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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Two deliberating jurors at the rape trial of former “That ’70s Show” star Danny Masterson were dismissed Monday because they have been diagnosed with COVID-19.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo replaced the jurors with two alternates and told the panel to start over with deliberations.
The jurors were returning Monday from a week off after telling Olmedo on Nov. 18 that they were deadlocked and could not reach a verdict on any of the three rape counts against Masterson after nearly three days of deliberations.
The judge told them it was too soon to declare a mistrial and to keep deliberating when they returned from the holiday break.
Masterson, 46, is charged with the rape of three women, including a former girlfriend, in his Hollywood Hills home between 2001 and 2003.
He has pleaded not guilty, and the defense said the acts were consensual. | https://www.fox44news.com/entertainment-news/ap-2-sick-jurors-lost-from-deliberations-at-masterson-trial/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:18 | en | 0.985904 |
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BRUSSELS — Law enforcement authorities in six different countries have joined forces to take down a "super cartel" of drugs traffickers controlling about one third of the cocaine trade in Europe, the European Union crime agency said on Monday.
Europol said 49 suspects have been arrested during the investigation, with the latest series of raids across Europe and the United Arab Emirates taking place between Nov. 8-19.
The agency said police forces involved in "Operation Desert Light" targeted both the "command-and-control center and the logistical drugs trafficking infrastructure in Europe."
Over 30 metric tons (33 tons) of drugs were seized during the investigations run in Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UAE with the support of Europol. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration also played a role in bringing down the organization, which was also involved in money laundering, Europol said.
"The scale of cocaine importation into Europe under the suspects' control and command was massive," Europol said, adding that the suspects used encrypted communications to organize drugs shipments.
The Netherlands was the country where most of the arrests were made, with 14 suspects arrested in 2021. Europol said six "high-value targets" were arrested in Dubai.
Dutch authorities said one of the suspects arrested in Dubai allegedly imported thousands of kilos of cocaine into the Netherlands in 2020 and 2021. The 37-year-old man with both Dutch and Moroccan nationality is also being prosecuted for laundering large amounts of money and possession of firearms. Police started investigating him after investigators cracked the encrypted messaging service Sky ECC, which is popular with criminals.
A 40-year-old Dutch-Bosnian citizen was also arrested in Dubai following an investigation based on intercepted Sky messages, according to Dutch police. He is suspected of importing into Europe cocaine and raw materials for the production of amphetamines.
Record amounts of cocaine are being seized in Europe. Its availability on the continent has never been higher, with extremely high purity and low prices.
More than 214 tons of cocaine were seized in the region in 2020, a 6% increase from the previous year, and experts from the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction believe that amount could reach 300 metric tons (330 tons) in 2022.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-11-28/a-cartel-allegedly-responsible-for-a-third-of-europes-cocaine-has-been-busted | 2022-11-28T20:11:24 | en | 0.973069 |
DOHA, Qatar (AP) — Argentina’s 2-0 win over Mexico was the most-watched Spanish-language World Cup group stage broadcast in U.S. history, drawing 8.9 million viewers on Telemundo television and the streaming services of Telemundo and Peacock.
The game, which started at 2 p.m. EST Saturday, topped the previous group stage mark of 5.7 million set in Brazil’s 2-0 win over Serbia, a 2 p.m. EST kickoff on Nov. 24. The overall U.S. Spanish-language record is 9.2 million on television for the Netherlands’ 2-1 win over Mexico in a round of 16 game on June 29, 2014, a Sunday match that kicked off at noon EDT.
The Argentina-Mexico match set a record with 2.08 million viewers of the streams on Telemundo and Peacock, topping the 1.35 million for Mexico’s 0-0 draw against Poland on Tuesday, the networks said.
Telemundo and Peacock are part of NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast Corp.
Fox has U.S. English-language television rights.
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KYIV, Ukraine — As bells rang out at a centuries-old monastery, Ukrainians stepped out into a cold, misty night to light candles in memory of the devastating famine of 1932-33.
This annual commemoration was especially poignant this year, marking 90 years since the famine gripped Ukraine. Many here say Soviet dictator Josef Stalin was trying to destroy Ukraine then, and the current Kremlin leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, is trying to do the same thing now.
They call it the Holodomor, which means "death by hunger."
At the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide, one visitor, Roman Vashchenko, 44, spoke in somber tones of suffering old and new. First, he recalled stories his grandmother told him.
"She was one of 10 children. They were not allowed to leave their village. So they didn't know what was happening elsewhere," he said. "But they had a cow, and that's why they survived, because they had milk."
Then he spoke of pain that's much more recent.
"In March, the Russians shot and killed my sister and her husband," he said softly. Their sons, ages 12 and 6, survived.
Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union when Stalin seized private farms and turned them into state-run operations. It was an absolute disaster in this fertile farming region known as the "breadbasket of the Soviet Union."
Other farming regions also suffered famine, including Kazakhstan. But no place was hit as hard as Ukraine.
An estimated 4 million Ukrainians died within two years, though there's no precise figure and some historians say the toll may have been significantly higher.
Ukraine calls it a genocide, and nearly 20 other countries now agree — though not Russia.
Drawing parallels between Stalin and Putin
One country that shares Ukraine's position is Poland, and its prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, visited Kyiv this weekend.
"If we allow Putin to continue, he will become the Stalin of the 21st century," Morawiecki said.
Ukraine's President Volodomyr Zelenskyy also made the link between then and now.
"We see what is happening today in the world, what is happening in Ukraine. They want to destroy us with bombs, bullets, cold and hunger again," Zelenskyy said.
There are no official figures, but most estimates point to tens of thousands of Ukrainian deaths among soldiers and civilians since Russia invaded in February.
Nearly 8 million Ukrainians fled the country. While some have returned, it remains the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.
Millions more Ukrainians have fled their homes in the east and the south of the country, the scene of the heaviest fighting, and taken refuge in other parts of the country.
Zelenskyy marked the anniversary of the famine by hosting an international conference Saturday on food security, called "Grain from Ukraine."
Many European leaders attended, either in person or virtually. A total of 20 countries pledged $150 million to to help deliver Ukraine's farm exports by ship.
Russia blocked Ukraine from using its main export channel via the Black Sea in the early months of the war. Ukrainian wheat and other products are now flowing, though at lower than normal levels. Prices for basic foods remain expensive on the international market, straining the budgets of developing countries in Africa and Asia in particular.
"We do not just send Ukrainian foodstuffs to those countries that suffer the most from the food crisis. We affirm that never again should hunger be used as a weapon," Zelenskyy said.
Documenting the famine
At the Holodomor museum, there are books as thick as encyclopedias, some more than 1,000 pages. They're filled with the names of those who died in the famine. Visitors page through them, often looking for relatives they never knew.
Many say they heard firsthand accounts of the famine from grandparents or great-grandparents who survived.
"People were trying to live by eating grass and roots. My great-grandfather was a miner, and they got 100 grams of bread every day. Because of this bread, they survived," said Iryna Kopalova, a 37-year-old engineer.
This past spring, Kopalova said that as the fighting neared their village outside Kyiv, her 6-year-old daughter understood that the Russians were the enemy.
"When she heard the first explosions, she asked me, 'Mother, should I speak Russian now?' But we just fled our home, we didn't wait for the Russians to arrive," Kopalova said.
That famine, and today's war, speak to a country that's endured so much hardship.
It explains why the national anthem begins with the words, "Ukraine has not yet perished."
As NPR was about to leave the museum, Roman Vashchenko, the man who lost his sister and brother-in-law this spring, came over to say more about the couple's two orphaned children.
The 12-year-old, Tymofiy, has kept a journal during the war. When his parents were killed, he didn't believe it at first, hoping they might still be alive. Eventually he accepted the loss, writing, "Dreams don't come true."
Greg Myre is an NPR national security correspondent currently on assignment in Ukraine. Follow him @gregmyre1.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-11-28/ukraine-remembers-a-famine-under-stalin-and-points-to-parallels-with-putin | 2022-11-28T20:11:30 | en | 0.980894 |
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NEW YORK (AP) — Nearly six years into monitoring the content of conservative media outlets for his website and newsletter The Righting, Howard Polskin hasn’t lost the capacity for surprise.
Case in point: when Donald Trump announced his 2024 presidential candidacy, and many of his long-time media allies let fly with anger and insults. Two impeachments, two years of election denials and a U.S. Capitol riot didn’t have the impact of a disappointing showing by Republicans in the midterm elections.
“I didn’t expect the level of vitriol, there’s no question about it,” he said.
Trump’s inauguration in 2017 started Polskin on his journey. A New York-based former reporter and publicist for the likes of CNN and J.K. Rowling, Polskin was mystified at why his fellow Americans had elected Trump, and sought explanations.
He began studying outlets popular with conservatives and sending links to fellow left-leaning friends who wouldn’t think of clicking on the Washington Free Beacon, the Epoch Times, PJ Media or Chicks on the Right.
“I didn’t start it as a business,” he said. “I started it for myself.”
It has grown into a newsletter with subscribers that number nearly 10,000 and a website. Polskin, with a former Newsweek editor and freelance writers, does original reporting on people behind the outlets and coverage trends like the targeting of transgender rights and how powerful women of color are disparaged. He’s produced an “A-Z Guide to Right Wing Media” with 130 entries.
The Righting also follows which sites are gaining and losing popularity in an industry fully dominated by FoxNews.com.
Polskin is impatient for more people who are not enmeshed in conservative media to read what he’s compiling. He received an important endorsement when California Gov. Gavin Newsom said in September that he reads The Righting each morning.
Newsom told Politico that it gave him “a different appreciation and a different understanding of the ruthlessness of the right.”
People who are not fans don’t appreciate the breadth of the conservative media ecosystem, and how it has spread beyond radio and websites into podcasting, publishing and YouTube channels, Polskin said. The left doesn’t come anywhere close.
He’s not switched sides, but Polskin admits his work has pushed him more toward the political center. He’s grown to appreciate the talents of certain writers, like Townhall columnist Kurt Schlichter, a lawyer and former stand-up comic, and Ray Cardello, a blogger from New Hampshire.
“Prior to The Righting, I never went to these sites and it has opened my mind to a different way of thinking,” he said. “While I might not agree with it all the time, I get the underlying philosophy.”
He worries about the sites succeeding in painting Democrats as having views on the fringe and making them unpalatable to many Americans.
Scroll through some of the headlines Polskin has collected and you’ll find conventional conservative wisdom mixed with some that border on the bizarre: “Wokeness is the Acid Dissolving Christianity,” “Unvaccinated Women Shun Vaccinated Single Men,” “Climate Extremism is Making Americans Mentally Ill” and “DeSantis Flashes his Alpha-Dog Energy in Meeting with Diminished Biden.”
Pre-election newsletters contain an assortment of cold takes: “Bet the House on a GOP Landslide,” “Even Dems Now Realize Midterm Elections Will be a Bloodbath,” “All Signs Point to a Landslide for Liberty” and “Fetterman is Toast.”
“I might ridicule something, but I’m careful with that,” Polskin said. “I don’t want to get in a war with anyone. It would be time-consuming and distracting.”
For now, Polskin said The Righting is “a brand in search of a business.” A Ford Foundation grant he received in May provides the bulk of the funding, and Polskin is exploring ways to have readers donate. It has no advertising. Polskin isn’t opposed to that, although he did turn down an ad request from a gun manufacturer.
“I enjoy Howard quite a bit,” said Cardello, whose “Conservative View from New Hampshire” blog is often quoted in The Righting. “I know what side he comes from, but you can still have a civil conversation with him.”
That hasn’t always been the case with friends and even relatives since Cardello started putting his views online. He said he appreciates the exposure Polskin has given his writing to people of all points of view.
“Otherwise you’re just singing for the choir,” he said. “I put my work out there and if the only people who read it are conservatives … what have I really accomplished?”
But Cardello said he hasn’t gotten a great deal of feedback from people through The Righting. Two editors at prominent sites frequently quoted by Polskin didn’t return calls for comment.
Polskin said he saw real anger in the conservative press about the midterm election results and a need to blame someone. Trump was the most obvious choice.
He’s interested to see whether the break with Trump is permanent — and it is by no means unanimous. In one sign of softening, WND wrote that “Trump has promised to Make America Great Again — and he is probably the only person who can do it.”
And there’s always the tried-and-true target, as a headline in the Gateway Pundit illustrated: “Dems Steal Midterms as Communism Comes to America.” | https://www.fox44news.com/entertainment-news/ap-the-righting-deciphers-conservative-media-for-outsiders/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:31 | en | 0.969974 |
Updated November 28, 2022 at 2:59 PM ET
Officials in a rural, Republican-controlled county in Arizona have voted to delay certifying the results of this month's midterm elections and miss the state's legal deadline of Monday, despite finding no legitimate problems with the local counts.
The move by the board of supervisors for Cochise County in southeastern Arizona, near Tucson, puts more than 47,000 Arizonans' votes at risk and is expected to set off court action. The state's secretary of state's office plans to file a lawsuit on Monday, spokesperson Sophia Solis said by email.
"There is no reason for us to delay," said the board's chair, Ann English, a Democrat, whose vote was outnumbered by the county's two Republican supervisors, Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd.
Before Monday's vote, Arizona's state election director, Kori Lorick, said in a statement that the state's secretary of state "will use all available legal remedies to compel compliance with Arizona law and protect Cochise County voters' right to have their votes counted" if the board failed to complete its "non-discretionary duty."
Many election watchers have been raising concerns that Republican officials may disrupt the process for making the election results official after GOP leaders in Cochise County voted on Nov. 18 to wait to decide whether to certify the results until the legal deadline on Monday.
They cited claims about the certification of election equipment, which Lorick confirmed had been tested and properly certified. Still, Crosby and Judd have called for a meeting on Friday to discuss the claims.
In the opposite corner of Arizona, another Republican-controlled county — Mohave County — may end up following Cochise County's lead in not certifying election results. Last week, GOP officials there said they want to hold off on making a decision until Monday's deadline in order to make a political statement. They recessed their meeting Monday and are set to resume their discussion later in the day.
The controversy over local vote certifications comes as Republicans continue to criticize the election administration in Arizona's Maricopa County, the state's largest county and home to Phoenix. Maricopa's Republican leadership has defended its handling of the election and said no voters were disenfranchised as a result of technical issues. Still, GOP candidates for governor and state attorney general have questioned the results and sought more information after electronic vote-counting tabulators malfunctioned early on Election Day in some of the county's voting locations.
Ben Giles, a reporter with NPR member station KJZZ in Phoenix, contributed to this report.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-28/an-arizona-county-has-refused-to-certify-election-results-by-the-legal-deadline | 2022-11-28T20:11:36 | en | 0.966947 |
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NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Five Connecticut police officers were charged with misdemeanors Monday over their treatment of a Black man after he was paralyzed from the chest down in the back of a police van.
Randy Cox, 36, was being driven to a New Haven police station June 19 for processing on a weapons charge when the driver braked hard, apparently to avoid a collision, causing Cox to fly headfirst into the wall of the van, police said.
As Cox pleaded for help, saying he couldn’t move, some of the officers mocked him and accused him of being drunk and faking his injuries. Then, the officers dragged him by his feet from the van and placed him in a holding cell prior to his eventual transfer to a hospital.
The five New Haven police officers were charged with second-degree reckless endangerment and cruelty to persons.
The officers turned themselves in at a state police barracks Monday. Each was processed, posted a $25,000 bond and are due back in court Dec. 8, according to a news release from state police. Messages seeking comment were sent to attorneys for the officers.
The case has drawn outrage from civil rights advocates like the NAACP, along with comparisons to the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore. Gray, who was also Black, died in 2015 after he suffered a spinal injury while handcuffed and shackled in a city police van.
Five officers were placed on administrative leave in Cox’s case. The state later dropped all charges against Cox that led to him being put in the van. They included illegal possession of a firearm and threatening.
New Haven officials announced a series of police reforms this summer stemming from the case, including eliminating the use of police vans for most prisoner transports and using marked police vehicles instead. They also require officers to immediately call for an ambulance to respond to their location if the prisoner requests or appears to need medical aid. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-5-officers-charged-after-black-man-paralyzed-in-police-van/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:38 | en | 0.984708 |
Smoke filled the Hawaiian night sky on Sunday, glowing a bright red — signaling the eruption of the world's largest active volcano.
Mauna Loa, which means "long mountain" in Hawaiian, exploded at approximately 11:30 p.m. local time on Sunday. It had been showing signs of unrest since September, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
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The federal agency designated the volcano alert level as "warning," meaning "hazardous eruption is imminent, underway or suspected."
As of Monday morning there had been no calls for evacuation. The mayor of Hawaii County, Mitch Roth, said the eruption does not appear to be threatening any downslope communities. But as a precaution, the Hawaii government opened shelters for those who chose to evacuate at the Old Kona Airport in Kailua-Kona and Ka'u gym in Pahala.
Mauna Loa is taller than Mount Everest
Mauna Loa is one of 15 volcanoes located in the eight main Hawaiian islands. It makes up roughly 51% of the island of Hawai'i, according to the U.S. National Park Service. From the bottom of the sea, it stands 30,000 feet — more than 1,000 feet taller than the height of Mount Everest. Much of Mauna Loa is underwater, with only roughly 13,000 feet of it rising above sea level.
The volcano's earliest lava flows can be traced back to between 600,000 and a million years ago. Scientists estimate that the Mauna Loa likely emerged above sea level about 300,000 years ago and has been rapidly growing ever since.
The eruption ends Mauna Loa's longest recorded quiet period
Mauna Loa has erupted 33 times since written records of eruptions began in 1843. The last one took place in March 1984 and lasted three weeks. Lava advanced within five miles of Hilo, the largest city on the archipelago's big island.
Among the destructive eruptions, was one that occurred in the spring of 1868, when 4,000 acres of land were destroyed and 77 residents died in landslides and a tsunami and landslides spurred by earthquakes. The lava flow spanned five days, and the eruption is considered one of the deadliest natural disasters in Hawaiian history.
Mauna Loa lava flow can change rapidly
As of Monday morning local time, the lava appeared to be contained and showed no signs of exiting the summit. But Mauna Loa eruptions have a history of being dynamic and the flow of its lava can change rapidly in its early stages.
Mauna Loa also tends to erupt lava at a very high rate, which can be particularly dangerous when it descends the volcano's steep slopes. It can produce "fast-moving and long-travelled lava flows" which require a "quick response," the U.S. Geological Survey said.
There is also a risk that winds may carry volcanic gas and fine ash downwind to the nearby communities.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-28/hawaiis-mauna-loa-the-worlds-biggest-active-volcano-erupts-after-38-years | 2022-11-28T20:11:43 | en | 0.962358 |
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AL WAKRAH, Qatar (AP) — Substitute Vincent Aboubakar scored one goal and created another as Cameroon rallied from 3-1 down to draw 3-3 with Serbia at the World Cup on Monday.
He lobbed goalkeeper Vanja Milinkovic-Savic in the 64th minute and then set up striker Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting two minutes later.
The thrilling draw was the first game at the World Cup in Qatar in which both teams gave up a lead.
But the result suited neither side.
They have one point and either Brazil or Switzerland can qualify with a win when they meet later Monday.
Cameroon led through central defender Jean-Charles Castelletto’s 29th minute tap-in but also conceded twice in quick succession.
Strahinja Pavlovic headed home in the first minute of first-half stoppage time and, two minutes later, midfielder Sergej Milinkovic-Savic struck from 20 meters.
Striker Aleksandar Mitrovic made it 3-1 in the 53rd at Al Janoub Stadium.
Cameroon coach Rigobert Song dropped goalkeeper Andre Onana for the match. It was not immediately clear why Onana was left out amid reports it was for disciplinary reasons.
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AP World Cup coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/world-cup and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-aboubakar-saves-cameroon-in-3-3-tie-with-serbia-at-world-cup/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:45 | en | 0.948565 |
With a style both sophisticated and sanctified, Ahmad Jamal is known for an artful use of space in his music, which goes hand in hand with his dramatic sense of tension and release. He stands as an inspiration to peers like Miles Davis and countless others — including scores of hip-hop fans, who know Jamal through a few iconic samples of his work.
Zev Feldman is a record producer who has become synonymous with the discovery of archival gems, including two new volumes of live performances from Jamal that find the pianist in his prime, between the years 1963-66, they've titled Emerald City Nights: Live at the Penthouse. Together the recordings capture a jazz master at a dynamic peak, leading a succession of trios with a light touch but absolute command.
Jamal spoke to WRTI's Nate Chinen about the new archivial collection and the process of looking, sometimes, in the rear-view mirror.
To hear this story, use the audio player at the top of this page.
Copyright 2022 WRTI . To see more, visit WRTI . | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-28/influential-jazz-pianist-ahmad-jamal-has-released-a-pair-of-archival-albums | 2022-11-28T20:11:49 | en | 0.966206 |
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HONG KONG (AP) — Students in Hong Kong chanted “oppose dictatorship” in a protest of China’s COVID-19 rules Monday after demonstrators on the mainland issued an unprecedented call for President Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades.
Rallies against China’s unusually strict anti-virus measures spread to several cities over the weekend, and authorities eased some regulations, apparently to try to quell that public anger. But the government showed no sign of backing down on its larger coronavirus strategy, and analysts expect authorities to quickly silence the dissent.
With police out in force Monday, there was no word of protests in Beijing or Shanghai. But about 50 students sang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and some lit candles in a show of support for those in mainland cities who demonstrated against restrictions that have confined millions to their homes. Hiding their faces to avoid official retaliation, the students chanted, “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves!”
