for which their region is known. Entire crops were lost, and with it, all of the money that Glowaczewski and others had spent planting and nurturing them since spring.

On Tuesday, Glowaczewski stood with fellow growers and Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney at the Pawelski farm in Goshen to celebrate what could be a new lifeline for struggling farms: pending legislation that would cancel part or all of the debt they have amassed as a result of natural disasters like Irene.

The proposal, first introduced last year by Maloney and Sen. Kirsten Gillbrand of New York, may now come to fruition as a tiny part of the giant spending bill Democrats have negotiated in Washington for months. The $2.2 trillion overall plan is awaiting action in the Senate after the House of Representatives passed it on Friday in a party-line vote, with all Republicans opposed.

Under the modified version of Maloney's bill in the pending Build Back Better Act, farmers who borrowed money through any of three federal loan programs could have up to $150,000 of their remaining debt eliminated. For those who qualify as economically distressed because of their precarious finances, the government would forgive the entire debt.

About $10 billion has been set aside for farm debt relief in the pending package of funding for social programs and climate-change measures. Roughly 1,000 farms in New York stand to benefit, Maloney said on Tuesday.

Maloney, speaking in a farm building with the pungent smell of onions in the air, said the idea emerged from a brainstorming session with growers as "the simplest, best thing that would be a shot in the arm for our local farmers." He said its passage "will create an extraordinary opportunity for our local farmers to get ahead."

"With all the help that's going to other people in this economy, I just want to make sure that something happens for our farmers," the Cold Spring Democrat said.

Chris Pawelski, the fourth-generation onion grower who hosted the press conference, called the relief prospect "one of the most incredible things I've ever seen" in his 25 years of advocacy work on farm policy, saying it will ease the debt burden for an estimated 60,000 farms in the U.S.

"It really is an incredible, incredible achievement on the congressman's part," he said.

Glowaczewski, who grows onions, mixed greens and other vegetables on 600 acres in the Pine Island area, said afterward that the potential debt relief would be a "huge help" for him, shrinking the several hundred thousand dollars he owes for outstanding federal loans.

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Standing beside him was John Madura, who raises similar crops on 300 acres in Pine Island. He noted that loans are common for farmers because federal crop insurance covers only a fraction of their weather-related losses. He said the pending relief proposal would cut half of his $300,000 in outstanding debt.

cmckenna@th-record.com

___

(c)2021 The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y.

Visit The Times Herald-Record, Middletown, N.Y. at www.recordonline.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Madeline Cantarella Culpo founded the Cantarella School of Dance in Pittsfield, Mass., in 1955 after graduating from The Juilliard School in Manhattan. Five years later she established the Berkshire Ballet Guild as a performance outlet for her advanced students, growing it during the 1960s until, by 1969, it had become a professional ensemble known as Berkshire Civic Ballet, later called Berkshire Ballet and then, when it established a studio in Albany in 1989, Albany Berkshire Ballet. She remains artistic director.

The company has produced the classic holiday ballet "The Nutcracker" annually for about half a century, except for 2020, because of the coronavius pandemic. This year's production will be presented in four venues from Nov. 27 through Dec. 18, including Dec. 11 and 12 at The Egg in Albany. Culpo, 87, lives in Pittsfield. Answers have been minimally edited for space and clarity.

Q: How did it feel to have to cancel The Nutcracker last year?

A: It was so sad not to be able to do it for all of the children that are involved. Its a tremendous amount of work, but its a labor of love, and we were sorry the children werent able to do it last year. Of course, nobody thought that would happen in March, when there was a strange new virus going around and we decided we werent going to teach that week. I thought, Oh, good, Ill get a couple of days off. We all know how that turned out.

Q: Youre 87, but you still drive from Pittsfield to Albany three times a week 

A: It used to be five times!

Q: How many miles are on your car?

A: Oh, my God, I dont know! It should take an hour each way, but for me its 45 minutes, and it's a good time to relax. Maybe at my age I shouldnt say I relax when driving, but thats what I do.

Q: That must make for some long days.

A: Today I came to Albany from Vermont, where my grandson had a performance last night. I got up at 20 minutes to 5 this morning and was in the studio in Albany at 8 a.m. We have rehearsal all day, until 7 or 8, and then I have to drive back to Pittsfield. But I wouldnt want to be doing anything else.

Q: Dont you ever get sick of The Nutcracker?

A: Never. Isnt that amazing? Of course you have your ups and downs. Everyone does, even when they love something. But at that first rehearsal this year, after having to cancel last year, it was so beautiful. I was so happy to be able to do it for the students. They work so hard and are so dedicated.

Q: Aside from generations of parents who want to see their little ones on stage, what is the enduring appeal of the ballet?

A: Its a holiday tradition with beautiful dancing and beautiful music. Its as a simple as that.

Q: And lots of adorable children.

A: Theres that, too. I know they really get something out of it beyond just performing. All the research shows that students of dance  of any of the arts  are more successful in other parts of their lives and into adulthood because of the discipline that they learn, the commitment; they finish what they start. But I will say we dont have as much discipline now as we used to.

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Q: How else are kids different than when you started teaching 66 years ago?

If you go Albany Berkshire Ballet's "The Nutcracker" When: 1:30 and 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 11, and 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 12

Where: The Egg, Empire State Plaza, Albany

Tickets: $47 ($25 children)

Info: 518-473-1845 and theegg.org/events

Also: Additional performances are Nov. 28 at The Flynn theater in Burlington, Vt.; Dec. 4 at Berkshire Community College in Pittsield, Mass.; and Dec. 18 at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Mass. See More Collapse

A: Its harder to correct them, because theyre so sensitive. I always tell everyone that Im not going to heaven, because I lie. I tell the children, That was so good, but it wasnt! You have to find different ways to correct and instruct them.

Q: Tell me about that strategy.

A: It's important to make sure they feel theyre doing it right until theyre ready to accept that they need to improve. I had a wonderful student who is now a grandmother of students. She likes to say, Miss Madeline, its never good enough for you. You have to know how much to push and when to pull back on your criticism. I tell the children, "If the teacher doesnt talk to you during class or rehearsal, if they dont correct you or praise you, youre not doing well.

Q: During a recent class, the girl-boy ratio was more than 20 to 1  literally, one boy. Has it always been that lopsided?

A: I would say its actually better than 50 years ago. I see more boys who are not afraid to dance. I have five sons; they were all athletes growing up, and they would ask me to help them with stretches or with jumping, but they didnt dance. Boys are much more accepting now. I have a cute little great-grandson. Hes 4 years old, and he loves his ballet classes.

Q: Do you have any plans to retire?

A: Thats the problem: I dont. I suppose I should, in some sense, or other people think I should, but why? Ive cut back some, but I think I wont stop until Im ready to go up to that other place, if Hell take me. This is what I love. The students are so wonderful, its not work. Im lucky, just plain lucky.
ALBANY  It took 72 turkeys, 300 pounds of stuffing, 500 pounds each of yams and vegetables, and about 300 pounds of potatoes for the Capital City Rescue Mission to feed the throngs who came to dine in-person or to pick up a takeout meal at this year's version of the nonprofit's annual Thanksgiving dinner. But for Perry Jones, pastor and executive director of the mission, the annual event is more about letting people know that they have someone looking out for them and giving them a sense of community.

We were built that way, said Jones. For community, for fellowship, for other people. And when you don't have that, it puts a great strain on people. ... That's why the mission is here. And we will continue to be careful, (for pandemic safety) but continue to love people and let them know that.

After last years outdoor takeout-only meal, the mission brought back its indoor dinner this year. According to Jones, approximately 1,500 meals consisting of turkey, mashed potatoes, yams, vegetables, pie and dessert were to be served on Thursday. The sitdown dinner Thursday was preceded by a chapel and followed by a holiday cafe, where attendees were able to have coffee, popcorn and enjoy playing a few parlor games.

If you're at Grandma's house, you don't have to leave right away just because you had dinner, Jones said. You go in the parlor. And that's what this is based upon. I used to call it grandma's cafe, grandma's living room. But my wife said no, just call it a holiday cafe.

The preparation for this massive undertaking took over a week and was overseen by Maxwell Ansong, the missions chef and director of food services. Ansong was assisted by his three line cooks and four volunteers and began cooking at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday. The key to efficiency, he said, was the kitchen stations.

As long as everybody keeps the station, we can move around, he said. Every station has something that they do whenever you need something, you go to that station. And so that's how I've been running it for all these years.

Apart from the kitchen staff, over 150 volunteers were on hand to help run the event. Their duties varied from serving, ushering and conducting games. Many volunteer as a Thanksgiving tradition of their own. Alex Knapp, a Miami-based finance professional who grew up in Saratoga Springs, has been volunteering at the mission for as long as he can remember.

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I think we need to be thankful for all the blessings we have, said Knapp. And there's other folks that don't have those blessings. So you can try to help give them something to be thankful for. I think that's the whole point of the day.

As for the attendees, the event has given them a sense of comfort. Dominick Turnbull said the mission was there for him when he lost his home and he is grateful for that.

This is a port in a storm to anyone in the universe, said Turnbull as he waited in line for his meal.
ALBANY  Appellate justices on Wednesday reversed the Columbia County conviction of a man sentenced to eight years in prison for felony cocaine possession, finding he did not waive his right to a lawyer before speaking to State Police.

Marcel Teixeira-Ingram, who public records show lives in Massachusetts, pleaded guilty in March 2019 to two drug possession counts for allegedly possessing 6 1/2 ounces of cocaine that State Police seized in a traffic stop in Columbia County. County Judge Jonathan Nichols sentenced Teixeira-Ingram to eight years in prison.

On Wednesday, the Appellate Division of state Supreme Courts Third Department in Albany said the issue before them was whether State Police advised Teixeira-Ingram of his right to an attorney and if he voluntarily waived it.

Teixeira-Ingram was a passenger in the car.

At a pre-trial evidentiary hearing, one state trooper testified that he stopped the vehicle and spoke with the driver but not any passengers. Another trooper testified that he spoke with the driver and a female passenger and read those two their rights, but did not speak to Teixeira-Ingram or read him his rights, the Third Department ruling said.

A third witness, a State Police investigator, initially testified that he spoke with all the passengers  and more so to Teixeira-Ingram because he waived his right to counsel. But when asked to identify the trooper who had read Teixeira-Ingram his rights, the investigator said it was a trooper who did not speak to the defendant. The investigator then testified he was not present when he believed Teixeira-Ingram had been read his rights, the ruling said.

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The Third Department stated there were no facts from which Nichols could have rationally determined that Teixeira-Ingrams waiver of his right to an attorney  or any rights  was knowing, voluntary and intelligent. Justices said prosecutors did not meet their burden at the evidentiary hearing, which meant Teixeira-Ingram should have had his statements suppressed.

The decision, authored by Presiding Justice Elizabeth Garry, said Nichols' ruling "could not be deemed harmless" and returned Teixeira-Ingram to his pre-guilty plea status.

Justices Michael Lynch, Christine Clark, Stanley Pritzker and John Colangelo supported the ruling.

Assistant District Attorney Joyce Crawford represented District Attorney Paul Czajka's office. Catskill attorney David E. Woodin represented Teixeira-Ingram.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  Alabama's capital city last month removed the Confederate president's name from an avenue and renamed it after a lawyer known for his work during the civil rights movement.

Now the state attorney general says the city must pay a fine or face a lawsuit for violating a state law protecting Confederate monuments and other longstanding memorials.

Montgomery last month changed the name of Jeff Davis Avenue to Fred D. Gray Avenue. Gray, who grew up on that same street, represented Rosa Parks and others in cases that fought Deep South segregation practices and was dubbed by Martin Luther King Jr. as the chief counsel for the protest movement."

The Alabama attorney generals office sent a Nov. 5 letter to Montgomery officials saying the city must pay a $25,000 fine by Dec. 8, otherwise, the attorney general will file suit on behalf of the state.

Montgomery Mayor Steven Reed said changing the name was the right thing to do.

It was important that we show, not only our residents here, but people from afar that this is a new Montgomery, Reed, the citys first Black mayor said in a telephone interview. It was Reed's suggestion to rename the street after Gray.

We want to honor those heroes that have fought to make this union as perfect as it can be. When I see a lot of the Confederate symbols that we have in the city, it sends a message that we are focused on the lost cause as opposed to those things that bring us together under the Stars and Stripes.

The Alabama Memorial Preservation Act forbids the removal or alteration of monuments and memorials  including a memorial street or memorial building  that have stood for more than 40 years. While the law does not specifically mention memorials to the Confederacy, lawmakers approved the measure in 2017 as some cities began taking down Confederate monuments. Violations carry a $25,000 fine.

Mike Lewis, a spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, declined to comment on the letter to the city. This is the first time the law is being used regarding a street name change, he said.

The all-Republican Alabama Supreme Court in 2019 reversed a circuit judges ruling that declared the law an unconstitutional violation of the free speech rights of local communities.

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Reed said they knew this was a possibility when the city renamed the street. Donors from across the country have offered to pay the fine for the city. He said they are also considering taking the matter to court.

The other question we have to answer is: Should we pay the fine when we see it as an unjust law?" Reed said. Were certainly considering taking the matter to court because it takes away home rule for municipalities.

Alabamas capital city is sometimes referred to as the Cradle of the Confederacy because it is where representatives of states met in 1861 to form the Confederacy, and the city served as the first Confederate capital. The city also played a key role in the civil rights movement  including the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The Montgomery County school system has voted to rename high schools named for Davis and Confederate General Robert E. Lee  although the names have not yet been changed.

Several cities have just opted to take down Confederate monuments and pay the $25,000 fine. The state recently collected a $25,000 fine after suing officials in Huntsville, where the county removed a Confederate memorial outside the county courthouse last year.

Marshall last year issued a video message chiding local officials that they are breaking the law with monument removals.
BERLIN (AP)  Olaf Scholz is set to become post-World War II Germany's ninth chancellor, crowning a career that has seen him serve in a string of top government posts, after leading his party to an election comeback that appeared hugely unlikely just a few months ago.

The 63-year-old on Wednesday sealed a deal for his center-left Social Democrats to lead Germany's next government in a coalition with the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats. The agreement followed relatively quick talks that were disciplined and discreet, qualities that reflect Scholz's own image.

Scholz has a terse, no-nonsense approach typical of his home city of Hamburg, where he once worked as a lawyer  an even more sober style than that of outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel. He joined the Social Democratic Party at 17 and was first elected to parliament in 1998.

He is unflappable and unshakably self-confident, but no master of rhetoric. During a turbulent stint as the Social Democrats' general secretary in the early 2000s, he earned the nickname Scholzomat for what critics said was a habit of constantly repeating the same phrases in support of then-Chancellor Gehard Schroeder's welfare-state trims and economic reforms, which faced dissent within the party.

Scholz's experience, attention to detail and sometimes technocratic image became an asset during this year's election campaign, in which he led the long-struggling Social Democrats from third place in polls to a narrow win in the Sept. 26 election.

He was helped by a series of gaffes and slips by his two opponents  Armin Laschet, the leader of Merkel's center-right Christian Democrats, and Annalena Baerbock, who was making the Greens' first run for the chancellery.

The Social Democrats' stock rose as Scholz, the finance minister and vice chancellor in Merkel's government, calmly ran through a largely accident-free campaign and turned in unspectacular but solid performances in three televised pre-election debates.

He also appeared to portray himself as Merkel's natural successor, although he belongs to a different party. At one point, he posed with the outgoing chancellor's trademark Merkel diamond folded-hands gesture in an interview without words for the daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Scholz first served in the national government from 2007-9 as Merkels labor minister, during the global financial crisis. Germany kept down unemployment, notably by using a government-backed salary support program to keep people on companies payrolls. The same device served it well during the coronavirus pandemic, in which Scholz has helped guide Germany's economic response as finance minister.

Scholz became the mayor of Hamburg, Germany's second-biggest city, in 2011. He won back the traditional Social Democratic stronghold after years of center-left disarray in Hamburg, saying his party knew that if you order leadership from me, you get it.

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A low point was Hamburg's hosting of the 2017 Group of 20 summit, remembered largely for widespread rioting by hard-left protesters. Scholz had previously dismissed worries about the event.

The following year, he was elevated to the No. 2 job in Merkels government after his party reluctantly ditched a pledge to go into opposition. As finance minister, Scholz was a driving force behind moves to place a global minimum tax of at least 15% on large companies and led efforts to cushion the pandemics financial impact. But he also drew criticism over the collapse last year of payment processing company Wirecard.

The pragmatic Scholz ran for the Social Democrats leadership in 2019 but was spurned by members in favor of a left-leaning duo, Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans. However, the party put that contest behind it and had no hesitation in turning to him last year as its candidate to succeed Merkel.

Political opponent-turned-ally Christian Lindner, the leader of the pro-business Free Democrats and Scholz's designated successor as finance minister, said Wednesday that negotiators experienced him as a strong leadership personality who has the experience and professionality to lead this country."

Olaf Scholz will be a strong chancellor for Germany, he said.

___

Follow APs coverage of Germanys transition to a new government at https://apnews.com/hub/germany-election.
The New York Daily News editorial published as a Viewpoint, "DiNapoli right to drop Unilever over Israel stance," Nov. 2, calls boycotting Israel anti-Semitic. It is not anti-Semitic to fight for human rights. It is not anti-Semitic to fight against Israels abuses of Palestinians.

Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) does not target Jews, it targets the nation-state of Israel. A nation-state has to abide by international law, and Israel is no exception. Settlements are illegal, according to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334; Ben & Jerry's did the right thing by pulling out of the settlements. Human Rights Watch and B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights organization, both have documented that Israel is engaged in crimes of apartheid and persecution.
In the letter "Call out Israel over 'terrorist' claim," Nov. 18, Rev. John D. Paarlberg manages to look for ways to slander Israel under the guise of it being a human rights violator. If he really intends to support the human rights of the Palestinians, he need look no further than their own corrupt leadership. Both Hamas in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria trample the rights of their own people. If there is any criticism voiced against their leadership, the punishment most likely is to get thrown off a roof or beaten to death. There are no gay rights, women's rights or human rights. The people are used by Hamas as human shields as they fire thousands of missiles at innocent Israelis, clearly hoping that Israel will fire back and hit some of their own innocent people. Paarlberg promotes the concept of eliminating the only Jewish state in the world and replacing it with "a multi-ethnic democratic state." Israel is already a multi-ethnic Jewish democratic state that includes people of all religions; citizens include its 20 percent Arab population that has equal rights and participate in parliament, courts, military and government. Israel is the only true democracy in the Middle East; and they dont need any other country, including the corrupt United Nations, giving them advice on how to protect their democracy.

Jack Rosenblum
The following is from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial:

With recent flight cancellations, staffing snafus and other problems plaguing airlines, Congress is starting to ask how, exactly, the companies have used the $50 billion in pandemic relief funding the taxpayers gave them over the past two years to ensure smooth operation  given that smooth operation is the opposite of what some carriers have been providing lately. Its a valid question.

The airlines were hit especially hard by the pandemic, as it decimated daily travel numbers and necessitated cutting back flights. The airlines shed tens of thousands of employees last year mainly through voluntary furloughs and early retirement incentives. Those were necessary moves to weather the coronavirus storm. Predicting when and how quickly those travel numbers would come back up was always going to be an educated guess. And the reluctance of many employees (including pilots) to return to the job is a phenomenon few could have predicted.

But the chaos surrounding Southwest and American Airlines flights last month was nonetheless a shock. A few isolated weather events caused canceled flights in Texas and Florida, but then the cancellations rippled throughout the country and into the following week. Right-wing trolls like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, baselessly alleged that vaccine mandates were behind the staffing problems. In fact, the main problem appears to be that the companies were still too short-staffed from their pandemic cuts last year to quickly adjust to the changed schedules.

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With this holiday weekend shaping up to be the busiest since before the pandemic started, some in Congress want to know why, with that $50 billion lifeline over the past 18 months, the airlines are apparently having such a hard time ramping back up as the pandemic eases. The airlines say they are the victims of pandemic chaos like everyone else, but some in Congress are pointing out that most industries didnt get the kind of taxpayer help the airlines received.

In the Senate, plans for such hearings next month are already underway, with senators like Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., suggesting the airlines are failing to keep their side of the bargain. The airlines will have the chance to make their case  but the best way they could make it is to ensure the holiday travel season avoids more of this kind of turbulence.
ALBANY  The acting commissioner of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision wrote a memo to New Yorks inmate population this week, denouncing a recent string of extremely serious assaults against prison staff.

In the memo, acting Commissioner Anthony Annucci wrote of individuals confined within the Department who lately, and without warning or provocation, have chosen to commit extremely serious assaults against staff, including civilian staff security staff, and females as well as male staff.

I have over 37 years of experience in this agency, and while there has always been the occasional very troubling incident, the trend I am seeing of late in terms of the sheer savagery of the assault, the randomness of the assault, and lack of any precipitating event before the assault, is extremely disturbing, Annucci wrote. This will not be tolerated.

Annucci told prisoners that hed do everything in his power to make sure the assaults are fully prosecuted, noting his department had the legal ability to pay all reasonable costs in connection with assaults occurring in prisons.

Money is no object when it comes to staff safety, Annucci wrote.

Annucci emphasized that he had long favored progressive programs uplifting incarcerated individuals, but warned such programs were at risk without a fundamentally safe environment.

The union representing state prison officers, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association, denounced the commissioner's missive and contend the facilities have been growing more dangerous for years.

"This memo misses the mark in so many ways and is extremely disturbing," the union said in a statement. "To us, it means that the states progressive policies have watered down the disciplinary system so much that their only deterrent to keeping inmates from assaulting staff is a sternly worded memo and relying on overtaxed (district attorneys) offices to bring forth charges."

NYSCOPBA and many lawmakers also blame part of the violence on legislation that was approved disallowing the segregation of inmates  who previously could be placed in special housing units if they engaged in violence. Inmates, they said, are aware they can no longer be placed in solitary confinement and have become more emboldened to attack prison employees.

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Republicans in the state Senate, who publicized the commissioner's memo on Wednesday, took the opportunity to slam Democrats in the state Legislature.

Republican state Sen. Daniel Stec said he hoped the memo got the attention of Democratic lawmakers, who have been passing plenty of laws making the job of maintaining order and assuring safety in these facilities much more difficult.

And Republican Senate Majority Leader Robert Ortt issued his own statement, calling the memo deeply troubling.

The Democrats in New York continue to champion pro-criminal policies that endanger innocent people. It is inexcusable that guards, civilians, and inmates are at risk. I, along with members of the Republican Conference, will not sit idly by, Ortt said. That is why the Republican Conference supports our states corrections officers in calling for a study to assess the violence taking place in our correctional facilities, followed by decisive action to end it.
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Officials in western North Carolina say that a 54-year-old woman has died in an early-morning house fire in Burke County
For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Orlando Sentinel.
We're catching up with a great deal of crime news right now. Here's a quick TKC collection of local stories worth a peek and follow-up from recent crime news . . .



Charges filed in deadly hit and run that killed mother of two KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- A man has been charged with vehicular manslaughter and leaving the scene of a crash in connection with a fatal September hit and run. Arnold King, 23, has been charged in the incident that killed 31-year-old Valeria Villa-Alvarado September 17 at the intersection of 12th and Bales.

Man serving life in prison for KCK murder says he's innocent Hide Transcript Show Transcript LA:RA THE FATE OF TWO MEN IN WYANDOTTE COUNTY ARE IN QUESTION. KRIS: ONE MAN IS IN PRISON FOR MURDER BUT SAYS HE IS AN ASCENT. A SEPARATE FEDERAL SUIT SAYS RORGE GOLUBSKY IS GUILTY. HERE IS HERE LEE HARRISON. -- HALEY HARRISON.

Man sentenced to 25 years in prison for fatally shooting cousin inside Independence restaurant JACKSON COUNTY, MO (KCTV) -- A Lee's Summit man has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for fatally shooting a woman inside an Independence restaurant in 2019. According to the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office, Porntrep Phonjaroen pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and armed criminal action in May.

Gladstone police looking for man who robbed Commerce Bank over the weekend The wind will likely back off some this afternoon as the next cold front approaches and moves through the area this evening. Some light showers and sprinkles are already moving through a few spots on the Missouri side, and we're expecting a little more coverage to the rain south and east of KC before midnight tonight.

KCPD Chief Rick Smith confirms he'll retire next year Kansas City, Missouri police Chief Rick Smith confirms that he will retire next year.Smith will be leaving the police department in 2022. The Kansas City Star reported that Smith was forced out.

10 years later, Rosilyn Temple continues hope for justice in son's murder KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The holidays are not an easy time for everyone, especially those who've lost a loved one. For one community crusader working to stop violent crimes in Kansas City, this year marks a milestone that no mother should have to remember. In 2011, it was the day before Thanksgiving.

Leawood church leader says he will help Kevin Strickland adjust to life as a free man Outside the prison walls, few people can understand the challenges Kevin Strickland now faces but Darryl Burton is one of them. He served time with Strickland and said that he plans to be there for Strickland as he adjusts to life as a free man."He's in a fraternity of folks he didn't volunteer for," Burton said.Burton said there is a burden for exonerees like Strickland."He's going to have some breakdowns.

Developing . . .
About two weeks ago we talked about this impending surge.



Now it's news fact . . .



"The metro area is averaging 365 new cases per day, according to the Mid America Regional Council. And with more than 600 cases reported on Tuesday morning, the average may be quickly increasing."

Read more on both sides of the pandemic drama via www.TonysKansasCity.com news links . . .

As Thanksgiving looms, Kansas City's COVID cases and hospitalizations are rising fast For the second year, Kansas City area residents are entering another Thanksgiving holiday with COVID-19 cases at a steady climb. The metro area is averaging 365 new cases per day, according to the Mid America Regional Council. And with more than 600 cases reported on Tuesday morning, the average may be quickly increasing.

Independence issues COVID-19 exposure warning for crafts show KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The city of Independence Health and Animal Services Department has issued an exposure warning Wednesday for the Best Little Arts and Crafts Show after at least two people who attended the event tested positive for COVID-19. The crafts show occurred at the Sermon Center on Nov.

Kansas AG Derek Schmidt urges employers not to question religious vaccine exemption claims KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt told employers Wednesday not to look into the sincerity of an employee's religious beliefs when requesting exemption of the COVID-19 vaccine. Kansas employees are able to waive COVID-19 vaccine requirements on the basis of health and religion after Kansas Gov.

7-day COVID case average in Missouri has jumped 179% in a month by: Kevin S. Held Posted: / Updated: JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - The 7-day average for confirmed COVID-19 cases has more than doubled in Missouri since this time last month. Meanwhile, 69% of all Missouri adults have at least initiated the vaccination process.

US braces for 'fifth wave' of Covid on eve of Thanksgiving Twenty months into a pandemic that has claimed almost 770,000 American lives and nearly a year after Covid-19 vaccinations became available, US health experts warn that a fifth wave of infections risks overwhelming health systems in the worst-affected states.

US hospitals prepare for influx of Covid patients as millions travel for Thanksgiving As cases begin surging once more in the US, millions of people are expected to travel for the Thanksgiving holiday, and health workers and hospital systems are now preparing for an influx of Covid patients after having little time to recover from the summer surge.

Developing . . .
This evening news cycle was mostly garbage and dedicated to holiday doldrums.

However, other than city hall promoted garbage . . . There was a headline worthy of checking out because it offers the opportunity for a chuckle . . .

"We demand to be at the table when the selection process begins, said Pastor Darron Edwards, co-founder of Getting to the Heart of the Matter. Matter, said. We want to be at the table. We're not just listing these and offering these as sheets of paper.

Edwards said he recently met with other community activists and current police officers to come up with some requirements for the next chief.

Those include the following:

- Must have a background in dealing with diversity in the communities.

- Guardian mentality with all communities.

- Open door policy to the community and leaders and willing to listen and respect all voices.

- Offers bottom up out of the box solutions and strategies within the department handling community issues.

- Believes in financial transparency of the police department.

- Believes in holding bad characters in the department accountable.

- The next chief must come from out of state (including Kansas).

- Every resume from within the current department needs to be rejected.

- The next chief should have a documented history of building community engagement, partnerships, and community involved accountability boards.

##########

Looking closely, I think there might be a request for a pony too.

Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .

Community groups weigh in after KCPD chief announces plan to retire KANSAS CITY, Mo. - One day after Kansas City Police Chief Rick Smith confirmed plans to retire sometime in 2022, the focus begins shifting to future leadership. Community groups and individuals are starting to weigh in on what type of leadership they'd like to see.

You decide . . .
This one isn't Kansas City specific BUT it will make an inconvenient talking point during holiday discussions of "injustice" at the dinner table.



The upshot . . .



"The three white men on trial for killing Ahmaud Arbery have been found guilty of murder in the fatal pursuit of the unarmed Georgia jogger."

Moreover . . .



This decision is yet another reminder that sketchy protestations about vigilantism and any attempt to take the law into your own hands NEVER produce a desirable outcome.

It's much easier to type a nasty online comment or yell at the TV.



Read more via www.TonysKansasCity.com news link . . .
The following is a release by the Elections and Boundaries Commission on the recount request
Ukrainian law enforcers have exposed a bot farm set up by Kherson residents, operating in the interests of Russian handlers.

Thats according to the press service of the Prosecutor General's Office, Ukrinform reports.

According to security operatives, the perpetrators had installed and administered from their homes special telecommunication equipment, allowing them to hide actual network IDs when creating profiles across social media, online forums, and chat messengers, by altering traffic data.

The inquiry found that since 2019, more than 20,000 fake profiles have been created to circulate anonymous bomb threats and messages carrying disinformation, and pursue other illegal actions aimed at destabilizing Ukraine. The culprits were paid for their work through banned Russian-based transaction systems.

During the warranted searches, law enforcers confiscated computers with the relevant software installed, as well as telecommunications equipment and more than 3,000 SIM cards.

Relevant forensic examinations, interrogations, and other investigative routines aimed at bringing to criminal responsibility all individuals complicit in the criminal offenses are currently underway within the framework of the relevant criminal proceedings.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, since the beginning of 2021, the SBU has exposed more than 30 Russian intelligence assets and groups operating in the cyber domain.

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Since the Additional Measures to strengthen the ceasefire were enforced on July 27, 2020, a total of 66 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 275 wounded as a result of shelling and armed provocations by the Russian side.

Thats according to a report by Ukraines Mission to the OSCE, delivered at a meeting of the Forum for Security Cooperation on Wednesday, November 24, heard by an Ukrinform correspondent.

In total, from July 27, 2020, to November 22, 2021, the Joint Forces of Ukraine registered 2,848 ceasefire violations by the Russian side. Of particular concern is that in 759 cases, the occupation forces used weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements, the Ukrainian delegation added.

Read also: Militants deny OSCE SMM entry into disengagement areas near Zolote and Stanytsia Luhanska

Diplomats noted that over the past week, the situation in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine has been marked by regular shelling and armed provocations by Russian occupation forces. Positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were fired at 65 times, including 26 with the use of weapons banned by Minsk accords. A Ukrainian military serviceman, 33, was wounded in small arms fire near Prychepylivka.

Ukraines Mission to the OSCE called on the Russian Federation to cease efforts undermining the Minsk peace agreements, to reciprocate the constructive approach to negotiations, shown by the Ukrainian side, and to move to the practical implementation of commitments Moscow has undertaken.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission has recorded 163 ceasefire violations in Donetsk region and 36 such violations in Luhansk region over the past 24 hours alone.

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The Ukrainian side does not rule out that the Russian leadership will decide on a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in view of Moscows recent actions combined with hostile anti-Ukrainian rhetoric.

Thats according to a statement delivered by Ukraines Mission to the OSCE, delivered at the meeting of the Forum for Security Cooperation on Wednesday, November 24, and heard by an Ukrinform correspondent.

Taking into account all the recent actions of the Russian side, combined with its hostile rhetoric towards Ukraine and other countries, which is manifested at all levels, we do not rule out the possibility of the Russian leadership deciding on a military invasion, Ukraines Mission said.

Read also: Britain warns Russia against new aggression against Ukraine

Ukrainian diplomats pointed out that Russia had deployed 92,000 troops along the border with Ukraine with no adequate explanation of such a move provided. At the same time, the situation in the conflict zone in eastern Ukraine is developing in line with a dangerous trend, as against the background of intensified ceasefire violations by Russian armed formations, Russia has also boosted arms and ammo supplies to the temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

It was also pointed out that on November 15, the Russian occupation administrations in Donetsk and Luhansk regions kicked off exercises involving "reservists," and on November 22, large-scale command and staff drills were launched in formations and units of the 1st and 2nd Army Corps (AK), involving reservists, units of "law enforcement agencies," and occupation administrations. The exercises are being supervised by the joint commission of the 8th army of the southern military district of the Russian armed forces.

In addition, the occupation administrations put forward a proposal to officially allow taking Russian citizens for contracted military service in 1st and 2nd Armed Corps.

Ukraine has strongly condemned such actions by the Russian side aimed at drafting Ukrainians in the temporarily occupied territories for military service in the occupation forces. Such actions are a gross violation of international humanitarian law and do not contribute to deescalation in Donbas. Russia must cease such practices immediately, the Ukrainian Mission said.

The Mission of Ukraine to the OSCE called on the Russian Federation to deescalate the situation and to engage in constructive dialogue within the framework of existing mechanisms for maintaining international peace and security, including within the OSCE.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, said Russian invasion could kick off in January-February from several directions: from the areas of the eastern borders (both controlled and non-controlled by Kyiv), as well as from Crimea and via Belarus.

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Newly appointed Defense Minister of Canada Anita Anand is considering deploying hundreds of additional troops to support the Canadian soldiers already in Ukraine on a training mission and moving a warship into the Black Sea, or redeploying some of the CF-18 fighter jets currently based in Romania.

Ukrinform reports this with reference to The Globe and Mail.

It is noted that no decision has yet been made about deploying additional forces in Ukraine.

Its still status quo, as of now. Theres been no change in our posture, Lieutenant-Commander Julie McDonald, a spokeswoman for the Canadian military, said on Wednesday. Were closely monitoring the situation along with our allied partners.

Canada currently has some 200 troops based in Ukraine that train their Ukrainian counterparts.

As reported, Russia amassed about 94,000 troops, 1,200 tanks, 330 military aircraft and other equipment along the border with Ukraine, which is considered as preparations for large-scale aggression against Ukraine.

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Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova and representatives of the World Bank have discussed the cooperation in the field of returning assets illegally withdrawn from Ukraine and the fight against corruption.

In a post on her Facebook page, Venediktova wrote: "A fruitful meeting with Regional Director for Eastern Europe, Arup Banerji, Lead Economist and Program Leader for Economic Policy for Eastern Europe, Karlis Smits and Senior Financial Sector Specialist at World Bank Group, Laura Pop. The World Bank has been long supported Ukraine in the development of anti-corruption bodies and is ready to assist in the development of this infrastructure.

According to Venediktova, the fight against corruption is a "joint responsibility for all law enforcement and state bodies."

"Another key to the successful development of the state is judicial reform. Both citizens of Ukraine and foreign investors want to live by transparent rules in a country with the rule of law, not corruption, and to know that they are protected from illegal acts, Venediktova stressed.

In addition, the prospects of cooperation in the field of returning assets illegally withdrawn from Ukraine were discussed at the meeting.

"We are constantly raising this issue at the international level. We need a common asset recovery roadmap, as well as expert support from the World Bank to develop effective mechanisms. We are also open to the exchange of experience in the field of cryptocurrency circulation, Venediktova said.

As Ukrinform reported, on November 11, Venediktova discussed cooperation with the competent authorities of Luxembourg in the fight against money laundering and asset recovery.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of Poland Andrzej Duda have discussed security challenges in the region and the need for joint actions to address them.

Ukrinform reports this with reference to Zelenskys account on Twitter.

Had a fruitful phone conversation with Andrzej Duda. Glad that we have the same vision of security challenges in the region and the necessity to act together to overcome them. A further contact plan has been outlined to address bilateral and international issues, Zelensky wrote.

Secretary of State in the Chancellory of the President of Poland, Head of International Policy Bureau Jakub Kumoch wrote on Twitter that the Presidents of both countries agreed on further consultations.

Poland and Ukraine will stand by each other in the current crisis, he wrote.

Kumoch also announced that Duda would meet with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels on Thursday.

As Ukrinform reported, on November 8, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of Poland Andrzej Duda in a phone conversation discussed the issue of counteracting the Nord Stream 2 project.

The Ukrainian Head of State also informed about the security situation on the Ukrainian-Belarusian border and the measures taken to protect it properly.

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Lucia Tomo, 47, smiles as she displays her national ID card in Wau, South Sudan.  UNHCR/Rocco Nuri

Some 50 representatives took part in a roundtable conference on Wednesday, organised by UNHCR, The UN Refugee Agency, aimed at raising awareness on the issue of statelessness in South Sudan. The gathering marked the 7th Anniversary of the I Belong Campaign to Eradicate Statelessness by 2024, launched by UNHCR to ensure nobody is left behind.

The event, which focused on nationality documentation and the risk of statelessness, brought together a diverse group from South Sudans Directorate of Civil Registry, Nationality, Passports, and Immigration (DCRNPI), civil society representatives, legal practitioners, academics, journalists, artists as well as partner organisations and members of the international community.

With some 90 percent of the population lacking in essential documentation, the risk of statelessness is a major issue in South Sudan, with a dramatic scale up of awareness on the implications needed.

Without a nationality, peace and development is at stake, said Juliette Murekeyisoni, UNHCR Deputy Representative to South Sudan. Difficulties accessing education and employment; restricted property rights; lack of opportunities to own and register a business; limited access to a bank account or a loan; inability to vote or participate in elections and in some cases, the threat of extortion, detention or expulsion can trap people in a lifetime of obstacles and disappointment.

Participants stressed the need for creative approaches to identify and profile people at risk of statelessness, as well as strengthen existing mechanisms provided for in the Nationality Act to recognise and/ or provide essential documentation. A major theme also included the need for South Sudan to align its policies with international standards, including accession to the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Since the launch of UNHCRs #IBelong Campaign, political will and momentum to tackle statelessness by governments and other partners has been growing. The Republic of South Sudan made five pledges to address statelessness at the High-Level Segment and Global Refugee Forum, has fulfilled one and is working actively on completing the others.

UNHCR has carried out training and capacity-building for DCRNPI, support to vulnerable groups in the procedure of age assessment and acquisition of nationality and advocating for improved legal framework to address statelessness in the country. Since 2012, the Agency has helped more than 16,000 individuals at risk of statelessness in South Sudan to obtain nationality certificates. UNHCR will continue promoting nationality certificates, birth registrations and other nationality documents to those who are entitled to it under the laws of South Sudan.

However, UNHCR cannot do this alone. In order to eradicate statelessness in South Sudan, collective efforts must be redoubled. As noted during the roundtable, having a nationality is beautiful, it means you belong somewhere.

ENDS

For more information, please contact:

Aoife McDonnell | +211922654116 | [email protected]

Gift Friday Noah | +211 922 654219 | [email protected]

UNHCR South Sudan Data Portal | Facebook page | South Sudan Situation Portal
A young woman who survived kidnapping and rape in a brutal attack is starting to rebuild her life with help from UNHCR.  UNHCR/Vittoria Moretti

The following statement is attributable to UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

One in five refugee or internally displaced women have faced sexual violence. Today, given the prolonged human rights and socio-economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we know this situation has only worsened.

From Afghanistan, Colombia, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and beyond, the deleterious impact of conflict, COVID-19 and displacement has been felt acutely by women and girls.

Since March last year, we have reported a global surge in domestic violence, child marriages, trafficking, sexual exploitation and abuse as a result of the pandemic. Some hard-won gains in advancing gender equality have also been eroded.

Addressing gender-based violence requires a concerted response involving national authorities, humanitarian partners, civil society, donors and forcibly displaced women, girls, men and boys themselves.

As we mark the 30th anniversary of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence this year, we call on national and local authorities to do more to protect the rights of refugee, internally displaced and stateless women and girls and prevent these egregious violations.

Forcibly displaced and stateless people must also be included in all national responses to gender-based violence. Survivors must be supported to heal and recover, and perpetrators must be brought to justice.

Funding for humanitarian programmes that combat gender-based violence  including women and girls' empowerment projects as well as response services for survivors  has to be scaled up.

Support must especially be channelled to those who work on the front lines  including displaced women-led organizations and groups.

Ending gender-based violence requires action to match rhetoric.
Every Saturday, Cecile* heads to the Catholic Church of Lesvos from the temporary Reception and Identification Centre (RIC) in Mavrovouni where she resides, to help distribute food and assist other refugees who want to attend the service. What is more, she is daily occupied at one of the COVID-19 information desks that have been set up inside the temporary RIC, where she distributes protective masks to the refugee community, urges them to regularly wash and disinfect their hands and encourages them to follow the personal hygiene measures to protect against COVID-19.

When Cecile describes her volunteering activities, the tone of her voice becomes happier. She feels a valued member of the community and forgets about the traumatic events she has experienced.

Cecile was born and raised in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Having lost her parents at an early age, she grew up with her aunt. Living with her aunt was not easy; she had to do all of the housework and was not allowed to attend school.

Cecile had a relationship and fell pregnant. Her aunt then forced her to marry a much older man, who already had three more wives, so as to raise her daughter with him. I suffered a lot, she says, recalling that period.

A devastating blow occurred when Ceciles daughter died suddenly of an illness at the age of 18. Cecile had to manage not only her loss but also the threats of her daughters father. He had become a high ranking official by that time, and taking advantage of his position, he blamed her for the childs death and threatened to convict her. This forced Cecile to urgently flee the country. I didnt have anyone to support me. This is why I had to escape from the country and didnt even see where my child was buried, she says.

Cecile is daily occupied at one of the COVID-19 information desks that have been set up inside the temporary RIC in Mavrovouni  UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis Cecile speaks with the subdeacon of the Catholic Church of Lesvos where she volunteers every week.  UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis Cecile seen during a counselling meeting at DIOTIMA's Women Info Point located near the Mavrovouni RIC.  UNHCR/Achilleas Zavallis

Ceciles journey to find safety was very difficult. She was sexually exploited in her effort to leave the country. When she finally reached Turkey, she found herself alone and homeless and was sexually assaulted during her five-month stay.

Ever since I was born, everything that happens to me is difficult. I havent seen an easy and beautiful life so far. I havent been happy, Cecile says and her face fills with despair. The adversities she has encountered are clearly etched on her face..

She arrived on Lesvos in October 2019 and applied for asylum. Since then, she has been staying at the islands RIC, initially in Moria and now in Mavrovouni. As a survivor of gender-based violence (GBV), Cecile receives psychosocial support from a psychologist and a social worker from the non-profit Centre of Research on Womens Issues Diotima.

Diotima Centre, in cooperation with UNHCR and with financial support from the European Union, offers comprehensive support services to refugee survivors of GBV. Survivors may have experienced GBV at any stage of their lives  in their countries of origin, during their journey, or after their arrival in Greece.

Through a holistic programme, Diotima Centre assists by providing support, including case management, free legal aid, psychosocial support, referrals to specialized agencies and services, emergency housing, as well as prevention and awareness-raising events for the broader population.

Thanks to Diotima Centres support, Cecile was recently able to hold a memorial service for her deceased daughter, which she says helped to alleviate much of her pain. The psychologist who supports her explains that the memorial service was liberating for Cecile. It helped her to experience and express her grief, something she was not able to do in her home country or during her journey.

In October 2021, Diotima Centre began operating the Women Info Point located near the Mavrovouni RIC, as part of the same programme. The Info Point hosts womens empowerment groups, as well as information and prevention sessions around GBV issues.

Ceciles utmost need, as an asylum-seeker, is to feel secure, a feeling that she did not have in her hometown. Her dream is to move on from the RIC, live in a house, have a partner, find a job, and live a normal life, like other people, she says.

This sense of normality is what asylum-seekers and refugees who visit the Catholic Church of Lesvos are searching for. Asylum-seekers participate in the services, they read, they help us with the liturgy and the prayers. This gives people a sense of dignity, that they are able to do something, to contribute somehow to the church and to their community, says Len Meachim, the Subdeacon of the Catholic Church.

He highlights how much Cecile has changed since he first saw her. When I first met her, she seemed very sad, but little by little a smile appeared on her face. He explains to Cecile the importance of a typical Greek wish: May you live to remember those who passed away, urging her to live again. And I think that is exactly what she is doing now he says.

* Name has been changed for protection reasons



25 November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The United Nations organise the international campaign 16 Days of Activism Against GBV, which will last until 10 December. UNHCR is committed to promoting gender equality and human rights and protecting refugees and other persons of concern from gender-based violence.

Greek

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We live in a cycle of illness and fearing death, states Jameela, or Umm Hayder, as she is otherwise known. An Iraqi refugee and mother of three, life has never been easy for her family. Ever since her oldest son, Hayder, was born 27 years ago, they have constantly been going backwards and forwards between hospitals for blood transfusions after he was diagnosed with thalassemia, a genetic blood disorder which results in the excessive destruction of red blood cells.

Prior to the conflict in Iraq in 2003, Jameela explains that the situation was manageable but when the fighting started the process of travelling the 60km between their home in a village south of Baghdad to the hospital in the city became more dangerous than ever.

At one point the hospital stopped working so we had to try and smuggle blood from the blood bank in the city to the local clinic in our village so Hayder could do the blood transfusions. We frequently drove through airstrikes and shooting. But the risk of what would happen to Hayder if we didnt get the blood was greater than the risk of the journey. There was no choice.

After taking this risk for three years, the family had had enough and decided to flee across the border to Jordan. In 2006, they settled in Azraq village in north-east Jordan and enrolled the three children in school. Were from a rural area, we wanted to live in a place which felt like home, explains Abu Hayder.

Despite finding safety, the weekly visits to the hospital, now in Amman, continued, in order for Hayder to receive the treatment he needed. This 100km plus journey was made more difficult by the series of buses Hayder had to take; a journey which often took over four hours each way. The cost of this transportation, combined with the medical expenses, blood transfusions and additional medication that Hayders family had to pay for was often beyond their means.

His father had worked as a blacksmith back in Iraq and continued to do so when they first arrived in Jordan, but a debilitating stroke in 2015 stopped all means of the family earning an income especially considering Hayders medical condition continued to prevent him from also searching for employment.

I was a primary school teacher back in Iraq, explains Jameela, but as Iraqis we arent allowed to work in this sector in Jordan. Sometimes I do some sewing or tailoring for neighbors to earn a couple of dinar but apart from that we are completely reliant on assistance.

With increasing health and transportation costs, in 2016 the family decided to move from Azraq village to Jordans capital Amman. A decision also cemented by the fact that Thlal, their oldest daughter, had been diagnosed with thalassemia and also needed monthly blood transfusions.

Back then the cost of one transfusion was anything between 45-75JD ($63-105), says Jameela. Hayder needed two transfusions a month and Thlal one. How were we supposed to afford these costs with no work?

After reaching out to UNHCR, the family were enrolled on UNHCRs cash for health program designed to help vulnerable refugee families cover their healthcare costs. They currently receive around 300JD every three months. So far this year, UNHCR has supported approximately 4,000 refugees with cash for health assistance.

Over the last year, however, their healthcare costs have significantly decreased. A policy change taken by the Jordanian Government to reduce the cost of accessing healthcare for non-Syrian refugees from the foreigner rate to the non-insured Jordanian rate, brings medical costs down by 75% in some cases. A multi-donor health trust fund supported by the United States, Canada and Denmark is now directly supporting the Ministry of Health to carry on.

The reduction in costs for non-Syrians has also had a significant impact on UNHCRs own health programming budget, meaning that the organization can help more refugees cover their medical expenses than before.

For Hayder and Thlal though, their battle with ill health is not over yet. Thlal is struggling to get monthly blood transfusions due to her rare OB blood type and the lack of availability of this blood type in Jordanian blood banks.

Hayder, on the other hand, is fearful about the future, having recently lost one of his close friends with thalassemia to the disease. Although he dreams of being a pilot, his health condition has prevented him from working at all and he feels frustrated about the lack of opportunities available for someone in his position. The familys perspectives about going back to Iraq are also murky, given that insecurity persist in their village and there are few opportunities to continue their medical care.

While in Jordan, their daily life remains precarious: Sometimes I feel that Ive given up everything for my childrens health and safety, says Jameela. But at least the regular cash for health gives her a little peace of mind.

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Abdsamad, a Somali asylum seeker, stands with his family as they wait at Tripoli airport to board a flight to Rome.  UNHCR/Mohamed Alalem

An atmosphere of excitement and anticipation spreads among the group of women, children, and men queueing outside a building in the Libyan capital Tripoli. Inside, staff members from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, are preparing to provide counselling, help with processing documents and to distribute travel items to the group.

A short while later, smiles and tears of relief break out among the group when they learn that they will be on board the first evacuation flight from Libya to Italy for two years. COVID-19 and border closures had meant no flights could operate in 2020, while for much of this year, humanitarian flights had been blocked by the Libyan Directorate for Combatting Illegal Migration.

Those selected include some of the most vulnerable asylum seekers in the country. Many are women and children, survivors of violence or have a serious medical condition. All have faced terrible circumstances in their country of origin and, later, great danger and difficulties in Libya.

"Being a woman alone is tough."

Eritrean mother, Hayat, aged 24, arrived in Libya in 2017, after making a dangerous crossing through the desert. Her husband was shot dead by smugglers when the couple were unable to pay a ransom demand for their release.

They killed him before my eyes, and they beat me, she recounted. Hayat was seven months pregnant at the time and said the following years were a huge struggle to provide for her son.

I sufferedin order to get him food and drink and pay the rent. Being a woman alone is tough. Being with a child, with no job and no-one helping you, you are really alone, she said.

Asylum seekers wait in line to enter Tripoli airport before boarding their flight to Rome.  UNHCR/Mohamed Alalem

Osman, a Sudanese asylum seeker, bids farewell to a UNHCR member of staff en route to Tripoli airport.  UNHCR/Mohamed Alalem

UNHCR staff in Tripoli provide counseling to Sudanese asylum seeker Zahra and her family ahead of their departure to Italy  UNHCR/Mohamed Alalem

On arrival in Libya, many migrants, refugees and asylum seekers face dangers, including exploitation and abuse at the hands of traffickers or smugglers.

Im so happy I could fly! Hayat exclaims. Thank God, Im going to travel. I need to leave. I need a safe place where I can raise my son.

The group will be the first of 500 people admitted to Italy over a one-year period. The flights are organized under a new mechanism, which combines emergency evacuations with the humanitarian corridors that have been established in Italy since 2016. While mainly funded by the Government of Italy, the flights are also supported by a coalition of faith-based organizations, which includes the Community of Saint Egidio, the Federation of Protestant Churches and the Waldensian Table.

See also: Evacuation flights from Libya to Italy bring hope for vulnerable asylum seekers

Zahra, a 48-year-old Sudanese mother of three, could barely scrape together the money for her taxi fare to attend the appointment, but shes happy she made the journey.

She has lived in Libya for over twenty years. All her children were born in the country, but none have official documentation except for their UNHCR asylum certificate.

Her eldest son, Mohamed, aged 17, is wheelchair-bound, after being hit by a bullet in his spine in 2014 as conflict raged. He had been playing outside the house where the family lived in the eastern city of Benghazi, where Zahras husband managed to find odd jobs to support the family.

My son cant talk or move anymore, but I am still confident he will recover. I have to take care of him all day-long, she said.

Doctors could do little to help at that time. There was no let-up in the conflict and healthcare premises were barely functioning due to a lack of medical equipment and continuous electricity cuts.

The family left for Tripoli to seek greater safety, but then Zahras husband died, leaving her with three children and no-one to turn to.

My only wish is to get treatment for my son, Zahra said.

Seated on a sidewalk outside the building, a young Somali man named Abdsamad and his wife were sharing the good news by phone with other relatives. Abdsamad had been living as a refugee in Ethiopia since 2001 before moving to Libya a few years ago.

It has been very difficult. When you do not have legal status in the country, you cant even rent a house or get health assistance.

Im thankful now that Im travelling. Im thinking about future, and the future of my children. Hopefully, it will be good.
Sudanese refugee Osman helps carry fellow evacuee Hayat's young son as they arrive at Tripoli airport to board a UNHCR-chartered flight to Rome.  UNHCR/Mohamed Alalem

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, was heartened by the evacuation today of 93 asylum seekers to Italy from Libya, where they had been living in precarious situations with an uncertain future.

This group of evacuees, the first of 500 under a new mechanism for humanitarian admissions, includes children, women at risk, survivors of violence and torture, and people with serious medical conditions. Some were recently released from detention while others had been held in captivity by smuggling or trafficking networks.

We are pleased to see these evacuation flights become a reality and that the Libyan authorities have supported them. They are a lifeline for some of the most vulnerable asylum seekers. Conditions in Libya remain dire for many refugees, and we need the international communitys help to expand similar routes to safety, said UNHCRs Chief of Mission in Libya, Jean-Paul Cavalieri.

The asylum seekers left Tripoli on a UNHCR-chartered flight to Rome. In total, five such flights will be organized over one year. After their arrival, the evacuees will be able to apply for refugee status, which will give them access to safety and security.

The flights are organized under a new mechanism, combining emergency evacuations with the humanitarian corridors that have been established in Italy since 2016. In addition to funding from the Government of Italy, the scheme relies on the support of a coalition of faith-based organizations, which includes the Community of Saint Egidio, the Federation of Protestant Churches and the Waldensian Table.

We are grateful to Italy for making these life-saving evacuations possible for people in such a vulnerable situation. Italian institutions and civil society have once again demonstrated the value of working together to welcome and integrate refugees, said UNHCRs Representative for Italy, the Holy See and San Marino, Chiara Cardoletti.

This month, UNHCR was able to resume evacuations from Libya after more than a year, after the authorities lifted a ban on humanitarian flights. On 4 November, UNHCR evacuated 172 vulnerable asylum-seekers from Libya to Niger, where they receive support while waiting for solutions, as part of the UNHCR-supported Emergency Transit Mechanism.

Since 2017, UNHCR has evacuated or resettled 6,919 refugees and asylum seekers out of Libya, of which 967 were admitted to Italy.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
By Fabien Faivre in Ndu village, the Democratic Republic of the Congo. | 12 February 2021 | Espanol | Francais

Central African refugee Boris, 37, sits with his wife Christine and their two children outside their makeshift shelter in Ndu village, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  UNHCR/Fabien Faivre

Twice in his long life, 74-year-old Joseph had to flee conflict in the Central African Republic. When violence erupted ahead of the countrys elections in December, he knew it would be a third.

There was war, so we had to flee. It is the third time I am fleeing my country. I am tired. At my age, you can imagine that I am not only tired but I feel despair and anguish, says Joseph wearily.

He had previously fled his hometown of Bangassou, some 700 kilometres from the capital Bangui, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in 2013. He later returned home but had to flee again in 2018 because of conflict. And in January 2021, Joseph and his family had no choice but to escape again.

The insecurity and violence surrounding last Decembers elections have forced over 100,000 people like him to flee  some into neighbouring Cameroon, Chad, the DRC and the Republic of the Congo, while around 100,000 people are displaced inside CAR.

It is the third time I am fleeing my country. I am tired.

Arrivals into the DRC have reached 92,000, according to local authorities. So far, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its government partner have registered over 22,000 people and will update the population figures based on actual registrations.

Over 200,000 people displaced in the Central African Republic in less than two months (Fabien Faivre, camera / Mary Theru, producer/ Joshua Werema, editor)

Joseph and thousands of others found safety in Ndu, a remote village located on the other side of the Mbomou river which borders CAR in Bas Uele Province, in northern DRC. Most of them arrived exhausted after crossing the border river, with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. UNHCR, has warned that tens of thousands face dire conditions, as many are without basic needs like food, water, medical assistance and shelter.

Makeshift shelters that offer little protection from rain, wind, and the scorching sun have mushroomed along the main road in Ndu. Some families have taken refuge in abandoned houses and the villages cramped school, while others have no option but to sleep out in the open.

Louise, 75, lives with a disability and can only walk with crutches. The journey to find safety was especially hard on her

I heard gun shots. I fled to protect myself and my loved ones, she says.

She now lives in a tiny shelter with 17 other family members. Tree branches and old pipes hold a plastic tarpaulin in place  this is where she stores the few belongings her family was able to carry in their hurry to leave.

Central African refugee, Joseph, 74, has escaped violence thrice in his life. He recently escaped to the village of Ndu in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  UNHCR/Fabien Faivre

Central African refugee, Louise, 75, sits next to her makeshift shelter in the village of Ndu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  UNHCR

Central African refugee, Benitia, 23, holds her newborn baby girl as her daughter Safira stands next to her in the village of Ndu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  UNHCR/Fabien Faivre

A Central African refugee and her child walk in front of a shelter in the village of Ndu, Bas Uele province, Democratic Republic of Congo.  UNHCR/Fabien Faivre

While the local host community has shown generosity in welcoming the displaced, they have extremely limited resources and need support to cope with the enormous strain.

There is so much I need to think about that I havent even named my new born baby girl.

For many, the river is also their sole source of water for drinking, washing and cooking. Diseases like malaria, respiratory tract infections and diarrhoea have become common among the refugees, especially children.

These conditions are particularly stressful for women like Benitia, 23, who fled while pregnant, with her two-year-old daughter and her husband. Thankfully, she delivered her second child safely in Ndu. But she is afraid of her two children getting sick.

Our life has changed overnight. We are now refugees. There is so much I need to think about that I havent even named my new born baby girl, she says.

See also: UNHCR appeals for access as Central African displacement soars

Most refugee families have spontaneously settled along the border with CAR which remains unsafe. Although the security situation in Bangassou is now relatively calm, refugees on the DRC side have reported that they still hear gunshots from neighbouring areas on the CAR side. They say that they prefer to stay here in the hope that they will be able to return home soon.

It is a race against time as these roads will become impassable during the rainy season.

The vast distances and extremely poor road conditions mean that humanitarian assistance is taking a lot of time to reach people in need.

Refugees have found safety in very remote and hard to reach areas, where infrastructure can be very limited. It is a race against time as these roads will become impassable during the rainy season, says Madeleine Tchabi Moumouni, UNHCRs head of sub-office in Gbadolite, in North Ubangi province.

UNHCR is already distributing emergency supplies such as blankets, sleeping mats, kitchen sets, tarpaulins and mosquito nets to the most vulnerable families and is pre-positioning supplies in key locations before vast areas become inaccessible by road.

Biometric registration is also ongoing, with up to 1,000 new arrivals registered per day, which enables the early identification of people with vulnerabilities.

However, funding vital to UNHCRs humanitarian response for the existing 173,000 refugees from CAR is already critically low and under severe pressure as the numbers continue to rise. The current influx is further exerting enormous strain on resources and urgent funding is needed to protect refugees from exposure to the elements during the upcoming rainy season.
Fidele, 35, his wife Brigitte, 28, and their children get ready to move to their shelter in Modale site, in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Helene Caux

Twice in five years, Fidel, 35, has had to flee the Central African Republic (CAR), across the Ubangi river, into the Democratic Republic of the Congo. His latest crossing to safety was tragic.

This time, I lost my five-year-old son. He drowned in the river, he said.

While crossing the river from his home in Bema last January to Yakoma in the DRC, he had left his son Eric on the CAR side of the rivers shores  his dugout canoe was too small to carry his entire family of seven across the river at once, so he had to make several trips back and forth.

When he reached the shore, he couldnt find Eric. Panicked, he asked the fishermen who were around, and they confirmed his worst fears as they were able to identify his body.

I was in total shock, he recalled.

How do you start over when you have lost so much? Central Africa refugees moving to safer areas need support (Arnold Temple, videographer/ Linda Muruki, producer / Fabien Faivre, producer )

Like other Central African refugees, Fidel and his family fled the violence and insecurity that surrounded last Decembers elections with barely any belongings. So far, over 117,000 people have spilled into neighbouring Cameroon, Chad and the Republic of Congo, with the majority finding safety in the DRC. Some 164,000 more are displaced inside CAR.

I lost my five-year-old son. He drowned in the river.

Once they reached Yakoma, in the DRCs North Ubangi province, Fidel, his wife Brigitte and their six children were welcomed by a Congolese family that took them into their modest home.

Most Central African refugees have been generously hosted by local communities, themselves struggling to share whatever little resources they have.

Last week, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency and partners started relocating refugees further inland, away from the border area of Yakoma to a safer site in Modale village that can accommodate up to 10,000 refugees.

Fidels family was among the first group of 335 refugees who arrived at the new site this week, where they will begin the process of settling down among the local Congolese communities, which have generously offered land to refugee families and welcomed their children into their schools.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi meets with Micheline (left), a refugee from the Central African Republic living in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Helene Caux

Central African refugees arrive in Modale site, after traveling in trucks for several hours from Yakoma, at the CAR-DRC border.  UNHCR/Helene Caux

A Central African refugee holds her sick son as he is attended to at a health center in Modale, Democratic Republic of the Congo.  UNHCR/Helene Caux

People walk within a section of Modale site in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, where UNHCR is relocating Central African refugees from the border area.  UNHCR/Helene Caux

UNHCR is setting up new water and sanitation facilities and expanding health and education services while reinforcing existing infrastructure so as to reduce the strain on services resulting from the influx.

On a visit to Modale this week, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi applauded these efforts which will assist refugees to start rebuilding their lives.

It is really an inclusive effort. Refugees can grow their crops alongside the host community, become self-reliant, use the health services and go to school, he said.

He also called on the international community to urgently support these efforts.

We need to show greater commitment towards this country and its communities that continue to open their arms and shelter refugees with the little means they have, he added.

The refugees I met want to return, but only if there is durable peace and security.

Grandi also met Fidel and Brigitte, who shared their tragic experience with him.

The refugees I met want to return, but only if there is durable peace and security. They are understandably scared after having been forced to flee repeatedly, he added.

He recalled his last visit to the CAR in December 2019 when there were hopeful signs of peace and expressed his wish for a solution to be found for all the refugees scattered in this very inaccessible region.

He also appealed to the international community to help CAR come out of the spiral of violence and unrest that has characterized its recent history.

It is especially important for its people, so they dont have to flee, he said. While they feel more secure here in the DRC, more resources are needed. This is a very underfunded situation which requires more attention from the international community.

UNHCR has received just 16 per cent of the US$ 204.8 million needed for operations in the DRC. Together with the Congolese Governments National Commission for Refugees (CNR), UNHCR has registered nearly 53,000 new arrivals from CAR in Bas Huele, North Ubangi and South Ubangi Provinces, as of 22 April. Registration is still ongoing  authorities in the DRC estimate that 92,000 refugees have arrived from CAR since last December.
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Calais, France, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :At least 31 migrants died Wednesday crossing from France to England when their boat sank off the port of Calais, French authorities said, the deadliest disaster since the Channel became a major part of the migrant route.

President Emmanuel Macron, saying France would not allow the Channel to become a "cemetery", vowed to find out who was responsible for the tragedy as prosecutors opened a manslaughter probe.

"It is Europe's deepest values -- humanism, respect for the dignity of each person -- that are in mourning," Macron said.

The French leader also called for an emergency meeting of "European ministers faced with the migration challenge", with his Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin urging a "tough international response".

Darmanin announced that four people suspected of being "directly linked" to the accident have been arrested.

Prime Minister Jean Castex is to convene several of his ministers for a crisis meeting early on Thursday, his office said.

French officials said earlier three helicopters and three boats had searched the area, uncovering corpses and people unconscious in the water, after a fisherman sounded the alarm.

The victims were among around 50 people aboard a vessel that had set out from Dunkirk east of Calais, according to the police.

On the other side of the Channel, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "shocked, appalled and deeply saddened by the loss of life at sea", following a crisis meeting with senior officials.

The disaster, the worst single loss of life since at least 2018 when migrants began using boats en masse to cross the Channel, comes as tensions grow between London and Paris over the record numbers of people crossing.

Britain has urged tougher action from France to stop migrants from making the voyage.

- Winter warning - Pierre Roques, coordinator of the Auberge des Migrants NGO in Calais, said the Channel risked becoming as deadly for migrants as the Mediterranean which has seen a much heavier toll over the last years of migrants crossing.

"People are dying in the Channel, which is becoming a cemetery. And as England is right opposite, people will continue to cross." According to the French authorities, 31,500 people attempted to leave for Britain since the start of the year and 7,800 people have been rescued at sea, figures which doubled since August.

In Britain, Johnson's government is coming under intense pressure, including from its own supporters, to reduce the numbers crossing.

Natalie Elphicke, the Conservative MP for the British Channel port of Dover called the sinking "an absolute tragedy" and demonstrated the need to stop the crossings at source.

"As winter is approaching the seas will get rougher, the water colder, the risk of even more lives tragically being lost greater," she said.

- 'A business' - France's top maritime official for the northern coast Philippe Dutrieux told AFP in an interview last week that the numbers trying to cross had doubled in the last three months.

He blamed the "cynicism" of the traffickers "who throw migrants into the water as it is a business that makes money".

"It has been years that we have been warning about the dangers of the situation", said Charlotte Kwantes, head of Utopia56, an association that works with migrants in Calais.

She put at "more than 300" the number of migrants who have died since 1999 in the area.

"As long as safe passages are not put in place between England and France, or as long as these people cannot be regularised in France... there will be deaths at the border," she told AFP.

In Britain, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, Enver Solomon, said the deaths were "heartbreaking" and safe routes were needed for those "in desperate need of protection".

According to British authorities, more than 25,000 people have now arrived illegally so far this year, already triple the figure recorded in 2020.

The issue has added to growing post-Brexit tensions between Britain and France, with a row on fishing rights also still unresolved.
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Paris, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 26th Nov, 2021 ) :French fishermen will block ferry traffic into three Channel ports and the movement of goods through the rail tunnel between France and the UK on Friday in protest over post-Brexit fishing rights, a union said.

Describing the action as a "warning shot", French national fisheries committee (CNPMEM) chairman Gerard Romiti said ferry traffic would be blocked at the ports of Saint-Malo, Ouistreham and Calais as well as freight traffic into the Channel Tunnel for several hours.

The months-long dispute between Britain and France over the number of licences for UK waters handed to French vessels remains unresolved and has threatened to turn into a full-scale trade war.

"We don't want handouts, we just want our licenses back. The UK must abide by the post-Brexit deal. Too many fishermen are still in the dark," said Romiti.

"The patience of professionals has limits. We hope this warning shot will be heard," he said, refusing to rule out further actions in the future.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "disappointed by threats of protest activity", adding that it was "a matter for the French to ensure that there are no illegal actions and that trade is not affected." Britain has been struggling with major supply problems due to post-Brexit trade disruption and a lack of qualified truck drivers, resulting in fuel shortages and worries about shortages at Christmas.

The UK is highly dependent on French ports, particularly for fresh food imports, and any extended blockade would have the potential to cause significant costs.

The action by French fishermen comes with relations between the two neighbours at their lowest point in decades and a day after a dinghy carrying migrants sank in the Channel, claiming 27 lives.

- Fishing row - Under a deal agreed by Britain and the EU late last year, European fishing vessels can continue to ply UK waters if they apply for new licences and can prove they operated there in the past.

But Paris says dozens of French boats have had their applications to fish the UK's rich waters rejected, an assessment strongly contested by London.

France also accuses authorities on Jersey, a self-governing Channel island that depends on Britain for defence, of obstructing its fishermen.

The total volumes affected are tiny in terms of overall France-UK bilateral trade.

But the issue is politically sensitive and has contributed to growing post-Brexit tensions between Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron, whose relationship was strained again by Wednesday's migrant disaster in the Channel.

In late October, France threatened to ban British fishing boats from unloading their catches at French ports and to subject all British imports to inspections.

Tensions even spiralled into a brief naval standoff in May, when dozens of French trawlers massed in front of Jersey's Saint Helier harbour.

Macron has said France would hold off imposing the measures to give dialogue a chance, but French officials have insisted that all options remain on the table.

Talks between France's Europe Minister Clement Beaune and Britain's Brexit minister David Frost have yet to yield a breakthrough.
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Zagreb, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :Two lions at the Zagreb zoo have tested positive for Covid-19 that they had contracted from their keeper, officials said on Wednesday.

These are the first confirmed cases of the disease in zoo animals in Croatia, an agriculture ministry statement said.

Laboratory tests on samples taken from the two animals after they had developed symptoms of the disease confirmed that they have Covid-19, it said.

The big cats, who are undergoing medical treatment, caught the infection from their keeper who was also tested afterwards and was positive, head of the zoo Damir Skok said.

"The zookeeper as well as (lions) Leo and Ayana are fine.

"They sneeze and cough occasionally" and are recovering, he told local media.

Zoo visitors cannot contract the coronavirus from the lions as they are kept behind a glass fence, he added.

Other animals that the keeper was taking care of were also tested for Covid-19 and results of the tests are excepted soon.

In September, several US zoos, including the one in Washington, launched a vaccination campaign for animals susceptible to Covid-19 after a bout of sickness among them.

