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Justin Haskins
Latest cable-news ratings show big changes for Fox News
After several months of challenging longtime cable-news giant Fox News, the ratings for MSNBC and CNN have fallen, propelling Fox News to the top of the ratings chart in virtually every timeslot. (2016 file photo/Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
After several months of challenging longtime cable-news giant Fox News, the ratings for MSNBC and CNN have fallen, propelling Fox News to the top of the ratings chart in virtually every timeslot.
At the end of May, spurred by a string of unfavorable news stories about President Donald Trump, the left-leaning MSNBC surpassed CNN and Fox News in the key 25-54 demographic during primetime for the first time since September 2000, and Rachel Maddow appeared to have solidified her position as the top cable-news host in the wake of Bill O’Reilly’s departure from Fox News. Since then, Fox News has steadily recovered and is now dominating in the key demo, including against Maddow.
For instance, on Wednesday, Fox News beat CNN and MSNBC in every timeslot from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m., and Fox News’ total day audience in primetime was significantly higher than CNN and MSNBC, coming in at 369,000 for the key demo, according to ratings provided by TV Newser.
The biggest winner of the night was Tucker Carlson, who had 598,000 key demo viewers for his 8 p.m. show on Fox News, 258,000 more than MSNBC’s “All In,” hosted by Chris Hayes. Anderson Cooper, whose show ran from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., finished 293,000 viewers behind Carlson at 8 p.m. and a whopping 312,000 behind “The Five” at 9 p.m., which finished first for the hour, beating out MSNBC’s Maddow.
In total viewers, Fox News’ victory was even more substantial. Carlson had 2.86 million viewers at 8 p.m., nearly 1.3 million more than Hayes.
On Thursday, Maddow's show returned to its place at the top of the cable-news mountain in the key demo, but Fox News won every other primetime timeslot in the key demo and Carlson had a larger total audience than Maddow.
Fox News' ratings are made more impressive by the fact its numbers have improved compared to this time in 2016, when millions of Americans were closely following presidential campaigns. Compared to its 2016 second quarter ratings, Fox News improved by double-digits in in total viewership in primetime and total day viewership, and the third quarter is off to a similar start.
CNN’s ratings relative to its competitors has suffered the most in recent weeks, following a string of damaging stories, including one that emerged on Tuesday, when CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski was accused of bullying a Reddit user who posted an animated image of CNN’s logo superimposed on the head of a wrestler who Trump “punched” in an old professional wrestling video, sparking outrage from critics. Trump had made the video famous by posting it on his Twitter account.
#FraudNewsCNN #FNN pic.twitter.com/WYUnHjjUjg
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2017
Kaczynski suggested in his article CNN could reveal the identity of the Reddit user in the future if he stopped showing remorse for posting the video, which he reportedly apologized for repeatedly, despite it being a joke.
Right-leaning Fox News' performance has not proven to be an indicator of Trump's popularity. Since May 3, when the Real Clear Politics average of approval polls showed Trump with an average disapproval rating of 51.3 percent and average approval rating of 43.6 percent, the president's average approval rating has fallen noticeably, to 39.9 percent, with 54.7 percent of voters disapproving.
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Judge Amy Coney Barrett
Amy Coney Barrett pledges ‘humility’ and ‘service’ after SCOTUS nomination
Catholic News Agency / September 27, 2020 /
By Christine Rousselle Washington D.C., Sep 26, 2020 / 04:30 pm MT (CNA).- Judge Amy Coney Barrett pledged to serve all Americans with impartiality if confirmed to the Supreme Court, following her nomination by President Donald Trump on Saturday. Speaking in the White House Rose Garden on Sept. 26, Barrett
Black Pentecostal leaders: Amy Coney Barrett ‘persecuted’ for charismatic faith
By Christine Rousselle Washington D.C., Sep 25, 2020 / 03:15 pm MT (CNA).- A letter released Friday by Black Pentecostal and charismatic Christian leaders has decried criticisms of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s charismatic Catholicism, ahead of her possible appointment to the Supreme Court. “Today we stand with, and speak in
Amy Coney Barrett and ‘building the Kingdom of God’
By Matt Hadro Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 23, 2020 / 07:45 am MT (CNA).- Judge Amy Coney Barrett has been the subject of renewed criticism regarding her Catholic faith, following reports that she is a leading candidate for President Donald Trump’s nomination to fill the current Supreme Court vacancy. With
Catholic Amy Coney Barrett front-runner as Trump signals Supreme Court nomination plans
CNA Staff, Sep 19, 2020 / 10:00 am MT (CNA).- President Donald Trump on Saturday signaled he would soon nominate a potential replacement to the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday evening at 87. Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a Catholic mother of seven, is widely reported
Judge Amy Barrett’s charismatic Catholicism- Who are the People of Praise?
By Christine Rousselle Washington D.C., Sep 19, 2020 / 03:00 pm MT (CNA).- After the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, reports have circulated that Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a federal judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, is a leading candidate for the country’s high court.
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12 Monkeys: Premiere Date, Cast, Recap, Update
Diksha Sundriyal
Created by Terry Matalas and Travis Fickett, ’12 Monkeys’ is an American science fiction television series. The drama first premiered on Syfy on January 16, 2015. It stars Aaron Stanford as James Cole and Amanda Schull as Dr Cassandra “Cassie” Railly, who plan to time travel in order to stop the disastrous plan of an enigmatic organization called “Army of the 12 Monkeys”. It is based on the 1995 film of the same name which stars Bruce Willis, Brad Pitt and Christopher Plummer, which is based on the French novel, La Jetee, by Chris Marker. The series is executive produced by Richard Suckle, Charles Roven, Natalie Chaidez, Jefferey Reiner, David Grossman, Travis Fickett and Terry Matalas.
12 Monkeys Plot: What’s it about?
Set in the year 2043, it follows a scavenger named James Cole who gets recruited by a group called “Project Splinter”. This team contains a scientist which is led by a physicist named Katarina Jones. They are assigned to work together and travel back in time to the year 2015. This is the year when a deadly virus was released by the “Army of the 12 monkeys’. They have to stop that virus which is to be the cause of the plague that leads to the destruction of the humankind. In the original timeline, more than billions of people have died due to it.
Cole travels to 2015 timeline and comes in contact with a virologist named Dr Cassandra “Cassie” Railly. It is a part of his mission to meet her because, in the future timeline, he comes upon a recording that she had made after the viral outbreak of the virus. This makes her a pivotal character in the events to come. He also meets a math genius named Jennifer Goines. Jennifer’s father has been assigned to kill the brutal high-ranking members of the 12 monkeys, Olivia, Pallid Man as well as Cassie’s ex-boyfriend named Aaron Marker. Cole also has to handle a guy named Theodore Deacon and his best friend named Jose Ramse in the future timeline. Ramse and Cole are ex-members of the dangerous pack of scavengers led by Theodore. Meanwhile, Cassie and Cole have to reveal the whereabouts and name of the mysterious person who is leading the Army of the 12 monkeys. He is referred to as “The Witness”.
By the fourth season, Cassie and Cole get engaged and they make a plan to stop Olivia from freeing the Red Forest. Cassie hesitates to turn off the time machine because by doing so she would lose Cole. She has two options: either to save humanity or their relation, but in the end, she has to save the world. They both exchange goodbyes with each other and everyone returns to their original year. Jones surrenders to the radiation poisoning and Cole tries to erase himself from the timelines. There is also a dramatic fight sequence, the winner of which has the power to save or destroy the world.
Read More in TV Preview: The Innocents | Ultraviolet
12 Monkeys Cast: Who’s in it?
Aaron Stanford plays the role of James Cole, the time traveller. He has played Pyro in the second and third instalments of the ‘X-men franchise’ and is also known for his work in ‘Nikita’ and ‘Travelers’. Amanda Schull appears in the role of Cassandra Railly. She is known for her roles in ‘One Tree Hill‘, ‘Pretty Little Liars‘, ‘Suits‘ and ‘Murder in the First’. Kirk Acevedo plays the character of Jose Ramse. His best-known works include ‘Fringe’, ‘Band of Brothers’, ‘The Thin Red Line’ and ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’. He also played the role of The Dragon in the sixth and seventh season of ‘Arrow‘.
Todd Stashwick appears in the role of Theodore Deacon. He has been a part of ‘Gotham’, ‘The Originals’, ‘Teen Wolf‘, ‘Heroes’ and ‘The Riches’. The role of Jennifer Goines is played by Emily Hampshire. She is best known for playing the role of Angelina in 1998’s ‘Boy Meets Girl’ and Stevie Budd in ‘Schitt’s Creek’. Her other acting credits include ‘Rookie Blue’, ‘Ruby Gloom’, ‘Made in Canada’ and ‘The Last Don’. She also serves as a voice actor in various films and TV shows. Barbara Sukowa plays the role of Dr Katarina Jones. A Grammy-nominated and multiple awards winning actress, Sukowa is best known for her roles in ‘Atomic Blonde’, ‘Romance and Cigarettes’, ‘Europa’, and ‘Mr Butterfly’.
Read More in TV Preview: Braxton Family Values
12 Monkeys Season 5 Release Date: Will it happen?
’12 Monkeys’ season 4 premiered on June 15, 2018, on Syfy. The high concept premise and layered characters of the show did not receive so much love in the beginning. In fact, the first half of the first season received very lukewarm reviews and was considered a mediocrity as compared to its source material. However, as the story moved forward, the finesse and the details began to show and the reception of the series took a turn for the better.
The second season opened up to rave reviews from the critics and started cementing the popularity of the show. By the third season, it had both the critics and the audience under its spell. This is why, when the network declared that the fourth season would also be the final, it came as a huge shock to the fans. The showrunners of ’12 Monkeys’ gave their all to the finale and it wrapped up all the loose ends, giving a fitting conclusion to every character. The season followed in the footsteps of the success of the previous seasons and was declared a critical success while receiving all the love of its fans. Because the series has met a proper end, there is a very slim chance of its return. Even if the series returns, it would probably start from scratch and will tell a different story. We wouldn’t suggest you wait around for this one. In any case, if we receive news on ’12 Monkeys’ season 5 release date we will update this section.
12 Monkeys Trailer
If you are the fan of ’12 Monkeys’ and are disheartened by the show’s end, find comfort in the fact that you can revisit all its seasons on Hulu. Here is the trailer of the fourth season to remind you what a thrilling ride it was.
Read More: Best Sci Fi Shows on Netflix
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Woman’s ‘Body’ Discovery That Sparked Police Search Turns Out to Be a Large Potato
SLAW AND ORDER
Jamie Ross
Published Jan. 08, 2021 10:06AM ET
Northumbria Police via BBC News
An English dog walker got the shock of her life Tuesday when she stumbled across what appeared to be a human foot protruding through the dirt in the countryside. However, after police deployed a “large-scale” search team to the potential major-crime scene, they discovered it was just a potato growing next to a mushroom. According to BBC News, the woman sent a photo of the root vegetable selection to police as soon as she got home from the walk. Northumbria Police said the photo “did show what appeared to be a human foot,” so they deployed multiple officers to the scene. “The search team did have a chuckle when they realized it was a potato,” police said in a statement, adding praise for the unnamed woman’s vigilance. Police said anyone in a similar situation should call them, stating: “If it does turn out to be a vegetable, our police dogs will thank you for the treat.”
Read it at BBC News
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Bell's Bizarre Looking Stretched Huey Turned Out To Be A Rare But Sought After Workhorse
Originally developed for Iran, the helicopters never saw service in that country, but have become popular with contractors supporting U.S. forces.
By Joseph Trevithick June 12, 2019
Must Read Features
Erickson, Inc.
More than six decades after Bell introduced the world to the very first version of its famous UH-1 Huey helicopter, variants and derivatives of this iconic design continue to serve governments and fly commercially around the world. But not all of these subsequent helicopters have been as successful or become as well-known as their progenitor. Case in point, the Bell 214ST, with its stretched, bulged fuselage, which makes it look something like the offspring of a Huey and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. Bell developed specifically for the Iranian military, but which never entered service in that country and has since become popular with contractors that often work for the U.S. military.
The Bell 214ST first flew on July 21, 1979, at the company’ s Dallas-Fort Worth facility. Two years earlier, the company had flown an experimental helicopter derived from the earlier Bell 214, which showed much more of its Huey lineage. As time went on, the design not only increased in length by 30 inches compared to the previous model, but saw significant changes to the central fuselage and nose. It also gained an entirely recontoured upper exhaust and tail.
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Two General Electric CT7-2 turboshafts, each one generating 1,625 shaft horsepower, powered the 214ST. The CT7 series, also known as the T700 series, is still extremely popular today and variants are found on a wide array of commercial and military helicopters, including Bell's own UH-1Y Venom and AH-1Z Viper, as well as the UH-60 Black Hawk and AH-64 Apache gunship.
The engines made the 214ST significantly more powerful than the existing twin-engine UH-1N Twin Huey variant, and its commercial cousin the Bell 212, which used the Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6T Twin-Pac, a turboshaft that consists of two PT6s linked together to generate a combined 1,250 shaft horsepower. The 214ST also had multiple then-state-of-the-art automated flight systems to improve handling.
Gary Watt via Wikimedia
A Bell 214ST helicopter belonging to Bristow Helicopters.
“Basically, the 214ST is the 214 heavy lifter with a stretched cabin, two GE CT7-2 engines replacing the single Lycoming LC4B, a strengthened transmission passing rather more horsepower, new plastic [fiberglass] rotor blades and Noda-Matic suspension,” Mark Lambert wrote in an article in Flight International magazine in June 1979, ahead of the first flight. “The result is a new twin with exceptional hot-and-high capability and good single-engined performance.”
More than 3,000 pounds heavier than the UH-1N, the 214ST had a maximum takeoff weight nearly 5,000 pounds greater than its smaller twin-engine cousin and a faster cruising speed of 140 knots. The stretched cabin could accommodate 20 individuals in greater comfort than the maximum of 15 people who could ride in the rear of a Twin Huey. The new helicopter was powerful enough to hover with a total weight of 12,400 pounds at sea level while running on just one engine. It also had a one-hour run dry transmission and elastomeric rotorhead bearings for improved reliability and safety.
As Lambert noted in his Flight International piece, the origin of the 214ST is inseparable from that of the Bell 214, which first flew in 1970. Originally marketed as the Huey Plus, the 214 was itself a variant of the earlier Bell 205, also known to the U.S. military and others as the UH-1H.
While both the 205 and 214 are single-engine helicopters, the latter is instantly identifiable due to its much larger engine housing and exhaust. The Huey Plus replaced the older Huey’s Lycoming T53-L-13 engine with a much more powerful Lycoming T55-L-7, the same engine found on early models of the CH-47 Chinook. The 214 also had wider chord rotor blades than the 205 and the Noda-Matic suspension and improved rotorhead found on the later 214ST. The latter features help dampen vibrations, which in turn would make for a smoother flight and reduce wear and tear on the airframe. All of this, combined with the larger engine, gave the helicopter much better hot-and-high performance than its predecessor.
Meggar via Wikimedia
A commercial Bell 214-series helicopter.
With its significantly improved performance and capabilities well suited to deserts and mountainous terrain, the 214 had grabbed the eye of the Shah of Iran. He subsequently signed an order for nearly 300 214A models for the Imperial Iranian Army, with production starting in 1972. The Imperial Iranian Air Force received a smaller number of 214Cs, which featured a rescue hoist and other features for use in the search and rescue mission. A small number of 214s served in the militaries of Ecuador, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates, as well.
Between 1974 and 1975, Bell then began development of the 214ST specifically to meet Iranian requirements for an even larger, more capable military transport helicopter. Iran had picked Bell’s offer over France’s Aérospatiale Puma and the British Westland Wessex, the latter being a license-produced turbine-powered derivative of the Sikorsky S-58.
The Shah and Bell had also agreed to eventually establish domestic Iranian production of the Bell 214A and C in the city of Isfahan. This agreement later expanded to include plans to build the 214ST in Iran, as well.
Shahram Sharifi via Wikimedia
A Bell 214A still in service in Iran.
But while Iran did receive hundreds of 214A/Cs, it never got a single 214ST and the Iranian factory never came to be. Protests beginning in 1978 eventually evolved into an open revolt in 1979, with the Shah’s government collapsing entirely in February of that year. The Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a prominent Shia Islamic cleric, subsequently led a movement that took control and established the new Islamic Republic of Iran.
Tensions with the United States, which had orchestrated the Shah’s rise into power in the first place in 1953, eventually boiled over and resulted in the infamous hostage crisis, where Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans captive for more than a year. Though the U.S. government secured the release of the hostages in January 1981, the United States had, by that time, broken off relations with Iran over the hostage-taking and the two countries have remained at odds ever since. Iran continues to fly its 214A/Cs and has developed indigenous supply chains to keep them going.
Blocked from completing its helicopter deal with Iran, but having already completed the bulk of the work on the 214ST with financial help from the Shah’s government, Bell finished development of the helicopter and marketed it alongside the 214B BigLifter, the commercial version of Iran’s 214A.
Available with skids or fixed wheels, Bell pitched the 214ST, also first as the Stretched Twin and then as the Super Transporter, in various civilian roles. These included executive transport, forest fire fighting, and supporting offshore oil rigs, logging operations, and other remote commercial enterprises. 214STs, along with 214Bs, continue to perform these types of duties to this day, though in relatively small numbers compared to other Huey variants derivatives.
SDASM Archives
A Bell 214ST in service with Petroleum Helicopters, Inc., or PHI, a contract helicopter operator that continues to operate today supporting offshore oil operations, among other things.
Bell did continue to offer the 214ST as a military transport, as well. It has seen very limited military service in countries such as Brunei, Peru, Thailand, and Venezuela over the years.
In one of life’s little quirks, the largest military operator of the 214ST turned out to be Iraq, which took delivery of nearly 50 of the helicopters during the 1980s and flying them during its brutal war with Iran. The U.S. military would capture one of these during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
US Marines, holding a Kuwaiti flag, stand in front of a captured Iraqi Bell 214ST during Operation Desert Storm in 1991.
The U.S. Army did conduct airworthiness testing of the 214ST in the 1980s, but “the helicopter is a commercial aircraft and was not designed for U.S. military use or compliance with U.S. military specifications,” a final test report made clear. “The adequacy of the BHTI [Bell Helicopter Textron, Inc.] 214ST helicopter to perform as a military aircraft should not be inferred from the results of this evaluation.”
Bell had previously proposed the Model 240, which also used two T700 engines, for the Army for its Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft System (UTTAS) program in 1972. The company also pitched the idea of product improved version of the UH-1H helicopter, sometimes referred to as the UH-1H+. The service decided to go in a different direction and selected what would become the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk as the winner of the UTTAS competition in 1976.
But the 214ST has had something of a U.S. military adjacent career with contractors supporting various American operations around the world, including in Afghanistan, the Philippines, and Uganda, primarily moving cargo and personnel to and from remote outposts. One of the most prominent operators of these helicopters in this role was Evergreen Helicopters. In 2013, Erikson, Inc. bought Evergreen and has continued to work with the U.S. military, among other customers.
An Evergreen Bell 214ST supporting U.S. Marines in Afghanistan's Helmand Province in 2012.
Various firms tied to infamous private military company Blackwater, including Presidential Airways and EP Aviation, also flew the 214ST under contract to the U.S. military in Afghanistan, among other locales. AAR Airlift Group subsequently purchased Presidential Airways and EP Aviation, acquiring their fleets in the process.
This company 214STs have notably supported U.S. military activities in Niger, subcontracted to another firm, Berry Aviation. One of these helicopters helped recover the body of U.S. Army Sergeant LaDavid Johnson after the now infamous ambush of American troops near Tongo Tongo in October 2017, an incident you can read more about here and here.
A grainy screengrab from an official video presentation regarding the October 2017 incident in Niger showing one of Erickson's 214ST helicopters in that country.
The U.S. Department of State’s Air Wing also flies 214STs. Officially known as Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs’ Office of Aviation, which you can read about in depth here, this is organizations is one of the largest U.S. government aviation arms outside the U.S. military.
All told, despite its limited production run, which ran from 1981 until 1993, during which Bell built some 96 examples, the 214ST’s impressive capabilities have kept the helicopters in very active service in many parts of the world, including continued involvement in military operations. Until Bell introduced the 525 Relentless in 2012, the 214ST was the largest helicopter the company had ever made.
It’s certainly been an interesting life for a design originally meant specifically for Iran, a customer that then never flew a single one of the helicopters. By every indication, the 214STs will still be thump thump thumping their way through the skies for years to comes.
Contact the author: joe@thedrive.com
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The helicopter, which traces its roots to a 60 year old design, is still sought after internationally among stiff competition.
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The Department has more than 200 helicopters, aircraft, and small drones, including a particularly shadowy small transport plane.
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Study eats into oil-sands opponents’ corrosion claims
Open this photo in gallery:
A woman protests the Keystone XL pipeline in Washington, D.C., in a file photo.
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg
Published November 23, 2012 Updated November 23, 2012
This article was published more than 8 years ago. Some information in it may no longer be current.
It has taken on the air of fact among those seeking to halt pipelines designed to carry crude from the oil sands. The diluted bitumen those pipelines would carry, critics say, is more corrosive than "normal" crude. In other words, the chemical nature of oil sands crude places the steel it travels through at risk.
But a new study conducted by federal scientists finds exactly the opposite: Diluted bitumen is not more corrosive. In fact, when comparing four types of dilbit, as it's called, with seven other kinds of oil, the dilbit is among the least corrosive.
The study is a major strike against a key argument made by opponents of pipelines such as TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL and Enbridge Inc.'s Northern Gateway.