The gathering and a similar one elsewhere in Hong Kong were the biggest protests there in more than a year under rules imposed to crush a pro-democracy movement in the territory, which is Chinese but has a separate legal system from the mainland.
“I’ve wanted to speak up for a long time, but I did not get the chance to,” said James Cai, a 29-year-old from Shanghai who attended a Hong Kong protest and held up a piece of white paper, a symbol of defiance against the ruling party’s pervasive censorship. ”If people in the mainland can’t tolerate it anymore, then I cannot as well.”
It wasn’t clear how many people have been detained since the protests began Friday, sparked by anger over the deaths of 10 people in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Some have questioned whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls.
Without mentioning the protests, the criticism of Xi or the fire, some local authorities eased restrictions Monday.
The city government of Beijing announced it would no longer set up gates to block access to apartment compounds where infections are found.
“Passages must remain clear for medical transportation, emergency escapes and rescues,” said Wang Daguang, a city official in charge of epidemic control, according to the official China News Service.
Guangzhou, a manufacturing and trade center that is the biggest hot spot in China’s latest wave of infections, announced some residents will no longer be required to undergo mass testing.
Urumqi, where the fire occurred, and another city in the Xinjiang region in the northwest announced markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of infection would reopen this week and public bus service would resume.
“Zero COVID,” which aims to isolate every infected person, has helped to keep China’s case numbers lower than those of the United States and other major countries. But tolerance for the measures has flagged as people in some areas have been confined at home for up to four months and say they lack reliable access to food and medical supplies.
In Hong Kong, protesters at Chinese University put up posters that said, “Do Not Fear. Do Not Forget. Do Not Forgive,” and sang including “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical “Les Miserables.” Most hid their faces behind blank white sheets of paper.
“I want to show my support,” said a 24-year-old mainland student who would identify herself only as G for fear of retaliation. “I care about things that I couldn’t get to know in the past.”
University security guards videotaped the event but there was no sign of police.
At an event in Central, a business district, about four dozen protesters held up blank sheets of paper and flowers in what they said was mourning for the fire victims in Urumqi and others who have died as a result of “zero COVID” policies.
Police cordoned off an area around protesters who stood in small, separate groups to avoid violating pandemic rules that bar gatherings of more than 12 people. Police took identity details of participants but there were no arrests.
Hong Kong has tightened security controls and rolled back Western-style civil liberties since China launched a campaign in 2019 to crush a pro-democracy movement. The territory has its own anti-virus strategy that is separate from the mainland.
On the mainland, the ruling party promised last month to reduce disruption by changing quarantine and other rules. But a spike in infections has prompted cities to tighten controls.
On Monday, the number of new daily cases rose to more than 40,000, including more than 36,000 with no symptoms.
The ruling party newspaper People’s Daily called for its anti-virus strategy to be carried out effectively, indicating Xi’s government has no plans to change course.
“Facts have fully proved that each version of the prevention and control plan has withstood the test of practice,” a People’s Daily commentator wrote.
Protests also have occurred in Guangzhou near Hong Kong, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest, and Nanjing in the east, according to witnesses and video on social media.
Most protesters have complained about excessive restrictions, but some turned their anger at Xi, China’s most powerful leader since at least the 1980s. In a video that was verified by The Associated Press, a crowd in Shanghai on Saturday chanted, “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!”
The British Broadcasting Corp. said one of its reporters was beaten, kicked, handcuffed and detained for several hours by Shanghai police but later released.
The BBC criticized what it said was Chinese authorities’ explanation that its reporter was detained to prevent him from contracting the coronavirus from the crowd. “We do not consider this a credible explanation,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian said the BBC reporter failed to identify himself and “didn’t voluntarily present” his press credential.
“Foreign journalists need to consciously follow Chinese laws and regulations,” Zhao said.
Swiss broadcaster RTS said its correspondent and a cameraman were detained while doing a live broadcast but released a few minutes later. An AP journalist was detained but later released.
___
Associated Press writer Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-china-affirms-zero-covid-stance-eases-rules-after-protests/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:52 | en | 0.971606 |
NEW YORK — Stocks fell on Wall Street Monday, giving back some of their huge gains made last week on hopes the worst of the nation's inflation may finally have passed.
The S&P 500 fell 0.9%, or 35.68 points, to 3,957.25 after drifting between gains and losses several times through the day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.6%, or 211.16, to 33,536.70, and the Nasdaq composite fell 1.1%, or 127.11, to 11,196.22.
The losses follow Wall Street's best week since June, when the S&P 500 surged 5.9% after encouraging data on inflation sparked speculation the Federal Reserve may ease up on its fusillade of interest-rate hikes meant to get prices under control. Such rate hikes have raised worries about a possible recession, while also dragging down prices for stocks, bonds and cryptocurrencies.
Some analysts have called Wall Street's recent rally overdone, including a 5.5% surge for the S&P 500 on Thursday alone, saying one report does not mean the coast is clear, even if it was encouraging. Some officials at the Federal Reserve have also urged caution, with Fed Governor Christopher Waller saying the better-than-expected reading on inflation for October "was just one data point" and that "everybody should just take a deep breath."
Such warnings weighed on stocks Monday, as did a rise in Treasury yields. But the market also got a brief boost after Fed Vice Chair Lael Brainard gave comments that investors took as a hint that the steepest of the Fed's rate hikes may have passed.
"The inflation data was reassuring, preliminarily," she said. "It will probably be appropriate, soon, to move to a slower pace of rate increases."
In each of its last four meetings, the Fed has hiked its key overnight rate by a big 0.75 percentage points, which is triple the usual amount. Bets have increased since last week's inflation report that the Fed's next move will be an increase of only 0.50 percentage points. While that's still a big increase relative to history, investors are starving for any indication the Fed may ease up on its rate hikes.
Even before last week's report on inflation, Fed Chair Jerome Powell already said such a dial down in the size of rate hikes may be imminent. But he also said the Fed nevertheless could still ultimately take rates higher than earlier expected, and that it may hold rates at that high level a while to make sure inflation stays under control.
Fed officials have been reiterating how the Fed's campaign against high inflation still looks to be a long one.
"Quit paying attention to the pace and start paying attention to where the endpoint is going to be," Waller said. "Until we get inflation down, that endpoint is still a ways out there."
On Wall Street, Hasbro fell 9.9% for the largest loss in the S&P 500 index. Analysts in a BofA Global Research report raised concerns the company may be overproducing cards for its "Magic: The Gathering" game, threatening to undercut a lucrative business.
On the winning side was Moderna, which climbed 4.6% after reporting encouraging data on its bivalent vaccine targeting COVID-19.
Bond yields rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which helps set mortgage rates, rose to 3.87% from 3.81% late Thursday. Bond markets were closed Friday for Veterans Day.
Crypto-related stocks kept whipsawing following the implosion last week of FTX, a major crypto trading exchange. Coinbase, another crypto exchange platform, fell 7.4%.
Several economic reports due this week could offer more clues about where inflation is heading.
On Tuesday, the government will issue its October report on prices at the wholesale level. Economists say inflation there likely slowed to 8.3% from September's 8.5% rate for year-over-year price changes.
On Wednesday, markets will see how resilient U.S. households have been in their spending when the government gives its latest monthly update on sales at retailers.
Economists say retail sales likely grew 0.9% in October from a month earlier, a much stronger showing than September's flat performance. The data, though, does not take inflation into account and could be a reflection of nothing more than higher prices being charged at the register.
Retailers could offer more color on that, with a long line of them scheduled to say this week how much profit they earned during the summer.
Home Depot and Walmart report earnings on Tuesday. Target reports its results on Wednesday, and Macy's reports results on Thursday.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/npr-news/2022-11-28/wall-street-slips-giving-back-some-of-last-weeks-big-gains | 2022-11-28T20:11:55 | en | 0.970881 |
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Audi on Monday announced U.S. pricing for the R8 V10 GT, marking the swan song for the German automaker’s V-10 engine.
The base price is $249,900 plus a $1,495 destination charge, $595 for paint, and a $1,300 gas guzzler tax. That brings the total cost to $253,290 for each of the 150 units planned for the U.S., out of 333 globally. The R8 V10 GT will be sold here as a 2023 model, and is scheduled to start arriving at dealerships early in the 2023 calendar year.
The familiar 5.2-liter has been tuned to deliver 602 hp and 413 lb-ft of torque for the U.S. version of the R8 V10 GT. That’s the same output as all-wheel drive R8 models, and makes the GT the most powerful rear-wheel-drive production car to wear the Audi badge. Audi expects 0-60 mph in 3.3 seconds and a top speed of 199 mph.
The R8’s 7-speed dual-clutch automatic also has recalibrated gear ratios to deliver faster shifts, while a new Torque Rear mode allows the driver to adjust the intervention of the electronic stability control. There are seven stages of Torque Rear to choose from, with each level making the car want to oversteer more.
In U.S. spec, the R8 V10 GT loses 55 pounds compared to the standard R8 V10 RWD coupe, bringing the curb weight down to 3,516 pounds. This was achieved with 20-inch lightweight alloy wheels with Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires, carbon-ceramic brake rotors, a carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic anti-roll bar, and lightweight bucket seats.
The GT is visually distinguished from other R8 models by all-black lettering and badging, a new front splitter, flics, code skirt covers, attachments on the sides of the rear fascia, a rear diffuser, and a rear wing with swan-neck struts. The intake manifold is also painted black. Cars coming to the U.S. also get standard carbon fiber side blades, door-sill inlays, and exterior mirror housings.
Three colors are available—Tango Red Metallic, Daytona Gray Metallic, and Mythos Black Metallic—totaling 50 cars in each color for the U.S. The black-and-red interior includes red seatbelts in homage to the original R8 GT from the 2012 model year. Other standard equipment includes a sport exhaust system, Audi Laser Lights, Dynamic Steering, a Bang & Olufsen audio system, and a diamond-stitched headliner with the stitching in red.
Audi hasn’t said if the R8 will die alongside the V-10, though rumors point to it being discontinued next year. We wouldn’t be surprised if Audi launched an additional run of open-top Spyder versions of the GT before that, though, as was the case with the previous-generation R8 GT. Audi is reportedly planning a successor, but with an electric powertrain and likely a new name.
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- Review: 2023 Porsche 911 Carrera T makes performance simple | https://www.news10.com/automotive/internet-brands/audi-r8-v10-gt-costs-253290-limited-to-150-units/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:58 | en | 0.903851 |
PIDIE, Indonesia (AP) — Children in school uniforms and toddlers with their parents lined up Monday for polio vaccinations in the Sigli town square on the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, after four children were found infected with the highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated in the country less than a decade ago.
The virus was first detected in October in a 7-year-old boy suffering from partial paralysis in the province of Aceh near Sigli, and since then three other cases have been detected, prompting the mass immunization and information drive.
Official say that polio immunization rates in the conservative province are well behind the rest of the country, with efforts hampered by widespread disinformation the vaccine is incompatible with religious beliefs, among other things. The government has also been prioritizing COVID-19 vaccinations since they became available.
The campaign that started Monday aims to vaccinate some 1.2 million children in the province, said Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, the Health Ministry’s director general for disease control and prevention.
“There is no cure for polio, the only treatment is prevention and the tool for prevention is vaccination,” Rondonuwu said, adding that the child is still able to walk, albeit with a limp.
With some 275 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous, and the largest Muslim-majority nation.
Aceh is particularly conservative, and is Indonesia’s only province allowed to practice Shariah, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a war with separatists.
False rumors that the polio vaccine contains pork or alcohol, prohibited according to Muslim beliefs, have proliferated, especially in rural areas, complicating vaccination efforts, said the head of the Aceh Health Office, Hanif, who only goes by one name like many Indonesians.
“We cannot work alone, we need support from all parties, including religious leaders, to that people understand the importance of immunization,” said Hanif.
Azhar, the father of the 7-year-old who contracted polio, said he had opted not to immunize his son after other villagers where he lived told him the vaccines may cause harmful chemicals or non-halal substances.
“My neighbors said that my son don’t need to be immunized and I didn’t want my son get sick because of harmful chemicals that are against Islam,” the 45-year-old said.
For Dewi Safitri, a mother of three who was getting them vaccinated on Monday, it was simply a matter of not knowing it was necessary.
She said she was convinced after health workers spelled out the risks of paralysis or death if her children were to go unvaccinated.
“I didn’t even know about immunization,” she said.
The World Health Assembly adopted a resolution for the global eradication of polio in 1988 and since then, wild poliovirus cases have decreased by more than 99%, according to the World Health Organization.
It was eliminated in Indonesia in 2014, and is today only still endemic in two countries — Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Polio primarily affects children under the age of 5, according to the WHO. Unvaccinated people of any ages can contract the disease, however, and sporadic cases continue to crop up.
In September in New York, for example, the state stepped up its polio-fighting efforts after the disease was detected in the wastewater in the New York City area.
Officials began checking for signs of the virus there after the first case of polio in the United States was identified in July in Rockland County, which is north of the city. It was confirmed in a young adult who was unvaccinated.
The statewide polio vaccination rate is 79% but Rockland’s rate was lower, and New York health officials urged all unvaccinated residents, including children by 2 months of age, to get vaccinated immediately.
Last week, new poliovirus cases were found in Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria, according to the WHO’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
Of the three other children in Indonesia from the same village as the initially confirmed case none had their basic vaccinations, Rondonuwu said.
“It has to be reported as an outbreak, because it had been declared eradicated in Indonesia, but it turns out that there is still wild polio virus,” he said.
Rondonuwu said his ministry is keeping a close watch on the cases by doing door-to-door screening to ensure that there are no additional infections that have not been reported.
The polio virus is transmitted person-to-person, generally through the “fecal-oral” route, according to the WHO. In Indonesia, authorities have also pointed to unsanitary conditions as a probable cause of the new infections after finding out that some local residents still defecate directly into a river where children are often found playing.
Across Indonesia, polio vaccination coverage has been slipping since the outbreak of COVID-19. Despite the challenges of reaching people in the archipelago nation of five main islands and thousands of smaller ones, 73.4% of Indonesians are now fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and 87.5% have at least one shot.
For polio, 86.8% of babies were vaccinated in their first year in 2020 nationwide, which fell to 80.7% in 2021 as the country was forced to focus most of its health facilities and workers on addressing the pandemic.
By comparison, only 50.9% of the infants born in Aceh in 2021 received a polio vaccination. It was the second lowest on a national scale after West Papua, where only 43.4% of babies were vaccinated.
The nationwide decline was part of a broader drop in basic immunizations, such as for measles and rubella, according to UNICEF.
Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist from Australia’s Griffith University, said the discovery of polio in Aceh must be responded to seriously because “the threat is real for Indonesia,” noting that basic immunization coverage is still low, putting the country in a high-risk category.
“This is what the government really has to pursue, because it’s dangerous if we don’t,” Budiman said.
“We must move immediately by strengthening basic immunization or there will be a potential additional health disaster for Indonesia.”
___
Karmini reported from Jakarta, Indonesia. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-polio-is-back-in-indonesia-sparking-vaccination-campaign/ | 2022-11-28T20:11:59 | en | 0.978267 |
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One of Italy’s oldest automotive design houses, Stile Bertone, might be revived with a new supercar, nearly a decade after it succumbed to bankruptcy.
With bankruptcy filed in 2014 and the last of the company’s assets put up for sale in 2018, it seemed like the end for the century-old car manufacturer.
Included among the assets were the rights to the use of the Bertone name, which made its way into the hands of brothers Jean-Franck and Mauro Ricci in 2020.
Teasers of the proposed supercar show clean aesthetics and the proportions of a mid-engine car. Elements also appear to be derived from classic Bertone concept designs such as the 1970’s Stratos HF Zero and 2012’s Nuccio.
It isn’t clear what the power source is but the Ricci brothers have previously hinted at electric technology. In 2019, an engineering firm they’re tied with, Akka, teamed up with an Italian mobility company to preview a pair of Bertone-branded electric supercars. Both featured an electric motor at each axle and a 100-kwh battery.
It also isn’t clear when we’ll see the new Bertone supercar revealed, though an update is expected shortly.
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- Praga Bohema track-focused hypercar revealed | https://www.news10.com/automotive/internet-brands/bertone-name-revived-for-supercar-project/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:05 | en | 0.929465 |
Dr. Oleh Duda was in the middle of a particularly complicated surgery at a hospital in Lviv, Ukraine, when he heard explosions nearby. Moments later, the lights went out.
Duda had no choice but to keep working with only a headlamp for light. The lights came back when a generator kicked in three minutes later, but it felt like an eternity.
“These fateful minutes could have cost the patient his life,” the cancer surgeon told The Associated Press.
The operation on the patient’s major artery took place Nov. 15, when the city in western Ukraine suffered blackouts as Russia unleashed yet another missile barrage on the power grid, damaging nearly 50% of the country’s energy facilities.
The devastating strikes, which continued last week and plunged the country into darkness once again, strained and disrupted the health care system, already battered by years of corruption, mismanagement, the COVID-19 pandemic and nine months of war.
Scheduled operations are being postponed; patient records are unavailable because of internet outages; and paramedics have had to use flashlights to examine patients in darkened apartments.
The World Health Organization said last week that Ukraine’s health system is facing “its darkest days in the war so far,” amid the growing energy crisis, the onset of cold winter weather and other challenges.
“This winter will be life-threatening for millions of people in Ukraine,” the WHO’s regional director for Europe, Dr. Hans Kluge, said in a statement.
He predicted that 2 million to 3 million more people could leave their homes in search of warmth and safety, and “will face unique health challenges, including respiratory infections such as COVID-19, pneumonia and influenza.”
Last week, Kyiv’s Heart Institute posted on its Facebook page a video of surgeons operating on a child’s heart with the only light coming from headlamps and a battery-powered flashlight.
“Rejoice, Russians, a child is on the table and during an operation the lights have gone completely off,” Dr. Boris Todurov, director of the institute in the capital, said in the video. “We will now turn on the generator — unfortunately, it will take a few minutes.”
Attacks have hit hospitals and outpatient clinics in southeastern Ukraine, too. The WHO said in a statement last week that they have verified at least 703 attacks between Feb. 24, when Russian troops rolled into Ukraine, and Nov. 23.
The Kremlin has rejected accusations that it targets civilian facilities. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov once again insisted last week that Russia is targeting only sites “directly or indirectly related to military power.”
But just last week, a strike on a maternity ward in a hospital in eastern Ukraine killed a newborn and heavily wounded two doctors. In the northeastern Kharkiv region, two people were killed after the Russian forces shelled an outpatient clinic.
In Lviv, Duda said the explosions were so close to the hospital that “the walls were shaking,” and doctors and patients had to go down to the shelter in the basement — something that happens every time an air raid siren sounds.
The hospital, which specializes in treating cancer, performed only 10 out of 40 operations scheduled for that day.
In the recently retaken southern city of Kherson, without power after the Russian retreat, paralyzed elevators are a real challenge for paramedics.
They have to carry immobile patients all the way down the stairs of apartment buildings, and then bring them up again to operating rooms.
Across Kherson, where it starts to get dark after 4 p.m. in late November, doctors are using headlamps, phone lights and flashlights. In some hospitals, key equipment no longer works.
Last Tuesday, Russian strikes on the southern city wounded 13-year-old Artur Voblikov, and doctors had to amputate his arm. Medical workers carried the teenager through the dark stairwells of a children’s hospital to an operating room on the sixth floor.
“The breathing machines don’t work, the X-ray machines don’t work. … There is only one portable ultrasound machine and we carry it around constantly,” said Dr. Volodymyr Malishchuk, head of surgery at a children’s hospital in Kherson.
The generator the children’s hospital uses broke down last week, leaving the facility without any form of power for several hours. Doctors are wrapping newborns in blankets because there’s no heat, said Dr. Olga Pilyarska, deputy head of intensive care.
The lack of heat makes operating on patients difficult, said Dr. Maya Mendel, at the same hospital. “No one will put a patient on an operating table when temperatures are below zero,” she said.
Health Minister Viktor Liashko said on Friday that there are no plans to shut down any of country’s hospitals, no matter how bad the situation gets, but the authorities will “optimize the use of space and accumulate everything that’s necessary in smaller areas” to make heating easier.
Liashko said that diesel or gas generators have been provided to all Ukrainian hospitals, and in the coming weeks an additional 1,100 generators sent by the country’s Western allies will be delivered to the hospitals as well. Currently, hospitals have enough fuel to last seven days, the minister said.
Additional reserve generators are still badly needed, the minister added. “The generators are designed to work for a short period of time — three to four hours,” but power outages can last up to three days, Liashko said.
In the recently recaptured territories, the medical system is reeling from months of Russian occupation.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused the Russian forces of shutting down medical facilities in the Kherson region and looting medical equipment — even the ambulances, “literally everything.”
Dr. Olha Kobevko, who has recently returned from the retaken areas of Kherson after delivering humanitarian aid there, echoed the president’s remarks in an interview.
“The Russians stole even towels, blankets and bandages from medical facilities,” Kobevko said.
In Kyiv, the majority of the hospitals are functioning as usual, while relying on generators part of the time.
Smaller private practices and dentist clinics, in the meantime, are having a hard time keeping their doors open for patients.
Dr. Viktor Turakevich, a dentist in Kyiv, said he has to reschedule even urgent appointments, because power outages in his clinic last for at least four hours a day, and a generator he ordered will take weeks to arrive.
“Every doctor has to answer a question about who they will take in first,” Turakevich said.
Power outages have also made it difficult to access online patients’ records, and the Health Ministry’s system that stores all the data has been unavailable, said Kobevko, who works in the western city of Chernivtsy.
Duda, the cancer surgeon from Lviv, said that three doctors and several nurses from his hospital left to treat Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines.