Croatia, which has some of Europe's lowest inoculation rates, is currently facing a record surge of coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic.

The respiratory disease has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the country of 4.2 million people.
Seoul, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :Seoul has started trialling pint-sized robots as teaching aids in kindergartens -- a pilot project the city government said would help prepare the next generation for a hi-tech future.

The "Alpha Mini" is just 24.5 centimetres tall and can dance, lead sing-a-longs, recite stories and even teach kung-fu moves as children mimic its push-ups and one-legged balances.

"The robots help with the kids' creativity," teacher Byun Seo-yeon told AFP during a visit to the bright and busy Maru nursery in Seoul.

The robot's eyes wink and blink -- and its pupils become heart-shaped during conversation.

With a camera on its helmet, it takes photos that are instantly sent to a tablet for viewing.

"In the future, knowing how to manage AI and related tools will be very important," Han Dong-seog, from the Seoul government's childcare division, told AFP.

The robots are being trialled in 300 Seoul nurseries and childcare centres, with the government recommending the programme for children aged three to five.

"We believe having this experience in nursery schools will have a lasting effect throughout their youth and as adults," Han said.

The Alpha Mini has been adopted as part of a daily schedule for the class of four- to five-year-old students at Maru, with its ability to "fart" on command being a highlight during playtime.

"When I tell it to sing, it sings well. I tell it to dance and we dance together," said five-year-old Lee Ga-yoon.
Deputy Chief of Air Staff Operations Pakistan Air Force (PAF), Air Marshal Waqas Sulehri has said the Indian Air Force claims of shooting down Pakistani aircraft F-16 were refuted by various international authorities

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :Deputy Chief of Air Staff Operations Pakistan Air Force (PAF), Air Marshal Waqas Sulehri has said the Indian Air Force claims of shooting down Pakistani aircraft F-16 were refuted by various international authorities.

Talking to a private news channel, the Air Marshal gave the PAF's formal response over shooting down of India Aircraft and others.

Air Marshal Suleri said, "Only three aircraft were shot down on February 27 which were belonging to Indian Air Force (IAF)," Air Marshal said.

Air Marshal said the Indian false claims for destroying PAF aircraft have been challenged globally whereas the destroyed aircraft comprised of MiG-21, Su-30 and Mi-17 helicopter.

He said the Indian claim of hitting Pakistani F-16 was based on lies as nothing such occurred at that time.

However, the Foreign Policy magazine also referred to the US government claims of confirming total number of Pakistani fighter jets, he added.

The world renowned author Michael Kugleman also denied Indian claims of shooting Pakistani aircraft, he added.

"The India Today anchorperson has been confronted by an expert during the live programme claiming a fighter jet engine as of F-16," he added.

The then IAF Wing Commander Abhinandan's aircraft MiG-31 could carry four missiles that have been recovered from the planes wreck that were intact and also placed for display to both local and international media, he added.

Air Marshal Suleri informed that Christen Fair had also denied the IAF claims of hitting an F-16 whereas the aircraft manufacturers also confirmed the total number of the fighter jet in Pakistan.

He added that the PAF completed the mission as per the Prime Minister's directives.

He mentioned that every country has its separate prerogative to give awards to its soldiers which were conferred through proper process. The nation, and all authorities have to accept the story behind the reason for conferring highest military to s soldier, he added.

"All our aircraft partaking the mission have successfully landed on our bases," he told.

The MI-17 helicopter was hit by a surface to surface missile which Pakistan could have claimed that but it kept its high moral standards paramount.

"Forces and nations stand on core values and cannot afford to compromise it. We stand on integrity and can't claim what did not do," he said.

To a question, he said the conversation between pilot and air defence controller was recorded whereas in Abhinandan's case it was jammed.

Referring to IAF's then Wing Commander Abhinandan's shooting of F-16, the Air Marshal said as per the set practice of Air Forces world over, the fighter pilot used to make a call after locking his target which was not found in his case.

He informed that the Operation Swift Retort was part of the contingency prepared for a long time with the similar name.

He said the PAF and IAF mutually respect each other whereas core value of force's included dignity which Abhinandan had violated and should be taken into account by the individual, nation and the forces.

"We are upholding the core value of our predecessors. Our ex-officers are also guiding our decision making who have kept the global trends of air power in mind during their endeavours for the process," Air Marshal said.

He said, "We have to ensure our sacred duty and proceed for better air power without burdening national economy."
YEREVAN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2021) Armenian and Iranian foreign ministers Ararat Mirzoyan and Hossein Amir Abdollahian discussed regional security issues by phone, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"The foreign ministers of Armenia and Iran discussed regional security issues of mutual interest," it said.

"Mirzoyan informed his counterpart about the situation after the recent aggression of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia. He added that another Azerbaijani aggression against Armenia seriously threatens the efforts to establish security and stability in the region," the ministry said.
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The European Commission on Thursday presented a plan to oblige online platforms to clearly label paid political advertising

Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :The European Commission on Thursday presented a plan to oblige online platforms to clearly label paid political advertising.

Advertising designed to promote a political party or candidate will have to be marked as such and indicate who has paid for the campaign.

This will not apply to politicians posting on their own personal social media accounts, but Brussels wants to impose transparency on organised campaigns to influence elections.

"The rules for meaningful transparency will apply across the ads production chain, be it political party, PR company, digital platform, data broker or influencer," said EU vice-president for values and transparency Vera Jourova.

"This is not only about Facebook or Google. Without providing this information, political advertising online will be illegal," she added.

Each ad should include the identity of the sponsor paying for it, the period in which it will be published, the sum paid to secure exposure and the identity of the election it is designed to influence.

In recent years European several governments and election watchdogs have raised the alarm over the use of targeted online advertising and covertly funded disinformation campaigns to sway voting.

In 2018, the British outfit Cambridge Analytica was revealed to have used the personal data of tens of millions of Facebook users to build an operation to influence US and UK voters.

Russian and Chinese operatives have also been accused of secretly acting online to disrupt politics in western democracies. Moscow and Beijing deny this.

"Today's package is a reaction to these events and also to loopholes identified in our systems," Jourova said.

The new EU rules on political ads, which will next be discussed by EU member states and by the European Parliament, are supposed to come into effect, by spring 2023, one year before the next European Elections.

The updated regulation is also intended to work alongside the GDPR privacy laws introduced in 2018 to govern tech's use of user data target ads and the upcoming landmark Digital Services Act.

Some platforms, such as Twitter and TikTok, have already voluntarily banned political advertising.
A fifth suspect has been arrested in connection with the migrant boat that sank in the English Channel, killing at least 27 people, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Thursday

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :A fifth suspect has been arrested in connection with the migrant boat that sank in the English Channel, killing at least 27 people, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said Thursday.

Seventeen men, seven women and three minors died when the boat sank off the northern coast of France on Wednesday, according to public prosecutors in Lille. Four suspected people smugglers had already been arrested on Wednesday afternoon, Darmanin said.
French President Emmanuel Macron warned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson against exploiting the migrant crisis politically after the deaths of 27 people in the Channel seeking to cross to England, the presidency said Thursday

Paris, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :French President Emmanuel Macron warned British Prime Minister Boris Johnson against exploiting the migrant crisis politically after the deaths of 27 people in the Channel seeking to cross to England, the presidency said Thursday.

In its statement after telephone talks late Wednesday, the Elysee Palace said Macron told Johnson that France and the UK have a "shared responsibility" and added he "expected the British to cooperate fully and refrain from exploiting a dramatic situation for political ends."
Mumbai's top court on Thursday commuted the death sentences of three men convicted in a rape case that heightened public outrage over women's safety in India

Mumbai, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :Mumbai's top court on Thursday commuted the death sentences of three men convicted in a rape case that heightened public outrage over women's safety in India.

The assault in 2013 followed another high-profile gang-rape case the previous year that left a woman dead in New Delhi, sparking nationwide protests resulting in tougher anti-rape laws.

The three men in Mumbai, along with two accomplices, trapped and repeatedly raped a 22-year-old photojournalist while she was on assignment at an abandoned factory compound.

The Shakti Mills complex stands next to a fashionable area of apartments, office blocks, shops and restaurants in India's financial centre.

The attack dismayed residents of Mumbai, a metropolis considered far safer for women than the capital New Delhi, sparking protests in the city and uproar in the national parliament.

Mumbai police arrested all five within a week of the incident.

It prompted a 19-year-old telephone operator to come forward and accuse the trio of also raping her in the same place a month earlier, along with two different accomplices.

All seven accused -- two of them juveniles -- were convicted over the two rapes.

The 2012 New Delhi case prompted a change in the law to make repeat rapists eligible for the death penalty.

The three men found guilty in both Mumbai assaults were condemned to hang, the first such sentences under the amended legislation.

At the time of the sentencing they were aged 19, 21 and 28.

Mumbai's High Court upheld their convictions Thursday but reduced the sentences to "rigorous life imprisonment" without parole.

"Death puts an end to the concept of repentance," the judge said according to news agency PTI.

"It cannot be said that the accused deserved only the death penalty. They deserve imprisonment for life to repent the offence committed by them."
MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 26th November, 2021) Fifty-two people, including six mine rescuers, were killed in the accident at the Listvyazhnaya mine in the Kemerovo Region, a spokesman for the emergency services told Sputnik on Thursday.

"According to preliminary data, 52 people died, including six rescuers," he said.

Earlier it was reported about 11 dead miners, as well as three dead rescuers.
WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 25th November, 2021) Ottawa is disappointed over the United States' decision to increase duties on imports of Canadian softwood lumber, International Trade Minister Mary Ng said.

"Canada is extremely disappointed that the United States has decided to increase the unfair duties it is imposing on Canadian softwood lumber from most producers to 17.9 percent," Ng said in a press release on Wednesday. "Canada calls on the United States to cease imposing these unwarranted duties on Canadian softwood lumber products.

"

Ng said the duties will have negative impacts on Canadian communities and businesses, including US consumers by raising costs of housing.

Earlier on Wednesday, the US Department of Commerce issued the final results of an anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigation regarding softwood lumber products from Canada. The United States decided to increase duties on imports of Canadian softwood lumber from 8.99 percent to 17.9 percent.
Some 230 migrants forced their way through the border from Belarus with the help of Belarusian border guards but were immediately sent back across, Poland said on Thursday

Warsaw, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :Some 230 migrants forced their way through the border from Belarus with the help of Belarusian border guards but were immediately sent back across, Poland said on Thursday.

"They destroyed the fence and a group of 232 people made their way several metres into Polish territory," border guard spokeswoman Anna Michalska told Polish news agency PAP.

"The officers instructed them to leave Polish territory and escorted them to the border demarcation," she said, adding the incident happened late Wednesday.

The EU and US accuse Belarus of manufacturing the crisis by bringing in migrants from the middle East and then taking them to the border -- an accusation that Belarus denies.

In a statement, Polish border guards said the migrants "threw rocks and sticks at Polish forces" as Belarusian forces used lasers and strobe lighting to try and blind Polish officers.
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The streets of the Slovak capital Bratislava were deserted Thursday as a new partial Covid lockdown came into effect in the country where new cases are soaring

Bratislava, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2021 ) :The streets of the Slovak capital Bratislava were deserted Thursday as a new partial Covid lockdown came into effect in the country where new cases are soaring.

Slovakia, which is battling one of the world's highest Covid-19 infection rates, announced new measures on Wednesday, which include closing non-essential shops.

People have been asked to stay home for much of the day and are allowed outside only between the hours of 1:00 am to 5:00 am for the next two weeks.

During the day they can only leave the house for essential reasons, including to work or visit essential shops. Schools will also remain open.

For some, the measures did not come soon enough.

"It is too late. These restrictions should have been introduced earlier," Lenka Rosenberger told AFP in the empty streets.

"For certain age groups, vaccination should be mandatory, and schools should have been closed, but the government did not have the courage to do so," the 50-year-old said.

Health authorities had suggested closing schools nationwide but one member of the four-party central-right government -- the SaS party -- vetoed the proposal.

"Schools will be the last to close.

We insist that they remain open. We also agree that testing in schools should be mandatory," Economy Minister and SaS party chair Richard Sulik told reporters.

The education ministry told AFP that it was important for schools to remain open "because we perceive the urgent need to educate children and protect their mental health".

The move drew criticism from many in the EU member of 5.4 million people.

"Students tend to travel to Bratislava from different regions, therefore the number of infected will spread," said medical student Milan Polacek.

"In many cases, infected parents also bring their children to school, and there are many people who can then spread the disease," he told AFP.

The education ministry said only 1.6 percent of students tested positive for Covid last week, adding that more than 68 percent of teachers and school staff were fully vaccinated.

Slovakia registered 980 Covid cases per 100,000 inhabitants over the last seven days, according to an AFP count based on official tolls up to Wednesday.

That is the fourth highest Covid infection rate in the world after Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovenia.

Only 45.7 percent of the population is fully vaccinated in Slovakia.
Caritas Internationalis hosts its fifth webinar on "promoting social justice through sustainable opportunities and building community resilience". Focusing on the Latin America and the Caribbean, the webinar saw members of various Caritas organisations across the region describe the realities of their work.

By Francesca Merlo

Caritas Internationalis is hosting a series of online Conferences until December 12 marking the 70th anniversary of its foundation in 1951. The first four webinars were focused on Caritas work in North America, Europe, Oceania and Africa.

Today's webinar, titled "Promoting Social Justice through Sustainable Opportunities and Building Community Resilience", was dedicated to Latin America and the Caribbean. Speakers during this webinar especially highlighted the efforts made by Caritas in this region with regards to recent natural disasters, the fight against poverty, the commitment to protect the common home. Space was also given to recalling the history of Latin American martyrs.

The first Ecclesial Assembly

The first person to speak was Marta Petrosillo, director of communication of Caritas Internationalis. Her greeting was followed by that of the Secretary General of the Confederation, Aloysius John, who opened the webinar by expressing his closeness to the people of Venezuela. He then recalled that on Sunday the first Ecclesial Assembly of Latin America and the Caribbean opened in Mexico City, with a Mass celebrated in the Basilica of Guadalupe, presided over by Monsignor Miguel Cabrejos, president of the Latin American Bishops' Conference (CELAM). Throughout the the webinar, iparticipant also pointed out the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon region, which took place in the Vatican in 2019, opened new paths and bore new fruits.

Venezuela

Representing Caritas Latin America and the Caribbean was its President, Archbishop Jose Luis Azuaje Ayala, who highlighted that deep inequalities and serious violations of human rights are occurring in several states in the region. The Archbishop, who heads the Archdiocese of Maracaibo in Venezuela, dwelt in particular on the crisis in his country. Millions of people live in poverty, he said. Sixty-three per cent of Venezuelans who emigrated to Colombia and Brazil left their country out of hunger. More than five million Venezuelan migrants live without any documents in the countries they have travelled to, continued Monsignor Jose Luis Azuaje Ayala. "One cannot waste time with political negotiations", one must intervene "with urgent solutions in the short term", not only for Venezuela, the Archbishop . He concluded his address by warning that the general situation in Latin America is difficult and that immediate solutions are needed to tackle the scourge of poverty. "Funds must be channelled in the best possible way and above all, as the Pope emphasises, solidarity must be promoted", he said.

Solidarity enriches us

Speaking on behalf of Caritas Uruguay and the Formation and Spirituality Team was Rosa Ramos, who underlined that "solidarity enriches us". Reflecting on Pope Francis' Encyclica Fratelli tutti, she said, "We are called to a personal and social conversion. We need others, and our neighbours, and we must reflect on the fragility of men and women". Rosa Ramos' thoughts then turned to the extraordinary moment of prayer held on 27 March 2020, in which the Pope stressed that we are all in the same boat. "And on this boat", Rosa Ramos added, "we are not all in the same condition". We must therefore learn to live solidarity authentically: we are all fragile but together we can weave a network that humanises society, she concluded.

The mission of being

Service is the meaning of mission, said Archbishop Jose Luis Azuaje Ayala as he spoke, underlining the guidelines for Caritas action. In doing so, he recalled a passage from Pope Francis' Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium: "My mission of being in the heart of the people is not just a part of my life or a badge I can take off; it is not an 'extra' or just another moment in life. Instead, it is something I cannot uproot from my being without destroying my very self. I am a mission on this earth; that is the reason why I am here in this world. Finally, the president of Caritas Latin America and the Caribbean said that the phrase "My mission of being" is concretely witnessed by the many volunteers serving works marked by fraternity and charity.
Pope Francis is set to visit Cyprus and Greece from 2-6 December. He will spend the first two days of the visit in Cypriot capital Nicosia, and then travel to Greece on 4 December visiting Athens and Lesbos until 6 December. The following is an overview of the nation's ancient Catholic community and of the religious and cultural context of the country.

By Lisa Zengarini

Cyprus has close historical, cultural and religious ties with Greece that go back to ancient times. Along with ethnicity, Greek Cypriots and Greeks share a common heritage, language and religion, though over the centuries Cyprus has had more contacts with the Middle East, due to its geographical position and to the presence of significant ethnic minorities from this area. Indeed, Cyprus is considered to be a bridge between the East and the West.

An ancient Church

Christianity in the two countries traces its roots back to the Apostolic Era, namely to the Apostle Paul who preached in Greece, but also evangelized Cyprus together with the Apostle Barnabas, who is considered to be the founder of the Cypriot Church. Moreover, both countries are of Orthodox tradition, with the Orthodox making up an overwhelming majority, though the Autocephalus Church of Cyprus does not enjoy the privileged legal status of the Greek one.

The Latin-rite Church

Cypriot Catholics presently make up 4.75% of the population (38,000) and are for the most part of Latin rite. Many of them trace their roots back to Crusaders who settled there in the late 12th century, following the Third Crusade (1191) and the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin (1187).

The Latin Catholics thrived until Cyprus was conquered by the Turks in 1570-1573, when thousands were killed, churches converted to mosques, and the Latin Church dissolved. However, they survived the Ottoman rule in great part thanks to the Franciscan Order, which has been present in the island since its founding in the 13th century and still plays a central role in the local Church today.

The policy of tolerance under the subsequent British rule (1878-1960) strengthened the Latin community allowing its full integration in Cypriot society. The process of emancipation has further advanced since independence in 1960, when the new Constitution officially recognized the Catholic Church and, at a political level, reserved a seat in Parliament to each one of the three Catholic communities present on the island.

Despite the 1974 Turkish invasion, which forced many Catholic families to flee from the North, the Latin Catholic community in Cyprus has continued to thrive, contributing actively to the development of the country, particularly in the field of education. The Latin community is also very active in the social field, through charitable organizations helping the poor and most vulnerable, refugees and foreign workers.

The Cypriot Latin Church is under the Jurisdiction of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem and is entrusted to a Latin Patriarchal Vicar, presently Father Jerzy Kraj, OFM. The Patriarchate manages the Saint-Paul parish of Paphos, while the remaining three parishes are administered by the Franciscan Order.

Maronite Catholics

The second largest Catholic community in Cyprus are the Maronites, who presently make up 1.5% of the population. Maronites arrived in successive waves starting from the 8th century and thrived under the Latin rule, becoming the largest Eastern Christian community after the local Greek one. Numbers dropped dramatically following the Ottoman take over in the 16th century and subsequent persecutions. They started to grow again under the British rule and after independence, with many Lebanese arriving after war broke out in Lebanon in 1975.

Following the partition of Cyprus in 1974, however, the number of Maronites has thinned down drastically in the North. Overall, Maronite Catholics amounted to some 13,000 in 2019. They are for the most part concentrated in Nicosia and under the jurisdiction of the Archeparchy of Cyprus, currently governed by Archbishop Selim Jean Sfeir.

In terms of cultural distinctiveness, the Maronites of Cyprus are predominately native Greek speakers. Presently, however, they also speak different languages, as they have throughout their history, which include Syriac, Arabic, French and Italian.

Armenian Catholics

The smallest Cypriot Catholic community is the Catholic-Armenian one. Its presence dates back to the 6th century when Armenian war prisoners were transfered on the island. More Christian Armenians, mainly belonging to the Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church, came over in the following centuries, especially in the 13th century.

Catholic Armenians also benefitted from British rule. More Armenians arrived in Cyprus during the massacres by the Turks in World War I, the partition of Palestine in 1948, and the war in Lebanon (1975-1990). Some 3,000-4,000 live in Cyprus today, for the most part in the capital, Nicosia.

Good ecumenical relations

The major Christian Churches in Cyprus, also including Protestants and Anglicans, work closely together and enjoy good ecumenical relations. Over the past 15 years, the Holy See and the majority Orthodox Church have strengthened their fraternal relations, which have been actively supported by His Beatitude Chrysostom II, Archbishop of New Giustiniana and All Cyprus.

On 16 June 2007, the Orthodox Primate signed a Joint Declaration with Benedict XVI on the occasion of his visit to the Vatican. Pope Benedict XVI subsequently met Archbishop Chrysostom II on two further occasions: on 5 June 2010, during his Apostolic Journey to Cyprus, when he gave the Orthodox Primate a copy of the Instrumentum laboris (working document) of the Special Synod of Bishops for the Middle East held in October that year and on 28 March 2011, again in the Vatican.
After visiting Cyprus from 2-4 December, Pope Francis will travel to Greece where he will visit Athens and the island of Lesbos, which he visited in 2016. We offer an overview of the Catholic community in this majority-Orthodox country and of the challenges facing the local Catholic Church today.

By Lisa Zengarini

The Orthodox Church has played a major role in Greek history. Adherence to this Church, which is autocephalous (ecclesiastically independent) since 1850, was established as a hallmark of Greek ethnic identity in the first constitution in early 19th century, when Greece obtained independence from the Ottoman Empire.

The Orthodox Church

Its primacy was confirmed in subsequent constitutions and also in the new democratic constitution of 1974, that established the Orthodox Church as the prevailing religion in the country, though it recognizes religious freedom for all faiths. 90% of Greeks still identify as Greek Orthodox today, though not all are practicing believers.

Religious minorities include Catholics, Protestants, Anglicans, as well as Muslims (1%) concentrated on the border with Turkey, and a small Jewish community.

Official figures on the Catholic population

According to the Vatican's latest figures, Catholics, mainly Latin rite, make up 1.2 % of the population (that is, 133,000 out of some 11 million inhabitants), most of whom are not ethnic Greeks. However, local figures show higher numbers, including several thousand immigrant workers with temporary residence permits, refugee and asylum seekers. In 2018, the Greek Catholic Church estimated up to 400,000 Catholics living in the country.

Many foreigners

The largest foreign groups are Polish nationals (40,000) and Filipinos (45,000). In addition, the number of Catholics from the Middle East has significantly increased due to war, namely from Iraq and Syria. Other ethnic groups include Albanians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and Armenians. Moreover, immigration has caused an increase in Eastern rite Catholics.

Significant Catholic communities are to be found in the Cyclades Islands (especially in Syros and Tinos) and also in Corfu, Patras, Giannitsa, Thessaloniki, Kavala, Volos and in several other cities of mainland Greece.

Pastoral challenges

The local Church carries out an intense pastoral and social work. However, the geographical dispersion of the Catholic community and its heterogeneous makeup, amidst declining local vocations, have made this work more challenging.

Immigration has undoubtedly enriched the local Church, but also requires increased human and financial resources to meet growing pastoral and social needs, also to integrate the newcomers in the local parish communities.

The ongoing economic crisis that has hit the country since 2009 has further aggravated these difficulties. The fiscal tightening imposed on Greece by the so-called "European troika" (IMF, ECB and the European Commission) has also put a strain on the finances of Catholic dioceses, parishes and charities engaged in supporting impoverished Greek families, as well as the thousands of immigrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty.

With increased expenses and lower Sunday Mass offerings, the Catholic Church (which unlike the Orthodox Church does not benefit from State support) is having to pay substantially higher taxes as compared to the past.



Active role in supporting the most vulnerable

Greek Catholic bishops have repeatedly called attention to these difficulties, also criticizing the austerity policies imposed by Brussels that have increased poverty across the country, as confirmed by the local Caritas network.

Indeed, Caritas Greece in collaboration with Caritas Internationalis and other Catholic charities have been on the frontline in responding to the crisis and in supporting the needs of the poor and the most vulnerable, including migrants in the Aegean islands and in mainland Greece. This work has continued during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Ecumenical relations

Ecumenical relations between the Catholic and the majority Orthodox Church in Greece have made some progress in recent years. An important step forward was St. John Paul IIs Jubilee Pilgrimage in the footsteps of St. Paul the Apostle, in 2001.

It was the first ever visit by a Roman Pontiff in the country. The highlight of that historical event was the Popes request for forgiveness for the Crusade's Sack of Constantinople in 1204 and the signing of a Joint Declaration on the Christian roots of Europe with the Greek Orthodox Primate Christodoulos, on 4 May 2001.

Seeking closer collaboration

Since then, the Holy See and the Autocephalous Church of Greece have seeked closer collaboration in the pastoral field and on practical issues of common interest, especially in the context of the European Union. This was further testified by the Joint Declaration signed by Pope Francis, the Greek Orthodox Primate Ieronymos II and the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, during their visit to the refugee camp of Moria, on the Greek island of Lesbos, on April 16 2016.

In that Declaration, the three Church leaders joined in calling upon the international community to employ every means to ensure that individuals and communities, including Christians, remain in their homelands and enjoy the fundamental right to live in peace and security, while committing firmly and wholeheartedly to intensify their efforts to promote the full unity of all Christian.

More recently, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, reiterated the Holy Sees hope for greater collaboration between the two Churches, especially in the service of charity and in the promotion of Christian values in Greek society, on the occasion of his visit to the country in November 2019.
Lebanese prime minister Najib Mikati was received at the Apostolic Palace on Thursday morning.

Communique of the Holy See Press Office

Pope Francis Thursday morning received in audience the Prime Minister of Lebanon, His Excellency Mr. Najib Mikati, who subsequently met with His Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, accompanied by His Excellency Monsignor Paul Richard Gallagher, Secretary for Relations with States.

During the cordial talks in the Secretariat of State, the historic relations between the Holy See and Lebanon and the important role played by the Catholic Church in the country were emphasised. Reference was made to the current situation that the Lebanese people are experiencing, especially with regard to the political crisis and socio-economic conditions, and the hope that justice, the necessary reforms and the support of the international community will help to restore the fate of the Country of Cedars.

Furthermore, in reiterating the importance of promoting the concept of full citizenship for every Lebanese, the importance of peaceful coexistence was emphasised, so that Lebanon might continue to be a message of peace and fraternity that rises from the Middle East.



(Working translation of the original text in Italian)

Exchange of gifts

A traditional exchange of gifts followed the private meeting between the two leaders. Prime Minister Mikati presented the Pope with a tile from the Greek Melkite Church of Saint Saviour in Beirut. One of the oldest churches in the Lebanese capital, Saint Saviour was badly damaged during the 1975 war; but was fully restored and opened again to parishioners in 1973. The Church was severely damaged again by the explosion of 4 August 2020.

Prime Minister Mikati explains his gift

For his part, Pope Francis offered the Lebanese prime minister a bronze casting of workers in a vineyard, with the inscription, May the fruit of the vine and of human labour become for us the draught of salvation; along with a number of documents published during his papacy.

Exchange of gifts

At the conclusion of the exchange of gifts, the Pope addressed a few words to those present, stating that Lebanon is a country, a message, and also a promise, to strive for.

The Holy Father noted that Lebanon has been through bad and difficult times, and he assured them of his prayers, his closeness and his labour so that a common effort might take shape to help Lebanon rise again. Finally, he recalled the Gospel passage in which Jesus went to Jairus' house and, taking his dead daughter by the hand, said to her: Get up! to which the Pope added a prayer, saying, Lord God, take Lebanon by the hand and say to her: 'Get up!'

Closing the encounter, the Holy Father invited those present to pause for a moment of silent prayer.
Over One Hundred Ships Waiting to Offload Cargo in California

The twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in California have been experiencing record backlogs over the past few months. They are still overwhelmed by the number of ships waiting to unload this month. As of Dec. 6, 123 huge transatlantic ships were waiting to offload their cargo at
Taiwan has formally been invited to Washingtons Summit for Democracy scheduled to be held next month. The island is one of the 109 nations that have been invited to the event. Nations like Egypt, Turkey, Russia, and Communist China have been excluded from the conference.

The summit was proposed by President Joe Biden in February when he pledged to make America the leader against authoritarian forces. The virtual event, scheduled to be held over two days between Dec. 9 and 10, is aimed at preventing democracy from weakening as well as protecting freedoms and rights internationally.

According to the foreign ministry of the Republic of China (Taiwans formal name), the island will be represented by its de facto ambassador in Washington, Hsiao Bi-Khim, and Digital Minister Audrey Tang.

Our countrys invitation to participate in the Summit for Democracy is an affirmation of Taiwans efforts to promote the values of democracy and human rights over the years, the ministry stated.

Xavier Chang, the spokesperson for Taiwans presidential office, thanked Biden for the invitation. Chang promised that the island would be a force for good in the international community. Taipei will cooperate firmly with like-minded nations to safeguard democracy, human rights, and freedom as well as protect regional stability and peace, Chang added.

Beijing reacted sharply against the invitation. The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) foreign ministry said that it was firmly opposed to Taiwans invitation since the island is an inalienable part of Chinese territory.

Beijing sees Taiwan as a wayward province that must be brought under its control by the use of force if necessary. The communist regime warned that Washington was making a mistake by sending the invitation.

Zhu Fenglian, the spokeswoman for the PRC Taiwan Affairs Office, insisted that the U.S. stick to the One China principle and stressed that Beijing opposes any official interaction between Taiwan and the United States.

US actions only go to show democracy is just a cover and a tool for it to advance its geopolitical objectives, oppress other countries, divide the world and serve its own interests, Fenglian told reporters.

In August, the Chinese state-backed media outlet the Global Times warned Washington against inviting Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen to the summit. There would be severe escalation if Tsai participates in the summit, the outlet warned.

Im really not sure if Beijings bottom line is simply that Tsai not be allowed to participate But she wont be invited, so maybe they can tell their domestic audience that the US backed down in the face of Chinese pressure, Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told The Guardian.

Some have found flaws with the summit.

In an article for The Epoch Times, Anders Corr, principal at Corr Analytics Inc, stated that the summit has not invited some authoritarian nations that have been less aggressive territorially and are good allies of the United States. Corr warns that the exclusion of such nations is a diplomatic snub that makes them vulnerable to Beijings manipulation.

Some countries friendly with the U.S. that have been excluded from the summit include Thailand and Singapore, which are run by a monarch and a de facto single party system, respectively.

We need to recognize a continuum of authoritarianism, from better authoritarians who side with the worlds market democracies, and should be rewarded and encouraged for doing so, to worse ones, who side with Beijing. The worse the dictator, the more they should be excluded from all the benefits and privileges of respected membership in the international system, Corr states.
Former President Donald Trump met with Kyle Rittenhouse and his mother at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday after the young man was found not guilty on two counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, and two counts of reckless endangerment, after shooting three men in self defense during violent rioting in Kenosha, Wisconsin in August 2020.

In an interview on Monday with Fox Newss Sean Hannity Trump said, Really a nice young man. What he went through  he shouldve, that was prosecutorial misconduct. He should not have had to suffer through a trial for that. He was going to be dead. If he didnt pull that trigger, that guy that put the gun to his head, in one quarter of a second, he was going to pull the trigger  Kyle wouldve been dead.

Trumps comments came after an hour-long interview on Tucker Carlsons Monday night show featuring Rittenhouse.

A Wisconsin jury acquitted Rittenhouse last week after a controversial trial that saw the prosecution berated, multiple times, by Judge Bruce Schroeder for what many have characterized as prosecutorial misconduct.

In the most startling example of prosecutorial misconduct the states assistant district attorney, Thomas Binger, was reprimanded for questioning Rittenhouses Miranda-protected post-arrest silence.

I was astonished when you began your examination by commenting on the defendants post-arrest silence, the judge said. Thats basic law. Its been basic law in this country for decades, adding, I dont know what youre up to.

KENOSHA, WISCONSIN  NOV.08: Kyle Rittenhouse looks back before his trial starts at the Kenosha County Courthouse on Nov. 8, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Image: Sean Krajacic-Pool/Getty Images)

What Trump and Rittenhouse have in common

At first glance one would think that Rittenhouse, a young man from Illinois with dreams of becoming an EMT, would not have much in common with the former president until one considers how both of them were treated by the corporate media.

Rittenhouse may very well have grounds for multiple defamation lawsuits targeting numerous corporate media outlets and even the sitting U.S. president, Joe Biden.

For months, the running narrative broadcast by numerous corporate media outlets was that Rittenhouse was a violent white supremacist who crossed state lines with an illegal assualt rifle and inserted himself into the chaos in Kenosha looking for trouble were he gunned down three innocent men.

The truth of the matter, as demonstrated in Rittenhouses trial, was much different. The trial was more an indictment of the corporate medias misinformation peddling than anything else.

What was discovered was that Rittenhouse inserted himself into the chaos in an attempt to protect his community and his livelihood after authorities stood down in the face of violent destructive rioters. He was there affording medical care to wounded rioters and struggling to extinguish fires set by the mob when he was targeted.

It was later discovered that some of the men targeting him had lengthy criminal records with one of them having just been released from prison after serving time for brutally sexually exploiting minors.

The issue of race was inserted into the incident despite race not being a factor. All three men shot by Rittenhouse were white but that did not stop some media outlets from fanning the flames of racial tension.

The Independent ran a story falsely stating that Rittenhouse had shot three black men. Speculation as to why the news organization would publish such blatant inaccuracies range from lazy journalism to the medias attempt to stir up more racial tension in the U.S..

A depressing example of how the British media misreported the Kyle Rittenhouse trial as badly as the US media. This is the @Independent's report on the verdict.



'Teenager who shot three black men' pic.twitter.com/VmSncAI417  Stephen Daisley (@JournoStephen) November 19, 2021

The idea that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist took hold after president Joe Biden tweeted a video condemning white supremacy featuring an image of Rittenhouse.

This led Kyles mother, Wendy Rittenhouse, to blast the White House claiming that the president defamed her son. President Biden dont know my son whatsoever, and hes not a white supremacist. Hes not a racist. And [Biden] did that for the votes, she told Fox News Sean Hannity in an interview.

To date the tweet in question remains published.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said Saturday that U.S. airstrikes targeting al-Shabab in Somalia over the past few days were undertaken because Somali forces are intensifying their offensive against the al-Qaida-affiliated terror group.

Most recently whats happened is our partner forces have increased their op[erational] tempo, and they have been pushing back on al-Shabab in a more significant way, Austin told reporters traveling with him to Eielson Air Force Base in Alaska.

The result of that is some engagements that were fairly intense, and we conducted those strikes to support our partner forces, he added.

U.S. Africa Command targeted al-Shabab with two airstrikes on July 20 and July 23, following a nearly six-month hiatus that began when President Joe Biden took office.

The Somali military has been embroiled in a fierce struggle on the ground with al-Shabab in Galmudug state, the region targeted in both U.S. strikes.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told VOA and other reporters traveling aboard a U.S. military aircraft Friday that U.S. troops were not on the ground with Somali forces during the strikes but were conducting a remote advise-and-assist mission.

Further information was not provided because of "operational security."

The U.S. military carried out 63 airstrikes against al-Shabab in 2019 and 53 airstrikes last year.

Another seven airstrikes were launched in the first 2 weeks of 2021, before former U.S. President Donald Trump left office.

U.S. officials explained the slowdown by citing a Biden administration review of the militarys airstrike policy. Senior Somali officials concerned with the lack of strikes had warned it would allow al-Shabab to come out of hiding.

Late last month, Africa Commands commander, General Stephen Townsend, told a virtual defense forum that the spread of terrorism across Africa "has continued relatively unabated, singling out al-Shabab as a major concern.

"We see threats in Somalia to regional stability," he said. "We even see threats there to the U.S. homeland."
Political leaders in Somalia agreed Thursday on a framework for long-delayed national elections, hoping to avert a crisis that could push the fragile Horn of Africa country into political violence.

The agreement signed by Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble and the leaders of five regional states laid out a path to parliamentary elections to begin within 60 days.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, following four days of talks in Mogadishu, Roble said the government is committed to implementing the agreement.

My government is reassuring to the countrys political stakeholders and to the Somali people that my government will hold free and fair indirect elections in line with this agreement, Roble said.

Of course, we are all responsible to ensure women get their 30% quota, he added.

Roble has urged all state leaders to facilitate and implement the election framework.

Afyare Abdi Elmi, a professor of international affairs at Qatar University, said the agreement brings hope to Somalia.

The leaders have solved and successfully fixed all the outstanding issues that delayed elections, including the composition of electoral and dispute resolution commissions and election procedures for Somaliland and Gedo regions and it is a promising political future for Somalia, said Elmi.

Speaking on behalf of the international community members present at the ceremony, James Swan, the U.N. special representative for Somalia, praised the deal.

The United Nations and Somalias international partners present here welcome the agreement, Swan said. We pay tribute to the Somali- led and Somali-owned process that produced this consensus, Swan said.

The agreement comes after four days of heated talks in Mogadishu between the prime minister, representing the federal government, and the leaders of five federal member regional states and the administration of Mogadishu. It refurbished the agreement reached by the same leaders in September last year.

A walk back from the Brink

Somalia was scheduled to hold elections last year, but the polls never happened due to complications, political disputes, and continuous security threats by al-Shabab militants.

Talks for holding elections between the federal government and regional leaders began in March, but broke down in early April, as the two houses of parliament clashed on the status of President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, known popularly as Farmajo.

Farmajos term had expired in February, but the lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly to extend his term by two years, a move that sparked widespread opposition led by two former presidents and renowned political figures.

Mobilization of clan militias began, exposing divisions within Somali security forces, and Mogadishu witnessed violent clashes on April 25. The crisis raised fears that militant group al-Shabab could exploit a security vacuum if state forces split along clan lines and turned on each other.

Local and international pressure forced Farmajo to ask the lawmakers to cancel the presidential term extension, leading to a consultative national meeting led by the Somali prime minister.

This agreement has saved the country from easily slipping into deadly chaos, said the president of Puntland state, Said Abdullahi Deni, one of the signatories of Thursdays agreement.

Briefing the U.N. Security Council on Somalia Wednesday, Swan warned that without a political consensus, Somalias political gains would be in danger.

Without such an agreement, and the goodwill and sincerity to implement it, the gains which have been made in recent years may be reversed, risking further instability and insecurity, said Swan. Somalia has come back from the brink of this worst-case scenario.


Somalia President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed says he will no longer pursue a two-year extension of his presidential term, giving in to internal and international pressure to back away from a controversial resolution on the extension passed by the Lower House of Parliament.

In a televised address, Mohamed said he will appear before the Lower House of Parliament on Saturday to ask the lawmakers to restore last years agreement between the federal government and the leaders of five federal member states and the governor of Mogadishu.

The agreement known as the September 17 agreement called for the election of federal lawmakers through indirect elections. The lawmakers would then elect the president. The Lower House of Parliament invalidated that agreement on April 12, giving the executive and legislative branches two more years to prepare popular elections. Mohamed signed the resolution into law on April 13. The president's term expired on February 8, 2021, while the parliament's mandate exhausted on December 27, 2020.

I shall on Saturday, appear before House of the People of our Republic to restore the September 17 process between Federal Government and Federal Member States, he said.

If the parliament approves the presidents request, it will reverse the two-year extension.

The government sees the only viable path is through dialogue, convincing each other and compromise, and a return to the table to compete the September 17 agreement, he said.

Mohamed urged the signatories of the September 17 agreement for immediate talks to discuss the way forward towards the implementation of the agreement without conditions.

The Somali leader came under pressure on Tuesday when two federal members states allied with him broke ranks and opposed the term extension. In a joint statement, Galmudug and Hirshabelle states ruled out any kind of term extension and instead supported elections based on the September 17 agreement.

Prime Minister Mohamed Hussein Roble issued a statement shortly after endorsing the joint statement issued by the two federal member states. Roble urged all stakeholders to prepare for elections based on the implementation of September 17 agreement.

I would like to welcome the press statements made by Galmudug and Hirshabelle Federal Member States, Roble said in the statement. I call on the other states of Puntland, Jubaland and Southwest and Banadir region to fully commit to a peace process in our efforts to hold a free and inclusive election.

In a call directed at armed security forces who split and sided with either the federal government or the opposition, Roble urged them to pull back to their locations and barracks, while urging opposition leaders to cease all hostilities and actions that could undermine stability.

Foreign diplomats in Mogadishu who already strongly opposed the term extension expressed relief after the prime minister took the decision to essentially oppose extension and support dialogue based on the previous agreement.

Earlier, the United States embassy in Mogadishu applauded the decision of the two federal member states to oppose the term extension and urged President Mohamed to accept the clear path to dialogue and peace.

The European Union Ambassador to Somalia Nicolas Berlanga also threw his support behind the prime minister and the two federal states.

The EU praises the courage and sense of concertation by PM Roble and FMS proposing a consensus-based way forward towards fast elections and urge others to follow the path to previous commitments, Berlanga wrote. Violence has no place in Somalia and dialogue is the only way forward.

This latest political shift comes two days after clashes erupted in the capital, Mogadishu, between soldiers backing the federal government and forces supporting the opposition.

Mogadishu has been calm but tense since Monday, forcing civilians to flee from volatile districts to safer ones within Mogadishu and the outskirts. Forces from the two sides erected roadblocks and took positions in key junctions close to the presidential palace, the arterial Maka Al-Mukarama road and K-4 junction near the Mogadishu airport.

Somali security experts blamed the political stalemate for the split of the fragile army, which has been undergoing rebuilding, with training and mentoring from number of countries including the United States and Turkey.

There has been prolonged political stalemate between the Somalia leaders, this unfortunately created uncertainty for not only the Somali people, but for the Somali security forces, said Jihan Abdullahi Hassan, a former advisor to the Ministry of Defense and Chief of Defense Forces who admitted the army is split.

The incident of the 25th April 2021 showcases a split Somali security forces which is unfortunate since the security forces should not be involved in politics.

Hassan warned that if the political dispute is not quickly resolved, it will undo any progress made in recent years and will dismantle the security forces.

(It) will be difficult for any administration to resolve, she said.

The International community also warned the fragmentation will detract the army from fighting the radical Muslim insurgency group, al-Shabab.

Use of security forces for pursuit of political objectives is unacceptable, a statement released by the United Nations Mission for Somalia on behalf of partners read.

Hassan said the standoff between security forces in Mogadishu indicates that the fight against al-Shabab is not a current priority. She said security forces vacated frontlines, which will create a security vacuum.

The unity of our security forces will be key in combating the threat al-Shabab poses, she said.
The United States military has confirmed that it carried out another airstrike against al-Shabab militants, its third in less than two weeks.



Sundays strike was in support of Somali government forces in the vicinity of Qeycad, in the central Galmudug state, according to the U.S. military.



The Somali government earlier reported the strike was in an area where federal and U.S.-trained forces were fighting the militants. There was no word on whether militants were injured or killed.



This is another major blow to al-Shababs means to wage war against the Somali people, a statement by the Information Ministry of Somalia said.



The airstrikes destroyed a large al-Shabab firing position engaging Danab and SNA (Somali National Army) forces as they approached, the statement added.



Danab or lightning are Somali commandos trained by the U.S.



Both the U.S. and Somali government said there were no civilian casualties.



Al-Shabab, however, said in a statement published online that government forces, supported by the United States, did not succeed in Sundays fighting.



Previous airstrikes took place July 20 and 23 in the same vicinity.



These are the first airstrikes against al-Shabab in Somalia since U.S. President Joe Biden took office in January.


At least 27 migrants drowned Wednesday after their inflatable dinghy capsized as they tried to cross the English Channel from France.

French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 34 people were aboard the boat. Two were rescued and one is missing, according to Reuters, in the worst recorded tragedy involving migrants between the two countries.

Without explanation, the Interior Ministry later revised the initial death toll to 27, according to Agence France-Presse. The nationality of the migrants was not immediately clear.

Darmanin said the survivors are suffering from hypothermia.

"It is a catastrophe for France, for Europe, for humanity, to see these people who are at the mercy of smugglers perish at sea," he said, according to Reuters.

Darmanin said in a tweet that smugglers are responsible.

"The responsibility for this tragedy is above all that of the smugglers, who endanger the lives of men, women and children without any scruples," he wrote.

French police have arrested four people suspected of some involvement in the drownings and have opened a manslaughter investigation.

French Prime Minister Jean Castex echoed Darmanin's sentiments.

"My thoughts are with the many missing and injured, victims of criminal smugglers who exploit their distress and injury," he said, according to the BBC.

French President Emmanuel Macron called on European governments to better address migrant movement across the channel, according to The Washington Post.

"France will not let the Channel become a cemetery," Macron said in a statement.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson chaired an emergency meeting Wednesday on the tragedy.

"My thoughts and sympathies are with the victims and their families, and it is an appalling thing that they have suffered. But this disaster underscores how dangerous it is to cross the channel in this way," he said, according to Reuters.

Johnson added that more needed to be done to break up human-trafficking gangs, which he said were "literally getting away with murder."

The channel is a common crossing for migrants, who have been increasingly using it to reach Britain from France.

The BBC reported that as of Monday, the number of migrants who have reached the United Kingdom by boat in 2021 was three times greater than the 2020 total. Earlier this month, more than 1,000 migrants arrived in a single day.

The channel is also one of the world's busiest shipping lanes, and dinghies can capsize in its strong currents.

French police have succeeded in preventing more crossings in recent years but have only partially mitigated the waves of migrants trying to reach Britain, according to Reuters.

The continued flow of migrants across the channel, and how to address it, has been a source of tension between Britain and France.

Some information for this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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NASA tests an asteroid-assaulting system to protect planet Earth. Plus, Japanese tourists ready for the trip of a lifetime, and a look at the historic, sky-darkening lunar eclipse. VOAs Arash Arabasadi brings us the Week in Space
Australia on Wednesday said it intends to add far-right extremist group The Base and the entirety of the Lebanese group Hezbollah to its list of outlawed terrorist organizations as national security services grapple with a surge in neo-Nazi cells and other ideologically motivated extremists.

The Base, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group formed in the United States in 2018, would become only the second far-right group to be designated a terrorist organization in Australia after the British-based Sonnenkrieg Division was listed in August, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said.

The remaining 25 terrorist organizations on Australia's list are Islamist groups, including Hezbollah's External Security Organization, which was designated under Australia's Criminal Code in 2003.

Including all Hezbollah entities as terrorist organizations would make being a member of or supporting those entities a criminal offense.

Andrews said terrorist organizations were watching as Australia lifted border and pandemic restrictions while allowing its vaccinated citizens to present themselves as potential targets by gathering in greater numbers.

"We know there is a threat of terrorism here in Australia and that there is a threat of terrorism right across the world," Andrews said. "We have recently witnessed that in both the United Kingdom and in New Zealand."

She was referring to Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 worshippers at two New Zealand mosques in 2019.

The following year, a major report found New Zealand's intelligence agencies had been far too focused on the threat posed by Islamic extremism at the expense of other threats including white supremacism.

White supremacists organizing

Australia's counter-terror intelligence chief Mike Burgess warned in August that Australians as young as 16 were being radicalized to support white supremacy groups, and that half of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization's most important domestic anti-terrorism cases now involve neo-Nazi cells and other ideologically motivated groups.

Burgess, director-general of ASIO, said the shift in the national security threat away from religiously motivated terrorism was being fueled by disinformation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and other global events.

Andrews said listing The Base  which is active in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia  and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations brought Australia into line with international partners including the U.S., Canada and Britain.

She said her decision to list the two organizations was not taken lightly. The threats posed by both groups are real and credible, she said.

She described the numbers of Hezbollah and The Base supporters in Australia as "fluid."

"I have sufficient information in front of me to be concerned and to understand that The Base meets the threshold for listing as a terrorist organization," Andrews said.

"We will look closely at their membership, and we will take action once they are fully listed under the Criminal Code," she added.

Andrews wrote to state and territory governments to consult on the two proposed listings. She said she aimed to finalize the listings as soon as possible.

Lebanese Ambassador to Australia Milad Raad was not immediately available for comment.

Hezbollah responds

Hezbollah condemned Australia's decision as "servile submission to American and Zionist dictations" and "blind engagement in the service of Israel's policies based on terrorism, killing and massacres."

A Hezbollah statement said similar decisions of Western governments indicate bias against issues of concern to the people of the Middle East who are defending their right to liberty and independence.

Israel praised Australia's decision to include Hezbollah in the designations.

"Australia is a close friend of Israel in the global fight against terrorism," said Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, saying there is no distinction between the military and political wings of Hezbollah.

"I call on additional countries and the European Union to join this pressure on Hezbollah, to outlaw its activities, and to recognize the entirety of the organization as a terrorist organization," he said.

Israel and Hezbollah are bitter enemies that fought a monthlong war in 2006. Israel considers the Iranian-backed group a major security threat, with an estimated arsenal of more than 130,000 rockets and missiles pointed at Israel.
Three Burkina Faso soldiers died and 11 militants were killed during an attack on the troops Wednesday, the army said, amid worsening insecurity that has sparked anti-government protests.

The attack took place against an army detachment in Thiou in the Yatenga Region, the army said in a statement Thursday.

"Eleven terrorists were neutralized. However, three soldiers fell during combat and dozens were wounded," it said.

The attack by suspected Islamist militants was the latest of three since November 14 that have killed more than 60 security forces and more than a dozen civilians, sparking nationwide anger and protests, with calls for President Roch Marc Kabore to resign.

Opponents urged people to stage fresh protests Saturday against the government's inability to contain a four-year insurgency by militants linked to al-Qaida and Islamic State that has killed thousands and displaced upward of a million people.

Ouagadougou's mayor issued a statement Wednesday saying no protests had been authorized and asking police to take necessary measures to stop illegal demonstrations.

The education ministry said schools would be shut nationwide on Friday and Saturday for the safety of students and teachers, given the calls for protests.

The U.N. special representative for West Africa and the Sahel said Thursday that the situation in Burkina Faso was concerning, particularly in a region that has seen three military takeovers since the start of the year.

"I appeal to the wisdom of civil society and other actors to prevent a country like Burkina ... from falling into a crisis like what is happening elsewhere," Mahamat Saleh Annadif told a news conference.

Some of the anger in Burkina Faso last week was directed against former colonial power France, which has deployed thousands of soldiers in the West Africa Sahel region to combat the militants.

Hundreds of people in the city of Kaya massed over the weekend to block a convoy of French logistics and armored vehicles on its way to neighboring Niger. The convoy has still not been able to leave Burkina Faso.
The United States has decided to almost double the duties on Canadian softwood lumber from most producers to 17.9%, Canadian Trade Minister Mary Ng said on Wednesday, adding that Canada is "extremely disappointed."

The current rate for most companies is about 9%.

Ng said that the U.S. Department of Commerce on Wednesday issued the final results of the second administrative reviews of its anti-dumping and countervailing duty orders regarding certain softwood lumber products from Canada.

Canada is extremely disappointed that the United States has decided to increase the unfair duties it is imposing on Canadian softwood lumber from most producers to 17.9%," Ng said in a statement. "Canada calls on the United States to cease imposing these unwarranted duties on Canadian softwood lumber products."

The U.S. Commerce Department and the U.S. Trade Representative's office did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday night. Earlier this year, Washington announced plans to double the duties on imports of Canadian lumber and requested a dispute panel on Canada's dairy import quotas.

Canada's softwood lumber industry is a key component of the country's forestry sector, which contributed more than $25 billion to the nation's gross domestic product in 2020 and employed nearly 185,000 workers. The British Columbia Lumber Trade Council also expressed disappointment.

Ng said that "following completion of any legal challenges under the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement's (CUSMA) Chapter 10 or in U.S. courts, these new anti-dumping and countervailing duty rates will apply retroactively to softwood lumber exports to the United States from companies that were subject to the second administrative reviews."

"These unjustified duties harm Canadian communities, businesses, and workers," she said, adding: "They are also a tax on U.S. consumers."
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Prince Edward Island, made famous globally by the Anne of Green Gables novels, is the smallest province in Canada. In recent years, it has been attracting immigrants from around the world. Chad Ingraham explains why.
Beijing's pledge this week to avoid dominance in the South China Sea comes too late to convince smaller Southeast Asian claimants to the strategic waterway after years of Chinese expansion, experts say.

President Xi Jinping made the pledge Monday at a virtual summit marking the 30th anniversary of ASEAN-China dialogue. He told leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations that Beijing would avoid "bullying" smaller countries over their competing claims to the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea.

China's representation at ASEAN events typically falls to Premier Li Keqiang, but this time, Xi addressed the Southeast Asian countries and said "China will never seek hegemony, still less bully smaller countries," according to a Tuesday report by Beijing's state-run China Daily website.

China vies with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam for sovereignty over parts of the resource-rich sea, which stretches from Hong Kong to Borneo. The Chinese government has conducted landfilling of tiny islets in the sea, in some cases for military use, alarming the other countries.

The Chinese navy, coast guard as well as its fishing fleets often antagonize other claimants, all militarily weaker than China, by passing through the disputed maritime tracts prized for fisheries and subterranean fossil fuel reserves.

Southeast Asia reaction

Xi's comments have been met with skepticism among ASEAN member states because Southeast Asian leaders have heard similar language before, said Jay Batongbacal, international maritime affairs professor at the University of the Philippines in Quezon City.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam are members of ASEAN, which negotiates as a bloc over external trade and security matters, including South China Sea conduct.

"The rest of the region, of course, won't take it at face value," Batongbacal said, referring especially to Southeast Asia. "It's the actions of China that raise these concerns, even though China has been giving that kind of assurance even before."

China has no intention of quitting its positions in the sea, said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, in Hawaii. Xi had told former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015 that China would not militarize the sea but did anyway, Vuving said.

Vietnam would not trust China's latest comments, he said, while the Philippines and Indonesia will find it suspicious. Indonesia does not vie with China over islets, but the two sides have disagreed over sea lanes.

Vietnam has sparred with China over disputed islands since the 1970s, leading to deadly clashes in 1974 and 1988. Malaysia and the Philippines have spoken out over the past year.

Earlier this month, Chinese coast guard vessels blocked Philippine resupply boats bound for Second Thomas Shoal, a Philippine-occupied atoll, and fired water cannons.

"We abhor the recent event in the Ayungin Shoal and view with grave concern other similar developments," Duterte said Monday during his virtual participation in the ASEAN summit. "This does not speak well of the relations between our nations and our partnership."

"The problem is that message [from China] becomes more laughable to a lot of its neighbors with every passing year," said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative under the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"You look at the South China Sea, Taiwan Strait, the border with India," Poling said, referring to potential military flash points involving Beijing. "It's getting harder for the ASEAN members who aren't involved in the disputes to still believe this Chinese line."

Why Xi spoke out

Regional experts like Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore's public policy school, say that having Xi take the unusual step of personally addressing the fraught issue of hegemony in the South China Sea before ASEAN member states was "the logical thing to do" for a burgeoning global power.

"When you're a small country and you border with a big country, you get nervous when that big country grows very big, so I guess for the past 30 years, this is the utmost question on the minds of leaders of ASEAN," Araral said. China has the world's third strongest armed forces after the United States and Russia.

"So, when [fellow ASEAN leaders] have this opportunity to meet with President Xi Jinping, they probably expect him to make those assurances," he said.

Vuving of the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, however, said Xi may have made his hegemony comment in case Southeast Asian governments are wondering whether Xi's recent meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden  or the AUKUS military technology sharing deal  could have altered China's geopolitical posture in the region.

AUKUS, a security deal between the United States, Britain and Australia designed to contain China's expansion, is opposed by Beijing.

Between the AUKUS rollout and last week's China -U.S. virtual bilateral, Vuving speculated that the Chinese may have "felt that they need to reassure their Southeast Asian neighbors a little bit."

While China is expected to "spread its sphere of influence" throughout the region without risking trade through any blockage of sea lanes, Araral said, Beijing might also try to displace the influence of Washington, which maintains a regular naval presence and sells arms in the region.

Multiple U.S. administrations have declared their support for a "free and open Indo-Pacific," which views "Beijing's claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea [as] completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them."

ASEAN members without South China Sea claims are Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand.
Al-Shabab terrorists in Somalia have claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a U.N. convoy in the capital, Mogadishu, Thursday during morning rush hour that killed at least eight people and wounded 17.

An Al-Shabab spokesman told Reuters news agency the suicide car bombing Thursday was aimed at a U.N. security convoy.

It wasnt immediately clear if any UN staff were among the casualties.

But Somali police spokesman Abdifatah Aden Hassan confirmed the U.N. convoy was the target.

Hassan told state media Radio Mogadishu that the attack was near several schools. The Associated Press reported several students among the victims.

Hassan said they were limited as schools were already on weekend break.

He said most casualties were small business owners and passersby in the area, since there were no lessons for students today.

At least one school appeared damaged by the blast, with social media images showing a blown-out classroom and debris scattered across desks.

The U.S. embassy in Mogadishu strongly condemned the attack in a Tweet, saying the people of Somalia deserve to live without fear of attack.

The Islamist militant Al-Shabab group carries out frequent attacks in Somalia with the aim of overthrowing the government.
An Egyptian court sentenced to death by hanging 22 militants Thursday for 54 attacks, including the attempted assassination of a former interior minister, a judicial source told AFP.

The men were found guilty of committing 54 "terrorist operations" across Egypt, including the murder of a senior police officer, as well as trying to kill former interior minister Mohamed Ibrahim.

Executions in Egypt for civilians are carried out by hanging. Those sentenced to death include a former police officer, and the verdicts cannot be appealed.

The 22 convicted were found guilty of being members of the Ansar Beit al-Maqdis group, which pledged its allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2014.

The Court of Cassation, Egypt's highest appeals court, also upheld prison sentences of 118 others in the same case, ranging from terms of several years to life imprisonment.

Egypt has for years been fighting an insurgency in North Sinai that escalated after the army's 2013 ouster of Mohamed Morsi, Egypts first democratically elected president.

In February 2018, the army and police launched a nationwide operation against militants focused on North Sinai.

About 1,073 suspected militants and dozens of security personnel have been killed since the start of operations, according to official figures.

Earlier this month, Egypt agreed with Israel to boost its troop numbers around the border town of Rafah in order to quell IS militants.

Ansar Beit al-Maqdis fighters in Sinai were led by Hisham al-Ashmawy, an ex-special forces officer in the Egyptian army.

Ashmawy  once dubbed Egypt's "most wanted man"  split from the militants after they switched allegiance from al-Qaida to the Islamic State group.



In 2018, Ashmawy was captured in the eastern Libya city of Derna and extradited to Cairo. He had been on trial with the 22 men sentenced Thursday, but already had been found guilty, and was executed in March 2020.

Egypt recorded the third most executions in the world  behind China and Iran, according to Amnesty International. In 2020, Egyptian authorities executed at least 107 people, Amnesty said.
Ethiopia's government has asked the United States to stop spreading what it considers falsehoods against the country, the state minister of communication Kebede Dessisa said Thursday, after the State Department issued an alert about potential "terrorist attacks."

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's government and rebellious forces from the Tigray region in the north have been fighting for more than a year, in a conflict that has killed thousands and displaced millions in Africa's second most populous nation.

This week, the Irish government said Ethiopia had expelled four of six Irish diplomats from the country because of Ireland's stance on the conflict. Spokespeople for the Ethiopian government also have warned against unnamed external threats and repeatedly criticized Western governments for what they say is inaccurate coverage of the war.

Kebede, the state minister of communication, was quoted by state broadcaster EBC as telling a news conference the U.S. government should refrain from disseminating "shameful fake news and defamation regarding Ethiopia."

He referred to a statement Wednesday on Twitter by the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa that urged its citizens to maintain a high level of vigilance due to "the ongoing possibility of terrorist attacks in Ethiopia."

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Ethiopians lied in the capital to support the government, where they denounced the United States for alleged interference in Ethiopia's internal affairs. Washington has urged its citizens to leave Ethiopia immediately while the security situation still permits.

On Thursday, dozens of protesters took their anger to the U.S. Embassy in the city, where they displayed banners reading "Interference is Undemocratic" and "Truth Wins."

Asked for comment, a U.S. Embassy official said the safety of U.S. citizens abroad is one of the highest priorities of the State Department, adding: "We continue to urge U.S. citizens in Ethiopia to depart now using commercially available flight options."

Tigrayan forces and their allies have threatened to march on the capital Addis Ababa. They also have been fighting fiercely to try to cut a transport corridor linking landlocked Ethiopia with the region's main port Djibouti.

On Tuesday, U.S. Special Envoy Jeffrey Feltman warned of an "alarming" increase in military operations and said both Abiy and the Tigrayan forces seem to believe they are on the cusp of military victory.
The European Union drug regulator Thursday approved the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for children between the ages of five and 11, opening the way for them to be given a first shot as the region battles surging infections.



The vaccine, which is called Comirnaty, will be given in two doses of 10 micrograms three weeks apart as an injection in the upper arm, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) recommended. Adult doses contain 30 micrograms.



"The benefits of Comirnaty in children aged 5 to 11 outweigh the risks, particularly in those with conditions that increase the risk of severe COVID-19," the EMA said.



The companies have said their vaccine showed 90.7% efficacy against the coronavirus in a clinical trial of children aged 5 to 11.



Pfizer-BioNTech's vaccine has been approved for European Union use in teenagers between 12 and 17 years old since May. While final approval is up to the European Commission, it typically follows EMA recommendations.



It is not clear when countries may start rolling out the shots among younger children. Earlier this week, outgoing German health minister Jens Spahn said that EU-wide deliveries of the low-dose pediatric version would only begin on December 20.



The bloc joins a growing number of countries, including the United States, Canada, Israel, China and Saudi Arabia, which have cleared vaccines for children in the 5-11 year age group and younger.



Tens of millions of children in this age group will be eligible for the shot in the EU.



For pediatric shots, the U.S. regulator authorized a new version of the vaccine, which uses a new buffer and allows them to be stored in refrigerators for up to 10 weeks.




The families of victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, announced Monday that they had reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the federal government, claiming the FBI failed to stop the shooting despite knowing the shooter's intentions.

Seventeen were killed and 17 were wounded in the shooting.

While the amount of the settlement was confidential, the Miami Herald reported it to be $127.5 million for the 40 plaintiffs.

"It has been an honor to represent the Parkland families who, through their immeasurable grief, have devoted themselves to making the world a safer place," lead attorney Kristina Infante said in a statement. "Although no resolution could ever restore what the Parkland families lost, this settlement marks an important step toward justice."

"None of this feels good," said Fred Guttenberg, the father of one of the victims and a plaintiff in the lawsuit, to the Sun Sentinel newspaper in Fort Lauderdale. "It brings us one step closer to justice and putting the legal realities of what happened to our families behind us."

Weeks before the shooting, the FBI received a tip from an anonymous caller saying the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, bought guns and was planning to "slip into a school and start shooting the place up."

"I know he's going to explode," the caller told the FBI.

The information was never passed on to the FBI's South Florida office, and officials never questioned Cruz, who had been expelled from the high school a year prior.

Cruz, now 23, pleaded guilty to 17 counts of first-degree murder and likely will be sentenced to death or life in prison when a penalty trial is held, starting in January.

Last month, families settled a case with the Broward County school district for $25 million.
Determined to reclaim Thanksgiving traditions that were put on pause last year by the pandemic, millions of Americans will be loading up their cars or piling onto planes to gather again with friends and family.

The number of air travelers this week is expected to approach or exceed pre-pandemic levels, and auto club AAA predicts that 48.3 million people will travel at least 80 kilometers from home over the holiday period, an increase of nearly 4 million over last year despite sharply higher gasoline prices.

Many feel emboldened by the fact that nearly 200 million Americans are now fully vaccinated. But it also means brushing aside concerns about a resurgent virus at a time when the U.S. is now averaging nearly 100,000 new infections a day and hospitals in Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado and Arizona are seeing alarming increases in patients.

The seven-day daily average of new reported cases is up nearly 30% in the last two weeks through Tuesday, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says unvaccinated people should not travel, although it is unclear whether that recommendation is having any effect.

More than 2.2 million travelers streamed through airport checkpoints last Friday, the busiest day since the pandemic devastated travel early last year. From Friday through Tuesday, the number of people flying in the U.S. was more than double the same days last year and less than 9% lower than the same days in 2019.

At Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, Christian Titus was heading to visit extended family in Canada. Titus says he's spent much of the pandemic inside but is willing to risk flying on a crowded airplane because he misses being around his family. He got a booster shot to increase his protection.

"My mental health does better by being around my family during these times," he said. "Yeah, it's dangerous. But you love these people, so you do what you can to stay safe around them."

For their part, airlines are hoping to avoid a repeat of the massive flight cancellations  more than 2,300 apiece  that dogged Southwest and American Airlines at different times last month.

The breakdowns started with bad weather in one part of the country and spun out of control. In the past, airlines had enough pilots, flight attendants and other workers to recover from many disruptions within a day or two. They are finding it harder to bounce back now, however, because they are stretched thin after pushing thousands of employees to quit when travel collapsed last year.

American, Southwest, Delta and United have all been hiring lately, which gives the airlines and industry observers hope that flights will stay on track this week.

The airlines have little margin for error right now. American expected to fill more than 90% of its seats with paying customers on Tuesday. That's a throwback to holiday travel before the pandemic.

By late afternoon Wednesday on the East Coast, airlines in the U.S. had canceled fewer than 100 flights, an unusually low number, according to FlightAware. The Federal Aviation Administration reported very few airports affected by significant delays.

For holiday travelers going by car, the biggest pain is likely to be higher prices at the pump. The nationwide average for gasoline on Tuesday was $3.40 a gallon, according to AAA, up more than 60% from last Thanksgiving.

Those prices could be one of several factors that will discourage some holiday travelers. In a survey conducted by Gasbuddy, which tracks pump prices, about half of the app users who responded said high prices will affect their travel plans this week. About two in five said they aren't making as many trips for a variety of reasons.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered 50 million barrels of oil released from America's strategic reserve to help bring down energy costs, in coordination with other major energy consuming nations.

The price at the pump was a bit of a shock to Tye Reedy, who flew into California from Tennessee and borrowed his friend's truck for some sightseeing. Gas was running $5 a gallon at the Chevron in Alameda, and it cost $100 to fill up the truck.

"We did not travel last year because of COVID restrictions and all," Reedy said. "We're confident enough ... with the vaccine and where things are now with the virus that, you know, we felt comfortable traveling."
A gas leak in a Siberian coal mine killed at least 52 people on Thursday, Russian news agencies said, including six rescuers who were sent down to try to bring out dozens of men in what was one of Russia's worst mining disasters since Soviet times.

The regional Investigative Committee said three people, including the director of the Listvyazhnaya mine and his deputy, had been arrested on suspicion of violating industrial safety rules.

It said miners had suffocated when a ventilation shaft became filled with gas. State television said prosecutors believed there had been a methane explosion.

The dead comprised 11 miners already confirmed killed, 35 who had been reported missing, and the six rescue workers.

Dozens of people were treated in hospital, at least some of them for smoke inhalation. Four were in critical condition.

The coal-producing region of Kemerovo, roughly 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) east of Moscow, has suffered fatal mining accidents for years.

The Listvyazhnaya mine is part of SDS-Holding, owned by the privately held Siberian Business Union. The owner had no immediate comment.

About 285 people were inside the mine when smoke spread through the ventilation shaft, the Emergencies Ministry said. Authorities said 239 had made it to the surface.

President Vladimir Putin said he had spoken with the governor and emergency officials, and the Kremlin said he had ordered the emergencies minister to fly to the region to help.

Kemerovo declared three days of mourning.

In 2007, the region was the site of the worst mining accident since the collapse of the Soviet Union when an explosion at the Ulyanovskaya mine claimed the lives of more than 100 people. In 2010, explosions at the region's Raspadskaya mine killed more than 90 people.
Russia's Supreme Court on Thursday will consider a request to shut down Memorial, the country's most prominent rights group and a pillar of its civil society.

Founded by Soviet dissidents including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov in 1989, Memorial has built up a huge archive of Soviet-era crimes and campaigned tirelessly for human rights in Russia.

Prosecutors have asked the court to dissolve Memorial International, the group's central structure, for allegedly violating Russia's controversial law on "foreign agents."

The move has sparked widespread outrage, with supporters saying the shuttering of Memorial would mark the end of an era in Russia's post-Soviet democratization.

It comes in a year that has seen an unprecedented crackdown on opponents of President Vladimir Putin, including the jailing of chief Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny and the banning of his organizations.

By taking the once-unimaginable move to close Memorial, the group's founders say Russian authorities would be sending a signal to both the West and domestic opponents.

The message, Memorial founding member Irina Shcherbakova told AFP ahead of the hearing, is: "We are doing to civil society here whatever we want. We will put behind bars whoever we want, we will close down whoever we want."

Thursday's hearing concerns one of two cases brought this month against the group and is being heard by the Supreme Court because Memorial International is registered as an international body. The ruling will not be open to appeal in a Russian court.