Just last week, Quebec Environment Minister Daniel Breton argued that Alberta crude was found to be more corrosive on older pipelines and could result in spills, as he warned Quebec could oppose a plan to pipe western oil through the province to eastern markets.
The challenge to those claims comes from work conducted by a Natural Resources Canada lab in Hamilton.
It builds on efforts that have seen government researchers test the corrosive qualities of oil since 1993. For the latest study, conducted this year, they compared various types of oil with a salt solution, which corroded pipeline steel at a rate of nearly 20 milli-inches per year. Anything below four is considered non-corrosive. The dilbit came in at three and below.
In fact, "we are not seeing any corrosion rate which is more than around four ... in all the around 100 crude oils we have tested so far" in two decades of work, said Sankara Papavinasam, a research scientist with Natural Resources Canada.
As for dilbit, "we did not see any difference whatsoever. We could not differentiate" it from other types of oil.
Dilbit also tends to be a more acidic crude, but "we did not see any correlation between TAN" – that refers to Total Acid Number – "and the corrosion rate under pipeline operating conditions," said Mr. Papavinasam.
Alex Pourbaix, president of energy and oil pipelines for TransCanada, said the study could be "meaningful" to efforts to get Keystone XL built.
"All of these things coming out make it more difficult for the opponents of this pipeline to continue spinning the misrepresentations and exaggerations that they have been prone to," he said.
The NRC tests were carried out at room temperature, roughly matching the 10 to 20 degrees Celsius that is normal for oil moving through pipelines. But TransCanada, for instance, suggests Keystone XL will operate at temperatures up to 54 degrees. That's significantly above the conditions used by federal scientists, and the variance is enough that environmental groups continue to be skeptical, saying dilbit could still be more corrosive at higher temperatures – as it is, conclusively, in refineries, which operate at 500 degrees Celsius and above.
"The temperature issue is a key one," said Anthony Swift, an energy analyst at the New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council. Mr. Swift was the lead author on a report that made public the notion that dilbit could be risky. That February 2011 publication, whose information has often been repeated by pipeline opponents and even U.S. legislators, concludes that "There are many indications that DilBit is significantly more corrosive to pipeline systems than conventional crude."
Asked if the federal study would persuade him to acknowledge that science has found differently, Mr. Swift said: "if it does, we will." He reiterated that temperature creates concerns both for internal and external corrosion, and that friction from the oil travelling through the pipe also serves to elevate the temperature.
But in some ways, the science already has spoken, and Mr. Swift's concerns are not shared by at least one of the scientists tasked by the U.S. government to provide a definitive evaluation of the dangers of dilbit. Frank Cheng holds the Canada Research Chair in Pipeline Engineering at the University of Calgary. He is the sole Canadian researcher among 12 experts chosen by the National Academy of Sciences to examine the corrosive properties of oil sands crude for the U.S. Congress. Their report is due at the end of 2013; it is primarily a literature survey, and will rely in part on the Natural Resources Canada work.
It is true, Mr. Cheng said, that higher temperatures produce more corrosion, and dilbit pipelines typically operate at 50 to 60 degrees Celsius, he said. But the difference in corrosion rates at 60 degrees and 20 degrees "in my opinion is minor. So it's not significant," he said. As for friction heating? Mr. Cheng's inquiries, including a field trip to speak with pipeline operators, have generated a similar finding: it happens. But it is not, he said, "an issue."
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Bill Morneau faces ‘tough’ odds to head OECD, mainly because of who has held the position in the past
Paul WaldieEurope Correspondent
A source close to Morneau – seen here holding a news conference in Ottawa on July 8, 2020 – said the former finance minister will push his experience in office, his global connections and his work on issues such as taxing digital companies, which has been a major topic at the OECD.
Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Bill Morneau is facing long odds in his quest to become the next head of the OECD – with those who closely follow the organization questioning his chances.
Mr. Morneau stepped down as finance minister this week and announced he would run for secretary-general of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, which is based in Paris. He received the backing of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who promised that Canada would “vigorously support” his candidacy.
That might not be enough, especially considering that a Canadian recently held the post for 10 years, giving OECD members little incentive to pick another one. The United States, the OECD’s biggest financial backer, has put forward a candidate as well, and the Americans seem determined to lead the organization for the first time.
Mr. Morneau also left the government under a cloud because of his role in the WE Charity scandal, which could come back to haunt him during the OECD selection process.
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CERB’s replacement addresses three significant concerns, economists say
“Minister Morneau is certainly highly qualified,” said Daniel Runde, a senior analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “But the fact that a Canadian had it before the last secretary-general of the OECD was going to make his candidacy tough to begin with. Some of the recent events in Canada may make it even more difficult for him to win as well.”
Mr. Morneau was unavailable for comment, but a source close to him said the 57-year-old will push his experience in office, his global connections and his work on issues such as taxing digital companies, which has been a major topic at the OECD. The source, who is not being identified by The Globe and Mail because they can’t speak publicly about Mr. Morneau’s campaign, added that Canada is seen by many countries as an important broker between the U.S. and Europe, which could help his cause.
It’s easy to see why Mr. Morneau wants the job. Heading the OECD is a plum position that carries international clout and some nice perks.
While it’s often portrayed as little more than a think tank for a club of 37 wealthy countries, the OECD actually plays a pivotal role in setting global standards in areas such as taxation, trade, health care, environmental protection, social affairs and science. It has more than 300 committees that bring together some 40,000 experts from around the world to develop technical regulations that many countries eventually adopt. For example, the OECD came up with the “polluter pay principle,” which mandates that those who produce pollution should pay the cost of managing it. It has also worked on regulatory regimes for tax avoidance, artificial intelligence and genetic inventions.
The secretary-general oversees a staff of more than 3,000 people and manages a budget of almost €400-million ($622-million). For that, he or she is paid a tax-free salary of €226,731, plus allowances that can exceed €90,000. The job also includes rent-free accommodation in a 5,100-square-foot apartment in a posh area of Paris.
There have only been five secretaries-general since the OECD was founded in 1961, and the current leader, Angel Gurria, announced last month that he planned to step down when his five-year term ends June 1 next year. That kick-started the campaign to find his replacement.
Member states have until the end of October to put forward nominations. All the candidates go through a rigorous vetting process until the field is whittled down to a handful of contenders. There’s rarely a vote to determine the winner – the choice is made by consensus. The entire process can take months and is largely conducted behind closed doors.
There is plenty at stake. The OECD has been struggling with how to increase its membership and deal with China’s growing economic power, and members will be looking for a leader who can do both. The problem confronting the OECD is how to remain true to its core principles of open markets and democratic freedoms while still engaging with China on global regulation.
For Mr. Morneau to win, he’ll have to prove his international credentials and overcome some significant challenges. Foremost is the fact that Mr. Gurria’s predecessor was a Canadian – former federal cabinet minister Donald Johnston. Mr. Johnston held the position from 1996 until 2006, when Mr. Gurria, who is from Mexico, began the first of his three terms. It’s unlikely the OECD’s large contingent of European members, 26 in total, will be keen to see another North American take over.
“That might count against [Mr. Morneau],” said Richard Woodward, a lecturer in international business at Britain’s Coventry University. “The Europeans may say, ‘We’ve had enough.‘ ”
Dr. Woodward said the U.S. candidate – Chris Liddell, who is deputy chief of staff to U.S. President Donald Trump – will have a distinct advantage. Although Mr. Liddell, 62, has never held a ministerial position, his candidacy will have the backing of the U.S. government, which contributes 20 per cent of the OECD’s budget. He also holds New Zealand citizenship, which could draw support from that country. “If the Americans put someone forward, I’m presuming they are going to support him,” Dr. Woodward said. “And America of course is in a position to twist arms in a way that Canada probably is not.”
Another possible candidate is Australia’s Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann, who announced recently that he plans to leave politics in December. He reportedly has the strong backing of Prime Minister Scott Morrison for the OECD role. Mr. Cormann, 49, would be the first secretary-general from outside Europe and North America, which might appeal to the small but growing number of Asian members.
Estonia’s President, Kersti Kaljulaid, is a potential contender, too. Her presidential term ends next fall, and she could be seen as someone the European countries rally around. Ms. Kaljulaid, 50, spent 12 years as Estonia’s representative on the European Court of Auditors, which oversees the European Union’s finances, and she has strong contacts across Europe.
All of which leaves Mr. Morneau facing an uphill battle. “I’m not saying he has no chance at all,” Dr. Woodward said. “I don’t think he will be a shoo-in either.”
Paul Waldie
WE Charity
As Finance Minister, Chrystia Freeland’s toughest job will be dealing with Justin Trudeau
Bill Morneau’s office, Kielburgers described as ‘besties’ in newly released documents
Bill Morneau urged Trudeau to stop leaks from senior PMO staff to media
Follow Paul Waldie on Twitter @PwaldieGLOBE
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'My ties to England have loosened': John le Carré on Britain, Boris and Brexit
John le Carré. Photograph: Nadav Kander/The Guardian
Ahead of publishing his 25th novel, le Carré talks to John Banville about our ‘dismal statesmanship’ and what he learned from his time as a spy
Fri 11 Oct 2019 03.00 EDT
Last modified on Sun 13 Dec 2020 17.46 EST
I have always admired John le Carré. Not always without envy – so many bestsellers! – but in wonderment at the fact that the work of an artist of such high literary accomplishment should have achieved such wide appeal among readers. That le Carré, otherwise David Cornwell, has chosen to set his novels almost exclusively in the world of espionage has allowed certain critics to dismiss him as essentially unserious, a mere entertainer. But with at least two of his books, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963) and A Perfect Spy (1986), he has written masterpieces that will endure.
Which other writer could have produced novels of such consistent quality over a career spanning almost 60 years, since Call for the Dead in 1961, to his latest, Agent Running in the Field, which he is about to publish at the age of 87. And while he has hinted that this is to be his final book, I am prepared to bet that he is not done yet. He is just as intellectually vigorous and as politically aware as he has been at any time throughout his long life.
In the new book there is a plotline that is predicated on covert collusion between Trump’s US and the British security services with the aim of undermining the democratic institutions of the European Union. “It’s horribly plausible,” he says, with some relish when we meet in his Hampstead home. His relish is for the fictional conceit, not its horrible plausibility, and at once his conman father pops up with his large-browed head and his all too plausible grin. Ronald “Ronnie” Cornwell was a confidence trickster of genius, of whom his son is still in awe, and to whose exploits and influence he returns again and again, to the point of bemused obsession. “I’ve had the good fortune in life,” says le Carré, “to be born with a subject” – no, not the cold war, which many foolishly imagined was his only topic – “the extraordinary, the insatiable criminality of my father and the people he had around him. I Googled him the other day and under ‘profession’ it said: ‘Associate of the Kray brothers’.” This gives us both a laugh, though a queasy one.
“A ceaseless procession of fascinating people” wound its felonious way through his childhood. In his earliest days he was “relieved of any real concept of truth. Truth was what you got away with.” All too familiar to him, then, are the frauds who have swaggered their way into the spotlight in today’s political pantomime.
‘A confidence trickster of genius’ … le Carré’s father, Ronald Cornwell. Photograph: Courtesy of John Le Carre
It seems to le Carré now entirely natural that escape from the toxic background of his childhood should have been entry into “severe institutions”. He was sent to his first boarding school at the age of five – “and I did five years straight of stir”. He went on to Sherborne school in Dorset, which he hated – in later years the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, David Spedding, told him that what he most admired him for was the fact that “you ran away from Sherborne while I stayed the course”. Spedding’s rueful warmth is in marked contrast to the recent attack on le Carré by another former head of MI6, Richard Dearlove, who last month at a literary festival in Cliveden – of all places – said the writer was “obsessed” with his brief time as a spy, which he had used as a basis for novels that reveal him to be “so corrosive in his view of MI6 that most SIS officers are pretty angry with him”.
For all his sufferings under the educational system of the day, boarding school was for le Carré “one route in the search for some sort of clarity about behaviour”. Then came “the glide into the secret world”: at Oxford he was approached by the security services and did some spying, and informing, on his fellow students of the left-leaning sort, something of which he does not repent. John le Carré, or better say David Cornwell, is at heart an old-fashioned, romantic English patriot. For all that, he is not deluded about the mores of the “secret world”. The security services fixed on their candidates “for being on the one hand larcenous” – a favourite word – “and on the other hand, however you call it, loyal”. This dichotomy raised “huge, many-faceted questions”, for instance what distinguishes patriotism, good, from nationalism, bad. That particular question “kicked around in me ever after. It remains unresolved.”
I mention a passage in Agent Running in the Field in which the protagonist Nat, short for Anatoly, a middle-aged, Russo-English secret agent, is watching on screen a surveillance operation being carried out in the streets of London, and is suddenly, and surprisingly, seized with admiration for his country and its people: “multi-ethnic kids playing improvised netball, girls in summer dresses basking in rays of the endless sun, old folk sauntering arm-in-arm ... ” The irony, as Nat cannot but be aware, is that about 100 of these innocent-seeming folk, including the friendly police officer who “strolls comfortably among them”, are in fact British agents busy about their clandestine work. Freedom is fragile, and must be protected by all available means, even the tainted ones.
Le Carré speaks of his grandchildren who are “all appalled by Brexit and the concept that freedom of movement is being taken from them, and so on. I say: ‘Look, actually, you have lived in many foreign cities, and you know that you will never get better conversation, a greater sophistication, more ease of social contact, than in London or in Britain altogether.’”
Mob orators of Boris Johnson's sort do not speak reason – your task is to fire up the people with nostalgia, with anger
I tell him that I lived in London for a year at the end of the 1960s and, coming from an Ireland that in those days was still firmly locked in the stranglehold of the Catholic church, I was endlessly surprised by the freedom of movement that was allowed to me, especially up and down the rungs of the infinitely graduated English class system. “Ah, yes,” he says, with a melancholy smile, “but you were not branded on the tongue.”
In Cornwall, where he and his wife, Jane, live for a good part of the year, “dealing with traders, and going to cafes and so on, I find that nobody knows, or cares, who I am”. This is, he feels, an example of “the absolute ease of association” there is in at least that part of England, where there is “a real sense of democracy”.
I agree with him, though perhaps not wholeheartedly – I am Irish, after all – on the British commitment to liberal values and the civilised life. But surely all that is now at risk, with the country so divided on Europe?
Damian Lewis in the 2016 film adaptation of Our Kind of Traitor. Photograph: Allstar/Studiocanal
“Yes it is, because in the first place reason has no natural voice. Mob orators of the sort we have, the Boris Johnson sort, do not speak reason. When you get into that category, your task is to fire up the people with nostalgia, with anger. It’s almost unbelievable that these people of the establishment – Farage, for instance – are speaking of betrayal: ‘I’m betrayed by parliament, betrayed by government – I’m speaking to you as a betrayed person, and I’m a man of the people like you.’”
He is profoundly worried by the present state of his country. Johnson and his svengali, Dominic Cummings, are running what le Carré recognises as a highly sophisticated propaganda campaign to convince the people that they are their true champions, arrayed with them against the power of parliament and the political elite. This, he says, is a breathtaking sleight of hand that could bring about serious civil disorder. “And absolutely the most terrifying thing that could happen is that the EU should cave in on some minor point regarding the backstop, Johnson blows the dust off May’s withdrawal agreement, adds his own spin, claims a great victory, gets it through a frightened parliament, and rules for eight years.”
Yet all is not bleakness and cause for ire. “I think everything is controllable if the social contract is restored. You cannot preach a level playing field in this country as long as you have such exclusive institutions as private education, private medicine, private everything.” There is also the pervasive and pernicious influence of what have come to be called social media – though how far they are truly “social” is moot. “People are shown so many treats, and urged as to what to buy and what to wear and where to travel to, all of which pumps up a spurious notion of the perfect life.”
How to combat these dangerous fantasies? “I believe we have to do the things that other countries do pretty painlessly. We have to have a wealth tax, we have to limit hugely the amount of inherited wealth anyone can receive. And none of these things has happened.”
But who would make them happen?
“Well, we have an extraordinary situation with our Labour party, if they do get in and they can shed Corbyn – I think Corbyn would quite like to go, actually – but they have this Leninist element and they have this huge appetite to level society. I’ve always believed, though ironically it’s not the way I’ve voted, that it’s compassionate conservatism that in the end could, for example, integrate the private schooling system. If you do it from the left you will seem to be acting out of resentment; do it from the right and it looks like good social organisation.”
I tentatively suggest that by this stage we might sound like two crusty old codgers being sentimental about an imaginary golden age. He ponders this for a while, then sets off on a tangential tack. “You could say that with the demise of the working class we saw also the demise of an established social order, based on the stability of ancient class structures. And then, the working class had the experience of war, but one can count the years when one by one people with war experience disappeared from politics and were replaced, in the main, by people with no idea of human conflict.” And he adds, with straight-faced understatement: “Human conflict has a sobering effect.”
To hear Brexiters claiming that Britain won the war single-handedly is, he says, “emetic”. “The wonderful rightwing military historian Max Hastings points out that we were bad fighters, that we were extremely badly organised, and our contribution in terms of blood and wealth and material was – I can’t say trivial, but tremendously small by comparison to the sacrifices of the other major powers. Russia lost, what, 30 million men? And in treasure, heaven knows what. We didn’t win the war in that sense. We were on the winning side by the end, but we were really quite minor players.”
His attitude to Brexit is pungently expressed in the new novel. “It is my considered opinion,” one of the characters declares to Nat, “that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none.”
You can’t say plainer than that, even if you have made yourself safe by putting the speech into the mouth of one of your invented creatures. Le Carré says squarely of Agent Running in the Field that “to me it’s quite an angry book”. But certainly it is more, and happily less, than a political rant.
Seen on screen … Rachel Weisz and Ralph Fiennes in the 2005 film adaptation of The Constant Gardener. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar
“I didn’t want it to be a Brexit novel. I wanted it to be readable and comic. I wanted people to get a good laugh out of it. But if one has the impertinence to propose a message, then the book’s message is that our concept of patriotism and nationalism – our concept of where to place our loyalties, collectively and individually – is now utterly mysterious. I think Brexit is totally irrational, that it’s evidence of dismal statesmanship on our part, and lousy diplomatic performances. Things that were wrong with Europe could be changed from inside Europe.” He pauses, then goes on, less in anger than in sadness. “I think my own ties to England were hugely loosened over the last few years. And it’s a kind of liberation, if a sad kind.”
It was in this spirit that he and wife, Jane, paid a visit recently to Ireland, Jane to delve again among her own roots in Ulster, and David to visit the house in West Cork where his paternal grandmother was raised. He consulted a local archivist for information on the family. “After spending silent minutes at her computer, she looked up with a charming smile and said: ‘Welcome home.’”
I suggest that Agent Running in the Field is affirmative of the small pleasures of life, which makes the book very enjoyable. Well, he is careful to remind me again, the voice that speaks in it is not that of John le Carré, and certainly not of David Cornwell, but of Nat, the narrator. “When you’re challenged about the behaviour of characters in your own novels,” he asks me, “do you feel obliged to defend their behaviour?” My answer is that I am no more responsible for them than I am responsible for the people in my dreams. This gets a nod of assent.
Besides Nat, the two other leading characters in the book, the gangly Ed and the beautiful Florence – I notice that the women in le Carré’s books become lovelier, and younger, the older the author gets – are essentially decent people. As such, surely they are something of an anomaly? In his reply he seems to agree. “If you’re putting together a secret service you’re looking for people who can charm, who can persuade, and who are not burdened with too much moral sense. People are naturally larcenous and sufficiently hypocritical to appear virtuous and loyal, so actually you are looking for people who are almost by definition capable of betraying you.” Hence by the end of the book the decent people in it have to be put away in a place of safety.
My dad for part of my childhood was in prison. So I arrived in the heartland of the establishment as a kind of spy
What of his own origins as a secret agent? “From the moment I went to boarding schools I was learning to be a gent” – nice little pun – “I had none of the attitudes of the ruling class to keep me going. I didn’t have a pony, that kind of thing. My dad for part of my childhood was in prison. So I arrived in the heartland of the establishment – private education – as a kind of spy, as somebody who had to put on the uniform, affect a voice and attitudes, and give myself a background I didn’t have. And so it was a forced assimilation and I became fascinated by the class I was pretending to be a member of. And it’s no surprise to me that although I loathed my public school I ended up teaching at Eton, and it’s no surprise to me now that I was so fascinated by the interior motor of British society, and that I was drawn to what I believe is the secret centre of our administration.”
Did being a spy give him a sense of belonging, of finally finding a workable identity for himself? “Looking really – in some Faustian sense, God help me – for what the world holds at its innermost point, was a way of asking, what are we? Who were we? Which is probably an extension of the question, who the hell am I? Where is virtue to be found? Where is the altar of Englishness? And I think that really was quite a severe internal journey, and a very interesting one, in retrospect: a lost boy in search of something or other.”
But when he was a member of the security services did he feel he was in touch with the real world, as distinct from the fantasised one in which the majority of us blithely live? “Please remember, I was a very junior figure in both MI5 and MI6. So much of what in my novels is assumed to be interior knowledge is really imagined stuff. But when I was allowed to attend operational meetings I heard what bigger animals than I were getting up to, and so by the time I got out of that world – with great relief – I had a really big treasure chest of imagined operations, which were based on glimpses of the reality. But I never did anything of the least value in that world.”
Le Carré on Hampstead Heath with his son Nicholas in 1979. Photograph: Monty Fresco/Daily Mail/REX/Shutterstock
The aftermath of the secret life contained moments of rich comedy. Yevgeny Primakov – former head of the KGB, “who was within a hair’s breadth of getting Putin’s job” – came to Britain for an official visit, at the end of which his one request was to meet le Carré.