“The war has affected every doctor in Ukraine, be it in the west or in the east, and the level of pain we’re facing every day is hard to measure,” Duda said.
___
Mednick reported from Kherson, Ukraine. Karmanau and Litvinova reported from Tallinn, Estonia.
___
Follow AP coverage of the war in Ukraine at: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-surgeons-work-by-flashlight-as-ukraine-power-grid-battered/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:07 | en | 0.957833 |
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Most electric pickups currently in the works are big, full-size trucks. But a new electric truck survey from Autolist indicates there could be significant demand—particularly among millennials—for something smaller.
The Ford F-150 Lightning topped the rankings as most popular electric truck for the second year in a row in this annual survey, with 24% of respondents naming it their top EV pickup. But the Toyota Tacoma EV—a model that doesn’t even exist—ranked second, with 20% of respondents naming it their top pick.
The Tacoma EV option was particularly popular among millennial respondents, who as an age group ranked it highest. In comparison, the Lightning was the most popular truck among baby boomers and Generation X, while the Tesla Cybertruck was ranked highest by Generation Z respondents. The Tacoma EV also had the most interest from non-truck owners, among any electric trucks.
This would be great news for Toyota if it was actually making an electric version of the Tacoma, a mid-size pickup smaller than full-size models such as the F-150. Toyota has confirmed a fully electric pickup in “the near future,” and in 2021 it showed a concept with a strong resemblance to the current Tacoma, but it hasn’t specifically confirmed a production Tacoma EV.
In addition to the somewhat amusing revelation that millennials are very interested in an electric truck that doesn’t exist, the survey had some other interesting findings regarding the current electric truck trend.
Because internal-combustion pickups are the most popular vehicles in the United States, it’s generally assumed that electric trucks will help drive EV adoption. While 66% of respondents who have owned an EV already said they would consider an electric truck as their next vehicle, just 34% of people who have never owned an EV said they would consider an electric truck as their next vehicle.
The survey found that price and charging infrastructure were major issues. Just over half (51%) of respondents said they wouldn’t buy an electric truck because they are too expensive, while 50% cited lack of access to charging as the main reason for not considering an electric truck.
Availability of charging infrastructure is an issue that affects all EVs, but the relatively limited selection of electric pickups makes price a bigger factor for them right now. Rivian raised prices of its R1T earlier this year and then dropped the most affordable versions that remained. Ford also recently hiked the price of the F-150 Lightning by about $12,000.
Other electric trucks advertised with lower prices haven’t arrived yet. General Motors has claimed the Chevrolet Silverado EV will be a high-volume entry aimed at fleets and affordability, but it hasn’t gone on sale yet, and when it does there’s nothing stopping GM from raising prices, as Ford did with fleet-oriented versions of the Lightning. At the concept/prototype stage in 2019, the Tesla Cybertruck was supposed to have a $39,900 starting price, but it hasn’t yet been detailed in its production form, a year after it was originally due for first deliveries.
In the meantime, Toyota’s best pickup efficiency play has been the full-size Tundra hybrid—although high mpg clearly isn’t the top priority.
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PARIS (AP) — A United Nations-backed mission is recommending that the Great Barrier Reef be added to the list of endangered World Heritage sites, warning that without “ambitious, rapid and sustained” climate action the world’s largest coral reef is in peril.
The warning came in a report published Monday following a 10-day mission to the reef last March by officials from UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The reef, a living place of immense variety and beauty on the north-east coast of Australia, has been on UNESCO’s World Heritage List since 1981.
Australia’s federal government and Queensland’s state authorities should adopt more ambitious emission reduction targets, in line with international efforts to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, according to the report.
Feedback from Australian officials, both at the federal and state level, will also be reviewed before UNESCO, the U.N.’s Paris-based cultural agency, makes any official proposal to the World Heritage committee.
The text is damning about recent efforts to stop mass bleaching and prevent pollution from contaminating the reef’s natural waters, saying they have not been fast nor effective enough. Uncurbed emissions lead to increased water acidity, which can be toxic.
More money should be found to increase the water quality and stop the site’s decline, the report concludes.
In an email to AP, the U.N. cultural agency said: “In recent months, we have had a constructive dialogue (with) Australian authorities. But there is still work to be done.” | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-un-great-barrier-reef-should-be-on-heritage-danger-list/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:14 | en | 0.931857 |
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French official cites Inflation Reduction Act concerns, USTR says
- Country:
- United States
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire on Monday raised concerns over certain provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act in a meeting with United States Trade Representative (USTR) Katherine Tai, the USTR office said.
Europeans say the massive spending package to protect U.S. manufacturers could deal a lethal blow to their industries, which are already reeling from high energy prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"Ambassador Tai and Minister Le Maire agreed that the U.S. and European Union should work together to deepen the bilateral understanding of the legislation," the USTR's office said in a statement after the virtual meeting between the French minister and Tai.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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U.S. imposing sanctions on military procurement network for Russia, says Yellen | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/2268075-french-official-cites-inflation-reduction-act-concerns-ustr-says | 2022-11-28T20:12:17 | en | 0.929033 |
Ford has expanded a recall on newer editions of its most popular compact crossovers equipped with 1.5-liter engines. A cracked fuel injector in the Ford Escape and related Ford Bronco Sport can leak fuel or vapors inside the engine near ignition sources. This could result in a fire under the hood, the NHTSA disclosed Monday.
The recall encompasses 521,778, and expands on a previous recall (22V-191) issued on March 25, 2022. The new number includes the original recall of 345,451 Escape and Bronco Sport vehicles for a cracked engine oil separator housing that carried the same risk and showed the same symptoms of the expanded recall.
The new, wider recall covers the 2020-2023 Ford Escape and 2021-2023 Ford Bronco Sport equipped with the base 1.5-liter turbo-3 engine. The recall includes those vehicles previously recalled and extends to all Escape and Bronco Sport models with the 1.5-liter produced through Oct. 17, 2022.
Ten engine fires occurred after the initial fix for the oil separator issue, and that number increased to 36 as of August of this year. Ford conducted further investigation and has now acknowledged 54 reports of underhood fires from the affected vehicle population. There have been four injuries resulting from the two recalls and 43 legal claims.
The root cause of the engine fires is still under investigation. As of the latest recall, Ford found that the “cracked fuel injector in the engine allows for fuel to leak at a high rate into the cylinder head, which can travel out via a drain hole and down onto hot surfaces on the exhaust/turbo system where it may combust.”
Owners might smell gas both inside or outside of the vehicle and, if a fire combusts, visible smoke and/or flames could follow.
Until Ford figures out the root cause, a software update to the engine control module will detect a pressure drop in the fuel system and alert the customer to seek service, and it will disable the high pressure fuel pump which will then limit engine power. Additionally, Ford and Lincoln service centers will install a drain tube from the cylinder head drain hole away from engine surfaces down to the ground.
Owners can expect notification by mail as early as Dec. 19, 2022, and the services will be completed free of charge. For owners seeking reimbursement for work completed on the engine fire issue, the deadline is Dec. 30, 2022. For more info, call Ford customer service at 1-866-436-7332 or visit Ford’s dedicated recall hub.
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- Tesla fixes 321,000 Model Y, Model 3 EVs over the air
- Study: Driver-assist systems cut rear-end crashes by 49%
- GM recalls 338,000 Suburban, Tahoe, Yukon, Escalade SUVs | https://www.news10.com/automotive/internet-brands/ford-expands-recall-of-escape-and-bronco-sport-for-fire-risk/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:19 | en | 0.923031 |
HOUSTON (AP) — More than 2 million people in the Houston area were under a boil order notice Monday after a power outage at a purification plant caused water pressure to drop, and the mayor of the nation’s fourth-largest city ordered a full review of the system.
The notice tells customers to boil water before it’s used for cooking, bathing or drinking. Multiple Houston area public and private schools, as well as some local colleges, were closed Monday as a result of the notice, while others made adjustments to provide affected campuses with bottled water and sanitizer.
The notice was issued Sunday, hours after two transformers failed, causing power outages at the water plant, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said at a press conference Monday. There was no indication the water system had been contaminated.
Water quality testing was underway, Turner said. He said he expects the notice to be lifted by early Tuesday at the latest, once the state’s environmental agency gives an all-clear after analyzing test results.
According to Turner, the city issued a notice, which affects all of Houston and multiple adjacent areas, in an “abundance of caution” after the two transformers— a main one and its backup— “uniquely and coincidentally” failed. The problem affected the plant’s ability to treat water and pump water into the transmission system, resulting in low water pressure.
The power system at the water plant undergoes regular maintenance, Turner said, but he did not give a timeline for how often. The mayor said he has ordered a diagnostic review of the system to understand how this was possible and how it can be prevented. He said because the issue was within the plant’s system, backup power generators would not have made a difference.
Sixteen sensors marked dips under the minimum pressure levels required by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — 14 of them for only 2 minutes and two of them for nearly 30 minutes, Turner said.
Untreated groundwater can enter a water system through cracked pipes when water pressure drops. Customers are told to boil water to kill bacteria that could be harmful.
“We are optimistic the results will come back clean,” Turner said.
Turner defended the decision to warn residents about the water quality several hours after the issue first occurred and apologized for the disruptions to businesses, schools and elective surgeries. He said the dip in pressure did not automatically trigger a water boil notice, but a decision was made to issue one based on the data once the city consulted with and was instructed to do so by TCEQ.
Water infrastructure and quality has been a prominent issue in cities large and small throughout the U.S., including Baltimore; Honolulu; Jackson, Mississippi; and Flint, Michigan.
___
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FACTBOX-From BlockFi to Genesis, crypto firms reel from exposure to FTX
After the collapse of major cryptocurrency exchange FTX, the industry is bracing for further pain because of the exposure of many companies to FTX and its affiliated trading firm Alameda Research. Here are some firms that have given information about their exposure to FTX.
BLOCKFI BlockFi filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 28, weeks after the crypto lender said it was pausing client withdrawals. In July, FTX had signed a deal with an option to buy BlockFi for up to $240 million.
GENESIS The crypto lending arm of U.S. digital asset broker Genesis Trading suspended customer redemptions earlier this month, citing the sudden failure of FTX.
Genesis said in a tweet on Nov. 10 that its derivatives business has approximately $175 million in locked funds on FTX. However, Genesis had no material exposure to FTX's native token FTT, or any other tokens issued by centralized exchanges, the firm said in a tweet on Nov. 9.
BINANCE Binance Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao sparked concerns among investors on Nov. 6 when he said in a tweet that the crypto exchange would sell its holdings of FTT.
Zhao told a Twitter spaces event that Binance had previously held $580 million worth of FTT, of which "we only sold quite a small portion, we still hold a large bag." CELSIUS NETWORK
Bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network said in a tweet on Nov. 11 that it had 3.5 million Serum tokens (SRM) on FTX as well as around $13 million in loans to FTX-linked trading company Alameda Research. The loans were under-collateralised, mostly by FTT tokens, Celsius said. COINBASE
Coinbase Global Inc said in a blog post on Nov. 8 that it had $15 million worth of deposits on FTX. It said it had no exposure to FTT or Alameda Research and no loans to FTX. COINSHARES
Crypto asset manager CoinShares has $30.3 million worth of exposure to crypto exchange FTX, it said in a statement on Nov. 10. CoinShares CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti said the group's financial health remains "strong."
CRYPTO.COM Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com said on Nov. 14 it had moved about $1 billion to FTX over the course of a year, but most of it was recovered and exposure at the time of FTX's collapse was less than $10 million.
CEO Kris Marszalek said the firm would prove wrong all naysayers who thought the platform was in trouble, adding it had a robust balance sheet and took no risks. GALAXY DIGITAL
Crypto financial services company Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd said in its third-quarter earnings statement on Nov. 9 - the day after FTX froze withdrawals - that it had $76.8 million worth of exposure to FTX, of which $47.5 million was "in the withdrawal process." GALOIS CAPITAL
Hedge fund Galois Capital had half its assets trapped on FTX, co-founder Kevin Zhou told investors in a recent letter, the Financial Times reported, estimating the amount to be around $100 million. Galois did not respond to requests for comment by Reuters.
KRAKEN Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken said on Nov. 10 that it held about 9,000 FTT tokens on the FTX exchange and was not affected "in any material way".
SILVERGATE CAPITAL CORP Silvergate Capital Corp said on Nov. 11 FTX represented less than 10% of $11.9 billion in deposits from all digital asset customers as of Sept. 30.
The financial solutions provider to digital assets also said Silvergate has no outstanding loans or investments in FTX, and that FTX is not a custodian for Silvergate’s bitcoin-collateralized Silvergate Exchange Network (SEN) leverage loans. VOYAGER DIGITAL
Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital, which was set to sell its assets to FTX after a $1.42 billion deal bid by the exchange in September, had a balance of approximately $3 million at FTX. It also reopened the bidding earlier this month.
GRAYSCALE Crypto asset manager Grayscale, whose flagship Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) is the world's largest bitcoin fund, told investors that the recent market events have had no impact on its product operations or the security of the holdings in its funds.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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China Premier Li emphasised 'irresponsibility' of nuclear threats at Asia summit -U.S. official | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/2268086-factbox-from-blockfi-to-genesis-crypto-firms-reel-from-exposure-to-ftx | 2022-11-28T20:12:25 | en | 0.958831 |
BMW M turned 50 this year and celebrated by reviving one of its most legendary models: the 3.0 CSL.
Revealed last week, the new 3.0 CSL is a modern take on the homologation E9 special launched by BMW M in 1972, and considered to be the BMW motorsports and tuning division’s first car. The original, nicknamed the Batmobile because of its wild aerodynamic styling, went on to win on the track and essentially laid the foundation for decades of BMW performance cars to come.
BMW previously honored the original 3.0 CSL with the 3.0 CSL Hommage concept cars unveiled in the last decade, and some of the styling elements of those concepts have made it onto the new 3.0 CSL. In particular, the treatment of the grille and flared wheel arches helps set the car apart from the 2023 M4 CSL with which it is closely related.
Also setting the car apart from the rest of the BMW fold is limited production of just 50 units. BMW hasn’t named a price but rumors point to a starting figure of 750,000 euros (approximately $778,770).
According to BMW, the new 3.0 CSL is the result of five decades of motorsports experience. The car’s powertrain is a twin-turbo 3.0-liter inline-6 similar to what’s found in other BMW products but with output dialed up to 553 hp and 405 lb-ft of torque. The automaker says that’s the highest output for a production inline-6 from the automaker. The engine, which features a rigid crankcase, forged crankshaft, and specially designed oil supply and cooling systems, is mated to a 6-speed manual and drives the rear wheels only.
An Active M Differential can vary the torque between the rear wheels by up to 100% if necessary, using information supplied by the car’s stability control system. The wheels are center-lock units measuring 20 inches up front and 21 inches at the rear, and are wrapped in Michelin rubber. They attach to a double-joint spring strut suspension up front and a five-link setup at the rear. The car is also fitted with an Adaptive M suspension with electronically controlled dampers, as well as carbon-ceramic brake rotors.
Low weight was also a focus of the design. After all, the initials CSL stands for “Coupe, Sport, Lightweight.” Nearly all of the body panels are made from carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic, while the same lightweight material can be found in the cabin for the door panels and bucket seats. The curb weight is approximately 3,580 pounds.
The 50 units of the car are for worldwide sale. BMW is yet to say how many of those 50 will reach the U.S.
BMW M also celebrated its 50th anniversary with the aforementioned M4 CSL, as well as an M3 Touring wagon, a standalone XM super SUV, a redesigned M2, and a special M3 sedan.
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- 2023 Porsche 911 Dakar makes the off-road sports car mashup a reality | https://www.news10.com/automotive/internet-brands/legendary-bmw-3-0-csl-reborn-with-553-hp-inline-6/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:27 | en | 0.937651 |
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LONDON (AP) — The World Health Organization has renamed monkeypox as mpox, citing concerns the original name of the decades-old animal disease could be construed as discriminatory and racist.
The U.N. health agency said in a statement Monday that mpox was its new preferred name for monkeypox, saying that both monkeypox and mpox would be used for the next year while the old name is phased out.
WHO said it was concerned by the “racist and stigmatizing language” that arose after monkeypox spread to more than 100 countries. It said numerous individuals and countries asked the organization “to propose a way forward to change the name.”
In August, WHO began consulting experts about renaming the disease, shortly after the U.N. agency declared monkeypox’s spread to be a global emergency.
To date, there have been more than 80,000 cases identified in dozens of countries that had not previously reported the smallpox-related disease. Until May, monkeypox, a disease that is thought to originate in animals, was not known to trigger large outbreaks beyond central and west Africa.
Outside of Africa, nearly all cases have been in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. Scientists believe monkeypox triggered outbreaks in Western countries after spreading via sex at two raves in Belgium and Spain. Vaccination efforts in rich countries, along with targeted control interventions, have mostly brought the disease under control after it peaked in the summer.
In Africa, the disease mainly affects people in contact with infected animals such as rodents and squirrels. The majority of monkeypox-related deaths have been in Africa, where there have been almost no vaccines available.
U.S. health officials have warned it may be impossible to eliminate the disease there, warning it could be a continuing threat mainly for gay and bisexual men for years to come.
Mpox was first named monkeypox in 1958 when research monkeys in Denmark were observed to have a “pox-like” disease, although they are not thought to be the disease’s animal reservoir.
Although WHO has named numerous new diseases shortly after they emerged, including Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS and COVID-19, this appears to be the first time the agency has attempted to rechristen a disease decades after it was first named.
Numerous other diseases, including Japanese encephalitis, German measles, Marburg virus and Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome have been named after geographic regions, which could now be considered prejudicial. WHO has not suggested changing any of those names. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/ap-who-renames-monkeypox-as-mpox-citing-racism-concerns/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:29 | en | 0.974021 |
US STOCKS-Wall Street drops, weighed down by Apple and China worries
Wall Street stocks tumbled on Monday as protests in major Chinese cities against strict COVID-19 policies sparked concerns about economic growth, while Apple Inc slid on worries about a hit to iPhone production. Shares of the Cupertino, California tech giant fell over 2% and weighed heavily on the benchmark S&P 500 index as worker unrest at the world's biggest iPhone factory in China fanned fears of a deeper hit to the already constrained production of higher-end phones.
- Country:
- United States
Wall Street stocks tumbled on Monday as protests in major Chinese cities against strict COVID-19 policies sparked concerns about economic growth, while Apple Inc slid on worries about a hit to iPhone production.
Shares of the Cupertino, California tech giant fell over 2% and weighed heavily on the benchmark S&P 500 index as worker unrest at the world's biggest iPhone factory in China fanned fears of a deeper hit to the already constrained production of higher-end phones. Rare protests in major Chinese cities over the weekend against the country's strict zero-COVID curbs are exacerbating worries about growth in the world's second-largest economy.
"These protests are just evidence that this is a kind of a moving target where, will China continue to try to really constrain COVID's spread?" said Tom Hainlin, national investment strategist at U.S. Bank Wealth Management in Minneapolis. "Or will they have more of a 'living with COVID' approach that we've seen in the United States and other countries?"
"We think COVID itself and China's policy is one of the key variables for 2023 that would influence stock prices and investors," Hainlin said. All 11 S&P 500 sector indexes declined, led by real estate, down 2%, followed by a 1.91% loss in energy .
U.S. shares of Pinduoduo Inc surged 14% after the Chinese e-commerce platform beat estimates for third-quarter revenue, helped by COVID-related lockdowns in the country that forced consumers to shop online. U.S. shares of other Chinese technology companies also rose, with Baidu and Tencent Holdings each gaining over 2%. In afternoon trading, the S&P 500 was down 1.20% at 3,977.86 points.
The Nasdaq Composite declined 1.15% to 11,097.71 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.15% at 33,953.73 points. Shares of Amazon.com Inc rose about 1% after an industry report estimated spending during Cyber Monday, the biggest U.S. online shopping day, would rise to as much as $11.6 billion.
Trading was mixed in other heavyweight growth stocks, including Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms Inc, Nvidia Corp and Tesla Inc. Biogen Inc fell 3.5% following a report of death during a clinical study of its experimental Alzheimer's drug.
Shares of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related companies Coinbase Global Inc, Riot Blockchain Inc and Marathon Digital Holdings Inc each fell more than 2% following lender BlockFi's bankruptcy filing, the latest casualty since FTX's collapse earlier this month. This week, investors will keep a close watch on November consumer confidence data, due on Tuesday; the government's second estimate for third-quarter gross domestic product, due on Wednesday; and November nonfarm payrolls due on Friday.
Declining stocks outnumbered rising ones within the S&P 500 by a 7.7-to-one ratio. The S&P 500 posted 11 new highs and two new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 75 new highs and 120 new lows.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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US STOCKS SNAPSHOT-S&P 500, Nasdaq pare gains after explosion kills two in Poland | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/2268098-us-stocks-wall-street-drops-weighed-down-by-apple-and-china-worries | 2022-11-28T20:12:33 | en | 0.943054 |
A delay for Volkswagen’s Project Trinity EV flagship could mean a return of the VW e-Golf, according to a report from German newspaper Handelsblatt cited by Automotive News Europe.
Production of the e-Golf, which shared a platform with gasoline and diesel versions of the compact hatchback, ended in December 2020 to make room for the ID family of electric models based on VW’s MEB dedicated EV platform. But VW is now considering a new Golf EV, as well as an electric version of the Tiguan crossover, while expecting Project Trinity to be delayed until 2030, according to the report.
The new electric Golf or Tiguan would use the MEB platform, and could go on sale before 2026, the report said. Production would be handled by VW’s Wolfsburg, Germany, factory. VW had originally planned a $2.06 billion addition to the site for the Project Trinity EV, but the timeline for that model’s launch is now being reassessed by VW CEO Oliver Blume, the report noted.