The other case, against the Memorial Human Rights Centre, began in a Moscow court on Tuesday and will continue later this month.

Both Memorial International and the Human Rights Centre are accused of violating rules under their designations as "foreign agents," a legal label that forces individuals or organizations to disclose sources of funding and tag all their publications with a disclaimer.

Cataloging Soviet atrocities

The Human Rights Centre is facing another charge of defending "extremist and terrorist activities" for publishing lists of imprisoned members of banned political or religious movements.

The "foreign agent" label, laden with Soviet-era connotations of treachery and espionage, has been used against a wide range of rights groups and independent media in recent years.

Memorial has spent decades cataloging atrocities committed in the Soviet Union, especially in the notorious network of prison camps, the gulag.

It has also campaigned for the rights of political prisoners, migrants and other marginalized groups, and highlighted abuses especially in the turbulent North Caucasus region that includes Chechnya.

It is a loose structure of locally registered organizations, but the dissolving of its central structure could have a major impact on operations.

Memorial International maintains the group's extensive archives in Moscow and coordinates dozens of Memorial-linked NGOs in and outside of Russia.

A board member of Memorial International, Oleg Orlov, told AFP the move would greatly complicate the work of the NGO by depriving it of a legal basis to pay employees, receive funds or store archives.

Supporters speak out

United Nations officials, the Council of Europe, international rights groups and Western governments have all warned against the group being disbanded.

Russia's two surviving Nobel Peace Prize winners  last Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Novaya Gazeta newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov  urged prosecutors to withdraw their claims.

The two said in a joint statement that Memorial was aimed not only at preserving the memory of Soviet-era repression, but at "preventing this from happening now and in the future."

The Kremlin has said the case is a matter for the courts, though Putin's spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, noted that Memorial has "long had issues with observing Russian legislation."
A new coronavirus variant has been detected in South Africa that scientists say is a concern because of its high number of mutations and rapid spread among young people in Gauteng, the country's most populous province, Health Minister Joe Phaahla announced Thursday.

The coronavirus evolves as it spreads, and many new variants, including those with worrying mutations, often just die out. Scientists monitor for possible changes that could make the virus more transmissible or deadly, but sorting out whether new variants will have a public health impact can take time.

South Africa has seen a dramatic rise in new infections, Phaahla said at an online press briefing.

"Over the last four or five days, there has been more of an exponential rise," he said, adding that the new variant appears to be driving the spike in cases. Scientists in South Africa are working to determine what percentage of the new cases have been caused by the new variant.

Currently identified as B.1.1.529, the new variant has also been found in Botswana and Hong Kong in travelers from South Africa, he said.

The WHO's technical working group is to meet Friday to assess the new variant and may decide whether to give it a name from the Greek alphabet.

The British government announced that it was banning flights from South Africa and five other southern African countries effective at noon (1200GMT) Friday, and that anyone who had recently arrived from those countries would be asked to take a coronavirus test.

U.K. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said there were concerns the new variant "may be more transmissible" than the dominant delta strain and "the vaccines that we currently have may be less effective" against it.

'Constellation' of mutations

The new variant has a "constellation of new mutations," said Tulio de Oliveira, from the Network for Genomic Surveillance in South Africa, who has tracked the spread of the delta variant in the country.

The "very high number of mutations is a concern for predicted immune evasion and transmissibility," de Oliveira said.

"This new variant has many, many more mutations," including more than 30 to the spike protein that affects transmissibility, he said. "We can see that the variant is potentially spreading very fast. We do expect to start seeing pressure in the health care system in the next few days and weeks."

De Oliveira said a team of scientists from seven South African universities was studying the variant. They have 100 whole genomes of it and expect to have many more in the next few days, he said.

"We are concerned by the jump in evolution in this variant," he said. One piece of good news is that it can be detected by a PCR test, he said.

After a period of relatively low transmission in which South Africa recorded just more than 200 new confirmed cases per day, in the past week the daily new cases rapidly increased to more than 1,200 on Wednesday. On Thursday, they jumped to 2,465.

The first surge was in Pretoria and the surrounding Tshwane metropolitan area and appeared to be cluster outbreaks from student gatherings at universities in the area, said Phaahla, the health minister. Amid the rise in cases, scientists studied the genomic sequencing and discovered the new variant.

Seriousness required

"This is clearly a variant that we must be very serious about," said Ravindra Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge. "It has a high number of spike mutations that could affect transmissibility and immune response."

Gupta said scientists in South Africa needed time to determine if the surge in new cases was attributable to the new variant.

"There is a high probability that this is the case," he said. "South African scientists have done an incredible job of identifying this quickly and bringing it to the world's attention."

South African officials had warned that a new resurgence was expected from mid-December to early January and had hoped to prepare for that by getting many more people vaccinated, Phaahla said.

About 41% of South Africa's adults have been vaccinated and the number of shots being given per day is relatively low, at fewer than 130,000, significantly below the government's target of 300,000 per day.

South Africa has about 16.5 million doses of vaccines, by Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, in the country and is expecting delivery of about 2.5 million more in the next week, according to Nicholas Crisp, acting director-general of the national health department.

"We are getting in vaccines faster than we are using them at the moment," Crisp said. "So for some time now, we have been deferring deliveries, not decreasing orders, but just deferring our deliveries so that we don't accumulate and stockpile vaccines."

South Africa, with a population of 60 million, has recorded more than 2.9 million COVID-19 cases including more than 89,000 deaths.

To date, the delta variant remains by far the most infectious and has crowded out other once-worrying variants including alpha, beta and mu. According to sequences submitted by countries worldwide to the world's biggest public database, more than 99% are delta.
TRANSCRIPT

The Inside Story: Afghanistans Addiction Crisis

Episode 10  October 21, 2021

Show Open:

Voice of: KATHERINE GYPSON, VOA Congressional Correspondent:

Afghanistans poppy fields provides most of the worlds opium 

Creating a crisis of addiction in the country.

Mark Colhoun, Former UNODC Representative in Afghanistan:

So, these are all increasing the threat to the population exponentially.

KATHERINE GYPSON:

The old ... the young.

The men  and the women 

Drugs grip on Afghanistan's society and economy ---

On The Inside Story: Afghanistans Addiction Crisis.

The Inside Story:

KATHERINE GYPSON:

Hi. Im Katherine Gypson, VOAs Congressional Correspondent.

While members of Congress and others debate the tactics of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the strategies of 20 years of war, there is one issue that has constantly plagued that country: Drugs. Narcotics. Specifically, opium.

According to the U.N., Afghanistan produces 80 percent of the worlds opium.

While the rest of the world tries to deal with the trafficking of the drug, millions of people are addicted inside Afghanistan.

Before the U.S. withdrawal, VOAs Afghan Service traveled through the country to document the extent of Afghanistans Addiction Crisis.

Our grim trip begins in the capital, Kabul.

Voice of narrator (Annie Ball):

In Afghanistan, this is where, and how, it sometimes ends. A drug addicts life.

Health workers came to round-up the addicts and take them to addiction treatment centers. But today they encounter the lifeless bodies of three addicts.

Here, at Kabuls Pul-e-Sokhta bridge, the health workers face the grim, and heavy chore of removing the bodies, hauling them up to the street and away for burial. If no family can be located, they will be laid in an unmarked grave, with no one to mourn their loss. It is the mark of shame to be buried alone in Afghanistan.

For the workers and government officials, it reminds them they cannot help everyone.

Dr. Aref Wafa was working with addicts.

Dr. Aref Wafa, Department of Drug Demand Reduction:

Especially when we come here in the winter, our goal is to save their lives. They may increase the dose due to cold or chills. When they overdose, they do not feel it, therefore, this causes their death.

Narrator:

Doctors say, these addicts are consuming heroin, morphine, opium and increasingly, crystal meth. The cause of death is usually a drug overdose. They are taken to a Kabul cemetery for burial. How many bodies are buried there? No one knows. Officials dont track the numbers.

Gholam Yahyas brother lost his life to addiction under the bridge. Yahya, an addict like his brother, still lives under this bridge. Now, he describes the sadnessand shameand how addicts deaths are treated by religious leaders.

Gholam Yahya, Drug Addict:

They said those who use drugs, commit suicide. Since they commit suicide, their funeral prayers are forbidden. They cannot be washed. His mother did not bring her child to this world to end up under Pull-e-Sokhta bridge. He did not wish this for himself., but I could not bury him in any cemetery.

Narrator:

In Kabuls Pul-e-Sokhta area, this is not just the story of Gholam Yahyas life.

Throughout Afghanistan, it is known as a drug addiction center. The bridge in western Kabul has become a major hub for drug users for the past two decades. An iconic symbol of drug abuse in a nation rife with addiction.

The addicts dont come just from Kabul, but many from the provinces, too. Hundreds of them share this grimy space, spending their days and nights getting high amidst the waste and debris. Most of them have been evicted by their families and have no shelter.

They live in squalor, surrounded by filth, black walls, and dirty water.

Over the years there have been several unsuccessful attempts to close the area. But it remains a popular gathering place for addicts.

Nazo is one of many looking for loved ones. Her husband and brother are addicted to drugs. Nazo's husband uses opium and is remarried. He left her with the responsibility of taking care of their six boys. In Afghanistan, single mothers with no men in the house face a particularly difficult life, especially when the single mother is the only breadwinner. This is why Nazo hopes to find her brother, who is a heroin addict.

Nazo, Sister of a Drug Addict:

It has been five months since I went to Kart-e-now, Arzan Qemat, Jada, and Cinema-e-Pamir to Shama-li so that anyone could tell me his whereabouts. I dont know the area. I went to ask. I got home about ten o'clock at night. I am a woman. I cannot bear this grief, if God forbid. someone touches me or someone talks dirty behind my back.

Narrator:

In addition to her six children, Nazo also has been taking care of her mother and her brothers wife. She washes dishes and cleans peoples laundry, making about $2.60 a day.

Nazo, Sister of a Drug Addict:

I suffered for him so much. The other day, I told my mother. Mother! She said, Yes. I said it's a pain, we can get over it. I will find a poison tablet and we will end everything together.

KATHERINE GYPSON:

Stories like Nazos are becoming more commonplace because of the drug trades grip on Afghanistan's economy.

2017 was the peak, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Nearly 10-thousand tons of opium brought in one-point-four billion dollars --- seven percent of Afghanistans GDP.

And now the opium produced from the poppy plant has a rival that also grows wild in Afghanistan.

Narrator:

As a country, Afghanistan deals with insecurity, endless wars, corruption, poverty, a weak economy, high unemployment, and other challenges. But it also faces the problem of home-grown addiction and drug use. Some describe drug addiction in this country as a hidden tsunami; a large wave ready to crush what is in its wake.

Despite billions of dollars in international aid, government projects and efforts, Afghanistan remains the worlds top cultivator of poppythe plant used to make opium and heroin.

The country is the world's largest narcotics producer. A joint survey by the Afghan government and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, shows they are losing the war to eradicate the crop.

It says in 2020, poppy cultivation was up 37% in Afghanistan.

The report found that last year poppy was cultivated on nearly a quarter of a million hectares of land in 22 of the 34 provinces.

Most of the opium is smuggled abroad, but what remains is a problem at home.

Mark Colhoun, Former UNODC Representative in Afghanistan:

We are seeing high level of opioid use in the country. We are seeing high level of cannabis use in the country and an emerging threat that we have been noticing for the last number of years is definitely methamphetamine and other amphetamine type stimulants in the country. So, these are all increasing the threats to the population exponentially, so we have drug production and then rising drug use in the country which is a severe threat to the people of the country.

Narrator:

Drug production and addiction go hand-in-hand, and both are on the rise.

User statistics are hard to come by. The most recent numbers are from a 2015 survey. It was conducted by INL, the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs and the Afghan government. It found that 2.5 to 3.5 million Afghans are directly or indirectly addicted to drugs. At that time, one in three families tested positive for drugs. And the rural areas were three times worse than in the cities.

Dr. Ahmad Jawad Osmani, Former Afghanistan Minister of Public Health:

Unfortunately, drug addiction is not diminishing. It is increasing. And thats why, we think that the number that was estimated in the past has increased even more.

Narrator:

Meanwhile, a recent report shows crystal methamphetamine  also called crystal or meth --- is a growing problem in Afghanistan. Last November, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) reported that the country is becoming a significant global producer of meth.

One reason is drug traffickers discovered that the ephedra plant, which commonly grows wild in parts of Afghanistan, can be used to make meth. The report focused on the production of meth in Bakwa district. It called the preliminary findings worrying, adding there is potential for meth to rival the countrys production of opiates.

KATHERINE GYPSON:

Concern over the rapid increase in meth production is its relative low cost to make.

And for many of Afghanistans addicts, low cost is what they are looking for.

And it is not limited to the cities.

VOAs Afghan Service went about 180 kilometers west of Kabul --- to Bamyan province --- for a ground-level view of addictions reach into rural villages.

Narrator:

Bamyan is known for its beautiful landscapes. It is where, nearly 20 years ago (March 2001) the Taliban destroyed two ancient statues of Buddha, which had been the largest in the world.

Here, people in the cities and villages suffer from drug addiction.

Local officials say there are about 50,000 addicts, and people affected by addiction.

Head west, into more rural areas, and you find drugs even more prevalent than in central Bamyan province.

The Waras district is where most of the villagers use drugs.

The long drive to get there winds through scenic landscapes and rutted roads.

Waras district is surrounded by green hills and valleys.

People in this remote area live in poverty. They lack the benefits of modern society, like good schools, clinics or hospitals, and technology.

The sun shines brightly this morning in Bazobala village. Here, everyone, young and old, including the men, women and children are drug addicts.

Eighty families live in Bazobala.

Most people here use drugs together, in groups, and out in the open. The lives of the villagers revolve around smoking drugs. When they have it, they use it.

When asked why, they mention many reasons. Like this 18-year-old man:

Drug Addict, Bazobala Shuqol village:

The reason I became addicted to drugs was unemployment and poverty. I went to Iran, far away from home. I was unemployed and the situation was bad, so I got addicted to drugs. So, when I return here, I thought that the situation will be better. The situation is bad here as well.

Ali Yawar, Bazobala Shuqol village:

I have been using drugs for almost fifteen years. First, I used heroin, now Im using in crystal.

Narrator:

It affects the children too. Parents not only use themselves, but also give drugs to their children. In addition to heroin, opium and crystal meth, the addicts of Bazobala are also familiar with other drug options, like tramadol tablets. It is a cheap alternative to heroin and opium.

Drug Addict, Bazobala Shugol village:

Those whose consumption is high, like myself, my spending is also high. I use may be one or one and half packet. A packet is 25 (32 cents) to 50 Afghanis. You cant even purchase this tramadol 500 for 100 Afghanis.

Narrator:

In Pezhandur village, women are also drug addicts.

In many families in the area, they use drugs with their husbands and children

This is Fatima. She has been addicted to drugs for 30 years. Fatima, her husband and her sons use drugs together.

Fatima, Pashandur Village:

I have asthma. Im sick as well. Im 65 years old. I go to work in the desert and mountains until late. Im weak and my husband is also sick.

Narrator:

Villagers here work in farming and raising animals. Young people go to the mountains to collect grass for the animals, and the children are shepherds.

The idyllic life of these villages is disrupted by narcotics, brought in from neighboring provinces. Residents say they have repeatedly informed security agencies about the smugglers, but no action is taken.

The villagers want the government's attention. They want help, and they want an addiction treatment center.

There is only one 20-bed clinic in Waras, which clearly lacks the ability to treat all the addicts in an area of tens of thousands of people. Local officials want more.

Qasim Ali, Chairman, People's Council of the Peshandur & Bazobala Area:

Everyone is addicted to drugs. These people are all unfortunate. The reason is unemployment and poverty. The government does not care about these people. I request from the government, the international community, and human rights to build a hospital in the Shiwqol area. The hospital should be 100 beds or so so these people can be treated.

KATHERINE GYPSON

Addiction treatment is undergoing a change now that the Taliban are running Afghanistan.

Police have been recently rounding up addicts in Kabul, giving them a choice to either sober up or face beatings.

They are stripped, bathed and shaved before going into a 45-day treatment program.

But as one Taliban officer put it: It's not important if some of them will die. Others will be cured. After they are cured, they can be free.

The addicts rounded up in these raids have been men. But women fall victim to drug addiction, too. Before the Taliban took over, our VOA Afghan Service team went to Balk province in northern Afghanistan and discovered the disturbing way women addicts can be preyed upon.

Narrator:

The yellow morning sun shines on Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkhs capital.

This is one of the most populous provinces in northern Afghanistan, and Mazar-e-Sharif is the fourth largest city in the country.

The Blue Mosque, dating back to the 15th century, has made this city famous.

Mazar-e-Sharif hosts internally displaced people, IDPs, from nearby provinces. Security in the city brings people to come live here.

The city suffers from a large presence of drug addicts. Local officials say more than 300,000 people in Balkh province, including women and children, use drugs.

Easy access to drugs has led to more addicts. In the city of Mazar-e-Sharif, some women addicts are homeless, and some seek shelter in the cemetery at night.

This area is called Dasht-e-Shoor. These are the tents of internally displaced families.

This woman lives in the camp. She is an addict with a difficult story.

Zohra, Homeless Drug Addict:

I was 13 years old, and my father was not there when my brother and mother married me. Now I am 31 years old, and I am lost. My mother-in-law was beating me. My father-in-law was beating me. I was smoking opium. I used to drink opium and that's why they were beating me and telling me not to eat it. My husband left me and said I dont want a wife like you. You are free. I have my two children with me. My husband hates me and doesnt allow me to go home. I live in a tent. I have relatives, but they dont care about me.

Narrator:

But Zohra says she is not addicted to drugs by her own free will. She says her family got her hooked. They used drugs in groups, she explains, to lessen the intense pain caused by their work as carpet weavers.

Zohra uses marijuana and opium. She has tried to quit several times but concerns about being homeless led her to relapse.

.

She walks the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif at night, begging and collecting usable garbage. This is NOT normal practice for womenbecause generally, it is not safe here for a woman to be out alone at night.

VOA went with her one night to see how she fares alone.

Zohra told us about how she pays for her habit. And in this harrowing story, she shared about someone giving her a ride, and the offer he made her:

Zohra/Homeless Drug Addict:

I weave carpets to earn money. I use opium, thats not cheap. I was on my way to collect waste when a car stopped, and the driver told me to get in the car. And he told me I will take you home and help you. Then I got in the car. The driver showed me the suicide jacket and asked me, Do you want to do this? I will give you money. I said No, I will not do it. And I jumped out of the car.

KATHERINE GYPSON:

The United States spent more than eight-and-a-half billion dollars between 2002 and 2017 battling Afghanistans drug trade --- That, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

In May, the Special Inspector General said the Taliban gets an estimated 60 percent of its income from illegal drugs --- About 400-million dollars between 2018 and 2019 according to the U.N.

And in Afghanistans easternmost province, VOAs Afghan service found out that addiction knows no age --- old or young.

Narrator:

Here in Badakhshan province, there are an estimated 25 to 30,000 addicts. Like elsewhere, addiction tends to run in families.

Jan Begums family is one of them. They live in the city of Faizabad. Her two sons and husband are addicted. They use crystal meth and heroin.

Jan Begum, Drug Addict:

We dont have anything. They are both unemployed, this one is an addict, that one is an addict, too. My older son is not here. It has been three years since he is missing. I dont know if he is alive or dead. There are four of us, and all four of us are addicts. Yes, we sold everything. We sold bedsheets and everything that we had. And with the money, we bought drugs and used it.

Narrator:

Jan Begum's family used to live in a house in Faizabad. When the homeowner found out the family was using drugs, he kicked them out.

Now, they beg, take in laundry, and spend most of their income on drugs. Some of them have been treated several times for their addiction, but relapsed.

Samiullah is 18 years old. He uses drugs together with his mother, father, and brother.

Samiullah, Drug Addict:

I have been taking drugs from a young age. I take it with my parents. I go out to find then I take it. I wish the government would come and treat us and I would work as a server in a hotel.

Narrator:

Afghanistan remains the world's largest opium producer.

Here in Nangahar province, children and teenagers work in the poppy fields collecting the gum with the elders in their family. Theyre helping with opium production.

Mustafa is one of the teenagers working the poppy fields. Now,16 years old, Mustafa says he has been moving towards addiction for a long time, just because he works with poppies and opium.

Mustafa, 16-Year Old Poppy Field Worker:

Well, its narcotics, it gets you high. When we collect, we sniff, and it made us dizzy. Made us high, then we would sit down or go home with an excuse to relax and then go out. It had a bad effect. I had a headache when I went to school. I got permission to leave. It had a very bad effect because our heads were spinning, we were high. Drugs must cause this condition to our body.

Narrator:

This is some of Mustafa's poppy harvest for the year. A few kilograms of opium have been harvested from the fields. He says that after collecting, he sold the opium and kept two more kilograms to sell later.

When the poppy season is over, he works in fields tending other crops like onions.

Mustafa says he has seen many people, including women, become addicted to drugs after working in poppy fields. He does not want to become an addict himself.

Mustafa, Poppy Field Worker:

If no narcotics were planted here, maybe no one would be addicted to drugs. Poppy made many people addicted to heroin. We want the government to stop the poppy cultivation. They should cultivate for us good, good fruit trees.

Narrator:

Less poppy production would mean less drug addiction, and fewer drug addicts ending up here, in this cemetery, in an unmarked grave. A sad and shameful death, in a nation where nothing is more important than family, honor and tradition.

KATHERINE GYPSON:

These are just a few of the stories of addiction in Afghanistan - you can watch the entire documentary at VOANews.com. Thats all we have for now.

Connect with us at VOANews on Instagram and Facebook.

And you can follow me on Twitter at Kgyp. Thats @ K G Y P.

See you next week for The Inside Story.

###
Tens of thousands of Sudanese protested in the streets of Khartoum and other cities on Thursday, keeping the pressure on military leaders after they struck a deal to bring back a civilian prime minister deposed in a coup one month ago.

Prominent political parties and Sudan's powerful protest movement have opposed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's decision on Sunday to sign the accord with the military, with some calling it a betrayal or saying it provides political cover for the takeover.

"The revolution is the people's revolution. The army back to the barracks!" chanted protesters in Al Daim, a working-class district of Khartoum. They called for justice for those killed in earlier demonstrations.

Protesters also closed a main road in the Sahafa neighborhood of the capital. Carrying Sudanese flags, they chanted "Burhan you wont rule. Down with military rule," referring to Sudan's military leader Abdel-Fattah Burhan.

Live streams on social media also showed protests in cities including Port Sudan, Kassala, Wad Madani, and El Geneina in West Darfur.

West Darfur

Separately, the United Nations said reports indicated at least 43 people had been killed in intercommunal violence in Jebel Moon in West Darfur since November 17, with 46 villages burned and looted.

"We are also alarmed at reports of rape committed against women and girls as well as reports of 20 children missing," the U.N. mission to Sudan said, calling on the government and armed groups that signed a peace deal last year to protect civilians.

Military concession

Last month's coup raised questions over the future of the deal and efforts to end decades of internal conflict in Sudan.

The civilian Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) coalition that had been sharing power with the military before the takeover blamed the military in a statement on Thursday for allowing a worsening of the security situation in Darfur.

While Hamdok's reinstatement was a concession by military leader Burhan, key political parties and civilian groups say the army should play no role in politics.

Under Sunday's deal, Hamdok will lead a government of technocrats during a political transition expected to last until 2023 and will share power with the military.

It is meant to be based on an earlier deal struck between the military and civilian political forces following the 2019 overthrow of Omar al-Bashir, when they had agreed to share power until elections. The coup sank that partnership, and the military had worked since then to strengthen its position by making appointments and transferring staff in senior state jobs.

On Thursday the Cabinet secretariat issued a decision canceling all staff transfers in government since October 25 and reserving the Cabinet's right to make future transfers.

The FFC and its former ministers have rejected the agreement struck by Hamdok, citing a violent crackdown on anti-military protests over the past month. Hamdok has said the Sudanese authorities are committed to democracy and free expression.
Two Chinese nationals have been killed and an unknown number of other people have been kidnapped in an attack by the CODECO militia on a mining camp in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, an army spokesman said Thursday.

A local chief and a civil society leader also confirmed the two deaths and said eight other Chinese people were missing after Wednesday's attack. They also blamed CODECO, one of an array of armed groups active in the area.

The attack took place in Djugu, in Ituri province, where Chinese nationals have informal gold mining operations. "We confirm that CODECO elements attacked one of our positions in Djugu territory. They also attacked a base of our Chinese brothers, unfortunately killing two of them and kidnapping others," said Lieutenant Jules Ngongo, spokesman for the army in Ituri.

The CODECO militia could not be reached for comment. The Chinese embassy in Kinshasa also could not be reached. The United Nations says repeated attacks by CODECO have killed hundreds of civilians in Djugu territory since 2017 and forced thousands to flee their homes.

About 20 people were killed in an attack on displaced civilians in Djugu territory Sunday night, which the government also blamed on CODECO.

CODECO's fighters are drawn mainly from the Lendu farming community, which has long been in conflict with Hema herders. Wednesday's attack was the second on a Chinese mining operation in a week in Congo's restive east. Authorities said Sunday gunmen had killed a policeman and kidnapped five Chinese nationals near a mine in South Kivu province.
The Biden administration and Mexico have not yet agreed to restart a Trump-era program obliging asylum-seekers to await U.S. court hearings in Mexico, because certain conditions must first be met, two Mexican officials said on Wednesday.

News outlet Axios reported earlier that returns under the program officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) could restart as soon as next week. But one of the Mexican officials said agreement was unlikely to be reached this week.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in a statement it was working to resume the program "as promptly as possible" but could not do so without Mexico's agreement.

The two Mexican government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said talks were ongoing to determine under what terms the United States could begin returns.

Mexico is insisting Washington provide more support against COVID-19 for migrants, such as vaccinations, more legal aid for asylum-seekers, and acceleration of hearings for those taking part in the returns program, one senior Mexican official said.

The administration of President Joe Biden, who vowed to undo some of the hardline immigration policies of his predecessor, Donald Trump, ended MPP. It makes asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings before U.S. immigration judges.

But a federal judge ordered the administration to restart the program, saying it had failed to follow proper regulatory procedure. The U.S. Supreme Court in August rejected an administration appeal against the lower court's ruling.

Late last month, the administration tried again to end the program, hoping to address the judge's concerns. But it also said it was moving to comply with the court's order.

Biden has been under political and humanitarian pressure on the immigration issue because of an increase in migrants at the U.S. border.

Immigration advocates argue the MPP program exposed migrants to violence and kidnappings in dangerous border cities, where people camped out for months or years waiting for U.S. hearings.

During bilateral negotiations, Mexico has sought to ensure that new returns are carried out in a more controlled fashion, and that particularly vulnerable migrants and unaccompanied minors are excluded, the Mexican officials said.

The two officials also said Mexico's government is trying to secure a U.S. commitment to provide additional support for international organizations that help look after migrants and shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border. When MPP was in place under Trump, a sprawling camp arose in the border city of Matamoros in a violence-plagued region of Mexico.

Although Biden has sought to reverse some Trump-era immigration measures, he has kept in place a sweeping expulsion policy initiated at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That policy turns most migrants caught crossing the border away without giving them a chance to apply for asylum at all.
I could not understand how this highly educated, powerful trauma nurse is now the patient.

A registered nurse who asks that we call her Gi is talking about herself. While working in the emergency room of her community hospital at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Gi started crying unconsolably, unable to speak or function. She was having a panic attack and was later hospitalized in an in-patient psychiatric facility, diagnosed with PTSD. Gi is back at a hospital bedside now  as a hospice nurse.

A pandemic of nurses suffering

Gi is not alone. The number of nurses with mental health issues has grown substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) shows that the number of nurses reporting mental health issues since the pandemic started has risen from 60% to 80% in many countries.

Nurses are suffering, says ICN CEO Howard Catton. He cites violent attacks, along with the exhaustion, grief and fear faced by nurses who are caring for patients.

The American Nurses Foundation says 1 of 3 nurses indicate they are emotionally unhealthy.

Normal systems breaking down

Nurses say the mental health strain arises from a variety of issues.The industry was already facing a staffing shortage prior to COVID-19, and many nurses juggled multiple jobs caring for increasing numbers of patients.Now the recommended ratio of 1 nurse for 2 patients is stretched to a ratio of 1 to 3, to the detriment of patients and nurses alike.

Clara, who has spent her career as a nurse, says shes up against tremendous workloads, tremendous volumes, with not enough resources.One misstep can make the difference between life and death  and potentially ruin a career.

It's a constant pressure on your shoulders, a constant downward pressure, you have to move faster, you have to do better, you have to work harder, she said.

Alex Kaspin was suffering from a panic disorder from being overworked, overtired and overwhelmed. She recently stepped away from a Philadelphia emergency room when the COVID-19 numbers were matched by the citys rising homicide rate.



At that point, says Kaspin, all normal systems were breaking down. Kaspin says her hospital was operating in a triage situation. It did not have enough nurses to attend to patients in regular rooms.So the emergency room was filled with in-patients, and the waiting room became the emergency room.

Please give me the vaccine now

Between rising violence in the United States and the increase in COVID-19 patients, Kaspin felt she could not deliver health care at the standards she set for herself.Adding to the stress were patients unvaccinated against COVID-19.

She is haunted by her memories of several COVID-19 patients in their 20s. Right before we put the breathing tube down, the last thing they say is. I want the vaccine now. Please give me the vaccine now. 

Pennsylvanian Jen Partyka calls vaccine hesitancy a willful ignorance shes never seen in her 27 years of nursing.

You are willfully creating a situation that I can't keep up with as a nurse manager, says Partyka. She will always do her best for her patients, she says, but she feels differently when she learns they are unvaccinated.You are willfully harming others.

Experts say getting more people vaccinated will tremendously lower patient numbers.

Chip Kahn is the president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals. He says there is no short term, magic bullet, but what is needed is less COVID.

No more banging pots of support

Abigail Donley worked in a Manhattan ICU during the early phases of the pandemic.She left her job to co-found IMPACT in Healthcare to work to change policies to benefit workers and patients.IMPACTs December campaign promotes safe staffing levels.



Donley says nurses were once viewed as COVID-19 heroes.People were banging the pots for them at seven o'clock, but now they can't get a raise, Donley said on Skype. They can't get a bonus. They can't get child care. They don't have maternal health care.

A growing number of nurses are leaving the hospital bedside for a less daunting work schedule and better pay.Travel nursing agencies send nurses where they are needed to stem the dwindling staffing numbers, offering as much as triple the salary that other nurses receive.

Michelle helped set up the COVID-19 unit at the hospital where she had worked for 10 years.This month she left her $30-an-hour registered nursing job to be a travel nurse in an intensive care unit in another city. She calls her new salary crazy.

I'm leaving that system and going to a travel nursing position, and I'll be making $120 an hour, she told VOA.

Kahn says agencies are gouging hospitals when they offer travel nurses such high salaries. He agrees it is much better to have a strong, in-house team rather than temporary staffing.

When asked why hospitals dont retain veteran nurses by offering higher salaries and other benefits, Kahn says, There's no way that that any institution could afford to pay the broad base of their nurses anywhere near what they're paying for the travel nurses.
The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) says the wheat seeds it recently provided to farmers in northeast Syria meet high standards for safety and quality.

The announcement comes after claims by the Syrian government that the seeds donated by the U.S. agency are not suitable for cultivation.

Last week, USAID donated 3,000 tons of wheat seeds to Syrias northeast to help address wheat shortages in a region hit by a growing drought.

The Syrian government claimed Tuesday, however, that a sample analysis of the U.S.-provided seeds found they are not suitable for cultivation.

The seeds contain a high rate of nematodes [plant-parasitic worms], which reached 40 percent, and this poses a great danger to agriculture in the region, especially as its effects cause great damage that is exacerbated by the passage of time, Said Hajji, head of the governments agriculture directorate in Hasaka province, was quoted by Syrias state-run SANA news agency as saying.

The Syrian government official warned local farmers in northeast Syria against using the seeds, urging people to destroy them.

A USAID spokesperson, however, told VOA in a statement that the wheat seeds go through treatment and testing for safety and quality before they are donated.

USAID is supplying Adana and Cihan wheat seed varieties to Syrian farmers, which are sourced from the region and undergo a series of tests at a qualified lab in (the) Kurdish Region of Iraq to verify their quality before they are transported and distributed to farmers in northeast Syria, the spokesperson said.

The U.S. official added that the seeds are tested for purity, germination rate, smut, presence of barley, insects, Cephalonia, nematodes, and to ensure they are effectively treated with fungicide.

Some local farmers told the Kurdish news network Rudaw they have received wheat seeds from USAID partners and have already cultivated them in their farmlands.

Northeast Syria is largely under the control of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led military alliance that has been a major U.S. partner in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) terror group in the war-torn country.

The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has minimal presence in the area, doesnt recognize an SDF-led local administration and opposes the presence of about 900 American troops, who are deployed in northeast Syria as part of an international coalition against IS.

John Saleh, a Washington-based Syrian affairs analyst said, The Assad regime, along with its main backer, Russia, dont want to see development in the Kurdish region, especially if it is supported by the U.S.

He told VOA the Syrian government wants northeast Syria to remain economically weak in the hope that it will control it again if U.S. forces depart at some point.

Therefore, they spread these types of absurd rumors to create fear and panic among farmers who are in desperate need for help during these tough economic times, Saleh said.
Here is a summary of Uyghur-related news around the world in the past week.

Marriott declined to host international Uyghur conference in Prague



Marriott turned down a conference of Uyghur human rights activists held in Prague. For reasons of political neutrality, we cannot offer events of this type with a political theme, the hotel told the organizers, according to an Axios report. Marriott later said it would apologize and that the hotels response was not consistent with our policies."

Chinese YouTuber secretly recorded internment camps in Xinjiang

A Chinese YouTuber secretly recorded a 20-minute video that documented what one researcher described as some of the largest and most infamous internment camps in Xinjiang. Human rights groups estimate more than 1 million Uyghurs have been arbitrarily detained there, though Beijing describes the camps as vocational training schools.

US considering diplomatic boycott of 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing

Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said last week that the U.S. was considering a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics because of serious concerns about human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

Uyghur activists ask Canada to block imports made with forced Uyghur labor and take in more refugees

Dolkun Isa, the leader of World Uyghur Congress, is asking Ottawa to block imports of goods made with forced labor of Uyghurs in China and to admit more Uyghur refugees fleeing Chinas persecution.

Japanese apparel makers stop sourcing cotton from Xinjiang over allegations of forced Uyghur labor

Japan apparel makers Sanyo Shokai and TSI holdings have decided to stop sourcing cotton from Chinas Xinjiang region, joining other Japanese and international manufacturers over allegations of forced Uyghur labor, while other brands continue using cotton from the region because they have been unable to confirm the problem.

News in brief

 The South China Morning Post reports the European Union will renew sanctions against four top Chinese officials in Xinjiang and one government office for their alleged role in human rights abuses toward Uyghurs and other Turkic ethnic groups in Xinjiang. The renewed sanctions are expected to be approved at the beginning of December and roll over in March 2022, which will mark a year after the original sanctions were put in place.

 More than 100 global brands are at risk of selling cotton products related to forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang where Chinas cotton industry obscures where the cotton originated, according to a report last week. The report, Laundering Cotton, How Xinjiang Cotton Obscured in International Supply Chains, by the Helena Kennedy Center for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University in England, found that Chinese yarn and fabric suppliers that use cotton from the Uyghur region would export their semi-finished cotton products to intermediary manufacturers that then ship finished products to brands worldwide, including the U.S.

Quote of note

They [local authorities] compel people  sometimes whole villages  to relinquish the leases to their land  and then they [Uyghurs] are considered surplus labor by the government and are made more vulnerable to state-sponsored labor transfers.  Laura Murphy, lead author of Laundering Cotton, How Xinjiang Cotton Obscured in International Supply Chains, and professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Sheffield Hallam University in England.
The buildup of Russian troops along the border with Ukraine, and on the Crimean Peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014, is prompting an intense debate among American and European policymakers about how to respond, say Western officials.

They are split over why Russian President Vladimir Putin is amassing troops. They are also wrestling with their options for deterring him from making any dramatic military moves on Ukraine and, separately, for responding if Putin does order his forces to seize more Ukrainian territory, most likely Mariupol on the coast of the Sea of Azov and its surroundings.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg cautioned Moscow last week against "any further provocation or aggressive actions" after U.S. officials warned that Russia might be preparing a winter offensive in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says Russia has amassed about 100,000 soldiers near Ukraine's border.

Washington has warned European allies that the Kremlin may be "attempting to rehash" 2014, when it annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula and Russia-backed separatists seized a large part of the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine, bordering Russia.

Accusations against Kyiv

Kremlin officials maintain that Russia is not getting ready to invade Ukraine and accuse Ukrainians of mobilizing military units along their shared border.

"Kyiv is itself building up its forces. Kyiv is being helped to build up its forces. Kyiv is being supplied with a significant number of weapons, including modern high-tech weapons," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday in Moscow.

Some former U.S. diplomats and officials believe Washington and its European allies should be ready to supply Ukraine with more high-tech weaponry, and sooner rather than later. They see the Kremlin's anxiety over supplies of Western high-tech weapons as the best policy option to deter any Kremlin adventurism.

The question U.S. and European policymakers must answer is whether they are "going to help Ukraine with the weapons and the training it needs to defend itself," said Daniel Fried, a former American diplomat who served as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs and was the U.S. ambassador to Poland from 1997 to 2000.

Fried, now an analyst at the Atlantic Council, a New York-based research group, ticks off a list of equipment that could be sent, including more Javelin anti-tank missiles, air defense and electronic warfare systems, artillery pieces and radars.

"That kind of stuff," he said. "Ukrainians know how to use them. And I think the equipment needs to be delivered either now to deter the Russians or in the pipelines so the Russians know it can arrive very quickly."

He said his preference would be for the equipment to arrive sooner rather than later.

'Interesting lesson'

"If you look at the military history of the Russo-Georgian war in 2008, the Georgians gave the Russians quite a bit of trouble when they used Israeli weapons that Tbilisi had purchased," he told VOA. "The Russians had trouble combating them, and their casualties were pretty significant.

"The Georgians didn't have enough of the Israeli weaponry. They were just overwhelmed. But it was an interesting lesson. The Russians are used to their own weapons. They may find the U.S. weapons much harder to deal with."

The Biden administration has sent more weapons to Ukraine but far short of what it could dispatch. Two refitted former U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats arrived Saturday. And the Ukrainians received a large consignment of U.S. ammunition earlier this year, including some Javelin anti-tank missiles, prompting criticism from Moscow.

The administration is mulling sending more, officials say.

Republican lawmakers have been urging a significant step up in American military support, but some U.S. and European policymakers are anxious and counseling caution.

They fear that sending more arms supplies could backfire, escalate tensions and force Putin into a full-blown confrontation, when all along he may have just wanted to taunt and goad. Others fear a limp response from the West risks emboldening Putin, who might see it as an indication that Washington and Western European capitals will do nothing but wring their hands if he is more aggressive.

"When we call on Putin to be more transparent, what we are trying to convey to the Russians is that unpredictability increases the chances of inadvertent miscalculation," a European diplomat based in Brussels told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

"We are left in a quandary: Logically, Moscow can ill afford the economic costs of an incursion, and there seems no popular support in Russia for military action, and a high casualty toll would likely go down badly. But you could have said similar things in 2008 and 2014. Few predicted the war with Georgia or the moves on Ukraine," he said.

"That makes deciding on our policy options especially challenging."

Expanding sanctions

Aside from what to do to deter Russia, Western policymakers are also wrestling with how to respond if Moscow does take aggressive action.

Some analysts argue the West has little room to add new sanctions on top of those imposed on Russia in the wake of the seizure of Crimea and others imposed after the poisoning of Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny, which the West blamed on the Kremlin. But former Ambassador Fried said he thought there was "significant room for escalating sanctions, especially in the financial sector."

"We can go after Russian banks. We can sanction Russia's metals and mining industries," he said.

"The Russia sanctions that are currently in effect, while costly for the Russian economy, are far below the level that could be imposed," Fried added. "While some in Europe and the United States have argued that there is little room to escalate these measures, there is in fact still a lot of space to do so." His list would include targeting Russian state-owned banks such as VTB and Gazprombank, especially their investment arms. Neither bank has been sanctioned before.

The subsidiaries and capital market financing of energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft could also be blocked. Russia's mining and metals sector, which has been mostly untouched in the current sanctions, could also be hit. Fried and others highlight the steel company Evraz, controlled by oligarch Roman Abramovich, and Alrosa, a state-controlled diamond concern.

On Monday, Russia's stock market saw the biggest sell-off since August, plunging by 3.58%. Traders and market analysts cited geopolitical risks as one of the key drivers rattling investors.

The possibility of expanded sanctions has also prompted alarm in some European quarters. Objections include the impact they may have on ordinary Russians. Sanctions also wouldn't be cost-free for Europeans. The Kremlin could retaliate by cutting off, or heavily reducing, natural gas supplies to Europe, which is already struggling with an unprecedented energy squeeze.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson focused on that worry last week, chiding Germany and others in a speech in London for being so dependent on Russian energy supplies, saying they should stop "mainlining Russian hydrocarbons." In a warning to European countries heavily dependent on Russian gas, he suggested Putin could indeed be serious about restricting supplies from pipelines running through Eastern Europe if the West sought to defend Ukraine.

"We hope that our friends may recognize that a choice is shortly coming between mainlining ever more Russian hydrocarbons in giant new pipelines and sticking up for Ukraine and championing the cause of peace and stability, let me put it that way," he said in the speech.

What would West do?

How much appetite European countries will have for a strong response in the event of a Russian incursion is a key question for policymakers and independent analysts. Putin and the Kremlin are likely expecting European weakness. That may "play into Putin's calculations," said Benjamin Haddad, senior director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council. "Putin may think this is the right moment to act, with Germany going through a political transition and France heading towards an election.

"But I do think that would be a miscalculation\."

Haddad said he expected the new center-left German government, led by Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, would "want to show it can be a good transatlantic partner." And regarding France, he noted that President Emmanuel Macron "spoke to Putin last week about Ukraine, and the messaging was pretty clear on French support for Ukrainian territorial integrity."
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On this edition of Straight Talk Africa, host Hayde Adams and her guests discuss the significance of European and U.S. museums returning African art and objects looted during colonial times.
U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West will head to Doha, Qatar, next week for meetings with Taliban leaders, the State Department says. West told VOA the U.S. is deeply concerned about the humanitarian crisis in the country, as VOA Senior Diplomatic Correspondent CindySaine reports
FILE - President Joe Biden speaks about COVID-19 vaccinations after touring a Clayco Corporation construction site for a Microsoft data center in Elk Grove Village, Ill., on Oct. 7, 2021. Looks like the Biden administrations vaccine mandate for millions of federal workers is working, and dire projections of disruption to law enforcement, intelligence gathering, or holiday travel have not materialized. Of Tuesday, one day after the deadline, 92% of the 3.5 million federal workers covered by Bidens reported to the administration that they are at least partially vaccinated, according to White House officials. In total, 96.5% of employees have been deemed in compliance with the policy, whether through medical or religious exemptions that are still being evaluated.
French President Emmanuel Macron and the President of the Italian Council of Ministers, Mario Draghi, are due to sign the Quirinal Treaty on 26 November 26.

The two governments intend to take the leadership of the European Union after the departure of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the formation of the new coalition government under her successor, Olaf Scholz. France is set to take over the rotating EU presidency on 1 January 2022 for the first six months.

The Quirinal Treaty includes provisions for industrial cooperation and defense.

The transition from a Franco-German tandem to a post-Brexit Franco-Italian brand should signal the return of Franco-German rivalry and the end of the European Union.
NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg met President Draghi on November 17 in Rome to address "the current security challenges" arising from "Russias military build-up in and around Ukraine". Stoltenberg thanked Italy because it "contributes to our presence in the Baltic Region with the air policing and troops". The Italian Air Force - specifies the Ministry of Defense - has deployed at Amari airport in Estonia F-35A fighters from the 32nd Wing of Amendola and Eurofighter Typhoon fighters from the 4th Wing of Grosseto, 36th Wing of Gioia del Colle, 37th Wing of Trapani and 51st Wing of Istrana (Treviso). When Russian planes fly into the international airspace over the Baltic, usually heading for the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, the Italian fighters receive an immediate take-off order from the NATO command on alert and within minutes they intercept them. Official purpose of this operation is "to preserve allied airspace". The real purpose is to make Russia appear as a threatening power preparing to attack Europe.

This is fuelling a growing climate of tension: the F-35A and Eurofighter Typhoon fighters deployed within minutes of Russian territory are dual-capable fighters with conventional and nuclear capabilities. What would happen if similar Russian fighter jets were deployed on the border with the United States?

The "air policing" on Russias borders is part of the frenzied U.S.-NATO military escalation in Europe against an invented enemy, Russia, in an increasingly dangerous grand strategic game. It was initiated in 2014 with the US/NATO-directed coup in Ukraine, supported by the EU, in order to provoke a new cold war in Europe to isolate Russia and strengthen US influence and presence in Europe. Russia has been accused of forcibly annexing Crimea, ignoring that it was the Crimean Russians who decided in a referendum to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia to avoid being attacked, like the Russians in Donbass, by Kiev neo-Nazi battalions. Those used in 2014 as a strike force in the Maidan Square putsch, triggered by Georgian snipers who fired on demonstrators and policemen, and in subsequent actions: villages put to fire and sword, activists burned alive in the Odessa Chamber of Labor, unarmed civilians massacred in Mariupol, bombed with white phosphorus in Donetsk and Lugansk.

Stoltenberg and Draghi also addressed the issue of the "crisis on the border of Belarus with Poland, Latvia and Lithuania". NATO accuses Belarus of using, with Russias support, "vulnerable migrants as tools of hybrid tactics against other countries, putting their lives at risk." Defending the migrants, expressing fear for their lives, are the same US and NATO leaders, including the Italian rulers, who in the last thirty years have led the first war against Iraq, the war against Yugoslavia, the war in Afghanistan, the second war against Iraq, the war against Libya, the war against Syria. Wars that have demolished entire states and broken up entire societies, causing millions of victims, forcing millions of people to forced emigration.

The day after the meeting with Draghi, Stoltenberg attended the 70th anniversary of the NATO Defense College, to which about 15,000 military and civilian personnel from 80 member and partner countries of the Alliance have graduated in Rome since 1951. After being educated in every aspect of "international security," they went on to "hold the highest civilian and military positions," that is, positions of responsibility in the governments and armed forces of NATO member and partner countries. In this university of war, where the most sophisticated strategies are taught, the most important sector is dedicated to Russia. It will now be joined by another. In his celebratory speech, the NATO Secretary General in fact stressed, "Russia and China are leading an authoritarian push-back against the rules-based international order." Stoltenberg has however forgotten to specify that the international order must be based on our rules".
I am livid. Pictures viewed from afar of bone-thin children rightly elicit gasps of horror. When youre standing in the pediatric ward in Kandahars largest hospital, looking into the empty eyes of hungry children and the anguished faces of desperate parents, the situation is absolutely infuriating.

Its so infuriating because this suffering is man-made. Economic sanctions meant to punish those in power in Kabul are instead freezing millions of people across Afghanistan out of the basics they need to survive. The international community is turning its back as the country teeters on the precipice of man-made catastrophe.

Sanctions on banking services are sending the economy into free-fall and holding up bilateral aid. Municipal workers, teachers, and health staff havent been paid in five months. They walk up to two hours to work instead of taking public transportation. They have no money to buy food; their children go hungry, get dangerously thin, and then die.

At the paediatric intensive care unit the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) supports at Mirwais Regional Hospital in Kandahar, the number of children suffering from malnutrition, pneumonia and dehydration more than doubled from mid-August to September.

More broadly, severe and moderate global acute malnutrition is up 31% around Kandahar compared to the same period in 2020. Region by region the severity of child malnutrition can be up to three times the emergency rating. This is a serious food crisis even before the worst of winter sets in.

New support for hospitals

Amid a sea of heartache is one small silver lining: The ICRC on Monday began supporting 18 regional and provincial hospitals and the 5,100 staff who work in them to help prevent total collapse of the public health system in Afghanistan. This support, slated to last six months, includes funding for running costs and medical supplies, and will ensure the continuity of nearly half a million medical consultations per month.

But its not enough.

Drought, failed harvests, and the economic collapse are all driving the increase in malnutrition. Rising food costs are pushing proteins and other staples out of reach. As the harsh winter sets with temperatures below freezing, the suffering will be immense as people lack the cash to heat their homes.

What can be done?

First, states must engage with Afghanistan. This is the only way to prevent a total collapse of essential services like health care and education. Political considerations should not interfere with humanitarian action. A political solution must be found to avoid irreparable humanitarian consequences.

And this is technical but important. Foreign assistance to Afghanistan is currently put in question as donors ask themselves how they can comply with their legal obligations stemming from relevant U.N. Security Council resolutions. Simply put, some donors feel they can either comply with the resolutions and their own law  thereby denying life-saving assistance  or provide such assistance through organizations such as the ICRC and others.

Suppliers and banking services will have similar impediments. The ICRC is calling for a clear carve-out for impartial humanitarian organizations engaged in exclusively humanitarian activities, and for its translation into domestic legislation. It is in everyones interest to see humanitarian activities operating smoothly in Afghanistan.

Amid what we know will be a tragic winter, the ICRC will step up its response to the most urgent humanitarian needs, but humanitarian assistance is only part of the solution. The existing and projected needs are beyond any humanitarian organizations capacity to deal with or solve.

More than 22 million Afghans will face crisis or emergency levels of acute hunger between November and March 2022, according to the latest IPC report. The desperation can be seen in the huge crowds lining up in front of banks at 5 a.m. in the hope that they can withdraw a little bit of cash.

The empty eyes of hungry children are not something one soon forgets. It makes my plea to the international community even more urgent: that it rapidly finds creative solutions to save millions of Afghans from deprivation and despair. Ultimately, this is in everybodys interest as it will help prevent Afghanistan from slipping back into conflict and violence, and help give Afghans more means to remain in their country.
Mr Lavrov, colleagues,

I would like to welcome everyone here to the expanded meeting of the Foreign Ministry Board. Today, our agenda is focused on the implementation of Russias foreign policy and priority tasks for the future, taking into account the adopted amendments to the Constitution, which also concern foreign policy.

Importantly, our Fundamental Law has now sealed such basic ideas and values as loyalty to the homeland, respect for our native tongue, history, culture and traditions of our predecessors. This is everything that unites our people around common ideals and determines the vector for the development of the sovereign, independent and peace-loving Russian state, an active member of the international community.

We will also fix the specific areas of foreign policy, of our diplomatic work in todays difficult international conditions in the new version of the Foreign Policy Concept that is now being drafted. This document, along with the National Security Strategy endorsed this summer, will, actually, become a roadmap for the Foreign Ministry and other ministries and departments.

The main thing is that our foreign policy should continue ensuring the most comfortable and secure conditions for Russias development, resolving ambitious socioeconomic tasks and improving the living standards of our people.

With this in mind, Russia is committed to developing partnership and mutually beneficial constructive relations with all countries and regional associations. We will proactively participate in international efforts to counter common challenges and threats which, unfortunately, still include terrorism and cross-border crime, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, poverty, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia is set to continue to firmly uphold the fundamental principles enshrined in the UN Charter such as sovereignty and equality of states, non-interference in their internal affairs, fair settlement of disputes and of course, the key role of the UN in addressing international problems.

Our proposal to hold a summit of states  permanent members of the UN Security Council, which bear special responsibility for maintaining international peace and stability, is in line with this principled approach.

Colleagues,

The coronavirus pandemic  we will have to talk about this as well, since there is no way around it given the circumstances  has seriously disrupted the usual course of life around the world. Last year  and the [Foreign] Minister just mentioned this  we were unable to even get together for our traditional meeting at the Foreign Ministry with the ambassadors and Russias permanent representatives. In fact, we began to work in a new environment.

But here is what I would like to emphasise. I have spoken about this more than once. Despite the ongoing measures, the pandemic is far from being overcome, and the risks of more waves of the disease coming our way are quite likely, and not a single country will be able to isolate itself from them. So, Russia calls for establishing actual cooperation in fighting this insidious disease on an equal and fair basis. Achieving success and defeating the virus is impossible without this.

Recently at the G20 summit, I proposed expediting the mutual recognition of national vaccine certificates and urged our partners to act promptly  you have probably seen this. It is of the essence for reviving global business and tourism activity and, in general, bringing life back to normal.

Of course, in this context, the role of the World Health Organisation (WHO) is increasing. Its work should be supported in every way. It could be even more active in mass immunisation, and in particular, could speed up the prequalification of new vaccines and medications, that is, the process for assessing their quality, safety and efficacy.

Another growing challenge is climate change. Russia is addressing it, proposing out-of-the-box initiatives. Clean nuclear energy and hydropower, gas power generation, as well as the enormous absorptive capacity of our forests and ecosystems have made our country one of the leaders in the global decarbonisation process. We meet all our commitments under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

Recently, a major decision was taken to implement a new programme to improve energy efficiency in the economy by 2035, and this is only the first stage. The programme will be part of a broader plan to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 at the latest. This does not mean it cannot be achieved earlier  I said, not later.

Our diplomacy should be more active in countering attempts by the European Union and the United States to assume the right to dictate the climate agenda single-handedly and to create standards for it, although we saw how difficult discussions in Glasgow were and how many questions they had between themselves. But we are not calling for dissent; on the contrary, we are calling for a search for mutually acceptable solutions. Incidentally, overall we should proceed from the premise that Russia has taken an advanced position in the green transformation and in digitisation in all economic industries and areas of life.

Regarding other priorities for the diplomatic service, I would like to mention the need to pay more attention to strengthening ties with our compatriots abroad, protecting their interests and preserving pan-Russian cultural identity, as well as to simplifying the procedures for granting Russian citizenship to them. Yes, I realise that this problem is at the junction of several ministries and departments, but the Foreign Ministry should also deal with this. In general, we should map out the best ways for using the creative potential of the millions of Russians around the world.

Obviously, it is necessary to continue creating an atmosphere of friendship, security and cooperation in the post-Soviet space. To achieve this, we need to expand our relations with our partners in the Commonwealth of Independent States, with whom we are bonded by historical, cultural and simply human ties.

The Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) is a key integration association. The EAEU goal is to create a common market for goods and services, capital and workforce. Consistent promotion of integration is already producing results for the participating states, driving their economic growth and helping improve the wellbeing of their citizens. We should use such achievements to involve new members and partners in the orbit of this organisation.

Considering the risks and challenges arising along the perimeter of our borders, we should pay special attention to joint efforts with our allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). In the last few decades, the CSTO has seriously contributed to the maintenance of stability in Eurasia. We should steadily promote our cooperation in the CSTO and use it in practice for the reliable protection of the national interests, sovereignty and independence of its members.

We should also enhance, through practical actions, our partnership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). This is one of the most influential centres in the multi-polar world, multi-polar international architecture. It is substantially facilitating stability and a sustainable socioeconomic growth in Eurasia. It is in our interests to achieve closer foreign policy coordination between its members, primarily in the UN, and other international venues.

Of course, we will develop cooperation in BRICS in the same vein. BRICS brings over 40 percent of the worlds population together and occupies more than a quarter of the Earths land area. BRICS should play a bigger role in international affairs and match the growing potential of its participants.

Colleagues,

Traditionally, our diplomacy is actively involved in settling regional conflicts. Unfortunately, the number of these conflicts and crisis situations around the world is multiplying, requiring more attention and swift response.

Of course, Ukraines internal crisis is among the most pressing and sensitive issues for us, which has so far remained unresolved. Demonstratively, Ukraine has failed to fulfil its obligations under the Minsk Package of Measures, as well as the Normandy format agreements. In other words, our Normandy Quartet partners  Germany and France  do not dispute the importance of the Minsk agreements. By the way, we must not forget that the Minsk agreements have become a norm of international law since the UN Security Council adopted the relevant resolutions. Unfortunately, in reality, [Germany and France] are indulging the current Kiev leaderships course on dismantling the [Minsk agreements], which, unfortunately, has led the talks and the settlement itself into a dead end.

Nonetheless, it is important to energetically continue the mediation efforts in the Contact Group and the Normandy format, since there are no other international mechanisms to promote an internal Ukrainian settlement, and there is no alternative to implementing the Minsk agreements in full.

Importantly, our Western partners are exacerbating the situation by supplying Kiev with modern lethal weapons, conducting provocative military exercises in the Black Sea and other regions close to our borders. With regard to the Black Sea, this even goes beyond certain limits since strategic bombers, which carry very serious weapons, fly at a distance of only 20 kilometres from our state border.

Indeed, we constantly express our concerns about these matters and talk about red lines, but of course, we understand that our partners are peculiar in the sense that they have a very  how to put it mildly  superficial approach to our warnings about red lines. We remember well NATOs eastward expansion  the audience here is quite representative and professional. Despite the fact that relations between Russia and our Western partners, including the United States, were nothing short of unique, and the level of relations was almost allied, our concerns and warnings regarding NATOs eastward expansion have been totally ignored.

There have been several waves of expansion, and lets look at where the military infrastructure of the NATO bloc is now  anti-missile defence systems have been deployed right next to our borders in Romania and Poland. These can easily be put to offensive use with the Mk-41 launchers there; replacing the software takes only minutes. Nevertheless, our recent warnings have had a certain effect: tensions have arisen there anyway.

In this regard, I have two points to make. First, it is important for them to remain in this state for as long as possible, so that it does not occur to them to stage some kind of conflict on our western borders which we do not need, we do not need a new conflict.

Second, Mr Lavrov, it is imperative to push for serious long-term guarantees that ensure Russias security in this area, because Russia cannot constantly be thinking about what could happen there tomorrow.

Clearly, and I can see this despite the fact that many people are wearing face masks, but I can tell by their eyes that there are sceptical smiles with regard to whether we can count on and hope for serious agreements in this area, keeping in mind that, after all, we are dealing with, to put it mildly, not very reliable partners who can easily backtrack on any previous agreement. Nevertheless, as difficult as it may be, we need to work on this, and I want you to keep that in mind.

It is also impossible to ignore that Western countries are using the migration crisis on Belarus-Poland border as a new reason for tension in a region close to us, for putting pressure on Minsk, while at the same time forgetting their own humanitarian commitments. Just look how the Polish security forces are behaving at the border  you can watch it on the internet or on television. The first thing that comes to mind is those poor children, there are small children there. And they are shooting water and tear gas at the crowd, throwing grenades. At night, helicopters fly along the border, sirens are howling.

I remember well how in 2014, when the Polish government, trying to stop the use of similar equipment by law enforcement forces in Ukraine  [Viktor] Yanukovych was President then  how they said it was unacceptable to use such means against the civilian population. What are they doing now?

Indeed, we know and understand that Belarus has its problems, although domestic political tensions have calmed down, but the problems exist, and yes, we are well aware of this and we certainly support a dialogue between the authorities and the opposition. But Russia, for its part, will undoubtedly continue its policy of strengthening ties and deepening integration with Belarus. We are determined to implement all 28 recently adopted Union State industry programmes to develop a common economic space, and go on to pursue coordinated macroeconomic, tax, banking and credit policies.

A year ago, Russias vigorous mediation efforts helped curb the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, but the recent shootings on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border have shown that the region has not yet fully stabilised. The efforts of the Russian peacekeeping contingent, as a guarantor of the ceasefire and the civilian populations security, are essential to ensure stability.

Undoubtedly, Russian diplomacy is playing a growing role in further efforts to settle disputes between Azerbaijan and Armenia, restore economic ties and unblock vital transport corridors in the South Caucasus. We have established an interstate commission at the level of deputy prime ministers. It is working, and I think it has good prospects. All countries of the region, including Russia, are interested in the long-term resolution of these problems.

There are serious challenges with respect to Afghanistan, especially after the US withdrawal from that country. In further contacts with the Taliban, it is necessary to make more active use of the formats of the Moscow consultations and the consultations of the extended Troika with the participation of external players and neighbours of Afghanistan with a view to promoting civil peace and public order, neutralising terrorist structures and drug crime.

Developments in Afghanistan dictate the need for additional measures to ensure Russias security on its southern borders and provide assistance to our allies  Central Asian states that consider Russia to be a guarantor of regional stability. It is necessary to continue acting in this vein, taking measures to prevent uncontrollable refugee flows and stop terrorists and other criminals from crossing our border.

Colleagues,

We have repeatedly noted the centre of gravity of the worlds politics and economy steadily shift from the Euro-Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific. So, we should continue vigorously developing relations with the states of the Asia-Pacific Region, being guided by our ambitious initiative to create the Greater Eurasian Partnership as a common, broad and open space of security, mutually beneficial economic and humanitarian cooperation.

We will continue strengthening ties with our good neighbours and friends in the Peoples Republic of China. Our bilateral ties have now reached the highest level in history and amount to a comprehensive strategic partnership. It is possible to say that they are a model for effective interstate cooperation in the 21st century.

Naturally, this is not to the liking of everyone. Some of our Western partners are openly trying to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. We are well aware of this. Together with our Chinese friends, we will continue responding to such attempts by expanding our political, economic and other cooperation, and coordinating steps in the world arena.

Russia has a similar approach in relations with India, our specially privileged strategic partner. We intend to build up our truly multifaceted bilateral cooperation. We regard India as an independent, strong centre of the multipolar world. We have a similar foreign policy philosophy and priorities.

Cooperation between Russia and ASEAN contributes to maintaining stability and security, as well as ensures sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific. It is important to deepen and improve, in every possible way, the experience we have accumulated over 30 years of productive political, economic and social cooperation with ASEAN.

It is equally important to maintain the intensive work with our partners in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, consistently implementing existing initiatives for post-pandemic economic recovery, stimulating trade in goods and services, investment and technological exchange, and expanding humanitarian contacts.

Russia has always acted and will continue to act as an impartial mediator to resolve conflicts and crises in the Middle East and help stabilise that region in every possible way. Our direct involvement contributed to defeating international terrorism in Syria, preventing the country from disintegrating, and to launching the intra-Syrian settlement process under the auspices of the UN, as part of the Astana format with Turkey and Iran.

Russian diplomacy should continue to contribute to the normalisation of relations between Syria and the Arab countries and an early return to the League of Arab States, as well as to enlist international assistance to improve the humanitarian situation in that country.

Assisting in the advancement of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is of fundamental importance for the improvement of the situation in the Middle East. We need to continue balanced and purposeful work with all parties to the Libyan conflict, to direct them towards finding a compromise. Overall, forging a truly friendly, pragmatic and non-ideology based dialogue with all states in the Middle East remains our unconditional priority.

Russia intends to continue to focus on cooperating with the African states, building comprehensive and mutually beneficial ties. By the way, this was the purpose of a recent decision to strengthen the staff of the Africa Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As you know, in 2019, Sochi hosted the first Russia-Africa summit; the parties are exploring the possibility of holding the next meeting in 2022.

With regard to Latin American and Caribbean countries, this region has always been interested in cooperating with Russia, and interest is growing, especially in the wake of our major supplies of vaccines and medicines to combat the coronavirus. We have formed a circle of countries on the continent that we traditionally maintain good and close relations with, and this circle is expanding, so we need to keep this process going.

Regarding European affairs, I have to state with regret that the opportunities for cooperation continue to narrow. Even though the EU remains our leading trade and economic partner, the previously rather productive Russia-EU cooperation is currently experiencing major difficulties.

The EU continues to push us back with its sanctions, unfriendly actions and unfounded accusations while ignoring the obvious benefits of interaction in politics, the economy and culture. We must not forget that we are neighbours and, as we know from history, dividing lines on the continent have never led to anything good. Of course, Russia is interested in maintaining neighbourly and constructive ties with the European countries, but everything depends on our partners willingness to establish and maintain equal and respectful cooperation.

A similar, if not more depressing, situation prevails in our relations with NATO which has adopted a markedly confrontational stance and is stubbornly and demonstratively bringing its military infrastructure closer to our borders, as I mentioned earlier. Moreover, NATO was the one that broke our dialogue mechanisms. Of course, we will provide a proper response to NATOs military activity along Russias borders, but, most importantly, Brussels must understand that alleviating military-political tensions is not only in Russias interest, but also in the interest of Europe and the world in general.

Out of the blue, they expelled our diplomats without providing any reason for doing so, and then they take offence at us closing their [diplomatic] mission in Russia. Why take offence? This was their initiative. They did it with their own hands and then started looking for someone to blame. Well, if they do not want to cooperate with us, okay, dont, it is not that we are desperate to cooperate with them. I think they will want to, they are already sending signals that they want to cooperate, but why did they expel our diplomats just like that, out of the blue, for no reason? Is it some kind of sport for them?

This also applies, by the way, to Russia-US relations, which, as you know, largely underlie global security and stability. At this point, these relations, to put it mildly, are in an unsatisfactory state. The diplomats from both countries are experiencing major problems. Embassy staffs have been cut and the embassies cannot function properly, let alone systematically engage in expanding bilateral ties. These are the consequences of the provocative policy pursued by US authorities, which began to practice large-scale bans and restrictions for Russian diplomats five years ago.

Our property in the United Sates has been seized in violation of every international standard and rule, every single rule. They have grossly violated the rules, just took our property and that was that  where is the Vienna Convention now? They even refuse to talk to us about it. Isnt this strange, in the seemingly civilised world we live in? Or it is not so civilised after all.

Nevertheless, the summit with President Biden in Geneva last June opened up a few opportunities for a dialogue and gradual alignment, straightening out our relations, and it is important that both sides consistently expand the agreements reached.

Indeed, something is already being done, this much must be admitted: joint work has begun on the strategic stability and information security agenda. True, our interests, assessments, and positions on many bilateral and international issues differ  this is indeed so and everyone is well aware of it  sometimes the difference is dramatic. However, I would like to say this again, we are open to contact and an exchange of views, to a constructive dialogue.

Colleagues,

The points that I made here show that the diplomatic service is definitely shouldering a heavy burden, which is constantly increasing. You have to work under very difficult and challenging conditions. The state will continue to heed any pressing problems with diplomatic service employees, and to strengthen their social guarantees.

We have made a few steps towards this in the past few years. Two basic laws have been adopted  on the diplomatic service and on the status of Russian ambassadors and permanent representatives in foreign states. A new remuneration system has been introduced, which increased the incomes of employees at the Foreign Ministry headquarters. The headquarters was slightly upsized, and the Foreign Ministrys proposals on expanding Russias diplomatic and consular presence in a number of CIS countries have been approved, too. We will continue to keep all these matters under review, and to support useful initiatives from the top Ministry officials.

To conclude my remarks, I would like to thank all the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for their high-quality and dedicated work, and to wish them every success.

Taking this opportunity, I would like to again express my special gratitude to the diplomatic service veterans, who could not join us in this room today for obvious reasons, and I would ask you to convey to them my best wishes of good health and happiness.

Thank you for your attention.
In Paris for the Trend lunch with imm, read the six trends here: six interior trends for imm cologne 2022 I also met my friend Elisabetta from Italianbark. We travelled and worked several times together after meeting in Helsinki a few years ago: Hello from Helsinki design week After lunch we had a walk and a drink together. We visited Ogata, which I showed you on the blog already here: 48 hours in Paris and also strolled through the Marais and visited a gallery I had not visited before.

At Empreintes, a French craft concept store.. [ did you noticed most stores stopped calling themselves a concept store ] the work of several designers was on display. Located rue de Picardie, the street connecting the effervescent rue de Bretagne to the shopping alleys surrounding the lively Carreau du Temple, Empreintes spreads over 600m  in a sunbathed four-story building.

Yann Marot

I always love to discover new craftsman. At Empreintes I especially loved the work of woodworker Yann Marot from Aup, France and his Black rope bowls. Visit his Instagram to see more of his work: Yann Marot

Already as a child, Yann Marot enjoyed the experience and atmosphere of his fathers workshop on the family farm. He was drawn to craftsmanship, but initially studied engineering. Degree in hand, he lasted about two weeks in that profession before setting off on a path towards his true passion: becoming a woodturning artisan. The profession very nearly disappeared but has been redeveloping since the 1980s and 90s. Now there is a symbiosis between artistic turning and traditional woodturning for furniture, he says. When asked if its necessary to learn both techniques, Yann, who is also a devoted teacher, says, its better to have more than one arrow in your quiver. words by Michael Angelo Foundation

I wish I had made some more images at the store, but it was really warm inside and with the obligated masks to hot to really take time and discover more I snapped a few other images of work that caught my eye below.







More posts about shopping in Paris and some earlier Paris visits and inspiration found in the city can also be found here on the blog when searching for Paris
DAYTON-Listening to a veteran's story was the perfect topic at the November 11 Dayton Kiwanis Club Meeting.

Kiwanis members invited Eric Thorn, a local veteran who served in Vietnam, to share his experiences as a Chinook pilot during the war.

"It's coming up on almost exactly fifty years since I got back from Vietnam," Thorn began. "I think it's in another month."