“And so Jane and I found ourselves in the Russian embassy surrounded by Russians, with Primakov in front of me. He was an extremely intelligent man, quite a humanist, though at the age of 18 he was already working with the NKVD, later to become the KGB. He was charming and we had a wonderful time together, but I was so in above my pay rate that it was ridiculous. He imagined somehow that the author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was a colleague in sophistication. And that sometimes happens to me still. People insist that I know things that I have absolutely no knowledge of, and never did have.”
We speak about his later books, set among the super-rich, in nasty foreign wars, in battles with the international pharmaceutical industry. It is apparent that he is proud of this work, and of his support for the forces of decency, such as they are. This brings us back, inevitably, to the enigma that is his father. “I puzzle hugely about his motivation. You ask me what was fun for him. I think what was fun for him were the great confidence tricks he pulled off.”
Did this not make Ronnie an artist, of a kind?
“This is the thing that fascinates me, of course: am I simply the lucky version of him?”
If so, it is we, John le Carré’s readers, who are the lucky ones
• John le Carré’s Agent Running in the Field is published by Viking (£20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p on all online orders over £15.
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Second Life in virtual child sex scandal
Age Play, in which players request sex with others who dress up as child avatars, has encouraged a growth in players posing as children in order to make money
Kate Connolly in Berlin
Wed 9 May 2007 03.04 EDT
German prosecutors have launched an investigation to find anonymous participants of the online computer game Second Life, who are reportedly buying sex with other players posing as children, as well as offering child pornography for sale.
Second Life is an internet-based virtual world with at least 6 million players, where you can choose your appearance, age, gender and colour.
Investigators in the city of Halle are acting on specific information about a German Second Life player, or avatar, who put child pornography images up for sale and paid for sex with underage players or players posing as minors.
"We are trying to find out the identity of this person," Peter Vogt, chief prosecutor from the central office against child pornography told German television. " What is being offered is nothing short of child pornography."
Nick Schader, a reporter with the investigative television programme, Report Mainz and a member of Second Life, said he had been "shocked to see" the virtual child pornography meetings to which he was invited for 500 Linden dollars - around £1.50. He said the same group of people subsequently put him in touch with traders in real child pornography.
Robin Harper, the deputy president of the San Francisco firm Linden Lab which runs Second Life, said: "We will find out who is behind this, and then inform the police."
Whilst in the US "virtual" child pornography is not a crime, in Germany it is punishable by up to five years in prison.
Those under 18 are banned from the adult area of Second Life and adults are banned from the "Teen Area", but critics say in reality it is impossible to check the ages of participants. Some players dress up as child figures, but with no sexual motivation, purchasing "skins" to make them look like minors. But so-called "age play", in which players request sex with other players who dress up as child avatars, has encouraged a growth in players posing as children in order to make money. Sex with animals is also increasingly popular on the site.
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Home Infectious Diseases
I Volunteered for a Covid-19 Vaccine Trial—Here’s What I Learned
Amanda GardnerUpdated: Dec. 11, 2020
A family physician enrolled in a Covid-19 vaccine trial desperate to find a treatment for her patients. Here's what her experience was like.
Courtesy Ochsner Health
Tens of thousands of people around the world are receiving experimental Covid-19 vaccines as part of clinical trials. Victoria Smith, MD, a family practice physician at Ochsner Health in Kenner, Louisiana, is one of them. Ochsner Health is one of 120 trial sites worldwide, and they’re enrolling between 250 and 300 participants to test a vaccine called BNT162b2, developed by Pfizer and BioNTech SE. A smaller trial, published August 12 in Nature, found that BNT162b2 was safe and produced antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. Now it’s on to the next step: Finding out if it actually works. “A vaccine is probably the best prevention we will have for Covid-19,” says Julia Garcia-Diaz, MD, principal investigator for the Ochsner segment of the trial and Ochsner’s director of clinical infectious diseases research in New Orleans. “Everything is moving very, very fast.”
Dr. Smith spoke to us just one day before receiving her second injection of either the vaccine or a placebo. Neither she nor any other participants nor the investigators know who received the real thing and who received the placebo.
How do I keep my family and patients safe?
When all this started, there was so much confusion. At Ochsner, we immediately changed many of our visits from being physical visits to virtual visits and we were fortunate to have personal protective equipment. I’m also the mother of two sons. One was in his senior year of college in Miami and he came home because we didn’t know what was going on. Another son was starting college and he came home as well. I was asking myself, “How do I keep myself safe and take care of patients and keep my family safe?” We were social distancing and wearing masks. That was sometimes a challenge with my children because they’re 18 and 22 and they wanted to see their friends. I said, “Okay, you can see your friends but can you wear a mask? Can you maintain social distancing?”
My son got sick
My 18-year-old son contracted Covid-19 about a month ago. He had a very mild case with just a loss of taste and smell. We quarantined him in the house. I did not hug him or kiss him for the 10 days of his quarantine. It was hair raising because somebody was actually positive in my home and before he developed Covid-19 symptoms, I had normal contact with him. I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, do I have it?” At some point, I did develop some fatigue and chills and body aches and I was tested and it turned out to be negative.
Many of my patients are elderly and I have had some patients who have been hospitalized for Covid-19. Unfortunately, I’ve had three patients that I know of who passed from Covid-19 and I have many patients who are African American or Latino who have been disproportionately affected. I had one patient who lost her mother, husband, and brother to Covid-19 and patients who have lost multiple friends.
A vaccine trial opportunity
There had been talk about Ochsner being part of a Pfizer vaccine trial and I happened to be in an elevator with someone who was working on the trial. I said, “I would love to be part of the trial when we start it.” On July 29, I found out that Ochsner had been approved as a trial site for Pfizer. I enrolled in the trial on July 30. My son’s illness with Covid-19 played some role in my decision. A greater motivation was the devastation and suffering caused by Covid that I was seeing as a physician and my knowledge that the only real end to the pandemic would be the development and widespread distribution of a vaccine. I really wanted to be part of the solution to this problem—to be part of that effort. At some point in history, people had to go through clinical trials for the flu vaccine and I said, “Okay I want to be part of history.”
I had to go through a pretty long informed consent process. There was also a thorough review of my medical records. I got my first of two injections about three weeks ago, the same day I signed the informed consent. [The trial involves two vaccine shots given three weeks apart.] The whole process took about three hours. Then, for safety purposes, I was monitored for 30 minutes after receiving the vaccine to make sure I didn’t have an allergic reaction to the vaccine (or to the placebo—I could have got either one).
There’s still a ways to go
I will have six to seven visits over the two years of the study. The one thing that surprised me was learning that the trial would go for 24 to 26 months. That should not have shocked me as a vaccine trial is not only about whether it’s effective, but also how long it’s effective. After my second injection tomorrow, I have to monitor my temperature for any side effects of the vaccine for seven days. At any point during the trial, if I were to develop possible Covid-19 symptoms, I need to let the team know. I have my own Covid-19 swabbing test at home that I would need to do and bring in. I will be asked to complete a Covid-19 illness diary weekly or at any time that I have Covid-19 symptoms.
I still have to take the precautions I normally would: wear a mask, no Covid-19 parties. I’ll also get tested for antibodies. I’m still in the office most days of the week. One patient came in with symptoms she thought were allergies, but I thought she needed a test. I put on my full protective gear and went back in and did a swab and she was positive.
Did I get the real thing?
I don’t know if I got the vaccine or a placebo. But I think I did receive the actual vaccine because I had some soreness that day. I also felt a little flu-y. That made me feel great that maybe I’d gotten some early protection. I’m just glad to be part of the trial and advancing toward a vaccine by the end of the year. There’s still so much to be studied about Covid-19.
—As told to Amanda Gardner
Westend61/Getty Images
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Wavebreakmedia/Getty Images
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11 Signs You Had Covid-19
Victoria Smith, MD, family practice physician, Ochsner Health, Kenner, Louisiana
Pfizer Inc: "Pfizer and BioNTech Dose First Participants in the U.S. as Part of Global COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Development Program"
Nature: "Phase 1/2 study of COVID-19 RNA vaccine BNT162b1 in adults"
Julia Garcia-Diaz, MD, director of clinical infectious diseases research, Ochsner Health, New Orleans
Amanda Gardner is a freelance health reporter whose stories have appeared in cnn.com, health.com, cnn.com, WebMD, HealthDay, Self Magazine, the New York Daily News, Teachers & Writers Magazine, the Foreign Service Journal, AmeriQuests (Vanderbilt University) and others. In 2009, she served as writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. She is also a community artist and recipient or partner in five National Endowment for the Arts grants.
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Truth of China
Falungong
Revealing History
Investigation & Report
CCP Crimes
Coronavirus HK investigation Investigation & Report Organ harvesting Revealing History Transitional Justice
Upholds the dignity and supports justice
Survivors and victims on shocking state-sanctioned organ harvesting in China
Having hepatitis C may very well have saved Jennifer Zeng’s life.
In February 2000, she was arrested for being a Falun Gong practitioner and interrogated intensely about her medical history at a Labor Camp in China’s Da Xing County, she said. Zeng’s blood was drawn and she told them she had hepatitis C before she took up the spiritual practice.
“Twelve days later, my (cellmate) died as a result of forced feeding,” Zeng told Fox News. “Having hepatitis C might have unqualified me as an organ donor.”
It’s the stuff of nightmares. And it has been buried from public view, hard to prove, and shrouded beneath the cloak of silence for almost two decades.
But anecdotes and evidence are slowly bubbling to the surface that the organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prisons and labor camps are unwillingly harvested. Most affected is a spiritual minority, the Falun Gong, who have been persecuted for adhering to a Buddhist-centric religious philosophy grounded in meditation and compassion.
Footage pertaining to alleged illegal organ harvesting in China (Yu Ming )
After 12 months of independent assessment of all available evidence, the seven-person China Tribunal panel – which was initiated by the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC), an international human rights charity – delivered its final findings in June. The tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC who led the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic in the International Criminal Trial for the former Yugoslavia, stated with “certainty” that “in China, forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience has been practiced for a substantial period of time.”
“Forced organ harvesting has been committed for years, and Falun Gong practitioners have been one – and probably the main – source of organ supply,” the report concluded, pointing to the growing transplant industry already worth more than $1 billion.
WHAT CHINESE SPIES WANT FROM AMERICANS
The report underscored that there were “extraordinarily short waiting times for organs to be available for transplantation,” and numerous websites advertised hearts, lungs, and kidneys for sale – suggesting an on-demand industry. The Tribunal concluded that the commission of Crimes Against Humanity against Falun Gong and Uighurs had been committed.
Witness testimonies provided to the tribunal, and interviewed by Fox News, paint the picture of an unfathomably callous trade often performed when the victims are still alive.
Orang transplantation in China has been condemned as a criminal practice (Courtesy Yu Ming )
Han Yu was kidnapped on July 20, 2015, and detained for 37 days in Beijing’s Haidian District Detention Center.
In May 2004 – three months after her father disappeared into a detention center – Han Yu received a call that her father, a Falun Gong practitioner, was dead. But it wasn’t until almost a month later that the family was allowed to view the body at Liangxiang District Xiao Zhuang village morgue, with dozens of authorities surveilling their every move.
“I saw obvious injuries on his face, even after the makeup, the severe bruise below his left eye stood out. There was a trace of stitches starting from the throat down to where his clothes covered,” Yu recalled. “I tried to unbutton the clothes, the police saw and quickly dragged me out. Later another family member went in and continued to unbutton and found stitches that went all the way to the stomach.”
She suspects her father was a victim of organ harvesting. The family was not given an autopsy, Hu stressed, and the body was hurriedly cremated.
Jennifer Zeng (Samira Bouaou)
“We were not even allowed to cry when he was buried,” Hu continued, reflecting on the throngs of authorities that trailed their every move and prohibited any photographs from being taken. “After I heard about organ harvesting, I couldn’t imagine what had happened to my father before his death. It happened, and it is happening.”
Jiang Li also believes her father, Jiang Xiqing – also of the Falun Gong faith – was a victim to the harrowing practice. He was arrested on May 2008 and sent to a forced labor camp. On the afternoon of January 27, 2009, she and three other family members went to visit him.
“His mental and physical health was normal. Then at 3.40 p.m. the next day, the labor camp called my brother and said he had died and immediately hung up,” she said. “Seven of my family members arrived at the mortuary house at 10.30 p.m. with the guidance of police officers. They read out the regulations – we could see the body for only five minutes, no cameras or communication devices, and we could only go to the freezer room to see Jiang’s head and not his whole body.”
Jiang Li also believes her father, Jiang Xiqing – also of the Falun Gong faith – was a victim to the harrowing practice. (China Tribunal)
But when her older sister touched his face, she screamed that his philtrum was still warm, and his upper teeth were biting his lower lip. He was alive.
“We pulled out my father’s body halfway. We touched his chest, and it was warm. He was wearing a down jacket. My older sister prepared to perform CPR,” Li continued. “But were each forcibly dragged out of the freezer by four people. Uniformed and plainclothes officers pushed my father’s body into the freezer. They demanded that we quickly sign for cremation and pay the fees.”
The family has since attempted to seek some sense of justice – their lawyers ended up behind bars, and their family home was raided. In 2010, Li said she was terminated from her job without explanation and detained.
Survivors routinely point to the frequent physical screenings, ultrasounds, and X-rays as further corroboration that victims are being monitored to determine whose organs are healthy enough for transplantation purposes, as most are pushed to the brink in allegedly tortuous interrogation sessions.
Moreover, the China Organ Harvest Research Center (COHRC), which also testified before the China Tribunal, published its own incriminating report in July after years of underground research and analysis, deducing that the “on-demand killing of prisoners of conscience is driven by the state, run on an industrial scale and carried out by both military and civilian institutions.”
Falun Gong advocates demonstrate across from the U.N. in September (Adam Shaw/ Fox News)
China boasts that it sustains the largest voluntary organ donation system in Asia, but experts contend that the country does not have a history of willful organ donation and the official figures – 10,000 transplants each year – “understates the real volume,” which researchers pledge is likely upward of 60,000-100,000 annually.
According to the COHRC, there are mountains of money to be made. Data from 2007 shows that hospitals charged more than $65,000 for a kidney transplant, $130,000 for liver, and more than $150,000 for lung or heart. Desperate patients might make a high-price “donation” for a new organ at top-speed.
The practice is alleged to have started in the 90s on a small-scale, but kicked into high gear around 2000 and focused on the Falun Gong. It was initially characterized as targeting the forcible removing of organs of prisoners on death row.
“China later claimed that death row prisoners consented to donate their organs to the State to redeem themselves for the crimes they had committed against the State, a practice China claimed to have stopped in January 2015. However, the explosion of organ transplant activities in China from 2000, together with reports of thousands of transplant tourists going to China to purchase organs, suggests a larger supply of organs than could be sourced from executed criminals alone,” the Tribunal states. “The scale of the Chinese transplant industry, together with other evidence, points to the possibility that China is involved in forced organ harvesting and selling for profit organs from prisoners of conscience.”
(Provided Yu Ming )
The Tribunal affirmed that it “has had no evidence that the significant infrastructure associated with China’s transplantation industry has been dismantled and absent a satisfactory explanation as to the source of readily available organs concludes that forced organ harvesting continues till today.”
Grace Yin, a leading researcher at the COHRC, also asserted that by admitting to less severe abuse and proclaiming it was only happening to those awaiting capital punishment, the government was purporting to “divert attention away from the more severe issue.”
“The root issue still goes back to the Communist Party’s persecution of faith groups and its animosity toward groups that it perceives as threats to its ideological control,” she said.
Olivia Enos, a senior policy analyst and Asian studies expert at The Heritage Foundation, concurred that organ harvesting has long been a largely overlooked aspect of human rights abuses and has been predominantly reported by the Falun Gong.
“In recent months, however, as the crisis in Xinjiang gathered steam, new reports have emerged that Uighurs may be having their organs harvested,” she observed.
US SPEAKS UP FOR MINORITY MUSLIM UIGHURS IN CHINA – WHILE ISLAMIC COUNTRIES STAY MOSTLY SILENT
Xinjiang, also referred to by some as East Turkistan, has made headlines with the revelations that upwards on one million belonging to the Muslim minority have been carted off into concentration camps. Chinese leaders have categorically denied misconduct, insisting that Uighurs are in “re-education camps” and doubled-down that the government respects religious rights. Four Uighurs testified before the China Tribunal that they had been organ scanned whilst in detention.
Salih Hudayar, ambassador to the U.S. for the East Turkistan Government in Exile and a leader in the beleaguered Uighur community, told Fox News that the Chinese government claims that “written consent is required for all organ transplants,” but in reality it is hardly likely there was any such consent, and if there was it would have been “extracted through torture.”
Salih Hudayar – political affairs officer for the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement, a Washington-based human rights groups devoted to the independence of the region – argued many countries are staying silent over fears of jeopardizing investments. (Supplied Salih Hudayar)
“Voice prints and retina scans were collected in 2016-2017 in East Turkistan, and some of us fear that they might be used for organ matching,” Hudayar continued. “We fear that today, the Chinese Communist Party may be harvesting the organs of not just Falun Gong practitioners, but also Uighurs, Tibetan Buddhists, Chinese Christians and other prisoners of conscience.”
But some political leaders are pushing for the U.S. to take a stronger stance in investigating the horrific allegation.
“It is just so bizarre it was hard to believe. That (governments) can defile a human being like that,” Shawn Steel, California’s Republican National (RNC) Committeeman, told Fox News. “Medical tourism is big business; if you are wealthy, you can get the organ you need in a couple of weeks. Thousands are being sacrificed every year, and it is not being discussed.”
Shawn Steel, California’s Republican National Committee (RNC) chairman (Steel (provided))
Earlier this year, Steel introduced a resolution to the RNC condemning Beijing’s practice of involuntary organ harvesting from inmates, which was unanimously adopted at the quarterly conference in August. It marked the first explicit charge from a prominent U.S political party on the matter.
Representatives for the Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment, but the government has previously denied any accusations of illicit organ harvesting or mistreatment of prisoners.
And many assert the practice is still happening.
Yu Ming, 47, another member of Falun Gong and newly arrived in the United States, claimed that he was “kidnapped” multiple times by law enforcement, the most recent time in August 2013, and locked up in the Shenyang Detention Center where he was allegedly beaten into oblivion.
Yu Ming (Samira Bouaou)
As time when on, his friends disappeared. The family of one Falun Gong companion, Gao Yixi, recalled seeing “his eyes opened wide, his stomach deflated and no organs inside.”
He secretly recorded footage of undercover interviews at major military hospitals in mainland China over the past couple of years, he said, and has turned it over to the Tribunal as evidence for unlawful organ transplants.
original post link: https://www.foxnews.com/world/organ-harvesting-china-survivors-victims
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Akyüz Nakliyat on CCP Crimes And Global Response: Chinese Communist Party’s Crimes Against Humanity
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Home Science Scientists Find Fossils Of ‘Man’s Earliest Ancestors’ In England
Scientists Find Fossils Of ‘Man’s Earliest Ancestors’ In England
James M. Patterson
Scientists Find Fossils Of 'Man's Earliest Ancestors' In England
Fossil of ‘our earliest ancestors’ found in Dorset.
The two teeth are from small, rat-like creatures that lived 145 million years ago in the shadow of the dinosaurs. They are the earliest undisputed fossils of mammals belonging to the line that led to human beings.
They are also the ancestors to most mammals alive today, including creatures as diverse as the Blue Whale and the Pigmy Shrew. The findings are published today in the Journal, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, in a paper by Dr Steve Sweetman, Research Fellow at the University of Portsmouth, and co-authors from the same university.
Dr Sweetman, whose primary research interest concerns all the small vertebrates that lived with the dinosaurs, identified the teeth but it was University of Portsmouth undergraduate student, Grant Smith who made the discovery.
Dr Sweetman said: “Grant was sifting through small samples of earliest Cretaceous rocks collected on the coast of Dorset as part of his undergraduate dissertation project in the hope of finding some interesting remains. Quite unexpectedly he found not one but two quite remarkable teeth of a type never before seen from rocks of this age. I was asked to look at them and give an opinion and even at first glance my jaw dropped!”
“The teeth are of a type so highly evolved that I realised straight away I was looking at remains of Early Cretaceous mammals that more closely resembled those that lived during the latest Cretaceous – some 60 million years later in geological history. In the world of palaeontology there has been a lot of debate around a specimen found in China, which is approximately 160 million years old. This was originally said to be of the same type as ours but recent studies have ruled this out. That being the case, our 145 million year old teeth are undoubtedly the earliest yet known from the line of mammals that lead to our own species.”
Dr Sweetman believes the mammals were small, furry creatures and most likely nocturnal. One, a possible burrower, probably ate insects and the larger may have eaten plants as well. He said: “The teeth are of a highly advanced type that can pierce, cut and crush food. They are also very worn which suggests the animals to which they belonged lived to a good age for their species. No mean feat when you’re sharing your habitat with predatory dinosaurs!”
The teeth were recovered from rocks exposed in cliffs near Swanage which has given up thousands of iconic fossils. Grant, now reading for his Master’s degree at The University of Portsmouth, said that he knew he was looking at something mammalian but didn’t realise he had discovered something quite so special. His supervisor, Dave Martill, Professor of Palaeobiology, confirmed that they were mammalian, but suggested Dr Sweetman, a mammal expert should see them.
Professor Martill said: “We looked at them with a microscope but despite over 30 years’ experience these teeth looked very different and we decided we needed to bring in a third pair of eyes and more expertise in the field in the form of our colleague, Dr Sweetman.