VW first started teasing its Project Trinity flagship earlier in 2021, and it said it was due in 2026. It said that technology and platform were at the center of the new project, and it was being developed from the inside out. Previous CEO Herbert Diess also said that the project would rival (and outdo) Tesla, although Diess had made versions of such claims since 2017, declaring “anything Tesla can do, we can surpass.”
Blume, who replaced Diess as CEO in September, seems to be taking a more cautious approach. He wants to push the launch of Project Trinity back toward the end of the decade because certain software won’t be ready in time for the original 2026 target date, according to the report.
If that happens, the gap in product launches could be filled by an EV more in line with the affordability angle VW has emphasized with its ID models.
In the U.S., the e-Golf was a well-regarded model when it launched in late 2014 and served as a stage-setter for the ID.4 crossover. VW just marked the global delivery of 500,000 of its ID EVs, despite supply issues.
In reconstituted form, an e-Golf would almost certainly offer more range—just as the Fiat 500e is expected to when it returns to the U.S. in 2024. Increased range would certainly be possible with the MEB platform, which enables a range of up to 275 miles for the ID.4, compared to 125 miles for the old e-Golf.
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Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the fallout from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX spreads outward.
In a Monday filing for bankruptcy protection in New Jersey, where it is based, BlockFi claimed more than 100,000 creditors and liabilities ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion.
“Chapter 11 is a transparent process and we will continue to communicate with our clients to ensure they hear directly from us,” BlockFi said in a tweet.
Cryptocurrencies were in retreat Monday in what has already been a disastrous year. Bitcoin, among the most widely traded cryptocurrencies, has plunged almost 70% in 2022 to below $16,000 apiece.
BlockFi Inc., which was founded in 2017, said bankruptcy protection will allow it to stabilize the company and restructure. That restructuring will include an attempt to recover all obligations that it is owed by its counterparties, including FTX. BlockFi, which was bailed out by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX early last summer, said it anticipates recoveries from FTX will be delayed.
FTX filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month. BlockFi said that because of the FTX collapse, it was no longer able to do business as usual and was pausing client withdrawals.
“With the collapse of FTX, the BlockFi management team and board of directors immediately took action to protect clients and the company,” Mark Renzi of Berkeley Research Group, BlockFi’s financial advisor, said in a prepared statement Monday.
The implosion of FTX is still being sorted out and it is unknown how much collateral damage it could inflict.
There are already comparisons to the collapse of the storied Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, at least within the confines of cryptocurrency. The bank trafficked heavily in subprime mortgages that lost almost all of their recognized worth and shook the U.S. and global economy.
BlockFi has $256.9 million in cash on hand, which it expects will provide enough cushion to support some operations during the restructuring. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-blockfi-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:36 | en | 0.970411 |
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Crypto lender BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX ripple effect spreads
FTX filed for protection in the United States earlier in November after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal. In a court filing on Monday, BlockFi listed FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year.
Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it said on Monday, the latest crypto casualty following the spectacular collapse of the FTX exchange earlier this month. The filing in a New Jersey court comes as crypto prices plummet. The price of bitcoin, the largest digital currency by far, is down more than 70% from a 2021 peak.
“BlockFi’s Chapter 11 restructuring underscores significant asset contagion risks associated with the crypto ecosystem," said Monsur Hussain, senior director at Fitch Ratings. New Jersey-based BlockFi, founded by Zac Prince, said in a bankruptcy filing that its substantial exposure to FTX created a liquidity crisis. FTX filed for protection in the United States earlier in November after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.
In a court filing on Monday, BlockFi listed FTX as its second-largest creditor, with $275 million owed on a loan extended earlier this year. It said it owes money to more than 100,000 creditors. The company also said in a separate filing it plans to lay off two-thirds of its 292 employees. Under a deal signed with FTX in July BlockFi was to receive a $400 million revolving credit facility while FTX got an option to buy it for up to $240 million.
BlockFi's bankruptcy filing also comes after two of BlockFi's largest competitors, Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, filed for bankruptcy in July citing extreme market conditions that had resulted in losses at both companies. Crypto lenders, the de facto banks of the crypto world, boomed during the pandemic, attracting retail customers with double-digit rates in return for their cryptocurrency deposits. On the flip side, institutional investors such as hedge funds looking to make leveraged bets paid higher rates to borrow the funds from the lenders, who profited from the difference.
Crypto lenders are not required to hold capital or liquidity buffers like traditional lenders and some found themselves exposed when a shortage of collateral forced them - and their customers - to shoulder large losses. CREDITOR LIST
BlockFi's largest creditor is Ankura Trust, a company that represents creditors in stressed situations, and is owed $729 million. Valar Ventures, a Peter Thiel-linked venture capital fund, owns 19% of BlockFi equity shares. BlockFi also listed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as one of its largest creditors, with a $30 million claim. In February, a subsidiary of BlockFi agreed to pay $100 million to the SEC and 32 states to settle charges in connection with a retail crypto lending product the company offered to nearly 600,000 investors.
In a blog post, BlockFi said its Chapter 11 cases will enable the company to stabilize its business and maximize value for all stakeholders. "Acting in the best interest of our clients is our top priority and continues to guide our path forward," BlockFi said.
BlockFi had earlier paused withdrawals from its platform and acknowledged it had "significant exposure" to FTX and its associated entities, including "obligations owed to us by Alameda, assets held at FTX.com, and undrawn amounts from our credit line with FTX.US." In its bankruptcy filing, BlockFi said it had hired Kirkland & Ellis and Haynes & Boone as bankruptcy counsel and Berkeley Research Group as a financial adviser.
At the end of June, a third of BlockFi's $1.8 billion outstanding loans were unsecured, according to the company. ORIGINS
BlockFi was founded in 2017 by Prince, who is currently the company's chief executive officer, and Flori Marquez. Though headquartered in Jersey City, BlockFi also has offices in New York, Singapore, Poland and Argentina, according to its website. In July, Prince had tweeted that "it's time to stop putting BlockFi in the same bucket / sentence as Voyager and Celsius."
"Two months ago we looked the 'same.' They shut down and have impending losses for their clients," he said. According to a profile of BlockFi published earlier this year by Inc, Prince was raised in San Antonio, Texas, and financed his college education at the University of Oklahoma and Texas State University with winnings from online poker tournaments. Before starting BlockFi with Marquez, he held jobs at Orchard Platform, a broker dealer, and at Zibby, a lease-to-own lender now called Katapult.
Marquez previously worked at Bond Street, a small business lending outfit that was folded in to Goldman Sachs in 2017, according to Inc.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Wales-United States World Cup match draws peak of 13 million UK viewers | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/2268103-crypto-lender-blockfi-files-for-bankruptcy-as-ftx-ripple-effect-spreads | 2022-11-28T20:12:41 | en | 0.969455 |
The Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to all Tesla customers in North America, CEO Elon Musk announced via Twitter over the Thanksgiving holiday.
“Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta is now available to anyone in North America who requests it from the car screen, assuming you have bought this option,” Musk tweeted.
Despite its name, Full Self-Driving does not enable autonomous driving, although Musk has repeatedly claimed that it will at some point with gradual software updates. The current version is still a driver-assist system that requires full attention at all times. Musk himself still considers the current version to be incomplete, hence the “Beta” designation.
Tesla’s own software has also introduced at least one flaw. In February, the automaker had to recall almost 54,000 vehicles running a recent version of Full Self-Driving that allowed the vehicles to disobey stop signs. A software update disabled that function.
Tesla began installing what it claimed at the time was all the necessary hardware for self-driving in 2016, though it’s made some changes to the hardware package since then. Tesla requires customers to pay for the software to enable Full Self-Driving.
The price of that software has steadily increased over the years. It cost $5,000 when launched in 2016, but Tesla raised the price to $10,000 in 2020, and again to $12,000 earlier this year, and finally to $15,000 in September.
Musk has argued that a fully autonomous Tesla will be able to generate revenue for its owner through use in a “robotaxi” service, where cars are rented out to shuttle-paying passengers when owners aren’t using them. But that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Musk said in October that Tesla was still waiting on regulatory approval for autonomous driving, adding that Tesla would release a software update sometime in 2023 aimed at showing regulators that the tech is safe.
Meanwhile, Tesla is getting more scrutiny from those regulators. In 2021, Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), called the Full Self-Driving name “misleading and irresponsible,” and expressed concerns over Tesla handing what it considers “beta” software to customers for use on public roads. That same year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also opened a safety probe into Tesla’s more basic Autopilot system after dozens of crashes involving Teslas and emergency vehicles.
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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Business groups are increasing the pressure on lawmakers to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks.
A coalition of more than 400 business groups sent a letter to Congressional leaders Monday urging them to step into the stalled talks because of fears about the devastating potential impact of a strike that could force many businesses to shut down if they can’t get the rail deliveries they need. Commuter railroads and Amtrak would also be affected in a strike because many of them use tracks owned by the freight railroads.
The business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and National Retail Federation said even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and the economic pain would start to be felt even before the Dec. 9 strike deadline because the railroads would stop hauling hazardous chemicals, fertilizers and perishable goods up to a week beforehand to keep those products from being stranded somewhere along the tracks.
“A potential rail strike only adds to the headwinds facing the U.S. economy,” the businesses wrote. “A rail stoppage would immediately lead to supply shortages and higher prices. The cessation of Amtrak and commuter rail services would disrupt up to 7 million travelers a day. Many businesses would see their sales disrupted right in the middle of the critical holiday shopping season.”
A similar group of businesses sent another letter to President Joe Biden last month urging him to play a more active role in resolving the contract dispute.
Congressional leaders and the White House have said they are monitoring the contract talks closely but haven’t indicated when they might act or what they will do. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said leaders are aware of the situation with the rail negotiations and will monitor the talks in the coming days.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., said on Fox News Sunday that Congressional intervention is a last resort, but lawmakers will have to be ready to act.
“Congress will not let this strike happen. That’s for sure,” said Fitzpatrick who helps lead a bipartisan group of 58 lawmakers. “It would be devastating to our economy. So, we’ll get to a resolution one way or another.”
A White House spokeswoman has said that a rail strike would be “unacceptable.”
Congress has the power to impose contract terms on the workers, but it’s not clear what they might include if they do that. They could also force the negotiations to continue into the new year.
Both the unions and railroads have been lobbying Congress while contract talks continue. Four rail unions that represent more than half of the 115,000 workers in the industry have rejected the deals that President Joe Biden helped broker before the original strike deadline in September and are back at the table trying to work out new agreements. Eight other unions have approved their five-year deals with the railroads and are in the process of getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.
“It certainly could end up in Congress’ lap, which is why we are headed to D.C. this week to meet with lawmakers on The Hill from both parties,” said Clark Ballew, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division union that represents track maintenance workers. “We have instructed our members to contact their federal lawmakers in the House and Senate for several weeks now.”
The unions have asked the railroads to consider adding paid sick time to what they already offered to address some of workers’ quality of life concerns. But so far, the railroads, which include Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX and Kansas City Southern, have refused to consider that.
The railroads want any deal to closely follow the recommendations a special board of arbitrators that Biden appointed made this summer that called for the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses but didn’t resolve workers’ concerns about demanding schedules that make it hard to take a day off and other working conditions. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-business-groups-urge-congress-to-block-potential-rail-strike/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:44 | en | 0.972096 |
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Danish automaker Zenvo has revealed an ultra-exclusive version of its TSR-S hypercar. Dubbed TSR-GT, it’s limited to just three examples—which have already sold out.
The last planned model built on Zenvo’s TS platform, which dates back to the TS1 that launched at the 2016 Geneva Motor Show, the TSR-GT was designed for a higher top speed than the current TSR-S. Zenvo claims the TSR-GT will reach 263 mph, compared to 202 mph for the TSR-S. For reference, that should make the TSR-GT faster than the 256-mph Rimac Nevera, touted as the world’s fastest production EV, although the Zenvo’s top speed hasn’t been officially confirmed.
To achieve that, Zenvo altered the bodywork to reduce drag, fitted a longer final-drive ratio, and increased power. The flat-plane crank 5.8-liter twin-supercharged V-8 now makes 1,360 bhp (or about 1,379 hp), up from 1,177 bhp before (or 1,193 hp). The upgraded engine is also designed to run on standard pump gasoline or E85 fuel, which is a blend of 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline.
Modifications to the bodywork include a new elongated rear spoiler that, unlike the crazy rear wing on the TSR-S, is fixed in place, along with aero wheels covers. Zenvo also gave the TSR-GT a more luxurious interior, with leather upholstery replacing the bare carbon fiber on the TSR-S, and leather-edged velour floor mats designed to reduce cabin noise.
Production will take place at Zenvo’s Danish plant. While the three-unit production run will make the TSR-GT one of the rarest supercars in existence, it’s worth noting that Zenvo has only been building five examples of the TSR-S per year. The company hasn’t disclosed pricing for the TSR-GT, but it will likely cost more than the TSR-S, which was priced at the equivalent of $1.6 million in 2020.
Zenvo plans to launch its next model, based on a new platform, in the third quarter of 2023. In addition to the new underpinnings, it’s expected to feature a V-12 hybrid powertrain with electric motors used to spool turbochargers. Output is expected to be in the neighborhood of 1,800 hp, and the in-house-developed V-12 will reportedly be capable of revving to 10,000 rpm.
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- Factory matte black Ferrari Enzo heads to auction | https://www.news10.com/automotive/internet-brands/zenvo-tsr-gt-represents-a-faster-rarer-version-of-denmarks-supercar/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:48 | en | 0.931465 |
Singapore state investor Temasek to open Paris office in 2023
"Our decision to open a new European office reflects the continuing importance of EMEA as an investment destination," Temasek's EMEA head Uwe Krueger said in a statement. Ranked among the top 10 state investors in the world, Temasek's portfolio value rose to a record S$403 billion ($293 billion) in the year to March 2022.
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Singaporean state investor Temasek Holdings will open an office in Paris next year as it seeks to focus on investments in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region, it said on Tuesday. "Our decision to open a new European office reflects the continuing importance of EMEA as an investment destination," Temasek's EMEA head Uwe Krueger said in a statement.
Ranked among the top 10 state investors in the world, Temasek's portfolio value rose to a record S$403 billion ($293 billion) in the year to March 2022. A Temasek spokesperson told Reuters that the new office is expected to house 10 investment executives by 2024, who the firm said will work closely with Temasek's existing offices in London and Brussels.
Temasek, which has stakes in large listed Asian companies such as DBS Group and China Construction Bank , is mainly focused on Asia. ($1 = 1.3759 Singapore dollars)
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South Africa reports bird flu outbreak on small farm - WOAH | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/business/2268106-singapore-state-investor-temasek-to-open-paris-office-in-2023 | 2022-11-28T20:12:49 | en | 0.926227 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Days after flocking to stores on Black Friday, consumers are turning online for Cyber Monday to score more discounts on gifts and other items that have ballooned in price because of high inflation.
Cyber Monday is expected to remain the year’s biggest online shopping day and rake in up to $11.6 billion in sales, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at over 85 of the top 100 U.S. online stores. That forecast represents a jump from the $10.7 billion consumers spent last year.
Adobe’s numbers are not adjusted for inflation, but the company says demand is growing even when inflation is factored in. Some analysts have said top line numbers will be boosted by higher prices and the amount of items consumers purchase could remain unchanged — or even fall — compared to prior years. Profit margins are also expected to be tight for retailers offering deeper discounts to attract budget-conscious consumers and clear out their bloated inventories.
Shoppers spent a record $9.12 billion online on Black Friday, up 2.3% from last year, according to Adobe. E-commerce activity continued to be strong over the weekend, with $9.55 billion in online sales.
Salesforce, which also tracks spending, said their estimates showed online sales in the U.S. hit $15 billion on Friday and $17.2 billion over the weekend, with an average discount rate of 30% on products. Electronics, active wear, toys and health and beauty items were among those that provided a big boost, the two groups said.
Meanwhile, consumers who feared leaving their homes and embraced e-commerce during the pandemic are heading back to physical stores in greater numbers this year as normalcy returns. The National Retail Federation said its recent survey showed a 3% uptick in the number of Black Friday shoppers planning to go to stores. It expects 63.9 million consumers to shop online during Cyber Monday, compared to 77 million last year.
CONSUMERS ARE SPENDING CAUTIOUSLY
Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks spending across all types of payments including cash and credit card, said that overall sales on Black Friday rose 12% from the year-ago. Sales at physical stores rose 12%, while online sales were up 14%.
RetailNext, which captures sales and traffic via sensors, reported that store traffic rose 7% on Black Friday, while sales at physical stores improved 0.1% from a year ago. However, spending per customer dropped nearly 7% as cautious shoppers did more browsing than buying. Another company that tracks store traffic — Sensormatic Solutions— said store traffic was up 2.9% on Black Friday compared to a year ago.
“Shoppers are being more thoughtful, but they are going to more than a few retailers to be able to make a determination of what they are going to buy this year,” said Brian Field, Sensormatic’s global leader of retail consulting and analytics.
Overall, online spending has remained resilient in the past few weeks as eager shoppers buy more items on credit and embrace “buy now, pay later” services that lack interest charges but carry late fees.
In the first three weeks of November, online sales were essentially flat compared with last year, according to Adobe. It said the modest uptick shows consumers have a strong appetite for holiday shopping amid uncertainty about the economy.
Still, some major retailers are feeling a shift. Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s said this month they’ve seen a slowdown in consumer spending in the past few weeks. The exception was Walmart, which reported higher sales in its third quarter and raised its earnings outlook.
“We’re seeing that inflation is starting to really hit the wallet and that consumers are starting to amass more debt at this point,” said Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of retail e-commerce management firm CommerceIQ, adding there’s more pressure on consumers to purchase cheaper alternatives.
SHIFTING DEMAND
This year’s Cyber Monday also comes amid a wider e-commerce slowdown affecting online retailers that saw a boom in sales during most of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon, for example, raked in record revenue but much of the demand has waned as the worst of the pandemic eased and consumers felt more comfortable shopping in stores.
To deal with the change, the company has been scaling back its warehouse expansion plans and is cutting costs by axing some of its projects. It’s also following in the steps of other tech companies and implementing mass layoffs in its corporate ranks. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company will continue to cut jobs until early next year.
Shopify, a company which helps businesses set up e-commerce websites and also offers offline software, laid off 10% of its staff this summer.
The company said Monday that its merchants have surpassed $5.1 billion in global sales since the start of Black Friday in New Zealand. And spending per U.S. customer went up $5 compared to last year, said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein.
Despite the bump, Finkelstein said shoppers were more intentional about their spending this year and waiting for discounts before making a purchase. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-cyber-monday-deals-lure-in-consumers-amid-high-inflation/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:51 | en | 0.966212 |
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Cryptocurrency lender BlockFi is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as the fallout from the collapse of crypto exchange FTX spreads outward.
In a Monday filing for bankruptcy protection in New Jersey, where it is based, BlockFi claimed more than 100,000 creditors and liabilities ranging from $1 billion to $10 billion.
“Chapter 11 is a transparent process and we will continue to communicate with our clients to ensure they hear directly from us,” BlockFi said in a tweet.
Cryptocurrencies were in retreat Monday in what has already been a disastrous year. Bitcoin, among the most widely traded cryptocurrencies, has plunged almost 70% in 2022 to below $16,000 apiece.
BlockFi Inc., which was founded in 2017, said bankruptcy protection will allow it to stabilize the company and restructure. That restructuring will include an attempt to recover all obligations that it is owed by its counterparties, including FTX. BlockFi, which was bailed out by Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX early last summer, said it anticipates recoveries from FTX will be delayed.
FTX filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month. BlockFi said that because of the FTX collapse, it was no longer able to do business as usual and was pausing client withdrawals.
“With the collapse of FTX, the BlockFi management team and board of directors immediately took action to protect clients and the company,” Mark Renzi of Berkeley Research Group, BlockFi’s financial advisor, said in a prepared statement Monday.
The implosion of FTX is still being sorted out and it is unknown how much collateral damage it could inflict.
There are already comparisons to the collapse of the storied Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers in 2008, at least within the confines of cryptocurrency. The bank trafficked heavily in subprime mortgages that lost almost all of their recognized worth and shook the U.S. and global economy.
BlockFi has $256.9 million in cash on hand, which it expects will provide enough cushion to support some operations during the restructuring. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-blockfi-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcy-protection/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:55 | en | 0.970411 |
Disney CEO Bob Iger calls the drive to make streaming profitable a priority
Walt Disney Co Chief Executive Bob Iger said on Monday one of his top priorities is to make the company's streaming business profitable.
Iger is responsible for Disney's all-in embrace of streaming, and the launch of its marquee service, Disney+, but he acknowledged the measurement of success has changed. Wall Street investors now focus on profitability, not merely subscriber gains. "Instead of chasing (subscribers) with aggressive marketing and aggressive spend on content, we have to start chasing profitability," Iger told a town-hall meeting on the company's Burbank, California, lot, according to a transcript of remarks seen by Reuters.
"In order to achieve that, we have to take a very, very hard look at our cost structure across our businesses." Disney joins a number of media companies seeking to grow their streaming services without sacrificing its film or television businesses.
The board announced it had installed Iger as chief executive on Nov. 20 after removing his handpicked successor, Bob Chapek, who had lost the support of senior staff. "Filled with gratitude and excitement to be back @WaltDisneyCo!," Iger tweeted on Monday with a picture of the company's headquarters.
From a sound stage on Disney's lot, Iger said he returns to the company he led for 15 years with a sense of urgency. He said he had recently been listening to Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical "Hamilton," and was struck by the song "What'd I Miss?," as Thomas Jefferson, the U.S. minister to France, is called home. "The status quo is gone. A lot has changed. But the sun is still shining," Iger said.