The United States became involved in Vietnam when President Eisenhower declared support for South Vietnam in 1955. President Kennedy furthered support efforts in 1962. South Vietnam's president, Ngo Dinh Diem, was killed in 1963, just weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent the first U.S troops into combat in early 1965.

"By 1967, there were 500,000 of us in Vietnam," Thorn said.

Thorn, who graduated from Dayton High School in 1965, said that his high school years saw the buildup of the conflict. A draft was in effect until President Nixon ended it in 1972. Thorn noted a few exemptions to the draft, including for education which he and many friends used to finish college.

"We never knew, at that time, what life after college would be," he shared. "Those in my class who didn't go to college, they got drafted right out of high school."

Many of the helicopter pilots in Vietnam were as young as eighteen or nineteen. Thorn said he was considered the "old guy" when he joined at the age of 22.

After graduating college in 1969, he said that many of his friends and Alpha Gamma Rho fraternity brothers were anticipating joining the military

"We formed a circle after graduation, in front of the fraternity house, and held out our hands and pledged to each other that we would meet at our social barn dance five years hence," Thorn shared. "We all made it."

In preparation for the possible draft, Thorn shared that many of his friends and classmates were members of the ROTC, but he chose to focus on his education first, military second.

"Every Thursday night, they had to polish their shoes and shine their brass for inspection on Friday," Thorn shared with a smile. "I'd chuckle at them. Three years later, when I was going to flight school as a warrant officer candidate, which meant I was living on post, marching to class, they would drive by and laugh at me."

When making his branch decision, he said that he only knew that he wanted to fly. He enlisted in the Army, in the Warrant Officer Program. He graduated in May and was active by September 1969. He went through basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana. He married his wife, Elizabeth, on Christmas Eve in 1969.

In March of 1970, he went away to flight school.

"About five months at Fort Wolthers, Texas," Thorn explained. "Two primary trainers at Fort Wolthers, two tiny helicopters."

He learned to fly in a Hughes 55 trainer helicopter, which was only big enough for a student and a teacher. He said around 40,000 pilots trained at the fort from 1956-1973. At the height of training, there were up to 500 helicopters flying each day.

"There were several benchmarks that you had to meet. One of them, one of the first, you had to solo in ten hours. If you couldn't, you were kicked out of flight school and sent to the infantry," Thorn said.

He said he was having an awful time, unable to hover the trainer helicopter as his ten-hour limit was almost up. Vietnam vet turned flight instructor Dennis Lockhart was credited with saving Thorn's life.

"He was just back from Vietnam, and he was a flight instructor at Fort Wolthers. He wasn't my instructor, but he visited me at the dorm one evening and asked how I was doing," Thorn said, getting emotional. "I told him that 'I don't know, it doesn't look good. I told him that I didn't think I was going to meet the ten-hour deadline for soloing."

Lockhart offered to work with him over the weekend, and within 20 minutes, Thorn said he was able to hover.

Thorn said that if he hadn't worked with Lockhart, he wouldn't have met the deadline and been handed over to the infantry.

He graduated and received his wings at the end of training before heading off to Fort Rucker, Alabama, to fly Bell UH1 helicopters. The pilot's motto during Vietnam: 'We fly above the best."

After Rucker, he said that most pilots received their orders to head overseas. He said that there were options, however, for the transition. Some pilots opted to fly crane helicopters, which transport bulldozers and equipment to make firebases on the tops of mountains.

Other options included piloting Chinook helicopters, classified as medium-lift helicopters, or becoming medevac pilots, which required additional training. There were also gunner aircraft and Light Observation Helicopters (LOH).

Thorn decided to fly Chinook helicopters, which required him to sign up as "indefinite," which no one was ever able to explain to him. He took the chance, and in March of 1971, he landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base near Saigon, South Vietnam.

He said within 24 hours of filling out his 'dream sheet,' which allowed soldiers to voice where they wanted to be stationed, he arrived in PhuBai. He flew in the areas between PhuBai and QuangTri.

"Our mission was not as dangerous, enemy-wise, as the folks that were doing guns, LOHs, and Uh-1's. Our danger was in mechanical problems, human error, and weather," Thorn said. "I think I found one bullet hole, the whole time I was there, in our Chinook, and a couple of fellows got shrapnel in their wrist or ankle, but no one got shot down while I was there,"

Thorn went on to say the most dangerous time was off-loading supplies at firebases. If the enemy was in the area, they might take a shot at the helicopters. The exhilaration, he said, came from trying to control the aircraft and set the load down exactly where it needed to be. Water, for example, had to be set on frames so that the spigots on tanks would work. Once the helicopters left, soldiers on the ground had no way to lift heavy items.

He flew on flare trips, as well, which meant that he was often on combat standby. He was called out once, in terrible weather, flying to coordinates provided by ground troops. The fuses on the flares had to be set to a certain time so that they would ignite below the fog.

At dawn, his crew was informed that they could return to base. About halfway through, all the instruments quit working, and they had to navigate using a stopwatch, heading out towards the ocean to avoid obstacles.

"We got about two-thirds of the way home, looked out the side, and there was a hole in the clouds," Thorn said. "In aviation terms, it's known as a sucker hole because usually when you get down through it, it closes up on you. It looked like the best option at the time, so we made a fast descent, got through the clouds, and made it home."

Thorn returned home in 1972, flying over 1,000 hours in 10 months. He went on to Fort Lewis, where he was processed out of the military. He contacted a younger fraternity brother, who helped him surprise his wife upon his return home.
Italy organises Gula's transfer as part of evacuation of Afghan citizens after Taliban takeover.

Sharbat Gula, who gained worldwide fame as the green-eyed 'Afghan Girl' image by photojournalist Steve McCurry, has been welcomed in Rome after being evacuated from Afghanistan.

The news was announced on Thursday by prime minister Mario Draghi's office which said it had organised Gula's transfer to Italy within the broader context of the government's Afghan evacuation, reception and integration programme.

Italy welcomes Sharbat Gula

The statement said that the government had responded to requests from "non-profit organisations active in Afghanistan who, after the events of last August, received Sharbat Gula's appeal to be helped to leave their country."

McCurry took Gula's photo at the Nasir Bagh refugee camp in 1984 and her image went on to become the iconic cover of the National Geographic magazine the following year.

Two decades later McCurry managed to locate Gula when he took her photograph again. She is now aged 49.

Photo Steve McCurry-National Geographic
Mandatory vaccination included in Italy's 'Super Green Pass' decree.

The Italian government has announced that the covid vaccine will become obligatory for the country's teachers, police officers and military, with effect from 15 December.

The move is part of a new decree centred around the so-called Super Green Pass which favours those who have been vaccinated or recovered from covid, while barring the unvaccinated from accessing a range of social, cultural and sporting activities.

The compulsory vaccination order - which includes administrative staff in schools and hospitals, and prison guards - was announced on Wednesday night by Italy's health minister Roberto Speranza.

The minister also said that from 1 December everyone over the age of 18 can book a booster dose.

Until now the booster dose is only available to the over-40s or those who are immunocompromised individuals such as cancer patients and transplant recipients.

Speranza said that health staff - the first category of workers mandated to get vaccinated earlier this year - will be obliged to have their third 'booster' dose of the vaccine from mid-December.

He added that the government intends to expand the nation's covid vaccination campaign to children aged 5-11, pending the formal approval from Italian medicines agency AIFA, expected to be given within days.

Speranza said that all going to plan Italy would receive the vaccine doses for children towards the end of December.

Italy's prime minister Mario Draghi said the new "important measures" were needed to "preserve normality" and to "give certainty" to the tourist holiday season.

"I hope it's a normal Christmas, for the vaccinated it will be" - said Draghi - "Let's hope the pandemic evolves so that next Christmas will be for everyone."

For details of the new decree (in Italian) see the government website. Photo: Alessia Pierdomenico / Shutterstock.com.
Covid booster is currently available in Italy to those aged over 40.

Italy is to offer the third covid vaccine dose, or booster shot, to everyone aged over 18 from 1 December, the health minister Roberto Speranza announced on Wednesday evening.

We have an advantage, also due to the brave choices made in previous months - said Speranza - and we want to try to keep it by staying ahead of the virus.

The booster dose is currently available in Italy to the over-40s or to frailer individuals such as cancer patients and transplant recipients.

Speranza was speaking during the unveiling of Italy's new 'Super Green Pass' which excludes the unvaccinated from accessing a range of social, cultural and sporting activities.

As part of the new decree, the covid vaccine will become obligatory for the country's teachers, police officers and military, with effect from 15 December.

Speranza also announced on Wednesday that the government intends to expand its covid vaccination campaign to children aged 5-11, once this is approved formally by the Italian medicines agency AIFA.

On Thursday the EU medicines regulator EMA approved the Pfizer-BioNTech Comirnaty vaccine for the 5-11 age group, paving the way for vaccines to be given to millions of children in Europe as a new wave of covid infections sweeps across the continent.
The HSI has not gone anywhere over the last few years even as other indices have moved up a lot over the same period, Brian Freitas, an analyst who publishes on Smartkarma, said in an email. The expectation was that these companies and their stocks would do well, the index would move higher and there would be more assets benchmarked to these indices (which is one of the ways that Hang Seng Indexes makes money).
There are lots of other trade-offs to consider. For example, mandating vaccination, if it slows hospitalizations to a manageable pace, can also prevent renewed school closures. Remember that, throughout the pandemic, nobody ever asked the children before suspending their rights. And theyve been suffering. Many, especially those from poor households, have fallen far behind academically and face worse prospects in their careers and lives. Some, for whom school may have been an escape from dysfunctional families, have been abused. Globally, depression and anxiety among kids has doubled during the pandemic, to an estimated 25.2% and 20.5% respectively.
So its not that the band breaks up then (in January), even though there are ups and downs in that month. I didnt have to manipulate the story. Because, fortunately, the story was built into the (existing footage)  the story of how they set out to do a recording and a live show, and have 14 new songs written in two weeks. . . . I was lucky the film already had enough drama from the real events that took place.
Soprano Erin Morley was superb, masterfully handling some of Aucoins more gravity-defying requests, which here and there flutter and flip like a sheet of paper in the air. A stunning centerpiece aria (This is what it is to love an artist) brought her powers into focus  her voice is lithe, lean and luminous, and her tone stayed consistent and strong throughout the operas three acts.
I had to go up because the water was coming in. I went up to the third floor and looked out, she said. Cars and dumpsters were floating down the street like bathtub toys. They rescued me with a 70-foot-ladder truck and took me away in an ambulance.
Democrats take credit for the surpluses, which clocked in at a record $2.6 billion for the 2021 fiscal year  which ended in June  and could amount to more than $3.5 billion above projections for each of the next two years, according to recent state estimates. Those unprecedented figures arrive a little more than a year after Gov. Ralph Northam (D) had to freeze spending because of the pandemic.
We feel like justice was served, and it was a relief to know the system actually worked in this case, and they didnt find a loophole, said Shawn Golden, 48, who was with his 10-year-old son. We talk about a lot of things that have been going on around the country, and being here and bringing him face-to-face to what is going on around us, this is special and something he will remember for the rest of his life.
Gaddafi's son barred from running in Libyan elections: Libya's top electoral body said Wednesday that the son and onetime heir apparent of the late Libyan dictator Moammar Gaddafi is disqualified from running in presidential elections that are supposed to take place next month. According to a list of barred candidates issued by the country's High National Elections Committee, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi is ineligible because of previous convictions against him. He can appeal the committee's decision in court in coming days. Saif al-Islam was sentenced to death by a Tripoli court in 2015 for use of violence against protesters who were calling for his father to step down, but that ruling has since been called into question by Libya's rival authorities. He is also wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of crimes against humanity related to the 2011 uprising against his father.
What has changed is the willingness of commuters to pay for more highways. Gas taxes no longer cover construction costs, and raising the gas tax is political suicide. The state cannot add tolls to existing lanes because the federal government forbids adding tolls on interstates (except in very limited circumstances). New tolled lanes built by the private sector have emerged as the perfect solution: accolades for governors, billions in profits for the highwaymen and the promise of magic highways that will end congestion.
Ohio State University in Columbus is one of two institutions that recently announced no-loan strategies for students to graduate debt free. (Angie Wang/AP)

Ohio State University and Smith College are removing student loans from financial aid packages, joining more than 70 other schools to do so.
Many in Hong Kong noted the timing of the switch to a more aggressive policy  three days after the attack on the police officer  as an analogy for their city itself, where they say the police force has not been held accountable for violating rules on the use of force during 2019 anti-government protests. Some began to see the pigs as victims of the citys political system, much as they see themselves.
Salote Mataitini, a Fijian pilot, said she was flying from Kiribati to the Solomon Islands when she and her co-pilot landed in the midst of the unrest on Wednesday. The route to their quarantine hotel was blocked because of the disorder, with police in riot gear using shipping containers to close access to the port. When the pilots arrived at another hotel, they found police officers clashing with protesters.
It only takes 5 to 10 minutes to take a boat and put it at sea filled with migrants, so Im not sure it is only a question of money and question about the number of [personnel], he said, echoing reports from French police officers who say they operate under tight rules. French authorities say they are allowed only a limited time window in which to try to prevent crossing attempts  usually after migrants reach the dunes and before the boats are underway.
At that time and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, a mood swept the country that the abuses of the KGB secret police in Soviet times must be remembered, so that such crimes would never be repeated.
Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn 

R, 106 minutes, in selected cinemas

Dont say you werent warned  the movie begins with a sex tape and the clue is in the title  although if pornography had as many fertile ideas as this Romanian slice of satire, it might be less boring.

To put it another way, in a world where police murder, terrorist violence, famine and all forms of human depravity are commonly available as spectator events, it seems odd to object to the fact some people like to film their home-made sexual adventures. Although I doubt Radu Jude wants to tell anyone how to think. His argument here is more that not thinking is not working so well for us all.

The free-flowing form of Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn will irritate and intimidate some. Credit:

Jude is a 44-year-old Romanian director with a long list of credits - shorts, documentaries and features. He has won a slew of prizes, including the Golden Bear in the most recent Berlin Film Festival for this one. He is steeped in the history of cinema: you would have to be, to break this many rules. Bad Luck Banging is about the most unconventional film to wash up on these shores since Godard was a film critic - and Jude is less of an egotist.
The key to reform is all about adopting a low-value high-volume fundraising model.

Were told that big donations from big organisations  trade unions, public or private companies, industry associations or even some community groups  are essential for democracy to function. Without that money, we are tearfully told, democracy would wither on the vine.

Furphies abound in discussions with political insiders about political fundraising  one in particular.

We need to make so insignificant the amount of money that can be lawfully donated that it could never be considered an inducement in the often Byzantine, sometimes nefarious world of politics.

We need to stop the Americanisation of Australian politics.

Creative fundraising has for generations yielded a flood of gold for political parties. Over many decades, hundreds of millions of dollars have been donated to parties across the entire political spectrum.

To fix this, we need a broom  not a dustpan.

The way to make that money clean is to cap donations and limit them to individuals. A limit of $200, anonymously donated, is equitable and neither favours nor disadvantages the supporters of any side of politics. It would make public funding and donations by corporates, unions or any other entity redundant. Dark money would disappear from the system overnight.
After almost three months fighting for his life in Royal Perth Hospital, soccer prodigy Danny Hodgson has been transferred to Fiona Stanley Hospital to begin his long rehabilitation journey.

Nicola Hodgson said her 26-year-old son had earned the nickname Ironman from intensive care doctors because of his fighting spirit.

Danny Hodgson with his father Peter.

Mr Hodgsons parents released a touching photo on Thursday showing himself kiss his son on the nose.

Danny, still needing a tracheostomy to breathe, reaches for his fathers cheek.
I am proud that no one at UWA was made redundant, she said. We used the negotiated collective jobs framework approach, buying time until the end of 2021 so that a better plan could be considered, consulted and mapped for the future. But she did not welcome the culture wars that broke out between universities and their leaders when they couldnt agree on a national framework to save jobs with the National Tertiary Education Union. When you take a VC job, the most important thing to do above all else is to leave things better than you find them. Emeritus Professor Jane den Hollander We ended up catastrophizing; universities deciding their sovereignty was being challenged, as if. And that certainly wasnt by the NTEU, she said.

She criticised the federal governments Groundhog Day of budgetary cuts and regulatory changes. The reductionist view of our elected leaders is demoralising and at risk is our place in the world as funding is cut and an increasingly narrow of what a university education is takes a grip, Professor den Hollander said. Universities can contribute much more to our nation than simply ensuring graduates get jobs within six months of their graduation. She said the great moral challenges of climate change and the Indigenous voice to Parliament had not gone away, which remained significant for the nation and the higher education sector. The surge of support for Black Lives Matter, the increased homeless numbers, the deaths in aged care and the trending violence against women are red signals; signals that were not getting it right and that there are divisions that will bring us down if we do not stand up.

That is the job of universities; to reflect the society, to educate, to speak and write the truth and also to provide some of the solutions. Loading As a specialist in digital technologies, Professor den Hollander created profound changes to Deakins tuition and research more than a decade ago by founding it in a digital origin and creating better access for distance education, which helped it roar up the rankings. She said delivering such change was very rough in the beginning and you cannot shy away from the discussion and the battles, labelling it the hardest job in the university sector. When you take a VC job  in fact, any leadership role  the most important thing to do above all else is to leave things better than you find them  that is the measure of our success, and it is our individual legacy.

She pointed to the importance of having a strong culture that backs strategy: UWA staff did that and my part in that I will cherish. And in an almost call to arms, she told academics that the university sector was now in harms way. Years of successive cuts and malignant disinterest are paying out, she said. Inclusion and a right to education are now in question, as is our capacity to contribute ideas and to speak the truth. Our social licence is being questioned and this will need our full attention.

Its no federal election but votes matter Murdoch Universitys senate election, which closes on December 10, will be telling about what motivates those invested in higher education to vote. Loading The alumni seat held by Abby Agrawal is being hotly contested by 10 others, including a retired fisheries science professor who opposed the dissolution of face-to-face lectures at Murdoch, and a corporate watchdog lawyer and the former guild president, who only recently left the university. Law graduate and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission investigator, Alex Bellotti, has called for the end of bad press about the university and to hold the senior leadership to account.

Murdochs current approach to management and pedagogy is a disservice to everyone involved, causing Murdoch to achieve the unenviable rank as the states worst-performing public university for research, teaching and impact in the influential Times Higher Education World University Rankings, Mr Bellotti said. We as alumni must take a stand and declare enough is enough, before Murdochs reputation (and by extension our degrees reputation) is further eroded by the discontinuance of leading areas of research and teaching, cost cuts masquerading as contemporary pedagogy or unproductive legal campaigns against whistleblowers. Former CSIRO marine biologist and Murdoch Professor Emeritus, Neil Loneragan, agreed that since 2012 major and harmful restructures have impacted the reputation and the morale of staff. In nominating for an alumni position on senate, I bring both senior inside experience and an outside perspective on which priorities are likely to ensure the greatest value and quality of Murdoch University for WAs public good and the alumni community, he said in his election profile. If elected, I would uphold the values of fairness, respect, equity and transparency in planning and decision-making to ensure the reputation of the university and the value of the Murdoch degree.

But among the most sweeping changes is the universitys academic council, where academic representation is being increased from 19 seats to 25 out of 50, with an additional two seats for heads of school added and two more seats for students, while ex-officio seats are being rolled back from 21 to 17, in a reversal of the national trend. Loading It sends the balance of power over academia back into the hands of its grass-roots representatives, which was conceded after a Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency review found Murdoch was at risk of failing to comply over its academic council adequately identifying, mitigating and maintaining oversight of material risks that impact teaching and learning quality at Murdoch. Based on research, recommended practice and benchmarking, the composition of Murdoch Universitys academic council has been adjusted where elected members now make up the clear majority, a university spokesperson said. The university has also added the direct election of academic members to many subordinate committees, thus broadening participation in academic governance across the university.

Dr Michael Tomlinson, who was a governance and compliance consultant at TEQSA until January 2020, said academic councils or boards used to be central to the decision-making structures of universities, where academic policies and strategies were debated and decisions made to accredit courses. But their position has been gradually eroded and more decisions have been made by management over the years, he said. This was a trend in all universities both here and overseas. Dr Tomlinson said the changes at Murdoch should allow more collective oversight of managerial proposals. This is more difficult to achieve if the academic council is dominated by ex-officio appointees from management, who will naturally tend to support a management agenda, he said.
A political storm over religious freedom has set up a test for Prime Minister Scott Morrison over schools that sack gay teachers or expel gay students, with Liberal MPs calling for faster action to fix the problem alongside laws to be put to Parliament today.

Mr Morrison has vowed to prevent schools suspending students on the grounds of their sexuality but has asked for an expert review that will take until early 2023, fuelling frustration about the failure to deliver on a pledge he made in 2018.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison is facing calls from Liberals to do more to protect gay students and teachers from being kicked out of religious schools. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer

Liberal MPs have gone public with calls to address the treatment of gay students in the debate over religious discrimination, amid warnings from Equality Australia that the draft laws will make it easier for religious schools to dismiss gay teachers.

The debate is dividing opinions in Parliament as conservatives back the Religious Discrimination Bill, church groups welcome the protection for people of faith and Labor expresses support for the principle while raising concerns about the impact in schools.
High-profile former ABC journalist Zoe Daniel is no stranger to the ravages of climate change.

She has travelled to the Arctic and seen the melting permafrost and rocky shores where the sea ice is in rapid retreat.

As a journalist, Zoe Daniel covered the effects of climate change around the globe.

In her 30 years at the ABC, including three stints as a foreign correspondent, the last as US bureau chief in Washington, Daniel covered bushfires in California, the aftermath of super storms in south-east Asia, hurricanes in the US and cyclones in the Pacific.

Daniel, who left the ABC in 2020, will stand as an independent for the blue-ribbon Melbourne bayside seat of Goldstein at next years federal election.
London: An Emirati general accused of torture and a senior Chinese official have won key posts at Interpol, sparking furious criticism from human rights campaigners.

The International Criminal Police Organisation said in a statement that Major-General Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi was elected president of Interpol at its general assembly in Istanbul on Thursday. He received 68.9 per cent of the votes cast by the 195 member countries after three rounds of voting.

UAE Major-General Ahmed Nasser al-Raisi was elected president of Interpol.

Two British men have filed complaints alleging that Raisi oversaw their physical abuse during their detention in the United Arab Emirates.

One of the men, academic Matthew Hedges, who was imprisoned in the UAE for seven months, condemned the result.
London: The head of the World Health Organisation says he is encouraged by the broad consensus he sees for a new binding treaty that would set the rules governing how the international community responds to the next pandemic.

The World Health Assembly is holding a special meeting from Monday to begin talks on a possible new pact.

WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Credit:AP

Such a pact would establish agreed rules on sharing, developing and distributing vaccines, technology, research, medical supplies and data with member states or countries negotiating the rules.

Agreements of this scale can take years to draw up. The last pandemic treaty took several years to formulate but only applied to the flu, meaning countries were free to act on their own when COVID-19 emerged from Wuhan, China in late 2019.
The trials of Kyle Rittenhouse and three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery had vastly different outcomes. But coming just days apart, they laid bare a dangerous and long-running current in the fight for racial equality: The move by some white Americans to grab guns and take their own stand against perceptions of lawlessness, particularly by Black people.

The two cases, which ended with an acquittal for Rittenhouse last week and guilty verdicts for Arbery's killers on Wednesday, highlighted polarizing issues about gun and self-defense laws, and racial injustice.

They also forced the questions: Who or what is being protected? And from whom? Should peace of mind for white Americans come at the expense of the protection and safety of Black Americans?

So much of this issue about protection and safety is about the safety and the protection of whites or white property, said Carol Anderson, historian and professor of African American studies at Emory University. There is a hubris of whiteness. The sense that it is on me to put Black lives back into their proper place.

Arbery, a Black man, was chased and shot to death by white men suspicious of an outsider in their predominantly white Georgia neighborhood. In Wisconsin, while both Rittenhouse and the three men he shot were white, the encounter was triggered by the 17-year-olds decision to travel from his Illinois home to Kenosha and arm himself with an AR-15 rifle, bent on protecting local businesses from Black Lives Matter protesters.

The unmistakable connection: The idea that white men who perceive a problem should grab a gun and wade into trouble and then claim self-defense, said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law.

This is a product of a gun culture. Its also a product of laws ... that give white men with guns the ability to create chaos and sometimes get away with it, said Waldman, author of The Second Amendment: A Biography.

The two coinciding trials highlighted deep racial rifts within American society, particularly following last years broad movement for racial justice that swept the country in the wake of George Floyds murder.

Both also came at the end of a year that began with an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which an overwhelmingly white crowd of supporters of former President Donald Trump, enraged with the idea that the 2020 election was stolen from them, stormed the building in an effort to take ownership of the government.

The impetus for raiding the Capitol, Anderson said, was the unfounded claim that there was massive amounts of voter fraud in cities where there were sizable Black populations, the notion that Black folks voting is what stole the election.

Thats the thing about vigilantism, its that something precious to me, for me, for my community, is being stolen and its being stolen by the unworthy, by the undeserving, Anderson said.

White vigilantism signifies the need to keep the Black population, particularly the Black male population, under surveillance and under control, said writer Darryl Pinckney. It has evolved over time, but there is a long history in the U.S. of people taking the law into their own hands  and of white Americans using that as a pretext to violently enforce racial boundaries.

Pinckney pointed to vagrancy laws and Black Codes, passed after the Civil War, that aimed to control freed slaves. Laws that say, if you cant say where you live, you can be locked up and made to work on the chain gang for some time. During segregation, Black people were told they were in the wrong place. In the days of integration, it was a questioning of why Black people were in a particular place  a demand for proof that they belonged in order to put white people at ease.

Arberys death recalls the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, a Black teen, by a white Hispanic man patrolling his Florida subdivision against supposed criminals. For many Black Americans, that case served as a cautionary tale that just being Black could make them targets, said Angela Onwuachi-Willig, dean of Boston Universitys law school.

To Willig, there was a direct line between the killing of Martin and the notorious 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, a Black teen visiting Mississippi from Chicago who was brutally slain by a pair of white vigilantes convinced the 14-year-old had whistled at a white woman. And the Arbery case is yet another reminder of the lingering malice that may await Black Americans who dare to cross into areas regarded as white strongholds, she said.

Organized violence against Black people by ordinary white American citizens has a long history in the U.S. and was often perpetrated with either explicit or tacit approval from authorities, said Ashley Howard, an assistant professor of African American history at the University of Iowa. She pointed to slave patrols that set out to capture suspected fugitive slaves and lynching cases, where jailers would often step aside or provide keys to give mobs access to Black suspects.

Arbery's killers were operating under that kind of slave patrol code, which basically deputized all whites to have the power to question anybody Black about why are you here? What are you doing here? Anderson said.

During the civil rights movement, police would often turn a blind eye to white vigilantes coming to Black communities to put down protests, Howard said. The violence was fueled by a false perception that Black people were aggressing against whites.

Its this feeling that the world that they know is being attacked, Howard said of white vigilantes. It is being threatened and they need to literally pick up arms and defend it against the roving mobs or however they are being framed and understood.

While Rittenhouses victims were three white men, race stood at the heart of his case, too, given that he decided to take up arms in defense of property during a Black Lives Matter protest, and his victims were white men who were standing up for the equal treatment of Black Americans. Attacking the white allies of Black liberation has always been a part of the story, Pinckney said.

Elijah Lovejoy, a white abolitionist and newspaper editor, was fatally shot by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, in 1837. His killers were found not guilty.

James Peck, a white activist during the civil rights movement, was deemed a race traitor by the KKK, brutally beaten to a bloody pulp during the Freedom Rides, as civil rights activist John Lewis described it.

Viola Liuzzo, a white civil rights activist who participated in the Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klan members.

In todays context, following persistent pleas that Black lives matter and many white people heeding the call to join the movement, discomfort and fear around a loss of white identity or power are being stoked once again, and some feel increasingly emboldened to address it.

White identity has never been challenged to this degree or abandoned to this extent by other white people, Pinckney said. There is a real sense of betrayal, and thats part of the fear  this loss of status or the devaluation of personal whiteness.

___

Nasir is a member of the APs Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/noreensnasir
WESTPORT  Gov. Ned Lamont took a walk through Westports downtown earlier this week making stops at what he calls three of the coolest stores in the world.

Accompanied by Westporter and social media influencer, Eva Amurri, the two highlighted several places for their positive impact and spirit that they bring to town as part of a new video to encourage residents to go out and support local small businesses.

Lamont, who partnered with Amurri and the Department of Economic and Community Development to spread the word, said the states small businesses are a big part of what makes Connecticut towns and cities great. The message comes day before Small Business Saturday this weekend which celebrates and supports small businesses.

I continue to be impressed with what our small businesses owners are doing to operate in a continuously changing and complex world, serve their community, and make a good living, Lamont said. Adding character and spirit in addition to creating jobs and keeping our local economy strong.

Amurri, who is also a blogger, actress, and entrepreneur, launched her blog HappilyEvaAfter.com in 2015. In August, she launched Do Your Thing CT!  a campaign that spotlighted local businesses and shares their stories of perseverance through COVID-19.

Connecticut-based influencers use the hashtag #DoYourThingCT to highlight different places within their communities on social media.

Amurri, who often writes about her love for Connecticut and how much she enjoys walking to Westports downtown with her children sought to continue the campaigns success by partnering with Lamont and DECD.

She launched a video this week where she and Lamont explore some of Amurris favorite Westport businesses including the Kerri Rosenthal boutique, the Indigo Wellness Group for some relaxation through acupuncture and The Toy Post to check out games and books.

The nearly three-minute video follows Amurri and Lamont at every stop where they speak with each business owner about their business and their life as a business owner. During the visits, the two also discussed off camera, the business owners strategies for staying operational during the pandemic as well as their experiences from when the town began to open back up.

I love supporting the local economy and driving my followers to check out little gems in every corner of the state, Amurri said.

Local business owners have been working so hard to pull through the pandemic, but its time for them to thrive instead of just survive, she added. Things are much better now than last year and Im encouraged to see people out and about again.

Amurri said that businesses need resident support now more than ever.

Lamont encouraged people to support local small businesses, like these Westport stores, because they are the pillars within the communities across the state.

According to the DECD, Connecticut has 80,000 diverse, small businesses that are a key part of the states thriving economy.

If youre concerned about delivery delays, want personalized customer service and looking for truly unique gifts then our local businesses are a better shopping option for the holidays, said Maribel La Luz, DECDs director of external affairs.

La Luz said the bonus is when residents support local businesses, were supporting our neighborhoods and our friends.
Allentown, PA (18103)

Today

Mainly cloudy, turning windy, and warm with record high temperatures possible. A few showers, mostly later in the day, but far from a washout..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy, windy, and mild early with evening showers and perhaps even a thunderstorm, then clearing, brisk, and colder late.
Reading, PA (19601)

Today

Mainly cloudy, turning windy, and warm with record high temperatures possible. A few showers, mostly later in the day, but far from a washout..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy, windy, and mild early with evening showers and perhaps even a thunderstorm, then clearing, brisk, and colder late.
Phil Fontaine's trip to Rome to meet Pope Francis next month will be in stark contrast to his first visit to the Vatican in 2009, when he was national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

Phil Fontaine's trip to Rome to meet Pope Francis next month will be in stark contrast to his first visit to the Vatican in 2009, when he was national chief of the Assembly of First Nations.

"We were unsuccessful in securing an apology" from Pope Benedict XVI, said Fontaine, although he noted the Pope did express "deep regret."

The circumstances of the Dec. 14 to 21 visit "are so different," said Fontaine, a member of the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba.

In 2009, there had been no Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, nor had the unmarked graves of children who died at residential schools been discovered.

Now, he said, "we already know the Pope is committed to visiting Canada," adding he hopes "the Holy Father will issue an apology" when he is here.

Fontaine spoke at a news conference hosted by the Assembly of First Nations Thursday. He has been named Manitoba's delegate, and co-lead, for the Dec. 20 visit by First Nations leaders with the Pope.

Thirteen First Nations members from across Canada will make the trip, which is being organized and paid for by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. In addition, delegates from the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami and the Metis National Council will attend. Each group will have one hour with the Pope.

Fontaine noted it has been a long journey for him and other Indigenous people.

"We are going to Rome with great expectations," he said, noting he hopes the Pope will agree to issue an apology on Indigenous territory in Canada.

While an apology is important, Fontaine added the delegation is also focused on reparations, access to residential school records, continued searching for unmarked graves and practical efforts at reconciliation with Catholics in Canada.

"There are a number of issues," on the table, he said, noting they cant all be covered in the short time the delegation will meet with the Pope.

Norman Yakeleya, a regional chief from the Northwest Territories, who will be the delegation lead, said the visit "has been a long time in coming."

It will provide "a measure of dignity and respect" to survivors and their descendants, he said, adding an apology is "absolutely required to advance reconciliation and healing."

It is also important that such an apology take place "on our lands," he said.

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Although no locations for the papal visit have been announced, it was suggested the former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., where the first unmarked graves were found, might be an ideal place for him to visit.

"We are ground zero," said Kukpi7 Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation and the B.C. representative on the delegation. "It would be extra significant for him (the Pope) to visit this area."

No date has been set for the papal visit, although it was speculated that Sept. 30, 2022, the second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, would be appropriate.

Rosalie LaBillois of Eel River Bar First Nation in New Brunswick, a young person and inter-generational survivor, said the visit is especially meaningful since she will get to "do what my grandfather never got to do  speak his truth."

To the best of her ability, LaBillois wants to "represent the youth perspective," to the Pope, and come home with a message that Indigenous youth can be "proud of where we come from we have a voice."

faith@freepress.mb.ca
OTTAWA - Canada's environment commissioner says a federal pandemic aid program for the oil and gas sector that was supposed to retain jobs and cut greenhouse-gas emissions is not set up to actually do either of those things.

A pumpjack works at a well head on an oil and gas installation near Cremona, Alta., Saturday, Oct. 29, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

OTTAWA - Canada's environment commissioner says a federal pandemic aid program for the oil and gas sector that was supposed to retain jobs and cut greenhouse-gas emissions is not set up to actually do either of those things.

"This is a program that needs a vast improvement," commissioner Jerry DeMarco said Thursday of the program called the Onshore Emissions Reduction Fund.

The $675-million program was announced in April 2020 to help the industry stay afloat amid a massive reduction in fossil fuel use in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The program funds projects to help oil and gas companies meet or exceed regulations requiring them to cut down on methane leaking or being purposely vented from production facilities.

DeMarco's audit of the program released Thursday says the process the Department of Natural Resources used for calculating the emissions lacked transparency, and that the companies had to report if they retained jobs but that doing so wasn't a requirement to receive the funding.

It also said the claimed emissions cuts were based on outdated data about existing emissions, and the program didn't ensure that companies were using the money for new projects they wouldn't have otherwise done.

Two-thirds of applicants for the 40 projects funded in the first round also stated outright that the funds were going to allow them to boost production. But neither they nor the federal government accounted for the increased emissions that would generate, and it's possible, said DeMarco, the increased production would produce more emissions than the program is able to cut.

Conservative party critics said in a joint statement that "the funding may have actually led to an increase in carbon emissions is ridiculous."

Julia Levin, a senior manager for climate and energy at Environmental Defence, said this is clearly an inefficient fossil fuel subsidy, something the government claims it is phasing out by the end of 2023.

"Ministers who are coherent with the promises they made just two weeks ago would cancel this program but I suspect they won't do that," she said.

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said they welcomed the audit, along with the others released by DeMarco's office Thursday.

That includes a damning report looking at Canada's overall progress on climate change.

DeMarco said Canada started promising to cut emissions three decades ago and since then emissions have gone up 20 per cent.

Canada was once a leader in the fight against climate change," DeMarco said. "However, after a series of missed opportunities, it has become the worst performer of all G7 nations since the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted in 2015. We cant continue to go from failure to failure; we need action and results, not just more targets and plans.

The ministers said the climate plans introduced since 2015 are starting to show results.

"We are confident that weve put in place the fundamentals, including with one of the worlds most stringent pollution pricing and rebate programs, to take Canadas climate fight to the next level," they said.

Wilkinson's department was less welcoming of the findings of the emissions reduction fund audit, only agreeing in part with many of the recommendations, and not directly addressing some of the biggest concerns about double counting and overestimating emissions cuts.

DeMarco said that is disappointing.

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"They didn't indicate to me that the department was willing to fully acknowledge the degree of problems," he said.

He said he knows the fund was "hastily" developed in the pandemic but said that's not an excuse for shoddy work and there is still time to fix what ails it before more money goes out the door.

Two rounds of applications have been completed so far, with the deadline for a third round coming in January. All told the fund has paid out $134 million to 26 companies for 81 projects, which the government claims cut more than 4.6 million tonnes of emissions.

DeMarco only audited the first round of applications  15 companies, 40 projects and $71.5 million. He said the program's design is so flawed he can't assess what emissions it actually did cut. He believes the government is vastly overestimating what this program can achieve.

The department itself admitted its emissions goals would require almost all 610 companies eligible for the fund to take part to the maximum benefit. In the first two of three rounds, only 26 companies applied.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 25, 2021.
OTTAWA - The Trudeau Liberals have outlined their latest aid package for an economy recovering from COVID-19, proposing targeted support to severely affected businesses, locked-down workers, and extra weeks of benefits that expired just days ago.

Chrystia Freeland Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance speaks at the Toronto Global Forum in Toronto, Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

OTTAWA - The Trudeau Liberals have outlined their latest aid package for an economy recovering from COVID-19, proposing targeted support to severely affected businesses, locked-down workers, and extra weeks of benefits that expired just days ago.

The legislation introduced Wednesday in the House of Commons is one of four bills the government wants MPs to pass before the middle of December ahead of a scheduled winter break.

The Liberals are proposing to send $300 per week to workers who find themselves off the job because of a pandemic-related lockdown between now and spring 2022.

The bill would let cabinet decide which regions are considered in lockdown, defined as an order for businesses to close and workers to stay home for at least 14 straight days. It would block benefits to those who refuse to get vaccinated.

Payments would be retroactive to Oct. 24 when the Liberals let a pandemic-era benefit for the unemployed expire. The Canada Recovery Benefit's siblings  sickness and caregiver benefits  would each get revived after expiring this past weekend with two more weeks of eligibility until May 7.

Wage and rent subsidies for businesses would be more generous and targeted over that same period to the still-hurting tourism, culture and hospitality sectors, as well as a long list of establishments such as movie theatres, arcades, casinos and gyms.

All would need to prove a deep and prolonged revenue loss to qualify.

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, praised the extended list of eligible companies but said the high bar for revenue losses would leave out too many small businesses.

Similarly, Restaurants Canada asked the Liberals to lower the revenue-loss requirement over worries that many financially viable operations won't survive the pandemic.

"We have been asking for months for sector-specific support and we just got a small portion of what we asked," said Olivier Bourbeau, the association's vice-president of federal and Quebec affairs.

The government also wants to extend to May a hiring credit for companies that add to their payrolls by boosting wages, rehiring laid-off workers, or new hires. The credit doesn't require as deep a revenue loss to qualify.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the economy is no longer in the same crisis that gripped the country at the onset of the pandemic when three million jobs were lost over March and April of 2020.

"I see this legislation as very much the last step in our COVID support programs. It is what I really hope and truly believe is the final pivot," Freeland said.

Employment has since rebounded to pre-pandemic levels, although the ranks of Canada's unemployed, including those who have been without a job for six months or more, remain higher than before COVID-19.

The mix of high unemployment and labour shortages helps explain why the government wants to target aid, hoping it jump-starts job hiring.

An analysis of survey data by job-posting site found more respondents were actively looking for work last month compared to July, August and September, and most described their search as "urgent."

Senior economist Brendon Bernard wrote that urgent job searches are usually linked to financial difficulties, suggesting the findings may be an early warning of strain for households.

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The minority Liberals estimate the new aid package would cost $7.4 billion, and the government needs parliamentary approval to spend the money.

The Conservatives and Bloc Quebecois separately on Tuesday suggested they may support the bill  the former because benefits will go where needed most, the latter because it would mean help for cultural workers.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Tuesday his party wouldn't support the bill unless the government reversed drops in income-tested benefits for low-income seniors and families who received aid last year, which boosted their overall income.

In a letter Wednesday, NDP finance critic Daniel Blaikie asked House Speaker Anthony Rota for an emergency debate to press the government on a plan to help "these financially vulnerable Canadians before they lose their home."

Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough told reporters later in the day that the government was searching for a solution, but didn't want the fix to create extra inequities for those whose benefits were rolled back because they simply earned more without aid.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 24, 2021.
OTTAWA - International Trade Minister Mary Ng and B.C.'s lumber producers say they are disappointed that the U.S. Department of Commerce has decided to increase duties on Canada's softwood lumber producers.

Minister of International Trade Mary Ng participates in a news conference in Ottawa, on Saturday, Nov. 21, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA - International Trade Minister Mary Ng and B.C.'s lumber producers say they are disappointed that the U.S. Department of Commerce has decided to increase duties on Canada's softwood lumber producers.

The U.S. government said Wednesday that its final combined anti-dumping and countervailing duty rate for most Canadian producers will be 17.9 per cent.

That's slightly below the 18.32 per cent preliminary rate issued in May but double the initial 8.99 per cent rate.

Ng called on the U.S. to stop imposing "these unwarranted duties" that harm Canadian communities, business and workers while also raising costs of housing and renovations for U.S. consumers.

Final rates for four Canadian producers have been slightly reduced from May. The final rate for Canfor Corp. is 19.54 per cent, down from 21.04 per cent; West Fraser Timber Co. Inc. is 11.12 per cent, down from 11.38 per cent; Resolute Forest Products Inc. is 29.66 per cent, down from 30.22 per cent; and JD Irving is 15 per cent, down from 15.82 per cent.

The BC Lumber Trade Council says the final rates are not unexpected but still disappointing, especially since U.S. producers are unable to meet domestic demand.

Our strong hope is that the U.S. industry will end this decades-long litigation and instead work with us to meet demand for the low-carbon wood products the world wants, including American families," stated council president Susan Yurkovich.

"Until then, we will continue to vigorously defend our industry against these meritless allegations."

Ng said the Canadian government will continue to defend the softwood lumber industry including through litigation under Chapter 10 of the CUSMA trade deal with Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, NAFTA's Chapter 19 and at the World Trade Organization.

"At every step of the way, rulings have found Canada to be a fair trading partner," she said in a news release.

Canada has always been willing to explore ideas that allow for a return to predictable cross-border trade in softwood lumber and remains confident that a negotiated solution to this long-standing trade issue is in the best interest of workers in both our countries.

Alberta Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Economic Development Minister Nate Horner said the higher tariffs are completely unacceptable.

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Any amount of duties unfairly targets our softwood lumber exports and these decreasing and then increasing rates create uncertainty on both sides of the border," he said in a news release.

Horner said the U.S. is a critical customer with 91 per cent of softwood lumber exports valued at $1.2 billion going south.

Conservative MPs say the softwood lumber duties show that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promise of a renewed relationship with the U.S. is failing.

Instead, we got an EV tax credit that threatens Canadian auto manufacturing, stringent Buy American policies, measures targeting agricultural producers, and actions against energy pipelines  contributing to skyrocketing energy prices. And now, the U.S. is again targeting Canada by doubling tariffs on Canadian softwood," said Michael Chong, foreign affairs critic, and Randy Hoback, international trade critic.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 24, 2021.

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FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)  The holiday tree is towering over the main square in this central German city, the chestnuts and sugared almonds are roasted, and kids are clambering aboard the merry-go-round just like they did before the pandemic. But a surge in coronavirus infections has left an uneasy feeling hanging over Frankfurt's Christmas market.

FILE - Lights illuminate the Christmas market in Frankfurt, Germany, Nov. 22, 2021. Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP)  The holiday tree is towering over the main square in this central German city, the chestnuts and sugared almonds are roasted, and kids are clambering aboard the merry-go-round just like they did before the pandemic. But a surge in coronavirus infections has left an uneasy feeling hanging over Frankfurt's Christmas market.

To savor a mug of mulled wine  an uncomplicated rite of winter in pre-pandemic times  masked customers must pass through a one-way entrance to a fenced-off wine hut, stopping at the hand sanitizer station. Elsewhere, security officers check vaccination certificates before letting customers head for the steaming sausages and kebabs.

Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. Merchants who have opened are hoping for at least a fraction of the pre-pandemic holiday sales that can make or break their businesses.

Others arent so lucky. Many of the famous holiday events have been canceled in Germany and Austria. With the market closures goes the money that tourists would spend in restaurants, hotels and other businesses.

Jens Knauer, who crafts intricate, lighted Christmas-themed silhouettes that people can hang in windows, said his hope was simply that the Frankfurt market stays open as long as possible.

While Christmas is 40% of annual revenue for many retailers and restaurateurs, with me, its 100%, Knauer said. If I can stay open for three weeks, I can make it through the year.

Vender Nils Knauerbstnads stands in his booth at the Christmas market in central Frankfurt, Germany, Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

Purveyors are on edge after other Christmas markets were abruptly shut down in Germany's Bavaria region, which includes Nuremberg, home of one of the biggest and best-known markets. Stunned exhibitors in Dresden had to pack up their goods when authorities in the eastern Saxony region suddenly imposed new restrictions amid soaring infections. Austria's markets closed as a 10-day lockdown began Monday, with many stall owners hoping they can reopen if it's not extended. The Czech government on Thursday closed Christmas markets as part of measures to counter a record surge in cases.

Markets usually attract elbow-to-elbow crowds to row upon row of ornament and food sellers, foot traffic that spills over into revenue for surrounding hotels and restaurants. This year, the crowds at Frankfurts market were vastly thinned out, with the stalls spread out over a larger area.

Heiner Roie, who runs a mulled wine hut in the shape of a wine barrel, said he's assuming he will see half the business he had in 2019. A shutdown would cause immense financial damage  it could lead to complete ruin since we haven't made any income in two years, and at some point, the financial reserves are used up.

But if people have a little discipline and observe the health measures, I think well manage it, he said.

Next door, Bettina Roie's guests are greeted with a sign asking them to show their vaccination certificates at her stand serving Swiss raclette, a popular melted cheese dish.

The market "has a good concept because what we need is space, room, to keep some distance from each other," she said. In contrast to a bricks-and-mortar restaurant, they have their building and their walls, but we can adjust ourselves to the circumstances.

The extended Roie family is a fifth-generation exhibitor business that also operates the merry-go-round on Frankfurt's central Roemerberg square, where the market opened Monday.

FILE - A girl rides on a merry-go-round on the first day of the Christmas market in Frankfurt, Germany, Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

Roie said it was important to reopen so that we can bring the people even during the pandemic a little joy  thats what we do, we bring back joy.

The latest spike in COVID-19 cases has unsettled prospects for Europe's economic recovery, leading some economists to hedge their expectations for growth in the final months of the year.

Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank in London, has cut his forecast for the last three months of the year in the 19 countries that use the euro from 0.7% to 0.5%. But he noted that the wave of infections is having less impact across the broad economy because vaccinations have reduced serious illnesses and many companies have learned to adjust.

That is cold comfort to Germany's DEHOGA restaurant and hotel association, which warned of a hail of cancellations and said members were reporting every second Christmas party or other special event was being called off.

Other European countries where the pandemic isn't hitting as hard are returning to old ways. The traditional Christmas market in Madrid's Plaza Mayor, in the heart of the Spanish capital, is slated to open Friday at the size it was before the pandemic.

It will have 104 stalls of nativity figures, decorations and traditional sweets in a country where 89% of those 12 or older are fully vaccinated. Last year, it had half the number of stalls and restricted the number of people allowed in the square. Masks and social distancing will remain mandatory, organizers said.

In Hungary's capital of Budapest, Christmas markets have been fenced off and visitors must show proof of vaccination to enter.

FILE - People visit the illuminated Christmas Market in Rostock, Germany, Monday, Nov. 22, 2021. Despite the pandemic inconveniences, stall owners selling ornaments, roasted chestnuts and other holiday-themed items in Frankfurt and other European cities are relieved to be open at all for their first Christmas market in two years, especially with new restrictions taking effect in Germany, Austria and other countries as COVID-19 infections hit record highs. (Bernd Wuestneck/dpa via AP, File)

Gyorgy Nagy, a producer and seller of handmade glazed crockery, said the restrictions initially stirred worries of fewer shoppers. But business has been good so far.

I dont think the fence is bad, he said. At the beginning, we were scared of it, really scared, but I think its fine. ... I dont think it will be a disadvantage.

Markets opening reflects a broader spectrum of loose restrictions in Hungary, even as new COVID-19 cases have exceeded peaks seen during a devastating surge last spring. More infections were confirmed last week than in other week since the pandemic started.

A representative for the Advent Bazilika Christmas market said a number of its measures go beyond government requirements, including that all vendors wear masks and those selling food and drinks be vaccinated.

Bea Lakatos, a seller of fragrant soaps and oils at the Budapest market, said that while sales have been a bit weaker than before the pandemic, I wasnt expecting so many foreign visitors given the restrictions.

I think things arent that bad so far, she said this week. The weekend started particularly strong.

In Vienna, markets were packed last weekend as people sought some Christmas cheer before Austria's lockdown. Merchants say closures last year and the new restrictions have had disastrous consequences.

The main sales for the whole year are made at the Christmas markets  this pause is a huge financial loss, said Laura Brechmann who sold illuminated stars at the Spittelberg market before the lockdown began. We hope things will reopen, but I personally dont really expect it.

In Austria's Salzkammergut region, home to ski resorts and the picturesque town of Hallstatt, the tourism industry hopes the national lockdown won't be extended past Dec. 13 and it can recover some much-needed revenue.

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Last winters extended lockdowns cost the tourism board alone 1 million euros ($1.12 million) just in nightly tourist tax fees during that period  not to mention the huge financial losses sustained by hotels, restaurants and ski resorts.

Overall, I do think that if things open up again before Christmas, we can save the winter season, said Christian Schirlbauer, head of tourism for the Dachstein-Salzkammergut region. But it will depend on whether or not the case numbers go down.

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Emily Schultheis reported from Vienna, and Justin Spike from Budapest, Hungary. Aritz Parra contributed to this report from Madrid.

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DETROIT (AP)  The FBIs confirmation last week that it was looking at a spot near a New Jersey landfill as the possible burial site of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is the latest development in a search that began when he disappeared in 1975.

FILE - In this May 24, 2006, file photo, workers, including Federal Bureau of Investigation evidence response team members, probe the ground near a demolished barn at a horse farm in Milford Township, Mich., where FBI agents investigating Jimmy Hoffa's 1975 disappearance. The FBI's recent confirmation that it was looking at a spot near a New Jersey landfill as the possible burial site of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is the latest development in a search that began when he disappeared. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File)

DETROIT (AP)  The FBIs confirmation last week that it was looking at a spot near a New Jersey landfill as the possible burial site of former Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa is the latest development in a search that began when he disappeared in 1975.

A number of theories have emerged about Hoffa since he was reported missing, though many of them have been tied to book releases. From serious to scurrilous, here are some of the best:

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Theory: Hoffa was killed on the orders of alleged New Jersey mob figure Anthony Tony Pro Provenzano. His body was ground up in little pieces, shipped to Florida and thrown into a swamp."

Who put it forth: Self-described mafia murderer Charles Allen, who served prison time with Hoffa and participated in the federal witness-protection program, told the story to a U.S. Senate committee in 1982.

Outcome: The FBI never found enough evidence to support the claim and questions were raised about Allen trying to sell the story to make money.

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Theory: Probably the most infamous had Hoffa buried under Section 107 of Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

Who put it forth: Self-described hit man Donald Tony the Greek Frankos in a 1989 Playboy magazine interview.

Outcome: The FBI found nothing to support the claim and didnt bother to show up when the stadium was demolished in 2010.

When that information came to our attention we batted it around, but we were all convinced in the end that this guy was not reliable, FBI agent Jim Kossler said then. We were able to prove to our mind that what he was telling us couldnt have happened because he either couldnt have been there or he was in jail at the time.

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Theory: Hoffa was abducted by either federal marshals or federal agents, driven to a nearby airport and dropped out of a plane, possibly into one of the Great Lakes that surround Michigan.

Who put it forth: Former Hoffa aide and strong-arm Joseph Franco in the 1987 book Hoffas Man.

Outcome: Other than Francos word, there was nothing to support his claim.

A Chicago Tribune review of the book put it this way: Former New York Times reporter Richard Hammer, who helped Franco with the book, candidly writes in the introduction that the stories have the ring of truth. Maybe, but they also reek of something else.

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Theory: Hoffa was killed by one-time ally Frank Sheeran at a Detroit house. Key parts of the narrative became the basis for the 2019 movie The Irishman."

Who put it forth: Sheeran.

Outcome: Bloomfield Township police ripped up floorboards at the house in 2004, but the FBI crime lab concluded that blood found on them was not Hoffas.

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Theory: New Jersey mob hit man Richard The Iceman Kuklinski killed Hoffa in Michigan, drove the body to a New Jersey junkyard, sealed it in a 50-gallon drum and set it on fire. He later dug up the body and put it in the trunk of a car that was sold as scrap metal.

Who put it forth: Kuklinski, who contended in his 2006 book, The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer, that he received $40,000 for the slaying.

Outcome: The former chief of organized crime investigations for the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice told The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, that he doubted the claim.

They took a body from Detroit, where they have one of the biggest lakes in the world, and drove it all the way back to New Jersey? Come on, Bob Buccino said.

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Theory: Hoffa was killed and his body was buried beneath a swimming pool in Bay Countys Hampton Township.

Who put it forth: Richard C. Powell, who used to live on the property and who was serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for a 1982 homicide in Saginaw County.

Outcome: Police used a backhoe to demolish the pool and dig beneath it in 2003, although no trace of Hoffa was found. At one point, police brought Powell to the scene handcuffed and shackled. Then-Bay County Prosecutor Joseph K. Sheeran told the Bay City (Michigan) Times that Powell didnt have any connection to Hoffa at all and that the convict just wanted a few moments of fame.

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Theory: Hoffas killers buried him beneath the 73-story Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit.

Who put it forth: Marvin Elkind, a self-described chauffeur and goon for mob bosses, in the 2011 book The Weasel: A Double Life in the Mob.

Outcome: The building, home to General Motors' headquarters, stands and the claim has never been taken seriously.

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Theory: Hoffa was buried in a makeshift grave beneath a concrete slab of a barn in Oakland Township about 25 miles north of Detroit.

Who put it forth: Reputed Mafia captain Tony Zerilli in the online Hoffa Found. Zerilli was in prison for organized crime when Hoffa disappeared, but he claimed he was informed about Hoffas whereabouts after his release.

Outcome: The FBI and police in 2013 spent two days digging at the site that no longer had the barn, but found nothing.

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Theory: Hoffas body was delivered to a Jersey City landfill in 1975, placed in a steel drum and buried about 100 yards away on state property that sits below an elevated highway.

Who put it forth: Journalist Dan Moldea, who has written extensively about the Hoffa saga, as a result of interviews with Frank Cappola. Cappola, who died in 2020, says his father owned the landfill and buried the body.

Outcome: To be determined. The FBI obtained a search warrant to do a site survey, which it completed last month and is analyzing the data. The agency hasn't said whether it removed anything from the site.

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This story was first published on Nov. 26. It was updated on Nov. 25 to correct that Michigan's Hampton Township is in Bay County, not Oakland County.
BERLIN (AP)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel labelled Thursday a very sad day and backed calls for more restrictions, as her country became the latest to surpass 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

FILE - A hotel has switched on the lights in some rooms to form a heart near the buildings of the banking district in in Frankfurt, Germany, Dec. 10, 2020, as the German government discusses further restrictions to avoid the outspread of the coronavirus. Germany is set to mark 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 this week, passing a somber milestone that several of its neighbors crossed months ago but which some in Western Europe's most populous nation had hoped to avoid. (AP Photo/Michael Probst, File)

BERLIN (AP)  German Chancellor Angela Merkel labelled Thursday a very sad day and backed calls for more restrictions, as her country became the latest to surpass 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

The national disease control agency said it recorded 351 deaths in connection with the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, taking the total toll to 100,119. In Europe, Germany is the fifth country to pass that mark, after Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy and France.

It is of course a very sad day that we have to mourn 100,000 victims of the coronavirus, Merkel said at a news conference in Berlin. And unfortunately, at the moment, more than 300 deaths are being added to that each day.

The long-time German leader, who is currently in office as caretaker until her successor is sworn in, warned that hundreds more deaths were already looming.

(The deaths) correlate very clearly with the number of infections that are occurring, she said. We know how many people on average do not survive this disease.

The Robert Koch Institute, a federal agency that collects data from some 400 regional health offices, said Germany set a record for daily confirmed cases  75,961  in the past 24-hour period. Since the start of the outbreak, Germany has had more than 5.57 million confirmed cases of COVID-19.

A coffin labelled with a paper 'SARS-CoV-2 positive - Corona' cremated in the crematorium in Giesen, Germany, Nov. 25, 2021. Germanys disease control agency said it recorded 351 additional deaths in connection with the coronavirus over the past 24 hours, taking the total toll to 100,119. In Europe, Germany is the fifth country to pass that mark, after Russia, the United Kingdom, Italy and France. (Julian Stratenschulte/dpa via AP)

The situation is so serious because we are still in an exponential growth and because the cases that we see getting sick today are basically the patients who will be in intensive care in 10 or 14 days, Merkel said.

She welcomed an announcement by Germany's government-in-waiting on Wednesday that it will create a new permanent expert group to advise officials on how to tackle the pandemic.

While the number of daily infections is higher than that seen during the last winter surge, there are currently fewer daily deaths per confirmed cases. Experts argue this is because of vaccinations, which reduce the likelihood of serious illness.

Still, hospitals have warned that intensive care beds are running out, with almost 4,000 already occupied by COVID-19 patients. Some hospitals in the countrys south and east have begun transferring patients to other regions.

The German air force has put two specialized medevac planes on stand-by to airlift ICU patients to regions with free beds.

The general manager of the Bavarian hospitals' association, Roland Engehausen, said the number of new cases needs to come down sharply.

Otherwise we're going to have a dramatic situation between Christmas and New Year's the likes of which we haven't seen yet, he told German news agency dpa.

Saxony, to the northeast, became the first German state to record a weekly number of confirmed cases above 1,000 per 100,000 inhabitants Thursday. It has the lowest vaccination rate  at 57.9%  among Germany's 16 states.

The government has urged people who were vaccinated more than six months ago to get boosters, and those who haven't been inoculated at all to get their first shot. Officials say 68.1% of Germany's 83 million inhabitants are fully vaccinated, far below the minimum level of 75% the government has aimed for.

Center-left leader Olaf Scholz, who is poised to succeed Merkel as chancellor next month, called Wednesday for mandatory vaccinations in nursing homes that care for particularly vulnerable people  and left open the possibility of extending the measure to others.

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Vaccinations are the way out of this pandemic, Scholz said.

His Social Democratic Party's health expert Karl Lauterbach, a trained epidemiologist, cited the case of Bayern Munich soccer star Joshua Kimmich as a cautionary tale for those who believe they can avoid both the virus and the vaccine. Kimmich, who had hesitated to get the shot, tested positive this week. Bayern said Wednesday that Kimmich was doing well."

The case shows how difficult it is for unvaccinated people to avoid COVID these days, Lauterbach said on Twitter.

Merkel didnt address the question of compulsory vaccinations for all, that some senior German officials and the countrys association of intesive care doctors have proposed. But she said there should be more restrictions on contacts.

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Follow AP's coverage of the coronavirus pandemic: https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic
GATINEAU, Que. - BCE Inc. urged the CRTC to reject Rogers Communications Inc.'s $26-billion proposed takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. on Thursday, while independent operators have called for more safeguards.

Edward Rogers, right, Chairman of Rogers Communications, and Brad Shaw, Chairman and CEO of Shaw Communications, chat before the start of the CRTC hearing looking into the merge of the two communication companies in Gatineau, Quebec, on Monday November 22, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

GATINEAU, Que. - BCE Inc. urged the CRTC to reject Rogers Communications Inc.'s $26-billion proposed takeover of Shaw Communications Inc. on Thursday, while independent operators have called for more safeguards.

Speaking at the second-last day of hearings in Gatineau, Que. this week  which are focused the broadcasting implications of the deal  BCE representatives echoed concerns raised by broadcasters, producers and distributors about the market dominance Rogers would have if the deal were to be approved.

"The market power that Rogers seeks to acquire will have a long-lasting negative impact that will echo throughout this interdependent ecosystem," said Robert Malcolmson, chief legal and regulatory officer at BCE.

"If successful, Rogers will achieve a degree of control over the broadcasting sector at levels never before contemplated with no clear countervailing benefits for the Canadian broadcasting system."

Malcolmson pointed to the CRTC's initial rejection of BCE's acquisition of Astral Media in 2012 because of the market size it would create as a clear precedent for if not rejecting, at least requiring commitments from Rogers to sell off assets to reduce the resulting market share.

Sarah Farrugia, vice president of content and business intelligence at Bell, said that if Rogers were allowed to secure 47 per cent of English-language broadcast subscribers it would be able to secure exclusive rights to international programs that it could use to direct subscribers to its online streaming services at the detriment of the broadcast system.

"It is very clear that the transaction will result in Rogers benefiting from a dominant position in negotiations for carriage that, in turn, will lead to reduced revenues for Canadian channels."

Rogers has argued that it needs the increased scale to compete against increasing competition from companies like Netflix and Amazon, while keeping subscribers within the regulated broadcasting system.

While direct competitors to Rogers such as Telus Corp. and BCE Inc. have outright opposed the deal, companies that are dependent on Rogers and Shaw to host their programming have been more targeted, with many requests focused on maintaining the status quo for a specified period.

The Independent Broadcast Group has asked that Rogers commit to maintaining 50 independent channels, compared with the 40 the company has said it will maintain for three years.

Ethnic Channels Group has asked that the CRTC require subscriber revenue to the independent ethnic producers not decrease for five years; children's TV producer WildBrain has asked that the regulator force Rogers to continue to carry independents currently on Rogers or Shaw for five years; while others have asked that Rogers be forced to maintain the satellite transportation services that Shaw currently provides.

Earlier on Thursday, Reynolds Mastin, chief executive of the Canadian Media Producers Association, called for more tangible benefits from the deal, saying the $5.7 million Rogers has proposed is not proportional to the size of the deal.

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"The commission should ensure that the applicant commits to a tangible benefits package that is proportionate to the size and nature of the transaction, and clearly and unequivocally benefits Canadians and their broadcasting system."

Unifor raised concerns about Rogers' plans to divert the $13 million a year Shaw gives to Global News to expand its own CityNews network, saying the plan risks losing a diversity of voices in smaller markets.

The hearings at the CRTC are focused on the broadcasting aspects of the merger, while other issues such as mobile wireless services will be reviewed by the Competition Bureau and from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada.

Rogers is scheduled Friday to respond to issues raised during the week.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 25, 2021.

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A buffet thats called Winnipeg home for decades will permanently close its doors next month, adding to the list of self-serve restaurants turning off their lights.

A buffet thats called Winnipeg home for decades will permanently close its doors next month, adding to the list of self-serve restaurants turning off their lights.

Royal Fork Buffet, at 1615 Regent Ave. West, will serve its last meals on Dec. 19.

"(The pandemic) hurt us," said Alma Frankow, the restaurants assistant manager.

For over 30 years, people have filled their plates with sushi, waffles, salad and fried chicken at the East Kildonan eatery. There are over 100 menu items  Frankow believes its the last buffet of its kind in Winnipeg.

However, the turbulent 18 months of pandemic have proven too much for Royal Fork. It offered takeout while physically closed but didnt see the sales it normally would.

Even now, when fully vaccinated folks can pile up portions of chow mein and roast beef, things are quiet. The weekends are busier, but overall, Royal Fork is seeing around 30 per cent of its pre-pandemic levels.

"Some of our regulars actually didnt come back," Frankow said. "They (are) scared."

Royal Fork assistant manager, Alma Frankow has been working at the restaurant for the past five years. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

Many dont wish to touch communal tongs and ladles. Some are seniors, at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19. Other past customers are unvaccinated and cant enter.

Royal Forks owner, Dan Jie Zhao, took to social media Monday announcing the buffets closure. Frankow said she found out last week. Around 35 people will lose their jobs.

"Im going to miss this place," Frankow said. "You get attached to the regulars."

Some have become so close, after coming for decades, they bring Christmas presents for the staff.

The closure hits home for Shaun Jeffrey, the executive director and CEO of the Manitoba Restaurant and Foodservices Association. He said he ate at Royal Fork Buffet as a kid and later took his children (who loved the dessert bar and beelined to the sundae station).

"Its very disheartening to hear (the news)," Jeffrey said. "Itll be sorely missed in the community."

Related Items Click to Expand Articles Aug 12, 2021: Leery but hungry response as buffet dining back on menu Danielle Da Silva

Of all restaurant models, buffets were closed longest and restricted most, he said. Many didnt offer takeout and delivery pre-pandemic.

Those who pivoted didnt necessarily receive customers calls.

"Its not something you think about when youre ordering," Jeffrey said, adding people largely order food based on habit, and choosing a buffet for delivery is uncommon.

Some self-serve restaurants transitioned to a cafeteria format or other dine-in option as public health restrictions eased. Theyve done better than those who havent, Jeffrey said.

"Buffets are very unpredictable, so youre wanting to make sure you have available products for your customers," he said. "Youre preparing based on volumes that you havent experienced in years."

The Royal Fork was seeing around 30 per cent of its pre-pandemic levels. (Mike Sudoma / Winnipeg Free Press)

The buffet model is only viable with many customers. Staffing remains almost the same, regardless of patron numbers.

"(It) was not created to be a single-serve operation," Jeffrey said.

He said he hasnt heard of much apprehension surrounding buffets  everyone who enters must be fully vaccinated  but still, the numbers arent what they were.

Buffets are "significantly behind" the restaurant pack, Jeffrey said.

"Theres a lot of debt and a lot of lost revenue to make up," he said.

Franchisees of Golden Corral, a large buffet chain in the United States, have declared bankruptcy in the past year. Tuckers Marketplace, an Ontario buffet-style brand, announced its permanent closure in June of 2020.

Tim Mushey was flooded with memories upon seeing the Facebook post publicizing Royal Forks closure. Mushey worked for the company in the late 80s and early 90s, from washing dishes to carving meat.

"It was not just a job," Mushey, 48, said. "We built a community there So many people I stay in touch with, I met there  and to this day, some of them are very good friends."

He was a self-described shy, stuttering 15-year-old when he started.

"No busier place to come out of a shell as a shy kid than on a crazy buffet when its lined up out the door all weekend long," he said.

People must use or return their gift cards at Royal Fork Buffet by Dec. 19. Diners sanitize their hands before touching communal utensils and are required to stay six feet apart, Frankow said.

gabrielle.piche@winnipegfreepress.com
OTTAWA - Boeing has been told that its bid to replace Canadas aging CF-18s with a new fleet of the American companys Super Hornet fighter jets did not meet the federal government's requirements.

The first F/A-18 Super Hornet, of many to come, undergoes updates and maintenance at Boeing's facility in St. Louis on April 25, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Ted Shaffrey

OTTAWA - Boeing has been told that its bid to replace Canadas aging CF-18s with a new fleet of the American companys Super Hornet fighter jets did not meet the federal government's requirements.

Three sources from industry and government say the message was delivered Wednesday as the other two companies competing for the $19-billion contract  U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin and Swedish firm Saab  were told they met the governments requirements.

The three sources were all granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss these matters publicly.

The Department of National Defence and Public Services and Procurement Canada, which is managing the competition on behalf of the federal government, did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Companies had been ordered to show their fighter jet was able to meet the militarys requirements for missions at home and abroad, but also that winning the contract would result in substantial economic benefits to Canada.

However, while Boeings failure to meet the requirements would appear to disqualify the Super Hornet from the competition, leaving only Lockheed Martins F-35 and Saabs Gripen fighter jet in the running, none of the companies have been told whether they are still in or out.

A Boeing spokesperson said the company would reserve comment pending official notification from the government.

News that one of the two U.S. companies competing for the contract failed to meet one or more of the requirements is the latest twist in what has already been a long and often unpredictable road toward replacing Canada's CF-18s.

Many observers had seen the Super Hornet and F-35 as the only real competition because of Canadas close relationship with the United States, which includes using fighter jets together to defend North American aerospace on a daily basis.

Those perceptions were only amplified after two other European companies dropped out of the competition before it even started, complaining the governments requirements had stacked the deck in favour of their U.S. rivals.

Sweden is not a member of NATO or the joint Canadian-American defence command known as Norad, which is responsible for protecting the continent from foreign threats. That had prompted questions about the Gripens compatibility with U.S. aircraft.

While Boeings failure to meet the governments requirements is surprising, said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, it could also boost the governments assertions that it is running a fair and unbiased competition to replace the CF-18s.