“Steve made the connection immediately, but what I’m most pleased about is that a student who is a complete beginner was able to make a remarkable scientific discovery in palaeontology and see his discovery and his name published in a scientific paper. The Jurassic Coast is always unveiling fresh secrets and I’d like to think that similar discoveries will continue to be made right on our doorstep.”
One of the new species has been named Durlstotherium newmani, christened after Charlie Newman, the landlord of the Square and Compass pub in Worth Matravers, close to where the fossils were discovered.
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Quibi Launches With Original Content for Phones
By Michael Balderston 06 April 2020
Quibi content comes in 10 minute episodes released daily
(Image credit: Quibi)
LOS ANGELES—Quibi has officially entered the streaming wars with its launch on Monday, April 6, in the U.S. and Canada.
Quibi, which was founded by Jeffrey Katzenberg, is an entertainment platform designed specifically for the phone. It features original content that are all 10 minutes or less, with more than 25 new episodes of content released every weekday, or seven days a week for news, sports and weather content, per Quibi.
The new platform touts its lineup of original programming featuring major Hollywood talent. Among the content available at launch is “Survive” starring “Game of Thrones” alum Sophie Turner; “Most Dangerous Game” with Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz; “Punk’d” with Chance the Rapper; “Thanks a Million” from Jennifer Lopez; “Chrissy’s Court” starring Chrissy Teigen; as well as other programs like “Murder House Flip,” “Around the World by BBC News” and “The Replay by ESPN.”
Quibi plans to release 175 original shows and 8,500 “quick bites” of content in its first year. It still has some big names to come, including Steve Spielberg, Will Smith, Bill Murray, Anna Kendrick, Laura Dern and more.
On the tech side of Quibi’s offering is what it calls Turnstyle technology. The patented technology allows viewers to move seamlessly between full-screen portrait and full-screen landscape without any delay.
TV Technology sister publication B&C sat down with Katzenberg ahead of Quibi’s launch to discuss the new platform.
Quibi, which can be downloaded either through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, will be available for a 90-day free trial if you sign up before the end of April. After the free trial, Quibi costs $4.99 with ads and $7.99 without ads.
Quibi joins an ever increasing content landscape with stalwarts like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, new entrants like Disney+—which has had quick success—and Apple TV+, and other upcoming platforms like NBCUniversal’s Peacock and HBO Max.
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Introducing Montenegro: Fortresses
By Slavica Trifunović, 26 Mar 2018, 21:08 PM Travel
Slavica Trifunović
Today we take a look at the San Giovani fortress in the Old Town of Kotor.
The “protector” of the Old Town of Kotor, the hill of St. John (San Giovanni) which is located about 260 meters above sea level, got its name from the church located at the very top of the fortress that was dedicated to St. John the Baptist and served the needs of the army that guarded the city walls.
The fortification complex of San Giovani was built gradually through many centuries. The beginning of the construction of the city walls is associated with the Roman Emperor Justinian in the 6th century. Taking the 1,350 stairs to the top, besides the incredible view of Boka Bay, will lead you through the town's rich history.
The Church of Our Lady of Health, which is located halfway to the fortress, was built by the locals at the beginning of 15th century, honoring the Holy Mother in acknowledgement of the rescue the town from the epidemic of the plague. The icon of Our Lady of Health was placed here, which became famous for saving those from death in Medieval Italy.
The fortification complex of the fort and the ramparts consist of two parts. One is made up of walls that surround the old urban core, with five bastions and three gates into the city. The other ramparts climb the eastern and southern sides of the hill, meeting the fortress at the top. The ramparts that could appear dilapidated in parts are actually remarkably well preserved.
Being one of the most recognizable tourist attractions in the “capital” of tourism in Montenegro, the Old Town of Kotor has been in discussion with local municipalities to invest in a cableway elevator that would take tourists directly to the top. Nothing concrete has been done to date. According to the Tourist Organization of Kotor, there are around 40.000 people who visit San Giovani each year - and it is actually the first place you would suggest to tourists visiting Kotor.
Our Lady of Health - A Cult Respected in Boka Since The Middle Ages
National Geographic Includes Montenegro in Best of the World in 2021
Episode of Series The Nomad Being Filmed in Montenegro
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Opinion: Origin is killing everything around it
Rugby League World 28/05/2014
This article, written by Steve Mascord, originally appeared in issue 398 of Rugby League World magazine. Issue 399 is currently in production and will be on sale from June 6. Click here to find out more about the magazine and to browse back issues click this link…
Representative Rugby League in Australia outside of State of Origin is at the lowest ebb in years right now.
Withdrawals from the City-Country game in Dubbo, central New South Wales, reached double figures. One of these players, Canterbury and Country’s Michael Ennis, reportedly said he just did not want to play.
In the NSW-Queensland under-20s game, Blues halfback Luke Brooks and winger Alex Johnston also withdrew uninjured. While their respective clubs – Wests Tigers and South Sydney – took the wrap, Rugby League World understands the players themselves just weren’t interested in the fixture.
One man who was interested in the Under 20s game was Canberra’s Anthony Milford. He chose to play in it IN PREFERENCE to a full international for Samoa against Fiji later that night at the same venue!
We all know that Origin has been killing everything around it for years. But I think it’s fair to say this year’s events illustrate we have reached a flashpoint. NRL players are paid truckloads of cash and they are not willing to put that at risk anymore for matches which date back to the part-time and even amateur eras.
How to react is the big question for all of us.
I am now absolutely convinced that State of Origin and international Rugby League should be completely separated from an eligibility point of view.
The Origin selection rules have been tightened so that it interstate football is closed to those who did not live in NSW or Queensland before the age of 13.
Origin will not become red versus blue. It will not be devalued. Its ‘magic’ is not under threat.
The rules for international sport are not as strict. The number of NRL players who would qualify for either of the states and a country other than Australia would run into the triple figures. Origin should no longer tie players to Australia.
Secondly, we need an international window for all countries, including England, around Origin time. Keep Australia off the international scene mid-year. Let them play amongst themselves. It would be wonderful if, 10 days before Origin I, we had every national team imaginable going into camp and playing games.
Australian terrestrial TV contracts are the main obstacle to this utopian scenario. Obviously, some players would then be forced to choose between state and country… but a relatively small number.
← Comment: It’s easy to see why the Bulls are struggling
Did Greg Inglis score the best Rugby League try of all time? →
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Acknowledging Disorientation after COVID-19: Beyond Horizons of Fear and Doubt
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 4 May 2020
Richard Falk | Global Justice in the 21st Century – TRANSCEND Media Service
3 May 2020 – More than earlier crises of my lifetime, including the Great Depression, World War II, 9/11, the COVID-19 pandemic illuminates as never before, how precarious and uncertain is the future wellbeing, and possibly survival, of the human species. The concreteness, immediacy, and haunting uncertainties of the pandemic is quite terrifying on its own, but its heuristic pedagogy seems applicable to a range of potentially catastrophic threats of global scope, most obviously climate change, biodiversity, nuclear weaponry. What we should now be able to realize even while asleep is that when the under-preparedness of governance and political leadership is based on ignoring a scientific consensus is combined with radical uncertainty and myopic nationalism the stage is set for planetary and species disaster, and not only personal grief and national emergency. These signature traits of the 21st century heighten our fears and feelings of utter helplessness that gives way to a dizzying disorientation of beliefs and expectations, a fertile breeding ground for political extremism, scapegoating, and the darkest flights of fancy.
As much as the horrifying spectacle of hospitals without beds for critically ill patients and too many dead bodies to find room in city morgues or funeral homes is this sense that the lethality of COVID-19 could have been significantly mitigated if political leaders of important countries had heeded two types of advance warnings from reliable sources. There was a foreboding prediction during the past five years by epidemiologists and other health experts that conditions existed around the world that made a viral pandemic a near certainty in coming years. It was just a matter of time. For governments of affluent countries to ignore such warnings from respected experts, and in a few cases even reduce the funding of their national health systems in recent years, as the U.S. and UK are reported to have done, should be regarded as a Crime Against Humanity, malign behavior worse than gross negligence or administrative incompetence.
In addition, there were a series of authoritative disclosures of the actual COVID-19 outbreak weeks before many governments undertook suitable preparations with regard to testing kits, masks, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Instead of rational and prudent preparations, the views of qualified experts either never reached the ears of leaders and their advisors or were thrown by leaders into the nearest waste basket as alarmist rubbish, at best distractions from the only real job of peacetime government—promoting markets and pro-rich growth. Politicians like Trump, Bolsonaro, Modi, Johnson, and others did even worse, actively denying, denigrating, and dismissing concerns until the spread of the disease became undeniable with several national health systems in leading countries reacting in emergency modes on the brink of been overwhelmed. If prudent and rational, this grave peril would never have happened, especially in countries with adequate health infrastructures.
The most elementary lesson from the pandemic so far is that adoption of the Precautionary Principle should become mandatory for organs of government and political officials at every level of social organization from the municipality to the UN, and especially at the level of governments of sovereign states. The wellbeing, security, and defense of national populations is widely assumed to be the prime duty of political leaders in a still state-centric system of world order. Such vigilance by leaders should be treated as more important than living up to the oath of office, and the failure to do so regarded as a flagrant violation of public trust, warranting a punitive removal from office. Basically, the Precautionary Principle decrees that expert warnings about impending public dangers should shape governance policies, even when available evidence does not produce conclusive results as to the extent and imminence of the risk. The precautionary approach insists on paying the costs of anticipatory prudence as over against reliance on reactive crisis management, especially under circumstances that pose substantial risks of severe future harm. The Precautionary Principle, informally long practiced and advocated with respect to health, was first internationally articulated and proposed with respect to expert warning about potentially catastrophic future environmental damage if corrective steps are not taken. The recent focus of precautionary thought and advocacy has been seeking that proper account be taken of the dire warnings derived from global warning projections. An influential formulation of the Precautionary Principle is set forth in Principle 15 of the Final Declaration of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992: “In order to protect the environment, the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
The concreteness of COVID-19 disease, as immediate, life-threatening, personal, planetary, and undeniable contrasts with other threats that are presently less visible, often more distant, and not as vividly or convincingly intruding on the security of everyday life. Yet the pattern is the same: prudent anticipation is cheaper, safer, more effective, and humane than are reactive measures, especially in view of the disproportionate vulnerability of marginalized ethnic minorities, prisons and retirement homes, and impoverished communities and crowded urban settings. In this sense, a difficult part of the post-pandemic challenge is not only to renovate the health system so as to be adequately prepared, but to transfer this elementary knowledge about dealing with global health threats to other policy domains while acknowledging the diversity of risks and distinctive types of likely harm. An existing scientific consensus projects with reasonable assurance the high probability of increasingly more dangerous levels of future global warming and of diminishing biodiversity if the dissemination of greenhouse gasses is not drastically reduced. Society lacks comparable capabilities to make such high confidence predictions with respect to the advent of nuclear war or the danger of a large meteor striking the earth. In other words, fidelity to the Precautionary Principle depends on intelligent calibration to particularities of risk that pertain to each issue of concern, but with a similar resolve to apply prudently the anticipatory knowledge available.
In this fundamental sense, what is true for COVID-19 is also true for climate change and biodiversity and likely even more so. Current levels of information suggest that even a dysfunctional delayed response will in due course contain the pandemic although with a needlessly large number of fatalities, as well as high degrees of economic and social dislocation. Yet despite the massive scale of disruption, a pandemic is expected to subside, although accompanied by some new risks of recurrence, permitting at least a prudently regulated return to normalcy. In contrast, once global warming crosses unknowable thresholds or biodiversity declines beyond a certain point, there may be no turning back, the ecological balance could become beyond the reach of alteration by human action or could only be achieved by very austere or expensive downward adjustments in standards of living and life style. This would incur much human suffering and political unrest along the way, especially if the adjustment process favors the rich and powerful, and victimizes the poor and vulnerable, which seems inevitable at this point given the way policy is formed and life circumstances structured.
The second obvious ‘teaching moment’ that has emerged during the health crisis is the globality of the challenge as contrasted with the statist fragmentation of the divisive response structures. Imposing geopolitically motivated sanctions on a state that weakens its societal capability to contain the spread and treatment of the virus virtually ensures that contagion will cross borders in greater numbers, and give rise to prolonging the pandemic and increasing the number of infections elsewhere, including quite possibly in the sanctioning countries. The sanctions currently weakening the coping capabilities of such countries such as Iran and Venezuela create a lose/lose series of antagonistic relationships between the targeted states and the rest of the world, and should be also considered as ‘geopolitical crimes’ or Crimes Against Humanity rather than as discretionary aspects of normal diplomacy. As well, maintaining such sanctions during the pandemic works against operationalizing the insight of global solidarity—‘we are all in this together’—rather than thinking of a riven world in neo-fascist terms of ‘friends and enemies.’
The Trump presidency, oblivious to the pragmatic argument of mutuality against maintaining sanctions during the COVIS pandemic is even more tone deaf when it comes to humanitarian normative arguments based on law and morality resting on the unacceptability and unlawfulness of international uses of force that have a primary impact on civilian populations. It is helpful to recall the notorious remark of Madeleine Albright, then U.S. Secretary of State, when asked by Leslie Stahl in the course of a ’60 Minutes’ interview whether an estimated 500,000 deaths of children attributed to the punitive sanctions imposed on Iraq after the First Gulf War five years earlier in 1991 were worth such a high human cost of innocent young live. Stahl’s question to Albright, “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” And Albright’s memorable response: “I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” Although Albright later expressed remorse about her own phraseology, suggesting that she should have put the blame on Iraq’s leader Saddam Hussein for withholding food from civilians rather than admitting that the deaths resulted from the sanctions. Actually, her spontaneous response was more truthful than her later attempt to shift blame for their inhumane impacts. Why would sanctions be maintained if not felt to be worthwhile from a geopolitical perspective? Beyond this, evidence shows that the Iraqi government behaved responsibly, establishing a food rationing arrangement that made every effort to protect Iraqi civilians from starvation. Trump, and his lead foreign policy spokesperson, Mike Pompeo seem to go further than Albright’s insensitive remark, by intensifying sanctions during the pandemic, grotesquely seeking to exploit the added vulnerability of these targeted societies while meeting the demands of the health crisis.
Trump defies globality in a further scandalous manner by blaming China for the COVID-19 outbreak, again opting for antagonistic tensions rather than affirming human solidarity and mutually beneficial cooperation. Trump also chose the time of this pandemic to defame and defund the WHO because of its supposed complicity with China’s failure to disclose sooner the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan. There is no reasonable evidence supporting such inflammatory charges against China or the WHO, and even if the allegations were to some extent accurate, it would not justify antagonizing China or weakening the WHO capabilities at a time when it is playing a crucial role in providing information and guidance to the many countries in the global South that do not have sufficient national health capabilities to depend on national or even regional capabilities. It should be beyond argument that a pandemic threat of this magnitude and lethality needs to be addressed by counseling maximum cooperation among states and through bolstering the resources and capabilities of global coordinating mechanisms. Instead of defaming and defunding the WHO at this time, the responsible approach would be to express gratitude for its existence by pledges of greater funding support. To repeat, such a litany that is true for COVID-19 is as true or truer for other serious present and impending problems of global scope and potentially severe magnitude. The so-called retreat from globalization that partly results from some negative structural consequences of neoliberalism, which has given rise to resurgent nationalisms, seems understandable with respect to the relation of states to the world economy. Nevertheless, it is a disaster if this enhanced statism is extended, as seems to be the case, to ecological and ethical contexts that give substance to nationalist standpoints. Interconnectedness and widely diverse material circumstances are manageable under contemporary conditions only if the behavior of sovereign states accord far greater weight than now to policy coordination and collaboration by way of internationalism, as well as exhibit concrete appreciation of the practical and principled benefits of honoring the imperatives of empathy, hospitality, and human solidarity.
Decades ago, the American poet, Robert Frost, put his prophetic gift to work on what has now become a planetary truism for those who ponder the future of the human experience. In a poem, ‘One Step Backward Taken’ these words of Frost shine:
“I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.”
Although I was conscious of the degree to which modern history featured a series of surprises that eluded experts, I was nevertheless surprised by the ferocity and rapid planetization of the Coronavirus assault on human health, and lifechanging, and likely permanent, ramifications for economic and social normalcy. It was not only a revelation of the precariousness of our individual and collective existence, but a stark reminder of the relevance of a sphere of life not previously given the societal and global attention and resources that were warranted. One question that will not be answered for some years is whether the aftermath of the pandemic will generate ‘a new world order,’ and if so, will it be an improvement on what existed before COVID-19. From past experiences, there is little reason to be hopeful unless a revolutionary movement below unexpectedly, effectively, and creatively challenges the established order.
The rhetoric of new world order was initially fashionable as a call for global reform at the dawn of the post-colonial age with its calls in the 1970s for ‘a new international economic order’ and ‘a new international information order,’ emanating from expectations that fairness was attainable if sufficient pressure from what was then known as ‘the Third World’ was mounted. These hopes were crushed by the political and economic forces aligned with capitalist geopolitics in the North dominating the existing world order at the time.
Almost twenty years later came George H. W. Bush’s mobilization of a response to Iraq’s conquest, occupation, and annexation of Kuwait in 1990 by suggesting that ‘a new world order’ was in the making by which he meant that the UN could function to prevent ‘aggression’ in the post-Cold War atmosphere as was originally intended when the UN was established in 1945. After Kuwaiti sovereignty was restored in the First Gulf War, the U.S. Government rushed to shrink expectations about a UN-centric world security system, fearing the responsibilities of being designated as the global peacekeeper. In the words of a leading Washington official at the time this idea of a new world order reliant on the UN ‘was put back on the shelf,’ that is, it was an idea that had served its purpose with respect to Kuwait but should not be counted upon to provide guidance for the future, especially tying American foreign policy and geopolitical discretion to a prior UN authorizations. In an unpublicized talk at Princeton James Baker, the influential U.S. Secretary of State at the time, gave a different spin. In essence Baker said, “Bush was wrong to associate the new world order with the centrality of the UN with regard to peace and security. He should have identified the new world order with the triumph of the American way of life in the Cold War, accompanied by glowing references to market economies and constitutionalism, which provided the contours of what became known during the 1990s as ‘the Washington consensus’ or ‘neoliberal globalization.’
We now can ask whether today’s politicians will think differently about the prospects for a new world order after the pandemic comes under control, and the crisis mood dissipates even if doesn’t fully disappear? It seems more likely that two clashing tendencies will dominate the pandemic aftermath. The first tendency will seek to restore the pre-pandemic dynamic of economic and political order, with modifications limited to augmenting the health sector, and taking advantage of the earlier dislocations to replace workers with machines. The second worrisome tendency is for political leaders to take advantage of the emergency prerogatives of government during the pandemic to institutionalize technologies of surveillance and control, while hardening their borders against immigrants and asylum seekers.
If actualized, neither of these two tendencies will give greater weight to global cooperation, human solidarity, UN authority, empathy, hospitality, and adherence to the Precautionary Principles in dealing with menacing threats clearly visible on the horizon of near future expectations. This further intensification of an already overly politically fragmented world order may be dramatic enough to lead critics to call attention to its defects by again applying the label of ‘new world order.’
If a benign new order built on the principles of stability and justice mentioned above, it will depend on pressures from a transnational movement rooted in civil society, and probably first arising in the Asian context, where several regional government displayed their superior problem-solving skills in the course of containing the COVID-19 challenge. Such a scenario could be endorsed, and even led, by China, the country more than any other with the stature and political imagination to take over global leadership from the United States, which has by its own will and dysfunctional behavior forfeited its prior role, at least temporarily. Of course, it is possible that a post-Trump America will heed Kissinger’s plea for a resumption of U.S. global leadership in ways that take inspiration from its successful restoration of a generally peaceful phase of world order after World War II. Or alternatively, possibly join with China in establishing a collaborative geopolitical framework to address more holistically and cooperatively the currently unsatisfactory responses to ecological, social, and economic global challenges. If this scenario emerges in either form, the label of new world order may yet come to be regarded as a sign of progress and hope, yet its realization will not happen without transnational activism of unprecedented depth and perseverance.
Only then can we recover a standpoint that upholds expectations for a humane and functional response to the universal crisis, which then would allow us to speak hopefully and responsibly about a new world order.
Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Distinguished Research Fellow, Orfalea Center of Global Studies, UCSB, author, co-author or editor of 60 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs. In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Falk to two three-year terms as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and associated with the local campus of the University of California, and for several years chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is On Nuclear Weapons, Denuclearization, Demilitarization, and Disarmament (2019).
Go to Original – richardfalk.wordpress.com
Tags: COVID-19, Climate Change, Conflict, Coronavirus, Environment, Global warming, New World Order, Nuclear Weapons, Nuclear war, Pandemic, World
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Minnesota Wild: Mike Yeo needs to turn team…
Minnesota Wild: Mike Yeo needs to turn team around … or else
Minnesota Wild head coach Mike Yeo talks with his team during the third period at the Xcel Energy Center Arena in St. Paul on October 5, 2013. (Pioneer Press: Sherri LaRose-Chiglo)
Minnesota head coach Mike Yeo gives instructions to his players from the bench in the second period of Thursday's game at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, October 10, 2013. The Wild beat the Jets, 2-1, to win their first game of the season. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)
By Chad Graff | cgraff@pioneerpress.com | Pioneer Press
PUBLISHED: December 29, 2013 at 11:01 p.m. | UPDATED: November 7, 2015 at 8:28 p.m.
Wild vs. Blues
5 tonight, FSN, KFXN-FM 100.3
With the Minnesota Wild on a five-game losing streak during their most recent stretch of poor play, the seat under coach Mike Yeo is heating up.