His predecessor, Chapek, had a rocky tenure at Disney's helm. The board credited him with navigating the company through the worst of the pandemic, which closed its theme parks and shuttered productions. He also clashed with "Black Widow" star Scarlett Johansson over the decision to simultaneously release the film in theaters and online, and with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over legislation limiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Disney also has been under pressure from activist investors, who have been pushing for change. Iger said he planned to keep a hiring freeze, which Chapek instituted, in place, while he assesses Disney's cost structure. He offered no timing on the restructuring of the company's film and television distribution group, Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution. CNBC was the first to report details, which Reuters independently confirmed.
The returning chief executive declined to respond to speculation that Disney might explore a sale to Apple Inc , noting, "We never comment on acquisitions or divestitures or whatever. You can quickly get into a lot of trouble there -- and I don't want to leave this job and end up in jail." Iger left the stage to a standing ovation, according to one person who attended the session.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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U.S. president unveils investments in Indonesia carbon capture, transport | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/entertainment/2268104-disney-ceo-bob-iger-calls-the-drive-to-make-streaming-profitable-a-priority | 2022-11-28T20:12:56 | en | 0.966542 |
BRUSSELS (AP) — The head of the European Central Bank said Monday she does not believe inflation has peaked after reaching the highest levels on record.
ECB President Christine Lagarde also told European lawmakers that the bank isn’t through raising interest rates to combat those price spikes.
There is too much uncertainty to know whether inflation, which hit 10.6% in October, would come down soon in the 19 countries that use the euro currency, Lagarde said.
When looking at what is driving inflation, “whether it is food and commodities at large, or whether it is energy, we do not see the components or the direction that would lead me to believe that we have reached peak inflation and that it is going to decline in short order,” she said.
That means the central bank will “continue to tame inflation with all the tools that we have,” primarily interest rate hikes, Lagarde told the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Following the bank’s third major rate hike in October, marking its fastest pace of increases ever, the ECB expects “to raise rates further to the levels needed to ensure that inflation returns to our 2% medium-term target in a timely manner,” she said.
The ECB has joined the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world in rapidly raising rates to combat inflation that spiked as the global economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, then got worse after Russia invaded Ukraine. Central banks risk tipping economies into recession as the world copes with an energy crisis, higher food costs and currencies weakening against the U.S. dollar.
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted the international economy would expand only 2.2% next year. Most economists expect a recession in places like Europe, the U.S. and the United Kingdom next year, with ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos saying this month that risk “has become more likely” in the eurozone.
Russia’s war hit Europe particularly hard, “given our proximity to the conflict and our dependence on energy imports” from Russia, Lagarde said Monday.
After Russia cut back most natural gas to Europe, sending energy prices soaring, governments have provided aid to help households and businesses with their bills.
Lagarde warned officials not to worsen inflation by ensuring support is “targeted, tailored and temporary” to those most at need and avoids weakening the push to cut energy use. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-europes-inflation-likely-hasnt-peaked-ecbs-lagarde-says/ | 2022-11-28T20:12:58 | en | 0.956084 |
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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Business groups are increasing the pressure on lawmakers to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks.
A coalition of more than 400 business groups sent a letter to Congressional leaders Monday urging them to step into the stalled talks because of fears about the devastating potential impact of a strike that could force many businesses to shut down if they can’t get the rail deliveries they need. Commuter railroads and Amtrak would also be affected in a strike because many of them use tracks owned by the freight railroads.
The business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and National Retail Federation said even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and the economic pain would start to be felt even before the Dec. 9 strike deadline because the railroads would stop hauling hazardous chemicals, fertilizers and perishable goods up to a week beforehand to keep those products from being stranded somewhere along the tracks.
“A potential rail strike only adds to the headwinds facing the U.S. economy,” the businesses wrote. “A rail stoppage would immediately lead to supply shortages and higher prices. The cessation of Amtrak and commuter rail services would disrupt up to 7 million travelers a day. Many businesses would see their sales disrupted right in the middle of the critical holiday shopping season.”
A similar group of businesses sent another letter to President Joe Biden last month urging him to play a more active role in resolving the contract dispute.
Congressional leaders and the White House have said they are monitoring the contract talks closely but haven’t indicated when they might act or what they will do. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said leaders are aware of the situation with the rail negotiations and will monitor the talks in the coming days.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., said on Fox News Sunday that Congressional intervention is a last resort, but lawmakers will have to be ready to act.
“Congress will not let this strike happen. That’s for sure,” said Fitzpatrick who helps lead a bipartisan group of 58 lawmakers. “It would be devastating to our economy. So, we’ll get to a resolution one way or another.”
A White House spokeswoman has said that a rail strike would be “unacceptable.”
Congress has the power to impose contract terms on the workers, but it’s not clear what they might include if they do that. They could also force the negotiations to continue into the new year.
Both the unions and railroads have been lobbying Congress while contract talks continue. Four rail unions that represent more than half of the 115,000 workers in the industry have rejected the deals that President Joe Biden helped broker before the original strike deadline in September and are back at the table trying to work out new agreements. Eight other unions have approved their five-year deals with the railroads and are in the process of getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020.
“It certainly could end up in Congress’ lap, which is why we are headed to D.C. this week to meet with lawmakers on The Hill from both parties,” said Clark Ballew, a spokesman for the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes Division union that represents track maintenance workers. “We have instructed our members to contact their federal lawmakers in the House and Senate for several weeks now.”
The unions have asked the railroads to consider adding paid sick time to what they already offered to address some of workers’ quality of life concerns. But so far, the railroads, which include Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CSX and Kansas City Southern, have refused to consider that.
The railroads want any deal to closely follow the recommendations a special board of arbitrators that Biden appointed made this summer that called for the 24% raises and $5,000 in bonuses but didn’t resolve workers’ concerns about demanding schedules that make it hard to take a day off and other working conditions. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-business-groups-urge-congress-to-block-potential-rail-strike/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:02 | en | 0.972096 |
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NEW YORK (AP) — Fidelity Charitable is getting into NFTs, the digital images that are registered on the blockchain, despite a torrent of bad news from the adjacent world of cryptocurrencies.
The nation’s largest grantmaker is sponsoring a raffle that ends Tuesday, where participants can claim one of the NFTs, which stands for nonfungible token, and 50 will win $1,000 to donate through a donor advised fund at Fidelity.
“The reason we’re doing this is we really believe there’s a whole new generation of givers and philanthropists out there,” said Amy Pirozzolo, head of donor engagement for Fidelity Charitable. “We want to be where they are and the channels they use and the formats they use and further encourage their generosity.”
Around 16% of Americans say they invested in cryptocurrencies, according to a poll from Pew Research Center last year. The demographic most likely to invest were men between the ages of 18 and 29, with 43% reporting that they had invested.
The blockchain is the technology that underlies the trading of cryptocurrencies, but it can also record the ownership of digital items like images, videos or Tweets. Fidelity said that 50,000 different wallets, potentially representing that many individuals, have already registered to create an NFT and potentially win the money to donate.
Contributions in cryptocurrency to donor advised funds at Fidelity exploded last year, growing from the equivalent of $28 million in 2020 to $331 million in 2021, Fidelity has said.
Speaking of the NFT project, Jacob Pruitt, president of Fidelity Charitable, said, “I think it’ll be a unique way to engage with next gen investors. It’s another way that I think Fidelity is innovating and leaning into a new space.”
Donor advised funds allow donors to claim a tax credit for charitable donations, but do not require them to give those funds away within any specific timeframe. Organizations that host DAFs, like Fidelity Charitable, also handle more complex donations, which includes exchanging the assets for cash and producing receipts for donors for tax purposes.
“Many of the nonprofits either can’t take on these assets or they have to hire outside counsel or people to staff to do it,” Pirozzolo said.
One reason for the jump in cryptocurrency donations is that until recently, their value had appreciated significantly. The cryptocurrency market saw a huge boom in 2021 with the price of Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, rising to an all time high of around $68,000 in November last year.
But the meltdown of Terra — a stablecoin, or a type of cryptocurrency that tries to peg its value to an asset like the U.S. dollar — in May brought down a series of major cryptocurrency businesses. Then, earlier this month, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX and related entities, suddenly filed for bankruptcy leaving both American and international users unable to access assets they held on the exchange.
James Lawrence, co-founder and CEO of Engiven, which facilitates cryptocurrency to nonprofits, including Christian ministries, observed that many people giving cryptocurrencies are making major gifts and that often those happen in the last quarter of the year. That means it’s too early to say how the cryptocurrency market’s fluctuations may impact donations this year. He said he doesn’t see people donating cryptocurrencies as that different from other donors.
“They just have a different asset to give and they’re going to give the most appreciated asset they can,” Lawrence said.
Of the more than 1.5 million nonprofits registered with the Internal Revenue Service in the U.S., Lawrence estimated that only four or five thousand could receive cryptocurrency donations directly.
“That’s a huge market that still doesn’t,” he said. He also has observed that many giving large donations in cryptocurrency (they facilitated one donation of $10 million in cryptocurrency assets) are the same types of people who give large donations in general, and not necessarily the younger demographics that are more likely to invest in cryptocurrency.
“Many of the largest gifts we’ve processed have been from an older demographic who have a tradition of giving large gifts in multiple asset classes,” he said.
Pirozzolo argued that the Fidelity Charitable promotion using NFTs is separate from the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
“This is really about the blockchain and having a fun way to celebrate with digital art the generosity of giving,” she said.
The company is paying for the cost of creating the NFTs, which includes a “gas” fee that pays for the creation and registration of the item, and also said that it has compensated the artists who made the images.
People who claim the NFTs will need to sign up for a cryptocurrency wallet that has access to the Polygon blockchain. The Fidelity Charitable NFTs will be hosted on the platform OpenSea.
Participants will see the NFT in their wallet when they sign up, but the art itself and the winners of the $1,000 tickets won’t be revealed until Giving Tuesday, Nov, 29.
___
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-fidelity-charitable-launches-nft-raffle-amid-crypto-downturn/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:05 | en | 0.962686 |
U.S. warns California cities to prepare for fourth year of drought
Federal water managers on Monday urged numerous California cities and industrial users to prepare for a fourth dry year, warning of possible "conservation actions" as drought conditions continue despite early rains. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said water storage is near historic lows in the reservoirs it operates in the state, which serve the Central Valley breadbasket as well as the cities of Sacramento and San Francisco.
Federal water managers on Monday urged numerous California cities and industrial users to prepare for a fourth dry year, warning of possible "conservation actions" as drought conditions continue despite early rains.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said water storage is near historic lows in the reservoirs it operates in the state, which serve the Central Valley breadbasket as well as the cities of Sacramento and San Francisco. Shasta Reservoir, the state's largest and the capstone of the federal Central Valley Project, is currently at 31% capacity, the agency said.
While the rainy season, which generally begins in October and continues through March or April, may yet bring more precipitation, it would be prudent for cities and industrial users to prepare for the possibility that less water will be available than the agency had contracted to provide them. "If drought conditions extend into 2023, Reclamation will find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to meet all the competing needs of the Central Valley Project without beginning the implementation of additional and more severe water conservation actions," the agency said.
Initial water supply allocations for its customers would be announced in February, the agency said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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NEW YORK (AP) — Days after flocking to stores on Black Friday, consumers are turning online for Cyber Monday to score more discounts on gifts and other items that have ballooned in price because of high inflation.
Cyber Monday is expected to remain the year’s biggest online shopping day and rake in up to $11.6 billion in sales, according to Adobe Analytics, which tracks transactions at over 85 of the top 100 U.S. online stores. That forecast represents a jump from the $10.7 billion consumers spent last year.
Adobe’s numbers are not adjusted for inflation, but the company says demand is growing even when inflation is factored in. Some analysts have said top line numbers will be boosted by higher prices and the amount of items consumers purchase could remain unchanged — or even fall — compared to prior years. Profit margins are also expected to be tight for retailers offering deeper discounts to attract budget-conscious consumers and clear out their bloated inventories.
Shoppers spent a record $9.12 billion online on Black Friday, up 2.3% from last year, according to Adobe. E-commerce activity continued to be strong over the weekend, with $9.55 billion in online sales.
Salesforce, which also tracks spending, said their estimates showed online sales in the U.S. hit $15 billion on Friday and $17.2 billion over the weekend, with an average discount rate of 30% on products. Electronics, active wear, toys and health and beauty items were among those that provided a big boost, the two groups said.
Meanwhile, consumers who feared leaving their homes and embraced e-commerce during the pandemic are heading back to physical stores in greater numbers this year as normalcy returns. The National Retail Federation said its recent survey showed a 3% uptick in the number of Black Friday shoppers planning to go to stores. It expects 63.9 million consumers to shop online during Cyber Monday, compared to 77 million last year.
CONSUMERS ARE SPENDING CAUTIOUSLY
Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks spending across all types of payments including cash and credit card, said that overall sales on Black Friday rose 12% from the year-ago. Sales at physical stores rose 12%, while online sales were up 14%.
RetailNext, which captures sales and traffic via sensors, reported that store traffic rose 7% on Black Friday, while sales at physical stores improved 0.1% from a year ago. However, spending per customer dropped nearly 7% as cautious shoppers did more browsing than buying. Another company that tracks store traffic — Sensormatic Solutions— said store traffic was up 2.9% on Black Friday compared to a year ago.
“Shoppers are being more thoughtful, but they are going to more than a few retailers to be able to make a determination of what they are going to buy this year,” said Brian Field, Sensormatic’s global leader of retail consulting and analytics.
Overall, online spending has remained resilient in the past few weeks as eager shoppers buy more items on credit and embrace “buy now, pay later” services that lack interest charges but carry late fees.
In the first three weeks of November, online sales were essentially flat compared with last year, according to Adobe. It said the modest uptick shows consumers have a strong appetite for holiday shopping amid uncertainty about the economy.
Still, some major retailers are feeling a shift. Target, Macy’s and Kohl’s said this month they’ve seen a slowdown in consumer spending in the past few weeks. The exception was Walmart, which reported higher sales in its third quarter and raised its earnings outlook.
“We’re seeing that inflation is starting to really hit the wallet and that consumers are starting to amass more debt at this point,” said Guru Hariharan, founder and CEO of retail e-commerce management firm CommerceIQ, adding there’s more pressure on consumers to purchase cheaper alternatives.
SHIFTING DEMAND
This year’s Cyber Monday also comes amid a wider e-commerce slowdown affecting online retailers that saw a boom in sales during most of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amazon, for example, raked in record revenue but much of the demand has waned as the worst of the pandemic eased and consumers felt more comfortable shopping in stores.
To deal with the change, the company has been scaling back its warehouse expansion plans and is cutting costs by axing some of its projects. It’s also following in the steps of other tech companies and implementing mass layoffs in its corporate ranks. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company will continue to cut jobs until early next year.
Shopify, a company which helps businesses set up e-commerce websites and also offers offline software, laid off 10% of its staff this summer.
The company said Monday that its merchants have surpassed $5.1 billion in global sales since the start of Black Friday in New Zealand. And spending per U.S. customer went up $5 compared to last year, said Shopify President Harley Finkelstein.
Despite the bump, Finkelstein said shoppers were more intentional about their spending this year and waiting for discounts before making a purchase. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-cyber-monday-deals-lure-in-consumers-amid-high-inflation/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:09 | en | 0.966212 |
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LONDON (AP) — Irish regulators slapped Facebook parent Meta with a 265 million-euro ($277 million) fine Monday, the company’s latest punishment for breaching strict European Union data privacy rules.
The Data Protection Commission said Meta Platforms infringed sections of the EU rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, that require technical and organizational measures aimed at protecting user data.
The watchdog opened an investigation last year into news reports that data on more 533 million users was found dumped online. The data was found on a website for hackers and included names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birthdates and email addresses for people from more than 100 countries, according to the reports.
Meta said the data had been “scraped” from Facebook using tools designed to help people find their friends through phone numbers using search and contact import features. The watchdog said it investigated the automated scraping carried out between May 2018 and September 2019.
The company said it had “cooperated fully” with the Irish watchdog.
“We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers,” Meta said in a statement. “Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules.”
Along with the fine, the commission said it also imposed on Meta a “range of corrective measures,” which weren’t specified.
When asked if Meta would appeal, a spokesman said, “We are still reviewing this decision carefully.”
It’s the latest in a series of punishments that the Irish watchdog has levied against Meta over the past two years.
The company, based in Menlo Park, California, has its European headquarters in Dublin, which makes the Irish authority its lead privacy regulator under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, in a system known as “one-stop shop.”
The Irish watchdog fined Meta-owned Instagram 405 million euros in September after it found that the platform mishandled teenagers’ personal information. Meta was fined 17 million euro fines in March for its handling of a dozen data breach notifications.
Last year, the watchdog fined Meta’s chat service WhatsApp 225 million euros for violating rules on sharing people’s data with other Meta companies. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-irish-watchdog-fines-meta-265m-euros-in-latest-privacy-case/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:12 | en | 0.96461 |
WRAPUP 6-Russia won't halt strikes until it runs out of missiles, Ukraine's Zelenskiy says
Russia has been carrying out massive missile bombardments on Ukraine's energy infrastructure roughly weekly since early October, with each barrage having greater impact than the last as damage accumulates and a frigid winter sets in. In an overnight address, Zelenskiy said he expected new attacks this week that could be as bad as last week's - the worst yet - that left millions of people with no heat, water or power.
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- Ukraine
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians to expect another brutal week of cold and darkness ahead, predicting more Russian attacks on infrastructure that would not cease until Moscow ran out of missiles. Russia has been carrying out massive missile bombardments on Ukraine's energy infrastructure roughly weekly since early October, with each barrage having greater impact than the last as damage accumulates and a frigid winter sets in.
In an overnight address, Zelenskiy said he expected new attacks this week that could be as bad as last week's - the worst yet - that left millions of people with no heat, water or power. "We understand that the terrorists are planning new strikes. We know this for a fact," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address. "And as long as they have missiles, they, unfortunately, will not calm down."
Kyiv says the attacks, which Russia acknowledges target Ukrainian infrastructure, are intended to harm civilians, making them a war crime. Moscow denies its intent is to hurt civilians but said last week their suffering would not end unless Ukraine yielded to Russia's demands, without spelling them out. In Kyiv, snow fell and temperatures were hovering around freezing as millions in and around the Ukrainian capital struggled with disruptions to electricity supply and central heating caused by the waves of Russian air strikes.
National grid operator Ukrenergo said on Monday it had been forced to resume regular emergency blackouts in areas across the country after a setback in its race to repair energy infrastructure. Power units at several power stations had to conduct emergency shutdowns and demand for electricity has been rising as snowy winter weather has set in, a Ukrenergo statement said.
"Once the causes of the emergency shutdowns are eliminated, the units will return to operation, which will reduce the deficit in the power system and reduce the amount of restrictions for consumers," it said. Along front lines in the east of Ukraine, the looming winter is ushering in a new phase of the conflict with intense trench warfare along heavily fortified positions after several months of Russian retreats.
With Russian forces having pulled back in the northeast and withdrawn across the Dnipro River in the south, the front line on land is only around half the length it was a few months ago, making it harder for Ukrainian forces to pinpoint weakly defended stretches to mount a new breakthrough. Zelenskiy described heavy fighting along part of the front west of the Russian-held eastern city of Donetsk where Moscow has focused its assault even as it has withdrawn troops elsewhere, and both sides claim huge casualties with little change in positions.
In its evening update on Monday, Ukraine's armed forces General Staff said Russia kept up heavy shelling of key targets Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province, and to the north bombarded Kupiansk and Lyman, both recaptured recently by Kyiv. On the southern front, it said, Russian forces had reinforced positions in occupied territory and were heavily shelling towns on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson, abandoned by Moscow earlier this month.
It said Ukrainian forces had damaged a rail bridge north of the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol that has been key to supplying Russian forces dug in there. Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports.
Ukraine has gained an advantage on the battlefield in part from deploying Western rocket systems that allow it to target Russian positions behind front lines, partly neutralising Moscow's big edge in artillery firepower. KREMLIN DENIES PLAN TO WITHDRAW FROM NUCLEAR PLANT
The Kremlin denied Russia had any plans to withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which it has controlled since early in the war near the front line on a reservoir on the Dnipro. The head of Ukraine's nuclear power operator, Petro Kotkin, had said on Sunday there were signs Russia might pull out. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded on Monday: "There's no need to look for signs where there are none and cannot be any."
Russia says it has annexed the area and put the plant under the control of its nuclear power agency. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has called for the plant and surrounding area to be demilitarised to prevent a nuclear disaster.
In Kherson, a southern city that has been without power or heat since Russian forces abandoned it earlier this month, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said 17% of customers now had electricity. Other districts would be hooked up soon. Russian forces who withdrew have been bombarding from across the river, killing dozens of civilians.
Liliia Khrystenko, 38, recounted to Reuters how her parents were both killed last Thursday when their building was hit while she was inside with her young son. "I heard my father screaming, telling me to call an ambulance, because my mother was wounded. But I couldn't call an ambulance, because the (mobile) connection was gone," she said through tears outside the building.
"I went outside with my child, and my mother was lying in the building entrance, face down, covered in blood. And my father was sitting by her side, saying he was going to die." Khystenko's mother's body lay on the street for a day before being removed. Her father had been hit in the liver by shrapnel and medics were unable to revive him in hospital.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/2268077-wrapup-6-russia-wont-halt-strikes-until-it-runs-out-of-missiles-ukraines-zelenskiy-says | 2022-11-28T20:13:13 | en | 0.981335 |
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BRUSSELS (AP) — The head of the European Central Bank said Monday she does not believe inflation has peaked after reaching the highest levels on record.