It indicates it was genuinely a competitive procurement, which Canada had put an awful lot of effort into ensuring was the case, he said.

Perry added: There was a lot of speculation about whether a non-American fighter could actually be a real contender, given Canada's requirements for interoperability with the United States. If they're still in the mix, Saab has obviously met that mark.

Yet Jeff Collins, an expert on military procurement at the University of Prince Edward Island, said there remain longstanding concerns in some corners that the entire competition has been set up from the beginning to select the F-35.

Choosing a different fighter, he added, would represent a major break from Canadas closest allies, the majority of which are buying the F-35.

Canada first joined the U.S. and other allies as a partner in developing the F-35 in 1997 and has since paid US$613 million to stay at the table. Partners get a discount when purchasing the jets and compete for billions of dollars in contracts associated with building and maintaining them.

Stephen Harpers Conservative government then committed to buying 65 F-35s without a competition in 2010, before concerns about the stealth fighters cost and capabilities forced it back to the drawing board.

The Liberals promised in 2015 not to buy the F-35, but to instead launch an open competition to replace the CF-18s. They later planned to buy 18 Super Hornets without a competition as an interim measure to ensure Canada had enough aircraft until permanent replacements could be purchased.

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Some at the time questioned that plan, suggesting the Liberals were trying to find a way to lock Canada into the Super Hornet without opening itself up to a legal challenge from Lockheed Martin or any other jet makers.

But the government cancelled the plan after Boeing launched a trade dispute with Montreal aerospace firm Bombardier over the latters C-Series planes. It later introduced a penalty on firms seeking a federal contract who have launched a trade dispute with Canada.

Collins questioned whether the so-called Boeing clause played any part in the fighter jet competition, though officials have previously said it was not a factor as the dispute was resolved in Bombardiers favour in 2018.

Meanwhile, the government has been forced to invest hundreds of millions of additional dollars into the CF-18 fleet to keep it flying until a replacement can be delivered. The government has said it plans to name a winner in the coming months, with the first plane delivered in 2025.

The last plane isnt scheduled to arrive until 2032, at which point the CF-18s will have been around for 50 years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 25, 2021.
OTTAWA - Canada is prepared to retaliate against an American increase of duties on Canadian softwood lumber producers, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday.

Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland rises during Question Period in the House of Commons, Thursday, November 25, 2021 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - Canada is prepared to retaliate against an American increase of duties on Canadian softwood lumber producers, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said Thursday.

"We will do precisely what we have done successfully with two previous American administrations: we state our case clearly and rationally. We also make very, very clear that Canada is prepared to retaliate, to defend the national interest," Freeland said in response to criticism in the House of Commons.

Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said the Liberal government is not being effective against a series of protectionist trade measures by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden. He was one of several Conservatives to pile on the Liberal government, which is facing mounting criticism over the growing list of trade irritants with Washington.

Freeland didn't provide specifics about what retaliatory measures might be under consideration. But she was alluding to the tough fights Canada waged against the previous administration of Republican Donald Trump who imposed punitive double-digit tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum at the height of the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 2018.

Trump used a section of U.S. trade law that allowed for the imposition of tariffs if a national security threat is perceived by Washington.

Canada hit back dollar-for-dollar countermeasures on American steel and aluminum, as well as a host of other products from whiskey to toilet paper to motorboats.

With Trump's departure and the arrival of the new Biden administration there were high hopes in some quarters that a new level of trade equilibrium might be restored between Canada and the U.S., even though Democrats are traditionally more protectionist.

Hence the litany of protectionist woes that Chong listed off on Thursday: a proposed electric vehicle tax credit that poses a threat to Canadian auto sector jobs, the revival of "stringent" Buy American procurement policies, and "measures targeting our dairy farmers, actions against pipelines that have contributed to skyrocketing energy prices and now a doubling of softwood lumber tariffs."

The U.S. Department of Commerce said Wednesday that its final combined anti-dumping and countervailing duty rate for most Canadian producers will be 17.9 per cent.

That is slightly below the 18.32 per cent preliminary rate issued in May but double the initial 8.99 per cent rate.

"It's clear that Canada's standing in Washington has declined," Chong said of the renewed relationship that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hoped for with U.S. President Joe Biden.

"It's clear this prime minister does not have a close working relationship with the president," Chong charged during question period as he asked Trudeau what he planned to do about it.

Freeland responded by raising the spectre of retaliatory measures.

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Bloc Quebecois MP Mario Simard said Canada's top trading partner was now acting like its adversary.

"Before people said Trump was the problem. Today, it's Biden. And we have the same problem," said Simard.

International Trade Minister Mary Ng said she raised the proposed the electric vehicle subsidy when she was in Washington last week for meetings as part of the North American Leaders Summit.

Earlier, Ng reiterated that she was disappointed by the new softwood duty, which she said was unfair. Ng said the government was pursuing litigation under the new North American trade deal between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, and at the World Trade Organization.

The B.C. Lumber Trade Council has said the increase was not unexpected but was still disappointing because U.S. producers are unable to meet domestic demand.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 25, 2021.
Shortages of bread, milk and other staples were reported Thursday from communities in southwestern Newfoundland left isolated by a storm that dumped almost 200 millimetres of rain on the area, washing out roads and bridges.

A surfer heads to the water in Cow Bay, N.S. on Tuesday, Nov. 23, 2021. Heavy rain and high winds are impacting a large swath of Atlantic Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

Shortages of bread, milk and other staples were reported Thursday from communities in southwestern Newfoundland left isolated by a storm that dumped almost 200 millimetres of rain on the area, washing out roads and bridges.

And in eastern and northern Nova Scotia, work crews fanned out to pump water from basements and repair roads inundated by torrential rainfall that had hammered parts of Atlantic Canada for three days.

In the coastal town of Port aux Basques, in the southwest corner of Newfoundland, repairs were underway on several roads, including the Trans-Canada Highway, and a helicopter was used Wednesday to rescue some residents trapped in a yurt  a round, tent-like shelter typically made from canvas and large poles.

Resident Robert Hinks confirmed supplies in town were running low.

"Theres no bread in town right now; there's no eggs to be bought; fresh milk is getting low, Hinks said in an interview Thursday from Port aux Basques. People are going to the gas stations and gassing up for fear of running out of gas, (but) you can't go anywhere anyway.

The town has three gas stations, (but) none of the refuelling trucks can get in  I guess they're going to be drained by next week."

In the nearby town of Codroy, fire Chief Brian Osmand said four of the area's roads have been washed out, leaving 14 families stranded.

Damage to Oregon Road as a bridge was washed away is shown in this handout image provided by Nova Scotia Department of Public Works in Tarbotvale, Cape Breton. Work crews fanned out across eastern Nova Scotia and southwestern Newfoundland today to repair roads, bridges and culverts damaged by torrential rainfall that had hammered parts of the region for the past three days. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Nova Scotia Department of Public Works *MANDATORY CREDIT*

"We're making the arrangement to make sure their needs are met," Osmand said in an interview as his crew pumped water from the basement of the Hynes Chicken Villa in Tompkins, N.L.

Osmand said the Codroy Valley Volunteer Fire Department, which serves 16 communities, had already pumped out more than a dozen basements on Thursday. The fire chief confirmed that the surrounding communities had missed their regular, weekly shipments of bread, milk and eggs on Wednesday, causing shortages.

"We might be able to airlift staples back into the community," he said.

Osmand said that on Wednesday night, when the storm was at its worst, the rain came down at an unbelievable rate. "It was wicked," he said, adding that it was too windy to use the fire truck.

"We were doing call-outs for the fire department, and there were times we couldn't see a foot in front of us. And it's not because it was foggy  it was just the rain. It was horrible. It's the most rain I've seen, and I'm 61 years old.  It was like getting hit by 10 buckets at one time."

Meanwhile, the ferry service that operates between Port aux Basques and North Sydney, N.S., was forced to alter its route because of road closures. Marine Atlantic announced Thursday it would temporarily reroute the crossing to Argentia, in eastern Newfoundland, to ensure people and supplies can reach the province. That route is usually offered only in the summer months.

The storm, described as an elongated area of low pressure, stalled over the region between Monday and Wednesday. Feeding on tropical moisture in the Caribbean, it dumped record amounts of rain on many communities, including Port aux Basques, where 165 mm accumulated over the past two days.

In the Codroy Valley, one weather station recorded 195 mm of rain. As well, a gust in the Wreckhouse area reached 141 kilometres per hour; however, that area is known for producing powerful winds.

In Nova Scotia, almost 30 roads and bridges were closed by the time the rain stopped on Wednesday. Most of the damage was reported in Antigonish County, in northeastern Nova Scotia, and in Victoria and Inverness counties in northern Cape Breton.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston said Thursday it would cost at least $7 million to repair the damage, adding that the province would apply for federal funds. "There's a lot of work to be done to rebuild, repair, restore," he said.

Some communities along Cape Breton's northeastern shore received more than 200 mm of rain, and several washouts forced the closure of sections of the scenic Cabot Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

In Ingonish River, N.S., on the east side of the Cabot Trail, flooding and washouts were reported amid heavy downpours that dumped a record 278 mm of rain on the tiny community. On Thursday, the 15-kilometre section between Neils Harbour and Ingonish remained impassable, leaving both communities isolated.

The washouts are separating the two communities from hospitals, long-term care facilities and the local high schools.

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"It's still a very unstable road," said Gourd Robie, the park's asset manager, "A lot of the culverts have aged poorly. They may look intact on the top, but the bottom is non-existent."

Robie said one of the parks employees, Davey Fraser, received minor injuries when his vehicle plunged into a large, dark hole in the road near Little Smokey on Wednesday night.

"It wasn't until our park employee was driving over it that it gave way," Robie said in an interview Thursday. "It looked good from the surface, but underneath it was a different story  (Fraser) is doing remarkably well, given the circumstance."

As for repairs to the road, Robie said he couldn't provide a time frame, but he stressed the park's staff were moving quickly to fix things.

"It's a world-class destination and an iconic route, but it's also the social and economic lifeblood of the communities here," he said. "It's a serious closure and we're doing everything we can to open the road as fast as possible."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 25, 2021.
Manitoba teachers could soon be regulated under a college that sets out standards for certification and publishes disciplinary actions, not unlike professionals in the fields of nursing and law.

Manitoba teachers could soon be regulated under a college that sets out standards for certification and publishes disciplinary actions, not unlike professionals in the fields of nursing and law.

The department of education is in the process of undertaking "a review and analysis of teacher regulatory models," a provincial spokesperson confirmed to the Free Press this week.

In its 2020 report, the K-12 review commission recommended the province develop standards for teaching and create a Manitoba College of Educators to certify teachers and "associate members" who work in the school system.

The regulatory body would: strengthen public confidence in the profession; train and certify members; provide transparency and accountability; promote quality, excellence and professionalism; maintain high standards for educators; and provide accreditation to faculties of education, according to the commission.

Right now, MTS (Manitoba Teachers' Society) is serving both as a regulatory body for teachers and a union, and its sort of an inherent conflict of interest.  Cameron Hauseman, an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba

"Its the one education reform Id agree with," said Cameron Hauseman, an assistant professor of educational administration at the University of Manitoba. "Right now, MTS (Manitoba Teachers' Society) is serving both as a regulatory body for teachers and a union, and its sort of an inherent conflict of interest."

Whereas a unions job is to protect its members, a college of teachers aims to protect the profession, said Hauseman, noting MTS oversees what, if any, disciplinary information is released to the public.

Ontario and B.C. have public registries that allow anyone to search for a specific teachers qualifications and view disciplinary records. A 2018 report on Nova Scotias K-12 system also recommended the eastern province introduce a similar college to license, govern, discipline and regulate the profession.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Manitoba Teachers' Society president James Bedford.

The Manitoba Teachers Society, however, is opposed to the idea. The union, which represents upwards of 16,000 teachers, claims it would set up a parallel system to an existing complaint process and create confusion.

"We have our own code of professional practice and its not just for members. Anyone could lay a complaint under that code and theres a rigorous review process in place," said president James Bedford, who indicated any issues that are "really egregious" come before the public court system.

Bedford said the union will work with the government to develop a uniform set of standards for professional competency and create a system that both has "the necessary level of transparency" and eliminates conflict of interest.

We have our own code of professional practice and its not just for members. Anyone could lay a complaint under that code and theres a rigorous review process in place."  Manitoba Teachers Society president James Bedford

He suggested Manitoba consider a regulatory model similar to the set-up at the Alberta Teachers Association.

A provincial spokesperson indicated Manitoba is considering every regulatory model for teacher certification that exists in Canada, in addition to international models. The results of the review will inform next steps.

"Manitoba teachers are strategically positioned to create the parameters, structures and strategies necessary to enhance their profession, contribute to their professionalization and ensure they all consider themselves equal to other established professions," states an excerpt from the 2020 K-12 report.

Former commissioner Linda Markus, who is an active career teacher, said she would like teachers to be considered professionals who have a vested interest in their students and educational outcomes.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS A teacher's desk in a classroom at R. F. Morrison School in Winnipeg.

"The way we certify teachers and allow teachers to be assigned in their schools has an impact on how effective those teachers can be in the field, so I welcome any changes to ensure that weve got the right teachers doing the right job in the right locations," added Markus.

For J.D. Lees, who also sat on the K-12 commission, a regulatory college would give teachers the professional respect they deserve and both increased authority and autonomy in their classrooms.

"(Teachers) are given a job to do thats a very broad job, and requires lots of decision making and discretion. More and more, we have interference in that Their professional judgment should be respected, as long as theyre getting results," said the retired teacher.

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Meantime, Hauseman argues a college would boost parent confidence in teacher proficiencies in pedagogy and student wellness, and benefit educators because only founded disciplinary incidents would be published and thus, rumours would easily be put to rest.

The transparent set-up would also deter bad behaviour, said the assistant professor.

"Theres a moral component to what we do in the classroom," he added. "I just dont see any benefit to keeping that information behind closed doors."

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
A long-awaited land acknowledgement intended to open daily proceedings at the Manitoba legislature is near completion after the government consulted with Indigenous leaders and groups.

A long-awaited land acknowledgement intended to open daily proceedings at the Manitoba legislature is near completion after the government consulted with Indigenous leaders and groups.

House leader Kelvin Goertzen said the government has prepared a draft land acknowledgement and provided it to his counterparts, NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine and Liberal MLA Jon Gerrard, for discussion on Wednesday.

Fontaine, who represents St. Johns and is Indigenous, said she hopes it is adopted quickly.

MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The government has prepared a draft land acknowledgement and provided it to his counterparts, NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine (pictured) and Liberal MLA Jon Gerrard, for discussion on Wednesday.

"Its certainly a long time coming and its an important move that the Manitoba legislature can make," she said. "We are prepared to do whatever it takes to have it tomorrow, if we could. Certainly the sooner, the better."

Currently, question period begins with a prayer, but there is no treaty or territorial land acknowledgement. The legislative assembly is one of the few public institutions in the province that doesnt open with a land acknowledgement.

Fontaine said her party has pushed for a formal land recognition to become part of regular proceedings since 2017. Earlier this year, NDP MLA Ian Bushie introduced a private members resolution to include a land acknowledgement but it did not proceed.

In September, while serving as premier, Goertzen struck a working group to consult with Indigenous groups and provide recommendations for a land acknowledgement.

THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/John Woods The legislative assembly is one of the few public institutions in the province that doesnt open with a land acknowledgement.

The working group was led by MLA Eileen Clarke, who resigned as Indigenous and northern relations minister last summer in the wake of comments by former Premier Brian Pallister on colonization and reconciliation. Clarke was not available for an interview on Wednesday.

Fontaine said she was not consulted in the development of the land acknowledgement but the draft was "a little bit better than I anticipated."

"I think we just need to tighten up some of the language and I think we need to tighten up the spelling, but other than that its a good start."

"The language that we all agree on will be something that will be said into this Manitoba legislature for years and years," Fontaine said.

Goertzen was not available for an interview, but said in a statement that all parties have indicated their commitment to implementing a land acknowledgement.

Grand Chief Arlen Dumas said the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs supports the draft land acknowledgement and described the consultation process as extensive.

Dumas said the assemblys elders council, which includes Dennis White Bird, Florence Paynter and Harry Bone, was involved in the consultations.

"There were some contentious issues from our perspective," Dumas said. "We wanted to make certain statements on our thoughts about where we are and the historical significance of what was being done when Manitoba was being created."

Grand Chief Arlen Dumas said the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs supports the draft land acknowledgement and described the consultation process as extensive. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES

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"The position of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs is that we are on unceded territory and that we respect our sovereignty," he said. "On those lines, we werent able to come to an agreement so those things were omitted."

Dumas said in this case the parties agreed to disagree and move on.

A spokesperson for the Manitoba Metis Federation said it was consulted by the province and was comfortable with the last draft they had seen.

News a proposed land acknowledgement has been completed came one day after Premier Heather Stefansons first throne speech, which also included the phrase "we are gathered here on ancestral lands on Treaty One Territory and on the homeland of the Metis Nation."

As part of the ceremony on Tuesday, for the first time, an Indigenous honour song was performed, by Opaskwayak Cree Nation member Mike Bignell, to accompany Lt.-Gov. Janice Filmon into the chamber.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
A key obstacle to some $740 million in potential funding for two major Winnipeg infrastructure projects has been removed.

A key obstacle to some $740 million in potential funding for two major Winnipeg infrastructure projects has been removed.

After several months of public prodding by Mayor Brian Bowman, the Manitoba government has agreed to sign off on the proposals.

On Wednesday, Premier Heather Stefanson announced her government will approve an application to secure funds from Ottawa for the second, "biosolids facilities" stage of the three-phase, $1.854-billion North End sewage treatment plant upgrade. It will also advance an application to implement the first steps of the Winnipeg Transit Master Plan.

"We want to make sure that we move forward together and send a signal to the federal government that these issues are of great importance," said Stefanson.

The applications will now move forward for federal approval through the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program.

If Ottawa approves, the feds will pay $201 million for sewage treatment, the province will cover $167 million, and the city will provide $184 million. The feds would provide $203 million for transit, the province would pay $170 million, and the city would cover $165 million.

The projects have a total value of nearly $1.1 billion, once the citys previously committed funds are factored in.

Stefanson joined Bowman at city hall for the announcement, one week after the city warned it was at risk of missing a Dec. 31 federal deadline for the sewage funding. A city report claimed missing it left Winnipeggers at risk of higher water rates and the city at risk of running out of sewage treatment capacity for future development.

The work was held up because the city and province could not agree on a public/private partnership for the project. The province pushed for that to involve private operations and maintenance, which the city rejected.

When asked if Wednesdays announcement means the city can pursue a partnership that doesnt involve that level of privatization, the premier said: "yes."

"Part of my new approach to things is obviously to empower ministers to do their jobs. In this case, were looking to the City of Winnipeg. This is a City of Winnipeg project, and well look to them to manage that project," said Stefanson.

The mayor has long lobbied the province to approve the funding applications, arguing the sewage upgrade should have moved forward long ago. The province ordered the city in 2003 to reduce pollution coming out of the plant.

"I think everybody that cares about the health of our rivers and lakes would have liked to have seen much of this dealt with by previous administration, both here at the city and at the provincial level," said Bowman.

The mayor said hes optimistic the federal government will give final approval to both projects. "Public transit is one of those ways that we help combat climate change, a key priority of the prime minister and the federal government."

The Transit master plan funding would cover the first key steps of a system overhaul expected to cost up to $1.5 billion.

The Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program request would pay for up to 110 zero-emission buses, a bus radio system, a new garage and the preliminary design of a rapid transit downtown corridor, as well as other infrastructure.

"What we would love to do is ensure that we move forward with as many electric buses as we can as a part of this because that will be part of our cleaner, greener Manitoba that I think we all want to see," said Stefanson.

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After the tense and distant relationship former premier Brian Pallister had with Bowman  in which they met only once in more than a year  Stefanson told media earlier Wednesday her decision to go see the mayor was "sending a signal."

"I dont have a big ego, where its someone else has to come here and weve got to do it here on our turf,'" Stefanson said. "I hope these turf wars are over. Its time to go in a new direction."

Funding for Phase 1 of the sewage upgrades was announced in July. The city has not yet applied for funding to cover the third phase of the project, which would greatly reduce the algae-promoting nutrients that leave the plant and wind up in Lake Winnipeg.

 with files from Carol Sanders

joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga
A long-awaited committee to address Manitoba's massive backlog of surgeries and diagnostics will be unveiled next week, Health Minister Audrey Gordon says.

A long-awaited committee to address Manitoba's massive backlog of surgeries and diagnostics will be unveiled next week, Health Minister Audrey Gordon says.

On Wednesday, the minister said the province is committed to fulfilling most of what Doctors Manitoba have been calling for.

In June, the organization representing more than 4,000 physicians and medical students estimated Manitoba has a backlog of 110,000 procedures, and made three recommendations for addressing the issue. Doctors Manitoba asked for a commitment from the province to fully address the COVID-19 pandemic-heightened backlog by a fixed date.

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Since then, the estimated backlog has grown to more than 130,000 surgeries and tests.

On Wednesday, Gordon wouldn't commit to a fixed date for ending the backlog, but said members of a surgery and diagnostic recovery task force to lead the immediate and ongoing effort to address the issue have been chosen.

The health minister said she's spoken with the group chairperson several times and the province will fulfill Doctors Manitoba's call for public reporting on the size of the backlog and what actions are taken to reduce it.

"Our commitment is to fulfill the call from Doctors Manitoba to name the task force, to set a timeline for the task force's work, and do public reporting," Gordon told reporters after question period in the legislature.

She didn't specify what day next week the task force would be unveiled, but said the announcement would include an update on the latest request for supply arrangements with surgical and diagnostic service providers.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
A jury has convicted three men of first-degree murder in the revenge killing of 20-year-old Rig Debak Moulebou.

A jury has convicted three men of first-degree murder in the revenge killing of 20-year-old Rig Debak Moulebou.

Jurors returned their verdict against Javaid Wahabi, Abdullahi Mohamed and Munachehr Haroon Wednesday night after more than a full day of deliberations.

TWITTER PHOTO Rig Debak Moulebou, 20, was shot and killed at a rental property at 25 Tim Sale Dr. in Winnipeg on Nov. 4, 2019.

All three men were convicted of additional counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

The mandatory sentence for first-degree murder is life in prison with no chance of parole for at least 25 years.

The Crowns case hinged on the testimony of Arnold Nduta, who was also initially charged in Moulebous Nov. 4, 2019, murder but later granted immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony.

Two days before he was killed, Moulebou fatally shot 23-year-old Jamshaid Wahabi  Javaid Wahabis brother  inside Citizen Nightclub. While Moulebou died before he could be charged, both the prosecution and defence accepted as fact that Moulebou was the killer.

Jurors heard evidence Javaid Wahabi and others immediately began searching for Moulebou and found him two days later, at a residential rental property on Tim Sale Drive.

Jurors heard the three accused and Nduta jointly plotted Moulebous murder, with Haroon and Mohamed agreeing to shoot him.

Tabitha Greive, who was Ndutas on-again, off-again girlfriend at the time, testified she and a friend had rented the Tim Sale Drive home for the month of October via an online service. After returning from a trip to Montreal on Nov. 2, she found the entry code to the home had been changed and Moulebou was occupying it.

"A man opened the door, who we later found out was Rig," Greive said.

Greive said she spent the night at a hotel and returned to the house the next day to pick up her belongings, after which Moulebou accompanied her on errands.

"He had a dirty T-shirt wrapped around his leg with a wound on it," she said.

Greive said she called the owner of the house, who agreed to let her stay for a couple of more days.

She said she woke the next morning to find Moulebou in bed with her, pushing her for sex, to which she ultimately agreed. Later that day, after police knocked on the door looking for the owner of the house, Greive called Nduta to pick her up.

"I didnt want to stay there, I just didnt have anywhere else at the time," she said.

When Nduta arrived, "He asked me to step outside the house door," Greive said. "I was confused why he asked me that. It was winter and I didnt have my coat on."

As she exited, two men wearing masks and gloves walked from around the corner and into the house.

"I heard two gunshots almost immediately," she said.

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Greive said Nduta took her by the shoulders to a waiting car, where they were quickly joined by the two masked men, who sat in the back seat.

Jurors were told Moulebou was shot 11 times in the head and torso as he slept.

Evidence against the three accused included intercepted cellphone conversations and cell tower transmissions showing their locations at the time of the killing.

Lawyers for the three men argued that other than Ndutas testimony, there was no direct evidence tying them to Moulebous slaying. Nduta, they told jurors, had everything to gain and nothing to lose by lying to the court.

Wahabis lawyer, Ryan Amy, argued Ndutas lies allowed him to escape prosecution and deportation, and have his housing needs and other expenses paid for by the state.

Dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Ding-dong, the wicked old Public Service Sustainability Act is dead.

In a surprise move that was not referenced in Tuesday's throne speech, Manitoba's Progressive Conservative government issued a news release at just after 6 a.m. Wednesday to announce it will repeal the act, otherwise known as the public-sector wage-freeze legislation.

It was passed in 2017 but never proclaimed into law. Even so, it was imposed on contract talks between the government and government-funded entities and public-sector unions until 2020, when a coalition of unions took the PC government to court arguing the act was unconstitutional. A lower court agreed and called the proposed law "draconian," but that decision was overturned on appeal in mid-October.

Labour unions announced their intention to seek leave to appeal that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Finance Minister Scott Fielding said the decision to repeal the act signalled a "fresh start" in the dialogue with public-sector unions.

In its news release Wednesday, Finance Minister Scott Fielding said the decision to repeal the act signalled a "fresh start" in the dialogue with public-sector unions. Fielding said the pandemic has deepened the economic burdens on the province and that the government was committed to avoiding layoffs while providing financial relief for "all Manitobans."

It's not clear that repealing the act will wipe the slate clean between the Tories and unionized public-sector workers. For the time being, however, Fielding would like unions to view this decision as proof that newly minted Premier Heather Stefanson wants to shed the cantankerous labour relations that accompanied former premier Brian Pallister's five years in office.

That's a big request, and it's not clear unions are willing to buy in.

In response to Fielding's surprise announcement, Manitoba Federation of Labour president Kevin Rebeck, said the Partnership to Defend Public Services "welcomes" the repeal of the act but will proceed to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.

Rebeck said the best way the government can prove it is sincere is to not formally oppose the leave-to-appeal application.

"If the Stefanson government is serious about wanting to reset the relationship with workers and unions, we call on them to stop interfering in public-sector bargaining, and to make a clear and genuine commitment that the government will also not oppose our application to have the Supreme Court consider the constitutionality of wage-freeze legislation," Rebeck stated in the release.

THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/John Woods Manitoba Federation of Labour president Kevin Rebeck, said the Partnership to Defend Public Services "welcomes" the repeal of the act but will proceed to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.

His comments are intriguing because they introduce another element: the current faculty strike at the University of Manitoba.

Faculty association members walked off the job in early November after they were unable to reach a wage deal. Complicating matters was an assertion by the union that the government had, once again, directed the university to limit its wage offer. That is what happened in 2016 when the university was secretly directed by the Tories to withdraw a multi-year contract offer and replace it with a one-year wage freeze.

The same appeal court decision that declared the wage-freeze act constitutional also found that the government had improperly meddled in contract talks between the university and faculty association. As a result, the faculty association is seeking $28.8 million in damages.

Can the repeal of the wage-freeze act resolve the multiple skirmishes the Stefanson government is waging with public-sector unions? Perhaps, but only if this government starts walking the talk.

From the moment he took over in 2016, Pallister made it clear he did not want to negotiate with unions. He got rid of several committees that allowed labour and business to make recommendations to the premier's office, and replaced them with business advisory groups. He stopped meeting in person with labour leaders.

Then there was the wage-freeze legislation. With no pressing fiscal crisis, Pallister nonetheless tried to impose a wage freeze, and three years of extremely modest wage increases, across all government contract negotiations. Even without proclaiming the act, government negotiators made its terms the one and only offer to unionized workers.

Several dozen unions did settle under the terms of the wage-freeze act. Many others did not and many of those  including nurses, school teachers and others  are now getting retroactive settlements that go well beyond the austere terms of the act.

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THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES/John Woods Add it up, and you can see why repealing the act does not necessarily, on its own, rebuild trust between the Stefanson government and public-sector unions.

Add it up, and you can see why repealing the act does not necessarily, on its own, rebuild trust between the Stefanson government and public-sector unions. In fact, it's not clear that Stefanson can pull off that trick before the next provincial election.

Notwithstanding the inexplicable decision by the Manitoba Court of Appeal to uphold the act, it stands as one of the clumsiest and most arrogant tools ever wielded by a premier in this province. It crippled collective bargaining for nearly five years, and left taxpayers on the hook for years of retroactive wage increases.

Getting rid of a law that should not have been created in the first place is a good first step. But it doesn't, on its own, repair this government's tattered relationship with its unionized workers.

Workers who will, no doubt, be active in the next election.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
THE Roman Catholic archdioceses of Winnipeg and St. Boniface have set targets for their Indigenous healing and reconciliation fundraising campaigns.

THE Roman Catholic archdioceses of Winnipeg and St. Boniface have set targets for their Indigenous healing and reconciliation fundraising campaigns.

The Archdiocese of Winnipeg plans to raise $660,000 over five years for what is being called the Solidarity Fund for Truth, Healing and Reconciliation, while the Archdiocese of St. Boniface wants to raise $500,000 over three years.

The amounts are based on an apportionment formula developed by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Nationally, Canadas Catholic bishops have committed to raising $30 million for healing and reconciliation efforts with Indigenous people.

Archbishop Richard Gagnon of Winnipeg said the amount sought in his diocese is something he feels local Catholics can manage.

"I think people will be supportive and glad to hear this news," he said, noting the funds that are raised will be dedicated to local healing and reconciliation work.

It will take a while to get the campaign off the ground, the archbishop said, but the effort has already been bolstered by a donation from the archdiocese of $220,000 from the sale of Micah House.

The building, which housed the social justice ministry of the archdiocese, was sold in 2020. The social justice work of the archdiocese is now done out of its headquarters on Pembina Highway.

A letter about the fund was sent to members of the archdiocese Nov. 23; in it, the archbishop invites Catholics in Winnipeg to "rally together" to meet the goal and contribute to reconciliation efforts in Manitoba.

Indigenous people will be consulted when it comes to disbursement of the funds in the province, the archbishop noted.

Archbishop Albert LeGatt of the Archdiocese of St. Boniface said raising money is one aspect of the campaign.

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"Its not primarily a question of money, but of developing relationships with Indigenous people so we are going on a good path of walking together," he said of the campaign.

Before raising any money, the archdiocese will embark on an education campaign for clergy and members about residential schools and reconciliation with Indigenous people.

"I am as interested in a conversion of hearts that leads to long-lasting relationships," as with raising money, the archbishop said.

The education campaign will be a "whole effort" involving many people in the diocese, LeGatt said, adding Indigenous people will be involved in deciding how funds raised in the archdiocese are spent.

Of the target itself, the archbishop said he wants to make "every effort to reach it or surpass it."

faith@freepress.mb.ca
HOW does systemic ageism affect our society? A coroners inquest into COVID-19 deaths in long-term care homes in Quebec recently heard that ageism was a contributing factor.

Opinion

HOW does systemic ageism affect our society? A coroners inquest into COVID-19 deaths in long-term care homes in Quebec recently heard that ageism was a contributing factor.

This is one of many recent examples of the ways ageism is entrenched into our institutional and social structures, and negatively impacts people and systems. The pandemic brought the critical consequences of ageism to the forefront, as older peoples basic human rights were dramatically affected.

Sarah Fraser, a professor in the Interdisciplinary School of Health Sciences at University of Ottawa, and global colleagues documented how some public reporting throughout the pandemic has misrepresented and undervalued older people.

For example, they highlight that younger adults who have died from complications of COVID-19 throughout the world have often generated long and in-depth media reports, while the deaths of thousands of older adults have been simply counted and summarized and the failure of the public authorities in France to report mortality figures for older adults in nursing homes.

Significant health ramifications, social isolation and the loss of millions of older lives around the world followed.

In 30 years, one in six people will be over 65. How do we better safeguard systems against discriminatory practices towards older adults and ageism?

Alongside my colleagues Eric R. Theriault and Amber Colibaba, I recently examined how our society can tackle ageism, starting in university classrooms.

Changing negative archetypes

Common societal archetypes of aging in the West are predominantly negative, embodying the repulsive, the deteriorating and the irrelevant.

Though the implications of ageism are dire, concerns about ageism outside of those working with or caring for older people are often quieter. Youth are the next generation of adults who will be interacting with, working with and caring for older people.

The language of ageism as a global crisis underlines the urgent need to understand and disrupt ageism, and to advocate for critical, supportive resources for changing cultural attitudes toward older lives.

Teaching young adults about aging

Research suggests that increased exposure to and interactions with older adults can reduce ageist views among college students. While a gold standard of inter-generational learning can be achieved through service learning  when students and older people actively work together on an activity or project  this is often infeasible.

Many universities laud experiential learning, yet the onus may fall upon individual faculty members to implement applied inter-generational activities. In an era of limited-term faculty appointments, stretched faculty members and budget trimming, the capacity to fund service learning and develop the required community relationships is limited.

Our study sought to understand how undergraduate students attitudes towards older adults and the aging process could shift after completing a lecture-based undergraduate course, that involved no service learning, about the psychology of aging. We analyzed student responses to two similar classes at two Canadian universities between 2019 and 2020.

Reducing fear

In 2017, my class welcomed Ruth Greenley to speak with us, however more recent classes, including those involved in the study, did not include older visitors. Without interacting with older people, students learned about the theory and research of aging from an intersectional lens that considered determinants of health such as socio-economic status. Voices of older 2SLGBTQ+ and racialized community members were woven throughout each section of the course.

After taking the course offered at Trent University and Cape Breton University, two undergraduate student cohorts at each of these schools participated in semi-structured focus groups/interviews.

Our data showed that simple, lecture-based courses focused on the psychology of aging can facilitate the development of an age-conscious student  those who are not ageist, do not fear aging and are attuned to the aging process.

Course learning

Most students taking the course, early on, viewed older people in one of two problematic ways: critically (as irrelevant) or patronizingly (as dependent). One student summarized this as putting older people in the boomer remover camp or the I really like my grandpa camp. Boomer remover was a phrase that emerged early in the pandemic as a kind of cruel shorthand for COVID-19.

After finishing the course, many students reflected that both of these previously held polarized views were equally harmful and ageist. Students were more age-conscious and demonstrated greater awareness of varied experiences of aging.

One student said:

Students also connected personally with aging and, importantly, become less ageist. It was surprising  or, in their words, eye opening, shocking and outlook-changing  that despite health challenges, older people can lead fulfilling and impactful lives. Such insights prompted empathy toward older adults.

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One student commented:

Universities role in reducing ageism

Our research shows that attitudes can be changed and that universities can play a leading role in developing age-conscious youth. Post-secondary courses focusing on aging in any relevant department offer one way to achieve this. Critically, this study shows that age-consciousness can develop within standard, lecture-based courses focused on aging.

Ageism was present long before the devastating impacts of the pandemic. However, simple interventions to improve inter-generational interactions are needed now more than ever to develop more socially conscious citizens. People may be more willing to speak out against the stigma of aging, and to work towards developing the necessary resources to support growing older with dignity.

Elizabeth Russell is an associate professor in the department of psychology and director of the Trent Centre for Aging & Society at Trent University.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.
Being part of something bigger drives educator

Wits Covid-19 Hero, Professor Lee Rusznyak spearheaded an initiative that assisted teaching students from 24 South African universities.

Her career is an inspiring, wonderful journey of connecting dots in search of understanding how teachers work with knowledge so that quality education can be delivered to every child.

The newly appointed Director of the Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) Hub has had a fascinating academic journey that even saw her taking up karate to extend her fascination with knowledge-building. She began her career as a primary school teacher, teaching music and science. As someone who has always had a fascination for astronomy and physics, she has a particular interest in how ideas fit together and how teachers represent these ideas in understandable ways.

After completing a BSc Honours in Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Rusznyak went back to first year to take up a four-year degree in teaching. She taught for several years before returning to Wits as a lecturer in 2000. She has served 15 years in leadership at the Wits School of Education, running the Teaching Experience office, managing the Bachelor of Education degree, heading up Teaching and Learning, and until recently, serving as a Deputy Head of School.

I come from a family of teachers and I always knew I wanted to become a teacher. I love seeing the light in someones eyes when they have understood something quite complex and it gives them insight into the world around them. I love seeing students acquire the conceptual tools to ask meaningful questions and challenge things that are not right. I love that with teaching, you become part of something way bigger than yourself, says Rusznyak.

Rusznyak who is a fervent animal and music lover, last year spearheaded the conceptualisation, design and development of an online teaching practice module, known as Teacher Choices in Action (TCiA). The module provided students with an alternative to school-based teaching practicals which were ruled out due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

She has been lauded as a Wits Covid-19 Hero, for not only did she save the academic year for all Wits Education students, but she invited other South African universities to participate. In this way, approximately 28 000 students from 24 South African universities attained a credit for their practical teaching during the 2020 academic year.

For this she was nominated as one of the Wits Covid-19 Heroes, nominated by members of the Wits community and are recognised for playing a key role in the university, society through outreach thereby helping the university and others to succeed under difficult times.

Professor Rusznyak says that more than 44 000 student teachers from around the country have now completed the module.

The TCiA is about learning to see how teachers think, how teachers work with ideas  it looks at the decisions teachers make in their classroom teaching processes  these are the things I am interested in when people talk about teaching  the building blocks of knowledge and how teachers are responsive to their contexts, she says.

The TCiA module has enriched how students are prepared for work-based learning. What is really great about the module is that it has developed a shared language of teaching practice and students become equipped with the same concepts to talk about their classroom work. It provided student teachers opportunities to talk to each other in a national discussion platform  during the module, they share what drives them teachers, their challenges, and their hopes. The recorded lessons that students observe show examples of great teaching practices across diverse school contexts. The module has woven together many components about teacher education, from content knowledge, pedagogy, inclusive teaching and language support in such a beautiful way. This would never have been possible without the generous funding from a DHET/EU partnership.

Rusznyak says she is enjoying the challenges of her new role at the Wits LCT Hub. LCT, developed by Prof. Karl Maton, offers a sociological approach to analyse knowledge-based practices and how people develop expertise across a range of disciplines and professional practices. Since its inception in May 2021, the Wits LCT Hub has attracted over 130 academics and postgraduate students who get together for two hours every week to read, discuss and research with LCT. Members of the Hub are drawn across five Wits Faculties, six South African universities and from 13 countries. Currently, Rusznyak is leading a national research project associated with the Teacher Choices in Action module. She and other researchers are using concepts from LCT to analyse how student teachers understand teachers work at different points in their teacher preparation. She is also working with Maton and other international LCT scholars to organise the next international LCT conference to be held in mid-January.

The next LCT conference will be around the world, around the clock. It is a mix of regional events hosted by LCT groups in 14 countries. A 65-hour non-stop global online broadcast will move from country to country, with some awesome contributions coming from the Wits LCT Hub and the LCT Centre for Knowledge-building based at the University of Sydney, Australia.

To find out about the Wits LCT Hub email WitsLCThub@gmail.com

About Wits Covid-19 Heroes

The Wits Heroes Series celebrates staff and students who went beyond the call of duty at the onset of Covid-19 in 2020. Wits Heroes were nominated by members of the Wits community. Discover other Heroes.
HERKIMER, N.Y. -- The First United Methodist Church of Herkimer and Little Falls gave thanks to their community on Thursday.

Many volunteers came together to make that traditional Thanksgiving meal to show their way of thanks this year.

Many got to enjoy their turkey, stuffing and mash potatoes.

Delivery and take-out were also available to community members.

It's the one day of the year to give thanks. It's an opportunity to service the community. To be honest with you, this community is served by a lot. The Salvation Army helps out during the week that helps with meals. There are meal programs like Meals on Wheels and pantry kitchens locally. This is one day, with tomorrow being Black Friday, that could be a long weekend where people go without a meal, says one of the volunteers John Brennan.

Organizers say that over 400 meals were made and enjoyed.
Arkema's Pierre-Benite site in France production unit specializes in the manufacture of products derived from fluorine chemistry. It produces Forane fluorinated gases and Kynar polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). (File Photo)

COLOMBES, FRANCE: In the presence of Thierry Le Henaff, chairman and CEO, Arkema inaugurated the Christian Collette Center of Excellence dedicated to batteries at its Pierre-Benite research center. The company also announced a 50 percent increase in its Kynar PVDF fluoropolymer production capacities at the Pierre-Benite site in order to address the fast-growing demand for materials for lithium-ion batteries. Arkema now aims for sales of at least one billion euros in batteries by 2030.

To support the exponential growth in demand for lithium-ion battery cell materials in Europe, Arkema also announces a 50 percent expansion of its Kynar fluoropolymer production capacity at its Pierre-Benite site. These polymers are used as separators coatings or as cathode binders. New innovations and product ranges will also be offered, such as Kynar CTO, the new Kynar PVDF made from renewable sources. This new extension should come on stream in the first quarter of 2023.

In June, Arkema announced a major innovation with the launch of its new sustainable Kynar PVDF range. These new grades will claim 100 percent renewable attributed carbon derived from crude tall oil bio-feedstock, according to a mass balance approach.

The Kynar CTO PVDF grades will be produced firstly in Arkemas Pierre-Benite plant in France for its European customers, focusing initially on grades specifically targeted for the lithium-ion battery market.

In a context of rapidly accelerating growth in electric mobility around the world, but also for stationary uses, renewable energy storage and electronics, improvements in battery performance, including greater energy density and shorter charging time, greater autonomy and lighter weight of vehicles, today represent key R&D areas to meet the challenge of energy transition.

Scientist at the newly inaugurated Christian Collette Center of Excellence at the Pierre-Benite research center taking lithium ion battery samples



Arkema is one of the world's leading suppliers of high-value-added solutions: PVDF for binders and separator coatings, lithium salts to improve cell performance, smart adhesives for cell-to-cell bonding, and bio-based polyamide 11 to cool battery lines.

This Center of Excellence dedicated to batteries for clean mobility is equipped with state-of-the-art design and analysis equipment, including a dry room and an electrode coating line. It draws on the scientific and technical complementarity of the Pierre-Benite research centers researchers. This Center of Excellence, which will help accelerate the development of advanced materials and processes for future generations of more efficient, safer and more compact batteries, was partly financed by the Region-Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes.

Alongside this platform, a pilot line dedicated to the pre-industrialization of the next generations of electrolytes for the batteries of the future is already operational.

This new Center of Excellence, named the Christian Collette Center of Excellence for Batteries, in honor of the Group's R&D Vice President who passed away last April, is inaugurated in the presence of numerous customers, partners, and representatives of the State, the Region and the City.

The teams will conduct research with the Group's academic partners (CNRS, CPE in Lyon, LEPMI in Grenoble and ENSCM in Montpellier), as well as with partners in the battery ecosystem, with which strategic agreements have been concluded (start-ups, manufacturers, gigafactories).

The expansion investment benefited from state support as part of the "France Relance" plan.

 Worldofchemicals News
Caia Park Community Police Team commended for their hard work and dedication

Officers from the Caia Park Community Police Team have been commended for their hard work and dedication to the area they police.

PC 76 Kerry Evans, PC 3223 James Duffy, PCSO 3968 Sadie Roberts, PCSO Nick Perry (now PC 3725), PCSO 3959 Lauren Willdigg, PCSO 3996 Lance Montaigue, PCSO 4405 Oliver Heard-Edwards, PCSO 3917 Kelvin Evans have all been praised by Local Policing Service Superintendent Nicholas Evans.

Discussing the teams work, Supt Evans said: The Caia Park Neighbourhood policing team clearly care about the people they police and face any challenges diligently.

The team has been tireless in their efforts; and have been recognised for their efforts and commitment to the community they police

The work conducted by this team, their collaboration with other departments, their local knowledge and community engagement is all done to support the good people of Caia Park.



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Electric car mechanics course helping to meet future demand for people who have the skills and knowledge

There will be a huge demand in the future for people who have the skills and the knowledge in electric car mechanics, Wales first minister has said.

Mark Drakeford was speaking before a visit to Coleg Cambrias Bersham Road campus yesterday (Wednesday 24 November) to meet some of the car mechanics of the future.

The students are currently enrolled on a Level 3 Motor Vehicle course which will enable them to access Hybrid/Electric Vehicle Technology.

As part of the course learners will be given the opportunity to enrol on a Level 3 City and Guilds qualification for the Repair and Servicing of Hybrid/Electric Vehicles.

They are able to do this at the Bersham site which is a cutting-edge facility combining the latest technology and equipment with interactive learning.

Speaking to Wrexham.com ahead of his visit Mr Drakeford said the course is a really excellent example of preparing early for something thats going to be really important in the years to come.

He said: The UK Government has an ambitious plan to phase out the sale of new conventional cars within this decade.

So there will be a huge demand in the future for people who have the skills and the knowledge to be able to deal with the things that will inevitably go wrong with whatever we will all be driving in 20 years time.

It is a really excellent example of preparing early for something thats going to be really important in the years to come.

The course has been available since September this year and will help to increase the number of mechanics able to work on electric cars.

The Bersham site has also benefited from the Welsh Governments 21st century schools and colleges programme with an investment of more than 13m.

Mr Drakeford said: We need to do more in the next ten years than weve done in the last thirty if were to reach our NetZero target by 2050. Making the switch to an electric vehicle is one way that we can make a big difference.

It is vital that we have the skills in Wales to maintain electric vehicles and its great to see this development at Coleg Cambria.

We recently launched the Young Persons Guarantee, a key commitment of this government. The aim of the guarantee is to provide everyone under 25 with the support to gain an offer of education, training, employment and self-employment.

Working Wales is the single, easy access gateway to the Young Persons Guarantee.

The kind of forward-thinking course offered here in Coleg Cambria is an example of what is on offer for our young people.

Asked what opportunities he thinks will be available to students and young people as Wales moves towards, NetZero, Mr Drakeford said referenced wind and tidal projects taking place in North Wales.

He said: Climate change is a huge challenge and it will mean changes in the way we all live our lives.

But weve got to find ways of turning it into economic opportunities particularly for for young people. If you can do that preparation and give young people the skills they need for the future.

The real thing weve got to try and do our best to get right is not just to invest in the breakthrough technologies but when they get to a stage of being commercial, that we capture the jobs that go with that.

Cambrias Principal Sue Price said: It was a pleasure to welcome the First Minister and show him around the modern and innovative facilities we have here at Bersham Road in Wrexham.

Our electric and hybrid vehicle training facility was one of the first in the country and at the forefront of advances in the motor industry. Cambria will play a pivotal role in training the next generation of mechanics to meet a surge in demand for these skills, as the UK works towards the transition from petrol and diesel to fossil-free, zero-emission travel.

The global focus on climate change and lowering our carbon footprint means we will use the technology we have at our disposal to lean into other areas and forge new partnerships that will make a positive difference to our environment for generations to come.

To be able to demonstrate that to the First Minister was heartening for the staff and students here in Wrexham, and we thank him for his support.

The First Minister also met with two enterprising young blacksmiths from Wrexham on his visit. Inspired by the family trade, cousins Ollie and Harvey Roberts, aged 13 and 12, from Borras were taught metalwork by their grandad, Anthony Roberts.

During the first lockdown in March, and using the new knowledge and skills they gained, they decided to start their own blacksmith business and have created a number of goods including brackets for hanging baskets and have renovated a go-kart.

The first minister said: Ollie and Harvey are a real inspiration and its been a pleasure to hear about their achievements. I wish them very well for the future.

It is vital that we foster the next generation of innovators and entrepreneurs through the Young Persons Guarantee. The young people that I have met today have been empowered with insights, skills and confidence that will enable them in the future for whatever challenges that lay ahead of them.



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It will be brilliant  First Minister backs Wrexhams UK City of Culture 2025 bid

The First Minister has said he is very keen to support Wrexhams UK City of Culture 2025 bid.

Yesterday the First Minister was in Wrexham on the beat with local policing teams, and we caught up with him for a few minutes and asked him his thoughts on Wrexhams UK City of Culture 2025 bid.

Wrexham made it through to the next round of the competition, and made it on to an eight strong longlist including other non-cities such as Cornwall and Stirling.

Every four years, a town or city is given the title  helping to raise its profile, boost its local economy and highlight everything thats good about the location, and often triggering a range of investment.

Wrexham is the only Welsh entry on the longlist, and would be the first Welsh holder of the title.

The First Minister Mark Drakeford said, We are very keen to support that.

I think that from our point of view, it is a very straightforward bid that we are keen on.

Wouldnt it be fantastic if it came to Wales? It has never come to Wales, we have come close a few times.

Wrexham will be the standard bearer for Wales in the next part of the competition

We see what it has done in other places in terms of a long term investment, the legacy, that it leaves behind. There are loads of jobs to be found in that sector, and if we could get that to happen in Wrexham. it will be brilliant.

We also asked the First Minister about the entirely separate, although similarly named, City Status bid that has recently got the majority backing of the Full Council  with a less committed response, I take my guide in all of that from my colleague, Lesley Griffiths (Wrexhams MS).

I was talking to her about it this week, and she was telling me some of the things that shes looking at and thinking about. So when it comes to it, if Lesley thinks its a good idea that Im sure I will too.



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New Reserve company of The Royal Welsh set for North Wales

Wrexham could be set to be the home of a new Reserve company of The Royal Welsh.

The UK Government said the number of soldiers in Wales is set to increase with the return of the Welsh cavalry, The Queens Dragoon Guards, and a new Reserve company of The Royal Welsh established in North Wales.

The retention of Brecon and growth in Wrexham locations are part of a 320 million investment.

There are indications the new Reserve company are due to be based out of Wrexham, with Secretary of State for Wales Simon Hart tweeting:

More UK Government news for Wales 1. An increase in the army footprint in Wales.

2. The Welsh cavalry are being repatriated to Wales in Monmouthshire.

3. The basing of a reserve unit in Wrexham.

4. A 320 million investment in Wales delivering 1 billion of prosperity.  pic.twitter.com/aUZzd4ysQo  Simon Hart (@Simonhartmp) November 25, 2021

The news emerged as part of a wider statement as the British Army unveiled Future Soldier today, its most radical transformation programme in over 20 years.

UK Government say,  Future Soldier demonstrates how the Army is modernising to address next-generation threats across the globe.

This will be bolstered by an additional investment of 8.6 billion in Army equipment over the next ten years. This will bring the total equipment investment to 41.3 billion for that period.

Alongside investment in our people, infrastructure, emerging technologies, and cyber capabilities, Future Solider will position the Army as a globally engaged fighting force that benefits the whole of our Union.

UK Government say the proportion of the Army based in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will be sustained or increased by 2025, and this will be reinforced by around 3.35 billion from the Defence Estate Optimisation budget and a further 1.2 billion of Army investment in remaining sites.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace said: Future Soldier is reinforced by the ambition outlined in the Defence Command Paper to transform the Army into a more agile, integrated, lethal, expeditionary force.

We have underpinned this generational work with an extra 8.6bn for Army equipment, bringing the total investment to 41.3bn.

Our Army will operate across the globe, equipped with the capabilities to face down a myriad of threats from cyber warfare through to battlefield conflict.

Commander of the Field Army, Lieutenant General Ralph Wooddisse CBE MC said: Future Soldier is the next step in the evolution of the British Army; it is the most radical change for the British Army in 20 years. It will change the way we fight and operate, and make us more lethal, agile and lean. It will be underpinned by changes to structure, technology, and workforce.

Future Soldier is fundamentally about ensuring the British Army is a competitive and resilient organisation able to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, wherever they may be.



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Last week, the president of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz, as Germanys domestic secret service is called) informed his colleagues from the federal states that the agency would treat the entire Alternative for Germany (AfD) as a suspected right-wing extremist case and will now subject it to observation for intelligence purposes. After years of refusing to do so, the government is now forced to officially recognise the fascistic character of Germanys largest opposition party.

Given the significance of the rise of fascism once again in Germany, the home of Nazism, it is extraordinary how little media attention is given to the phenomenon in the international press. Outside of an article once every couple months in the New York Times, it is virtually ignored in the United States. The fact is, however, that thirty years after the reunification of Germany and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all claims of an end of history and triumph of liberal democracy have been conclusively refuted.

In a comprehensive report leaked to various media outlets, the Verfassungsschutz summarised its justification for the classification, which is based on the statements of 302 functionaries, 88 of them at the federal level. It concludes that the officially disbanded, openly fascist  Der Flugel  (wing) grouping in the party still exerts great influence. Violent resistance could also not be excluded in principle, the Verfassungsschutz wrote.

File picture taken May 1, 2019 shows AfD supporters walking along a party elections poster in Erfurt, Germany. German media outlets are reporting the country's domestic intelligence agency has put the opposition Alternative for Germany party under observation under suspicion of extreme right sympathies. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer, file)

According to the summary statement, political opponents are dubbed enemies of the people and destroyers of Germany by the party, Muslims are defamed, belittled and marginalised across the board. The failure to respect the human dignity of migrants is not only diametrically opposed to the constitutional guarantee of human dignity and the principle of equality, but also greatly endangers social cohesion and peaceful coexistence in Germany.

There can be no doubt about the right-wing extremist character of the AfD. As early as 2017, its parliamentary group leader and honorary chairman Alexander Gauland called the crimes of the Nazis just so much bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history and expressed his pride in Hitlers Wehrmacht soldiers. Party members and elected officials maintain close contacts with violent neo-Nazis and those in the right-wing terrorist scene, whose members hoard weapons and draw up lists of thousands of political opponents whom they intend to round up and shoot on a day X.

Alexander Gauland (right) and the Thuringian AfD spokesman and leader of the fascist 'wing' Bjorn Hocke (AP Photo / Jens Meyer)

However, the Verfassungsschutz, which ostensibly answers to the interior ministry, has covered up for and supported the right-wing extremists for years. When the AfD marched through Chemnitz in August 2018 together with other right-wing extremists, inciting the hunting down of refugees as well as anti-Semitic attacks, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stood behind the demonstration and declared, If I wasnt a minister, I would also have taken to the streets as a citizen.

The then head of the Verfassungsschutz, Hans-Georg Maassen, even denied that there had been any right-wing extremist agitation at all. He had also met regularly with AfD leaders to advise them on how to escape surveillance by the intelligence agencies.

In the same year, the Verfassungsschutz classified the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) as left-wing extremist and anti-constitutional, among other things, because it positioned itself against supposed nationalism. The SGP, more than any other party, has warned of the right-wing danger and organised resistance against it.

In its annual report, the intelligence service cites protests against AfD party conferences, the ongoing fight against right-wing extremists and the collection of information about alleged or actual right-wing extremists and their structures as evidence of left-wing extremist sentiments.

The AfD entered the Bundestag (federal parliament) in 2017. For the first time since the end of the Nazi dictatorship, over 90 right-wing extremist deputies sat in parliament. The party was subsequently courted by all parliamentary groups and integrated into parliamentary work. It was elected to the chair of important committees and finally made the official leader of the opposition when the Social Democratic Party (SPD) resumed its place alongside the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) in the Grand Coalition government. In Thuringia, the CDU and Free Democratic Party (FDP) even formed a government majority with the fascists. In 2019 alone, the AfD received over ten million euros in state support.

It was only because of this policy that the AfD was able to enter all 16 state parliaments, build up a comprehensive party apparatus and massively expand its influence inside the police, army and secret services.

Now, given the enormous opposition to the right-wing extremists, even the Interior Ministry and the Verfassungsschutz cannot avoid officially recognising the character of the AfD. This shows how serious the fascist danger really is and fully confirms the warnings of the SGP.

But neither the government nor the secret services can be expected to seriously fight the AfD in any way. After all, the last few years have shown how closely the Verfassungsschutz is linked to the extreme right.

Even before the AfD, secret service employees set the tone in right-wing extremist organisations, and the Verfassungsschutz financed large sections of the fascist scene. In the course of its observation, the Verfassungsschutz infiltrated the neo-Nazi German National Party (NPD) to such an extent that, according to the judges of the Supreme Court, it had to be spoken of as a state affair.

The Grand Coalition not only made the AfD the leader of the opposition but is also putting the policies of the right-wing extremists into practice. The construction of inhumane deportation camps for refugees, the strengthening of police state measures and the most massive rearmament since the Second World War all bear the AfDs imprimatur. This takes on particularly sharp forms with the ruthless policy of re-opening the economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, which places corporate profits before health and lives.

Because capitalism has nothing more to offer the vast majority of the population than social inequality, militarism and death, the ruling class is increasingly resorting to authoritarian and fascist methods to enforce the policies of the financial oligarchy, as it did in the 1930s. This is why far-right tendencies are being built and strengthened throughout the world.

Donald Trumps coup attempt on January 6 was a turning point in this respect. Trump mobilised significant parts of the state apparatus, the Republican Party, and a fascist mob to try and overturn the US elections and establish a presidential dictatorship. Not for nothing did AfD Bundestag member Martin Renner write on Facebook shortly after the storming of the Capitol, Trump is waging the same political battlewhich already has to be called a culture waras we are as the Alternative for Germany.

In the US, as in Germany, the opposition of official politics to the far-right is mendacious and hypocritical. They do not fear the programme of the fascists so much as the resistance that is developing against it in the working class. All historical experiences show that the struggle against fascism cannot be based on the bourgeois state and its secret services. The latter inevitably use their increased powers to suppress opposition from the left.

The only way to stop the right-wing danger is to mobilise the international working class against the root of the evil, capitalism. This is the perspective for which the SGP is fighting in this years federal election. We call on all those who reject the return of fascism and war to support this election campaign and become members of the SGP.
Former President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, as Germanys secret service is called, Hans-Georg Maassen will run for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in the upcoming federal elections. He was selected at the end of April by the four CDU district associations of Schmalkalden-Meiningen, Hildburghausen, Sonneberg and Suhl in Thuringia as a direct candidate for the Bundestag (federal parliament) with 37 out of 43 votes cast.

Hans-Georg Maaen in the Bundestag (German Parliament) on Oct. 5, 2017 (AP Photo/Michael Sohn)

The selection of Maassen, which CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet defended at a press conference on Monday, shows the extent to which the ruling class in Germany is once again relying on fascist forces 75 years after the fall of Hitlers Third Reich. Maassen, more than anyone else, is the face of the far-right conspiracy inside the state apparatus, whose political representation in parliament takes the form of the Alternative for Germany (AfD).

In his role as head of the domestic intelligence service between 2012 and 2018, Maassen played a key role in covering up and strengthening far-right terrorist networks in the police, military and intelligence agencies, and advancing the agenda of the extreme right.

As president of the Verfassungsschutz (BfV) at the time, Maassen was responsible for the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) being included in the agencys 2017 annual report as a left-wing extremist party and object of surveillance. This was because, as the report states, the SGP stands for a democratic, egalitarian and socialist society. The report, which the federal government still adheres to today, bears the signature of the AfD and criminalises any left-wing criticism of capitalism and the right-wing policies of all the establishment parties as left-wing extremist and anti-constitutional.

When a far-right mob marched through Chemnitz in August 2018, hunting down foreigners, immigrants and Jews, Maassen described reports about this as fiction. He called videos documenting the violence disinformation and misinformation, to applause from AfD honorary leader Alexander Gauland. When the grand coalition federal government of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats (SPD) then felt compelled to make Maassen retire early due to massive popular opposition, he ranted in the style of the extreme right about a conspiracy of radical left-wing forces.

Since then, Maassen has openly acted as a far-right politician. He incites anti-refugee sentiments, trivialises and justifies right-wing extremist terrorist attacks and promotes the building of a fascist movement in right-wing magazines like the Swiss Weltwoche. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Maassen positioned himself as one of the countrys leading coronavirus deniers. He declared on Twitter that the novel virus was comparable in danger to a flu virus and called for an immediate end to all protective measures in the interests of business and the corporations.

Representatives of the SPD, Left Party and Greens reacted to Maassens candidacy with feigned indignation. Mr Maassens nomination is certainly a bad day for the CDU, but unfortunately also for all of us, said Olaf Scholz, the SPD chancellor candidate and current finance minister. The CDU had difficulties with people who move away from what we need for cohesion in Germany, he added.

Maassen has always held extreme right-wing positions and owes his career in the state apparatus in particular to the social democrats. His rise in the Interior Ministry coincides with the term of Otto Schily (SPD), who headed the department from 1998 to 2005. During this time, Maassen prevented the return of Murat Kurnaz, a native of Bremen, to Germany and ensured that he languished in the notorious US Guantanamo Bay prison camp for five years while innocent.

He held his post as head of the BfV largely under the aegis of the grand coalition. During his watch, the investigation into the series of immigrants murdered by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Underground (NSU) was torpedoed, and right-wing extremist structures within the state apparatus were strengthened. In the process, he established close ties with Scholz. When Scholz ran for SPD chair in 2019, Maassen demonstratively backed him. On Twitter, he described Scholz as a good man whom he had first met at the Visa-UA [Visa Investigative Committee], declaring, Olaf Scholz enjoys my trust!

The Greens criticism is no less mendacious. They call Maassen a door opener to the extreme right (Federal Executive Director Michael Kellner), but at the same time hold on to possibly forming the next federal government with his party.

Any parliamentary group can put up with one right-wing CDU MP and a handful more, said Green Party Co-Chair Robert Habeck cynically. He clearly also had in mind the right-wing extremist door openers in his own party, such as the mayor of Tubingen, Boris Palmer. In the past, Palmer had repeatedly outed himself as a staunch supporter of Maassen. Among other things, he defended Maassens denial of right-wing extremist violence in Chemnitz with the sentence: Who do I believe more now, antifascist insects or the president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution?

Most repulsive, however, is the hypocrisy of the Left Party. Maassens candidacy was a red line, declared Susanne Hennig-Wellsow, party chair together with Janine Wissler since the end of February. The firewall to the right is gone. Adding that Maassen is Hocke in a three-piece suit, referring to Bjorn Hocke, leader of the now-disbanded ultra-right Der Flugel (Wing) inside the AfD. In southern Thuringia, she said, there will now be a race on the right. The fact is, the Left Party is not only involved in this race but is actively driving it forward.

In Thuringia, where Maassen is now a candidate, the Left Party state prime minister Bodo Ramelow cooperates with the fascists in the state parliament committees and hoists them into important offices. Last February, Ramelow helped AfD deputy Michael Kaufmann to the vice presidency in the Thuringia state parliament with his own vote.

The Left Partys support for the extreme right in Thuringia is no exception; there is an entire wing around former parliamentary group leader Sahra Wagenknecht that openly spreads nationalism, rails against immigrants, and demands an immediate end to all protective measures in the pandemic.

This course is supported by the vast majority of the Left Party and the party leadership. Wagenknecht will always play a prominent role in this party, Hennig-Wellsow and Wissler declared at their first joint press conference. Last month, Wagenknecht was then elected by a large majority as the Left Party lead candidate in Germanys most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, even though she had just published her book Die Selbstgerechten (The Self-Righteous), which was hailed by the AfD.

The Left Party has also long since made its real position clear concerning Maassen and the BfV. As recently as March 2013, it had invited Maassen to a public meeting and practised direct solidarity with the domestic intelligence service. Wherever it is in government at state level, it supports increasing the powers of the police and intelligence apparatus, which is permeated by right-wing extremist structures. Its current criticism also serves to cover its own tracks.

Maassens candidacy for the CDU must be understood as a warning. Faced with the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the ruling class is closing ranks based on an extreme-right programme.

In the federal election, the SGP is the only party to oppose the pandemic policies of stepping up state powers at home and militarism abroad, social inequality and profits before lives, and to arm the growing opposition to them with a socialist programme. Read and distribute our election statement, help place our party on the ballot and become a member .
Germanys ruling Grand Coalition of the Christian Democratic Union, Christian Social Union and Social Democratic Party has used the final parliamentary sessions of the current legislative period to massively expand the powers of the countrys police and intelligence agencies. Largely unnoticed by the public, the Bundestag has passed a total of nine related laws and amendments.

Headquarters of the BND in Berlin Mitte (Image: Olaf Kosinsky / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

The new government to be formed after the federal election due this autumn will have at its disposal a technically highly equipped surveillance apparatus, with powers the likes of which have not been seen in Germany since the end of the Nazi regime. The state security apparatus (nicknamed Stasi) of the former East Germany, with its network of neighbourhood snoopers and its note box system, appears amateur in comparison.

Taken together, the legislative changes passed by the Bundestag since November 2020, and especially in the last four weeks, represent the biggest legislative complex passed since the reunification of Germany in 1990. Its main features are as follows:

Almost complete abolition of the separation of the police and secret services introduced after World War II in response to the experience of Hitlers Secret State Police (Gestapo).

The Federal Police (Bundespolizei) now has powers equivalent to those of a secret service, while the secret services can undertake police tasks. Both agencies will in future work hand in hand.

* The Federal Police will be able to massively restrict the freedom of citizens and refugees via bans on staying, detention pending deportation and similar measures, without requiring judicial authorisation.

* The powers of the police and secret services to tap into computer systems, mobile devices and other electronic systems in order to gather and/or manipulate data on a massive scale are being legalized.

* Authorisation is being granted for the secret services and Federal Police to carry out cyber-attacks and other observation and persecution measures merely on the basis of a targeted persons opinions, without any evidence of criminal activities.

* New powers are being authorized to comprehensively deploy automated monitoring and censorship of the internet with the help of upload filters.

* Seamless centralised collection and storage of personal and biometric data, made accessible to all state authorities, is being legalized.

Repression of the population, rather than its security, is the single purpose of the new laws. The entire state apparatus is being armed to suppress growing popular resistance to the devastating consequences of the coronavirus pandemic, attacks on jobs and social rights, militarism and war, and the threat from neo-Nazis and fascists.

The new Protection of the Constitution Law

The Protection of the Constitution Law, passed by the Bundestag on 10 June 2021, legalises the extensive use of so-called State Trojans by the Bundesamt fur Verfassungsschutz (Federal Office for the Protection of the ConstitutionGermanys domestic secret service), the 16 Landesamter fur Verfassungsschutz (State Offices for the Protection of the Constitution), the Federal Intelligence Service (foreign intelligence agencyBND) and the Military Counter-Intelligence Service (MAD). All of these 19 secret services can now systematically spy on people at home and abroad. The law sets virtually no limits on the data that may be collected and the reasons for observation.

A State Trojan is malware placed by an intelligence agent on the smart phone, laptop, PC or server of a person or organisation to be observed during a clandestine invasion of his or her home, or remotely via the internet. The monitoring of an ongoing communication takes place on the targeted persons device before the conversation, chat message or SMS is encrypted.

The operation is also referred to as telecommunication source tapping. The use of a State Trojan with the aim of transmitting stored data such as documents, image recordings and video recordings to the intelligence service is known as an online search.

In addition, State Trojans can manipulate data and programmes on other peoples computers, mobile phones and IT systems, with far-reaching, possibly fatal consequences for the persons concerned. A vehicles electronic control and braking systems can, for example, be manipulated to cause an accident.

Telecommunication source tapping and online searches were previously legally permitted only by the Federal Criminal Police (BKA), in the context of police investigations ordered by a judge into serious crimes. Now, all secret services have the power to conduct such operations.

According to the wording of the new law, the secret services are not permitted to carry out online searches. They are, however, allowed to extract data stored on a targeted device after a Trojan has been activated. In practice, nothing can prevent agents from collecting data stored much longer. Technically, a telecommunication source tapping operation is capable of carrying out a complete online search at the same time.

Several experts have sharply criticised the new Protection of the Constitution Law, declaring it to be unconstitutional. Dr. Matthias Backer, professor of public law and information law at the University of Mainz, stated in an expert opinion that all malware operations not strictly limited to an ongoing communication are online searches. If they are now carried out in the name of telecommunication source tapping, bypassing all legal hurdles, this will constitute a violation of the basic right to the integrity and confidentiality of information technology systems, he said. [1]

The Mainz professor also criticised the fact that the latitude for hacking and spying attacks has been considerably expanded. The law allows telecommunication surveillance in part even in the case of the planning of comparatively minor offences. As examples, Backer mentions the dissemination of propaganda material of anti-constitutional organisations, violations of a ban on associations and membership of a secret association of foreigners. [2]

In addition, the new law has expanded the concept of anti-constitutional aspirations from organisations to individuals, whereby the target of their behaviour is sufficient justification to start intelligence agency observations. Backer warns that the law virtually invites a practice of observation based on (presumed) personal characteristics or the social ties of the persons concerned, instead of on actions objectively relevant to the intelligence agency. [3]

In other words, persons are observed and prosecuted not because of concrete acts, but because of their opinions.

This principle of Gesinnungsjustiz (judgement based on opinions) was the basis of the legal system of the Nazis and is also the basis for the observation of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality PartySGP) by the Verfassungsschutz. When the Verfassungsschutz first included the SGP as a left-wing extremist party in its annual report of 2017, it justified its action by stating that the SGP defended a socialist programme, criticised capitalism and politically criticised apologists for capitalismin particular the SPD, the Left Party, the Greens and the trade unions.