After raising expectations with last season’s playoff appearance, the Wild have underperformed through the first half of the season — and much of the blame for that falls on the head coach.
After putting together a 9-1-1 stretch up to Nov. 23, the Wild have gone 5-12-1 since and 0-5 over the past 12 days to drop to 20-16-5 and tied for ninth in the Western Conference through Sunday’s games with 45 points.
And now, Yeo is running out of time to fix the team’s ever-growing list of problems.
The Wild have three games remaining on a four-game homestand, which continues Tuesday night against the St. Louis Blues at the Xcel Energy Center. If they don’t find a way to end the losing, Yeo might not make it to the next road trip.
At practice Monday, with players arriving “understandably not joyous and chipper,” Yeo said, he tried to get the team to refocus on the task at hand: taking on one of the NHL’s best teams. The Blues are third in the Western Conference with 57 points.
Yeo knows that the pressure and urgency to win are increasing.
That’s why, he said, he’s coming in and preaching a message of working harder each day to turn things around.
“I want our guys to look at me and say, ‘You know what, that’s how we’re going to deal with this,’ ” Yeo said. “It’s adversity; that’s fine. But you come to the rink the next day and you work a little bit harder.”
As the losing continues, the case against Yeo builds.
He’s the same coach, at 40 the youngest in the NHL, who nearly brought the 2011-12 Wild to the playoffs before the team had Zach Parise, Ryan Suter or Jason Pominville. And he’s the same coach who last season got the Wild to the playoffs for the first time in five years.
But with higher expectations coming into this season, the Wild have failed to meet them. With the exception of an 11-game stretch in October and November, the Wild have been a mediocre team.
That’s been an unfortunate theme. Yeo’s teams, throughout his 2-1/2 seasons, have played streaky hockey. When they’re good, the Wild are one of the best teams in the league. But when things go bad, they go really bad.
Two seasons ago, an early hot streak had the Wild in first place in the Western Conference on Dec. 17. But they lost 15 of their next 17 games and finished 12th.
Last season, after they ended March on a 10-2-0 stretch, they went 5-8-1 in April and had to win on the last day of the season to make the playoffs.
This season is following that all-too-familiar pattern.
“All good teams go through these things, but they react the right way and they get better because of it,” Yeo said. “So let’s look at it as an opportunity, as a challenge. I think competitors welcome challenges, and so here’s our challenge, and let’s welcome it.”
Offense has been the Wild’s biggest problem during their losing skid, but lately the defensive-minded team has played horrible defense, too.
Players returned to the Xcel Energy Center on Monday to a quiet locker room, about 12 hours after blowing a 3-0 lead in Sunday night’s 5-4 loss to the New York Islanders.
“But we turned the music on and felt refreshed instead of coming in like it’s a morgue in here,” Torrey Mitchell said. “We’re all in this together, and having good energy and positive energy is important, so that’s what you’re seeing right now.”
On the day the Vikings fired coach Leslie Frazier, Yeo was mindful of his situation.
“I feel bad for Leslie,” Yeo said. “I’m not a football guy, so I don’t know the ins and outs of that, but I do know that he is a great human being. But that’s part of it.”
The Wild called up defenseman Jonathan Blum from their AHL affiliate in Iowa.
Chad Graff | Minnesota Wild beat writer
Chad Graff joined the Pioneer Press in April of 2013 -- long enough to cover three straight Wild playoff exits at the hands of the Blackhawks -- after working for the Philadelphia Inquirer and Boston Globe. He's lived in California and Texas, but most recently spent a decade in New Hampshire. He watched New England fans celebrate seven championships in his time there, yet somehow his only sports allegiance lies with Nebraska football.
cgraff@pioneerpress.com
Follow Chad Graff ChadGraff Follow Chad Graff @ChadGraff
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The Most Historic U.S. Election in a Generation
In the first episode of our four-part U.S. Presidential Election Series, Professor William G. Howell gives an in depth overview of the presidential election process in the U.S. Howell begins with a discussion of the extensive powers held by the president, but also the system of checks and balances that mitigate such powers. Then, Howell gives insight into the history of the presidential nomination process and describes the complexities of the Electoral College system. Howell touches on the political controversy that is mail-in voting before concluding with a look at polling predictions for the upcoming election. Finally, Howell addresses audience members’ questions on topics such as whether there will be a smooth transition of power if Biden is elected and the implications on US-China relations that a Trump reelection might entail.
Professor William G. Howell
Chair, Department of Political Science
Sidney Stein Professor, Harris School of Public Policy
Director, Center for Effective Government, University of Chicago
Co-Author with Terry M. Moe:
'Presidents, Populism, And The Crisis of Democracy'
Check out the schedule of the U.S. Presidential Election
University of Chicago’s William Howell discusses what people should be paying attention to during the first Presidential debate and why the topic on “Chinese relations” won’t feature a prominent role during the debate.
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Historical and related studies
Over the years I have written a small number of things which can be described as historical, and they cover various of my areas of interest. They include:
Medicine and medical education
The much neglected work on medical education by Sir James Paget, the great nineteenth century surgeon and pathologist.
A new interpretation of the illnesses of Charles Dickens, whom I have suggested suffered symptoms of the neuropsychological syndrome of neglect, as well perhaps as other problems due to damage to the right parietal area. The original study in the Lancet was subsequently reprinted in the Dickens Quarterly.
A statistical analysis of the wealth of distinguished UK doctors, based on probate records summarised in the entries of the newly revised Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
The ISPIUA project. In the late 1960s a large-scale project was funded by the British Government to assess whether Tests of Academic Achievement were likely to be of help in predicting which students would perform better at university. The almost entirely negative findings of the Investigation into Supplementary Predictive Information for University Admission have by and large been neglected despite their importance for current debates over the use of aptitude tests in student selection.
An analysis of the life expectancy of Italian Renaissance painters, based on a re-analysis of the information available in the printed lists of Bernard Berenson. This was the first paper I ever published in a medical journal.
Handedness, lateralisation and asymmetry
The decline and fall of the rate of left-handedness during the nineteenth and then twentieth centuries. A key piece of work was an analysis waving by the right and left arms in the documentary films of the Mitchell and Kenyon, that were made between about 1900 and 1906, and showed hundreds of people in the streets of northern England. Work in press has also looked in more detail at these historical changes.
Alexander the Great is often described as being left-handed, although Jocelyn Penny Small has shown that there is no classical evidence for the claim. My study asked instead about the myth of Alexander's left-handedness.
The changing portrayal of the left and right cheeks, particularly in the art of Renaissance Italy. This was analysed in detail in my PhD thesis [link to chapter 13] and was also part of a broader review on the role of asymmetry in art and aesthetics
A very critical review of the concept of pathological left-handedness, which was described by one reviewer as an assassination attempt on several of the great figures of neuropsychology. The paper was only ever printed because of the kindness of Marcel Kinsbourne.
The enigmatic history of Dr A K Siewert, who was Ukrainian, working in Kiev and known as Dr A K Zivert. He was the first to describe a case of what has since become known as Kartagener's syndrome or Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia, in which along with bronchiectasis, sinusitis and reduced male infertility, there is also a total reversal of the viscera, the heart and stomach being on the right, the liver on the left, and so on. A history of the Kiev Department can be found here.
'Jonck'
A much loved colleague, A R Jonckheere, known always as 'Jonck', died in 2005. John Valentine and I had the idea of putting together a tribute to him, based largely around the contents of his library shelves, with John doing most of the hard work that was involved. The shelves show so eloquently his catholic intellectual interests. Click here for obituaries in The Independent and The Guardian.
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New laws beef up penalties covering cell phone abuse
News // Opinion
One sure sign of the arrival of fall, other than the slowly turning colors of the leaves soon to collect on your front lawn, is the number of new laws taking effect.
There are those laws passed by the General Assembly that took effect back in June following adjournment. Then we get this second batch on Oct. 1.
The legislature was unable to solve the state's fiscal crisis, but no matter, the members did pass a number of laws that have some impact on our daily lives. Lawmakers tend to be skittish about controversial proposals in an election year such as this.
The lawmakers did beef up the law on the use of hand-held cell phones while driving, something already banned by law. The change would eliminate one-time exemption for drivers stopped for the infraction if they subsequently prove proof that have acquired a hands-free phone device. Seems like a no-brainer to us.
The law also makes it clear that texting while driving is a no-no. Again, that should be an obvious violation.
While the tougher law may now be in effect, it's not too hard to still see someone using a hand-held device while tooling down the road. In many cases, they are not really hand-held but held by the crook of the neck and the driver's shoulder. That's not only illegal, it's probably the cause of an increase in neck and shoulder pain.
The practice has gotten more costly as of Oct. 1. A first-time violation will cost you $100. For a second offense, the price goes to $150. And for those repeat offenders, it goes to $200. For that last classification, we'd like to suggest that the law include the seizure of the phone device as a part of the punishment.
Another law that had support from both environmental advocates and business groups requires the Department of Environmental Protection to make all reasonable efforts to review initial application problems within 60 days and issue a tentative approval or denial for permits within 180 days. It also creates a new permit ombudsman in the Department of Economic and Community Development to help expedite DEP applications.
Probably more important to the quality of life in Connecticut are two laws -- one that protects from prosecution 16- and 17-year-olds forced into prostitution. We agree with Gov. M. Jodi Rell who said these young people are the true victims of human trafficking and need the protection of our laws.
Another law related to domestic violence, provides money for shelters to be open 24 hours a day. Spousal abuse has no timetable -- it can occur at any hour.
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Filming & Private Events
Teragram Presents
Moroccan & Teragram Staff GoFundMe
The Dears
Wed · February 10, 2021
Moroccan Lounge Presents
This event was postponed from 5/14/20 and 8/28/20, due to coronavirus. The new date will be 2/10/21. All original tickets will be honored.
https://thedears.org/
https://www.instagram.com/thedears/
https://www.facebook.com/TheDears/
Formed in 1995, The Dears released their first, ultra lo-fi album, End of a Hollywood Bedtime Story, in 2000. The orchestral, dark pop sound and dramatic live shows cemented The Dears at the foundation of the then-emerging Canadian indie-rock renaissance. In 2001 and 2002, they released two separate concept EPs Orchestral Pop Noir Romantique and Protest, respectively. In 2003 they released their second full-length album No Cities Left in Canada,
and a string of highly anticipated shows at SXSW ‘04 prompted the international release of No Cities Left with Bella Union. Gang of Losers came in 2006. In 2008 the group partnered with Dangerbird Records to release Missiles, followed by Degeneration Street (2011), Times Infinity Volume One (2015) and Times Infinity Volume Two (2017). In 2019, Murray A. Lightburn released his second solo album, Hear Me Out.
The Dears have toured the world over, including performances on Letterman (twofold), Jimmy Kimmel, Jonathan Ross and at Glastonbury, T in the Park, Wireless, Montreal Jazz Fest, Siren Festival, Coachella, Austin City Limits, V Fest, Reading and Leeds, Les Inrocks (France), Montreux Jazz Fest, Istanbul Jazz Fest, Pop Montreal, CMW, NXNE and countless appearances at SXSW. They have shared stages with Spiritualized, Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene, Daniel Lanois, Rufus Wainwright, Zemfira, Bloc Party, Keane, Morrissey, The Tragically Hip, Metric and Death From Above, to name a few.
Moroccan Lounge
901 E 1st St
Event search form
Jadu Heart - Fri 5/14
Jadu Heart - Thu 5/13
mmmonika - Fri 7/9
The Dears - Wed 2/10
Hyphen Hyphen - Thu 1/28
Thu 1/28 - Hyphen Hyphen
Wed 2/10 - The Dears
Mon 4/26 - Billy Raffoul
Thu 5/13 - Jadu Heart
Fri 5/14 - Jadu Heart
Fri 7/09 - mmmonika
Menu & Social Links
901 East 1st Street
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Goodwill or just for show? As political and corporate leaders speak out against anti-Black racism, some aren’t buying their sincerity
By Douglas QuanVancouver Bureau
Fri., June 12, 2020timer7 min. read
In recent days, Karissa Lewis has been fielding calls and messages from senior management at clothing retailer Aritzia after she took to Twitter to suggest the company’s public support of the Black Lives Matter movement was “all for show.”
Lewis, 27, who is Black, says she left her job as an associate manager at one of Aritzia’s Toronto stores earlier this year because she was undervalued and “treated differently” than the other managers.
While she appreciates the outreach from the company’s top people, she says she can’t help but feel their desire to learn more about her experience is an attempt at “damage control.” Her original tweet spawned a flurry of supportive messages on social media and other complaints about the company.
“It’s bittersweet that George Floyd had to die for people to take some accountability for the stuff they’ve said and done to us,” she says, referring to the Minnesota man whose high-profile death at the hands of police triggered a wave of protests around the world decrying police violence and anti-Black racism.
Lewis is not alone in sounding a note of skepticism in response to the rash of political and corporate leaders who, in recent days, have pledged to fight racial injustice. To some observers, the donations to Black charities and commitments to diversity and inclusion are “performative” acts that ring hollow because the makeup of so many corporate boards is still predominately white.
In 2018, people who identified as visible minorities accounted for only five per cent of directors of companies publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange, according to the University of Toronto.
“They may be saying words that they haven’t said before, like anti-Black racism, but they have to be pushed to say that,” says Beverly Bain, a University of Toronto professor of women and gender studies and anti-racism activist.
“It is critical for us to keep the momentum up.”
There is no question that this moment in history is significant, in terms of the scale of the protests, the pace with which certain terms — anti-Black racism, white supremacy, defund the police — have become part of everyday conversation, and the willingness to embrace the notion that racism isn’t committed by a few “bad apples” but is systemic in many facets of society, Bain and other experts say.
They compare the past couple of weeks to the watershed #MeToo movement that was founded by a Black woman, Tarana Burke, and reached a crescendo a few years ago when women around the world demanded accountability in cases of sexual abuse and harassment by powerful men.
“So much of the history of the last few decades of anti-racist work has really been about, implicitly, white people waiting for Black people to do the work to raise the issue, to talk about what needs changed. In a way, people have either been disengaged or passively involved,” says Ellen Berrey, a University of Toronto sociology professor whose research focuses on race, inequality and the law.
“My sense of this moment, what I feel is happening, is that more and more white people are seeing this as a white person’s problem.”
No longer are companies merely espousing their support for positive values such as “diversity and inclusion,” they’re coming out and saying they support the fight against anti-Black racism. It’s a notable shift, she says, because it puts the emphasis on the problem.
So how did we get here?
Experts say it’s likely a confluence of factors: data showing COVID-19 was killing a disproportionately high number of Black Americans; the searing bystander video showing a Minneapolis police officer pressing his knee against Floyd’s neck; plus the visceral images of riot police using aggressive tactics against mostly peaceful protesters.
In response to the outcry, major North American brands have come out in recent days to proclaim their support for anti-racism initiatives.
Nike released a video ad with simple written messages on a black screen: “For once, Don’t Do It,” it begins. “Don’t pretend there’s not a problem in America. Don’t turn your back on racism.”
Amazon announced that it was donating $10 million to organizations that work to improve the lives of Black Americans, saying that it was “committed to helping build a country and a world where everyone can live with dignity and free from fear.”
But this moment of collective reckoning has also drawn backlash with critics accusing some companies of hypocrisy. Nearly 60 per cent of Amazon’s managers are white and only eight per cent are Black, according to an Associated Press analysis. However, more than 60 per cent of its warehouse and delivery workers, who have been working through the COVID-19 pandemic, are people of colour.
Similarly, at Nike, 77 per cent of the company’s vice-presidents are white, while just under 10 per cent are Black, The Associated Press reported.
Sharon Chuter, the founder of California cosmetics company Uoma Beauty, launched a social media challenge dubbed Pull Up or Shut Up in which she called on companies to prove they were equal-opportunity employers by publicly releasing the racial makeup of their workforce.
Meanwhile, several high-profile executives have lost their jobs after being called out for racially insensitive behaviour. Greg Glassman, the CEO of CrossFit stepped down after asking why he or his staff should be mourning the death of George Floyd, other than it is the “white” thing to do. Adam Rapoport, editor-in-chief of Bon Appétit magazine, resigned after it was revealed he had shown up at a costume party in 2013 in brownface.
It is in this climate that Lewis says she felt compelled to respond when Aritzia posted an Instagram message saying it was using its platform as a “call to action” and donating $100,000 to Black Lives Matter and the NAACP.
“I worked for @aritzia for 5 months and I was the only black manager on my team,” she wrote. “During my time there, I was treated differently than other managers.”
She went on to say that her mistreatment included being assigned to working cashier shifts and being excluded from important decisions, including one that resulted in a Black employee being fired.
In a statement to the Star, Jennifer Wong, Aritzia’s president and chief operating officer, said while the company disagrees with many of Lewis’ assertions it is “focused on listening, learning, and taking action, recognizing we ourselves must lead and inspire change.”
“The fight to end racial inequality deserves our attention, support, and most importantly, real and significant action. Real change starts from within, and as such, we have already begun investing $1 million to expand and strengthen our Diversity and Inclusion programs. We want to make certain that Aritzia is creating positive change, and that we are part of the solution.”
Jefferson Darrell, Toronto-based founder of Breakfast Culture, a marketing and communications firm specializing in diversity, equity and inclusion, says if companies want to be sincere supporters of Black Lives Matter, they need to ask themselves key questions, such as: Are there Black people employed at all levels in your organization? Does your organization reflect the demographics of the community you’re serving? Does your organization support Black employees year round or just during Black History Month? What are your organization’s rates of promotion and retention for people of colour?
“If you are going to make a statement, make sure you have something to back it up if people do call you out,” Darrell said.
“Walk your talk, throw in some action with your words.”
Toronto entrepreneur Wes Hall, executive chairman of Kingsdale Advisors, a shareholder advisory firm, agrees. He says he’s encouraged by the show of support for Black lives, “but I hope it’s not a head fake.”
Protesters take to the streets for peaceful anti-Black racism marches
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, calls grow to ‘defund the police.’ But what would that actually mean?
He lost faith in RCMP when they wrongly arrested his daughter. Now, his city has a rare chance to build a new police force from scratch
“If you put out a statement you’re against anti-Black racism, what will you do about it? Tell me. Don’t just say you’re against it. Of course you’re going to be against it,” he said.
There have to be measurable results.
“We know as companies we like numbers. We want to set targets and objectives so we can measure results,” he said.
“If I say, ‘We’re going to ensure Black people are in these positions by this date,’ that’s a different statement.”
Hall recently founded the Canadian Council of Business Leaders Against Anti-Black Systemic Racism. Its goal is to increase representation of Black people in boardrooms across Canada.
“We’re corporate leaders. The only way to solve a problem is all of us gets together collectively, just like we did with COVID-19,” he said.
In an opinion column in this weekend’s Star, Hall writes: “A system that oppresses Black people is not a problem for Black people to fix, it’s for the gatekeepers of the system. And those gatekeepers who fail to act must be moved aside.
“We need to chart a new course where the need for voices like mine is obsolete. Where there is no need for our youth to march in the streets to demand our attention.”
Lewis, meanwhile, said she continues to engage in conversation with Aritzia’s top brass. She’s worried though about what will happen after the news cycle ends.
“After this blows over like every other trending topic, we still have to wake up for the rest of our lives … and live the Black experience. It’s not something we can just turn a blind eye to a couple weeks from now. It’s a constant thing we have to battle with.”
Douglas Quan is a Vancouver-based reporter for the Star. Follow him on Twitter: @dougquan
Amazon, Twitter
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Valerie Barr, professor of computer science, participated in a White House Technology Inclusion Roundtable run by United States Chief Technology Officer Todd Park. The session focused on how to ensure that all youth have the opportunity to participate in the technology sector, particularly those from underserved or historically underrepresented communities.
Michael Vineyard, the Frank and Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics, gave a talk, “Reflections on Computational Modeling in the Undergraduate Physics Curriculum,” at the summer meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers held in Philadelphia.
Scott LaBrake, senior lecturer and accelerator manager in the Physics and Astronomy Department, presented a poster, “Construction of a Scattering Chamber for Ion-Beam Analysis of Environmental Materials in Undergraduate Physics Research” at the 22nd International Conference on the Applications of Accelerators in Research and Industry in Fort Worth, Texas. A paper of the same title was also submitted for the conference. Vineyard, along with three students, were co-authors.
Stephen Berk, the Henry and Sally Schaffer Professor of Holocaust and Jewish Studies, will be a featured speaker at Hobart and William Smith Colleges’ Symposium on Genocide and Human Rights. Berk will speak at 7 p.m. Sept. 20 on “The Holocaust Revisited.” Berk also recently spoke at the Drew University Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study. In a preview of his talk with the New Jersey Jewish News, Berk discussed being a “child of World War II.”
Jennifer Matsue, director of the Asian Studies program, had an article accepted to the Journal of Asian Studies. “Stars to the State and Beyond: Globalization, Identity and Asian Popular Music” will appear in the publication’s May 2013 issue.
Jeffrey Corbin, associate professor of biology, and Miriam Katz of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute had a paper published in the American Geophysicists’ Union publication, Eos. They offered ways that student and faculty presented climate change science to counter Chrisopher Monckston’s visit to the College in March and a similar experience at RPI. The paper was titled “Effective Strategies to Counter Presentations on Climate Denial.” Corbin also co-chaired a symposium at the North American Congress for Conservation Biology titled, “Managing Novel Ecosystems: Bridging the Gap Between Research and Practice.”