ECB President Christine Lagarde also told European lawmakers that the bank isn’t through raising interest rates to combat those price spikes.
There is too much uncertainty to know whether inflation, which hit 10.6% in October, would come down soon in the 19 countries that use the euro currency, Lagarde said.
When looking at what is driving inflation, “whether it is food and commodities at large, or whether it is energy, we do not see the components or the direction that would lead me to believe that we have reached peak inflation and that it is going to decline in short order,” she said.
That means the central bank will “continue to tame inflation with all the tools that we have,” primarily interest rate hikes, Lagarde told the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.
Following the bank’s third major rate hike in October, marking its fastest pace of increases ever, the ECB expects “to raise rates further to the levels needed to ensure that inflation returns to our 2% medium-term target in a timely manner,” she said.
The ECB has joined the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world in rapidly raising rates to combat inflation that spiked as the global economy recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic, then got worse after Russia invaded Ukraine. Central banks risk tipping economies into recession as the world copes with an energy crisis, higher food costs and currencies weakening against the U.S. dollar.
The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development predicted the international economy would expand only 2.2% next year. Most economists expect a recession in places like Europe, the U.S. and the United Kingdom next year, with ECB Vice President Luis de Guindos saying this month that risk “has become more likely” in the eurozone.
Russia’s war hit Europe particularly hard, “given our proximity to the conflict and our dependence on energy imports” from Russia, Lagarde said Monday.
After Russia cut back most natural gas to Europe, sending energy prices soaring, governments have provided aid to help households and businesses with their bills.
Lagarde warned officials not to worsen inflation by ensuring support is “targeted, tailored and temporary” to those most at need and avoids weakening the push to cut energy use. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-europes-inflation-likely-hasnt-peaked-ecbs-lagarde-says/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:16 | en | 0.956084 |
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Russian energy giant Gazprom announced Monday that it will not further reduce natural gas to Moldova as it had threatened to do after claiming that bills went unpaid and that flows crossing through Ukraine were not making it to Moldova.
Gazprom tweeted that Moldovagaz has “eliminated the violation of payment” for November supplies and that “funds for the gas deposited on the territory of Ukraine, intended for consumers in Moldova, have been received.”
Last week, Moldova and Ukraine hit back at Gazprom’s claim that Russian gas moving through the last pipeline to Western Europe was being stored in Ukraine, saying all supplies that Russia sends through the war-torn country get “fully transferred” to Moldova.
“The volumes of gas that Gazprom refers to as remaining in Ukraine are our savings and reserves stored in warehouses in Ukraine,” Moldovan Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said last week. “These volumes were and will be fully paid for by our country.”
The Russia state-owned company alleged “regular violation by the Moldovan side of contractual obligations in terms of payment for Russian gas supplies,” adding that it “reserves the right to reduce or completely stop gas supplies in case of violation of their payment.”
It comes as Europe’s poorest country — which had relied entirely on Russia for natural gas — is facing an acute energy crisis after Moscow dramatically reduced supplies in October and halved them in November as cold weather took hold. Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure also have triggered massive blackouts in several cities in Moldova.
Russia has cut off most natural gas to Europe amid the war in Ukraine, which European leaders have called energy blackmail. Gazprom’s threats to further reduce flows raised concerns about rising prices heading into winter, when natural gas is needed to heat homes as well as generate electricity and power factories, with higher bills already squeezing households and businesses.
With inflation high all around, there were fears consumers in Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million, would struggle to pay their heating and electricity costs.
The European Union pledged 250 million euros (nearly $262 million) in aid to Moldova this month to help it weather the crisis. Last week, an international aid conference in Paris raised more than 100 million euros to support the country through the energy crisis.
___
Cristian Jardan contributed from Chisinau, Moldova. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-russian-energy-giant-says-no-further-gas-cuts-to-moldova/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:19 | en | 0.972192 |
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Russia's war on Ukraine latest news: Zelenskiy warns of more Russian attacks
Klitschko, a former professional boxer, hit back, saying the criticism was out of place amid Russia's military campaign. BATTLEFIELD * In its evening update on Monday, Ukraine's armed forces General Staff said Russia kept up heavy shelling of key targets Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province, and to the north bombarded Kupiansk and Lyman, both recaptured recently by Kyiv. On the southern front, it said, Russian forces had reinforced positions in occupied territory and were heavily shelling towns on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson, abandoned by Moscow earlier this month..
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians to expect another brutal week of cold and darkness ahead, predicting that Russian attacks on infrastructure would not stop until Moscow runs out of missiles. DIPLOMACY
* A communications line created between the militaries of the United States and Russia at the start of Moscow's war against Ukraine has been used only once so far, a U.S. official told Reuters. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the United States initiated a call through the "deconfliction" line to communicate its concerns about Russian military operations near critical infrastructure in Ukraine. * Nuclear disarmament talks between Russia and the United States set to take place this week have been postponed, Moscow's foreign ministry and the U.S. Embassy said.
* The United States is still talking to Russia about a deal to free jailed Americans Brittney Griner and Paul Whelan but Moscow has not provided a "serious response" to any of its proposals, a senior U.S. diplomat said. POWER SUPPLY
* City authorities said workers were close to completing restoration of power, water and heat, but high consumption levels meant some blackouts had been imposed. * Zelenskiy criticised Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, saying he had not done enough to help beleaguered residents. Klitschko, a former professional boxer, hit back, saying the criticism was out of place amid Russia's military campaign.
BATTLEFIELD * In its evening update on Monday, Ukraine's armed forces General Staff said Russia kept up heavy shelling of key targets Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province, and to the north bombarded Kupiansk and Lyman, both recaptured recently by Kyiv.
On the southern front, it said, Russian forces had reinforced positions in occupied territory and were heavily shelling towns on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson, abandoned by Moscow earlier this month.. * The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine is still under Russian control and will remain so, the Kremlin said, after a Ukrainian official suggested Russian forces were preparing to leave.
* Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports. * The Pentagon is considering a Boeing proposal to supply Ukraine with cheap, small precision bombs fitted onto abundantly available rockets, allowing Kyiv to strike far behind Russian lines as the West struggles to meet demand for more arms.
QUOTE "I went outside with my child, and my mother was lying in the building entrance, face down, covered in blood. And my father was sitting by her side, saying he was going to die," Liliia Khrystenko, 38, told Reuters, describing a recent Russian attack on the southern city of Kherson. (Compiled by Himani Sarkar; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Philippa Fletcher)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Boeing wants U.S. FAA to OK paint fix for 787 wing peeling | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/2268078-russias-war-on-ukraine-latest-news-zelenskiy-warns-of-more-russian-attacks | 2022-11-28T20:13:23 | en | 0.969267 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Fidelity Charitable is getting into NFTs, the digital images that are registered on the blockchain, despite a torrent of bad news from the adjacent world of cryptocurrencies.
The nation’s largest grantmaker is sponsoring a raffle that ends Tuesday, where participants can claim one of the NFTs, which stands for nonfungible token, and 50 will win $1,000 to donate through a donor advised fund at Fidelity.
“The reason we’re doing this is we really believe there’s a whole new generation of givers and philanthropists out there,” said Amy Pirozzolo, head of donor engagement for Fidelity Charitable. “We want to be where they are and the channels they use and the formats they use and further encourage their generosity.”
Around 16% of Americans say they invested in cryptocurrencies, according to a poll from Pew Research Center last year. The demographic most likely to invest were men between the ages of 18 and 29, with 43% reporting that they had invested.
The blockchain is the technology that underlies the trading of cryptocurrencies, but it can also record the ownership of digital items like images, videos or Tweets. Fidelity said that 50,000 different wallets, potentially representing that many individuals, have already registered to create an NFT and potentially win the money to donate.
Contributions in cryptocurrency to donor advised funds at Fidelity exploded last year, growing from the equivalent of $28 million in 2020 to $331 million in 2021, Fidelity has said.
Speaking of the NFT project, Jacob Pruitt, president of Fidelity Charitable, said, “I think it’ll be a unique way to engage with next gen investors. It’s another way that I think Fidelity is innovating and leaning into a new space.”
Donor advised funds allow donors to claim a tax credit for charitable donations, but do not require them to give those funds away within any specific timeframe. Organizations that host DAFs, like Fidelity Charitable, also handle more complex donations, which includes exchanging the assets for cash and producing receipts for donors for tax purposes.
“Many of the nonprofits either can’t take on these assets or they have to hire outside counsel or people to staff to do it,” Pirozzolo said.
One reason for the jump in cryptocurrency donations is that until recently, their value had appreciated significantly. The cryptocurrency market saw a huge boom in 2021 with the price of Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, rising to an all time high of around $68,000 in November last year.
But the meltdown of Terra — a stablecoin, or a type of cryptocurrency that tries to peg its value to an asset like the U.S. dollar — in May brought down a series of major cryptocurrency businesses. Then, earlier this month, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges, FTX and related entities, suddenly filed for bankruptcy leaving both American and international users unable to access assets they held on the exchange.
James Lawrence, co-founder and CEO of Engiven, which facilitates cryptocurrency to nonprofits, including Christian ministries, observed that many people giving cryptocurrencies are making major gifts and that often those happen in the last quarter of the year. That means it’s too early to say how the cryptocurrency market’s fluctuations may impact donations this year. He said he doesn’t see people donating cryptocurrencies as that different from other donors.
“They just have a different asset to give and they’re going to give the most appreciated asset they can,” Lawrence said.
Of the more than 1.5 million nonprofits registered with the Internal Revenue Service in the U.S., Lawrence estimated that only four or five thousand could receive cryptocurrency donations directly.
“That’s a huge market that still doesn’t,” he said. He also has observed that many giving large donations in cryptocurrency (they facilitated one donation of $10 million in cryptocurrency assets) are the same types of people who give large donations in general, and not necessarily the younger demographics that are more likely to invest in cryptocurrency.
“Many of the largest gifts we’ve processed have been from an older demographic who have a tradition of giving large gifts in multiple asset classes,” he said.
Pirozzolo argued that the Fidelity Charitable promotion using NFTs is separate from the cryptocurrency ecosystem.
“This is really about the blockchain and having a fun way to celebrate with digital art the generosity of giving,” she said.
The company is paying for the cost of creating the NFTs, which includes a “gas” fee that pays for the creation and registration of the item, and also said that it has compensated the artists who made the images.
People who claim the NFTs will need to sign up for a cryptocurrency wallet that has access to the Polygon blockchain. The Fidelity Charitable NFTs will be hosted on the platform OpenSea.
Participants will see the NFT in their wallet when they sign up, but the art itself and the winners of the $1,000 tickets won’t be revealed until Giving Tuesday, Nov, 29.
___
Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-fidelity-charitable-launches-nft-raffle-amid-crypto-downturn/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:24 | en | 0.962686 |
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Electricity shortages that have been plaguing Zimbabwe are set to worsen after an authority that manages the country’s biggest dam said water levels are now too low to continue power generation activities.
The Zambezi River Authority, which runs the Kariba Dam jointly owned by Zimbabwe and neighboring Zambia, said in a letter dated Nov. 25 that water levels are at a record low and electricity generation must stop.
The Kariba South Hydro Power Station provides Zimbabwe with about 70% of its electricity and has been producing significantly less than its capacity of 1,050 megawatts in recent years due to receding water levels caused by droughts. The Kariba plant has been generating 572 megawatts of the 782 megawatts of electricity produced in the country, according to the website of the state-run power firm, Zimbabwe Power Company.
The dam “no longer has any usable water to continue undertaking power generation operations,” said the authority’s chief executive officer, Munyaradzi Munodawafa, in a letter to the Zimbabwe Power Company. The authority “is left with no choice” except to “wholly suspend” power generation activities pending a review in January when water levels are expected to have improved, said Munodawafa in the letter seen by The Associated Press and widely reported in local media.
The authority has been reporting low levels of water at Kariba Dam during this period preceding the rainy season in recent years, but not enough to shut down power generation activities.
Coal fired power stations that also provide some electricity are unreliable due to aging infrastructure that constantly breaks down, while the country’s solar potential is yet to be fully developed to meaningfully augment supply. Households and industries have been going for hours, and at times days, without electricity due to shortages in recent months.
The State-run Herald newspaper reported on Monday that an ongoing expansion of a major coal-fired power station, Hwange, could help plug the shortages exacerbated by the Kariba plant shutdown if it goes live by year-end as scheduled. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/business-news/ap-water-levels-in-zimbabwes-biggest-dam-too-low-for-power/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:26 | en | 0.965392 |
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NEW YORK (AP) — There was talk of impeachment Monday at the Trump Organization’s criminal tax fraud trial — not former President Donald Trump’s, which happened twice — but whether lawyers for his company were angling to impeach their own witness, longtime Trump accountant Donald Bender.
Defense lawyer Susan Necheles said Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years overseeing tax returns for Trump’s hundreds of entities, “surprised” her when he testified that he didn’t actually do much work on the company’s tax returns.
Bender indicated he delegated some work to other firm employees.
“That answer surprised me because it’s just not true,” Necheles said during a court conference held after Bender and the jury left the courtroom for a lunch break.
Necheles was seeking permission to confront Bender with records showing he spent more time working on tax returns for the Trump Corporation, the company’s main subsidiary, than he led on. But the defense lawyer stopped short of saying she wanted to undermine his credibility in front of jurors.
“I don’t want to impeach the witness. I don’t want to call him a liar,” Necheles said. “That’s impeaching the witness.”
Judge Juan Manuel Merchan, already annoyed with the defense because it filed a court motion late Sunday night, appeared reluctant to grant Necheles’ request, instructing her to refine her argument over lunch.
“I believe I’ve bent over backward to allow both defendants to prepare a defense,” Merchan said, referring to the Trump Corporation and the other charged subsidiary, Trump Corp. and Trump Payroll Corp. As a gatekeeper, Merchan said, “I don’t believe that means I have to let you to throw everything at the jury and see what sticks.”
The Trump Organization, the holding company for Trump’s buildings, golf courses and other assets, is charged with helping some top executives avoid income taxes on compensation they got in addition to their salaries, including rent-free apartments and luxury cars. If convicted, the company could be fined more than $1 million.
Trump has blamed Bender for not catching the scheme, writing on his Truth Social platform: “The highly paid accounting firm should have routinely picked these things up — we relied on them. VERY UNFAIR!”
Bender also prepared personal income tax returns for Trump and his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, his children and some company executives.
The Trump Organization’s former finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, testified earlier in the trial that he came up with the scheme on his own, without Trump or the Trump family knowing. Weisselberg, who testified in a plea deal in exchange for a five-month jail sentence, said the company benefited because it didn’t have to pay him as much in salary.
Mazars USA LLP has since dropped Trump as a client. In February, the firm said annual financial statements it prepared for him “should no longer be relied upon” after New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office said the statements regularly misstated the value of assets.
James is suing Trump and his company over those allegations. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-impeachment-talk-at-trump-org-trial-did-witness-misspeak/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:31 | en | 0.971356 |
BUCHAREST (AP) — NATO returns on Tuesday to the scene of one of its most controversial decisions, intent on repeating its vow that Ukraine — now suffering through the 10th month of a war against Russia — will join the world’s biggest military alliance one day.
NATO foreign ministers will gather for two days at the Palace of the Parliament in the Romanian capital Bucharest. It was there in April 2008 that U.S. President George W. Bush persuaded his allies to open NATO’s door to Ukraine and Georgia, over vehement Russian objections.
“NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO,” the leaders said in a statement. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was at the summit, described this as “a direct threat” to Russia’s security.
About four months later, Russian forces invaded Georgia.
Some experts describe the decision in Bucharest as a massive error that left Russia feeling cornered by a seemingly ever-expanding NATO. NATO counters that it doesn’t pressgang countries into joining, and that some requested membership to seek protection from Russia — as Finland and Sweden are doing now.
More than 14 years on, NATO will pledge this week to support Ukraine long-term as it defends itself against Russian aerial, missile and ground attacks — many of which have struck power grids and other civilian infrastructure, depriving millions of people of electricity and heating.
In a press conference Monday in Bucharest after a meeting with Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg highlighted the importance of investing in defense “as we face our greatest security crisis in a generation.”
“We cannot let Putin win,” he said. “This would show authoritarian leaders around the world that they can achieve their goals by using military force — and make the world a more dangerous place for all of us. It is in our own security interests to support Ukraine.”
Stoltenberg noted Russia’s recent bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, saying Putin “is trying to use winter as a weapon of war against Ukraine” and that “we need to be prepared for more attacks.”
North Macedonia and Montenegro have joined the U.S.-led alliance in recent years. With this, Stoltenberg said last week before travelling to Bucharest, “we have demonstrated that NATO’s door is open and that it is for NATO allies and aspirant countries to decide on membership. This is also the message to Ukraine.”
This gathering in Bucharest is likely to see NATO make fresh pledges of non-lethal support to Ukraine: fuel, electricity generators, medical supplies, winter equipment and drone jamming devices.
Individual allies are also likely to announce fresh supplies of military equipment for Ukraine — chiefly the air defense systems that Kyiv so desperately seeks to protect its skies. NATO as an organization will not offer such supplies, to avoid being dragged into a wider war with nuclear-armed Russia.
But the ministers, along with their Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba, will also look further afield.
“Over the longer term we will help Ukraine transition from Soviet-era equipment to modern NATO standards, doctrine and training,” Stoltenberg said last week. This will not only improve Ukraine’s armed forces and help them to better integrate, it will also meet some of the conditions for membership.
That said, Ukraine will not join NATO anytime soon. With the Crimean Peninsula annexed, and Russian troops and pro-Moscow separatists holding parts of the south and east, it’s not clear what Ukraine’s borders would even look like.
Many of the 30 allies believe the focus now must be uniquely on defeating Russia.
“What we have seen in the last months is that President Putin made a big strategic mistake,” Stoltenberg said. “He underestimated the strength of the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian armed forces, and the Ukrainian political leadership.”
But even as economic pressure — high electricity and gas prices, plus inflation, all exacerbated by the war — mounts on many allies, Stoltenberg would not press Ukraine to enter into peace talks, and indeed NATO and European diplomats say that Putin does not appear willing to come to the table.
“The war will end at some stage at the negotiating table,” Stoltenberg said Monday. “But the outcome of those negotiations are totally dependent on the situation on the battlefield,” adding “it would be a tragedy for (the) Ukrainian people if President Putin wins.”
The foreign ministers of Bosnia, Georgia and Moldova — three partners that NATO says are under increasing Russian pressure — will also be in Bucharest. Stoltenberg said NATO would “take further steps to help them protect their independence, and strengthen their ability to defend themselves.
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Cook reported from Brussels. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-14-years-on-nato-to-renew-a-vow-to-ukraine/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:32 | en | 0.957312 |
Argentina agrees fuel price rise caps with firms, pledges FX access
The government wants to spur more local oil and gas development. "The state undertakes to guarantee access to foreign currency for firms, especially for the supply of lubricants, and to temporarily reduce taxes on fuel imports to guarantee supply for the agricultural sectors," the ministry added.
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- Argentina
Argentina on Monday reached an agreement with major oil firms operating in the country to put a cap on fuel price increases in a bid to keep costs at the pump down for hard-hit consumers amid surging inflation. The deal with firms like state company YPF and Shell would see fuel price increases of 4% in December, January and February and then 3.8% in March. Monthly inflation has recently topped 6% and is set to end 2022 at around 100%.
We want all sectors to "contribute to significantly lower inflation, which is the main drama in Argentina," the Ministry of Economy said in a statement. In return, the government said that it would ensure access to foreign exchange markets for energy firms, despite tight capital controls that restrict currency conversion. The government wants to spur more local oil and gas development.
"The state undertakes to guarantee access to foreign currency for firms, especially for the supply of lubricants, and to temporarily reduce taxes on fuel imports to guarantee supply for the agricultural sectors," the ministry added. Argentina's key agriculture sector, the main driver of the country's exports, has faced issues around planting and harvesting in recent years due to high prices and occasional shortages of fuel for agricultural machinery.
The South American country, a major exporter of soy, corn and wheat, is also home to the huge Vaca Muerta shale formation that could make the country an important energy exporter if it can succeed in accelerating domestic oil and gas production.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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LONDON (AP) — Irish regulators slapped Facebook parent Meta with a 265 million-euro ($277 million) fine Monday, the company’s latest punishment for breaching strict European Union data privacy rules.
The Data Protection Commission said Meta Platforms infringed sections of the EU rules, known as the General Data Protection Regulation, that require technical and organizational measures aimed at protecting user data.
The watchdog opened an investigation last year into news reports that data on more 533 million users was found dumped online. The data was found on a website for hackers and included names, Facebook IDs, phone numbers, locations, birthdates and email addresses for people from more than 100 countries, according to the reports.
Meta said the data had been “scraped” from Facebook using tools designed to help people find their friends through phone numbers using search and contact import features. The watchdog said it investigated the automated scraping carried out between May 2018 and September 2019.
The company said it had “cooperated fully” with the Irish watchdog.
“We made changes to our systems during the time in question, including removing the ability to scrape our features in this way using phone numbers,” Meta said in a statement. “Unauthorized data scraping is unacceptable and against our rules.”
Along with the fine, the commission said it also imposed on Meta a “range of corrective measures,” which weren’t specified.
When asked if Meta would appeal, a spokesman said, “We are still reviewing this decision carefully.”
It’s the latest in a series of punishments that the Irish watchdog has levied against Meta over the past two years.
The company, based in Menlo Park, California, has its European headquarters in Dublin, which makes the Irish authority its lead privacy regulator under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, in a system known as “one-stop shop.”