When the SGP subsequently filed a complaint against this judgement, lawyers for the Verfassungsschutz justified the persecution of the SGP not on the basis of unlawful activities, but rather on the basis of the partys analysis of society, its Marxist stance on history, its political analyses and its socialist objective. The Verfassungsschutz lawyers stated that arguing for a democratic, egalitarian, socialist society contradicted the central values of Germanys Basic Law. [4]

The SGP warned at the time: With its attack on the SGP, this criminal government agency wants to set a precedent for a new kind of legal prosecution of thought crimes that would provide the basis for the prosecution of anyone who criticises the current reactionary social and political situation If the right-wing conspiracy in the state apparatus is not stopped and the SGP is not defended, the dam will be broken for even more far-reaching measures. [5]

This assessment has now been confirmed. The new Protection of the Constitution Law legalises hitherto unprecedented measures targeting broad sections of the population and all kinds of organisations and parties assessed to be undesirable by the intelligence agencies and the German government.

In order to carry out this surveillance technically, the law obliges companies active in the aviation, financial services, telecommunications and telemedia sectors to pass on the personal data of citizens under surveillance and provide technical assistance for the insertion of State Trojans for online searches and the transmission of the resulting data streams. Internet providers such as Telekom and Vodafon, but also Google, Facebook and banks, will be turned into accomplices of the secret services.

Only a few target groups, such as priests and lawyers, are exempt from secret service cyber-attacks. Journalistsdespite protests from journalists associationsare explicitly not among them. The freedom of the press and the digital protection of its sources have been gutted.

The law also provides for networking and data exchange between all of the various secret services, Federal Police, Federal Criminal Police and other state authorities such as the countrys immigration authorities and the Federal Employment Agency.

The new Federal Intelligence Service Law

The Federal Intelligence Service Law of 25 March 2021 legalises the tapping of huge databases and data streams to monitor the communications of millions of people and search their computers, mobile phones and servers for data, photos and videos by the BND, the foreign intelligence service.

This same law was supposed to fulfil legal requirements to restrict and control the activities of the BND, as stipulated by the German Constitutional Court in May 2020. The court declared that the previous law of 2016, which legalised the mass surveillance uncovered by American whistleblower Edward Snowden, to be unconstitutional.

The court, however, did not object to mass surveillance per se, but merely insisted on compliance with a few formalities in its ordering, documenting and monitoring. It thereby provided a flimsy democratic fig leaf for mass surveillance.

But even with these formalities, the changes in the new BND law compared to the old one are minimal or simply farcical. For example, the quantitative limitation of interceptions demanded by the Federal Constitutional Court is implemented in such a way as to cover not more than 30 percent of the transmission capacities of all globally existing telecommunications networks!

What looks like a limitation is, in reality, a licence for unlimited spying. The BND, even if it continues to greatly expand its technical capabilities, will never be able to collate the enormous amount of data associated with this limit, according to Klaus Langenfeld, a man who should know. He is the operator of the worlds largest Internet node DE-CIX, near Frankfurt am Main, which at peak times records a data flow of more than 10 terabits, or 10 trillion bits per second. [6]

The new law also significantly expands the power to intercept data and spy on people. The BND is allowed to hack communication providers such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and Vodafone, as well as the IT systems of foreign companies and authorities, even without their knowledge and without concrete cause. These shady and criminal operations are called strategic telecommunications reconnaissance in the jargon of the ministerial authors.

Significantly, not only foreign but also German citizens, companies and IT systems may be targeted by the BND. Formally, the law prohibited the surveillance and interception of the individual communications of natural persons, even though no one can control compliance with this prohibition. The use, however, of a smart phone, computer or even a telephone is considered communication with machines. In these cases, the BND is allowed almost unrestricted access to stored data and current traffic and content data.

For such operations, the BND is explicitly allowed to cooperate and exchange data with foreign intelligence services such as the National Security Agency (NSA) and thereby use huge secret data storage centres such as the one in Utah. As Edward Snowden has revealed, the BND has been carrying out such operations for years, without any legal basis. Now the laws have been adapted to this practice!

As already mentioned, the BND is also allowed to use State Trojans for the mass extraction of data from foreign IT systems and devices.

The range of dangerous topics which the BND is authorized to spy upon has also been considerably expanded. In addition to the previous topicsinternational terrorism, the transfer of nuclear weapons material and illegal smugglingcrisis developments abroad, protection of critical infrastructures and cases of intellectual property theft or copyright infringement have been added.

The latter marks the first time a secret service has been authorised by law to intervene in private legal disputes. German companies are to be strengthened against foreign competitors. Chinese companies in particular have long been accused of copying products and programmes, although no evidence of such activities has ever been provided.

Now, with the help of the BND, it is hoped that such evidence can be found or fabricated as a pretext for more aggressive action against China. US companies are also likely to appear soon as targets on the monitors of the BND. The growing tensions between Germany and the US are part of the background to the BNDs increased powers.

Particularly dangerous is the BNDs new task of monitoring, spying on, sabotaging or manipulating oppositional tendencies, organisations and individuals at home and abroad under the catchword international extremism. These operations are based on the same principle of a thought police utilised by the Verfassungsschutz.

The BND was founded in 1956 by Reinhard Gehlen, who was responsible for military espionage against the Soviet Union under Hitler. Its staff consisted mainly of former agents of the Nazi military espionage apparatus, Gestapo and SS. Gehlen even collaborated with war criminals and Holocaust mass murderers such as Klaus Barbie, who had gone into hiding in Bolivia. [7]

Germanys Grand Coalition has now turned this organisation, steeped in its Nazi past, into a kind of super-intelligence agency for use against foreign countries and against its own people. The BND reports directly to the German Chancellery and has over 6,500 official employees, as well as enormous financial resourcesthis year alone over half a billion euros. For the past two years, it has resided in Europes largest new building complex in the centre of Berlin.

Part two of this article will deal with other new police state legislation and provide a political assessment.

**

Notes

[1] Dr. Matthias Backer, statement on the draft for the Adoption of the Law on the Protection of the Constitution, Bundestag papers 19/24785; p. 13

[2] ibid., pp. 14-15

[3] ibid, pp. 4-6

[4] See: Stop the right-wing conspiracy! Defend the SGP against the Verfassungsschutz secret service! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/07/26/sgps-j26.html

[5] ibid.

[6] See: https://netzpolitik.org/2021/bnd-gesetz-bundesnachrichtendienst-erhaelt-so-viele-ueberwachungsbefugnisse-wie-noch-nie/

[7] See: How former Nazi official Reinhard Gehlen erected a state within a state in post-war Germany https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/12/27/germ-d27.html
The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK) passed a resolution Monday condemning the ruling of the Berlin Administrative Court, which on November 18, 2021 upheld the designation of the German security service of the German section of the ICFI, the Sozialistische Geighheitspartei (SGP) as left wing extremists.

The ruling is being appealed by the Sozialistische Geighheitspartei. The courts decision is a flagrant attack on democratic rights and stands in the tradition of National Socialist ideological jurisprudence (Gesinnungsjustiz) and Bismarcks anti-socialist laws. It paves the way for the surveillance and suppression of all opposition to capitalism and arbitrary state power.

In court the SGP was represented by party chairman Ulrich Rippert, his deputy Christoph Vandreier and lawyer Dr. Peer Stolle. They defended the goals and the programme of the SGP during the more than two hours of proceedings. Rippert emphasised that basic democratic rights in Germany had been fought for by the Marxist labour movement and that the SGP was striving to expand democracy, especially to economic affairs.

Christoph Vandreier and Ulrich Rippert in the courtroom (WSWS Media)

Prior to Judge Wilfried Peters upholding the anti-democratic designation of the SGP, Vandreier warned that a decision in favour of the secret service and its anti-democratic arguments would have far-reaching consequences. He told the court, Seventy-six years after the end of the Nazi regime, socialist ideas would again be declared unconstitutional. This would create the basis for the secret service surveillance and ostracism of bookshops that offer Marxist literature, critical scholars, and striking workers. It would be a step toward a police state.

Vandreiers initial statement to the court, which dealt with the historical and current political background of the lawsuit, can be read here .

The resolution passed by the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK) reads:

This meeting of the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK) condemns the ruling of the Berlin Administrative Court which upholds the right of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the federal government to designate the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party-SGP), the German section of the ICFI, as left wing extremists and to keep its members and activities under surveillance.

The ruling is undemocratic and can easily be used to crack down on anyone fighting social inequality, environmental destruction, state repression, militarism, or other ills of capitalist society.

This is happening at a time when murderous profits before lives pandemic policies are being enforced across Europe and the world and social conflicts are intensifying and expanding internationally. That the SGP, which, along with its sister organisations worldwide, is committed to the safety and protection of workers and children from infection, is being monitored by the secret service is outrageous.

Whilst right-wing extremists, supporters of herd immunity, eugenics and other reactionary policies, are being funded and promoted by governments the world over, workers and parents who want to protect their colleagues and children are threatened with the sack, fines and imprisonment. The decision of the German court is driven by the fear that mass social opposition to the handling of the pandemic will find a positive and progressive outlet.

This is an international phenomenon and has already impacted on teachers and students in the UK.

Last October in Britain, the Department for Education (DFE) issued guidance describing anti-capitalism as an extreme political stance, equivalent to anti-Semitism and terrorism. After widespread criticism of its proposals by educators, the DfE issued further guidance that changed nothing. This catch-all guidance declares that the veto applies to resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters. This is the case even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation.

Efforts to silence all critics of capitalism at this critical juncture threaten a police state and must be systematically opposed and exposed.

We applaud the SGP for its brave and principled stand and will continue to lend our support to your efforts to overturn this draconian ruling.

Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee (UK)

November 23, 2021

***

Among those supporting the Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee was Martin, who commented, The main thing for me is the correlation between today and the attacks on any political dissent in 1930s Germany. I'm sure that this will not be lost on a thoughtful person. I would suggest that the anti-democratic attack on the SGP is not dissimilar to the 10-year vendetta against Julian Assange and others.

The implications for the masses are clear, do as you are told, do not challenge anything or you will be dealt with.

Socialist Equality Party supporter and Committee member Jude Jackson said, The Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Verfassungsschutz, secret service) in Germany, seeks to criminalise as extremist, and place under surveillance the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.

The SGP, and its sister parties across the world are the only socialist organisations that represent the genuine voice and the interests of the international working class and have rigorously upheld for decades the fundamental principles of Marxism in the struggles for the liberation of the workers of the world from inequality, exploitation, and wars of mass destruction.

The actions of the Verfassungsschutz do not represent the interests of workers in Germany, or anywhere else. They are an anti-democratic expression of their great fear of their own citizens, and a recognition that history has an appointment with the objective reality that capitalism and its rotten institutions have come to the end of the road and have no progressive role to play in the future. The attempt to suppress socialism, and even thinking about socialist ideals is anti-human and anti-life, and must be opposed by all workers who seek to build a humane, egalitarian and democratic world.

The Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee urges all educators, parents and students to oppose the ruling of the Berlin Administrative Court and to send in statements of protests. Please send correspondence here.
The three white men on trial for killing Ahmaud Arbery in a neighborhood just outside Brunswick, Georgia, were found guilty of murder and other charges on Wednesday in a case that, together with the killing of George Floyd, sparked massive interracial protests across America and internationally last summer.

Gregory and Travis McMichael, father and son, chased after Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, on February 23, 2020 in a pickup truck after they saw him running through their neighborhood, and their neighbor William Roddie Bryan joined the chase and recorded Travis McMichael fatally shooting Arbery.

The defense claimed Arberys killing was justified because the trio of men thought Arbery was a burglar, in a town that allegedly held growing concerns about crime. They also blamed Arbery for his own death, arguing in court that his resistance to the mens attempts to perform a citizens arrest caused Travis McMichael to fear for his life and shoot Arbery three times with a shotgun.

Throughout the trial, the defense sought to vilify Arberys character, in thinly-veiled racist overtones. Robert Rubin, a lawyer for Travis McMichael, said the men were acting that day out of a duty and responsibility to detain a man they believed was a burglar.

This photo combo shows, from left, Travis McMichael, William "Roddie" Bryan, and Gregory McMichael during their trial at at the Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Ga. (AP Pool)

The elder McMichaels lawyer, Laura Hogue, described Arbery as a frightening intruder with long dirty toenails, using a description from Arberys autopsy report. Hogue said Arbery was a recurring nighttime intruderand that is frightening, and unsettling.

However, the jury, composed of 11 white people and one black person, refused to buy this account.

Lead prosecutor Linda Dunikoski rightfully pointed out that Arbery was chased by the defendants for approximately five minutes around the neighborhood streets and pushed back against the idea that a fleeing unarmed man would constitute a threat to three men, two of whom were armed, in a pair of pickup trucks.

The men launched their attack on Arbery, she said, because he was a black man running down the street.

The jury found Travis McMichael, the man who shot Mr. Arbery, guilty on all nine charges, including malice murder and felony murder. Gregory McMichael was found not guilty of malice murder, but guilty of all other counts he faced, including felony murder. William Bryan, who filmed the fatal encounter, was found not guilty of malice murder, one count of felony murder, and one count of aggravated assault but guilty of three counts of felony murder and three other charges.

The men have also been indicted on separate federal charges, including hate crimes and attempted kidnapping, and are expected to stand trial in February on those charges.

The verdicts brought considerable relief to Arberys family, who fought against local officials attempted cover-up of the shooting. Arberys killers were not initially arrested or charged and instead allowed to walk free for several weeks after the shooting.

Jackie Johnson, the local prosecutor who initially handled the case, was indicted this year by a grand jury for showing favor and affection to Gregory McMichael, a former investigator in her office, and for directing police not to arrest Travis McMichael. Arrests were only made after video footage of the incident was released, prompting the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to take over the case. The trial was ultimately held in Cobb County, roughly 300 miles from Brunswick in metropolitan Atlanta.

Its been a long fight. Its been a hard fight. But God is good, Arberys mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, said outside the courthouse. He will now rest in peace.

Earlier, her head sunk into her chest as she wept upon hearing the verdict. Arberys father Marcus Arbery leapt up and cheered, prompting the judge to have him removed from the court.

The outcome of the trial is a blow against the push to legitimize vigilantism in America under the guise of self-defense and carries considerable political consequences. Georgias Republican Governor Brian Kemp was compelled to sign a hate crimes statute into law and helped repeal significant portions of the states citizens arrest statute. In a statement, he said that Arbery was the victim of a vigilantism that has no place in Georgia.

Senator Jon Ossoff (Democrat, GA) also spoke out against the reaction on display in the trial.

Ahmaud Arberys murderers will be held accountable, but a historic civil rights mobilization was necessary for the killers to face prosecution at all. There was nearly impunity for this murder, and further investigation is necessary to determine how and why officials initially refused to pursue the case. The circumstances of Ahmaud Arberys murder and the struggle required to secure a prosecution demonstrate profoundly the urgency of reforms to make equal justice real in America, Ossoff said.

At the same time, the facts of the trial refute the racialist claim that racism is embedded in the DNA of American society and demonstrate that the civil rights struggles waged by workers over the last century have not been in vain.

The state of Georgia has a long history of reaction and white supremacy. It was the last state to rejoin the Union after the Civil War. In November 1915, a group led by William J. Simmons burned a cross on top of Stone Mountain, inaugurating a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, which soon grew to occupy a powerful role in state and local politics, enforcing the segregationist Jim Crow regime that brutalized and terrorized black people.

The fact that a nearly all-white jury in the Deep South convicted Arberys killers and that the prosecution was led by a white woman refutes the claims of growing racial tensions put forward by proponents of identity politics.

Even Reverend Al Sharpton was forced to admit the common humanity on display at the conclusion of the trial.

All of us, this is a day white and black activists showed we could unite and beat the lynch mob that killed Ahmaud, Sharpton said in front of the courthouse Wednesday afternoon. And though I never say this often, I must say, we want to thank the prosecutors. They stood and fought for this family.

Marcus Arberys tearful speech outside the courthouse after the verdict was the most profound, reflecting a genuine understanding of the tragedy which befell his family.

All lives matter, not just blacks. We dont want to see nobody go through this.  Its all our problem. So, hey, lets keep fighting, lets keep doing it, and keep making this place a better place for all human beingall human beings.
As the end of the 2021 school year in Brazil approaches, the campaign to return to classroom teaching is bringing more cases and deaths from COVID-19 among children.

Teenage students receive COVID-19 shots in local schools in Salvador, Bahia (Credit: Andre Carvalho/Smed/FotosPublicas)

With the spread of the more transmissible COVID-19 Gamma and Delta variants this year, there have been 1,245 COVID-19 deaths among 0-19 year olds as of September 18, with an unknown number since then amid a dramatic drop in testing as vaccinations advance among the adult population. This number of recorded deaths, which had already surpassed the total number of deaths in all of last year1,203, precedes schools reopening with 100 percent occupancy and the mandatory face-to-face teaching ordered all across the country in the last two months.

A report by the public health agency Fiocruz, published last week, pointed out that despite the stability in the overall number of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) cases, the number is increasing among children aged 0 to 9 years old, with about 1,500 cases every week. With the insufficient number of COVID-19 tests in Brazil, the number of SARS cases has been used by Fiocruz as a proxy for the real situation of the pandemic in the country.

Although the cases of COVID-19 do not currently represent the majority of SARS cases, their increasing numbers, which can have multiple viral diseases as their cause, show how easily airborne viruses can spread in schools and expose the need for their immediate closure to prevent them from once again becoming centers of pandemic transmission.

Instead, amid record surges in Europe and warnings by Fiocruz that circulation of people is higher now than before the pandemic, the decrease in the number of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 in some regions of the country and the advances in vaccinations are being used by the government to justify living with COVID-19.

Since October, state and local governments have been pushing for compulsory in-person education to force parents to leave their children in schools and return to unsafe workplaces to secure corporate profits. At the same time, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, requirements for the use of masks in open environments were lifted, and the same was announced for Sao Paulo beginning December 11, as part of a propaganda campaign by authorities to convince the public that the virus is under control.

Such propaganda could not be further from the truth. Today, it is impossible to determine precisely the pandemic situation in Brazil. The country ranks 128th in the world in tests per million inhabitants, next to war-torn countries like Iraq and Libya. With testing prioritizing symptomatic cases, the positivity rate is 27.54 percent, far above the 5 percent needed to monitor the transmission of the virus in the population. The official number of new COVID-19 cases has been decreasing, with 58,312 cases reported last week.

Even assuming that the official numbers are reliable, the attempts by the government and the corporate media to promote living with the coronavirus mean accepting over 1,000 deaths each week, with 1,365 confirmed deaths last week, in addition to tens of thousands more who will suffer the effects of Long COVID.

Last week, the state of Piaui reported 100 percent occupancy in ICUs, having maintained that rate for the last three months. Instead of reining in the virus, local authorities have announced efforts to expand its in-patient capacity regardless of the high fatality rate of the disease for people needing intensive care. In the city of Serrana, in the state of Sao Paulo, where the population over the age of 18 was completely immunized seven months ago as part of a study by the government-linked Butantan Institute, the number of cases tripled in October and continued to rise during November.

In the capital of the state of Bahia, Salvador, the city government announced the mandatory return to schools on November 17, following announcements by dozens of states, including those governed by the Workers Party (PT). The city government admitted difficulties in implementing the reopening in the face of strong opposition among parents. Many are refusing to send their children to crowded schools with only weeks left in the school year.

In a backhanded admission of the wide opposition to the return among parents and teachers, on November 7, Rio de Janeiros Municipal Secretary of Education Renan Ferreirinha Carneiro went to Folha de Sao Paulo to defend mandatory in-person classes. In calling for a quick return, Carneiro stated that in the municipal school system alone, 25,000 students are neither interacting with the school remotely nor going in person. This number corresponds to 5.5 percent of the students enrolled in the public network of the state capital.

As has been done internationally, Secretary Carneiro fraudulently portrays compulsory in-person education as a fight against exclusion, covered up by lies that schools have been adapting to the required sanitary and infrastructural conditions. The exact opposite is true.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the measures implemented for remote learning were adjusted to the needs of big business interests, providing deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars to mobile phone companies and internet providers for mass education platforms. Meanwhile, millions of students without adequate internet access or digital equipment have been effectively excluded from remote learning.

As to the supposed adaptations made in schools, a glimpse of their complete inadequacy was provided by a report from the Parana State Court of Audit from September, pointing out that 14.3 percent of schools had damaged, very small or awning windows. Such conditions exist in schools all over the country.

Parents and teachers are completely aware of this situation, despite the flood of government and media propaganda in favor of the spread of the virus, and have reported to the WSWS the real conditions in their communities.

Fatima, a mother from the city of Nova Iguacu in the state of Rio de Janeiro, participated in the Rank-and-File Committee for Safe Education in Brazil (CBES-BR) online meeting on November 2 titled The need to close schools and the means to end the pandemic. She reported on the state governments efforts to dismantle any measures to control the spread of the virus.

She said, Here in the region, the politicians say that there are no more hospitalized patients and that vaccination is up, and there are almost no more cases of COVID-19, but the reality is different. In every suspected COVID-19 case, the doctors give the medicine and say that it is sinusitis. Anyway, now we have sinusitis outbreaks, because in my mothers house there were four people with the same symptoms. At my daughters school, the agglomeration continues. The pressure to go back has been enormous.

Luis, also from Rio de Janeiro, is a teacher, who sent a report of the unsafe conditions at the school where he works to the CBES-BR meeting. He described the situation which families are being subjected to.

[The end of the school year in] the state was a surreal mess. At the end of the day you still have students who havent returned due to pre-existing conditions, and students without internet delivering handouts, only now the classrooms are a little more full. Technically, classes will last until December 17, but I am already finishing up the activities of the attending students in order to be able to dedicate myself to the ones who havent returned, also thinking about emptying the school soon.

Their worries are compounded by the long-term risks presented to children exposed to COVID-19, even if they are not as severely affected by the respiratory symptoms as adults and the elderly.

In an interview with the WSWS, immunologist Dr. Anthony Leonardi, who co-authored a recent study on the impact of Long COVID, explained that molecules bound to the viruss spike protein induce an excessive immune response, which results in damage to the bodys tissues and cells.

Long COVID has the potential of damaging any part of the body, with one of the biggest concerns being neurological damage. The immune system is responsible for going into all the tissues in the body, except for a few immune-privileged sites. But SARS-CoV-2 doesnt respect the immune-privileged sites whatsoever. It brings T-cells into the brain. So, we can see the impact of the infection across every physiological system. Because if it distorts the immune system and the immune system is responsible for patrolling the body everywhere, then there are going to be problems everywhere.

Endemic COVID-19 would bring terrible consequences: 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.

Dr. Leonardi criticized efforts to hide the severity of COVID-19 in children, Theres a terrible assumption that kids are okay with SARS-CoV-2 infection when theres data coming out that they have lost out on a greater number of healthy years than adults, he said. And kids are more likely to be infected than adults and are more likely to be reinfected than adults.

In their opposition to the mass infection of children and the continued exposure of the population to the deadly SARS-CoV-2, with horrific immediate and long-term consequences for millions, parents and teachers are not alone.

A growing strike movement is developing internationally against the capitalist policies towards the pandemic, which are provoking mass death and impoverishment.

In Brazil, throughout the year, there have been several strikes and protests by nurses, truckers, oil workers, app drivers and other sectors. In September, Jurong shipyard workers went on strike over the companys refusal to pay wage increases, and last month, more than 4,000 General Motors workers in the ABC industrial region went on strike for two weeks, rejecting contract proposals made by the company and the union.

Education workers went on strike for months during the pandemic to oppose the return to schools to prevent the spread of the pandemic. Recently, there was a demonstration by thousands of municipal teachers in Sao Paulo against pension cuts.

In order to advance this international struggle against the new normal of mass infection, death, long-term incapacitation and poverty, the International Committee of the Fourth International has launched the Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic. It will analyze the origin and causes of the pandemic, indict those responsible for the deaths of more than 15 million people, and counter the homicidal policy of capitalist governments the world over with a campaign for eliminating the virus in all countries. The CBES-BR calls on all workers and scientists in Brazil to join this struggle and assist in the work of the inquest.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD), Free Democrats (FDP) and Greens in Germany agreed on a 177-page coalition agreement on Wednesday and presented it to the media. After it has been passed by the responsible party committees, nothing should stand in the way of the election of a new federal government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) after December 6.

Wrapped in flowery phrases about modernization, transformation, climate protection and solidarity, the program of the traffic light coalition (red, yellow, greenfor the colours of the parties) is a declaration of war on the working population and a commitment to militarism. The coalition consists of three parties, one which represents in distilled form the interests of the corporations and banks (FDP), another the affluent middle class (Greens) and the third the state (SPD).

The coalitions COVID-19 policy reveals the class character of the new government most clearly. On the same day that the SPD, Greens and FDP presented their coalition agreement in Berlin, the official death toll exceeded the threshold of 100,000. The number of infected in Germany reached a new daily record total of 67,000. In much of the country, the pandemic is completely out of control, with seven-day incidence rates well over 1,000. Such an incidence rate means that one in every one hundred residents of a district has been infected within the past week.

Press conference of the 'traffic light' coalition partners

The traffic light coalition bears direct joint responsibility for this catastrophe, and not just because the SPD has been in government for eight years. Just six days ago, the coalition used its majority in the federal parliament to allow the COVID-19 emergency to expire on November 25. This means there is no longer a legal basis for imposing lockdowns and similar measures essential to contain the pandemic.

The SPDs Scholz could not ignore the pandemic at the press conference and announced a series of measures, such as an expansion of the vaccination campaign, the establishment of a permanent crisis team and an expert group in the Chancellery, and a one-time bonus for overwhelmed health care workers. Scientists have long warned that only a combination of all available measures can prevent an even greater catastrophe.

But the traffic light coalition is determined to continue the brutal profit before life policy of the grand coalition. It would rather accept tens of thousands of deaths and the mass infection of the youth than endanger the profits of big business.

Perhaps the most important decision in the coalition agreement is handing over the finance ministry to the FDP. Although the ministers will only be named in the coming days, it is certain that FDP leader Christian Lindner will take over this post. Lindner has made a name for himself as a vehement advocate of austerity policies, an opponent of any tax increase for the rich and a representative of big business.

The coalition agreement accordingly states that the debt brake, which strictly limits new government borrowing, will come into force again without restriction from 2023. In Europe, too, Germany should continue to live up to its pioneering role as an anchor of stability and ensure compliance with the Stability and Growth Pact, which caps the deficits of European Union (EU) member states. Financial solidity and the economical use of tax money are principles of our budget and financial policy, the agreement asserts.

Olaf Scholz (Photo creditSteffen Prodorf)

Given the huge subsidies for the climate-friendly transformation of corporations, a massive increase in rearmament spending and the planned repayment of the COVID-19 debt, this can only be financed through drastic social cuts. The SPD is responsible for this. The FDP, the smallest of the three coalition partners, received not only finance, but also the justice, transport and education ministries.

The Greens will take over the ministry of economic affairs, which will be expanded to include climate protection, as well as the foreign, family, environment and agriculture ministries. Annalena Baerbock, a Green co-leader, is expected to become foreign minister and Robert Habeck, the other co-leader, to be named Vice Chancellor and minister of economic affairs.

Baerbock is known for her hostility to Russia and China. Accordingly, the coalition agreement describes the transatlantic partnership and friendship with the USA as a central pillar of our international action. The governments China policy is to be coordinated transatlantically, and cooperation with China will be sought only on the basis of human rights.

Like the current government, the traffic light coalition is also striving for a global strategy designed to serve German imperialist interests. Under the heading Germanys responsibility for Europe and the world, Eastern Europe, Ukraine, Turkey, the Middle East, Africa and even the Indo-Pacific are defined as German areas of interest. We know about the global responsibility that Germany, as the fourth largest economy in the world, bears for this, the document declares.

In order to bring Germanys weight to bear, the European Union will be strengthened. A capable and strategically sovereign EU is the basis for our peace and prosperity. The document continues, As the largest member state, we will assume our special responsibility ... for the EU as a whole.

To this end, the rearmament of the German army ( Bundeswehr ) will be accelerated. All restraint is thrown overboard, with the coalition agreement committing to arm the militarys drones and nuclear deterrence. As long as nuclear weapons play a role in NATOs strategic concept, Germany has an interest in participating in the strategic discussions and planning processes, the coalition agreement states. We are committed to maintaining a credible deterrent potential.

The deal also promises the acquisition of a successor system for the Tornado fighter aircraft at the beginning of the 20th legislative period.

The defence ministry will be led by the SPD, which will also head the interior, labour, health, building and development aid ministries. The SPD will also hold the posts of Chancellor and head of the Chancellors Office.

The ministry of labour, which the SPD has led for 23 years with a four-year break, is of particular importance in the traffic light coalitions program. Under the heading Modern world of work, the torture instruments associated with the Agenda 2010 welfare reforms will be further developed. In the last red-green coalition under the SDPs Gerhard Schroder, Agenda 2010 marked the initiation of the most extensive social cuts in recent history.

In connection with these attacks, the coalition agreement adopts a consistent approach. Measures that met with popular anger and outrage will be abolished and then reintroduced in a different form or under a new name.

For example, the unemployment benefit II (better known as Hartz IV) will be referred to as Burgergeld (Citizens Benefit) in the future. Citizens benefit focuses on the potential of people and aids the sustainable integration into the labour market, and enables social participation, the coalition agreement proclaims in harmonious prose. But the duty to cooperate will be maintained. That is, the recipient of the citizens benefit will continue to be harassed by the job centre until they accept a low-wage job. Such jobsmini and midi jobs, temporary work, agency work, fixed-term contracts, etc.are not being abolished, but adjusted, according to the agreement.

The increase in the statutory minimum wage to 12 [$US13.45], which the SPD is celebrating as a great victory, has also turned out to be a sham. The minimum wage is now 9.60 and would rise to 10.45 in the middle of next year anyway. The industry-specific minimum wages are already almost all over 12. In addition, the coalition agreement expressly calls for the retention of work contracts and temporary workers, with which the minimum wage can be undercut.

The same applies to the promise that there will be no pension cuts and no increase in the statutory retirement age. The decision to raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 has not yet been completed. And no one can live on the minimum pension level of 48 percent of the average income after 45 years of contribution payment guaranteed by the traffic light coalition.

In fact, the coalition agreement specifically stipulates that older people, even if they have long since reached retirement age, will return to work in order to supplement their meagre pensions. To this end, numerous provisions of labour law are to be changed.

To address the housing shortage, the traffic light promises that 400,000 new apartments will be built every year. But the grand coalition already promised in 2017 to build 1.5 million apartments in four years. This target was never met. Even in 2020, when the number of new buildings reached a new record, only 306,000 units were builtand rents are now hardly affordable.

The traffic light coalition promises the introduction of a basic child benefit to tackle child poverty. But this merely involves the amalgamation of previous benefitschild benefit, child allowance, educational supportinto a single support benefit.

In order to counter the growing social opposition, the coalition will strengthen the police and surveillance state. The members of the security authorities in our country, who support us every day anew in the defence of the free democratic basic order, deserve our respect and recognition, says the coalition agreement, and adds, Intelligence services are an important part of a well-fortified democracy.

Video surveillance, data retention, surveillance software and other forms of surveillance should not be abolished but made legally secure. The use of agents, warrant officers and other informants from all security authorities should not be prohibited, but regulated by law. There should be an independent supervisory body for disputes in the context of classifications by the Verfassungsschutz secret service (Office for the Protection of the Constitution). Instead of draining the swamp of far-right operatives in the state apparatus, the traffic light coalition intends to make March 11 a national day of remembrance for the victims of terrorist violence.

The traffic light coalition will also seamlessly continue the inhumane refugee policy of the grand coalition. It wants to allow more immigrationin order to attract workers and counteract the aging of societywhile keeping refugees out even more rigorously. We will reduce irregular migration and make regular migration possible, the document states.

Climate protection, hailed as a breakthrough by the Greens, turns out to be an additional enrichment program for corporations and banks on closer inspection. It is approached exclusively from the standpoint of creating new sales opportunities for the troubled German export industry.

As the largest industrial and export economy in Europe, Germany is facing profound transformation processes in global competition in the 2020s, says the chapter Climate protection in a socio-ecological market economy. We therefore see the task of giving the economic strength of our country a new dynamic.
Earlier this week, the House Select Committee charged with investigating former president Donald Trumps attempted coup on January 6th issued 10 new subpoenas targeting Republican political operatives as well as leaders of fascist paramilitary groups that participated in the planning and storming of the Capitol.

The five subpoenas issued by the committee on Monday called on Trumps long-time political fixer, Roger Stone, fascist host of the InfoWars show, Alex Jones, and right-wing Republican political operatives, Taylor Budowich, Dustin Stockton and his fiancee, Jennifer Lawrence, to provide documentation and testify by mid-December. The following day, the committee issued five new subpoenas, bringing the total so far to 45, targeting the leaders of the far-right paramilitary groups that provided security for the rallies and would later attack on the Capitol.

This includes Proud Boys chairman and admitted FBI informant Henry Enrique Tarrio, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, and founder of the 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP) private security group Robert Patrick-Lewis.

In a tweet telegraphing the attack on the Capitol, the official Twitter account of the 1AP warned on January 4, 2021: There may be some young National Guard Captains facing some very, very tough choices in the next 48 hours.

Subpoenas were also issued to the Proud Boys International, LLC and Jason Lee Van Dyke, the Proud Boys attorney and former chairman of the organization, and to the Oath Keepers organization, which is headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In his letter demanding Alex Jones appearance before the Select Committee, Chairman Bennie Thompson (Democrat, Mississippi) pointed to public reports that have revealed credible evidence of your involvement in the January 6 Save America rally, including by facilitating a donor, now known to be Julie Fancelli, to provide what you characterized as eighty percent of the funding.

Previously, the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post have reported that a majority of the funding for the January 6 rally at the Ellipse outside the White House came from heir of the Super Markets grocery chain, Julie Jenkins Fancelli, whose family, according to Forbes, is the 39th richest in the US.

In January, WSJ reported that Fancelli donated $300,000 towards the rally via an intermediary, the aforementioned Jones. In October, the Post found that she had funneled an additional $150,000 to the Republican Attorneys General Association to help promote the rally in the form of a robocall that invited Trump supporters to march on the Capitol and call on Congress to stop the steal. Federal Election Commission records show that in 2019 and 2020, Fancelli donated more than $2.6 million to the Republican Party, including over $1 million to the Trump Victory 2020 campaign fund.

In furtherance of Trumps paramilitary attempts to incite fascistic violence against the election of Biden, Roger Stone, along with Jones, promoted and spoke at several Stop the Steal rallies leading up to the attack. Both Jones and Stone have also admitted that Trump asked them to lead the march to the Capitol.

The Stop the Steal/Save America rallies and bus tour, organized by the Women for America First (WFAF) political action committee, served to propagate Trumps election fraud conspiracy theories, incite and cultivate lumpen elements, and pressure Republican senators to support an attempt by House Republicans to overturn the election results on January 6. After the attack on the Capitol, 147 House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with seven Republican senators, voted to overturn the election results.

Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Oath Keepers frequently served as security for the rallies. However, a featured speaker at the WFAF organized rallies, retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, also employed members of Patrick-Lewiss 1AP paramilitary group as security while speaking at them. Philip Luelsdorff, director of Business Development for 1AP, was photographed in one of Trumps Willard Hotel war rooms with Trumps coup lawyers, Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman, on January 5.

At the pro-Trump rallies in November, December, and the day before the attack on the Capitol, Trumps trusted political fixer, and the recently subpoenaed Roger Stone, was photographed and taped flanked by Oath Keeper bodyguards, 18 of whom have been indicted by a federal grand jury for allegedly planning a coordinated storming of the Capitol in order to prevent the certification of the election. At least 34 Proud Boys have been indicted for their role in the January 6 attack.

The WFAF group was founded by Roger Stones ex-wife Ann Stone and by Amy Kremer, the current chair of the organization. Amys daughter, Kylie J. Kremer, is the executive director of WFAF. Both have already been subpoenaed by the committee.

Amy Kremer, founder and chair of Women for America First, speaks at the Save America rally which took place on the White House Ellipse immediately preceding the attack on the Capitol by far-right Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

In the last week, Rolling Stone and Pro Publica have published major articles exposing the coordinated months-long planning between members of the Trump White House, including his inner family circle, and WFAF organizers. Rolling Stones articles include texts sent by the Kremers, some taken the day of the attempted coup and in the months leading up to it. As the Capitol was under siege around 5:30 p.m. Rolling Stone reported the Kremers were stationed at one of Trumps war rooms at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel, apparently ordering room service and drinking champagne.

Citing anonymous high-level organizers within WFAF, Rolling Stone reported on Tuesday that Kylie Kremer had an aide purchase three so-called burner phones a few days before the January 6 rally at the Ellipse. The source told Rolling Stone that it was of the utmost importance that the phones be purchased with cash. The report claims the phones were used by the Kremers and one other person to communicate with members of the Trump family, including Trumps son, Eric, daughter-in-law and former campaign official Lara Trump, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump surrogate and spokesperson for Trumps 2016 presidential campaign, Katrina Pierson.

The source told Rolling Stone that Kylie claimed the phones were bought because, she needed burner phones in order to communicate with high-level people.

In a different set of leaked text messages, Pro Publica reported last week that beginning on January 4, Kimberly Guilfoyle, current girlfriend of Donald Trump Jr. and fundraiser for the Trump campaign, pressured Pierson to allow her to speak at the January 6 rally, boasting about the amount of money she had raised for the event.

After Pierson, who was acting as a White House liaison for the January 6 rally, told Guilfoyle that Trump himself was setting the speaking lineup and that it was limited to only a select few people, including Amy Kremer, Guilfoyle retorted that she has raised so much money for this.

Literally one of my donors, Julie, at $3 million, claimed Guilfoyle. referring to the aforementioned billionaire heiress Fancelli.

Helping to organize the rallies that Stone and Jones spoke at were former Breitbart employees and the recently subpoenaed Dustin Stockton and Jennifer Lawrence. Following Trumps defeat, the pair worked with WFAF in promoting the Stop the Steal rallies and raising money for the group. Their former boss, fascist Steve Bannon, gave at least $5,000 to the WFAF as part of a WarRoom sponsorship. My Pillow CEO and Trump sycophant, Mike Lindell, also gave at least $50,000 to the group.

Prior to their involvement in WFAF, Stockton and Lawrence participated in dozens of Tea Party and Republican campaigns in the last decade. They have already been speaking with the committee, reportedly telling members that Stockton raised concerns with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that a march to the Capitol would lead to possible danger, which he said felt unsafe.

Stockton maintains a fascist blog called Tyrants Curse, which features several photos of him with the Three Percenters militia group taken during Stop the Steal rallies organized by the WFAF. Undeterred by the failed coup and arrests of low-level fascist thugs, in a July 28 post titled Statement on Q/Anons, Oath Keepers, III%ers, and January 6th Protesters, Stockton defends all the fascist militias that participated in the attack on the Capitol as patriots and encouraged his readers to join one of the groups, especially given the fact that The senile Chinese sellout in the White House is driving our country off a cliff and threatening to lock us all down again. Hell no.

In addition to billionaire backing, the Stop the Steal movement was, and continues to be, heavily promoted by fascist Republican lawmakers Paul Gosar (Arizona), Andy Biggs (Arizona) and Mo Brooks (Alabama), none of whom have been subpoenaed by the committee. Their participation underscores that the attack on the Capitol was not a grassroots protest that turned into a riot, but a well-funded attempt, carried out by a fascist section of the ruling class and their political pawns in the Republican Party, to overthrow the election of Joe Biden and institute a military dictatorship under Trump.

That Trump and his fascist co-conspirators in Congress remain free is entirely the fault of Biden and the Democrats, who above all seek unity with their far-right colleagues in order to carry out their shared agenda of ruthless class exploitation at home and imperialist military conquest abroad.
Australian Defence Minister Peter Dutton, who has close connections with Washington, this week repeated his declaration earlier this month that it would be inconceivable for Australia not to join a US war against China over Taiwan.

Staging a door-stop media conference outside Australias parliament on Tuesday, Dutton reaffirmed that it would be inconceivable under the alliance that Australia wouldnt go to be standing by the side of the United States if it took military action against China after hostilities erupted with Taiwan.

Dutton said there was nothing remarkable in his comments. It was simply a statement of reality. More broadly, he ramped up his agitation against China, saying it had become a very different country under President Xi Jinping. Its really important that we understand what point in history we are, he said, insinuating that China now posed a threat to the world.

In making these provocative comments, essentially committing Australia to a nuclear war that could kill billions and make the planet uninhabitable, Dutton is flying a flag for Washington. He is continuing efforts to poison public opinion against China and overcome deep popular concern and opposition over the prospect of such a catastrophic conflict.

Australian Minister of Defense Peter Dutton, Sept. 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

That evening, Dutton made an appearance on the Australian Broadcasting Corporations flagship 7.30 current affairs TV program. Host Leigh Sales asked him: But do you really think Australians would have the appetite to follow the US into another war after Iraq and Afghanistan?

In response, Dutton doubled down. He not only accused China of planning to reunify with Taiwan by force. Beijing was also ramping up militarily across the Indo-Pacific, bumping up against neighbouring countries, and making demands that threatened freedom of speech, democratic rights and sovereignty in Australia.

It is the US, not China, that has ramped up tensions throughout the Indo-Pacific over the past decade and is now deliberately undermining the One China policy that recognizes Taiwan as part of China and has underpinned diplomatic relations with Beijing for more than four decades.

The final barrage of accusations rests on a total distortion of formal complaints made by the Chinese embassy last year about Australian bans on Chinese investment and other punitive economic and political measures against China.

Dutton has become ever-more prominent since Prime Minister Scott Morrison elevated him to the defence portfolio in March. He is positioning himself to replace Morrison, whose Liberal-National Coalition government is increasingly faction-wracked, unpopular and reliant on an unstable majority in parliament.

Duttons comments closely mirror those of US President Joe Biden, who declared at a Town Hall meeting on October 21 that the US was committed to going to war against China in defence of Taiwan. Yes, we have a commitment to do that, Biden insisted when queried by the meetings moderator.

This was no throwaway line by Biden, who has been a central figure in the US military and foreign policy establishment for decades. In March, the outgoing head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Phil Davidson, warned of the potential for war with China within six years.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley recently narrowed the time frame for a potential war over Taiwan to two years. Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, Milley targeted China as the No 1. security threat to the United States. We are witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed, he said.

These remarks, like those of Biden and Dutton, clearly reflect the discussion taking place in the top military, intelligence and political echelons in Washington. Over the past decade, the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have intensified an aggressive US military and economic confrontation with China, aimed at preventing it from threatening American global hegemony.

In his latest media foray, Dutton denounced the opposition Labor Partys foreign affairs spokesperson, Senator Penny Wong. In a speech on Tuesday to the National Security College at the Australian National University, Wong accused Dutton of dangerously amping up the prospect of war to try to win the next federal election, due by May.

Wong absurdly claimed that Dutton was wildly out of step with US policy. She said Washington remained committed to maintaining the One China policy adopted in the 1970s and strategic ambiguity over whether it would defend Taiwan militarily.

In reality, following on from Trump, Biden has deliberately undermined this entire policy, including by letting it be known, via media leaks and the Taiwanese administration, that US Special Forces trainers have been on the island off Chinas coast. The US is seeking to goad Beijing into taking action that the US and its allies could seize upon to justify military intervention.

Wong also cited Bidens call at his recent virtual meeting with Xi for common-sense guardrails to prevent the US-China competition veering into conflict, whether intended or unintended. But Bidens language, which rebuffed Xis proposal for cooperation, was effectively a threat, consistent with the underlying US course of confronting China.

While sowing illusions in Biden, Wong spoke as one dedicated to maintaining the US alliance. She stressed that, as a US ally, Australia should take a position consistent with that of Washington. Moreover, she stirred the anti-China pot herself, saying China had changed and was not acting as responsible global power. She backed the Morrison governments accusations that China is committing economic coercion by adopting trade measures in response to Australias economic actions.

In later remarks to the media, Wong indignantly rejected Duttons charge that Labor was crabwalking away from its bipartisan support for the recent AUKUS pacta USUK-Australian front against China that includes the supply of nuclear attack submarines to Australia. Labor supports AUKUS, we support ANZUS, she emphasised.

That is in line with Labors entire foreign policy, which ranks the US alliance as its first principle, and with its own record of supporting Australian participation in US wars since World War II, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At Labors national conference in March, the party presented itself as the author of the US alliance, and the party best able to extract from the working class the sacrifices necessary for war, working closely with the trade unions.

Moreover, Duttons latest war drum-beating is not simply an election ploy. He has made a series of anti-China comments since becoming defence minister in March, starting by calling for a frank public discussion about the likelihood of war.

Duttons media offensives betray concerns in ruling circles about the widespread anti-war sentiment in Australia, which was intensified by the Iraq war. As tens of millions of people worldwide rallied and marched against that illegal invasion in 2003, Australia saw some of the worlds biggest protests, per capita.

Increasingly, the US accusations against China are taking on the frenzied character of the big lie of weapons of mass destruction that became the pretext for the invasion of Iraq, through which the Bush administration and its allies, including Australia, sought to seize control of the strategic and resource-rich Middle East and Central Asia.

There is only one force that can and must stop this lurch toward another world warthe international working class. Chinese, American and Australian workers have no interest in killing each other. Rather they have common interests, which can be defended only through a unified socialist strategy to put an end to capitalism, the source of imperialist war.
Another deluge is forecast to batter western and southwestern British Columbia on Thursday, threatening many of the same areas hit by historic floods last week. Much of the Fraser River Valley and parts of central BC were inundated after a month of rain fell in just 48 hours.

One of the three Royal Canadian Air Force helicopters surveys the Fraser Valley after rainstorms lashed the western Canadian province of British Columbia, triggering landslides and floods, and shutting highways, near Abbottsford, British Columbia, Sunday, Nov. 21, 2021. (The Canadian Press via AP)

Meteorologists and climate scientists have expressed urgent concern that the already waterlogged region, which saw mudslides in addition to the flooding of low-lying agricultural land, is ill prepared to handle another downpour. Many parts of the Fraser Valley remain flooded, and recovery efforts to shore up dikes and rebuild roads are threatened by the approaching rains.

The floods were caused by an atmospheric river, a dense column of water vapour from the tropics that condenses upon landfall and can dump large volumes of water in a short period of time. The atmospheric river responsible for last weeks floods created storms that released more than 185 millimetres of rain in less than 48 hours, which is equivalent to what the region typically sees in the entire month of November.

Armel Castellan, a meteorologist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, described the gathering rains as a parade of storms. Castellan predicts another 40 to 70 mm of rain in the Fraser Valley, and 100 mm on the North Shore mountains and Howe Sound, just north of Vancouver. The heaviest rains, on the order of 200 to 300 millimetres, are forecast to hit Vancouver Island. The freezing level is also expected to rise above the mountain peaks, causing snowmelt that could contribute to further floods.

Earlier this week, a flood watch was issued for the Haida Gwaii archipelago just off the southern tip of Alaska as an atmospheric river released 300 millimetres of rain. Although the storm system moving into southwestern B.C. on Thursday is not expected to discharge as much rain, experts predict it will last longer than last weeks storms, raising the danger of further mudslides and floods.

The number of deaths attributed to the initial floods has grown to four. All of the victims were buried in a mudslide that occurred after heavy rains fell on the northern stretch of Highway 99, northeast of Vancouver.

The bodies of Anita and Mirsad Hadzic, a couple from Vancouver returning home from a vacation, were recovered between Monday and Thursday last week. Also found in the debris was the body of Steven Taylor, a construction worker and rugby player originally from Calgary, Alberta, and Brett Diederichs, who was in the process of moving to Victoria. A fifth man is still considered missing.

Scenes of devastation are now ubiquitous across the Fraser Valley, the agricultural centre of the province. Eyewitness accounts describe the now flooded Sumas Prairie region near the city of Abbotsford as a lake, where what initially appear as little islands are actually the roofs of submerged barns. The flood zones were once a shallow lake, home to the Sumas First Nation before they were shunted off by the BC government in the 1920s. The lake was then drained and parceled off as farmland.

Close to 200 people were evacuated from flooded sectors of Abbotsford on November 16 as the Barrowtown water pump station neared critical failure. North Shore Rescue leader Mike Danks described harrowing nighttime evacuations of area residents, with children being airlifted from their homes with only their teddy bears and the clothes on their back, as flood waters rapidly approached.

Danks paid tribute to the herculean efforts of volunteers and community members, who went out in force and did what they could to shore up dikes and other flood defences. They also took it upon themselves to evacuate others by motorboat and conduct reconnaissance by private helicopter. We were just one little cog in the machine, Danks told North Shore News.

At least 14,000 people are currently still displaced from their homes on account of the floods, including 6,500 registered as evacuees whose homes are considered flooded. Several dozen properties in the Sumas Prairie district alone remain on high alert for evacuation. In the central city of Merritt, 7,000 residents have been cleared to return to their homes, though a significant number of those are in fact submerged. People in smaller and rural communities who rely on private water supplies have been instructed to monitor their supply for contaminants introduced by the floods.

Efforts are underway to restore roads and railways in order to repair supply chains from Vancouver to the provinces interior and beyond. Both the Trans Canada Highway linking Vancouver to the countrys east and the important transportation artery known as the Coquihalla Highway were partially flooded. The former has been restored to serviceable status to provide emergency access to agriculture and transportation. Other roads have been washed away in chunks, such as Highway 8 that links Merritt to the Trans Canada Highway.

With thousands of BC residents shattered by the floods and restoration efforts jeopardized by the approaching storms, anger at the provincial New Democratic Party government is reaching a crescendo. The response of Premier John Horgan and his government has been marked by gross negligence and callous indifference, the same traits it has exhibited in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed at least 2,257 people in the province.

Horgan declared a 14-day state of emergency on November 17 and requested assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces to aid with evacuation and restoration efforts. Tensions are high in the wake of a public order limiting those in affected areas to 30 litres of gas per station visit until December 1, and the rapid emptying of store shelves as a result of disrupted supply chains.

It quickly emerged that the government refused to activate the automated Alert Ready system to better prepare the population for the rains, despite forecasts well in advance of last weeks storm. In comparison, the Northwest Territories, with a fraction of BCs population, has used the system four times this year to alert residents to important emergencies via a prominent smartphone message.

When widespread criticism erupted on social media to this revelation, Public Safety Minister Mike Farnworth crudely insulted his detractors as experts on Twitter who were not on the ground dealing with the local situation and understanding the local conditions, despite many of them being first responders and residents experiencing the storm firsthand.

Adding insult to injury, people who have lost or suffered damage to their homes can expect a measly $2,000 cheque from the provincial government, barely enough to fund a months rent for a modest apartment in BCs major cities. The federal Liberal government, not to be outdone, announced as a ground-breaking initiative the waiving of a requirement for applicants to show a record of employment to file Employment Insurance claims.

The Liberal government handed Canadas banks and corporations $650 billion in aid virtually overnight to improve profitability and shareholder dividends in the early stages of the pandemic. This largesse helped Canadas billionaires get $78 billion richer in 2020.

Beyond their immediate negligence, the Horgan NDP are guilty, just like their Liberal predecessors under Christy Clark, of willfully ignoring repeated scientific warnings of impending climate disasters. Meanwhile, Horgan has embraced efforts to build a liquefied natural gas pipeline to the west coast, as well as the logging of old growth forests.

A 2020 study from Environment and Climate Change Canada asserted, like many studies before it, that climate change had made rainfall more extreme, and such storms more frequent. A report by the provincial government in 2015 found that 53 out of 75 dikes in the Lower Mainland region were vulnerable to breakdown. Three years later, the BC Auditor-General announced that the provincial government lacked an adequate plan to manage risks posed by climate change. Absolutely nothing has been done in the interim to address these concerns.

The rapid pace of environmental disasters BC has witnessed in just one year include a heat dome in June that led to the deaths of over 600 vulnerable residents, a devastating summer season of wildfires precipitated by the heat dome and an ensuing drought, and now a season of flash floods and mudslides that is far from over.

Like the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to rage, all questions of protecting the health, lives, and homes of ordinary people are subordinated by the NDP and capitalist governments around the world to the corporate drive for profit and the enrichment of a tiny financial oligarchy. Such a system of mass death and endless greed is incapable of responding to climate change, the pandemic, and other major social problems. Working people must take up a struggle to replace it with a workers government committed to socialist policies.
The COVID-19 disaster has exacerbated a systemic crisis in Australias chronically underfunded public hospitals, triggering frustration and hostility among health care workers and professionals, as well as patients and working people more broadly.

With the pandemic set to worsen as governments, both Labor and Liberal-National Coalition, rush to lift international and state borders for the sake of corporate profit, this anger is another factor in the bipartisan rushing through parliament of anti-democratic electoral laws designed to stifle dissent by blocking many parties, including the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), from contesting federal elections.

Nurses and other health workers are fed up with operating at breaking point. Hospitals are experiencing access block, where patients can be denied beds for more than eight hours. There is widespread ambulance ramping outside over-stretched emergency departments, simply because there are not enough beds and staff to cope with demand.

The situation was so bad in Melbourne on November 7 that a Code Red was almost declared, indicating that ambulances are unable to respond to any new patients. Similar emergencies have been declared on several occasions in South Australia in recent months, and ambulance ramping has been reported in other states, even where the pandemic has largely been suppressed until now.

A nurse holds a phone while a patient affected with COVID-19 speaks with his family from the intensive care unit. (Image Credit: AP/Daniel Cole)

In the states most affected by COVID-19, hospitals have been able to meet the demand for beds only by cancelling so-called elective surgery. This can be dangerous, even life-threatening. Far from being optional or non-urgent, some procedures are extremely time-sensitive, including diagnostic ones that could reveal cancer.

Despite government promises to provide thousands more intensive care unit (ICU) beds to cope with the pandemic, Australia has lost 200 staffed ICU beds since March 2020. New South Wales (NSW) has cut 45 ICU beds in the past year and Victoria has reduced its total by 40.

Declaring that the population must learn to live with the virus, these governments have now dispensed with lockdowns and dismantled other essential safety measures. The resulting unrestrained COVID outbreaks will place the hospitals under enormous strain, inevitably compromising patient care and threatening hospital workers health.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has predicted that the situation is about to get much worse. Up to 2,400 hospital beds are likely to be required by COVID-19 patients on an average day for six months after the opening up. This would lead to even greater ambulance ramping and reduce the capacity for elective surgeries further by up to 40 percent.

Already, health workers have been at nearly three times greater risk of COVID-19 infection than other members of the community. According to official statistics, 4,822 health care workers in Victoria were infected by COVID-19 up to October 2021. Of these, 2,687 acquired the virus at work. NSW figures are only available to June 2020, by which time 208 health care workers had been infected, 88 due to workplace exposure.

Many hospital outbreaks have occurred in NSW and Victoria, including in non-COVID wards, such as outpatient services, dialysis, psychiatry and geriatrics, where staff are not routinely provided with respirators. Effective N95/P2 respirators often have been restricted to ICUs, emergency departments and COVID-19 wards, with an over-reliance on inadequate surgical masks elsewhere.

To add to the stress and danger, managements have been covering staff shortages by continual overtime demands. A NSW auditor-generals report released last December found that almost 90 percent of nurses interviewed said they had worked unpaid overtime. Of this group, one third said they worked overtime on a daily basis.

As a consequence, there has been a mass exodus of critical care nurses over the past year20,000 have given up their registration.

Nurses are not the only ones suffering. A recent AMA Victoria report showed that unpaid work and fatigue were also plaguing trainee doctors in hospitals. In 2020, 47 percent of trainees were never paid for the unrostered overtime they worked. And 50 percent of trainees had made a clinical error due to excessive workload or understaffing.

Blame for this situation lies with federal and state governments, Labor and Coalition alike, which have carried out a war of attrition against the public hospital system for decades, accompanied by the expanding privatisation of healthcare.

During the 1990s, this offensive was taken to a new level by the introduction of casemix funding by the Kennett Liberal-National government in Victoria. Hospitals only received payments for procedures performed, weighted according to a national efficiency price.

That system laid the foundation for the Rudd-Gillard federal Labor governments 2012 imposition of Activity Based Funding, which allocates funds based on a set and inadequate price for the numbers and types of patients already treated, not projected need.

All this has been achieved with the help of the health trade unions, which have repeatedly prevented or sold out struggles by health workers against cuts and for decent wages, conditions and staffing ratios.

Health workers have been expected to bear the burden of gutted health budgets through intolerable workloads and hours. This has intensified during the pandemic. As well as the danger of infection, many have developed post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety.

Under these conditions, the Coalition and Labor combined to push through electoral laws that will deregister 36 parties, including the SEP, that currently do not have members of parliament, if they fail to submit lists of 1,500 members by December, trebling the previous requirement. If deregistered, their party names will not appear beside their candidates on election ballot papers, robbing voters of the right to know their political identities and policies.

These laws are nakedly intended to prop up the political establishment and, above all, prevent the outrage of workers, including health workers, from finding conscious expression in the socialist program being advanced by the SEP, the only party fighting to defend the health and lives of working people against the dictates of the capitalist profit system.

We urge all our readers to join the SEPs struggle against the anti-democratic laws by signing up to become an electoral member of the party and helping us to build a new socialist leadership in the working class.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirmed on Monday that the Labour Party-led government will abandon lockdowns as a means to suppress COVID-19 on December 3. The country will move into a new traffic light warning system, officially called a COVID-19 Protection Framework, which includes vaccine mandates for many workers, vaccine certificates and some limits on gathering sizes. Schools and businesses can remain open, regardless of the presence of COVID-19 in the community.

Legislation for the new framework was rammed through parliament yesterday under urgency, with little time for public debate. Minister for COVID-19 Response Chris Hipkins rejected a request from the Council for Civil Liberties to release policy advice to justify the new system. The councils chair Thomas Beagle called this a disgraceful anti-democratic decision.

The government also plans to lift the boundary around Auckland on December 15, allowing people to travel to and from the city, which is at the centre of the current outbreak. In mid-January, the border will open for New Zealanders to return from Australia without having to spend any time in a mandatory isolation and quarantine (MIQ) facility. From late April, the border will open to fully vaccinated people from other countries, including tourists.

A vaccination centre in Auckland. (Source: Te Whanau o Waipreira Facebook page)

Last month the government abandoned the elimination strategy that had been in place since March 2020, which used lockdowns and other public health measures to reduce outbreaks to zero cases. This was praised by public health experts and workers internationally. New Zealand has recorded 42 deaths during the pandemic, one of the lowest figures per capita in the world.

Now, however, the New Zealand ruling elite is racing to join the majority of countries in implementing the criminal opening up policy, telling the population they must live with the deadly virus.

Case numbers have already surged in Auckland in recent weeks after the government eased the lockdown and schools and retail businesses reopened. There are 5,182 active cases, up from just 260 on October 1. While most cases are in Auckland, there are 284 in Waikato, 35 in Northland, smaller numbers in Taupo, Rotorua, Bay of Plenty, Manawatu and Wairarapa, and four cases in Christchurch in the South Island.

The hard truth is that Delta is here and its not going away, Ardern said on Monday. She declared that because of vaccines, the new system would be safer and simpler than the old one. The vast majority of people who get COVID in the future will experience mild to moderate symptoms that wont require hospital-level care, she said.

In fact, vaccination, while an essential tool for reducing severe illness and deaths, is not enough to prevent significant numbers of hospitalisations and deaths if COVID-19 is allowed to spread. This was underscored by the Ministry of Healths revelation yesterday that three out of 15 people killed by the Delta variant in New Zealand since the outbreak began in August were fully vaccinated, and two had received their first dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

In Portugal, 98 percent of people over 12 years old (86 percent of the total population of 10.3 million) have been vaccinated, one of the highest rates in the world. However, the refusal to pursue an elimination strategy has allowed cases to soar, with more than 16,000 people testing positive and 79 deaths in the last seven days.

New Zealand could face an even worse surge, because just 84 percent of eligible people are vaccinated, or 71 percent of the total population.

The Council of Trade Unions, far from opposing the dangerous abandonment of the elimination policy, has provided advice on the traffic light system, working in partnership with the government and the lobby group Business New Zealand. Schools and retail have reopened in Auckland with the full support of the unions. These pro-capitalist organisations are collaborating to remove obstacles to parents returning to work, so that big business can fully resume the extraction of profit from the working class.

Unvaccinated children are particularly at risk of catching and spreading the virus. In the current outbreak, 19 percent of cases are under 10 years old, and 27 of these children have been hospitalised. A further 17 percent of cases and 10 hospitalisations are aged 10-19. Many children who become infected suffer from Long COVID, which can affect brain function and other vital organs.

Epidemiologist Dr Amanda Kvalsvig, from the University of Otago, tweeted on November 22: Im very worried about children, and about people not being worried enough about children. Without urgent, decisive action (vaccines; ventilation & masking in schools) well inevitably see rapid and inequitable spread in children. Will Covid become the next rheumatic fever? New Zealand has high rates of rheumatic fever, particularly among poor children living in substandard housing.

Media commentary has focused on the low vaccination rate among Maori, who make up 16.5 percent of the population. Only 65 percent of eligible Maori are fully vaccinated, and Maori account for 44 percent of cases in the Delta outbreak.

Dr Rawiri Jansen, a general practitioner and public health researcher, told Stuff that warnings about high rates of COVID-19 among Maori had been ignored: The government has deliberately heard certain voices in alignment with certain pressures on them to ease restrictions.

The majority of unvaccinated people, however, are non-Maori (423,462 people in the category European/Other are not fully vaccinated; compared with 199,355 Maori). The key factors behind low rates are class divisions and the lack of accessible vaccination services in many rural areas. Maori are much more likely to be unemployed and living in poverty, which goes hand-in-hand with worse access to healthcare services, and distrust of state authorities.

For the handful of Maori who live in wealthy or upper middle class Auckland suburbs such as Herne Bay, Newmarket, Devonport, Remuera and Parnell, vaccination rates are approaching or above 90 percent. By contrast, in the Counties Manukau District Health Board zone, covering working class South Auckland, only 66.9 percent of eligible Maori are fully vaccinated.

The same pattern exists in Wellington: Maori vaccination rates are much higher in wealthy Seatoun and Khandallah, and middle class Ngaio and Aotea, than in poor suburbs like Cannons Creek and Naenae.

In Northland, one of the poorest and most rural areas of the country, only 74 percent of the eligible population is vaccinated, and 60 percent of eligible Maori. Northland-based emergency doctor Gary Payinda warned that this, combined with rundown public health services, is paving the way for an avoidable catastrophe.

The West Coast region of the South Island, which includes many poor and isolated communities and is more than 90 percent white, has a similarly low vaccination rate of 76 percent.

COVID-19 modeller Michael Plank told the Science Media Centre that families going on holiday out of Auckland should consider not visiting regions or communities with low vaccination rates. He warned: Once schools and workplaces go back in the new year, the virus will be able to spread more easily and there is a danger that case numbers could take off with multiple outbreaks across the country.

The Labour government has brushed aside such warnings. With the crucial assistance of the trade unions, it is prioritising the demands of big business, with policies that will make COVID-19 endemic throughout the country, leading to rising numbers of deaths and severe illnesses.
The World Socialist Web Site has frequently compared the global coronavirus pandemic to World War I.

The pandemic is, as the WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North wrote in May 2020, a trigger event, analogous to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, which set off a chain of events that culminated in the outbreak of a global cataclysm. The assassination accelerated the historical process, North explained, but it acted upon preexisting and highly inflammable socioeconomic and political conditions. The same can be said of the pandemic.

When World War I began, a resolution adopted by the Socialist Equality Party in July 2020 explained, it was assumed by all belligerents that it would be over relatively quickly. However, the conflict dragged on and on, year after year, because the capitalist ruling elites, who dictated government policy, considered the sacrifice of the lives of millions of workers an acceptable cost in achieving their geostrategic interests in the conflict.

As the conclusion of the second year of the pandemic approaches and as mass death continues seemingly without end, the analogy to World War I is being tragically and brutally substantiated.

Medical workers dress the body of a COVID-19 victim in the morgue of a hospital in Kakhovka, Ukraine, on Friday, Oct. 29, 2021. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Already, the death toll from the pandemic is comparable to the death toll from World War I. Estimates of the total deaths of military personnel during the four years of the war range from between 9 million and 11 million. Civilian deaths are estimated at between 6 and 13 million, bringing a total estimated death toll to between 15 and 24 million.

By comparison, the number of deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic now stands at close to 5.2 million worldwide, according to official figures. We know, however, that this figure far understates reality. The Institute for Health Metrics at the University of Washington estimates that the total number of deaths attributable to COVID-19 (excess deaths) is more than 12.1 million, and possibly as high as 17.5 million.

And the pandemic is only just coming to the start of its third year. The third year of World War I began in the summer of 1916. The first two years of the war had seen a series of horrific bloodbaths, including devastating offensives by German forces against Russia and the First Battle of the Marne, fought on the outskirts of Paris, with casualties of over half a million.

As the war entered its third year, however, the scale of death increased. On the Eastern Front, the Brusilov Offensive between June and September of 1916, involving the armies of Russia on the one side and Germany and Austro-Hungary on the other, claimed more than 2.3 million casualties. In the Battle of Sommea British-French offensive against Germany on the Western Front, waged for 140 days between July 1 and November 18, 1916casualties are estimated at more than 1 million, including more than 310,000 dead.

The Battle of the Somme was initiated five months after the beginning of the Battle of Verdun, a German offensive against France launched in February of 1916 that concluded 302 days later. There were three-quarters of a million casualties in the bloody slaughter, including more than 300,000 dead. Historian Alistair Horne (in The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916) notes that Verdun came to gain the unenviable reputation of being the battlefield with the highest density of dead per square yard that has probably ever been known.

As the bodies piled up in their millions, human life seemed to count for nothing. In his December 1915 Christmas Memorandum, General Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff, outlined the aim, enacted at Verdun, of bleeding France to death. Falkenhayns Unternehmen Gericht (Operation Judgement) put into practice the strategy of materialschlacht, or battle of attrition. Massive casualties were expected on both sides, but the battle was to be considered won if the casualties on the other side were greater.

The same indifference to human life was expressed on the side of the French ruling class. Horne recounts the instructions delivered by a French coloneloperating under the direction of the future leader of Vichy France, General Philippe Petainto battalions sent to be slaughtered by German artillery at Verdun: You have a mission of sacrifice; here is a post of honour where they want to attack. Every day you will have casualties.  On the day they want to, they will massacre you to the last man, and it is your duty to fall.

The international working class confronts an analogous situation today. Over the past several months, there has been a murderous shift in ruling class policy. Governments throughout the world are abandoning any pretense of ending the pandemic. The signal was given by Biden in July, when he announced that the US was declaring our independence from a deadly virus We can live our lives, our kids can go back to school, our economy is roaring back.

Independence from the virus has not meant that infections and deaths would decline but rather that no significant effort would be made to stop death on a mass scale. The same policy has been implemented in Europe, and enormous pressure has been brought to bear on countries that had pursued an elimination strategy (including New Zealand and other countries in the Asia-Pacific) to reverse course. Lockdowns, contact tracing, testing and all other public health measures essential to controlling and eliminating the virus have been systematically abandoned.

The consequences were both predictable and catastrophic. The claim that the virus could be stopped through vaccination alone is exposed by the massive spike in new cases globally.

In Europe, 4,200 people are dying every day. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization released a statement warning that the situation is expected to get drastically worse. The WHO projects that the official death toll in the European region, including Russia, will reach 2.2 million by the springthat is, the WHO anticipates another 700,000 deaths in Europe alone over the next four months.

Again: Between now and the spring, the WHO is anticipating that 700,000 people will die in Europe from COVID-19, an average of more than 5,000 every single day. The anticipated death toll in the next four months is approximately twice the death toll from the 10-month Battle of Verdun.

Neither Germany nor any of the governments of Europe will do anything to stop the deluge. We have removed measures such as lockdowns, blanket school and business closures or curfews from the law, proclaimed Free Democratic Party member Marco Buschmann, who will be justice minister under the new government headed by Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).

In the United States, more than 1,000 people are dying every day. New cases are at 90,000 and rising. In Michigan, now the center of the pandemic in the US, more than 17,000 new cases were reported during the past two days, along with 280 deaths. New cases in Michigan are now higher than at any point in the entire pandemic, with a large percentage consisting of breakthrough infections of those who have been vaccinated.

The official death toll from COVID-19 in the US, currently at nearly 800,000, will likely surpass 1 million by the spring of 2022. Total deaths in 2021 are already more than the number of dead in 2020, with more than one month left in the year.

Most alarmingly, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) reported this week that child infections are again on the rise. There were 141,905 new pediatric COVID-19 cases for the week ending November 18, up from 122,000 the week prior. More than 150 children under the age of 18 are hospitalized every day, and the overall death toll among children has risen to 636.