“National Policies, State Response and Community College Outcomes: Testing an Augmented Bennett Hypothesis” by Allison Frederick ’10; Stephen Schmidt, professor of economics; and Lewis Davis, associate professor of economics, will appear in the December issue of the Economics of Education Review. The article estimates the effect of the American Graduation Initiative on community college enrollments, tuition rates and educational quality.
An article by Lewis Davis, associate professor of economics, and Fuat Sener, professor of economics, will appear in the October issue of the European Economic Review. The paper, “Private Patent Protection in the Theory of Schumpeterian Growth,” considers the legal and economic conditions under which private legal action to enforce intellectual property rights will increase the rate of innovation.
Pilar Moyano, professor of Spanish, attended a faculty development program in international business this summer, “Teaching Spanish for Business: A Global Approach.” The program, conducted by the Center for International Business Education and Research of the Florida International University, was in preparation for a new course Moyano will teach this winter, “Spanish for Business and Economics.” The program was held at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Moyano also delivered a paper at the International Conference on the Bicentenary of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 in Cadiz, Spain. Her talk centered on the input of elite women on the Constitution of 1812 through their literary and political salons.
An essay co-authored by Christopher Chabris, associate professor of psychology, was published in The Wall Street Journal. “Do Our Gadgets Really Threaten Planes?” looked at the Federal Aviation Administration’s restrictions of cellphone use during take-off and landing. Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois was his co-author.
George Gmelch, the Roger Thayer Stone Professor of Anthropology, is part of an interdisciplinary team that received a $2.5 million grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. The grant is for a multi-year study of employment-related geographical mobility, labor migration and its many impacts on the workers' home communities and on regional economic development. Gmelch's research will be conducted in several Newfoundland communities over the next several summers with the help of student assistants.
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Rev. Devon Thomas, Pastor
Office Hours: Wednesdays 10AM - 1PM
Cyndi Newett, Church Board Chair
Sharon Lawyer, Building Use
Patrick Evans, Organist
Sharon Evans, Newsletter & Bulletin
UCBF: (802) 827-6544
We are a combination of three church and the communities fo Bakersfield (pop. 1200), East Fairfield, and Fairfield (pop. 1800)
The 1st Congregational Church of Bakersfield (1811)
Our current location
The Bakersfield United Methodist Church (1850)
Currently privately owned as a nonprofit museum
The East Fairfield Congregational Church (1880)
Currently The Meeting House and part of the Fairfield Community Center
The road to this union was a long and sometimes thorny journey. These three churches moved in and out of different configurations until the early 1980's when the Tri-Church Parish was formed, combining all three churches while maintaining independent boards and finances. In the early 2000's, church bylaws were written and a vote was taken to become the United Church of Bakersfield and Fairfield. Unification was officially achieved in 2007. In 2013, the United Methodist and East Fairfield church buildings were sold for $1 each. The church family has settled into its current home, former 1st Congregational Church building in Bakersfield, with a spirit of continuity of faith, acceptance of differences, and hope in the future.
United Church of
Bakersfield & Fairfield
Bakersfield, Vermont
in affliation with
We are the United Church of Bakersfield and Fairfield, a church which has deep roots in the communities we serve. We are a flexible and inclusive church, committed to supporting the connectedness and commonality of our church family and the broader Bakersfield and Fairfield communities. We happily welcome and enjoy children and youth, believing they are the future hope for renewal and continuity of our church. We celebrate our relationship with Jesus Christ, and invite all to join with us in joyous music, worship, fellowship, and mission outreach as we share His message of love, peace, and grace.
Open & Affirming Covenant
At the United Church of Bakersfield and Fairfield, we believe that each person is a child of God. We invite and welcome into our community persons of every age, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, physical condition, economic, faith, and educational background, marital status, and family structure. Our faith leads us to welcome all who wish to share their God given gifts and to participate fully in the life, leadership, ministry, fellowship, worship, sacraments, responsibilities, and blessing of our congregation. We have room for all.
We are a welcoming community that enjoys each other's company. We like to worship together, sing together, talk with each other, and gather for fellowship. We are concerned for and supportive of those in need. We are growing in faith, and are accepting of all who come to worship with us no matter where they are in their faith journey. They saying, "many hands make light work," really does apply to our church family. Whether it's a pie sale, craft fair, community dinner, potluck for a luncheon, or some type of community outreach: though we are small in numbers, when called upon, we are mighty in support. Because we are all in different stages of life, with some busier than others, we do have many of the same faces on the church board and committees. However, the commitment and support at our church is ever-present and growing. We have faith that when the time comes there will be others who will take up the torch and carry one. The UCBF is an independent congregation that has weathered many storms. We have come out of conflicts with a clearer idea of who we are and where we are going.
"What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?" Luke 24:16
2016 Covenant
As a congregation, we covenant to walk with each other in all God's ways;
We will show one another love and patience, tenderness, mercy, tolerance, respect, and kindness.
We will speak directly to one another.
We will listen in order to understand, learn from one another, please God, and hear the still small voice.
We will speak in kindness, truth, love, honesty, and compassion.
We will respect each other's point of view, diversity, questioning, and our church building.
We will appreciate one another, unique abilities, church body, love here in the church, and diversity.
We will help one another grow in Jesus Christ.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we will do our best to help each other along this journey of discovering our future life together.
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2020 deadliest year for Lake Michigan drownings in a decade
by: WOODTV.com staff
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Fifty-seven people have drowned in Lake Michigan so far in 2020, making it the deadliest year on the lake in at least a decade.
The data was compiled by the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, which has tracked drownings on the lakes since 2010 and works to prevent them.
Twenty-one of the Lake Michigan deaths happened in Michigan, 23 in Illinois, seven in Indiana and six in Wisconsin. The total of 57 is more than twice as many drownings as in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
Dave Benjamin of GLSRP said he thinks the pandemic is part of the reason for the increase, encouraging more people to go outdoors and to the beaches.
“Chicago beaches were closed, which pushed a lot of people to go to Indiana or Michigan if they wanted to go to the beach,” he said in a Tuesday Zoom interview with News 8. “A lot of beaches don’t have lifeguards, especially in Michigan. It just kind of created the perfect storm of opportunity for drownings to happen: more people going in the water, crowded beaches.”
He said lifeguards are a must in preventing drownings, and that schools should include water safety courses.
“It’s a problem. It’s a public health issue,” Benjamin said. “It is 100% preventable if we prevent it as a culture to make water safety a priority, like fire safety or tornado safety or school safety issue. We have all those water programs in schools but we have very little water safety education. It’s more likely that each year, more students will die drowning in the United States than by fires, tornadoes, school shooters or even earthquakes; some schools have earthquake drills in the Great Lakes region.”
The GLSRP is working to turn its water safety course into an e-learning format so that schools can teach it more easily. It accepts donations online.
Michigan confirms about 2,600 more coronavirus cases
by WOODTV.com staff / Jan 15, 2021
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) — Michigan has reported another 2,598 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 29 more deaths linked to it.
Friday's update from the state brought the total number of confirmed cases to 533,602 and the total number of associated deaths to 2,598.
Canton Township man charged in fatal shooting of son, 8
CANTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A man has been charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of his 8-year-old son in a suburban Detroit home.
The Wayne County prosecutor's office says 33-year-old Nicholas Bennett of Canton Township was arraigned Friday.
Michigan tax revenues are $2.1B above earlier projections
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Projected tax revenues in Michigan’s two major accounts will be $2.1 billion higher than previously anticipated over two years, driven by increased federal unemployment benefits and consumers’ online purchases in the coronavirus pandemic.
Economists in the Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration agreed Friday to economic and fiscal forecasts.
MDHHS revises COVID-19 vaccine rollout schedule
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How to protect yourself We ❤️ online delivery KFC's 🎮 console Talking Tech
How to watch Disenchanted, the Enchanted sequel
Madison Durham
— Recommendations are independently chosen by Reviewed’s editors. Purchases you make through our links may earn us a commission.
Who could forget Amy Adams emerging in full Disney princess regalia from a sewer grate in Manhattan, or dancing and singing her way through Central Park? How about James Marsden stabbing a bus? It’s been 13 years since Enchanted was released, but the timeless live-action-animated film lives on as a Disney classic. Luckily for fans, the long-awaited Enchanted sequel, Disenchanted, was announced during Disney’s Investor Day 2020, along with the news that the sequel will debut on Disney+.
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Enchanted itself actually has yet to drop on the streaming service, but hopefully with the news about Disenchanted having been revealed, the original film will make an appearance on the platform soon.
Where to stream Disenchanted
You can stream Disenchanted when it's released, as well as other Walt Disney Studio films on Disney+. The streaming service is available via internet connection if you live in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Channel Islands, France, Germany, India, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Italy, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, or the U.S. Disney’s direct-to-consumer streaming platform can be accessed from desktop browsers, mobile devices, game consoles, and more.
Disney+ is home to content from Marvel, as well as Walt Disney Studios films, Disney Channel original series, Pixar films and shorts, Star Wars films and series, and National Geographic titles. The platform is constantly releasing new content, such as The Mandalorian, Soul, upcoming series like Star Wars: The Bad Batch, and more.
Sign up for Disney+ for $6.99 a month
What is Disenchanted about?
In Enchanted, Giselle (Amy Adams) was spirited away from her home in animated Andalasia, land of fairy tales and true love, into modern-day New York City. There, she struggles to adapt and to find ways to return to her betrothed, Prince Edward (James Marsden). With the help of Robert (Patrick Dempsey) and a few well-timed songs, Giselle comes to understand that her life in Andalasia is not necessarily everything it seems, and that she might want more than she previously thought.
Disenchanted will follow the events of the first film. So far, Adam Shankman is set to direct with Amy Adams confirmed to return as Giselle. The rest of the cast has yet to be confirmed. Very little information about the plot has been released, but according to IMDB the film will explore what happens after happily ever after. Disenchanted has been rumored to be in the works for years, so it’s exciting to see the property finally getting confirmed by Disney and finding its home on Disney+.
How to sign up for Disney+
To start watching Walt Disney Studios films on Disney+, you can subscribe to Disney+ today starting at $6.99 or $69.99 for a year’s subscription. Prices for the platform are going to increase slightly in 2021 to $7.99 and $79.99, respectively, so if you’re worried about the price increase consider investing in a bundle with Hulu or ESPN+ to get the most out of your subscription, or even subscribing for a year to save a little extra money.
Disney+ is available on devices like Apple products, Roku streaming devices, Google Chromecast, Android phones and TV devices, XBOX One, PlayStation 4, LG TVs, Samsung products, Chrome OS, Mac OS, or Windows PC. If you’re worried about connecting to the service, check out their supported devices list and sign up for email updates to keep updated on which devices are compatible.
In addition to all of its new content, Disney+ is also home to classic films like Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Robin Hood, A Bug’s Life, and The Princess and The Frog that you can watch on-demand, as well as Disney Channel Original shows and TV series like Sky High, Elena of Avalor, Kim Possible, and The Owl House. They also have a lot of properties you might not expect, like Pixar Shorts; The Princess Bride; The Simpsons; Home Alone; The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; Hamilton; and more.
Sign up for Disney Plus for $6.99 a month
All of the new Pixar projects coming to Disney+ Here are all the new Marvel projects coming to Disney+ How to watch Disney and Pixar's Soul How to watch The Falcon and The Winter Soldier Here's every new Star Wars series coming to Disney+
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Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.
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Backing for Junior Chambers International Summit
The Jaycees’ international summit took place in New York in June.
Fresh from successfully organizing the 7th World Chambers Congress in Mexico City, USCIB’s affiliate the International Chamber of Commerce and its World Chamber Federation lent support to the annual summit of Junior Chamber International, a worldwide federation for entrepreneurs and professionals under the age of 40, last month in New York City.
The Jaycees summit highlighted how strategic partnerships can be implemented at the local level to build a better world and make advances towards the Millennium Development Goals – eight internationally agreed goals to alleviate poverty by 2015.
Speakers at the summit included USCIB President and CEO Peter Robinson. Speaking at the summit opening plenary, entitled “Global Collaboration to Implement the UN MDGs,” Mr. Robinson underscored the power of businesses to positively impact the communities where they operate.
Also addressing the Jaycees was Aaron Nelson, president and CEO of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro (N.C.) Chamber of Commerce. In a breakout session on sustainability, Mr. Nelson gave concrete examples of how the power of business can be harnessed to create positive change.
The summit concluded with a resolution to undertake sustainable projects that would advance the UN Millennium Development Goals in respective Junior Chamber International member communities.
Mr. Robinson’s remarks
JCI website
ICC website
This entry was posted in ICC, News Stories. Bookmark the permalink.
Modified on February 4, 2015
Staff Contact: Peter Robinson
Peter Robinson is USCIB’s 15th president. USCIB, founded in 1945, is a policy advocacy and trade services organization dedicated to promoting open markets, competitiveness and innovation, sustainable development and corporate responsibility, supported by international engagement and regulatory coherence.
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Home » What's New » Progressive Myopia: When Your Child’s Vision Keeps Getting Worse
What Is Progressive Myopia?
Nearsightedness or myopia is one of the most prevalent eye disorders worldwide and its incidence is increasing. In fact by 2050, myopia is projected to affect half of the world’s population!
Many children diagnosed with nearsightedness (myopia) experience a consistent worsening of their vision as they grow into adolescence. This condition can be so aggressive that for some, each time they take their child to the eye doctor for a vision checkup, their prescription gets higher.
This is called progressive myopia and can be a serious condition for many children now and in the future. Not only is there a financial burden and inconvenience associated with having to replace eyeglasses on a regular basis, but high myopia is a risk factor for many eye diseases later in life such as retinal detachment, early onset cataracts, glaucoma and macular degeneration.
What Causes Progressive Myopia?
Myopia is a refractive error that happens when the eye focuses incoming light in front of the retina, rather than directly on it, resulting in blurred distance vision. While an exact cause of progressive myopia is not known, most research indicates that a combination of environmental and genetic factors trigger the condition.
First of all, there is evidence that a family history of nearsightedness is a contributing factor. Additionally, spending a lot of time indoors may play a role in myopia development, as studies show that children who spend more time outside have less incidence of myopia. Lastly, near point stress, which can be caused from looking at a near object for an extended period of time, can prompt the eye to grow longer and result in myopia. Several eye doctors recommend following the 20-20-20 rule when using digital devices (stopping every 20 minutes to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds) to reduce near point stress caused by computer use.
What Can Be Done To Prevent or Treat Myopia?
There are several treatments that have been shown to slow the progression of myopia.
Orthokeratology (ortho-k):
Also known as corneal reshaping, this treatment uses rigid gas permeable contact lenses that are worn while the patient sleeps to reshape the cornea, which is the clear, front part of the eye. During the day, the patient is usually able to see clearly, glasses-free. In addition to allowing glasses-free vision during the day, this treatment has been shown to reduce the progression of myopia in many children.
Distance Center Multifocal Contact Lenses:
This treatment uses distance center (which means the area for seeing at a distance is in the center of the lens) multifocal soft contact lenses to provide clear vision and slow the progression of myopia. The lenses are worn as normal contact lenses during the day.
Atropine Drops:
Atropine drops are a daily-use prescription eye drop that has been shown to reduce myopia progression. It can be used alone or in combination with ortho-k or multifocal contact lenses.
Additional Myopia Treatments:
While these treatments are available in all of North America, some countries offer additional options that are approved for myopia control. For example, in Canada, ZeissTM MyoVision glasses that have an innovative lens curvature design are available to help reduce the rate of myopia progression. Additionally some doctors in Canada offer Coopervision MiSight® lenses, which are 1-day contact lenses that are worn during the daytime. These contacts have a multifocal lens design with distance centre and near surround that is specifically designed for children.
Myopia & Your Child
If your child’s vision keeps getting worse, it's more than an annoyance - it can be a serious risk factor for their eye health and vision in the future. The best strategy for myopia control depends on the child and the severity of the case, and requires consultation with an experienced eye doctor in order to determine the best solution. If your child wears glasses, make his or her vision a priority; schedule an eye exam to ensure stable vision and healthy eyes.
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5 Things You May Not Know (But Should!) About GDPR
V&E Cybersecurity & Data Privacy Update
Today is the day! Companies around the world have had two years to prepare for implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation, the comprehensive legal regime with the self-stated goal of putting the European Union at the forefront of safeguarding individuals’ data privacy rights. Well, now that GDPR is finally in effect, we can safely assume that every company that may be impacted by it has performed a full analysis of applicability and has a complete grasp of all 99 of its Articles…right?
For all of the buzz and media coverage of GDPR, business leaders can be forgiven if they’ve missed or misunderstood some of the finer points embedded within the voluminous text of the regulation. Even the guidance issued by regulatory bodies like the EU Commission, Article 29 Working Party, and UK Information Commissioner’s Office acknowledge that there is ambiguity in some of the provisions of GDPR. Of course, it goes without saying that it’s better not to be surprised by GDPR’s various requirements and exceptions, so here are five aspects of GDPR that every corporate data steward should keep in mind:
Consent is not the only “lawful basis” for processing data. There’s been some panic around the idea that consumers can revoke consent for the use of their data, throwing millions or billions of dollars worth of transactions into jeopardy and causing administrative headaches. But, in accordance with Article 6(1)(b), when data is necessary for the performance of a contract, a consumer can’t force a business to stop using that data as long as the contract is in force. That contract can be formed as simply as a consumer clicking “I agree” on an online vendor’s terms of use when purchasing a product or subscribing to a service. In such a case, a consumer who agrees to purchase a product or service from that vendor and provides her credit card information can’t then demand that the vendor erase that data before the sale has been processed.
The right to be forgotten is not absolute. As with consent, the right to erasure has emerged as a bogeyman of sorts for companies concerned with maintaining access to data critical to their businesses. Some may worry that GDPR will force them to delete all of an individual’s data immediately once such a request is made. In reality, Article 17 of GDPR states that immediate erasure is required only on certain grounds, such as when the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or if it was collected unlawfully in the first place. GDPR also allows important exceptions to the right of erasure. Among them: when EU member state laws specify the retention of data to meet legal obligations, and when data processing is necessary for the sake of freedom of expression — for instance, newsworthy information published by a journalistic outfit.
There’s a difference between legal representatives and data protection officers (DPOs). GDPR creates a need for new roles inside and outside organizations, and there’s been some confusion as to whether two of these roles are one in the same: legal representatives and data protection officers. In fact, these roles are distinct. Here’s a quick breakdown:
Data protection officers are required under Article 37 for certain companies that monitor individuals on a large scale or perform large-scale processing of certain categories of data. A DPO is an individual that can be a company employee or an external professional and is charged with essentially functioning as a watchdog: he or she reports to the highest levels of the company and conducts internal investigations when concerns or complaints arise about how the company manages data. The DPO is charged with remaining independent of the company when investigating these complaints and cannot be fired by companies in retaliation for performing his or her duties.Legal representativesare required under Article 27 for certain companies based outside the EU that process data subject to GDPR. These representatives, which may be individuals or separate entities, act as liaisons to data protection authorities. When a European regulator wants to get in touch with a company about a data breach or other issue, they call the representative. That representative, as the name suggests, is charged with representing the interests of the company.Both roles require a thorough understanding of a company’s data practices, but the key duties of each differ and, ideally, should be fulfilled by different people/entities, to prevent a conflict of interest.
Rules governing data portability may create uneasy cooperation between competitors. Under Article 20, companies must provide a person his or her personal data in a structured, commonly used, machine-readable format so long as the data processing was automated in the first place. At the person’s request, a company must also transmit the data to another company, meaning that a consumer could conceivably ask a business to transfer his or her data to a competitor. For instance, a person using a wearable fitness tracker could decide to switch to a different product and essentially order wearable vendor A to provide information on the person’s heart rate patterns, sleep cycles, and more to wearable vendor B. Where the hassle of transferring data may have previously made a customer hesitate to switch products or vendors, now switching may be more seamless than ever. While that may be welcome news for consumers, businesses should be aware of the potential impact to their bottom line.
Specific employee data privacy rules may apply. GDPR applies to both a company’s individual customers and its employees. But for EU-based companies, GDPR is just a baseline for employee data privacy protections — Article 88 permits individual member states to set their own, more far-reaching rules governing employee data privacy (such as the employment-specific rules in Germany’s Federal Data Protection Act).For companies with no offices or employees in the EU and not offering goods or services to the EU, complying with the employee data privacy rules of GDPR isn’t something they typically have to worry about… . . . unless those employees travel to the EU. Here’s where it gets tricky: If a company is collecting data on the behavior (e.g., location) of its employees while those employees happen to be visiting EU member states, the processing of that particular data is arguably subject to GDPR under Article 3(2)(b). How closely regulators will be holding non-EU businesses accountable for following GDPR in such specialized cases is not completely clear, but being aware of this issue could be worthwhile for companies with employees who frequently travel to Europe.
With a better understanding of GDPR, businesses have the opportunity to focus their attention on issues that matter most and proactively address complications before they evolve into real problems.
For more guidance on GDPR, please contact Vinson & Elkins Intellectual Property partner Devika Kornbacher or Labor and Employment counsel Martin Luff.
Devika Kornbacher
dkornbacher@velaw.com
Martin Luff
mluff@velaw.com
Privacy Matters in the Virtual Workspace
Safe for Now: Temporary Grace Period for EU-UK Data Flow
FTC Announces Settlement with Zoom Resolving Data Security Concerns
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Punched to the ground — court hears from boxer John Marvin’s victims
VICTIMS of army boxer John Marvin had their statements read out in court today — but were spared giving evidence when their attacker changed his plea to guilty on the morning of his trial.