The Irish watchdog fined Meta-owned Instagram 405 million euros in September after it found that the platform mishandled teenagers’ personal information. Meta was fined 17 million euro fines in March for its handling of a dozen data breach notifications.
Last year, the watchdog fined Meta’s chat service WhatsApp 225 million euros for violating rules on sharing people’s data with other Meta companies. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-irish-watchdog-fines-meta-265m-euros-in-latest-privacy-case/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:37 | en | 0.96461 |
MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md. (AP) — Crews on Monday rescued the injured pilot and passenger of a small plane that crashed into a Maryland electricity transmission tower, knocking out power for tens of thousands of customers and leaving the aircraft dangling 10 stories off the ground.
The plane crashed into the tower that supports high-tension lines at around 5:40 p.m. Sunday and got stuck about 100 feet (30 meters) above the ground, Montgomery County Fire Chief Scott Goldstein said. The crash happened about a mile from the Montgomery County Airpark in Montgomery Village, a Washington, D.C., suburb. It knocked out power in the surrounding area and caused Metrorail delays.
Video from the scene showed numerous rescue personnel and vehicles surrounding the tower shortly after it happened. At the time of the crash, the conditions were misty and rainy, said Pete Piringer, a spokesperson for the county’s Fire & Rescue Service.
Piringer said the rescue was complicated by the fact that the lines were live when the plane hit.
After electrical workers made sure it was safe to try to reach the pilot and passenger, who were in contact with authorities via cellphone and were anxious to be rescued, crews secured the plane to the tower at around 12:15 a.m. Monday and took the two to safety a few minutes later, officials said.
The State Police identified the pilot as Patrick Merkle, 65, of Washington, D.C., and the passenger as Janet Williams, 66, of Marrero, Louisiana. Both had serious but non-life-threatening injuries, and hypothermia set in while they waited to be rescued, Goldstein said. Their rescue was faster than anticipated since the pilot and passenger were able to assist, he said.
The plane was later lowered to the ground revealing a crushed front end.
The single-engine Mooney M20J had departed White Plains, New York, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The FAA, National Transportation Safety Board and Maryland State Police are investigating.
The utility Pepco had reported that power was temporarily cut to about 120,000 customers in Montgomery County, but it was restored to most of them before the people were rescued.
The county’s public school system closed its schools and offices Monday due to the outage’s impact on safety and school operations. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-2-rescued-after-plane-hits-transmission-tower-in-maryland/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:38 | en | 0.978285 |
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US STOCKS-Apple, energy shares drag Wall St lower amid China COVID protests
Shares of the tech giant fell 2% and weighed the most on the benchmark S&P 500 index, as growing worker unrest at the world's biggest iPhone factory in China fanned fears of a deeper hit to the already constrained production of higher-end models. Rare protests in major Chinese cities over the weekend against the country's strict zero-COVID curbs have hit growth expectations in the world's second-largest economy.
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Wall Street's main indexes fell on Monday as protests in major Chinese cities against strict COVID-19 policies sparked concerns over economic growth and dragged commodity-linked shares lower, while Apple slid on worries about a hit to iPhone production. Shares of the tech giant fell 2% and weighed the most on the benchmark S&P 500 index, as growing worker unrest at the world's biggest iPhone factory in China fanned fears of a deeper hit to the already constrained production of higher-end models.
Rare protests in major Chinese cities over the weekend against the country's strict zero-COVID curbs have hit growth expectations in the world's second-largest economy. "If these protests continue, it could disrupt supply chains and the reopenings, a glimpse of which we saw earlier this year," said Brian Klimke, director of investment research at Cetera Financial Group.
"It will continue to weigh on investors' minds going forward." The S&P 500 energy index and the materials index slid 1.7% and 1.4%, respectively, making them the biggest sectoral decliners as oil and metal prices dropped on China news.
U.S.-listed shares of Chinese companies such as Bilibili Inc , Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, JD.com Inc, Baidu Inc and Nio Inc, however, eked out gains, rising between 1% and 2.2%. "Those that are buying might be trying to pick up some ball games on stocks that have been way beaten down or maybe they think that this is going to force the (Chinese) party's hand into relaxing some of the restrictions," said Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in Fairfield.
At 12:29 p.m. ET, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 270.56 points, or 0.79%, at 34,076.47, the S&P 500 was down 35.13 points, or 0.87%, at 3,990.99, and the Nasdaq Composite was down 87.55 points, or 0.78%, at 11,138.80. A 1.2% rise in shares of Amazon.com limited the downside, after an industry report estimated spending during Cyber Monday, the biggest U.S. online shopping day, to rise to as much as $11.6 billion, encouraged by some of the biggest discounts and deals to attract inflation-wary consumers.
Trading in other growth stocks, including Microsoft Corp , Meta Platforms Inc, Nvidia Corp, Netflix Inc and Tesla Inc, were mixed. Among other stocks, Biogen Inc fell 3.9% following a report of death during a clinical study of its experimental Alzheimer's drug.
Shares of cryptocurrency and blockchain-related companies, including Coinbase Global Inc, Riot Blockchain Inc and Marathon Digital Holdings Inc, were down about 2.5% each following lender BlockFi's bankruptcy filing, the latest casualty since FTX's collapse earlier this month. For the week, investors will keep a close watch on nonfarm payrolls for November, the second estimate for third-quarter gross domestic product and consumer confidence this month.
Declining issues outnumbered advancers for a 2.47-to-1 ratio on the NYSE and for a 1.95-to-1 ratio on the Nasdaq. The S&P index recorded 11 new 52-week highs and two new lows, while the Nasdaq recorded 74 new highs and 102 new lows.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/2268092-us-stocks-apple-energy-shares-drag-wall-st-lower-amid-china-covid-protests | 2022-11-28T20:13:40 | en | 0.953657 |
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Russian energy giant Gazprom announced Monday that it will not further reduce natural gas to Moldova as it had threatened to do after claiming that bills went unpaid and that flows crossing through Ukraine were not making it to Moldova.
Gazprom tweeted that Moldovagaz has “eliminated the violation of payment” for November supplies and that “funds for the gas deposited on the territory of Ukraine, intended for consumers in Moldova, have been received.”
Last week, Moldova and Ukraine hit back at Gazprom’s claim that Russian gas moving through the last pipeline to Western Europe was being stored in Ukraine, saying all supplies that Russia sends through the war-torn country get “fully transferred” to Moldova.
“The volumes of gas that Gazprom refers to as remaining in Ukraine are our savings and reserves stored in warehouses in Ukraine,” Moldovan Infrastructure Minister Andrei Spinu said last week. “These volumes were and will be fully paid for by our country.”
The Russia state-owned company alleged “regular violation by the Moldovan side of contractual obligations in terms of payment for Russian gas supplies,” adding that it “reserves the right to reduce or completely stop gas supplies in case of violation of their payment.”
It comes as Europe’s poorest country — which had relied entirely on Russia for natural gas — is facing an acute energy crisis after Moscow dramatically reduced supplies in October and halved them in November as cold weather took hold. Moscow’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure also have triggered massive blackouts in several cities in Moldova.
Russia has cut off most natural gas to Europe amid the war in Ukraine, which European leaders have called energy blackmail. Gazprom’s threats to further reduce flows raised concerns about rising prices heading into winter, when natural gas is needed to heat homes as well as generate electricity and power factories, with higher bills already squeezing households and businesses.
With inflation high all around, there were fears consumers in Moldova, a former Soviet republic of about 2.6 million, would struggle to pay their heating and electricity costs.
The European Union pledged 250 million euros (nearly $262 million) in aid to Moldova this month to help it weather the crisis. Last week, an international aid conference in Paris raised more than 100 million euros to support the country through the energy crisis.
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Cristian Jardan contributed from Chisinau, Moldova. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-russian-energy-giant-says-no-further-gas-cuts-to-moldova/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:44 | en | 0.972192 |
The U.S. Census Bureau’s chief is defending a new tool meant to protect the privacy of people participating in the statistical agency’s questionnaires against calls to abandon it by prominent researchers who claim it jeopardizes the usefulness of numbers that are the foundation of the nation’s data infrastructure.
The tool known as differential privacy “was selected as the best solution available” against efforts by outside groups or individuals to piece together the identities of participants in the bureau’s censuses and surveys by using third-party data and powerful computers, U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos said in a letter last week. Concerns about privacy have grown in recent years as cyberattacks and threats of personal data being used for the wrong reasons have become more commonplace.
Several prominent state demographers and academic researchers had asked the statistical agency in August to abandon using differential privacy on future annual population estimates, which are used in the distribution of $1.5 trillion in federal funding each year, and future releases of American Community Survey data, which provide the most comprehensive information on how people live in the U.S.
The demographers and researchers said the application of the privacy method for the first time on 2020 census data had delayed their release and created inaccuracies in the numbers used to determine political power and distribute federal funds. The researchers said in their letter that there were thousands of small jurisdictions throughout the U.S. that won’t get usable data because of the algorithms applied to the numbers to protect confidentiality.
By continuing to use the differential privacy algorithms, “the Census Bureau risks failing its responsibilities as a federal statistical agency to provide relevant, accurate, timely, and credible information for the public good,” the researchers and demographers said. “In fact, the experience of the last few years has undermined user trust in the Census Bureau.”
Differential privacy algorithms add intentional errors to data to obscure the identity of any given participant and is most noticeable at the smallest geographies, such as census blocks. Data used for determining how many congressional seats each state gets and for redrawing political districts were released last year, but more detailed figures from the 2020 census won’t be made public until next year, almost three years after they were collected.
Some bias using the privacy tool “was inevitable from a purely mathematical perspective,” but bureau statisticians have worked to minimize it, and delays were caused by the pandemic, which pushed back a series of releases of the 2020 census data, Santos said.
Meanwhile, the bureau’s watchdog agency said in a report last week that the statistical agency had failed to stop simulated cyberattacks it had conducted as part of a covert operation to test the bureau’s cybersecurity vulnerabilities. The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Office of Inspector General said that its team had obtained unauthorized access to a domain administrator account, gotten personally identifiable information about bureau employees and used insecure programs to send out fake emails.
The Census Bureau said in a response to the report that the exercise had allowed it to improve its cyber defenses.
___
Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-census-bureau-chief-defends-new-privacy-tool-against-critics/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:46 | en | 0.960084 |
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NEW YORK (AP) — Don’t look for plastic partitions or faraway benches when visiting Santa Claus this year. The jolly old elf is back, pre-pandemic style, and he’s got some pressing issues on his mind.
Santa booker HireSanta.com has logged a 30% increase in demand this Christmas season over last year, after losing about 15% of its performers to retirement or death during the pandemic, said founder and head elf Mitch Allen.
He has a Santa database of several thousand with gigs at the Bloomingdale’s flagship store in New York, various Marriott properties and other venues around the U.S. Most of Allen’s clients have moved back to kids on laps and aren’t considering COVID-19 in a major way, he said, but Santa can choose to mask up.
Another large Santa agency, Cherry Hill Programs, is back up to pre-pandemic booking numbers for their 1,400 or so Santas working at more than 600 malls and other spots this year, said spokesperson Chris Landtroop.
“I can’t even explain how excited we are to see everyone’s smiles at all locations this season without anything covering up those beautiful faces,” she said.
Cherry Hill Santas are also free to wear masks, Landtroop said.
Among standout Santas still keeping their distance? There will be no lap visits at the Macy’s flagship store in New York’s Herald Square. Santa is seated behind his desk.
Some Santas who stayed home the last two years out of concern for their health have returned to the ho ho ho game, but Allen is desperately trying to refill his pipeline with new performers.
Inflation has also taken a bite out of Santa. Many are older, on fixed incomes and travel long distances to don the red suit. They spend hundreds on their costumes and other accoutrements.
“We’re charging the clients slightly more and we’re also paying our Santas slightly more,” Allen said.
Bookings for many Santas were made months in advance, and some work year-round. Allen’s Santas will earn from $5,000 to $12,000 for the season.
A few Santas told The Associated Press they’re unbothered by the cost, however. They’re not in the Santa profession to make a buck but do it out of sheer joy.
Allen and other agencies are juggling more requests for inclusive Santas, such as Black, deaf and Spanish-speaking performers. Allen also has a female Santa on speed dial.
“I haven’t been busted yet by the kids and, with one exception, by the parents, either,” said 48-year-old Melissa Rickard, who stepped into the role in her early 20s when the Santa hired by her father’s lodge fell ill.
“To have a child not be able to tell I’m a woman in one sense is the ultimate compliment because it means I’m doing Santa justice. It cracks my husband up,” added Rickard, who lives outside Little Rock, Arkansas. “I know there are more of us out there.”
By mid-November, Rickard had more than 100 gigs lined up, through Hire Santa and other means.
“A lot of it is word of mouth,” she said. “It’s `Hey, have you seen the female Santa?’”
Rickard charges roughly $175 an hour as Santa, depending on the job, and donates all but her fuel money to charity. And her beard? Yak hair.
Eric Elliott’s carefully tended white beard is the real deal. He and his Mrs. Claus, wife Moeisha Elliott, went pro this year after first taking on the roles as volunteers in 2007. Both are retired military.
They spent weeks in formal Claus training. Among the skills they picked up was American Sign Language and other ways to accommodate people with disabilities. Their work has included trips into disaster zones with the Texas-based nonprofit Lone Star Santas to lend a little cheer.
The Elliotts, who are Black, say breaking into the top tier of Santas as first-time pros and Clauses of color hasn’t been easy. For some people, Eric said, “We understand that we’re not the Santa for you.”
The Santa Experience at Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, is staffing up with six Saint Nicks, including two who are Black and its first Asian Santa. Visits in Spanish and Cantonese are provided.
Working smaller jobs, including house visits, the Elliotts have seen how rising prices have hit some people hard. They’ve lowered their rates at times when they sense that people are struggling.
“People are having issues just eating, but they don’t want to miss out on the experience,” Eric said. Sometimes, he said, “You’ll meet them and be like, `You go ahead and hold on to that. I know you worked hard for that.’”
For other clients, the Elliotts charge anywhere from $150 to $300 an hour.
Charles Graves, a rare, professional deaf Santa in New Braunfels, Texas, said through an interpreter that he was inspired to grow his beard and put on the suit in part by awkward encounters with hearing Santas as a child.
“As a child, I was very excited to receive a gift, but then you just kind of go away and you’re like, there’s no connection there. Children look at me now and they’re like, wow, you know, there’s a connection there with the deaf culture. And I can always connect with the hearing kids as well,” said Graves, a spry Santa at 52.
Graves, who has a day job at a school for deaf children, also received training to be Santa. He works as Santa with interpreters. Breaking in has been difficult and expensive, he says, but “this is something really, really important to me.”
By mid-November, he had more than a dozen gigs, including a parade in Santa Paula, California, a mall in Austin, Texas, and at Morgan’s Wonderland, a nonprofit accessible theme park in San Antonio. He’s also doing some Zoom visits.
Among Santa’s rising costs this year are his duds. The price of suits, from custom to ready-to-wear, is up about 25%, said 72-year-old Stephen Arnold, a longtime Santa who heads the more than 2,000-strong International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas.
“Most of the performers I know are raising their rates, mostly due to the costs of transportation, accommodation and materials,” he said. “Personally, I’m raising my rates a bit for new clients but I’m holding prices this year for my repeat gigs.”
Arnold, who’s in Memphis, Tennessee, charges $250 to $350 an hour. Others in his organization, depending on location and experience, charge anywhere from $100 to $500 an hour, the latter in big cities like Los Angeles. Some, he said, don’t know their worth and lowball it at $50 or $75 an hour.
As for the pandemic, Arnold hasn’t heard a word about it from his clients, compared to last year and 2020, when he worked inside a snow globe. The Santas he knows seem unflustered.
“I’m surprised how few people are concerned about it,” Arnold said. “I visit my wife twice a day in a nursing facility. I’m diabetic. I mean, most of us are old fat men.”
___
Follow Leanne Italie on Twitter at http://twitter.com/litalie
—-
For more AP Lifetyles stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/lifestyle. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-santas-back-in-town-with-inflation-inclusion-on-his-mind/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:51 | en | 0.972368 |
SHANGHAI (AP) — Barely a month after granting himself new powers as China’s potential leader for life, Xi Jinping is facing a wave of public anger of the kind not seen for decades, sparked by his “zero COVID” strategy that will soon enter its fourth year.
Demonstrators poured into the streets over the weekend in cities including Shanghai and Beijing, criticizing the policy, confronting police — and even calling for Xi to step down. On Monday, demonstrators gathered in the semi-autonomous southern city of Hong Kong, where the pro-democracy movement was all but snuffed out by a harsh crackdown following monthslong demonstrations that began in 2019.
Students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong chanted “oppose dictatorship” and “Freedom! Freedom!” Floral tributes were laid in the Central district that had been the epicenter of previous protests.
The widespread demonstrations are unprecedented since the army crushed the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Most protesters focused their anger on restrictions that can confine families to their homes for months and have been criticized as neither scientific nor effective. Some complained the system is failing to respond to their needs.
The cries for the resignation of Xi and the end of the Communist Party that has ruled China for 73 years could be deemed sedition, which is punishable by prison.
In response, police in Shanghai used pepper spray to drive away demonstrators, and dozens were detained in police sweeps and taken away in police vans and buses. China’s vast internal security apparatus is also famed for identifying people it considers troublemakers and picking them up later when few are watching.
The possibility of more protests is unclear. Government censors scrubbed the internet of videos and messages supporting them. And analysts say unless divisions emerge, the Communist Party should be able to contain the dissent.
China’s stringent measures were originally accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating waves of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
While the ruling party says anti-coronavirus measures should be “targeted and precise” and cause the least possible disruption to people’s lives, local officials are threatened with losing their jobs or other punishments if outbreaks occur. They have responded by imposing quarantines and other restrictions that protesters say exceed what the central government allows.
Xi’s unelected government doesn’t seem too concerned with the hardships brought by the policy. This spring, millions of Shanghai residents were placed under a strict lockdown that resulted in food shortages, restricted access to medical care and economic pain. Nevertheless, in October, the city’s party secretary, a Xi loyalist, was appointed to the Communist Party’s No. 2 position.
The party has long imposed surveillance and travel restrictions on minorities including Tibetans and Muslim groups such as Uyghurs, more than 1 million of whom have been detained in camps where they are forced to renounce their traditional culture and religion and swear fealty to Xi.
But this weekend’s protests included many members of the educated urban middle class from the ethnic Han majority. The ruling party relies on that group to abide by an unwritten post-Tiananmen agreement to accept autocratic rule in exchange for a better quality of life.
Now, it appears that old arrangement has ended as the party enforces control at the expense of the economy, said Hung Ho-fung of Johns Hopkins University.
“The party and the people are trying to seek a new equilibrium,” he said. “There will be some instability in the process.”
To develop into something on the scale of the 1989 protests would require clear divisions within the leadership that could be leveraged for change, Hung said.
Xi all but eliminated such threats at an October party congress. He broke with tradition and awarded himself a third five-year term as party leader and packed the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists. Two potential rivals were sent into retirement.
“Without the clear signal of party leader divisions … I would expect this kind of protest might not last very long,” Hung said.
It’s “unimaginable” that Xi would back down, and the party is experienced in handling protests, Hung said.
China is now the only major country still trying to stop transmission of the virus that was first detected in the central city of Wuhan in late 2019.
The normally supportive head of the World Health Organization has called “zero COVID” unsustainable. Beijing dismissed his remarks as irresponsible, but public acceptance of the restrictions has worn thin.
People who are quarantined at home in some areas say they lack food and medicine. And the ruling party faced anger over the deaths of two children whose parents said anti-virus controls hampered efforts to get emergency medical care.
Protests then erupted after a fire on Thursday killed at least 10 people in an apartment building in the city of Urumqi in the northwest, where some residents have been locked in their homes for four months. That prompted an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other pandemic restrictions.
Yet Xi, an ardent nationalist, has politicized the issue to the point that exiting the “zero COVID” policy could be seen as a loss to his reputation and authority.
“Zero COVID” was “supposed to demonstrate the superiority of the ‘Chinese model,’ but ended up demonstrating the risk that when authoritarian regimes make mistakes, those mistakes can be colossal,” said Andrew Nathan, a Chinese politics specialist at Columbia University. He edited The Tiananmen Papers, an insider account of the government’s response to the 1989 protests.
“But I think the regime has backed itself into a corner and has no way to yield. It has lots of force, and if necessary, it will use it,” Nathan said. “If it could hold onto power in the face of the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989, it can do so again now.”
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Associated Press reporters Kanis Leung and Zen Soo and researcher Alice Fung in Hong Kong contributed to this report. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-chinas-xi-faces-public-anger-over-draconian-zero-covid/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:53 | en | 0.972209 |
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WRAPUP 7-Russia will not halt strikes until it runs out of missiles, Ukraine's Zelenskiy says
Russia has been carrying out massive missile bombardments on Ukraine's energy infrastructure roughly weekly since early October, with each barrage having greater impact than the last as damage accumulates and a frigid winter sets in. In an overnight video address, Zelenskiy said he expected new attacks this week that could be as bad as last week's - the worst yet that left millions of people with no heat, water or power.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy warned Ukrainians to expect another brutal week of cold and darkness ahead, predicting more Russian attacks on infrastructure that would not cease until Moscow ran out of missiles. Russia has been carrying out massive missile bombardments on Ukraine's energy infrastructure roughly weekly since early October, with each barrage having greater impact than the last as damage accumulates and a frigid winter sets in.