Yet the political establishment and media have declared that nothing can or will be done. The homicidal, indeed criminal, outlook of the ruling class was articulated in an article published in The Atlantic yesterday by Juliette Kayyem, the former assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security under Obama and faculty chair of the Homeland Security program at Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Under the headline, The Pandemic is Ending With a Whimper, Kayyem acknowledges that more than 1,000 Americans are dying every day but insists that it is time to declare the war over and move on.

Kayyem, with impeccable liberal credentials, states: [E]ven though the threat still exists, the country needs to be nudged into the recovery phaseand only elected leaders can provide that nudge. She adds that the question of when a crisis is over isnt an objective matter that Anthony Fauci or any other scientific expert can decide. What is an acceptable trade-off between preventing infections and promoting the resumption of pre-pandemic routines? Should employers and school districts base their policies on the expectations of the most risk-averse people or those who have a higher tolerance?

The choice now facing the US, Kayyem concludes her article, is whether to acknowledge the progress weve madeand the subjective, political, nonscientific nature of the value judgments that face us.

What does this mean? It is, in fact, an objective matter that 1,000 people are dying every day in the United States. However, Kayyem is declaring that a decision that the crisis is over is not going to be decided by science and objective fact but on a purely political basis. But who is making these political decisions and in whose interests? If science and objective reality are not to be the determining factors, what is? The inevitable conclusion is that the decision must be made by the ruling class and its political institutions, on the basis of economic and geopolitical considerations.

One might ask Ms. Kayyem precisely how many deaths does she and others who have a higher tolerance consider to be an acceptable trade-off? 10,000? 100,000? 1 million? What is the final calculus of her subjective, political, nonscientific  value judgements?

This is a monstrous policy, and those carrying it out and advocating for it are nothing less than politically criminal. How is driving students back to the classrooms and workers back to unsafe workplaces any different from sending soldiers out into an endless wave of artillery shells and machine gun fire? The outcome is the same.

The pandemic, as a trigger event, is accelerating the underlying processes and tendencies of the crisis of global capitalism. The elevation of fascistic movements is the most violent expression of the demand for the removal of all restrictions on the spread of the pandemic. As Kayyems article demonstrates, however, the basic agenda is supported by the entire ruling class.

As the second year of the pandemic comes to a conclusion, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties affiliated with the International Committee of the Fourth International have initiated the Global Workers Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic. The task of this Inquest will be to examine and refute all the lies promoted by governments and in the media over the past two years, indict and expose those who are responsible for a policy that has produced death on a massive scale, educate workers on what can and must be done to eliminate the virus, and raise the political and social consciousness of the working class.

A final comparison to World War I is perhaps the most important. The war was finally brought to an end through the intervention of the working class, culminating in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and a wave of revolutionary struggles throughout Europe. Similarly, a change in policy in response to the pandemic will not be realized outside of a massive social and political movement of the international working class to demand a strategy of global elimination.

The logic of class interests, expressed in the experience of the past two years, makes evident that such demands place the working class in a confrontation with the ruling elites and the entire capitalist system.
For years, the word disgraced has been obligatorily prepended to the name of Viscount Matthew Ridley, the British aristocrat and chairman of Northern Rock who steered the bank, and the entire United Kingdom, into financial ruin.

Matt Ridley, disgraced in 2007 as the former chairman of collapsed bank Northern Rock, wrote Reuters in 2013 in an article on shamed bank executives. The disgraced banker, the Guardian called him in 2015.

Ridleys disgrace occurred in the House of Commons Treasury Committee in October 2007, where MPs declared the executive had no sense of honour and had damaged the good name of British banking.

Matt Ridley testifies before the House of Commons Treasury Committee in 20007

They demonstrated that he had openly and flagrantly lied to Parliament, writing in a letter, we have no subprime loans, while running advertisements reading open for sub-prime business.

Thenceforward, it was assumed that Ridley would be seen not only as a crook and an incompetent, but a liar whom no one would take seriously on anything, much less the ethical conduct of others.

Ridley's letter to Parliament, as republished in the Financial Times, in which he declares "Northern Rock was not a reckless lender" and "we have no subprime loans."

But since his misadventure in banking, which cost British taxpayers 37 billion pounds and led to tens of thousands of foreclosures, the 5th Viscount Ridley was not content to retreat to his estate, home to the largest open-pit mine in Britain.

What is honour? asked Shakespeares corrupt and cowardly knight, Sir Falstaff. Air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o Wednesday... Therefore Ill none of it.

Perhaps with similar sentiments, the Viscount returned to public life, elected by his aristocratic peers to the House of Lords in 2013, and has rebooted his career as a science writer to deny the existence of climate change, argue the genetic basis of race, and promote ideas associated with Social Darwinism.

Most recently, he has joined the band of rogues and scoundrels, including the racist Nicholas Wade and aluminum tubes liar Michael R. Gordon, working to slander the worlds leading coronavirus experts, including Shi Zhengli and Peter Daszak, during a global pandemic that has killed up to 20 million people.

In line with his fellow Brexit advocate Raheem Kassam, the co-host of Steve Bannons War Room: Pandemic podcast, Ridley has, since early 2020, sought to blame China for the COVID-19 pandemic, asking in March 2020, Is there not a case for demanding some sort of reparations from the Chinese government for the terrible human suffering caused by the pandemic.

Working backward from this conclusion, Ridley has accused the US National Institutes of Health and the EcoHealth alliance of a coverup, implying that they are complicit in the creation or release of SARS-CoV-2.

Viral, by Alina Chan and Matt Ridley

Using the weasel words common to all intellectual pickpockets, Ridley regularly makes sweeping claims in the press using deniable language arguing to promote the claim that SARS-COV-2 is a genetically engineered virus created at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. For example, he wrote in May 2020, The simple story of an animal in a market infected by a bat that then infected several human beings no longer looks crediblea statement that any normal person would interpret as a rejection of the natural origins of COVID-19.

As the consummation of this campaign, Ridley has, together with Alina Chan, an intellectually dishonest, manipulative conspiracist in the words of virologist Angela Rasmussen, written a 400-page book purporting to substantiate the lab leak hoax.

For the work of two scoundrels, Viral is not a completely useless book. For though myself be a full vicious man, a moral tale yet I you tell can, says Chaucers church-sanctioned seller of false religious relics. Viral provides a service, of sorts, in compiling, in long form, every argument concocted by every quack, every leak provided to anonymous internet researchers, used to impugn the credibility of the scientists who have devoted their lives to protecting humanity from new infectious diseases.

After hundreds of pages describing the genesis of the lab leak theory, Ridley and Chan get to their central argument: an effort to present a right-wing hoax as a credible scientific theory.

Peter Daszak and Shi Zhengli - Credit: EcoHealth Alliance

They devote one chapter to the case for the natural origins of COVID-19, another arguing for non-natural origins, and one chapter drawing conclusions.

These arguments are presented in the form of a jury deliberation in a criminal case, with the arguments addressed to ladies and gentlemen of the jury.

The chapter arguing for natural origins begins as follows: So the theory that the pandemic began as a natural spillover was from the start, and remains to this day, highly plausible. It is the null hypothesis, the default assumption.

In a judicial proceeding, the null hypothesis is not guilty. By implication, the case of zoonosis is presented as the defense, and the lab leak theory is rendered as the prosecution. Having framed the issue this way, Ridley goes on to argue for the defense:

Then there is the lack of direct evidence of a laboratory leak. Where is the infected laboratory worker, the index case? Where is the record of an accident? If there was a leak, why, in the months since the pandemic began, has no scientist come forward with a confession or an eyewitness account? The Chinese regime may be authoritarian, but it is not omnipotent. The lack of a whistleblower with genuine evidence of an escape of the virus into the community must count for something. Do not forget that there is no evidence at all that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the subject of experiments in any laboratory. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, says the attorney, there is no evidence of a laboratory leak, and the default assumption must remain that this pandemic began with a natural event, as so many other epidemics have done in the past.

This is a simple, direct, consistent and correct argument. Ridley and Chan then turn to the argument of the prosecution, which we abridge here:

the allegation we take seriously is that scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology and, possibly, other laboratories in the city, at the Center for Disease Control or the Huazhong Agricultural University, were doing exactly what they said they were doing: namely, studying viruses from bats and other wildlife with a view to predicting pandemics and eventually developing therapeutics or vaccines. But something went wrong and a virus leaked, either infecting a person who worked in the field, in a laboratory, or elsewhere in the city if lab waste had not been properly decontaminated before being discarded.... Next consider that there is no direct evidence of a natural origin of the Covid-19 pandemic.... We now know, as we did not in February 2020, that the WIV was in possession of a batch of very closely related viruses collected from an abandoned copper mine in Mojiang where workers had sickened with a SARS-like illness in 2012.... In stark contrast to the 2003 SARS virus, there has been no explanation of how it came to be so adept at spreading among humans. Both the 2003 SARS and SARS-CoV-2 are generalist viruses and can infect a wide range of animal species, but the stepwise adaptation of the 2003 SARS virus to its new human host in the early months of that outbreak is missing altogether in the case of SARS-CoV-2.... Then there is the almost ridiculous secrecy that surrounds the mine itself.... The next piece of evidence against the laboratory scientists is the long and detailed record of their research. In paper after paper, they laid bare a record of experiments on sarbecoviruses and other coronaviruses that were ingenious, comprehensive and successful.... One final argument for the laboratory leak is that more virologists have shifted their view and now either think it is possible or even likely.... It must be conceded that many of those making the charge that SARS-CoV-2 leaked from a laboratory are not agreed as to which of several versions of the leak they find most plausible: whether SARS-CoV-2 is a natural virus that was stored there and leaked, like the SARS leaks in Beijing in 2004; or a virus that had been passaged in human cell cultures to the point where it evolved into an efficient human pathogen; or whether SARS-CoV-2 is an engineered chimeric virus. All are possible and until there is better evidence none of these can be ruled out.... Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the attorney concludes, there is a stark absence of evidence for a zoonotic spillover at the start of this pandemic. In contrast, the proximity of the outbreak to the WIVthe largest collector of SARS-related coronaviruses in the world, where scientists were creating chimeric viruses and experimenting with close relatives of SARS-CoV-2makes a compelling case for a laboratory-based origin of the virus.

Ridley assumes that his readers will conclude that a quasi-judicial presentation of his arguments will impart to them rigor. But by framing the argument in this fashion, it only opens him up to total refutation. In statistics, if the null hypothesis is not rejected to a high confidence level, say 90 to 95 percent, alternatives are discarded, and the null hypothesis stands.

In the standards of criminal law, the defendant is presumed not guilty, unless he can be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

I asked my colleague Tom Carter, an attorney, how he would react if a prosecutor accused his client of committing a crime but offered two mutually exclusive theories of how the crime was committed. Carter replied:

If the prosecutor says that either the crime occurred one way or it occurred another way, then I would jump up and respond that this means that the prosecutor doesnt actually have enough evidence to prove either alternative beyond a reasonable doubt. Therefore, the prosecutor cant actually prove that a crime was committed at all. You see exactly this type of argument made all the time by unscrupulous prosecutors, who attempt to strengthen a weak case by piling on the charges, in hopes that the jury will think that with all these official-sounding accusations the defendant must be guilty of something. One accusation that cant be proven beyond a reasonable doubt added to another accusation that cant be proven beyond a reasonable doubt is just two accusations that cant be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Zero plus zero is still zero.

And this is precisely the issue. Some of the claims Ridley makes are partially true, some are misleading, and some are totally false. But if all of the accusers premisestrue and false alike are granted, he still cannot come up with a story of what he thinks occurred.

Ridley begins by claiming that he does not know if the disease was genetically engineered or not. Then he implies that he believes SARS-CoV-2 was genetically engineered from RaTG13, a virus that is 96 percent similar to it. Then, new viruses are discovered in Laos, and he accuses scientists of doing research in Laos and taking the viruses to Wuhan, implying that they used those viruses as a basis for genetically engineering SARS-CoV-2.

Each one of these storylines is so tendentious that even Ridley refuses to commit to one or the other. So, he just adds them up, one on top of the other. But, as Carter puts it, Zero plus zero is still zero. And Ridley and Chan know it.

A researcher swabs a bat's mouth to take samples at Sai Yok National Park in Kanchanaburi province, west of Bangkok, Thailand, Friday, July 31, 2020. Researchers in Thailand have been trekking though the countryside to catch bats in their caves in an effort to trace the murky origins of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

Having failed to prove his favored theory using the logical test he establishes, Ridley decides to throw his own methodology out, totally contradicting his earlier assertion that the natural origins of COVID-19 is the null hypothesis:

Much of the debate about the origin of the virus assumes that the laboratory-leak theory must prove itself. Natural spillover, by contrast, is the default assumption, which does not have to prove anything. The ball is in its opponents court. This holds any laboratory-leak theory to a higher standard of proof than any natural theory. But why should the burden of proof be with those who posit a laboratory leak? True, there has been no major pandemic caused by a laboratory leak, so it would be a first. But we have entered an era when scientists are collecting, sequencing and manipulating viruses at unprecedented scale. We think that even if the burden of proof was on the laboratory leak initially, it has since shifted. That the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, RaTG13, got to Wuhan via scientists shifts the burden of proof. So does the obfuscation and misdirection in the story of the Mojiang miners. So does the existence of the other eight SARS-CoV-2-like viruses from the mine. So does the missing database of more than twenty-two thousand entries. So does the long record of virus collection, coronavirus genetic engineering and animal infection experiments in Wuhan. So does the track record of scientists inserting furin cleavage sites into viruses and the failure to find a furin cleavage site in another SARS-like virus despite widespread searches in China and other countries. And so does the failure of the market spillover hypothesis to find any definitive evidenceno intermediate host, no immediate precursor to SARS-CoV-2, no animal samples found to be positive for the virus.

To summarize Ridleys argumentation, the evidence pointing to a laboratory origin of COVID-19 is so substantial that the burden of proof to demonstrate his theory must be lowered.

This is an argument so nonsensical that a typical reader would just assume he misunderstood it. But no, this is what Ridley is actually claiming: That is, there are so many zeros, so many speculations and long shots proving nothing, that this justifies lowering the burden of proof for what all these zeros are seeking to prove.

This is the theory. While there does not exist a preponderance of evidence between multiple competing theories defended by Ridley and Chan, all the speculative and unproven allegations, added up together, make a plausible hypothesis worthy of a credible investigation.

No. No, it does not. It does not even add up to a plausible hypothesis if every specious claim made by the authors is granted, if all counterarguments are ignored, and the motives of its proponents are disregarded.

But in reality, every week adds new evidence to the natural origins of COVID-19, from the revelation of the fact that the first known case was a vendor at the Huanan seafood market, to the discovery of a set of viruses in Laos whose receptor binding domains are closer to that of the wild-type SARS-CoV-2 than that of its variants, to new evidence that SARS-like coronaviruses are constantly spilling over into the human population throughout Asia.

And the evidence described by Ridley and Chan pointing to a laboratory origins ranges from the irrelevant to the preposterous. In his excellent review of Viral in the Guardian, the medical historian Mark Honigsbaum tears them apart one by one.

Take Chans claim that it appeared pre-adapted to human transmission to an extent similar to late epidemic Sars. This claim rests on a single mutation in the spike protein that appears to slightly enhance (Chan and Ridleys words) its ability to bind to human receptor cells and suggests that by the time it was first detected in Wuhan it had apparently stabilised genetically. But this is highly misleading. As the subsequent alphabet soup of variants demonstrates, the coronavirus has undergone repeated mutations that have steadily increased its fitness. Furthermore, studies of viruses isolated from pangolins, one of the animals suspected of being an intermediary host, bind to human receptor cells even more efficiently than Sars-CoV-2, suggesting capacity for further adaptation. As two leading virologists put it, the virus was not perfectly adapted to humans but was just good enough. Another supposedly suspicious feature of Sars-CoV-2 is that it possesses a molecular key, known as a furin cleavage site, that enables it to prise open the receptor protein on human cells and kickstart the infection process. The same sequence is seen in highly contagious flu viruses and had previously been employed by researchers to modify the spike protein of Sars. Chan and Ridley suggest this is exactly the sort of insertion you would expect to find in a bat virus that had been modified in a laboratory. However, 21 leading scientific experts recently pointed out that the furin sequence is suboptimal and that near identical sequences have been found in coronaviruses that commonly infect humans and cattle. In other words, although the feature is absent from known bat coronaviruses, it could just as easily be the product of natural evolution. Tellingly, Chan and Ridley do not go so far as to suggest this feature of the virus was inserted deliberately. Merely, that there is no way to know.

It is this same piling up of tendentious evidence that led Ridley to give credence in 2020 to the conspiracy theory that AIDS was a man-made virus, writing, in the exact same language he uses to promote the Wuhan lab lie,

Most scientists believe that Aids was 'naturally' transferred from primates to human beings via a hunter who ate a chimpanzee. But a competing theory claims that Aids was caused in the 1950s when thousands of Africans were given a live polio vaccine derived from chimp kidneys. The stakes are getting higher.

In July 2000, Ridley led credence tot he conspiracy theory "that Aids was caused by polio vaccination"

But the motive is what turns the lab leak theory from mere misguided nonsense into a right-wing conspiracy theory.

It is noteworthy that Viral addresses some of the criticisms raised by the World Socialist Web Site of the US medias treatment of the conspiracy theory. It grudgingly admits Nicholas Wades history of falsifying science, and the connections of whistleblower Li-Meng Yan to Steve Bannon.

But Ridley refuses to acknowledge the fact that Michael R. Gordon, whose front-page article in the Wall Street Journal led the entire media to declare the lab-leak theory credible, wrote the discredited New York Times article that declared Saddam Hussein was seeking aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons.

The omission of this revelation is deliberate and significant because it is the fundamental refutation of Ridleys argument. The far-right gunman Kyle Rittenhouse, in the words of the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer, is an all-American boy just trying to help the community. Likewise, the lab-leak hoax is not a pretext to demonize China and prepare for a war, it is a scientific theory.

But it is precisely demonizing China that is the central aim of Ridley, who is a fascist, an anti-Semite, and an advocate of mass infection with COVID-19.

On October 15, Ridley embraced the Great Barrington Declaration, authored in consultation with Trumps White House, to declare, Students who catch COVID may be saving lives. He adds, The extraordinary truth is that a student catching COVID might be saving Grandmas life rather than threatening it.

A woman walks by a propaganda poster promoting wildlife animals as friends instead of food in Beijing, Wednesday, March 11, 2020 [Credit: AP Photo/Andy Wong]

Embracing Nicholas Wades racist tract in 2014, Ridley raved, Perhaps people of Ashkenazi Jewish descent have high average IQs because for centuries their ancestors worked almost exclusively in professions such as money-lending.

Ridley blames socialists for the fascist dictatorships which exterminated hundreds of thousands of left-wing workers and millions of Jews, declaring, Fascism, properly understood, is not a phenomenon of the right at all. Instead, it is, and always has been, a phenomenon of the left.

For months, scientists and the general public have been subjected to a nonstop campaign promoting the Wuhan Lab lie. Every major US newspaper cited Nicholas Wade favorably. The left-wing Intercept carried stories condemning Anthony Fauci for his role in an alleged coverup. Joe Biden demanded an investigation. Even the National Institutes of Health made an unsubstantiated claim that the EcoHealth Alliance failed to appropriately report its findings. This was coupled with death threats and anti-Semitic hate speech targeting scientists and journalists.

But truth is truth, and all the forces of the state and the corporate media, all the forces of ignorance and reaction could not change the fact that the lab leak theory is a lie.

As Daszak recently told Science, This is an antiscience attack and, unfortunately, were the target If a small group of scientists were absolutely correct in their predictions, why are we now putting them on the pyre in the middle of the village, dancing around, and burning them alive?

Thats what really sickens me to my stomach.

As we have told the scientists, this right-wing witch hunt disgusts not only them, but also the tens of thousands of workers all over the world who see scientists like Daszak as leaders and guides in their fight to protect their own lives and those of their loved ones from the pandemic.

This month, Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine global health researcher, condemned the campaign against Daszak as a witch hunt. He is one of the leading voices of a chorus of scientists and principled journalists who, turning to the working class for support, will condemn this disgusting hoax and all its proponents to infamy.
On Tuesday evening, Donald Trump said during an interview on Fox News that he recently met at his resort in Palm Beach, Florida with Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenage vigilante shooter who was acquitted of homicide charges in a court-rigged jury trial on November 19 in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Although he did not say precisely when he met with Rittenhouse at Mar-A-Lago, Trump told Fox News Sean Hannity that he got to know him a little bit and that the shooter was a really nice young man. Trump further said that the meeting was prompted by a request from Rittenhouse. He wanted to know if he could come over and say hello because he was a fan, Trump said.

Trump went on to claim that Rittenhouse, should never have been put through a trial to face multiple criminal charges for murdering Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, both of whom were unarmed, and for injuring Gaige Grosskreutz with an AR-15-style rifle that he brought to protests against police violence on August 25, 2020, in Kenosha.

Trump told Hannity that the case against Rittenhouse was prosecutorial misconduct, and its happening all over the United States right now with the Democrats. As reported on the World Socialist Web Site on Monday, Trump and his right-wing Republican supporters have been celebrating the acquittal of Rittenhouse. They are using the outcome as means or rallying their fascistic base for further attacks against the democratic rights of protesters and the mass struggles of the working class.

Donald Trump and Kyle Rittenhouse meet at Mar-A-Lago (@DonaldJTrumpJr/Twitter)

Kyle Rittenhouse was 17 years old when he volunteered with a group of armed vigilantes to defend property and assist the police in suppressing mass protests in Kenosha following the shooting of Jacob Blake two nights earlier. Blake, a 27-year-old black man, was shot seven times in the back and paralyzed by Kenosha policeman Rusten Sheskey. The brutal attack was captured on smartphone video.

Although his political history and affiliation with fascists were concealed by the judge during the trial, Rittenhouse was a gun enthusiast and police cadet who was recorded two weeks prior to the shootings in Kenosha saying he would have liked to start shooting rounds at people he claimed were shoplifting. Furthermore, Rittenhouses support for Trump was well-known, since he had been recorded on video in the front row of a 2020 reelection rally of the former Republican president in January 2020.

The right-wing campaign supporting Rittenhouses claim of self-defense in Kenosha began immediately upon his arrest, including a fundraising effort that generated the $2 million needed for the shooter to post bail at his arraignment in November 2020. After his release, Rittenhouse appeared with members of the fascist Wisconsin Proud Boys at a local bar, sang their anthem and flashed white power symbols. Judge Schroeder blocked any of these critical facts from being entered into evidence by the prosecution.

Trumps enthusiasm for the fascist shooter as a really nice young man is reminiscent of the statements made while he was President following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. After a white supremacist drove his car into an anti-fascist protest, killing Heather Heyer and injuring 35 others, Trump said there were very fine people among those participating in the neo-Nazi rampage.

The Fox News report of Trumps meeting with Rittenhouse followed by one day the appearance of the teenage shooter in a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson. Contributing an observation prior to the interview, Carlson said the fascist youth is not especially political and never wanted to be the symbol of anything.

In a politically significant comment, Carlson went to elaborate on a false narrative that Rittenhouse is a representative of the working class, saying, It is hard to ignore the yawning class divide between Kyle Rittenhouse and his critics in the media. Rittenhouse comes from the least-privileged sector of our society. In high school he worked as a janitor and cook to help support his family.

During the interview, Rittenhouse reviewed his well-rehearsed account of the events of August 25, 2020, emphasizing how he was trying to help our community, cleaning graffiti from buildings and offering medical assistance during the protests in Kenosha when he was inexplicably set upon by the men who he shot.

However, Rittenhouse was set upon because he aimed his AR-15-style rifle at protesters and it was they who were entirely within their rights to defend themselves against him. In the words of Assistant District Attorney Binger during his closing argument, You cannot hide behind self-defense if you provoked the incident. If you created the danger, you forfeit the right to self-defense by bringing that gun, aiming it at people, threatening peoples lives. The defendant provoked everything.

The effort to lionize Rittenhouse and use his not guilty verdict as a vehicle to legitimize far-right politics continues. At least three fascistic Republican CongressmenMatt Gaetz of Florida, Paul Gosar of Arizona and Madison Cawthornhave offered Rittenhouse an internship in their government offices.

Candidate JD Vance, who is seeking the Republican nomination for US Senate in Ohio, called the trial of Rittenhouse child abuse and said that the teenager saw a bunch of thugs and rioters destroying his community and no one was doing anything about it. Vance said the prosecution slandered and lied about him and treated basic manly virtue as white supremacy.

On Wednesday, QAnon supporter and January 6 coup-plotter Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia introduced a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honor of the legislative branch of the US Congress, to Kyle Rittenhouse. Although the full text of Greenes proposed legislation has yet to be drafted, an official summary states, H.R.6070 - To award a Congressional Gold Medal to Kyle H. Rittenhouse, who protected the community of Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a Black Lives Matter (BLM) riot on August 25, 2020.
The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported a record 66,884 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday. In the past two weeks, about 630,000 people in Germany have officially been infected with the coronavirus and more than 2,700 have lost their lives. With a mortality rate of 0.8 percent reported by Lothar Wieler, president of the RKI, the infections of the past two weeks mean a death sentence for more than 5,000 additional people. In the last 24 hours alone, 335 people died from COVID-19, according to the RKI.

Charite intensiv - Station 43 (Bild: DOCDAYS Production)

Like the nearly 100,000 coronavirus deaths in Germany so far, these people have been the victims of a policy carried out in the interests of the German stock market, which has reached historic highs in recent weeks in tandem with the surging infection figures. If industry, schools, offices and daycare centres are not shut down, another wave of mass death threatens to dwarf the pandemics previous course.

Cumulative reported deaths [in Europe] by spring of next year are expected to reach more than 2.2 million, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicted in a report presented Tuesday in Copenhagen. So far, 1.5 million people have already officially died from COVID-19 in Europe since the pandemic began. If current trends continue, another 700,000 deaths are imminent by March 2022, according to the WHO.

The pandemic is not under control, Gernot Marx, president of the German Association for Intensive Care and Emergency Medicine (Divi), warned in the Tagesspiegel newspaper on Monday. The situation in hospitals in Germany resembles developments a year ago, when 1,000 people were dying daily. Compared to the previous year, Marx said, there are 4,000 fewer intensive care beds available due to the nursing shortage.

According to Divi data, of the 3,675 COVID-19 patients in intensive care, one in two currently requires invasive ventilationwith a strong upward trend. In the past week alone, an additional 1,887 new COVID-19 patients were admitted to intensive care units. Experts put the likelihood of COVID-19 patients dying in an intensive care unit at between 30 and 50 percent. Their length of stay, averaging 14 days, is more than three times greater than for other ICU patients and is expected to increase.

Exactly what should always be avoided is what now threatens, concludes the Tagesspiegel: an overload of the health care system, with the introduction of triage, the selection of which patients receive life-saving treatment and which do not, giving rise to dramatic images like those in Bergamo, Italy, in the spring of 2020.

World Medical Association Chairman Frank Ulrich Montgomery had already warned last week of a deadly coronavirus winter and expressed the hope over the weekend that the waffle about freedom, which in reality is a freedom to [accept] illness and death, will not prevail. Bundestag (federal parliament) vice president Wolfgang Kubicki (Liberal Democrats, FDP) then denigrated the physician at an FDP state party conference in Schleswig-Holstein as the Saddam Hussein of the medical profession.

In fact, Wednesday marks the last day that comprehensive shutdown measures could be enacted due to the traffic light coalition of the Social Democrats (SPD), FDP and Greens ending the designation of an emergency situation. Instead of closing schools, daycare centres and workplaces, breaking the chains of infection, and rapidly vaccinating and caring for the population, federal and state governments are sticking to their profits-before-lives policies, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk.

In Bavaria, where the incidence rate per 100,000 among school children has now risen to more than 1,300, Minister President Markus Soder explicitly dismissed the closure of schools in a government statement on Tuesday. However, international studies have repeatedly shown that school closures are an indispensable part of any real pandemic response.

In the hospitals of southeastern Bavaria, intensive care bed occupancy is currently at 95 percent, despite hospitals already transferring patients to other Bavarian hospitals whenever possible. In the region, only absolute emergency care is still guaranteed and all non-urgent operations, including tumour cases, have been postponed until further notice, reports broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk. The hospitals in the Neu-Ulm district have already begun to prepare for the collapse of intensive medical care by establishing a triage team.

In Saxony, according to the president of the state medical association, intensive care units could be overwhelmed as early as the end of the week, so that even large hospitals would have to implement triage. It is likely that anyone who has to be admitted to the intensive care unit and be given artificial respiration in the state will not be able to be transferred to other hospitals because the situation in surrounding states is similar.

Wherever additional measures have been announced, they are completely inadequate.

On Friday, the Saxony state government decided on a supposed wave break lock-down, which, however, does not provide for any closure of the manufacturing sector. Instead, the governing coalition of Christian Democrats (CDU), Greens and SPD amended the Working Hours Act to allow crematoria to burn the victims of their policies on Sundays. Until December 15, the maximum daily working hours may also be exceeded for medical treatment and care and mobile vaccination teams, among others.

In Thuringia, clubs, bars and discos, as well as indoor and outdoor swimming pools, are to close from Wednesday. A night-time curfew between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. is in effect for the unvaccinated. Christmas markets will be cancelled. But schools, daycare centres and businesses will remain open without any restrictions.

Similar measures are apparently also being discussed at the federal level. Tuesday evening, outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) invited her designated successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and the other leaders of the traffic light partiesAnnalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck (both Greens) as well as Christian Lindner and Marco Buschmann (both FDP)to a crisis meeting at the Chancellors Office. According to media reports, the discussion was about further measures in the fight against pandemic.

Again, the goal is to avoid the urgent need for tough measures. Just last week, the traffic light coalition leaders in the Bundestag had decided to allow the designation of an epidemic emergency expire, thus eliminating the legal basis for nationwide school and business closures. Closing recreational facilities or curfews for the unvaccinated are not nearly enough to prevent hospitals collapsing and significantly curb the pandemic.

The same applies to the introduction of a general vaccination requirement. The governing parties have so far strictly refused to do so but are now signalling a possible change of course. Berlins mayor Michael Muller (SPD) told RBB Tuesday that he believed there would be no getting around compulsory vaccination. Only vaccination permanently ensures that we can experience everything as we want to.

In fact, it has been scientifically proven that vaccination alone is not enough to reduce infection rates and end mass deaths. To contain and eventually eliminate the virus, schools and non-essential businesses must also be closed, first and foremost, and measures such as testing, tracing and isolating all cases must be carried out systematically.

In addition, the vaccination campaign in Germany has been a disaster. The RKIs recent COVIMO report, which surveyed more than 3,000 adults about their willingness to be vaccinated, suggests that this is far higher in all age groups than the vaccination rate realized to date. But instead of ensuring that the entire population receives the desired protection, the federal and state governments have largely shut down public vaccination centres.

Federal Health Minister Jens Spahn (CDU) had recently even issued an order cap of 30 doses per doctors office for Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines, claiming that not all orders could be filled due to the short-term increase in demand. The Moderna vaccine, which is to be delivered instead, is recommended by the Standing Committee on Vaccination (STIKO), in contrast to the Pfizer shot, only for people over 30 years of age, so that the vaccination of younger people is once again in danger of being delayed.

The same indifference of the ruling class to the health and lives of the population is evident in the vaccination debacle as in all other areas of pandemic policy. Probably by the end of this winter everyone in Germany will have been vaccinated, recovered or died, Spahn declared at a press conference Monday. With that, he summed up the fascistic indifference of the ruling class to mass death.

By allowing infection numbers to explode while millions remain unvaccinated or boostered, the federal and state governments are increasing the risk of another escape variant emerging. Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), warned of this danger in a public statement in late September.

With the amount of virus currently circulating in the US, especially among unvaccinated people, our greatest concern as public health officials and scientists is that the virus will become even more transmissible and have the potential to evade our vaccines that protect us from serious illness and death. The next elusive variant, Walensky said, may be just a few mutations away.
LAUREL, Miss.  A county supervisor in southeastern Mississippi is accused of unlawfully using a government-owned car and cell phone to operate his beauty supply business.

Jones County District Five Supervisor Travares Comegys was arrested Monday after being indicted by a grand jury on embezzlement charges, State Auditor Shad White said in a news release.

Comegys also was issued a $5,719.24 demand letter from the auditor's office.

Comegys is accused of embezzling $2,794.05, according to court records. The rest of the bill represents $131.14 in interest and investigative expenses incurred by the state auditor's office totaling another $2,794.05.

Speaking with The Associated Press, Comegys' lawyer, Thomas Fortner, said Tuesday that he doesn't believe the auditor can prove his client did anything wrong.

I dont think he can back that up, he said, of White. I think he just makes allegations to get his name in the paper.

Its all about headlines from their standpoint, he continued. For us, its about protecting our clients' reputations and character.

More: 'These are lies.' Shad White and Brett Favre go back and forth over welfare fraud case

State Auditor spokesperson Logan Reeves said Tuesday that Fortner is free to make that argument in front of a judge in court.

Comegys is accused of using a county-issued vehicle and cell phone to operate his beauty supply business from July 2020 to April 2021, according to the auditors office. He allegedly used the vehicle to travel to multiple salons and barbershops outside Jones County and to the New Orleans airport.

The auditor's office investigators claim Comegys used his county-owned cell phone almost exclusively to operate his personal business.

Using taxpayer resources or property for your personal benefit is not allowed, White said in his statement. This message should be clear to every elected official in the state by now."

Fortner said it should be noted that the auditor's office is demanding twice as much money as the auditor says his client is accused of embezzling.

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Im sure the auditor is going to publicly say that every penny of the publics money thats misspent is important and I dont disagree with them," he said. "It just seems like, in the overall scheme of things, the state auditors investigators time would be better spent chasing after significant misspending than some allegation of this fairly minimal amount.

More: Confused by the Mississippi welfare embezzlement scandal? Here's a timeline of events

"But quite honestly, it doesnt really matter to me, he continued. "Were going to try this case. I dont think the auditor can prove Mr. Comegy's done anything wrong at all.

Reeves said the investigative costs  calculated using the actual time it takes state auditor's office investigators to work on a case  can exceed what they ask for in demand letters, especially for smaller amounts. The office's policy is not to charge people more in investigative expenses than they are accused of misusing.

If convicted on all counts, Comegys faces up to 10 years in prison and an additional $5,000 in fines.

The case will be prosecuted by Jones County District Attorney Anthony Buckley.

A $100,000 surety bond covers Comegyss time as a member of the Jones County Board of Supervisors. Surety bonds are similar to insurance designed to protect taxpayers from corruption. Comegys would remain liable for the full amount of the demand, in addition to criminal proceedings.

___

Leah Willingham 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.

This article originally appeared on Hattiesburg American: Jones County supervisor arrested for embezzling government funds
Squid Game

Today in Dystopia reacts to dystopia news: A North Korean man has reportedly been sentenced to death by firing squad after being accused of selling bootleg copies of Netflixs Squid Game to a handful of the countrys teenagers. As reported by Radio Free Asia, the man was caught after some of the students were discovered watching the massively successful South Korean export.

North Korea has, of course, had a long history of interactions with, fascination toward, and attempts to control the distribution of media from outside the country within its borders. Squid Games success has presumably only spurred on those efforts, due to a variety of factors including the long-standing tension between the two nations, and the fact that the series directly touches on North Koreas domestic woes by making one of its characters (Kang Sae-Byeo, played by Jung Ho-Yeon) a North Korean defector who plays the shows deadly games in an effort to raise money to smuggle her family out of the nation.

Read more

In addition to the death sentence passed on the man who reportedly smuggled the show in (on a flash drive, from China), North Korean authorities have also reportedly sentenced a number of students who viewed the series to five years or more of hard labor. Everyone involved is being punished under North Koreas new Elimination of Reactionary Thought and Culture law, passed last year, which makes it a potentially capital offense to distribute or view media from capitalist countries.

Theres a certain grim irony in having a series that is an explicit (and not especially subtle) condemnation of capitalism serve as a flashpoint for this crackdown by a communist government. But, Radio Free Asia notes, Squid Gamess focus on strict, arbitrary rules with lethal consequences for breaking them does, obviously, resonate with at least some North Korean citizens. Meanwhile, police are reportedly searching the country for more memory storage with the series stored on it, and educators in the schools where the bootleg copies were found have also been punished.

RFA notes that there have also been rumors that at least one student who watched the show was spared the punishment meted out to their peers because their parents had the money to bribe authorities, which, yeah: Thats pretty Squid Game, actually.
Should we be quitting our wine o'clock habit? (Getty Images)

Christmas is coming, and the chink of bottles is almost as loud as the tinkle of sleigh bells. Most households will be getting in a bottle or six of something decent, whether it's to drink with Christmas lunch, help the party go with a swing or simply accompany a fortnight of festive telly.

But while Britain loves wine  red or white, old or new world, we're not fussy  new research suggests that we might want to re-think when it comes to our drinking habits.

Read more: How to cut down on alcohol this Christmas, without missing out

According to a new study, just four small glasses or wine a week  or four pints of beer  increases the risk of developing dementia in later life by half, causing potential problems with 'short-term memory and spatial awareness'.

Four glasses or pints is just eight units, much less than the NHS guidelines which suggest up to 14 units a week is relatively safe. Other studies, however, have found that there is no 'safe' limit of alcohol, and advise avoiding it altogether.

Alcohol consumption  particularly in excess  is know to contribute to the development of high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer and liver disease, amongst other health issues.

Your good health! Or maybe not? (Getty Images)

Global dementia cases are predicted almost to triple by 2050, from 57.4 million to 152.8 million, a study by the University of Washington School of Medicine has found, in part due to an ageing population, but lifestyle is also considered to be a significant factor.

Dr Tony Rao, a consultant psychiatrist who led the new study at King's College London, said: "With a career of more than 20 years devoted to research on alcohol and older people, this is certainly the most groundbreaking study on the relationship between drinking and the risk of dementia.

"None of the participants had dementia at the start of the study but those who drank at risky levels were more likely to show cognitive decline, which is likely to progress to dementia.'

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Watch: Nebraska Medicine doc's tips to moderate holiday drinking

The scientists studied more than 15,000 people aged 50 and over and tracked them for two years. Their consumption of alcohol, including quantity and frequency, was assessed and they took tests to measure thinking skills.

Dementia is triggered by plaques, or clumps of protein, called amyloid beta. In a healthy brain, the cells are self-clearing, but alcohol inhibits the brain's efficiency. The plaques can destroy nerve cells and trigger memory loss and confusion. Cell inflammation, caused by toxins including alcohol, means the risk of dementia increases.

Read more: Drinking tonight? Here's how much alcohol is too much - and how to avoid holiday binging

"With alcohol use, this is wholly preventable if the people identified early with these tests cut down or become abstinent. It has the potential to improve public health." Said Dr Rosa Sancho, of Alzheimer's Research UK.

It's bad news for drinkers  but good news for our brains, when staying under eight units a week can cut the risk dramatically. Looks like a sober holiday all round...

Watch: New study suggests morning coffee or tea may lower risk of dementia
There are a lot of meta moments in Netflixs new limited series True Story.

Kevin Hart stars as a wildly successful comedian named Kid, and Wesley Snipes  whose long list of fraternal dramas include Sugar Hill and New Jack City  stars as his deadbeat older brother Carlton.

More from TVLine

Things come to a head when Kid returns to his native Philadelphia for his comedy tour and has to confront Carlton about the restaurant he launched and lost, right along with Kids investment dollars.

But Kid only has so much time to focus on Carlton. Hes going through a very public divorce, he rarely sees his only son and his blockbuster superhero movie means the studio will want a sequel and fast. To his detriment, Kid takes his team  comedy writer Billie, doting manager Todd and dedicated bodyguard Herschel  for granted. (More on that later.)

Kids only real solace is his comedy show, and luckily for him, his first hometown performance is a sold-out success. Carlton, who lies and says he didnt see Kids hit flick, takes his younger brother out on the town to celebrate with old friends from their neighborhood. These same friends are the ones who reveal Carlton not only saw the movie, but laughed at it the hardest.

True Story, Herschel the bodyguard

The friends and Carlton also convince Kid to send Herschel packing because they didnt like being chaperoned, and thats when the trouble begins. If Kid had kept Herschel around and not started drinking again, despite the unsavory influence of his brother and friends, he would not have drunkenly taken that groupie back to his hotel room.

The groupie overdoses and doesnt wake up after a night with Kid  because shes dead. Carlton springs into action, as if on cue, and quickly devises a plan to bring in a Greek gangster named Ari (Billy Zane!), who will help them dispose of the body.

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Aris services come with a fee, of course, and after he gets rid of the body, he tells Kid he wants $6 million in hush money. Making matters worse, he starts talking to Kid in a demeaning way and flippantly comments as though Kid didnt work hard for every dollar he has.

True Story, Billy Zane as Ari

Thats when Kid snaps and chokes Ari with a phone charging cord, the same cord he borrowed from a racially insensitive fan on his flight to Philly. Thats symbolic, huh?

Although Kid is smaller than Ari, hes also angrier and pulls and pulls with all his might until Ari is dead. Now theres another body to dispose of, and Carlton will have to help again.

What did you think of the premiere? Grade it in our poll, and drop your thoughts in the comments.

Best of TVLine
Self-Care Gift Guide

MASSIMO GAMMACURTA

Although the holiday season is sure to make you feel merry and bright, it also brings about just as much anxiety and stress. You'll fret about the long flight back to your hometown, endure awkward conversations about your dating life with your distant relatives, and panic over the lack of suitable options that fit your eating style at the dinner table.

All the worrying and uncomfortable experiences that lie ahead mean you'll definitely be in need of some TLC once the holidays end. And there's no better way to do that than treating yourself to one of these self-care gifts. Whether you're a sneaker head, avid cook, or homebody, this guide features a self-care gift that will make you feel your best.

G-Shock Women's G-Squad Step Tracker

You (or your giftee) gets throwback cool and step counter too with these fun new G-Shock styles. The watches are Bluetooth enabled so steps sync to a smartphone and timed laps can be tracked.

Self-Care Gift Guide

Puma Fierce 2 Training Shoe

Who hasn't come to appreciate the beauty of a stylish slip-on? Puma's Fierce 2 trainers pair equally well with street wear and spandex for when streaming a quick-strength workout beckons. This self-care gift is a buoyant pick for anyone navigating the new work-life balance.

Self-Care Gift Guide

The Latin American Cookbook

True to its all-encompassing title, The Latin American Cookbook delivers over 600 recipes from an atlas of places (20 countries, including Argentina, Guyana, Suriname, and Venezuela) and influences. This self-care gift will let them dive into empanadas one night and Nicaraguan squash stew the next, and travel the world from their kitchen.

The Latin American Cookbook

Anecdote Candles Apres Ski Candle

Anecdote Candles perfectly capture a mood for a hip hostess gift. This Apres Ski variety is described as evergreens and afterparties;

it smells like cinnamon, spearmint, and cypress. The fragrance oils have a powerful throw, and the coconut-soy wax blend burns cleanly for about 70 hours. (While you're at it, add these scented candles to your collection.)

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Self-Care Gift Guide

Teva ReEmber Moc Fleece

Made almost exclusively from 100 percent recycled materials, Teva ReEmber Fleece slippers are like hygge in motion. Kick back in the quilted slip-ons in front of a fire or get around town in comfort thanks to the recycled-rubber outsole. (They also make for the perfect house shoe.)

Teva ReEmber Fleece slippers

Specialized Mode Helmet

Anyone who rediscovered the love of riding or jumped on the e-bike trend is going to dig Specialized's sleek Mode helmet. The subtle above-the-brim vent in this self-care gift brings wind-in-hair cooling to this slick topper that supplies the highest level of protection.

Self-Care Gift Guide

Rothy's Belt Bag

Crafted from marine plastic, Rothy's The Belt Bag is a win for any occasion. This minimalist chameleon can pose as a cross-body bag, a fanny pack, an evening clutch, or a mini shoulder bag. Your traveler pal will love the self-care gift's versatility and the fact that they can toss it in the wash for a post-trip refresh.

Rothys The Belt Bag

Mochidoki Holiday Gift Box

Consider this self-care gift the upscale version of ice cream truck glee: Send a friend a mochi ice cream sampler from Mochidoki in New York. The myriad inventive twists on this Japanese treat  a sweet rice dough encapsulating a bite-size scoop of ice cream include milk and cereal, black sesame, and vegan matcha coconut.

Mochidoki

Aveda Botanical Repair Collection

A collaboration between eco-friendly hair brand Aveda and fashion designer 3.1 Phillip Lim brings these botanical accessories to life. The wooden paddle brush, hair towel wrap, comb, and scrunchies included in the self-care gift come paired with either hair or skin products and will bring a smile as they suds and then style.

Aveda Phillip Lim

Saje Aroma (Be) Free

The Saje Aroma (Be) Free Cordless & Rechargeable Diffuser looks more like a jewel than a wellness tool. The chic, rechargeable device sends a cool mist to fill

a room with uplifting blends  like the holiday exclusive, Joyful Blooms, a mix of tangerine, jasmine, and magnolia. (Follow this guide to put that diffuser to use safely.)

Self-Care Gift Guide

Apothekary Chill the F Out

These are gold for smoothie bowl fans: Apothekary's range of herbal blends get straight to the point, whether you're gifting stress relief (Chill the F Out) or glowing skin (Better Than Botox). With 39 options, there's one of these self-care gifts for everyone on your list.

Self-Care Gift Guide

Cavi-air Tasting Pack

Indulge your favorite epicure with high-qualityand reasonably pricedcaviar delivered to the door from the smart, chic, all-women company CaviAir. Choose from a tasting pack or a single type, plus add-ons like spoons, bubbly, and more. Fun, festive, and healthy!

CaviAir

Fit To Succeed Barbell Necklace

This delicate rose-gold and pave diamond Fit to Succeed Barbell necklace from designer and philanthropist Joan Hornig will charm on sight while its message of empowerment hits deep. Plus, all profits from this self-care gift go to a charity of your choice to further the feel-good cheer.

Fit to Succeed Barbell necklace Joan Hornig

Shape Beauty Lab Box

Wish granted: We restocked our exclusive Shape Beauty Lab Box for the holidays, a stash of 18 of our editors' most-loved beauty productsserums, scrubs, creams, cleansers, balms, powders, and more. Even better, we packed the $435 splurge into a gifting-friendly $45.

shape-beauty-lab-box

Oktett Barware

Even your cheers gear can be feeling more festive! Bodum Oktett barware, an exclusive reissue from the MoMA Design Store, retains all the class of glass vessels with the practicality of chunky, funky recycled-plastic stems.

Self-Care Gift Guide

S'well Reusable Salad Bowl Kit

No brown-bagging it for the plant-based devotee in your life. This compact S'well Salad Bowl kit contains their Caesars, Nicoises, and other creations with a leakproof lid and holds within a removable utensil tray and dressing container so all can be freshly tossed at lunchtime.
Evidence cones mark shell casings at a fatal drive-by shooting scene on Norworth Road in the Blacklick area on Columbus' Far East Side. A male victim died less than an hour after the shooting at Mount Carmel East Hospital. His death was the 178th homicide in the city in 2021 and the third fatal shooting this week.

A 39-year-old man was killed in Columbus on Friday afternoon, the city's second fatal shooting within 48 hours that bookended the Thanksgiving holiday.

After being shot around 12:30 p.m. in the 700 block of Reinhard Avenue on the South Side, Christopher Miller was rushed in critical condition to OhioHealth Grant Medical Center, where he died at 1:15 p.m.

Miller was in a parked vehicle on Reinhard Avenue when he became involved in a confrontation with another man, who then shot Miller and fled the area, according to Columbus police, who said it's unclear what prompted the altercation.

Columbus has now had 179 homicides this year, making 2021 the deadliest year on record with five weeks remaining. Miller's death also marks the fourth homicide this week, the same week in which Columbus surpassed the total number of homicides in all of 2020.

Columbus' 179th homicide occurs less than 2 days after the 178th

Less than 48 hours before Miller was killed, a 17-year-old was killed in a drive-by shooting late Wednesday afternoon in the Blacklick area on the Far East Side.

Jakwan Lee Radford was shot around 5 p.m. on the 7000 block of Norworth Road between Altoona Drive and Slaybaugh Drive/Chapel Stone Road, Columbus police said. The shooting occurred in the Dorchester residential subdivision located west of North Waggoner Road and north of East Broad Street.

Homicide map: Here's an updated map of where homicides have occurred in Columbus over the last five years

Sgt. David Shimberg, the Homicide Unit supervisor at the scene, told The Dispatch that multiple shots were fired from a vehicle at the victim before the suspect vehicle drove off.

Jefferson Township fire medics transported Radford in critical condition to Mount Carmel East Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 5:55 p.m.

Radford's death was the city's 178th homicide of 2021, surpassing a record for homicides in Columbus for the second year in a row.

As of Friday evening, police had not yet officially released a description of the suspect vehicle involved in the shooting. On Wednesday night, detectives could be see canvassing the neighborhood, asking residents with Ring doorbells and security cameras if they had any footage of a vehicle speeding through the area at the time of the shooting.

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The fatal drive-by shooting came hours after Columbus police announced that an Akron woman turned herself in after police on Tuesday issued a warrant for her arrest in the shooting death of her reported boyfriend in Columbus earlier in the week.

For subscribers: For second consecutive year, Columbus sets new record for homicides

Samantha Jo Stevens, 21, has been charged with murder and is being held at the Franklin County jail awaiting her first court appearance on Friday morning in Franklin County Municipal Court, records show.

Columbus homicide detectives accuse Stevens of fatally shooting Eric T. Washington Jr., 23, after the couple had been arguing Monday afternoon outside of an apartment complex on the city's West Side.

Recent homicide arrest: Near East Side man jailed for shooting into apartment charged in separate August homicide

Police were dispatched around 3:50 p.m. Monday to a reported shooting in the 3500 block of Fremont Street, east of South Wilson Road. Officers found Washington on the kitchen floor inside an apartment with a gunshot wound to his neck, according to an arrest affidavit.

Washington, of the Southeast Side, was rushed to OhioHealth Doctors Hospital in critical condition, where he died before 5 p.m. Washington's death was the 176th homicide of the year, which surpassed last year's record year for homicides when 175 people were killed.

Washington's death was one of two homicides to occur Monday, ending a two-week lull since the city's previous homicide  a brazen, assassination-style shooting of a man Nov. 8 outside the main entrance to a Target store near Easton Town Center.

Violence in Columbus: As record homicides continue, Ginther announces plans to allocate $660 million on public safety

Six hours after Washington was shot on Monday, 34-year-old Derrick Samuels Jr., of Milo-Grogan, was fatally shot around 9:30 p.m. on the 4300 block of Malin Drive on the city's Northeast Side. No arrests have been reported in Samuels' death, the 177th homicide this year.

Stevens was identified as the suspect in Washington's death after a witness told detectives that he'd seen her drop him off at the apartment before the two began arguing outside, the affidavit states. That witness also said he heard a gunshot, followed by Washington bursting into the apartment to say the woman had shot him.

Read more: Report claims 17 gangs with about 480 members behind nearly half of Columbus 2020 homicides

Multiple witnesses told detectives they saw a gray Jeep Cherokee flee the scene, which detectives later determined matched a vehicle registered to Stevens, according to the affidavit.

Anyone with information regarding any of these homicides is asked to call the Columbus Police Homicide Unit at (614) 645-4730 or Central Ohio Crime Stoppers at (614) 461-TIPS (8477).

Reporter Monroe Trombly contributed to this report.

Eric Lagatta is a reporter at the Columbus Dispatch covering public safety, breaking news and social justice issues. Reach him at elagatta@dispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @EricLagatta

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Fatal South Side shooting is fourth homicide this week in Columbus
Republicans are locking in newly gerrymandered maps for the legislatures in four battleground states that are set to secure the partys control in the statehouse chambers over the next decade, fortifying the GOP against even the most sweeping potential Democratic wave elections.

In Texas, North Carolina, Ohio and Georgia, Republican state lawmakers have either created supermajorities capable of overriding a governors veto or whittled down competitive districts so significantly that Republicans advantage is virtually impenetrable  leaving voters in narrowly divided states powerless to change the leadership of their legislatures.

Although much of the attention on this years redistricting process has focused on gerrymandered congressional maps, the new maps being drafted in state legislatures have been just as distorted.

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And statehouses have taken on towering importance: With the federal government gridlocked, these legislatures now serve as the countrys policy laboratory, crafting bills on abortion, guns, voting restrictions and other issues that shape the national political debate.

This is not your Founding Fathers gerrymander, said Chris Lamar, a senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center who focuses on redistricting. This is something more intense and durable and permanent.

This redistricting cycle, the first one in a decade, builds on a political trend that accelerated in 2011, when Republicans in swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan drew highly gerrymandered state legislative maps.

Since those maps were enacted, Republicans have held both houses of state government in all three places for the entire decade. They never lost control of a single chamber, even as Democrats won some of the states races for president, governor and Senate.

All three of those Northern states are likely to see some shift back toward parity this year, with a new independent commission drawing Michigans maps, a state legislative commission drawing maps in Pennsylvania, and a Democratic governor in Wisconsin likely to force the process to be completed by the courts.

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Gerrymandering is a tool used by both parties in swing states as well as less competitive ones. Democrats in deep-blue states like Illinois are moving to increase their advantage in legislatures, and Republicans in deep-red states like Utah and Idaho are doing the same.

But in politically contested states where Republicans hold full control, legislators are carefully crafting a GOP future. They are armed with sharper technology, weakened federal voting statutes and the knowledge that legal challenges to their maps may not be resolved in time for the next elections.

Texas, North Carolina and Ohio have signed into law new maps with a significant Republican advantage. Georgia is moving quickly to join them.

Republicans say that the growth of such heavily skewed legislatures is both the result of the partys electoral victories and of where voters choose to live.

State legislative districts are by nature much smaller in population than congressional districts, meaning they are often more geographically compact.

As Democratic voters have crowded into cities and commuter suburbs, and voters in rural and exurban areas have grown increasingly Republican, GOP mapmakers say that they risk running afoul of other redistricting criteria if they split up those densely populated Democratic areas across multiple state legislative districts.

What you see is reflective of the more even distribution of Republican and right-leaning voters across wider geographic areas, said Adam Kincaid, director of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. Trying to draw more competitive legislative districts, he said, would result in just a lot of squiggly lines.

He pointed to maps in Wisconsin that were proposed by a commission created by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. Under those designs, Republicans would still have a majority in both state legislative chambers (though with significantly smaller margins).

Theyre limited by geography, Kincaid said. Theres only so many things you can do to spread that many voters across a wide area.

Democrats note that Republicans are still cracking apart liberal communities  especially in suburbs near Akron and Cleveland in Ohio and in predominantly Black counties in northern and central North Carolina  in a way that helps the GOP and cuts against a geographical argument.

They are carving up Democratic voters where they cant pack them, said Garrett Arwa, director of campaigns at the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. He argued that Democratic map proposals all put forth better and more fair maps that I would say are far from a Rorschach test.

Democrats have fewer opportunities to unilaterally draw state legislative maps, particularly in battleground states. Of the 14 states where the margin of the 2020 presidential race was fewer than 10 percentage points, Democrats are able to draw state legislative maps in just one: Nevada. Republicans control the redistricting process in six of those 14 states. (The rest have divided governments, or their maps are drawn by commissions.)

But when Democrats have had an opening, they have also enacted significant gerrymanders at the state legislative level. In Nevada, Democrats are close to finalizing a map that would give them supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, despite President Joe Biden winning just 51% of the states vote last year.

The same holds true in deeply blue states. In Illinois, newly drawn state Senate maps would give Republicans roughly 23% of seats in the chamber, even though former President Donald Trump won more than 40% of voters in the state in 2020.

Republicans have taken two approaches to ensure durable majorities in state legislatures. The tactics in Texas and Georgia are more subtle, while Republicans in Ohio and North Carolina have taken more brazen steps.

In Texas and Georgia, the party has largely eliminated competitive districts and made both Republican and Democratic seats safer, a move that tends to ward off criticism from at least some incumbents in the minority party.

Out of the 150 seats in the Texas House, only six of them are within 7 points or closer, said Sam Wang, director of the Princeton Redistricting Project. Republicans now hold a 20-seat advantage in the chamber, 85-65, and the new maps will give the party roughly two more seats. So while the GOP lawmakers did not try to draw an aggressive supermajority, what they really did a good job of there is getting rid of competition and getting a reasonably safe majority for themselves, Wang said.

Democrats in the Texas Legislature argue that the new maps are yet another reason that the partys leaders in Washington must redouble their efforts to pass federal voting rights protections.

As long as Democrats sit in this manana moment and do nothing on federal voting rights legislation, theres nothing to stop Republicans from getting whatever they want, said Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democratic state representative from San Antonio.

Republicans in the Texas Legislature, however, say that the states maps are a fair representation of voters and that if any districts are unfair, it is largely the result of incumbents on both sides protecting themselves.

Incumbents generally get to draw their own maps, so thats how its done  its each member being able to draw it for their reelection, said Briscoe Cain, a Republican state representative from the Houston area. Its a big state. Weve got many regions and cultures. I believe the Texas House reflects those distinctions.

In Georgia, where redistricting is ongoing, early maps follow a trend line similar to that of Texas as Republicans try to eliminate competitive districts.

With the current gerrymandered maps in place, Democrats in the state Legislature would have needed to win more than 55.7% of the vote to flip the Georgia House in 2020, according to the Princeton Gerrymandering Project.

The new maps proposed in Georgia maintain that 55% threshold, according to Princeton.

In Ohio and North Carolina, however, Republicans are taking a forceful tack. By keeping some districts moderately competitive, they are taking more risks in an attempt to create significant majorities or supermajorities  and in doing so, they are often flouting laws or court decisions.

In Ohio, after Republicans drew themselves supermajorities in both the state House and Senate in 2011, voters approved a ballot initiative creating a bipartisan commission to draw the maps and dictating that no district plan should be drawn to favor or disfavor a political party.

But this year, Ohio Republicans ignored the commission, creating a House map that favors roughly 67% of GOP seats and a Senate map that gives Republicans an advantage in roughly 69% of districts, preserving supermajorities.

The suggestion we hear from Republicans in Ohio is that the Republicans hold the statewide offices, so that means that, Oh, we prefer Republicans,  said Emilia Strong Sykes, the Democratic minority leader in the state House. And sure, maybe that is the case. But it is not in a 3-to-1 fashion that they have concocted in their minds and in their maps.

In North Carolina, Republicans in the Legislature were forced by courts to redraw their maps twice in the past decade for obvious partisan gerrymandering. But with the opportunity to draw fresh maps, Republicans reverted to their old strategies, proposing maps that would give the party a 64-56 edge in the state House and a 32-18 advantage in the state Senate if the statewide vote were split 50-50, according to PlanScore.org, a nonpartisan site.

Both the Ohio and North Carolina legislative maps were met with immediate lawsuits, and North Carolina legislators were sued even before the maps were finalized. But the legal process for redistricting can take years, meaning that extremely gerrymandered maps can remain in place for multiple election cycles while challenges trudge along in the courts.

Republicans are willing to be a bit more aggressive in a state like Ohio and in North Carolina, said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. Theyre daring the courts to strike them down.

Correction: A New York Times News Service article about Republican gerrymandering in four battleground states referred incorrectly to the status of Pennsylvanias new maps for its legislature. A state legislative commission is designing them and they will then become official; it is not the case that the states Democratic governor is likely to force the process to be completed by the courts.

 2021 The New York Times Company
PLYMOUTH  One of the options being considered by the company that is decommissioning the closed Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is to release around one million gallons of potentially radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay.

The option had been discussed briefly with state regulatory officials as one possible way to get rid of water from the spent fuel pool, the reactor vessel and other components of the facility, Holtec International spokesman Patrick O'Brien said in an interview Wednesday. It was highlighted in a report by state Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Regional Director Seth Pickering at Monday's meeting of the Nuclear Decommissioning Citizens Advisory Panel in Plymouth.

"We had broached that with the state, but we've made no decision on that," O'Brien said.

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth, which was permanently closed in 2019 and is undergoing decommissioning.

As of mid-December, Holtec will complete the process of moving all the spent fuel rods into casks that are being stored on a concrete pad on the Pilgrim plant site in Plymouth. After that, O'Brien told the panel, the removal and disposal of other components in those areas of the facility will take place and be completed sometime in February.

O'Brien said the remaining water used to cool the fuel rods in the pool and inside the reactor will be dealt with  the process to decide on a disposal method will get underway within the next six months to a year. Two other possible options discussed at Monday's meeting are trucking the water off-site to an approved facility, as Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant did in shipping its contaminated water to a site in Idaho or to evaporate it, a process that has already been employed in some areas of the Plymouth plant.

Before they decide on any options, O'Brien said they would do an analysis to determine what contaminants the water contains. Likely, it will be metals and radioactive materials, he said.

Decommissioning process: Main emissions stack at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station set to come down

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Radioactive water inspected before it is released

Pickering pointed out that any water discharged under the federal Clean Water Act discharge permit overseen by the federal Environmental Protection Agency would have to be part of an approved plan reviewed by the EPA, the DEP and the state Department of Public Health.

"Mass DEP, and the U.S. EPA have made the company aware that any discharge of pollutants regulated under the Clean Water Act, (and) contained within spent fuel cooling water, into the ocean through Cape Cod Bay is not authorized under the NPDES (National Pollution Discharge Elimination System) permit," Pickering said. But he went on to say that radioactivity is not listed under the NPDES as a pollutant and is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Pine duBois, vice chair of the citizens decommissioning panel, cited a memorandum of understanding signed by Holtec that governed the decommissioning of Pilgrim  negotiated by the state Attorney General's office  that stated discharge of pollutants into Cape Cod Bay is not permitted.

"It's not permitted by the EPA, but that doesn't mean it can't happen if the NRC allows it," duBois said.

O'Brien noted that it was a fairly common practice in the nuclear industry, known as "overboarding," to release water, including radioactive water, into the ocean from power plants. He said it happened recently during the decommissioning of New Jersey's Oyster Creek facility, which is also being done by Holtec.

Opposition to plan comes from Cape Cod resident and officials

But state Sen. Susan Moran, D-Falmouth, said she is opposed to any release of radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay as part of the decommissioning process. She called for Holtec to release plans on how they will handle all waste materials at the plant.

The Nov. 7 accidental release of over 7,200 gallons of water into Cape Cod Bay  when contractors, seeking to drain a flooded electrical vault to do repair work following the October nor'easter, pumped water into a storm drain that emptied into the sea  did not inspire confidence in the execution of protocols, plant watchdogs say. That discharge was believed to be non-radioactive water.

"Although the recently reported violation of the station national pollutant discharge elimination system has been described as isolated, it brings to light that there are not sufficient safeguards and procedures in place to prevent discharges of contaminated water into the Cape Cod Bay. The potential for pollutants and dangerous materials being discharged in our water resources is alarming," Moran said in an email Wednesday. "Further, it is imperative that the federal agencies stop kicking the can down the road and determine long term solutions for the removal of these materials safely and expeditiously."

Diane Turco, of Harwich, the director of Cape Downwinders, a citizen group that was at the forefront of the effort to close Pilgrim, called any option that included sending radioactive water into the bay "outrageous" and "criminal." Turco said she has no confidence in the decommissioning process.

"The process has been to allow radioactivity into the environment," she said. "The answer should be no you can't do that."

Richard Delaney, the president of the Center for Coastal Studies, agreed.

"My immediate reaction to putting radioactivity into the ocean, into that part of Cape Cod Bay is that it would be nature-negative," he said. "We have been monitoring water quality in Cape Cod Bay for 20 years and there's already enough pollutants going into the bay. To put radioactive waste on top of that  it shouldn't be an option."

Delaney said he wondered if it was included as an option to be analyzed, but one that in the end wouldn't seriously be considered. DuBois agreed.

"I have a hard time thinking the NRC overrules (the EPA)," duBois said, adding that Holtec will be careful about damaging the environment.

"I think Holtec wants to do this right because they want to be a giant of the (decommissioning) industry. If they mess up Pilgrim, their reputation is dead," duBois said.

Turco called on the public to start paying more attention to the decommissioning process and attend citizens advisory board meetings in person and remotely. But O'Brien and duBois said the public comment period pretty much passed with the issuance of the NPDES permit.

"I don't think there's a requirement for public comment," duBois said.

Contact Doug Fraser at dfraser@capecodonline.com. Follow him on Twitter: @dougfrasercct.

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Pilgrim nuclear plant may release radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay
Rachel Flores

Following record resignation rates in September, retail employees are continuing to put in their two weeks ahead of the holidays.

Workers told Insider they're leaving due to low pay, poor working conditions, lack of scheduling flexibility, and pandemic burnout.

"Many of my friends are just tired of it, they don't want to deal with the chaos," one employee said of quitting before the holidays.

As the Great Resignation roils the retail industry, some employees are strategically looking to call it quits ahead of the busy holiday shopping season.

Retail workers who have recently left their jobs, or are otherwise seriously considering it, told Insider they are opting to quit for a variety of reasons, including what they describe as low pay, poor working conditions, lack of scheduling flexibility, and coronavirus pandemic-driven burnout. The departures come after a record number of more than 685,000 retail employees quit in September, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Adding to the inherent stressors for employees navigating a flood of shoppers during the hectic holiday season, many Americans are still refusing to get vaccinated for COVID-19 and eschewing mask mandates, leaving frontline retail workers exposed to the contagious Delta variant.

"Many of my friends are just tired of it, this is the first holiday after COVID lockdowns and with anti-vax and anti-mask customers wanting to shop during the holidays, they don't want to deal with the chaos," a Midwestern warehouse employee told Insider.

The employee, like the others who spoke to Insider for this story, did so on the condition of anonymity citing fear of retribution from current employers or risk to future opportunities. Their identities, as well as their work statuses, have been confirmed.

The pre-holiday resignations also come amid a period of unrest that has prompted a wave of protests at companies ranging from John Deere to Kellogg's during "Striketober" and that have continued into November, including a forthcoming Black Friday strike planned among Amazon workers in more than 20 countries.

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"The pandemic has exposed how Amazon places profits ahead of workers, society, and our planet," Make Amazon Pay wrote in a list of demands shared on its website. "Amazon takes too much and gives back too little. It is time to Make Amazon Pay."

'I would rather place my efforts elsewhere'

For one California-based worker, her recent departure from a gig as a mall concierge marks the second time in the past year that she's left a retail job ahead of the holidays, after she first left her role as a sales lead at Ann Taylor Loft in November 2020.

While she told Insider the mall concierge job had been an improvement  the primary reason she's leaving has to do with a lengthy commute caused by a recent move  she experienced similar struggles to her time at Ann Taylor, including low pay and scheduling difficulties. California's minimum wage is $14 per hour for employers with 26 or more employees.

"My manager's pretty politically aware of everything going and she agreed that they're not paying enough, but it's really not in her control," she told Insider. "There's really not anything she can do about it, but she understands that it's difficult to find people with the very small amount that they're paying."

Rigidity around holiday scheduling  including the common retail industry practice of enforcing "black out periods" where staffers are prohibited from taking time off during the holiday shopping season  has also prompted many already fed-up workers to resign.

Among them is a sales associate at a Vans store in Seattle, who told Insider she recently put in her two weeks notice after butting heads with management when she asked to take time off in January to visit her long-distance boyfriend, despite her request coming after the store's designated December black out period.

The employee said the incident piled on to her existing frustration and burnout, stemming from a recent period of over-scheduling. Though she was hired as a part-time employee for up to 25 hours a week, she said lately she has been asked to work upwards of 45 hours a week.

"If [management] cannot recognize how hard we are working for a store that is severely understaffed, then I would rather place my efforts elsewhere," she told Insider.

Representatives for Ann Taylor and Vans did not immediately respond to Insider's request to comment.

John Deere workers on strike on October 15, 2021 in Davenport, Iowa. Scott Olson/Getty Images

And while companies are hoping to retain workers and attract new talent using tactics like signing bonuses or increased salaries, some workers said its simply not enough.

According to recent report fron Appcast, a programmatic job advertising software company, the only sector experiencing a boost in applications tied to offer signing bonuses is warehousing and logistics. "The issue may be that when job ads mentioned signing bonus, it was likely to be the only benefit included in the ads," Appcast wrote.

The Midwestern warehouse worker told Insider that though he plans to stay in his job through the end of December to collect higher holiday pay, his aim is to quit before the start of the new year.

"I'm going to wait till I get holiday pay, but I'm definitely quitting before New Years," he said. "Nobody likes to work during the winter time, and I won't risk myself like last year just trying to get to work on snowy days. I'm in Illinois, so when it snows some country roads are the last ones to get plowed."

Ultimately, the former mall concierge employee said that she hopes the mass departure of retail workers will make a statement that has a lasting impact for improving the working conditions of retail workers.

"I just really hope something comes of this," she said. " We've never had more opportunity to change working culture, and I really hope that we don't waste it."