Lance Corporal Marvin, 27, was due to stand trial at the Isle of Wight Magistrates’ Court today (Thursday) but pleaded guilty to five assaults on four different women, and one count of criminal damage.
One of the victims was Marvin’s girlfriend at the time, Georgia Haywood. The couple have since split up.
The court heard how he turned on her, pushed her to the floor and trapped her leg in a door, which he then repeatedly shut against her leg.
She was left with several bruises, but he attacked her again shortly afterwards, in the street, knocking her and a friend out, and leaving her with a broken front tooth.
Her victim impact statement said the attack had left her in an anxious state and she now found it hard to trust people.
She said: “I was ashamed to show my face as I thought people would judge me.
“My front tooth will never be the same again and will cost a lot of money to fix. I was left with black and blue swollen legs, still swollen three months later.”
She felt she had to move out of her home, because of the memories, and out of Cowes because she was afraid of bumping into Marvin. However, Marvin has since moved house and now lives directly opposite Miss Haywood’s mother, which she described as ‘causing stress to my family’ and an example of him ‘showing very little remorse’.
She said: “One evening has changed my life in lots of ways. Hopefully I will move on and show other girls we do not have to live in fear.
“Lots of people have approached me and asked for advice on this subject.”
Another victim, Abigail Bright, was randomly attacked by Marvin on August 1.
She was walking away from a minor altercation with Miss Haywood, when Marvin grabbed her by the hair and pushed her to the ground.
Video of the assault was shown in court, and the gasps from onlookers in the street were clearly audible.
Her victim impact statement said: “I was pulled by my hair and thrown to the ground by a professional boxer.
“I had stitches to my left eyebrow which caused my head to swell and caused people to stare at me. It left me with a visible scar which still causes headaches.
“I am so angry. I did not know him and it makes me mad that he serves his country and is a boxer and he used his strength against me.
“He since saw me in the street and was laughing, so he has shown no remorse.”
Marvin will appear at the Isle of Wight Magistrates’ Court for sentencing on January 11.
Isle of Wight County Press | News
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Friday 12 Oct 2018 @ 17:08
Powering Fair Isle
The island will receive reliable 24-hour electricity for the first time.
Fair Isle’s local community is benefiting from around the clock electricity provision for the first time, supported by £1.5 million Scottish Government investment.
Fair Isle, situated halfway between Orkney and Shetland and currently home to 55 people, previously only had access to power between 07:30 and 23:30 each day.
A new renewable electricity system went live on Fair Isle today, which combines three wind turbine generators, a ground-mounted solar photovoltaic system and battery storage.
The £3.5 million project, led by Fair Isle Electricity Company (FIEC), secured £1.5 million funding from the Scottish Government’s Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP) and £250,000 from Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
Welcoming the island’s new energy system, Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Paul Wheelhouse said:
“Those of us living on the mainland of Scotland can often take reliable supplies of electricity for granted. This has never been possible for the islanders of Fair Isle. The reality of having, for the first time in their history, 24-hour supplies of electricity presents exciting prospects for the Fair Isle community, who will not only benefit from access to a reliable electricity supply around the clock, but also now have in place a new cleaner, greener energy system.
“This development is yet another example of Scotland’s ability to harness its renewables potential to build a sustainable energy future which will play a significant role in powering our future, and I am proud of the role that the Scottish Government and Highlands and Islands Enterprise have been able to play in providing 50% of the funding for this much needed project taken forward by Fair Isle Electricity Company. I wish FIEC every success and hope our investment has a truly transformational impact in improving the quality of life and economic prospects for all on Fair Isle.”
Robert Mitchell, company director of FIEC, said:
“As an important project in a fragile rural area, having reliable renewable power will make a huge difference now and in the future, and we hope that it will encourage more people to come and live on the island. It also provides a great opportunity for more businesses to start here.
“The new energy system will be cleaner and greener and will reduce reliance on expensive diesel, hence making living costs more sustainable. It’s an ambitious project and is another step in ensuring that the community of Fair Isle continues to thrive.”
LCITP is supported through the European Regional Development Fund and is a partnership programme led by the Scottish Government, with support from HIE, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Futures Trust and Resource Efficient Scotland.
The Fair Isle electricity scheme has secured full match funding for the project from many partners including Big Lottery, Shetland Islands Council, National Trust for Scotland, Scottish Water, Fair Isle Electricity Company and Fair Isle Bird Observatory.
Channel website: http://www.gov.scot/
Original article link: https://news.gov.scot/news/powering-fair-isle
South America international border health measures
Updates to public health foreign travel and pre-departure testing.
Victim Surcharge Fund open for applications
A new fund to help organisations provide support for victims of crime using money paid by offenders has opened for applications.
Review recommendations will enhance cooperation and collaborations between Scotland and Ireland.
Strengthening lockdown restrictions
Further measures to help stop the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) and limit non-essential contact will be introduced this weekend.
More teachers, digital devices and support for families.
Call for release of £21bn UK COVID-19 reserves
Finance Secretary Kate Forbes is urging the UK Government to release £21.3 billion of reserves to help tackle the impact of coronavirus (COVID-19).
Increase to carrier bag charge
The minimum price of a single use carrier bag is set to increase from 5p to 10p.
A project which helps people struggling to heat their homes has become the first to receive a share of a £7 million fund to tackle fuel poverty this winter.
Reforming parole
Move to improve transparency and understanding for victims.
Pre-departure coronavirus testing update
From 0400 on Friday 15 January 2021, passengers travelling to Scotland from outside the Common Travel Area must have a valid negative COVID-19 test result, taken no more than three days before the scheduled time of departure.
SME Locator Profiles
360 Defence (UK) Limited
21st Century Protection: Counter Terrorism, Cyber Security & Risk Management Specialists
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Judges block green card denials for immigrants on public aid
by: ELLIOT SPAGAT and DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press
File – In this Jan. 31, 2019, file photo, hundreds of people overflow onto the sidewalk in a line snaking around the block outside a U.S. immigration office with numerous courtrooms in San Francisco. Federal judges are being asked to block a new Trump administration policy scheduled to take effect next week that would deny legal permanent residency to many immigrants over the use of public benefits. Almost a dozen lawsuits have been filed from New York to California to prevent the “public charge” rule from taking effect on Oct. 15. Judges have indicated a willingness to issue rulings before the scheduled start date. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Federal judges in three states on Friday temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s policy to deny green cards to many immigrants who use Medicaid, food stamps and other government benefits, dealing a setback to one of the president’s most aggressive moves yet to cut legal immigration and make it more based on employment skills than family ties.
The rulings in California, New York and Washington came in quick succession four days before the new rules were set to take effect. The judges ruled in favor of 21 states and the District of Columbia, which challenged the policy almost immediately after it was announced in August.
U.S. District Judge George Daniels in New York said the policy redefined longstanding immigration laws with a new framework that had “no logic.” Allowing the policy to go into effect now, he said, would have a significant impact on “law-abiding residents who have come to this country to seek a better life.”
“Overnight, the rule will expose individuals to economic insecurity, health instability, denial of their path to citizenship and potential deportation,” Daniels wrote. “It is a rule that will punish individuals for their receipt of benefits provided by our government, and discourages them from lawfully receiving available assistance intended to aid them in becoming contributing members of society.”
Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, expressed confidence that the administration would eventually prevail and framed the policy as a legal attempt to ensure that those who settle in the United States can support themselves financially.
“An objective judiciary will see that this rule lies squarely within long-held existing law,” Cuccinelli wrote on Twitter. “Long-standing federal law requires aliens to rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, sponsors, and private organizations in their communities to succeed.”
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham added that the rulings were “extremely disappointing” and “the latest inexplicable example of the administration being ordered to comply with the flawed or lawless guidance of a previous administration instead of the actual laws passed by Congress.”
While Trump has focused much of his attention on illegal immigration — including his pledge to build a wall on the Mexican border — he has also trained his sights on curbing legal immigration by moving away from a system that is largely based on family ties. He outlined his plans early in his administration in discussions with Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, turning to executive actions after those efforts failed.
Just last week, Trump issued a presidential proclamation that says immigrants will be barred from the country unless they are covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs. The measure, which is scheduled to take effect Nov. 3, could prohibit the entry of about 375,000 people a year, mainly family members who account for a majority of people getting green cards from abroad, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
Friday’s rulings put the policy to deny green cards to more immigrants on government aid on hold while lawsuits proceed. Federal law already requires immigrants seeking to become permanent U.S. residents to prove they will not be a burden on the country — a “public charge,” in legal terms —but the new rules detail a broader range of programs that could disqualify applicants.
On average, 544,000 people apply for green cards every year, with about 382,000 falling into categories that would be subject to the new review, according to the government. Guidelines in use since 1999 refer to a “public charge” as someone primarily dependent on cash assistance, income maintenance or government support.
Under the new rules, the Department of Homeland Security has redefined a public charge as someone who is “more likely than not” to receive public benefits for more than 12 months within a 36-month period. If someone uses two benefits, that is counted as two months. And the definition has been broadened to include Medicaid, housing assistance and food assistance under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
Factors like the immigrant’s age, employment status and English-language ability would also be looked at to determine whether they could potentially become public burdens at any point in the future.
While the administration argues that the rule changes would ensure that those gaining legal residency status are self-sufficient, critics say they are discriminatory and would have the effect of barring immigrants with lower incomes in favor of those with wealth. They consider it a betrayal of Emma Lazarus’ words on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the ruling “an important win for our country (that) sends a clear message that we will not allow these hateful policies imposed by the Trump administration to tear our country apart. Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said it stops a “heartless attempt to weaponize” health care, housing and other essential public services.
Daniels’ ruling in New York was in a lawsuit filed by the states of New York, Connecticut and Vermont. The Washington decision, authored by U.S. District Judge Rosanna Molouf Peterson in Spokane, was in a lawsuit by the state of Washington and 13 others: Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Virginia.
U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in Oakland, California, ruled in favor of California, Maine, Oregon, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. Her decision applies only in those states, a moot point because the other two injunctions are nationwide.
Daniels and Hamilton were appointed by President Bill Clinton. Peterson was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Spagat reported from San Diego.
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D.C. United/Soccer
Shawn Kuykendall, soccer standout, dies of cancer at 32
Former D.C. United player Shawn Kuykendall allowed The Post to document his struggle with a rare form of cancer in the fall 2013. He died early Tuesday morning at the age of 32. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)
By Rick Maese
Rick Maese
Reporter covering a variety of subjects, including health and safety, Olympics, legal and political issues in sports
Even from a young age, Shawn Kuykendall had trouble sitting still. “Shawn was actually very easy as a child,” said his mother, Sherry, “until he started walking.”
What followed was a particularly active life: a standout soccer career at American University; stints with two Major League Soccer teams, including D.C. United; a coaching career that introduced the game to youths and helped talented college players refine their skills; and a vigorous, public battle against a rare cancer that rooted in his chest when he seemed to be in otherwise peak physical health.
Eight months after learning he had an incurable thymic cancer, Kuykendall died early Wednesday morning. He was 32.
His Christian faith grew stronger even as the cancer spread throughout his body.
Born in the Virginia suburbs, Kuykendall was the second oldest of five children. They were home-schooled by their mother, Sherry, and taught how to kick a soccer ball by their father, Kurt, who also played professional soccer in Washington and once even lined up alongside legendary player Pele.
The fight of his life
At 31, local soccer standout Shawn Kuykendall finds support in his family, friends and faith as he battles thymic cancer.
Friends and family lay their hands on Kuykendall for a final prayer during an August visit to the Washington National Cathedral. "I'm not going to waste my emotions wallowing in self-pity," he said. Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post
Wait 1 second to continue.
“I just always remember having lots of fun. We did all kinds of stuff. We were very active,” Kurt said during Shawn’s cancer battle. “I’m self-employed, so we would go on the sailboat for a week; we’d go out in the woods, target shoot, we did all kinds of stuff. Just a fun-loving kid.”
His mother remembers the boys hunting with their father when they spotted a wild donkey.
“Shawn was standing on a fence. Kurt said, ‘Why don’t you jump on the donkey?’ ” Sherry recalled recently. “Shawn jumped on this wild donkey and then it started bucking and it threw him off. But he landed on his feet. He just had natural coordination. He was always very athletic.”
With a mom who played in recreational leagues and a father certified as a high-level coach, soccer was always around. While all five of the Kuykendall children played Division I soccer, on soccer fields all across the Washington area, Shawn’s talent and work ethic always seemed to stand out. He was an undersized midfielder who relied on his left foot and high soccer IQ to overcome physical limitations.
“He did it with smarts,” said Todd West, his head coach at American. “He was a guy you put on an MLS roster and even if he’s not starting, he still makes every training session better. He was the proverbial coach on the field.”
D.C. United drafted him in the fourth round of the 2005 supplemental draft. He played sparingly and was traded to the New York Red Bulls, where knee injuries derailed his career. He eventually returned to American as an assistant coach and most recently worked as the director of player development for Montgomery Soccer Inc., the governing body for one of the country’s largest youth soccer communities.
Though his professional career was brief, Kuykendall fostered many relationships, which became especially evident in recent months when news spread about his diagnosis and the tight-knit soccer community rallied around him.
#Kuykenstrong
Shawn Kuykendall has been active on social media for several years. He has documented part of his cancer battle on his Instagram account. A look at the first stage of his treatment through his iPhone lens and in his words:
June 21, 2013 Thank you! Love you girls! @alliekuyk @krkuyk Shawn Kuykendall
United opened its season last week and players wore T-shirts during warm-ups featuring the phrase “#kuykenstrong.” Clarence Goodson, an Alexandria native who plays for the San Jose Earthquakes wore a similar T-shirt on the field following the U.S. men’s national team win over Panama in the Gold Cup final last summer, and that same week, a group of MLS all-stars, including Landon Donovan, Thierry Henry and Graham Zusi, wore #kuykenstrong T-shirts prior to a match with AS Roma.
Closer to home, coaches at American shaved their heads in a symbol of solidarity, and local youth teams and leagues staged fundraisers to support Kuykendall and his battle.
It wasn’t his soccer skills they’d miss most. Kuykendall’s outgoing personality was constantly on display. From private jokes to goofy videos he’d post on YouTube, Kuykendall was a natural entertainer who made sure everyone around him was enjoying themselves.
“At our family get-togethers, it would be most noticeable,” Kurt said, “because he's the loudest and he’s the most entertaining. He always keeps things lively, fresh.”
Melanie Menditch met Kuykendall her first day as a student at American and forged a life-long friendship. She quickly came to realize how many others also counted Kuykendall as a close friend.
“He’s contagious,” Menditch said. “Everything about him made you feel special.”
Toward the end, as the pain and medication seemed to dictate so much, Kuykendall still did his best to maintain good spirits. He sang with friends a Britney Spears song word for word, held hands and prayed with his two brothers and complimented his mother’s good looks, noting with a smile “that if there was a lineup for looks and fashion, I’d still outrank you.”
In addition to his parents, Kuykendall is survived by brother Kristopher and his wife, Allison; brother Jason; sister Jamie Pino and her husband, Alex; and sister Sami Jo Mudrezow and her husband, Jake, as well as nieces and nephews Lily, Fiona, Emma and Xander.
A memorial service is tentatively scheduled for March 22.
Rick Maese Rick Maese is a sports features writer for The Washington Post. He has written about the NFL since joining The Post in 2009, including three seasons as beat writer for the Washington Redskins. Follow
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Dolphins serve county well
Published: 8:20 AM January 13, 2009 Updated: 7:13 AM October 7, 2020
Ten swimmers from Thetford Dolphins Swimming Club represented Norfolk County to compete in the Three County Gala held at Peterborough. This annual event brings together the very best swimmers from Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to compete against each other in individual and relay events.
Eleven-year-old Taylor Dean swam the 50m fly race in a time of 35.66, smashing the current age group club record and finishing in fifth position. Taylor also swam in the medley relay (fly leg), where the squad were second, and was also a member of the third-placed freestyle relay squad.
Twelve-year-old Russell Hatton broke the age group club record for the 50m backstroke where his time of 35.09 gave him fourth place. Russell also swam the backstroke leg in the third-placed medley relay squad.
Ben Kleinau (14) swam well to finish third in the 100m breaststroke (1:15.36), while also breaking the club record. Ben also swam the breaststroke leg in the second-placed medley relay squad and was a member of the freestyle relay squad.
Luke Walsh (15) swam the 100m fly (1:03.20) where he finished second and he came fourth in the 100m breaststroke (1:14.46). Luke was also a member of the winning freestyle relay squad, and swam in the medley relay (fly leg) where the squad finished in second place.
Matthew Vertigans (14) came fourth in the 100m backstroke (1:14.26), and swam in both relays, where the medley squad finished second and the freestyle squad fifth.
Ten-year-old Luke Collins swam a PB of 41.06 in the 50m fly, finishing fourth and he also swam in the second-placed freestyle relay squad and the medley relay squad, which came in sixth place.
Daniel Clucas (15) swam in the freestyle relay squad which finished in fifth place. Zoe Douthwaite (14) and Hattie Clarke (14) both competed in the same freestyle relay race, finishing sixth. Morgan Burt (14) swam the breaststroke leg in the medley relay squad which finished fifth.
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How An Annuity Improves A Retirement Plan
“Your article on annuities [Does An Annuity Belong In Your Retirement Plan?] did not demonstrate that an annuity always improves a retirement plan.”
True, Warren Buffet’s retirement plan would not be improved by an annuity because he will not face the mortality and investment risks of a retiree with limited resources. Retirees with limited resources face the risk that if they live too long, and/or their assets earn less than expected, they will run out of spendable funds. There is also the risk that if they die too soon, and/or their assets earn more than expected, they will leave financial assets to their estate that they would have preferred to spend on themselves.
Retirees exposed to these risks can reduce or eliminate them in only one way: by using some of their assets to buy an annuity, which pays them as long as they live. This is a core feature of the Retirement Income Stabilizer (RIS) which I have been developing with Allan Redstone. With RIS, the retiree uses some of her assets to buy an annuity, payments from which are deferred for a period ranging from 5 to 25 years. The remaining assets are used as the primary source of spendable funds during the deferment period, with the amount drawn each year adjusted based on earnings during the year.
This article will compare retirement plans with and without an annuity for a hypothetical retiree of 65 who has $1 million in her 401K, half of it in common stock and half in intermediate-term Government securities. She is deciding between a RIS-based withdrawal plan that includes a 10-year deferred annuity, and the 4% withdrawal rule, which is advocated by many advisors.
With the RIS alternative, part of the $1 million purchases an annuity deferred 10 years. During the first 10 years the retiree draws on the assets remaining after the annuity purchase. At the end of the 10 years, those assets are gone and the annuity kicks in.
With the 4% rule alternative, the retiree makes monthly withdrawals equal to .04/12 of the initial balance, plus an annual inflation increase. I applied a 2% inflation adjustment to both schemes.
I am going to compare the monthly spendable funds that could be drawn by the retiree using these options, on two assumptions about future asset yields. One assumption is that yields are those expected, which I define as the median return during 1926-2012 among periods of the same length as the option. For the 4% rule, which must support the retiree until she dies, the period runs to age 104, or 39 years. The median return over 577 39-year periods was 9.4%. For the deferred annuity option, the relevant period is 10 years. The median return over 925 10-year periods was 8%.
As shown in Chart 1, despite the higher expected rate over the longer period relevant to the 4% rule, spendable funds are consistently higher in the annuity case. The first month draws are $4,363 and $3,333, and the difference widens as the retiree ages.
The likely rejoinder of a 4% rule advocate is that the retiree in my example could break from the rule to increase withdrawals if necessary. At a return of 9.4%, the retiree’s assets using the rule rise over time, where in the annuity case, the assets are gone after 10 years. The problem is that the 4% rule itself provides no guidance on how much extra can be safely drawn, and when. Further, the bias of advisors managing client assets is to avoid shrinking those assets if possible.
In any case, projections based on expected returns have limited value. Retirees must be more concerned about a worse case, because if one happens they cannot begin their careers again. I define a worse case rate of return as the return earned during less than 2% of the relevant periods. When the rates of return for all 925 10-year periods during 1926-2012 are ranked, highest to lowest, the worst-case rate is 0.7%. The worst-case rate over 39-year periods is 2.6%.
Despite the lower worst case rate during the shorter period, the annuity case works fine while the 4% rule implodes. As shown in Chart 2, the annuity case generates larger spendable funds except during ages 69-74. Further, the worst case under the 4% rule runs out of money completely at age 92.
In sum, using part of the retiree’s nest egg to purchase a deferred annuity improved the retirement plan.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackguttentag/2019/01/05/how-an-annuity-improves-a-retirement-plan/#6f011bfe6371
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You're changing the lives of the world's most vulnerable children.
Thanks to you, through World Vision's work, every 60 seconds... a family gets water... a hungry child is fed... a family receives the tools to overcome poverty.
Your generous support impacted over 4 million children across the world in 2019.
World Vision New Zealand raised $55,361,000 for international projects. Thanks to your kindness, we supported 257 individual projects, including 49 projects with the World Food Programme, in 24 countries around the world. Together, we responded to 11 emergencies across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Pacific regions.
You are creating futures for children living in extreme poverty.
Child sponsorship empowers children and their communities by targeting the root causes that keep children trapped in poverty.
Thanks to your life-changing support, together, we partner, plan and work alongside local community members to help build healthy, sustainable communities for children and families. Together, we supported children and their families in 28 community programmes across the world in 2019.
We believe development should be transformational, community-based and sustainable, and especially focused on the needs of children.
Children living in communities like Buyamba in Uganda now have a much brighter future ahead of them. Your support has transformed the Buyamba community to be a place where children can realise the fullness of life.
Your action makes a huge impact on the lives of vulnerable children.