Read the original article on Business Insider
The mid-morning incident took place at a branch of Equity Bank.

Police said at the end of the five-hour siege that officers were interrogating some customers and staff who had been evacuated to establish what happened.

More than 20 people including, the bank staff, were being held at the police station.

Authorities believe a suspect may be among those being held.
Nov. 24If you or someone you know needs resources or support related to sexual violence, contact the Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault's 24/7 hotline at 800-871-7741.

A senior enlisted member of the Maine Army National Guard is still at work on base nearly four months after federal investigators concluded that he sexually assaulted a female colleague earlier in his career.

Meanwhile, another female soldier filed a complaint on Aug. 8 accusing Sgt. Maj. Joshua Willett of touching her without her consent at the guard's Augusta headquarters, according to internal guard documents obtained by the Bangor Daily News. That complaint was filed less than a month after the National Guard Bureau's Office of Complex Investigations substantiated the sexual assault allegation from 2011, documents show. The female soldier in that case came forward about the assault in 2020.

The timeline raises questions about why the guard allowed the subject of a substantiated sexual assault allegation to keep working around other soldiers  and continued to do so after a second woman complained about his behavior. It also reflects the military's larger failure to take swift action against perpetrators of sexual misconduct, experts said.

Willett's employment status and the second complaint add new details to a case that was featured in last week's three-part BDN investigation, in which current and former members of the Maine Army National Guard described a broken culture that fails to hold perpetrators accountable for sexual assault and harassment.

It is still unclear what actions the guard is taking against Willett as a result of the July 28 finding of sexual assault, which the BDN reported last week. The status of the most recent investigation is also unclear. Maj. Carl Lamb, a spokesperson for the guard, declined to comment on Willett or acknowledge the existence of investigations into his behavior, citing state and federal privacy laws.

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The guard does not have the ability to suspend active duty soldiers, Lamb said. However, commanders "can and frequently do alter an active service member's appointed place of duty and duty responsibilities as needed during a disciplinary or separation process, in order to ensure the safety and comfort of all parties involved," he said.

Willett has not been charged with a crime. For the National Guard Bureau to substantiate an allegation of assault, investigators must determine that something was "more likely than not" to have happened, while in the civilian system, the standard is higher and must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt."

Less than two weeks after the sexual assault finding, Willet walked up behind a female soldier and started rubbing her shoulders while she was discussing drill weekend duties, according to a sworn statement she made to an internal investigator later that month. The statement identifies Willett by name. The assault took place near Willett's desk at Camp Chamberlain, the guard's headquarters in Augusta, the statement said.

The female soldier declined to comment for this story but said in her statement she was "shocked speechless," because the incident happened when she was speaking to another soldier while a commander was nearby in her office.

That was the first time she had seen Willett since 2013, according to sworn statements she made during a second interview with the investigator in September. Back then, his behavior routinely made her feel uncomfortable and unsafe, she said.

She transferred jobs in 2013 and hadn't interacted with him again until she saw him in August.

"Which is why I was so shocked and upset when the first thing he did upon seeing me was to rub my shoulders," she told the investigator.

Willett answered his work phone at the Maine Army National Guard in Augusta on Monday, but hung up when a reporter identified herself. He did not respond to a subsequent voicemail or text messages seeking comment.

Experts said Willett's presence at the guard after investigators substantiated a sexual assault allegation against him is a problem.

"There is no excuse for keeping a known sexual predator in his position," said Dwight Stirling, a reserve judge advocate general in the California National Guard and CEO of the Center for Law and Military Policy, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthening legal protections for service members.

"Everyone is entitled to the benefit of the doubt in the wake of an allegation. But that changes after the matter has been investigated and substantiated," Stirling said.

Willett's case is representative of a larger failure across the military to act quickly against perpetrators of sexual misconduct, said Don Christensen, a former Air Force prosecutor and president of Protect Our Defenders, a nonprofit group dedicated to ending sexual violence in the military.

"If this happened at Walmart, this guy would just be fired," Christensen said.

In the military, the process for discharging a soldier is more complicated than firing someone from their civilian job, he said. And unlike police departments, for example, national guards do not have a way to suspend a soldier or put him on leave while officials move to take action, Christensen said.

But leadership can move the process along if it decides to, Christensen said.

"When they make it a priority, things move faster," Christensen said. "When they don't, things languish."

Do you have a story to share? Contact the reporters at mainefocus@bangordailynews.com.
Tori Spelling

Tori Spelling/Instagram

Tori Spelling is feeling grateful for the ones she loves this holiday season.

The Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, 48, spent Thanksgiving on Thursday with her two daughters Stella Doreen, 13, Hattie Margaret, 10, as the three made dinner and watched a holiday rom-com.

"Happy Thanksgiving ," she wrote on Instagram. "Three empowered females cooking, cheering, and chatting."

She added, "Making sweet potato casserole, drinking cranberry mimosas {mine with champagne and theirs sparkling apple juice}, and watching a holiday rom-com on [Stella's] laptop."

Tori Spelling

Tori Spelling/Instagram

RELATED: Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott Are 'Living Separate Lives' amid Marital Woes: Sources

Spelling said that she was "grateful" for her family as she shared her well wishes with her fans.

"Stay safe and love hard on the ones you love. xoxo," she wrote, adding hashtags #mygirls and #diyfamily.

On Wednesday, she shared a celebratory Instagram video after she found "one bakery in town that still has a fresh monkey bread left." She showed off her clean kitchen as well. "With a big family, the kitchen sparkling clean is half of the battle!" she wrote, tagging and thanking her daughter Stella.

"Let the #thanksgiving cooking begin," she wrote.

Spelling also shares sons Liam Aaron, 14, Finn Davey, 9, and Beau Dean, 4, with husband Dean McDermott, whom a source told PEOPLE is living separately from her.

RELATED VIDEO: Tori Spelling Shares Family Holiday Card Without Husband Dean McDermott

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"It's been very chilly between them for a long time. They have been through the wringer before, but they've always gotten out of it," the source said of the stars, who previously weathered relationship struggles in the public eye when he admitted to cheating on her in 2014. (Following the affair, the couple documented their life together on their reality series True Tori.)

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"Tori still has major trust issues. Part of their relationship was never fully repaired after he was unfaithful," the source added. "They've been living separate lives. They will still have family meals and occasional outings, but it's for the kids."

Earlier this week, the actress posted a picture of her holiday card featuring her five children but McDermott was not featured in the photo.

In the comments section of her post, Spelling said McDermott was missing from the photo because he was "filming his new feature film in Canada" when it was taken.

RELATED: Tori Spelling and Son Liam, 14, Wear Matching Balenciaga Sweaters in Sweet Photo: 'Love You'

McDermott's absence from the family snapshot comes a few months after Spelling hinted that she and her husband  whom she married in 2006  were experiencing some marriage trouble.

Last month, the actress chatted with PEOPLE about navigating life with five kids, sharing it "takes a village" to balance life as a working mom.

"A lot of times, I find myself trying to do everything myself," she admitted. "I'm still a work in progress."

However, the star said she has a "great friend group that I definitely can call and be like, 'Hey, can you help me? I need support.' And I think that's always important, too."

"It's really hard for me because I definitely grew up in a family where we had a lot of support around. I grew up with a nanny full-time, so I was always that girl that was like, 'When I have kids, I'm going to do it all myself,' " she said. "So I still do it all, but I'm still working on that. It's okay to ask for help."
Thousands of Sudanese have taken to the streets in the capital of Khartoum to renew their demand for a civilian government
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The Yuma County Juvenile Justice Center celebrated National Adoption Day in a big way. Judges Stephen J. Rouff and R. Erin Farrar presided over 17 adoption hearings which took place every 15 minutes from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. Nov. 20. Its one of the happier things a judge does, said Rouff. He noted that the average time a child waits is around 402 days because it takes time for parental rights to be severed. While adoptions take place throughout the year, plenty of families wait to partake in the national celebration. The courtrooms were emotional as plenty of people came to celebrate with the families. Organizations such as the Arizona Childrens Association, EasterSeals Blake Foundation, Arms of Love Foster Care and CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates) provided information on resources for foster care and adoption. Unfortunately, theres a lot of children that need good parents, said Rouff. More than 1,666 children are waiting to be adopted. In light of this, Sandy Garrison from CASA expressed that the celebration is the happiness at the end of the rainbow as finding homes for children is the goal that the system works toward. With costumed characters, facepainting, a visit from the fire department and more, the celebration was palpably joyous.

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The Hungarian Armed Forces has assigned more soldiers to help out staff at Hungarys designated coronavirus vaccination points during this weeks national vaccination campaign, the defence ministry said.

Another 480 soldiers have been assigned to hospitals and health-care institutions in addition to the 300 who have been assisting the Covid response efforts, the ministry said in a statement.



This means there are now some 800 soldiers supporting the health-care system at 79 locations, it said.



The soldiers assigned to the hospitals help out with logistical tasks, temperature screenings, directing patients to the right place as well as with administrative and transportation tasks.



Hungary Registers 6,518 New Coronavirus Infections, 171 Deaths

Altogether 171 patients died of a Covid-related illness during the past 24 hours, while 6,518 new coronavirus infections were registered, koronavirus.gov.hu said on Tuesday. So far 6,043,116 people have received a first jab, while 5,801,593 have been fully vaccinated.



Fully 1,939,582 Hungarians have received a booster jab. The number of active infections stands at 147,558, while hospitals are treating 6,830 Covid-19 patients, 663 of whom need respiratory assistance.



Since the first outbreak, 1,032,215 infections have been registered, while the number of fatalities has risen to 33,343. Fully 851,314 people have made a recovery. There are 49,737 people in official quarantine, while the number of tests taken stands at 8,157,875.



Gulyas: Hungary Has Enough Covid Vaccine Doses



Hungary has a sufficient amount of coronavirus vaccines, Gergely Gulyas, the prime ministers chief of staff, told parliaments justice affairs committee. In his yearly briefing to the committee, the minister said that a total 10 million vaccine doses were available, adding that the government was working to increase the number of people inoculated with a booster jab to 4-5 million.



Even if everybody asked for Pfizer as the third jab, wed have enough to go round, he added. The minister said the range of services restricted to holders of vaccination certificates would be defined depending on how the Covid situation panned out.



Meanwhile, Gulyas said that the pandemic was putting a great strain on public administration. In the spring, staff had to coordinate administration of 200,000 jabs on certain days, while they also had to manage over 200,000 job protection subsidy applications and 22,000 applications for research and development aid, he said.



Answering a question concerning whether vaccinations would be mandatory, Gulyas noted that Austria had been the only EU country so far to do so, adding that the Hungarian government has introduced compulsory vaccination in public administration.



On another subject, Gulyas said that central subsidies for civil groups had increased from an annual 3.4 billion forints (EUR 9.3m) to 10 billion forints between 2012 and 2021, while financing for religious organisations had tripled since 2010.



Ethnic Hungarian communities now receive about ten times as much assistance, while the Hungary Helps programme has launched 170 projects in 50 counties to help some half a million people stay in their homeland, he said.



Answering a question concerning the upcoming general election, Gulyas said the government was not planning to change the electoral laws. Concerning a proposal under which winning candidates on the oppositions list would have to form a joint parliamentary group, Gulyas said that the current rules were correct and he was unaware of any plans to change them.



Regarding public transport, Gulyas said the government was seeking an opportunity to transfer public transport subsidies owed to the city of Budapest, but city leaders wont agree. The funds are there, he said, but were being held up by disputes concerning the financing of local train sections within the citys boundaries.



The city seems to be seeking dispute rather than agreement, he added. Gulyas confirmed the government treated Budapest as the nations capital and was supporting its development accordingly, especially given the biggest railway development programme of the past 100 years in the greater Budapest area totalling 1,000 billion forints.



Meanwhile, Gulyas said that regional government offices would benefit from an extra 16 billion forints next year to cover a pay hike of 10%.



Gulyas said the past 10 years had been the Hungarian economys most successful decade, with local governments benefitting mostly thanks to road and public facility upgrades.



He highlighted the Hungarian Village development programme, which, he said, had helped reverse negative demographic trends in 1,000 small villages.





MTI Photo
Bali: Ace Indian shuttler PV Sindhu registered a comfortable straight-game win over Germany's Yvonne Li to cruise into the women's singles quarterfinals of the Indonesia Open Super 1000 event here on Thursday.

The reigning world champion, seeded third here, hardly broke a sweat to win the second round clash 21-12 21-18 against the world No.26 in 37 minutes at the USD 850,000 event.

Up against Li for the first time, world No.7 Sindhu looked completely in control from the beginning.

Such was her dominance that the two-time Olympic medallist took the first game with ease, winning seven consecutive points at one stage.

Li made a good recovery in the second game and it was more evenly contested. But Sindhu persisted and did not let the German gain an advantage over her.

Sindhu will take on the winner of the second round clash between Spaniard Beatriz Corrales and South Korea's Sim Yujin in the quarterfinals
New Delhi: Earlier this week, the Central government announced that it will soon introduce a bill in the upcoming winter session of the Parliament to ban all private cryptocurrencies, a move that shook crypto investors in the country. With the decision to ban a few digital coins, the government has also revealed plans to introduce an official digital currency. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is expected to issue the digital coin that will be regulated by the central bank.

The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, will aim to regulate the cryptocurrencies in the country. The law will also become the basis for the introduction of RBI issued digital currency in India.

On Lok Sabhas website, the bulletin listing reads, The Bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.

The RBI is expected to use the underlying technology of cryptocurrency, which is blockchain, to issue digital currency. The government will also aim to promote other use cases of blockchain technology.

To create a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India, the bulletin listing read. But the question still arises of how RBIs digital currency will be different from popular coins such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.

To keep it simple, well first have to understand that RBI will introduce a central bank digital currency (CBDC) that isnt exactly a cryptocurrency. The major difference between a CBDC and a cryptocurrency is that the former is regulated by states while the latter is decentralised.

Moreover, CBDCs are much more stable than cryptocurrencies. India, however, isnt the first nation that is going to launch its own digital coin. For instance, Singapore is working on Project Ubin, Canada has Project Jasper, the UK is bullish on a cross-border interbank payment and settlements while France is pinning hopes on Digital Euro. Also Read: Airtel, Nokia team up to conduct Indias first 5G trial in 700 MHz band

Earlier this year, RBI has also given a clarification on what CBDC is. CBDC is a digital or virtual currency but it is not comparable to the private virtual currencies that have mushroomed over the last decade. Private virtual currencies sit at substantial odds to the historical concept of money. They are not commodities or claims on commodities as they have no intrinsic value; some claims that they are akin to gold clearly seem opportunistic. Usually, certainly for the most popular ones now, they do not represent any persons debt or liabilities. There is no ISSUER. They are not money (certainly not CURRENCY) as the word has come to be understood historically, the central bank had said. Also Read: Own a special Rs 1 coin? You can earn up to Rs 2.5 lakh by selling it online, check process

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#mute
New Delhi: Two persons  a storekeeper and a contractual staff engaged as Programme Assistant were arrested on charges of cheating and conspiracy to embezzle funds to the tune of Rs 13.8 crore.

The duo - Bijender Kumar (storekeeper) and Naveen Kumar allegedly misappropriated government funds on account of purchase of linen items. According to the police, the items were never supplied but payment was released to the supplier firm Sneh Enterprises.

During the course of investigation, it was revealed that the goods i.e. linen items etc. against which payments were released to accused firm, were never delivered to the AIIMS, Delhi. The account statement of the firm confirmed receipt of payments for items, said the police.

Scrutiny of the e-way bills revealed that vehicles shown as used for delivery of those goods to AIIMS, never delivered the same at AIIMS Delhi on any of the dates mentioned on e-way bills. Scrutiny of GPS logs of the vehicles appearing on the e-way bills shows their locations out of Delhi, they added.

The police said that all the manual and digital records maintained at AIIMS for the purpose of such supplies revealed criminal misdeeds of the accused in connivance with accused firm.

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Pune (Maharashtra): Anna Hazare, social activist and Gandhian, was on Thursday (November 25) admitted to a hospital in Maharashtra's Pune after he complained of chest pain, hospital authorities said.

"Anna Hazare was admitted to Ruby Hospital in Pune following chest pain. He has been kept under observation and stable," Dr Avdhut Bodamwad, Medical Superintendent, Ruby Hall Clinic informed. The 84-year old is currently stable, the medical superintendent said.

Anna Hazare was admitted to Ruby Hospital in Pune following chest pain. He has been kept under observation and stable: Dr Avdhut Bodamwad, Medical Superintendent, Ruby Hall Clinic (File photo) pic.twitter.com/3yGt4t6UsV  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2021

"Patient admitted under Dr Purvez Grant, Cardiologist for Medical Management and Coronary Angiography. He is stable now." Dr Bodamwad further said.

(With ANI inputs)

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Lucknow: Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday (November 25) said the 30th of every month should be observed in memory of the Hathras gang-rape victim, and that the "anti-Dalit and anti-women" stance of the BJP government should be "exposed".

A 19-year-old woman was allegedly gang-raped by four men at a village in Hathras on September 14 last year. After her condition deteriorated, she was referred to Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital where she breathed her last, a fortnight after the incident.

Her family members and villagers had alleged that the police forcibly took away her body and cremated it in the middle of the night.

"It is an appeal to the residents of Uttar Pradesh, the SP and its allies to observe 'Hathras Ki Beti Memorial Day' on the 30th of every month and recall the inhumane manner in which the BJP government in the state got the body of the rape victim burnt on 30-9-20," Yadav tweeted in Hindi. "The anti-Dalit and anti-women stance of the BJP should be exposed," he said.

A villager had alleged that the police did not heed their request to cremate the body during the day and the men in khaki forcibly held the cremation by themselves at night.

Local police officers, however, had said the cremation was carried out as per the wishes of the victim's family.

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday (November 25) directed the Ministry of Home Affairs to provide two additional companies of Central Armed Police Forces to ensure free and fair civic polls in Tripura.

The apex court also asked the Centre and Tripura govt to ensure necessary arrangements to ensure the safety of ballots and counting of votes.

Notably, voting for Tripura Municipal Elections is underway. As many as 770 polling stations have been established across the state for the civic polls, according to State Election Commission.

Tensions in Tripura have increased after violent incidents in the run-up to the elections to the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) and 12 other municipal bodies.

On Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary Jitendra Chaudhury wrote to Tripura's Director-General of Police, requesting him to take the appropriate actions against the alleged terror tactics adopted by the miscreants/outsiders inside the poll-bound Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Agartala Municipal Corporation areas at the behest of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Trinamool Congress Tripura unit Steering Committee head Subal Bhowmik has also expressed apprehensions over free and fair polls.

Subal Bhowmik alleged that the police continue to be a mute spectator on the incidents of violence against party candidates while lamenting that the Election Commission has not arranged voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras for the polls.

On Tuesday, the apex had refused the plea of All India Trinamool Congress to postpone the Tripura local body elections scheduled on November 25 but directed the police to increase the security arrangements for conducting free and fair polls and the declaration of results.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) is staging a protest outside West Agartala Police Station claiming their candidates are not being allowed to enter booths, polling agents are being attacked and many voters are not being able to cast their vote. Party workers demand immediate police intervention.

(With Agency Inputs)

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Shillong: Former Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma said that they have taken a decision to march with the Trinamool Congress while addressing a press conference here on Thursday (November 25). Sangma said that "Congress has failed to play the role of the main opposition party in the country."

In the media briefing, Mukul Sangma said, "A complete sense of commitment towards serving the people has brought us to take this decision. In the 2018 Assembly elections, we were confident of forming govt but we could not. Again, post-poll there were activities to poach our members."

#WATCH Former Meghalaya CM Mukul Sangma announces decision to go with the Trinamool Congress "Congress has failed to play the role of the main opposition party in the country," he adds during a media briefing in Shillong. pic.twitter.com/bJc7lyrKxz  ANI (@ANI) November 25, 2021

Former Meghalaya CM further said, "This group of 17 we have, collectively demonstrated our commitment. The commitment towards the state has superseded everything else. We are failing in our duty as far as the role of the opposition is concerned."

He said "Today, I am of the opinion, the country must understand the prevailing scenario. To play the role of effective opposition. So we carried out an exhaustive study on whether as the oldest and grand old party - INC we can serve the state, I am sorry to say, it seemed elusive. We are failing to do our duty. We must conduct the role of opposition effectively."

In a major setback for the Congress, the majority of party MLAs led by former Chief Minister Mukul Sangma decided to switch over to the Trinamool Congress.

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Police have collected a fine of Rs 200 from the driver of AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi's SUV, in which the latter was brought to Solapur city in Maharashtra, as the vehicle was found without a number plate, an official said. As per reports, Owaisi was travelling in a white-coloured Land Rover Defender, recently launched in India starting at Rs 80 lakh. The incident took place on Tuesday when Owaisi, who represents the Hyderabad Lok Sabha constituency in neighbouring Telangana state, was in Solapur for an event, he said.

The policeman, who took the action against his vehicle was later given a cash reward of Rs 5,000 by the local police authorities, the official said. "All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) party president Asaduddin Owaisi's luxury SUV reached the government guest house located in Sadar Bazar area in Solapur, following which the politician went to take rest. However, assistant police inspector Ramesh Chintankidi, who was on duty there at that time, noticed that the leader's car did not have a number plate on its front side," he said.

Chintankidi then asked Owaisi's driver to pay fine as the vehicle was without a number plate, he said. Following this, a few supporters of the AIMIM chief gathered outside the guest house, but soon senior police officials also reached the spot.

Traffic police inspector Chandrakant Wable then collected Rs 200 fine from the driver of the vehicle, he said. "Solapur Police Commissioner Harish Baijal then honoured API Chintankidi by giving a cash reward of Rs 5,000 for his action," the official said.

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Two-dose of Covaxin, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech, provided only 50 per cent protection against the Covid-19 infection during the second wave of the pandemic in India, according to the first real-world assessment published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal on Wednesday.

The study assessed 2,714 hospital workers from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, from April 15 to May 15, 2021, who were symptomatic and underwent RT-PCR testing for Covid-19.

The Delta variant was the dominant strain in India during the study period, accounting for approximately 80 per cent of all confirmed Covid-19 cases.

"Our study offers a more complete picture of how BBV152 performs in the field and should be considered in the context of Covid-19 surge conditions in India, combined with the possible immune evasive potential of the Delta variant," said Dr Manish Soneja, Additional Professor of Medicine at AIIMS in New Delhi.

Covaxin (BBV152) is a vero cell-derived, inactivated whole-virion vaccine formulated with a novel adjuvant and administered in a two-dose regimen, 28 days apart.

READ | Air pollution major determinant for negative health outcomes in India, check facts here

In January 2021, BBV152 was approved for emergency use in India for people aged 18, while earlier this month, the World Health Organization (WHO) also added BBV152 to its list of approved emergency use Covid-19 vaccines

Covaxin shot developed by Bharat Biotech in collaboration with the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)-National Institute of Virology (NIV), in July announced the final results of its Phase-III clinical trials.

According to the company, the vaccine showed an efficacy rate of 77.8 per cent against symptomatic Covid-19, which went up to 93.4 per cent against severe symptomatic infection.

In a study published in the journal The Lancet, earlier this month, Bharat Biotech demonstrated Covaxin to be 77.8 per cent effective against Covid-19, and 65.2 per cent against Delta variant.

However, in the latest study researchers at AIIMS acknowledged that the vaccine effectiveness is lower than the efficacy reported by a recently published phase-III randomised control study of BBV152.

Of the 2,714 employees in the study population, 1,617 people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection, and 1,097 tested negative. The adjusted vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic Covid-19 after two doses of BBV152 with the second dose administered 14 or more days before undergoing RT-PCR testing was 50 per cent.

Higher risk of exposure to Covid-19 infection among the hospital employees than the general population, as well as the prevalence of circulating variants of concern, especially Delta, may have contributed to BBV152`s lower effectiveness, the researchers said.

"Our study took place when the Covid-19 test positivity rate in Delhi was around 35 per cent a" the highest since the beginning of the pandemic. It is an important factor to consider while interpreting the impact of any vaccine." added Professor Naveet Wig, Head of Medicine at AIIMS, New Delhi.

The researchers stressed that the findings also add to the "growing body of evidence that rapid vaccine rollout programmes remain the most promising path to pandemic control. However, they also urged to continue additional protective measures, such as mask-wearing and social distancing".

Further, the authors also acknowledged several limitations in the study such as the study does not estimate the vaccine effectiveness against hospitalisation, severe disease, and death, which require further assessment. In addition, the study was not designed to estimate vaccine effectiveness for different time intervals after vaccination or to determine if vaccine effectiveness changed over time.

"The decline in vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 infection during a delta-driven surge in cases is neither surprising nor exclusive to inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccines including BBV152," said researchers including Dr Ramachandran Thiruvengadam, Dr Akshay Binayke, and Dr Amit Awasthi of the Translational Health Science and Technology Institute in a linked comment.

They were not involved in the study.

"The Delta variant has high transmissibility, infectivity, and virulence, which causes severe disease. These attributes might have contributed to a reduced vaccine effectiveness against symptomatic infections, which has been reported to be as low as 56 per cent for other vaccines in multiple studies worldwide. Future studies should be designed with the emphasis to evaluate protection against moderate to-severe Covid-19," they added.

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New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of Noida International Airport, also called Jewar Airport, which will be the largest airport in Asia once completed. However, some political leaders are calling it pre-poll stunt in view of the UP elections.

Zee News Anchor Sachin Arora on Thursday (November 25) discussed if the airport foundation is just a means for landing votes or if it is meant for the take-off of development of UP and north India.

Some of the opposition leaders have said that the governments move is aimed at gaining votes as it comes ahead months before UP polls.

However, it would be incorrect to link it with the elections. Heres why:

This airport was first proposed 20 years ago in the year 2001. At that time there was a coalition government of BJP and Bahujan Samaj Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Chief Minister was Rajnath Singh, who is now Defence Minister in the Government of India.

When Mayawati became the Chief Minister in 2002, the proposal of the airport was sent to the then central government. However, nothing materialized in the last two decades. When Akhilesh Yadav was in power, the state government considered shifting the airport plan from Noida to Agra, to woo voters in western UP. But again, nothing happened. The question is whether it is right to link the airport, the plan of which has been for 20 years, to the elections. In India, even development work is seen through the political prism.

According to a study, on average, some kind of elections are held in India every 4 to 6 months, be it Lok Sabha, Vidhan Sabha, panchayat elections or Municipal Corporation elections. That is, the election machine keeps running non-stop in our country. Accordingly, any development project can be linked to elections.

Today, Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav and Bahujan Samaj Party's Mayawati are at the forefront of those who have declared Noida International Airport as an election announcement. But when these parties were in power in UP, thousands of schemes were laid before the assembly elections.

Before the 2017 Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly elections, former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had laid the foundation stone of schemes worth Rs 60 thousand crore in just two months. But as the CM, he could start work on only a few of these schemes. In December 2016, he had laid the foundation of 910 projects before the elections, but on many of these projects, no work began while he stayed in the government.

It is true that every government lays the foundation stone of schemes worth thousands of crores before the elections to woo the voters. But it would be wrong to place Noida International Airport on this list because this project was not decided in a couple of months. Rather, it had to wait for two long decades. This airport will not just benefit Noida or UP. It is going to be the largest airport in the country that will serve crores of Indians.

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New Delhi: Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

According to sources close to the developments, Khattar will meet the Prime Minister at 10.30 am in Delhi. Notably, this meeting comes days after the Centre announced to repeal three farm laws and ahead of Samyukt Kisan Morcha`s call for a nationwide protest to mark the first anniversary of the farmers` movement on November 26.

Meanwhile, the Haryana Cabinet meeting will be held today at 3 pm at the Haryana Civil Secretariat. Moreover, Bharatiya Kisan Union (BKU) leader Rakesh Tikait had earlier said that 60 tractors will head to the Parliament in the national capital on November 29 as a part of the tractor march to press for a statutory guarantee of minimum support price (MSP) for crops among other things.

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the Centre will repeal the three farm laws, Union Minister Anurag Thakur on Wednesday informed that the Union Cabinet led by the Prime Minister has completed the formalities to repeal three farm laws.

Last week, the Prime Minister said that the Centre will bring necessary bills in the winter session of Parliament beginning later this month. The Prime Minister had also announced that the government will constitute a committee to work on a new framework for Minimum Support Price (MSP).

Farmers have been protesting against the government's three farm laws since the Centre had passed the laws in 2020. The Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021 seeks to repeal the Farmers` Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, the Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement of Price Assurance, Farm Services Act, 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020.

The Farm Laws Repeal Bill, 2021 has been listed for introduction and passage. It is among 26 new bills on the agenda of the government. Meanwhile, Samyukt Kisan Morcha (SKM), an umbrella body of farmer unions, in an official statement had said, "Preparations are underway for marking November 26, 2021, on the completion of 12 long and continuous months of struggle by lakhs of farmers in India - Thousands of farmers are expected to come to the morcha sites on that day around Delhi."

It further stated that on November 26, "partial victory" of the movement will be celebrated, and will emphasise on the remaining demands. It also said that a "Maha Dharna" is happening in Hyderabad on November 25 to mark the first anniversary of the farmers` protests at Delhi`s borders. "Several SKM leaders will join the event. Leaders of several trade unions and other mass organisations will also be participating in the Maha Dharna," SKM said.

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Chennai: The Indian and Japanese Space agencies are planning a joint mission to the moon, that is meant to explore the Polar region. The mission, which will be known as LUPEX (Lunar Polar Exploration Mission), will feature an Indian Lunar lander and a Japanese rover. Dr.Hiroshi Yamakawa, President, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) revealed this and Japans future mission plans, at the Sydney Dialogue, an Initiative by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

Speaking of International cooperation, Dr.Yamakawa said that the International Space Station was a great example, as it had ensured the continuous presence of humankind in space for more than two decades. On the need for greater collaboration between Quad countries (US-JAPAN-AUSTRALIA-INDIA), he added that the Future Lunar exploration had to be a joint effort, as there existed the possibility of having a manned space station in the vicinity of the moon, which can enable sustained exploration in the region and also on the Lunar surface.

The Japanese Space agency head emphasized on the need for Multi-national missions to Mars that would be led by Quad countries, owing to the high costs of manned missions. Referring to the successful Hayabusa 2 mission, he threw light on how Japan had developed the capability to land rovers on an asteroid, remain there, collect samples and return them back to earth. Hayabusa 2 spacecraft arrived on asteroid Ryugu in June 2018, deployed rovers and landers to collect samples and then delivered it to earth on December 6th 2020, as the spacecraft swooped by earth and dropped a landing capsule containing the samples.

On Japans planned Mars mission, he said that the country saw the future of Mars exploration as a mix of unmanned robotic and manned. Japans Martian Moons eXploration(MMX) mission aims to study Mars moons Phobos and Deimos, while also collecting a sample from Phobos and returning it to Earth. Multilateral international cooperation is ideal and realistic than going alone, each one can contribute in the field of their technical expertise and share the cost he urged the heads of Quad Country Space bodies.

This announcement on the LUPEX mission with India comes at a time when many countries are teaming up with America for the Artemis programme, which aims to get humans back to the moon, establish a long-term human presence and enable further exploration. This plan is also a precursor to the mission to send astronauts to Mars. India, however, has not made any announcements pertaining to any collaboration with the Artemis mission.

ALSO READ: ISRO working on hack-proof comms, robots, self-healing materials, debris-free rockets and satellites

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Indians will soon be able to visit Singapore, as the country reopened its doors for travellers from India. Starting 29 November 2021, this cosmopolitan hub is allowing fully vaccinated travellers from India. As Singapore welcomes Indians, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) is all set to commence flight operations under Vaccinated Travel Lanes (VTL) introduced for travellers to enjoy quarantine-free access to the country.

With 9 weekly flights from Mumbai, Singapore Airlines will now begin its operations on the Mumbai-Singapore sector. Singapore is opening its borders to Indians after a 20-month hiatus, as Indians will finally be able to enter one of the most visited countries in Asia. Moreover, with the upsurge in air traffic to U.A.E, travellers will now enjoy additional flight frequency from CSMIA to Sharjah.

For safe travel, vaccinated passengers travelling to Singapore are required to carry a negative Covid-19 PCR test taken 72 hours before departure and upload on the Air Suvidha portal. These norms exempt travellers who are younger than 5 years of age. According to the announcement by Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), short-term visitors and long-term pass holders will be required to apply for a Vaccinated Travel Pass (VTP) to enter Singapore. Applications for the VTP for short-term visitors and long-term pass holders for travel Indias to Singapore are now open.

Also read: Noida International Airport to get temple inspired terminal design

As per a statement issued by Mumbai Airport, they have undertaken various safety measures and has implemented numerous SOPs, including the preventive measures laid down by the Government to safeguard the passengers' wellbeing and curb the spread of the virus.

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Moga (Punjab): Once again, there seems to be trouble brewing in Punjab Congress. And Navjot Singh Sidhu is once again in the centre of the drama! The Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president on on Thursday (November 25) issued a warning - he said that he would sit on a hunger strike if chief minister Charanjit Singh Channi does not open files relating to sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib and the sale of intoxicants.

Addressing a Congress workers' meeting, Sidhu said that if the state government eliminates the sand mafia and liquor mafia and deposits tax to the government, then the state government can get rid of its debt to a great extent. He further said that the chief minister in the state has been changed so that the sacrilege of Guru Granth Sahib issue could be resolved and the sand and liquor mafia could be abolished. He announced that if the Punjab government does not take action, he would keep raising his voice.

The state Congress president also took on Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and said that he is trying to impress the people of Punjab, but the state wants a resident of the state as the face of the chief minister.

Amarinder Singh's exit as the Punjab CM and eventually from Congress party did not bring stability as the party in Punjab has been embroiled in one controversy after another and Sidhu being the Centre of it all. Though on different occasions Sidhu and CM Charanjit Singh Channi have claimed all's well between the two, the developments point otherwise. In the last tussle, Sidhu's exclusion from Chief Minister Channi-led delegation comprising state cabinet ministers for Kartarpur Sahib visit on November 18 had tongues wagging. And not just his opposition like Arvind Kejriwal's AAP, Sidhu had also attacked Channi for offering freebies.

(With Agency inputs)

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New Delhi: The Central government on Thursday (November 25) told Supreme Court that it has taken a considered decision to revisit the limit of Rs 8 lakh annual income fixed for determining the Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) category for reservation in NEET admissions for postgraduate medical courses.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appearing for Centre sought four weeks time from a Bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, Surya Kant and Vikram Nath, saying a committee will be constituted to determine the criteria for EWS.

Mehta told the Bench that National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) PG counselling shall remain postponed until the determination. "In the matter, I have instruction to say that the government has decided to revisit the criteria. We will formulate a committee and take a fresh decision within four weeks. Till then the counselling shall remain stayed only. I give my assurance," Solicitor General told the Bench.

The Bench recorded the submission of the Solicitor General and posted the matter for hearing on January 6, 2022. Earlier, the apex court had asked the Centre to put on hold the counselling for NEET-PG until it decides the validity of the Centre`s decision to introduce OBC and EWS reservation in All India Quota.

It had said that NEET-PG counselling will not start without its approval as the court is examining a plea against the Centre`s decision for medical admission. The Central government had also assured the apex court that the counselling process will not commence till the Bench decides the matter.

The top court was hearing a batch of pleas challenging the Centre and Medical Counselling Committee July 29 notice providing 27 per cent reservation for Other Backward Class (OBC) and 10 per cent for EWS category for the admission in the NEET for all medical seats.

The July 29 notice provide 27 per cent reservation for OBC and 10 per cent for EWS category in 15 per cent UG and 50 per cent PG All India Quota seats (MBBS/BDS and MD/MS/MDS) with effect from the current academic session 2021-22.

On October 21, the Bench had asked the Centre whether it would like to revisit the limit of rupees eight lakh annual income, fixed for determining the EWS category for reservation in NEET admissions for medical courses. It had asked the Centre whether any exercise was undertaken before fixing a limit of Rs 8 lakh annual income for determining the EWS category.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation stone of the Noida International Airport (NIA) in Jewar, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday (November 25) at 1 pm.

The development of the first phase of the airport is being done at a cost of over Rs 10,050 crore. The airport is spread over more than 1300 hectares of land and the completed first phase of the airport will have a capacity to serve around 1.2 crore passengers a year and work on it is scheduled to be completed by 2024.

Taking to Twitter, the Prime Minister had said that the project will boost commerce, connectivity and tourism.

"Tomorrow, 25th November is a major day for India's and Uttar Pradesh's strides in infra creation. At 1 PM, the foundation stone of the Noida International Airport will be laid. This project will significantly boost commerce, connectivity and tourism," the PM had tweeted on Wednesday.

According to Prime Minister's Office (PMO), Uttar Pradesh will become the only state in India to have five international airports. The development of the airport is in line with the vision of the Prime Minister towards boosting connectivity and creating a future-ready aviation sector.

"A special focus of this grand vision has been on the state of Uttar Pradesh that is witnessing the development of multiple new international airports including the recently inaugurated Kushinagar airport and the under-construction international airport at Ayodhya," it said. This airport will be the second international airport to come up in Delhi NCR.

As per PMO, the airport is strategically located and will serve the people of cities including Delhi, Noida, Ghaziabad, Aligarh, Agra, Faridabad and neighbouring areas. The airport will be the logistics gateway of northern India. Due to its scale and capacity, the airport will be a game-changer for Uttar Pradesh. It will unleash the potential of Uttar Pradesh to the world, and help establish the state on the global logistics map.

It further said that for the first time, an airport in India has been conceptualised with an integrated multi-modal cargo hub, with a focus on reducing the total cost and time for logistics.

"The dedicated cargo terminal will have a capacity of 20 lakh metric tonne, which will be expanded to 80 lakh metric tonnes. Through facilitating the seamless movement of industrial products, the airport will play a crucial role in helping the region attract huge investments, boost rapid industrial growth, and enable the reach of local products to national and international markets. This will bring new opportunities for numerous enterprises, and also create tremendous employment opportunities," the statement added.

The Noida International Airport will be implemented in four phases and the work on the first phase is scheduled to be completed in 36 months, said Civil Aviation Secretary Rajiv Bansal.

According to Civil Aviation Secretary, it is a greenfield project that will be implemented in four phases. "The traffic of 12 million passengers per year is expected in the first phase and by the completion of final phase i.e. between 2040-50, the capacity of Jewar airport will be to handle 70 million passengers per year," Bansal said.

He also informed that Uttar Pradesh government is spending Rs 4,326 crore on the acquisition of land and rehabilitation and resettlement. Bansal said that the Prime Minister is personally monitoring the project.

As per PMO, the airport will develop a Ground Transportation Centre that will feature a multimodal transit hub, housing metro and high-speed rail stations, taxi, bus services and private parking.

This will enable seamless connectivity of the airport with the road, rail, and metro. Noida and Delhi will be connected to the airport through hassle-free metro service. All major nearby roads and highways like the Yamuna Expressway, Western Peripheral Expressway, Eastern Peripheral Expressway, Delhi-Mumbai Expressway and others will be connected to the airport.

The airport will also be linked to the planned Delhi-Varanasi High-Speed Rail, enabling the journey between Delhi and the airport in only 21 minutes. The airport will also house a state-of-art Maintenance, Repair and Overhauling (MRO) Service. The design of the airport is focused on low operating costs and seamless and fast transfer processes for passengers.

READ | UP to become the only state in India with 5 international airports

The airport is introducing a swing aircraft stand concept, providing flexibility for airlines to operate an aircraft for both domestic and international flights from the same contact stand, without having to re-position the aircraft. This will ensure quick and efficient aircraft turnarounds at the airport while ensuring a smooth and seamless passenger transfer process.

It will be India's first net-zero emissions airport. It has earmarked dedicated land to be developed as a forest park using trees from the project site. NIA will preserve all native species and be nature positive throughout the development of the airport.It will be executed by the international bidder Zurich Airport International AG as a concessionaire.The groundwork for the first phase regarding land acquisition and rehabilitation of the affected families has been completed.

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New Delhi: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday (November 25) said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Central government has focused on the northeast region since it came to power. Shah said that political stability and peace have been established in the region and it will play a huge role in the development of the region.

Addressing an event at the Indian Chamber of Commerce (ICC) virtually, the Union Home Minister said, "The Modi government has focused on the northeast region since it came to power. Today, the region is ready to play the role of contributor in the development of the country."

Amit Shah said, "The Northeast region consists of 8 per cent of the Indian landmass. The Northeast region of the country is one of the 18 biodiversity hotspots in the world, which should be promoted."

The Home Minister said, "Today, the region is ready to play the role of contributor in the development of the country. We want to move forward with three E's-'Empathy, Empowerment, Enabler'- in the region."

"Political stability and peace have been established in North East. All state govt in the region have completed their respective 5-year terms. Elections in the region have also been conducted peacefully. All capital cities of northeastern states have air connectivity," Amit Shah said.

(With Agency Inputs)

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New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation has registered a case against seven accused, including private firms, for perpetrating a fraud at Punjab National Bank (PNB) and Allahabad Bank in credit facilities and term loans to the tune of nearly Rs 73 crore during 2013.

The CBI identified the accused as M/s S.R. Alcobev Pvt. Ltd, private company based at New Industrial Estate, Jagarpur, District Cuttack(Odisha) & its Managing Director, Ranjan Kumar Padhi, Director, Mrs Saina Kar, Three Private Companies, M/s. Naina Devi Suppliers Pvt. Ltd., Sainagoue Street, Kolkata, West Bengal, M/s. Chandraghanta Iron & Steel Traders Pvt. Ltd., Shyam Bazar Street, Kolkata, West Bengal(Corporate Guarantor), M/s. Brewforce Technologies, East Patel Nagar, New Delhi/Dehradun, Uttarakhand (Supplier), Sukanta Kumar Lenka, Civil Contractor(Private Person).

According to CBI, several unknown officials of Punjab National Bank are involved in the fraud among others.

"The accused committed a fraud at Punjab National Bank, main branch, Buxi Bazar, Cuttack and Allahabad Bank, Bhubaneswar branch, in a matter of credit facilities or term loans to the tune of around Rs 73 crore (Rs 40 crore by PNB and Rs 33 crore by Indian Bank, formerly Allahabad Bank) during 2013," the probe agency said in a statement.

After disbursal of the loan proceeds, the borrowers/guarantors allegedly violated the terms & conditions of the sanction and they neither procured the machineries nor deposited the installments in time and the account turned Non-Performing Assets(NPA), CBI stated.

It was further alleged that the accused including promoters/Directors/Guarantors/suppliers had misappropriated and diverted the loan proceeds with an ulterior motive to defraud the banks to the tune of around Rs.140.48 crore(principal amount plus interest as of September 30, 2021).

Searches were conducted at the premises of the accused situated at Cuttack(Odisha) and Dehradun(Uttarakhand).

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New Delhi: Sri Lanka police have arrested three Pakistan nationals for allegedly clicking pictures of the Indian High Commission based in Colombo.

Indian security agencies are monitoring the investigation. Sri Lanka's CID and police are probing the case

The Colombo Police registered a case and produced them in the court requesting for judicial demand. The court granted them bail through a lawyer provided by the Pakistan High Commission. However, the court confiscated their mobile phones and passports until the case was concluded, said a source aware of the development.

During interrogation, the arrested trio revealed that they came to Sri Lanka for mandatory quarantine for their onward travel to Saudi Arabia as direct flights between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are currently not operating. They were staying in a hotel situated near the Indian High Commission. They came out on a three-wheeler then took photos of the Indian High Commission from their mobiles.

The Pakistan High Commission based in Sri Lanka has come forward and is providing legal aid to all the arrested accused. Indian security agencies are in touch with Colombo investigative agencies so that it can be found out whether there was any part of a bigger conspiracy behind taking photographs of the Indian High Commission.

The Pakistan High Commission in Colombo has been facing allegations of conspiracy against India in the past. Pakistan's notorious intelligence agency ISI has been using Sri Lanka as a base for drug smuggling and to spy on India.

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Agartala (Tripura): Elections for more than 200 seats in the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) and other municipal bodies will be held on Thursday but Trinamool Congress Tripura unit Steering Committee head Subal Bhowmik has expressed apprehensions over free and fair polls.

Subal Bhowmik alleged that the police continue to be a mute spectator on the incidents of violence against party candidates, while lamenting that the Election Commission has not arranged voter-verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) and closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras for the polls.

He is quoted as saying, "In absence of the arrangement of VVPATs and CCTV cameras by the Election Commission, the holding of municipal polls has turned into a farce exercise. Such is the atmosphere made by the ruling government, it is shameful."

According to him, the violence in the state against TMC workers continues in spite of directions from the Supreme Court to police to ensure free and fair conduct of polls.

Addressing the media, Bhowmik said, "A total of 32 candidates of our party have been attacked in various parts of the state and attacks on workers are uncountable. The scale of political vengeance that TMC is facing in the state has crossed all limits."

"Vandalisation took place at residents of three candidates on Tuesday. A total of 27 FIRs have been filed but not a single arrest has been made. In spite of the Supreme`s Court`s judgement, the police continue to be a mute spectator. It is difficult to even visit a police station and file a complaint. If such a situation persists, it will be impossible to hold free and fair elections in the state," he said.

Responding to state Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath`s comments on the court`s order, the TMC leader said that the party did not want to postpone the elections.

"The main spirit of our appeal was to convince the Court about the prevailing situation in Tripura and necessary arrangements so that the polls could be done in a free and fair manner. And, in the Court`s judgement, it is crystal clear that the Court is worried about the elections," he added.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court had declined the plea of All India Trinamool Congress to postpone the Tripura local body elections scheduled on November 25 and directed the police to increase the security arrangements for conducting free and fair polls and the declaration of results.

Reacting to the order, Tripura Law Minister Ratan Lal Nath had said on Tuesday that the conspiracy hatched by the TMC to postpone the civic body elections in Tripura got foiled as the apex court dismissed its petition to postpone the polls.

Tripura civic body elections are scheduled for today. Tensions in Tripura have increased after violent incidents in the run-up to the elections to the Agartala Municipal Corporation (AMC) and 12 other municipal bodies.

CPIM urges DGP to take action against alleged terror tactics of miscreants

A day before Tripura civic polls, Communist Party of India (Marxist) state secretary Jitendra Chaudhury wrote to the Director-General of Police. He requested the DGP to take the appropriate actions against the alleged terror tactics adopted by the miscreants/outsiders inside the poll-bound Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Agartala Municipal Corporation areas at the behest of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Jitendra Chaudhury alleged that the miscreants are indulging in terrorizing the houses of the opposition supporters with dire consequences, with the threat not to move to the polling stations tomorrow on November 25, 2021, for urban local body elections.

"I on behalf of the Communist Party of India(Marxist) and Tripura Left Front Committee urge upon you to take the appropriate actions that all such intruders to be flushed out from the poll-bound areas within no time and all sorts of arrangements to be made to create a conducive environment for the sake of free and fair elections," Chowdhury said in his letter.

"I would like to inform you that so far information has been pouring from different poll-bound ULBs and several wards of Agartala Municipal Council that a large number of miscreants are intruding into those areas at the behest of the ruling BJP and indulging in terrorizing the houses of the opposition supporters with dire consequences, with the threat not to move to the polling stations tomorrow on November 25, 2021," he added.

(With Agency inputs)

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Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh minister Jitin Prasada said the BJP has the support of every section of society and dismissed claims that Brahmins in the state are upset with the party. He also predicted a comprehensive victory for the BJP in next year's Uttar Pradesh Assembly polls, saying the ruling party will surpass its previous tally.

A former Union minister, Prasada had joined the BJP earlier this year after quitting the Congress. His induction into the BJP was seen as part of efforts by the party to strengthen its support among the Brahmins, an electorally dominant section constituting 13 per cent of the UP population. The BJP, Samajwadi Party and the BSP had earlier held "sammelans" to woo Brahmins ahead of the Assembly polls.

When in the Congress, Prasada had started a campaign for the "honour and self-respect" of the community through the Brahmin Chetna Parishad.

When asked about claims that Brahmins are unhappy with the BJP, Prasad said, "Let those saying this continue to say. I can say with full confidence that the majority of every section of society is with the BJP and its one-sided." "As far as Brahmins are concerned, we are in public life and we take everyone along, but if someone talks about the community, if someone is being harassed, then we are ready to provide justice and help as far as possible," the UP technical education minister told PTI in an interview.

Prasada said he was sure that the BJP will surpass its previous tally in the Assembly polls scheduled early next year. The BJP had won 312 of the 403 seats in the 2017 polls. "The trend is clear and I can say with hundred per cent surety that the previous record of crossing 300 (seats) will be surpassed by the BJP," he said. When asked about the basis of his claim, he cited improvement in law and order. "Earlier, we used to ask people to come to UP, they used to say that they will go to South India as they do not get security and a business-friendly environment here," he said. "But now investment is coming, five international airports are in UP and this is a big achievement in itself. This will prove to be a milestone for the future of UP in the times to come," the minister said. He said UP is being "transformed through expressways". "I am sure that we will get the blessings of people and you will see that UP will be on top on every scale," he claimed.

When asked about quitting the Congress despite being close to the Gandhis, Prasada said, "I had earlier also said that after much deliberation, I decided to change the party. It was not a momentary decision. It was not that you got angry with anyone after denial of ticket or not getting any post."

"I considered various points. I took this decision after being influenced by the strong and powerful leadership of the prime minister," he said. "He believes in resolving problems by taking public support," Prasada said, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has become the "most famous PM" of the world. "It's a matter of pride that the PM of India has world class acceptance," he added.

When asked about leaving central politics and his experience with CM Yogi Adityanath, Prasada said, "I consider myself lucky that I am getting the privilege of working with such great leaders under their guidance." "The Centre or state does not matter much. The aim is to serve people and protect their interests. It was a privilege that I was given responsibility in my own state," he said.

Prasada said that within two months of taking over the ministry, he visited 20 districts and had an interaction with students of polytechnic and engineering colleges. On complaints about fee and harassment of students in private schools and colleges, he said, "It has been only a few days for me and you are correct. Arbitrariness in the matter of fee will not be tolerated. I myself am committed to this matter." The minister said he has given instructions that the institutions should make their fee structure public, put it on their websites and if any complaint is received from a student, then a portal should be made for that. He said his focus is to make technical education job oriented and students self-reliant.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for Noida International Airport at Jewar in Uttar Pradesh today (November 25). The airport is seen as a prime project for the BJP government ahead of the UP Assembly Polls of 2022. "It is infrastructure not politics for us, but part of national policy; we're ensuring projects don't get stuck and are completed in time," PM Modi said at the event, while hitting out at the former governments of the state.

Here are the 10 points highlighted by PM Modi as to how the Noida airport will benefit the country, and especially Uttar Pradesh.

- Noida International Airport at Jewar will benefit crores of people of Delhi-NCR, western Uttar Pradesh.

- It will become logistics gateway of northern India.

- Noida International Airport will give new employment opportunities to thousands of people of western UP.

- After seven decades, UP getting what it always deserved; with efforts of double-engine govt, UP is turning into country's most connected region.

- UP, which was kept in darkness by previous governments, now leaving its mark not only nationally but internationally too

- UP has become focal point for investments by multinational companies; it'll have five international airports.

- Jewar airport also an example of how earlier Govts in UP and at Centre ignored development of western Uttar Pradesh.

- Noida International Airport will directly connect a major centre of export with international markets. It will enable farmers of this region to export perishable goods like vegetables, fruits, & fish. Noida Airport will help MSMEs of western UP to reach foreign markets

#WATCH | Noida International Airport will directly connect a major centre of export with international markets. It will enable farmers of this region to export perishable goods like vegetables, fruits, & fish. It will help MSMEs of western UP to reach foreign markets: PM Modi pic.twitter.com/pw54X3GC4t  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) November 25, 2021

- Tourism of land-locked states like Uttar Pradesh will greatly benefit from the Noida International Airport. Now, pilgrims will be able to easily travel to temples and shrines in Uttar Pradesh

- Noida International Airport will be the largest centre of repair, maintenance and operation of aircraft. A facility for maintenance, repair and overhaul of aircraft will be built in the area of 40 acres here, which will provide employment to hundred of youths.

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New Delhi: West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee didnt meet Congress Interim President Sonia Gandhi during her latest visit to the National Capital. When asked about it, she asked a question in return, Why should we meet Sonia every time?

Its true that Banerjee was in Delhi to meet the Prime Ministerin official capacity, but she has also been maintaining a fine balance since she returned to power in West Bengal earlier this year.

On one hand, she is trying her best to be the face of opposition through a common consensus among parties, and on the other, she has tried to look like someone who wants to fight the Centre on every issue.

In such a situation, commenting with a straight answer might be a tactic to establish herself as a strong-willed person who could be the leader of the third front sans BJP and Congress.

She told reporters, This time I sought time only from the prime minister. The leaders are all busy with Punjab polls. Work is first. Why should we meet Sonia every time? It is not constitutionally mandated.

READ | Can Mamata Banerjee challenge Narendra Modi in 2024 elections?

First part of her comment presents her mindset of not being very in your face before the Punjab elections, and the second part shows how she can turn to the BJP if need be.

Whatever be the plan behind this statement, Mamata Banerjee definitely knows how to make others notice her.

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Mumbai: As star couple, Genelia and Riteish Deshmukh's elder son Riaan turned seven years old on Thursday, his mother penned an open letter to mark this special day.

Taking to her Instagram handle, Genelia shared a bunch of pictures with her son, in which the two look adorable, dressed in ethnic outfits. One picture also featured her laughing along with both her children -- Riaan and little Rahyl.

Along with the love-filled pictures, the actor wrote a lovely message for her child.

"My Dearest Baby Boy, I have a zillion wants, desires and wishes for you but what you have taught me is, that those are mine and not yours...So today I want to promise you that I will always put your wants before mine...When you want to fly, I will not try to be your wings but rather the wind beneath your wings," she began in the caption.

She further promised to be a loving, supportive mother in hard times.

"If you are don`t hold the first place, I promise to not to get disappointed but rather show you the beauty of a second-place or maybe even show you that being last in the line still has its own specialness, its own grit, it`s own determination," she wrote.

The doting mother concluded with an assurance that she will always be by her "brave boy".

"But most of all to assure you, That I will always be in front of you to cheer you on, Behind you to have your back, And next to you so you aren`t walking alone. Happy Birthday Riaan...I Love You, My brave brave boy," she signed off.

Genelia and Riteish tied the knot on February 3, 2012. They welcomed their son Riaan in November 2014 and their second son Rahyl in June 2016.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Genelia, whose last Bollywood film was `Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya` (2012), recently hosted a show `Ladies vs Gentleman` with Riteish.

The couple has also ventured into the food business with the launch of their plant-based meat brand Imagine Meats.

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NEW DELHI Bollywood couple Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra, who recently celebrated their wedding anniversary with with a cosy dinner, were on Thursday (Nov 25) snapped at the Mumbai airport. Raj Kundra, who has been maintaining a low profile ever since his arrest in pornography case in July this year, was seen hiding his face from paparazzi with his hoodie.

Kundra, who was dressed in a black hoodie and denim, did not pose for the shutterbugs and rushed towards the entry. On the other hand, Shilpa was seen in a casual formal outfit. She completed her look with a black handbag, statement jewellery and white sneakers. She had her makeup minimal. While both Raj and Shilpa arrived at the airport in the same car, they were seen making separate entries.

Celeb photographer Viral Bhayani shared a video from the airport featuring Shilpa and Raj. Meanwhile, a section of people trolled the couple over the recent controversy.

"Aisa kam mat kro jiske liye muh chupana pade," wrote one. "New film ki shooting krne jaare hai raj bhai," another user wrote.

In July, Raj Kundra was arrested in a case about the alleged creation and publishing of pornographic films on mobile applications. He was granted bail in September. He has maintained a low profile ever since and also deleted his social media accounts.

Raj Kundra was arrested by police on July 19 along with 11 other people on charges related to the alleged creation of pornographic films. In September, he was granted bail by a Mumbai Court in the pornography case on a surety of Rs 50,000.

A few days ago, Shilpa celebrated her 12th wedding anniversary with Raj. On the occasion, she posted a collage of their unseen wedding photos with a caption that read, "This moment and day 12 years ago, we made and continue to fulfil a promise; of sharing the good times & bearing the hard times, of trusting in love & God to show us the way side by side, day by day 12 years and not counting Happy Anniversary, Cookie! Heres to many more rainbows, laughter, milestones, and our prized possessions our children. Heartfelt gratitude to all our well-wishers, who have been with us through thick and thin."

Shilpa was last seen as a judge of 'Super Dancer Chapter 4'. She is now judging the reality show 'Indias Got Talent' with Kirron Kher, Badshah and Manoj Muntashir. The show will start airing soon. Her upcoming film releases include 'Nikamma' where she stars alongside Abhimanyu Dassani and Shirley Setia.
New Delhi: The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is looking at using smartphones as "universal authenticator" to establish a resident's identity, chief executive Saurabh Garg has said.

However, the official has not given any additional details on how the process of identification can get complete using the smartphone. At present, finger prints, iris and one-time password (OTP) are used for Aadhaar authentication and efforts are on to increase the scope of the same.

Addressing the 'ETBFSI Converge' summit, Garg said, "We are looking at how the smartphone can develop as a universal authenticator. That is an area of work that is ongoing and we hope we will be able to proceed rapidly in that direction. It will help people to do authentication right from where they are living, staying etc"

Garg said that of the overall 120 crore mobile connections, 80 crore are smartphones which could be used for the authentication.

The banking and the telecom industry have rapidly adopted the Aadhaar number for fulfilling the know-your-customer norms, he said, adding that 70 crore or half of the overall bank accounts are seeded with Aadhaar.

However, the number of pension accounts (3 crore) and mutual fund holders (around 10 crore) is very less and those industries should make use of the facilities offered by Aadhaar to rapidly expand coverage, Garg said.

He said the UIDAI has now decreased charges for full KYC to Rs 3 per authentication and 50 paise for a simple 'yes or no' authentication in order to drive up the usage.

What is Aadhaar Authentication?

Aadhaar Authentication is a process by which the Aadhaar number along with demographic information (such as name, date of birth, gender etc) or biometric information (Fingerprint or Iris) of an individual is submitted to UIDAIs Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR) for its verification and UIDAI verifies the correctness of the details submitted, or the lack thereof, on the basis of information available with it.

Why do you need Aadhaar Authentication?

Various government schemes and private service providers such as PDS, NREGA, banks and telecom operators have adopted Aadhaar authentication for verification of their beneficiaries/customers. The authentication is generally done either at the time of delivery of benefits or subscribing to the service.

What are the benefits of Aadhaar authentication?

Aadhaar authentication provides an instant mechanism to prove your identity through online authentication. Therefore one need not carry any other ID proof except Aadhaar number.

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With PTI Inputs
New Delhi: The Central government is all set to release the 10th instalment of the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana by December 15, according to media reports. Farmers can easily check the status of the instalment by following a few simple steps.

For those uninitiated, under the PM Kisan Scheme, the Central government transfers Rs 6000 annually to the bank accounts of eligible farmers in three instalments of Rs 2000 each.

Till now, the government has transferred nine instalments under the PM Kisan scheme to the bank accounts of crores of farmers with the aim to provide them with financial support.

Farmers are waiting for the 10th instalment, and, if reports are to be true, then the government could credit the amount by December 15, a few days ahead of the New Year.

Farmers who have applied for the scheme can easily check their names and instalment status on the online portal of the PM Kisan Yojana.

Heres how to check your instalment status:

Step 1: To check the status of your 10th PM Kisan Yojana instalment, you first go to the website dedicated to the scheme.

Step 2: On the homepage, you need to click Farmers Corner, which is on the right side of the website.

Step 3: On the new page, you will need to click on the Beneficiary Status option.

Step 4: On the next page, you will need to enter your Aadhaar card details and mobile number. Also Read: Spotify to take on TikTok, Instagram Reels with vertical feed of music videos

Step 5: Once you have entered the details, you will be able to see the complete information about your PM Kisan 10th instalment status. Also Read: Apple users most satisfied; Xiaomi, Samsung lead in brand awareness: Survey

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New Delhi: The 10th installment of Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) likely to come on December 15 as has been widely reported in the media.

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) Scheme, launched by PM Narendra Modi in 2019, aims to provide income support to all landholder farmer families across the country with cultivable land, subject to certain exclusions.

Under the Scheme, an amount of Rs 6000 per year is released in three 4-monthly instalments of Rs 2000 each directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. Now, with the disbursal of 10th installment of the PM-KISAN Scheme around the corner, it is important to know the eligibility. (PM KISAN Scheme documents rules changed, know what to do for registration to reap Rs 6,000 yearly benefits)

Who are eligible to get benefits under the PM-KISAN Scheme? Can both husband and wife claim Rs 6,000/year benefit?

Under the PM KISAN scheme, an income support of 6,000 per year in three equal installments is being provided to all land holding farmer families. Definition of family for the scheme is husband, wife and minor children. Hence, if both the husband and the wife applies for PM Kisan, both can't get Rs 6,000 benefit each. The beneficiary amount is for the entire family, hence either of the two has to give up on the amount.

ln the beginning when the PM-KISAN Scheme was launched (February, 2019), its benefits were admissible only to Small & marginal Farmers' families, with combined landholding upto 2 hectare. The Scheme was later on revised in June 2019 and extended to all farmer families irrespective of the size of their landholdings. The Central Government had notified a decision to extend the benefit of Rs 6,000 per year under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi scheme to all 14.5 crore farmers in the country, irrespective of the size of their landholding.

Who are excluded from the PM-KISAN Scheme

Those excluded from the PM-KISAN include institutional land holders, farmer families holding constitutional posts, serving or retired officers and employees of State or Central government as well as Public Sector Undetakings and Government Autonomous bodies. Professionals like doctors, engineers and lawyers as well as retired pensioners with a monthly pension of over Rs 10,000 and those who paid income tax in the last assessment year are also not eligible for the benefits.

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New Delhi: As the government is all set to bring a Bill to ban all private cryptocurrencies in India, a survey by LocalCircles has found that Indians currently have low levels of trust in international cryptocurrencies.

The Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill, 2021, is listed for introduction in the Lok Sabha in the winter session, scheduled to begin from November 29, as the government is looking to bar most private cryptocurrencies in India.

LocalCircles is a Community Social Media platform and pollster on issues of governance, public and consumer interest. The study found that 51 percent want India to roll out its own digital currency, 54 percent Indians do not want government to legalise cryptocurrencies but tax them like a digital asset held abroad while 26 percent say they should be legalised and then taxed in India.

The survery found that 71 percent Indians have low or zero trust in cryptocurrencies while 1 percent have high trust.

"In response, only 1% said they have a high trust in cryptocurrency. 12% said they have an average trust, and 22% said it is low. 49% of Indians studied said they have zero or do not trust at all. 16% did not have an opinion. On an aggregate basis, 71% of Indians studied have low or zero trust in cryptocurrencies while 1% have high trust. This question in the study received 9,174 responses," LocalCircles report added.

The LocalCircles study received more than 56,000 responses from citizens residing in 342 districts of India. 66% of respondents were men while 34% of respondents were women. 42% of respondents were from tier 1, 33% from tier 2 and 25% respondents were from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.

The study further found that 87% Indian families do not have anyone trading or investing in cryptocurrencies.

"On an aggregate basis, 87% of Indian families do not have anyone trading or investing in cryptocurrencies. This question in the study received 10,117 responses," said LocalCircles study.

74 percent Indians believe cryptocurrency advertisements are not highlighting the risks involved in an effective manner. While only 5 percent Indians are in favour of continuing cryptocurrency platform advertisements as is, 76 percent want advertising to be on hold till regulations are ready.

LocalCircles added that it will share the findings of this study with key stakeholders in the Central Government, the Reserve Bank of India and all Member of Parliament so public feedback is kept at the forefront as the Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill 2021 is taken up for discussion and approval in the parliament in a few weeks.

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NEW DELHI: For the past few days, a strong buzz has been going that Honorable Minister of Women and Child Development Smriti Irani was supposed to appear as a special guest on The Kapil Sharma Show and promote her debut novel, 'Lal Salaam'. However, the shooting for the episode didn't take place owing to a misunderstanding.

According to a report in TellyChakkar, there was a misunderstanding between Smriti Iranis driver and the gatekeeper of 'The Kapil Sharma Show' due to which the Union Minister left from the gate without shooting for the episode. The report stated that when the minister reached the sets of 'The Kapil Sharma Show' in Mumbai, a private security guard stopped her from entering the venue. Smriti doesnt travel with any security and it is believed that this may have led to confusion in the mind of the security guard.

The report further added that Smriti tried hard to explain to the guard that she was going to be a guest on the show and is also a Union Minister, however, the latter refused to budge.

Both Smriti and Kapil were unaware of the issue. Meanwhile, there has been no official statement on the incident from any side.

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Its not unusual to confuse between two names, but when it comes to things of daily usage, any mistake makes heads turn. And then if it happens with somebody sitting at a responsible post then it becomes even more difficult to not pay attention to the details. Something similar has happened with Fawad Chaudhry, Information and Broadcasting Minister of Pakistan, who couldnt understand the difference between garlic and ginger.

Pakistani journalist Naila Inayat has shared a video clip on Twitter in which Chaudhry is speaking at a conference where he is talking about the prices of edibles like onion and garlic. But he couldnt get the Urdu translation of garlic right and confused it with adrak. Though he started with lehsan but eventually settled for adrak.

READ | Speeding motorcycle crashes into shop in Telangana, video goes viral

The internet was quick to jump to conclusions after the clip went viral.

"Garlic is adrak," information minister Fawad Chaudhry. One learns a new thing everyday. pic.twitter.com/oXjgey4Kd8  Naila Inayat (@nailainayat) November 23, 2021

Here are some of the reactions:

Was rejected in pre-medical test as I was confused be2een tuber & rhizome.After 16 years,I realize,some r confused be2een garlic & ginger,but they get minister https://t.co/CB4qHk39ct dual degree of MBBS from Ukraine,BTECH in mechanical.Can I apply for a minister in Pakistan?  anil Krushna chandra (@anilKrushnachan) November 23, 2021

Ye kaunse school gaye the bachpan mein!  Dr. Vinayak Dubey (@vinayvaani) November 24, 2021
Paris: At least 31 migrants bound for Britain died Wednesday when their boat sank in the English Channel, in what France's interior minister called the biggest tragedy involving migrants on the dangerous crossing to date.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 34 people were believed to have been on the boat. Authorities found 31 bodies and two survivors, and one person appeared to still be missing. The nationalities of the travellers were not released.

A joint French-British operation to search for survivors was still underway late Wednesday. Four suspected traffickers were arrested Wednesday on suspicion of being linked to the sunken boat, Darmanin told reporters in the French port city of Calais. He said two of the suspects later appeared in court.

The regional prosecutor opened an investigation into aggravated manslaughter after the sinking. "It's a day of great mourning for France, for Europe, for humanity to see these people die at sea," Darmanin said. He called for coordination with the UK, saying "the response must also come from Great Britain."

Noting other deadly past incidents involving migrants in the same waters, Darmanin lashed out at "criminal traffickers" driving thousands to risk the crossing.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson convened a meeting of the government's crisis committee, and Darmanin rushed to see survivors in a Calais hospital. The two governments have long been at odds over how to prevent the crossings, with both sides blaming the other for not doing enough.

Johnson said he was "shocked, appalled and deeply saddened". A French naval boat spotted several bodies in the water around 2 pm and retrieved an unknown number of dead and injured, including some who were unconscious, a maritime authority spokesperson said.

Three French patrol boats were joined by a French helicopter and a British helicopter in searching the area, according to the French maritime agency for the region.

Jean-Marc Puissesseau, head of the ports of Calais and Boulogne, told The Associated Press that he spoke to one of the rescuers who brought some of the bodies to the Calais port. "Traffickers are assassins," he said. "We were waiting for something like this to happen."

While deaths are occasionally reported on the crossing, such a large number of people losing their lives in one boat is rare.

People fleeing conflict in Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea and Sudan have been among those gathered along towns in northern France seeking to cross to Britain.

The number of migrants using small boats to cross the channel has grown sharply this year, despite the high risks that are worsening in autumn weather.

More than 25,700 people have made the dangerous journey in small boats this year, three times the total for the whole of 2020.

With changeable weather, cold seas and heavy maritime traffic, the crossing is dangerous for the inflatables and other small boats that men, women and children squeeze into.

French and British authorities have picked up thousands of migrants off both the French and British coasts in recent weeks in scores of rescue operations.

Darmanin insisted that France has worked hard to prevent deadly crossings, rescuing 7,800 people since January and stopping 671 who were trying to cross on Wednesday alone.

"How many more times must we see people lose their life trying to reach safety in the UK because of the woeful lack of safe means to do so?" said Tom Davies, Amnesty International UK's refugee and migrant rights campaign manager.

"We desperately need a new approach to asylum, including genuine Anglo-French efforts to devise safe asylum routes to avoid such tragedies happening again," he added.

Johnson said more needed to be done to "break the business model of the gangsters who are sending people to sea in this way".

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