90,000 young New Zealanders
took part in the 40 Hour Famine, standing up for the world's most vulnerable children.
45,000 children
in developing countries benefited from the support of their New Zealand sponsor.
1,500 young changemakers
in their final years of high school attended a World Vision Leadership Conference.
We pursue the highest standards of stewardship and accountability.
We ensure all resources entrusted to us are used effectively to bring maximum impact. In 2019, 83.3% of World Vision New Zealand's total operating expenses were used for international program support that benefit children, families and communities in need.
World Vision New Zealand is:
Registered with the Charities Commission (registration CC25984).
A member of the Council for International Development (CID) and is a signatory to the CID Code of Conduct (http://www.cid.org.nz).
Externally and independently audited every year by PricewaterhouseCoopers New Zealand. The auditor's full 2019 financial report can be downloaded here.
Governed by a voluntary board of New Zealand trustees.
Accountable to our international body, World Vision International.
Aligned with international codes of conduct setting standards and benchmarks.
Committed to best-practice accountability to reduce the risk of corruption and fraud.
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Download our latest Annual Reports
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Download the full World Vision New Zealand 2018 Annual Report(pdf)
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Download the World Vision New Zealand 2019 Audited Accounts (pdf)
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MAHLER! Death Sentence
20.8.2012 by Jackson Moore
Mahler : Symphonie No. 9
Following on from the death of his daughter, the diagnosis of a fatal heart condition, and the discovery that his wife had been having an affair and had decided to leave him, the great Austrian composer Gustav Mahler sat down to write his last completed symphony, the Ninth. If the Ninth Symphony embraces the disintegration of Mahler’s personal life, it also speaks for the moral, political and spiritual decay that was beginning to infect the society in which he lived. Composed between 1909 and 1910, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony lays bare a German culture and a tradition of German music that had become, by the beginning of the twentieth century, increasingly febrile and fractured. Although the Modernist movement was still, roughly speaking, a decade away, the Ninth can be understood as a prophetic vision of the destruction that would come to devastate both the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Symphonic tradition with the advent of war in 1914.
The first movement begins with an uneasy truce between a bruised resignation and the dawning realisation that one’s commitment to life can never be static – it must be renewed over and over. As such, this movement has a convulsive quality to it – indeed, it is a series of failed climaxes, wherein the pathos resides, not so much in annihilation, but in the repeated and often heart-breaking juxtaposition of the will to triumph and the slow, bloodied recovery from failure.
The second and third movements of this symphony are essentially polemical; they contain music of such cynicism that one could be forgiven for dismissing them as the ranting of a bitter old man. Although these movements bristle with the anger and frustration, they are by no means reactionary: the dissonances, atonality and sheer chaos of the third movement in particular imposes, ineluctably, on the listener a sense of the avant-garde, even a century after it was written.
It is in the fourth movement however that the true scope of Mahler’s ambition is revealed: the Ninth Symphony concludes with both a stirring, poetic affirmation of life, and a cold, almost Zen-like, acceptance of death. Like the first movement, it is a procession of essentially failed climaxes, but unlike in the first, this no longer seems so painful. As the music is gradually stripped bare, we approach the extreme horizons of sound and soul. As the great American conductor Leonard Bernstein put it: “It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate … in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.”
For the symphonic novice, I would recommend either the 1998 Deutsche Grammophon recording with Pierre Boulez conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, or the 2008 EMI recording with Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic. While these recordings may lack the prestigious pedigree of earlier recordings by Bruno Walter or Sir John Barbirolli, when listened to in conjunction with a first-rate stereo system (or a good pair of headphones) these modern, digital recordings provide a clarity of sound, in addition to rigorous interpretation, that is apt to provoke a most visceral pleasing reaction.
Woroni TV is Hiring for 2021!
11.1.2021 by Woroni Editor
The Fifty-Two Books I Didn’t Read This Year
20.12.2020 by Anonymous
The Moose That Drank Too Much
13.10.2020 by Dana Rice
13.10.2020 by Tilda Njoo
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https://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/mission/meet-a-warrior/brian-sellers BRIAN SELLERS
"The more I helped people through WWP,” he said, “the more I wanted to help even more people. So when they approached me about joining the National Campaign Team, I thought this was another way to help more individuals."
— Brian Sellers
Support Warriors like Brian
Brian Sellers was all set to become a police officer. After years of rehab for his wartime injuries, and after even more years of study to earn a bachelor’s degree in criminology, Brian was about to enter the police academy and take his place on the front lines of law enforcement. Then he put the brakes on. His future was about to do a crisp about-face.
“I felt a calling,” Brian said. It was a calling to make a career out of the hospital emergency-department job that sustained him while he studied criminology.
“After leading more than 100 Marines in combat, I didn’t want to come home and work in a supermarket,” Brian said. “In the infantry, they always told you the only thing you could do when you leave the military is to go into law enforcement. So that’s just what I thought I was going to do.” To pay the bills while in school, Brian took a job in the emergency department of a local hospital.
“As I got closer to entering the police academy, I quit my job at the hospital. But I found myself missing the type of environment in which I could help other people who were injured,” Brian says. “So a week before I was to start the police academy, I decided that was not what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to go back into the medical field so I could help other people.”
So Brian again hit the classroom, this time earning a nursing degree. He now works in a hospital emergency room.
Brian’s empathy for those experiencing medical emergencies is very real. He’s been there, done that — on October 23, 2004, to be exact.
“I was inside the base after a combat mission in Ramadi, Iraq, and I figured I was pretty safe,” Brian says. Then an incoming mortar exploded.
“After my fellow Marines retired to their quarters, a loud explosion knocked me to my knees,” Brian remembers. “I felt a burning sensation all down my left side. I attempted to yell, ‘Incoming!’ but was unable to talk. I then put my hand to my throat and felt blood running down my neck.” Help was soon in coming.
“As the medical team laid me down, I felt blood rushing down my throat and my supply of air quickly depleting. I closed my eyes and said what I thought would be my last prayer. Then everything faded to black.”
Brian’s wounds required several surgeries and many months of rehabilitation to re-learn the simple tasks of speaking, swallowing, and eating.
When Brian recalls his first few days in the Marines, he laughs and says, “I remember thinking nothing I did was good enough and everything I did was wrong.” But everything Brian is doing today feels absolutely right. He recently became engaged to his girlfriend. He’s following his passion to help and heal others in their time of need. And he’s serving his fellow veterans through Wounded Warrior Project® (WWP) and its National Campaign Team. Brian is publicly sharing his story of injury, rehabilitation, and triumph with more recently injured service members to inspire them to continue to achieve great things.
“The more I helped people through WWP,” he said, “the more I wanted to help even more people. So when they approached me about joining the National Campaign Team, I thought this was another way to help more individuals.”
So years after saying what he thought would be his final prayer, he’s doing everything humanly possible to answer the prayers of others in their time of need. It’s just part of a common theme that runs throughout Brian Sellers’s life.
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2020-03-04 Rachael Flanagan 24 March 2015
Fatal personal injury case
Home / Knowledge base / Fatal personal injury case
Posted by Rachael Flanagan on 24 March 2015
Rachael Flanagan Associate
We acted for Mrs F who was the widow and administratrix of the estate of her deceased husband who died in an accident at work in 2013.
Mrs F’s husband worked as an independent contractor for a firm delivering farm food and grain. It was Mr F’s job to take a loaded lorry of animal feed and grain to deliver to farms up and down the country. Mr F had received very little training with regard to carrying out his job and in particular, there was a total lack of training on health and safety aspects of his position.
On the day when he died, he was delivering animal feed to a farm which he had not previously visited. He positioned his lorry close to the silo to discharge the animal food stuffs and connected the appropriate pipes. He then lifted the trailer part of the lorry in order to deliver the grain. Unfortunately the lorry rose to a height which meant it came into contact with live power cables which resulted in electrocution to Mr F.
The personal injury claim was brought against the employers for lack of appropriate training and placing Mr F in a dangerous position. The claim also proceeded against the farm upon whose land Mr F was, when delivering the foodstuffs, as the overhanging cables were not obvious, there were no warning signs notifying visitors of the danger or the fact that the cables carried electricity and were live.
An inquest was held into the death of Mr F which we attended on behalf of his wife and family. This was an extremely important hearing as a great deal of evidence was produced by both defendants which they had consistently failed to give despite being repeatedly requested. The evidence showed a complete lack of appreciation of health and safety law by both defendants, leaving Mr F in a hazardous position. The breaches were so severe that a prosecution by the Health and Safety Executive resulted in a conviction and fine against the owner of the farm.
Despite the clear fault on behalf of the employer and the owner of the farm, neither defendant admitted liability. However, the claim was settled with each party contributing 50% each for just shy of a six figure sum.
Although neither defendant would admit liability and maintained their defences throughout the proceedings, the persistence of Wright Hassall meant that Mrs F was properly compensated for the premature death of her husband.
Tags: Personal injury Compensation claims
Rachael Flanagan
Rachael is an experienced and dedicated specialist in the medical negligence and personal injury team. Rachael represents clients who have suffered serious and debilitating injuries.
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Obama to Call for a New Era of Responsibility
Huge Crowds Gather as First African-American President Takes Office; Aides Expect Steps on Iraq War, Bank Policy This Week
By Laura Meckler and Jonathan Weisman
Jan. 20, 2009 12:01 am ET
WASHINGTON -- Americans poured into the nation's capital to celebrate the inauguration of their first black president. But with the U.S. in its worst economic crisis since the Depression and at war on two fronts, Barack Obama was expected to call on the country to embrace a new culture of responsibility when he takes office at noon.
The inaugural crowd Tuesday could reach two million people, one of the largest gatherings in Washington's history. Millions more will be watching across the U.S. and around the world, with outdoor video screens planned for public squares.
Mr. Obama will take the oath of office with his hand on the Bible that once belonged to the last president to hail from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. The 44th president will stand opposite the Lincoln Memorial, two miles away, where 45 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. called upon the nation to judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Mr. Obama spent Monday celebrating Dr. King's birthday as a day of service, while street vendors sold memorabilia juxtaposing the images of the two black leaders.
Little official business is expected Tuesday in Washington. The real work of the new president will begin Wednesday, Mr. Obama's first full day in office. Aides said one of the new president's first actions will be summoning his national security team to begin preparing for a 16-month withdrawal of combat forces from Iraq, one of the main promises of his two-year-long campaign for the presidency.
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Watch Madeline Sing-a-Longs
This show follows Madeline and her friends. They sing along to popular songs. The words are displayed on the bottom of the screen so children at home can sing along with him. There are also songs from all around the world sung in English and their Native language. Madeline Sing-a-Longs is a series that is currently running and has 1 seasons (2 episodes). The series first aired on May 11, 2009.
Where do I stream Madeline Sing-a-Longs online? Madeline Sing-a-Longs is available for streaming on Cookie Jar, both individual episodes and full seasons. You can also watch Madeline Sing-a-Longs on demand at Starz, iTunes online.
1 Season, 2 Episodes
Watch Full Episodes of Madeline Sing-a-Longs
Sing-a-Long With Mad...
Sing-a-Long Around t...
Madeline Sing-a-Longs Full Episode Guide
2 Starz Episodes
2 iTunes Episodes
Episode 2 - Sing-a-Long Around the World With Mad...
This program features songs about monuments, other lands, and other cultures. "Jambo Africa" - Madeline and friends visit Africa with Miss Clavel, and learn about all the animals, and, most importantly, how to greet others with a friendly "Jambo!" (hello). "Pleased to Meet You" - The girls all learn how important it is to be polite when introducing yourself. "The Ants are Coming!" - While visiting New York, the girls broadcast a fake news report. "Hope is All You Need for Christmas" - The girls go on a field trip to the North Pole (where, humorously, there actually is a big pole... ingenious!) and end up filling in for Santa when all the elves get sick. "I've Always Dreamed of Flying with Santa" - Madeline flies around the world with Santa, helping deliver toys to all the good children. "What Would Paris Be Without the Eiffel Tower?" - The girls sing their praises to one of man's greatest architectural achievements. "Everything Else But a Flea" - The girls visit a flea market with Miss Clavel. "Long Live the King of Chocolate" - The girls sing an ode to chocolate. "We Can Can Be Friends" - In a delightful bit of synergy, the girls visit the Moulin Rouge and perform the legendary Can-Can. "You Can Never Run Out of Love" - The girls proclaim Paris the city of l'amour, and sing a song about "Loving all the way to Mars."
Episode 1 - Sing-a-Long With Madeline and Her Fri...
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Self-delivered Cardiac Rehabilitation programmes a step forward
Self-delivered cardiac rehabilitation programmes could benefit harder to reach communities
Self-delivered cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programmes could benefit some “harder to reach” members of society, new research by the University of York reveals.
Researchers also say cardiac rehabilitation should be individualised
Researchers also say CR should be “individualised” and organised in accordance with the patient's everyday life - for some patients it could include new technologies like mobile phone apps.
CR programmes are aimed at reducing lifestyle risk factors and promoting health in patients post cardiovascular disease.
The programmes are either supervised by health professionals, or self-delivered at home, with patients following set plans such as the Heart Manual or Angina Plan.
Little evidence
However, little evidence exists evaluating the association between mode of delivery and outcomes.
Now, researchers from the University of York’s Department of Health Sciences analysed data from more than 120,000 patients collected from the British Heart Foundation (BHF) National Audit of Cardiac Rehabilitation from 2012 to 2016.
The study looked at four psychosocial health outcomes pre and post CR and changes in anxiety, depression and quality of life following intervention.
Harder to reach
The analysis suggests that facilitated self-delivered CR was appealing to females, the employed and older patients who are traditionally harder to reach.
The findings are published in the International Journal of Cardiology, with an accompanying editorial promoting the benefit of the research.
The editorial went on to say that cardiac rehabilitation should be “individualised” and organised in accordance with the patient's everyday life, with patients possibly using mobile phone apps.
Professor Patrick Doherty, Chair in Cardiovascular Health at the University of York, added: “Our research shows that a ‘one size fits all’ version of rehabilitation fails to meet the expectations and preferences of patients following a heart event.
“Innovative ways of planning and organising rehabilitation is happening in some services but not all.
“Our research shows that variation in the mode of delivery of cardiac rehabilitation, including tailoring towards age and gender, will help improve uptake thus saving lives and improving the quality of life of those that attend.”
The study was carried out by the Cardiovascular Health Research Group which is supported by a grant from the BHF.
Alistair Keely
Head of Media Relations
alistair.keely@york.ac.uk
The research is conducted by Professor Patrick Doherty, Chair in Cardiovascular Health at the Department of Health Sciences.
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You are here: Home / Space / When Did the United States Launch Its First Satellite Into Space and Who Designed the Satellite Explorer 1?
When Did the United States Launch Its First Satellite Into Space and Who Designed the Satellite Explorer 1?
March 4, 2020 by Karen Hill
The Soviet launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to get its first satellite, Explorer 1, into orbit.
The National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA), the predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), adopted a U.S. Navy plan called Vanguard to launch the country’s first satellite.
However, the satellite’s test run, in December 1957, burned on the ground.
Explorer 1 was successfully launched into orbit around Earth on January 31, 1958.
Explorer 1 was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Jupiter-C rocket that carried the satellite was modified by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) to accommodate the payload.
The rocket became known as the Juno I.
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Qatar Health 2021 goes virtual, draws over 3,300 professionals
January 14 2021 12:23 AM
More than 3,300 healthcare professionals have registered for Qatar Health 2021 to be held virtually from January 20-23.
Qatar Health 2021 Pandemic Mitigation: Best Practice for Disaster Medicine, Mass Gatherings and Trauma Systems is a collaborative effort between Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC) and the Ministry of Public Health in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The conference is being held virtually for the first time with a live streaming of all sessions to all attendees. They will have the option to view the conference in a new 360 degree format and engage in real-life simulation of a conference setting with its large halls and virtual promoters.
“We are very excited to be holding Qatar Health 2021 in a completely virtual space,” said Dr AbdulWahab al-Musleh, Qatar Health 2021 Co-Chair. “This will give attendees important updates on the latest research and science related to disaster medicine, mass gatherings and trauma systems plus our pre-conference programme which will hone in on specific areas including nursing during Covid-19.”
Qatar Health 2021 will offer a three-day programme, with multi-disciplinary tracks, preceded by one-day pre-conference workshops and symposia. The tracks are: Pandemic Mitigation and Control, Post-Pandemic Preparations for Mass Gatherings, Post-Pandemic Trauma Systems plus Post-Pandemic Research. There are also three pre-conference tracks including: Heroic Nursing Practice During Covid-19; Critical Decision in Trauma; and Travel Health Preparedness During Sporting Events. The keynote speaker for the event is Dr Michael Ryan, the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) Director of Health Emergencies Programme and considered one of the pre-eminent expert throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
Other international speakers include Dr Abdinasir Abubaka, acting manager and programme lead, Infectious Hazard Preparedness Unit, Health Emergencies Programme, WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean and Dr Ali Khan, dean, College of Public Health, University of Nebraska Medical Centre. Dr Hassan al-Thani, head of Hamad Trauma Centre and deputy chair of Qatar Health 2021 Conference said: “So much has changed over the last 12 months. Qatar Health 2021 focuses in on providing quality care during mass gatherings with the inclusion of recent developments and best practice in pandemic mitigation.
“It shall also provide opportunities in professional development for a wide variety of healthcare professionals from a diverse set of disciplines and practice. The virtual platform enables us to reach a wider audience and gives attendees an immersive and hands on experience.”
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Military / By admin / September 28, 2019
Psychology: Name: Course: Institution: Instructor: Date: Psychology After the world war, many atrocities had been committed and many people dead.
Someone had to be accountable for the evil that was created. For all those brought to trial, many used authority as their defense where many cited that they were only following orders. This meant that only those at the highest rank would be charged while they did not commit all the atrocities. Thus, Stanley Milgram in his 1963 article, “Behavioral Study of Obedience,” published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology sought to understand the effect of authority and obedience on the behavior of people. The main question was whether a person would commit actions that are against his or her conscience because of orders from an authority figure.
The results showed that many went ahead to obey against their will, but tension was exhibited (Milgram, 1963). The study was conducted through an experiment in which the participants were supposed to administer shock to another person under instructions from an authority figure. The study tried as much as possible to replicate the situation in which the people committing atrocities faced then while committing the crimes. Although the experiment did not require anybody to kill a person, the fact that the action was sadistic was good enough to produce results that would show the relationship between authority and obedience.
The research showed that a significant number of the participants continued with the experiment and administered the highest shock after experimenter probed them to continue (Milgram, 1963). However, they showed extreme signs of tension. The experiments proved that people would carry out actions that hurt others in such a situation although critics argued that the participants were not in the same situation as those who committed the Second World War atrocities. The study aimed at finding out on the level of obedience to authority. The fact that majority, 65% of the participants administered the highest shock that would deliver extreme pain proved that people would do things against their conscience if authority demands so (Milgram, 1963).
This implies that those who committed atrocities in the Second World War were influenced by the orders coming from authority figures. However, some situations made it possible for the participants to administer the highest level of shock despite knowing they were quite painful. The first situation was the presence of the authority where many had to comply. In the war, many of the people issuing authority were not present but had authority figures down the line that followed and issued orders issued to them. The second was because the experiment was conducted by a trusted institution, which made the participants believe it was not dangerous.
Thirdly, the participants were only informed that the shock was painful but not dangerous. This was not the case however in the Second World War considering the people in the Second World War were killing innocent people and torturing them as well. Additionally, they were aware of the results of their actions that posed extreme inhumanity. For the experiment, the participants could only hear the person but did not see them agonizing in pain, which made it easier for them to administer the last shock. This does replicate a significant number of situations that people find in themselves. Many people will have no means to defy orders from an authority figure. Considering the military tradition of following orders, many would not defy orders from their authority. When people are following orders, they always know they cannot be held accountable of the results.
This drives many to commit actions that go against their principles. For instance, many people within the work environment will engage in acts they would not at their own will. Additionally, the participants knew this was an experiment and knew the experimenter would not be planning to hurt anybody. With this in mind, many were able to carry on the experiment to the end. However, at some extreme cases people show signs of rebellion.
Despite the study being an experiment, all the participants showed high levels of tension and nervousness. In the high levels of shock, the participants showed the highest levels of tension that were not usual in experiments. This was proving that there is a high level of obedience to authority.
This proved that among those committing atrocities in the war were obeying instructions against their will. The study presents the results in a statistical manner that makes it quite easy for the reader to follow and connect with the conclusion. Statistical data gives and verifies the qualitative analysis of the results. Further, the methodology used in the experiment is quite original and replicates many real situations that people face.
Further, the article provides a discussion of the results and conclusion. The article is quite clear and makes the experiment quite replicable in other experiments with different variables. One of the critics to the article is that participants were not informed the real danger of the shocks administered. The participants should have been informed of the angers of such shock in order to find out whether they could have obeyed when they knew the repercussions of the action. This could have helped in replicating further the situation that was faced by those who committed atrocities in the Second World War. Those that committed the atrocities were aware of their actions and their results but went ahead.
Thus, knowing that the victim would be severely hurt would replicate a near situation to the one the experiment was conducted for, the Second World War. The study by Milgram manages to prove that people are quite obedient to authority, proving that many would commit actions that go beyond their principles and consent (Milgram, 1963). In many cases especially in the army, many people cite they were following orders as a defense.
As the experiment suggests, many people would suffer psychological and emotional issues from committing some of the action. This is evident in the army where many come back with psychological disturbances and require professional help from all the actions that happen. Thus, the study presents a situation that is a reality within different settings in the society.
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