In an overnight video address, Zelenskiy said he expected new attacks this week that could be as bad as last week's - the worst yet that left millions of people with no heat, water or power. "We understand that the terrorists are planning new strikes. We know this for a fact," Zelenskiy said. "And as long as they have missiles, they, unfortunately, will not calm down."
Kyiv says the attacks, which Russia acknowledges target Ukrainian infrastructure, are intended to harm civilians, making them a war crime. Moscow denies its intent is to hurt civilians but said last week their suffering would not end unless Ukraine yielded to Russia's demands, without spelling them out. In Kyiv, snow fell and temperatures were hovering around freezing as millions in and around the Ukrainian capital struggled with disruptions to electricity supply and central heating caused by the waves of Russian air strikes.
National grid operator Ukrenergo said on Monday it had been forced to resume regular emergency blackouts in areas across the country after a setback in its race to repair energy infrastructure. Power units at several power stations had to conduct emergency shutdowns and demand for electricity has been rising as snowy winter weather has set in, a Ukrenergo statement said.
"Once the causes of the emergency shutdowns are eliminated, the units will return to operation, which will reduce the deficit in the power system and reduce the amount of restrictions for consumers," it said. Along front lines in the east of Ukraine the looming winter is ushering in a new phase of the conflict, after several months of Russian retreats, with intense trench warfare along heavily fortified positions.
With Russian forces having pulled back in the northeast and withdrawn across the Dnipro River in the south, the front line on land is only around half the length it was a few months ago, making it harder for Ukrainian forces to pinpoint weakly defended stretches to attempt a new breakthrough. Zelenskiy described heavy fighting west of the Russian-held eastern city of Donetsk, where Moscow has focused its assault even as it has withdrawn troops elsewhere, and both sides claim huge casualties with little change in positions.
In its evening update on Monday, Ukraine's armed forces General Staff said Russia kept up heavy shelling of key targets Bakhmut and Avdiivka in Donetsk province, and to the north bombarded areas around the towns of Kupiansk and Lyman, both recaptured recently by Kyiv. On the southern front, it said, Russian forces had reinforced positions in occupied territory and were heavily shelling towns on the west bank of the Dnipro River, including Kherson, abandoned by Moscow earlier this month.
It said Ukrainian forces had damaged a rail bridge north of the Russian-occupied southern city of Melitopol that has been key to supplying Russian forces dug in there. Reuters could not independently verify battlefield reports.
NUCLEAR PLANT The Kremlin denied Russia had any plans to withdraw from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, Europe's largest, which it has controlled since early in the war near the front line on a reservoir on the Dnipro.
The head of Ukraine's nuclear power operator, Petro Kotkin, had said on Sunday there were signs Russia might pull out. But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded on Monday: "There's no need to look for signs where there are none and cannot be any." Russia says it has annexed the area and put the plant under the control of its nuclear power agency.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, has called for the plant and surrounding area to be demilitarised to prevent a nuclear disaster. In Kherson, which has lacked electricity and heat since Russian forces abandoned it earlier this month, regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych said 17% of customers now had electricity. Other districts would be hooked up soon.
Russian forces who withdrew have been bombarding from across the river, killing dozens of civilians. Liliia Khrystenko, 38, recounted to Reuters how her parents were both killed last Thursday when their building was hit while she was inside with her young son.
"I heard my father screaming, telling me to call an ambulance, because my mother was wounded. But I couldn’t call an ambulance, because the (mobile) connection was gone," she said through tears outside the building. "I went outside with my child, and my mother was lying in the building entrance, face down, covered in blood. And my father was sitting by her side, saying he was going to die."
Khystenko's mother's body lay on the street for a day before being removed. Her father had been hit in the liver by shrapnel and medics were unable to revive him in hospital. On the diplomatic front, efforts to weaken Russia's ability to fund its war in Ukraine faltered on Monday, when envoys of European Union governments failed to agree on a price cap on Russian seaborne crude oil, diplomats said.
Poland, they said, had insisted the cap be set lower than others wanted. "There is no deal. The legal texts have now been agreed but Poland still can't agree to the price," one said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/2268108-wrapup-7-russia-will-not-halt-strikes-until-it-runs-out-of-missiles-ukraines-zelenskiy-says | 2022-11-28T20:13:49 | en | 0.982215 |
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HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Electricity shortages that have been plaguing Zimbabwe are set to worsen after an authority that manages the country’s biggest dam said water levels are now too low to continue power generation activities.
The Zambezi River Authority, which runs the Kariba Dam jointly owned by Zimbabwe and neighboring Zambia, said in a letter dated Nov. 25 that water levels are at a record low and electricity generation must stop.
The Kariba South Hydro Power Station provides Zimbabwe with about 70% of its electricity and has been producing significantly less than its capacity of 1,050 megawatts in recent years due to receding water levels caused by droughts. The Kariba plant has been generating 572 megawatts of the 782 megawatts of electricity produced in the country, according to the website of the state-run power firm, Zimbabwe Power Company.
The dam “no longer has any usable water to continue undertaking power generation operations,” said the authority’s chief executive officer, Munyaradzi Munodawafa, in a letter to the Zimbabwe Power Company. The authority “is left with no choice” except to “wholly suspend” power generation activities pending a review in January when water levels are expected to have improved, said Munodawafa in the letter seen by The Associated Press and widely reported in local media.
The authority has been reporting low levels of water at Kariba Dam during this period preceding the rainy season in recent years, but not enough to shut down power generation activities.
Coal fired power stations that also provide some electricity are unreliable due to aging infrastructure that constantly breaks down, while the country’s solar potential is yet to be fully developed to meaningfully augment supply. Households and industries have been going for hours, and at times days, without electricity due to shortages in recent months.
The State-run Herald newspaper reported on Monday that an ongoing expansion of a major coal-fired power station, Hwange, could help plug the shortages exacerbated by the Kariba plant shutdown if it goes live by year-end as scheduled. | https://www.news10.com/business/ap-business/ap-water-levels-in-zimbabwes-biggest-dam-too-low-for-power/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:59 | en | 0.965392 |
CHESAPEAKE, Va. (AP) — The city of Chesapeake, Virginia, has scheduled a candlelight vigil for Monday evening that will honor and remember the victims of last week’s mass shooting at a Walmart store.
Six employees were killed and six people were wounded by a store supervisor late Tuesday night in the city of about 250,000 people near Virginia’s Atlantic coastline, police said.
The rampage marked the nation’s second high-profile mass shooting in four days after a person opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and wounding 17.
Police said the shooter at the Walmart was a supervisor who left behind a note that claimed he was harassed and pushed to the brink by a perception his phone was hacked. He died at the scene of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The Walmart store associates who died ranged in age from 16 to 70 and were in various stages of life.
Fernando “Jesus” Chavez-Barron, 16, had just started driving and gotten his first part-time job at Walmart to help out his family. Kellie Pyle, 52, recently moved back to the region after reconnecting with her high school sweetheart. They planned to marry next year.
Randy Blevins, 70, had worked at the Walmart for more than 30 years after owning his own five-and-dime store. Brian Pendleton, 38, had recently celebrated his 10-year anniversary at the store and was a “happy-go-lucky” guy who loved to tell jokes.
Lorenzo Gamble, 43, worked there for 15 years. He was the quiet one in his family and enjoyed going to his 19-year-old’s football games. Tyneka Johnson, 22, was young and wanted to make her own money. She also had a sense of style and love for music and dancing.
The vigil starts at 6 p.m. and will be held at Chesapeake City Park. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-city-to-hold-vigil-honoring-those-killed-in-walmart-shooting/ | 2022-11-28T20:13:59 | en | 0.991798 |
Three years of flatlined progress on HIV treatment and prevention affect 2.7 million youth
Some 110,00 youth under age 19 died last year from AIDS-related causes, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday, noting that coupled with 310,000 newly infected, the total number of young people living with HIV stands at 2.7 million.
Some 110,00 youth under age 19 died last year from AIDS-related causes, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday, noting that coupled with 310,000 newly infected, the total number of young people living with HIV stands at 2.7 million.
Three years of flatlined progress on HIV treatment and prevention affect 2.7 million youth
Some 110,00 youth under age 19 died last year from AIDS-related causes, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said on Friday, noting that coupled with 310,000 newly infected, the total number of young people living with HIV stands at 2.7 million.
Ahead of World AIDS Day on Thursday, UNICEF warned in its latest global snapshot on children, HIV and AIDS that progress in HIV prevention and treatment has nearly flatlined over the past three years, with many regions still not at pre-pandemic service coverage.
Tweet URLIn the lead up to #WorldAIDSDay on 1 December, let's unite to end the inequalities holding back the end of AIDS.
To keep everyone safe, to protect everyone’s health, we need to #Equalize!
https://t.co/RAceTA3yKb https://t.co/i3oQnSilc9
UNAIDS UNAIDS November 28, 2022 UNAIDS/statuses/1597176354696749056">
“Though children have long lagged behind adults in the AIDS response, the stagnation seen in the last three years is unprecedented, putting too many young lives at risk of sickness and death,” said UNICEF Associate Chief of HIV/AIDS Anurita Bains.
Collective failure
This comes on top of an existing and growing gap in treatment between adults and children, adolescents, and pregnant women.
“Children are falling through the cracks because we are collectively failing to find and test them and get them on life-saving treatment”, she continued.
“Every day that goes by without progress, over 300 children and adolescents lose their fight against AIDS.”
Numbers tell the story
Despite accounting for only seven per cent of overall people living with HIV, children and adolescents comprised 17 per cent of AIDS-related deaths, and 21 per cent of new HIV infections last year.
Unless the drivers of inequities are addressed, UNICEF warns, ending AIDS in children and adolescents will continue to be a distant dream.
However, the snapshot points out that longer-term trends remain positive.
New HIV infections among children under age 14 dropped by 52 per cent from 2010 to 2021, and new infections among 15- to19-year-olds also dropped by 40 per cent.
Similarly, coverage of lifelong antiretroviral treatment (ART) among pregnant women living with HIV increased from 46 per cent to 81 per cent in a single decade.
Growing treatment gap
While the total number of children living with HIV is on the decline, the treatment gap between children and adults continues to grow.
In UNICEF’s HIV-priority countries, ART coverage for children stood at 56 per cent in 2020 but fell to 54 per cent in 2021.
Several factors were responsible for the decline, including the pandemic and other global crises that have increased marginalization and poverty.
However, the failure also reflects waning political will and a flagging AIDS response in children.
Globally, only 52 per cent of children living with HIV had access to treatment, which has only marginally increased over the past few years.
Among all adults living with HIV, meanwhile, coverage at 76 per cent was more than 20 percentage points higher than among children.
And there was an 81 per cent gap between children and pregnant women living with HIV.
Moreover, the percentage of children living with HIV under age four who are not on ART climbed to 72 per cent last year – as high as it was in 2012.
UNICEF_Burkina-Faso.jpg/image1170x530cropped.jpg" width="1170" height="530"> © UNICEF/UN0640796/Dejongh A twenty-year-old pregnant woman who was born with HIV, takes medication to prevent mother-to-child transmission.Regional lens
During 2020, pregnant and breastfeeding women in Asia and the Pacific; the Caribbean; Eastern and Southern Africa; Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa, and West and Central Africa all experienced treatment coverage drops.
And in 2021, coverage in Asia and the Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa declined further.
Except for West and Central Africa, which continues to see the highest burden of mother-to-child transmission, none of the regions above have recovered to 2019 levels, putting the lives of newborn babies at increased risk.
In 2021, more than 75,000 new child infections occurred because pregnant women were not diagnosed and initiated on treatment.
“With renewed political commitment to reaching the most vulnerable, strategic partnership and resources to scale up programmes, we can end AIDS in children, adolescents and pregnant women”, Ms. Bains said.
Visit UN News for more.
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UNICEF launches new initiative to protect children from climate-related disasters | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/2268095-three-years-of-flatlined-progress-on-hiv-treatment-and-prevention-affect-27-million-youth | 2022-11-28T20:14:01 | en | 0.950448 |
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MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a state board must reconsider its rejection of a substitute teaching license for the former police officer who shot and killed Philando Castile in 2016.
Jeronimo Yanez applied to be a substitute teacher in 2020, but his application was denied based on “immoral character or conduct.” The appeals court ruled that this reason was unconstitutionally vague and the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board must reconsider — focusing narrowly on whether Yanez’s conduct makes him unfit to teach.
The appeals court said that upon reconsideration, the board must identify factors it is using to determine whether Yanez’s conduct “violated moral standards for the teaching profession.” The board must also avoid characterizing policing practices — such as a pretextual reason for a traffic stop — as immoral.
“The board’s decision must focus exclusively on Yanez’s conduct and his fitness to be a teacher, not fitness to be a police officer,” the appeals court ruled.
Messages left with Yanez’s attorney and with the licensing board were not immediately returned Monday.
Yanez, a former St. Anthony police officer, shot Castile during a traffic stop after Castile, who was Black, said he had a gun. Authorities later discovered that Castile, a 32-year-old elementary school cafeteria worker, had a permit for the firearm.
The case got widespread attention after Castile’s girlfriend, who was in the car with her young daughter, began livestreaming the shooting’s aftermath on Facebook.
Yanez was charged with manslaughter but was acquitted by a jury. The shooting and Yanez’s subsequent acquittal led to massive public outcry and protests in Minnesota and beyond.
Yanez left the police department after his trial. In February 2020, he applied for a substitute teaching license, according to the appeals court ruling. At the time of his application, he was teaching Spanish part-time at a parochial school. The school’s principal supported his license application.
During the application process, the board’s disciplinary committee investigated Yanez’s case and recommended that his application be denied.
He appealed to an administrative-law judge, who also recommended that his application be denied after a hearing in which St. Paul Public Schools Superintendent Joseph Gothard testified that Yanez’s actions were hurtful and offensive to the community. An expert who testified for Yanez said the traffic stop was lawful and that he agreed the deadly use of force was reasonable.
The administrative-law judge found Yanez prejudged Castile as a robbery suspect because of his “wide set nose” — initiating a pretextual traffic stop that indicated “racial bias, microaggressions, and negativity bias that are detrimental to students, especially students of color.”
The administrative-law judge also found that Yanez failed to establish that his use of deadly force was reasonable and necessary. The board ultimately denied Yanez’s application.
Yanez argued on appeal that denying his application due to “immoral character or conduct” was unconstitutionally vague. The appeals court agreed, saying that other jurisdictions have found that immorality means different things to different people, and that the conduct in question must be directly related to a teacher’s ability to teach.
The appeals court said that the phrase is nebulous and “vulnerable to the caprice of ever-changing public opinion and the potential for arbitrary, biased enforcement” but that it could survive constitutional scrutiny if narrowed to “relate to professional morals in the occupation of teaching.”
Castile’s mother, Valerie Castile, said Monday that she didn’t know Yanez was trying to obtain a substitute teaching license, and that she doesn’t think he belongs in the classroom.
She said children – particularly students of color — might have trouble focusing on what Yanez is teaching and could worry that they were in danger. She said parents would also need to be notified if he was in a classroom.
“The community knows about what he did and I don’t think the kids would be comfortable even having him there,” she said. “We have to think about our children’s comfort levels. … We have to think about those children and the trauma they suffered because of what he did.” | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-court-cop-who-shot-castile-wrongly-denied-teaching-license/ | 2022-11-28T20:14:06 | en | 0.98523 |
HONG KONG (AP) — Students in Hong Kong chanted “oppose dictatorship” in a protest of China’s COVID-19 rules Monday after demonstrators on the mainland issued an unprecedented call for President Xi Jinping to resign in the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades.
Rallies against China’s unusually strict anti-virus measures spread to several cities over the weekend, and authorities eased some regulations, apparently to try to quell that public anger. But the government showed no sign of backing down on its larger coronavirus strategy, and analysts expect authorities to quickly silence the dissent.
With police out in force Monday, there was no word of protests in Beijing or Shanghai. But about 50 students sang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and some lit candles in a show of support for those in mainland cities who demonstrated against restrictions that have confined millions to their homes. Hiding their faces to avoid official retaliation, the students chanted, “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves!”
The gathering and a similar one elsewhere in Hong Kong were the biggest protests there in more than a year under rules imposed to crush a pro-democracy movement in the territory, which is Chinese but has a separate legal system from the mainland.
“I’ve wanted to speak up for a long time, but I did not get the chance to,” said James Cai, a 29-year-old from Shanghai who attended a Hong Kong protest and held up a piece of white paper, a symbol of defiance against the ruling party’s pervasive censorship. ”If people in the mainland can’t tolerate it anymore, then I cannot as well.”
It wasn’t clear how many people have been detained since the protests began Friday, sparked by anger over the deaths of 10 people in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Some have questioned whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls.
Without mentioning the protests, the criticism of Xi or the fire, some local authorities eased restrictions Monday.
The city government of Beijing announced it would no longer set up gates to block access to apartment compounds where infections are found.
“Passages must remain clear for medical transportation, emergency escapes and rescues,” said Wang Daguang, a city official in charge of epidemic control, according to the official China News Service.
Guangzhou, a manufacturing and trade center that is the biggest hot spot in China’s latest wave of infections, announced some residents will no longer be required to undergo mass testing.
Urumqi, where the fire occurred, and another city in the Xinjiang region in the northwest announced markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of infection would reopen this week and public bus service would resume.
“Zero COVID,” which aims to isolate every infected person, has helped to keep China’s case numbers lower than those of the United States and other major countries. But tolerance for the measures has flagged as people in some areas have been confined at home for up to four months and say they lack reliable access to food and medical supplies.
In Hong Kong, protesters at Chinese University put up posters that said, “Do Not Fear. Do Not Forget. Do Not Forgive,” and sang including “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical “Les Miserables.” Most hid their faces behind blank white sheets of paper.
“I want to show my support,” said a 24-year-old mainland student who would identify herself only as G for fear of retaliation. “I care about things that I couldn’t get to know in the past.”
University security guards videotaped the event but there was no sign of police.
At an event in Central, a business district, about four dozen protesters held up blank sheets of paper and flowers in what they said was mourning for the fire victims in Urumqi and others who have died as a result of “zero COVID” policies.
Police cordoned off an area around protesters who stood in small, separate groups to avoid violating pandemic rules that bar gatherings of more than 12 people. Police took identity details of participants but there were no arrests.
Hong Kong has tightened security controls and rolled back Western-style civil liberties since China launched a campaign in 2019 to crush a pro-democracy movement. The territory has its own anti-virus strategy that is separate from the mainland.
On the mainland, the ruling party promised last month to reduce disruption by changing quarantine and other rules. But a spike in infections has prompted cities to tighten controls.
On Monday, the number of new daily cases rose to more than 40,000, including more than 36,000 with no symptoms.
The ruling party newspaper People’s Daily called for its anti-virus strategy to be carried out effectively, indicating Xi’s government has no plans to change course.
“Facts have fully proved that each version of the prevention and control plan has withstood the test of practice,” a People’s Daily commentator wrote.
Protests also have occurred in Guangzhou near Hong Kong, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest, and Nanjing in the east, according to witnesses and video on social media.
Most protesters have complained about excessive restrictions, but some turned their anger at Xi, China’s most powerful leader since at least the 1980s. In a video that was verified by The Associated Press, a crowd in Shanghai on Saturday chanted, “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!”
The British Broadcasting Corp. said one of its reporters was beaten, kicked, handcuffed and detained for several hours by Shanghai police but later released.
The BBC criticized what it said was Chinese authorities’ explanation that its reporter was detained to prevent him from contracting the coronavirus from the crowd. “We do not consider this a credible explanation,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian said the BBC reporter failed to identify himself and “didn’t voluntarily present” his press credential.
“Foreign journalists need to consciously follow Chinese laws and regulations,” Zhao said.
Swiss broadcaster RTS said its correspondent and a cameraman were detained while doing a live broadcast but released a few minutes later. An AP journalist was detained but later released.
___
Associated Press writer Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed. | https://www.news10.com/health/ap-health/ap-china-affirms-zero-covid-stance-eases-rules-after-protests/ | 2022-11-28T20:14:06 | en | 0.971606 |
Guwahati: Another incident of alleged ragging surfaced at a college in Assam’s Jorhat district on Monday.
A B.Com 1st-semester student Pranab Chutia of Jagannath Barooah College alleged that he was mentally and physically tortured which ultimately led him to leave the college hostel.
He said: “I was subjected to torture by the seniors in Sayeed Abdul Malik hostel of the college. The senior students used to give me punishments every afternoon. They did not let me to sleep at night. It was totally unbearable for me. I could not concentrate on my studies.”
The student further said that as he got no respite from the ragging, he had to leave the hostel.
“The situation has become tough for me as it is hard for my parents to afford my expenses now,” Chutia added.
When contacted, the principal of the college Utpal Jyoti Mahanta was unwilling to comment on the issue.
Notably, in an alleged incident of ragging at Dibrugarh University, an M.Com 1st-semester student Anand Sharma jumped from the two-storey building of the hostel at the varsity campus on Sunday after he faced extreme mental and physical harassment by the seniors for more than 12 hours.
He is undergoing treatment in ICU at a private hospital in Dibrugarh.
Meanwhile, the authorities of Dibrugarh University on Monday rusticated at least 18 students on their alleged role in this incident. | https://www.siasat.com/assam-jorhat-college-student-alleges-ragging-in-hostel-2468238/ | 2022-11-28T20:14:11 | en | 0.982388 |
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Pakistan, IMF begin talks on $7 bln loan review
Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund have begun talks online on a ninth review of a $7 billion loan programme, the Finance Ministry said on Monday, after a media outlet reported that the lender had asked the country to cut its expenses.
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Pakistan and the International Monetary Fund have begun talks online on a ninth review of a $7 billion loan programme, the Finance Ministry said on Monday, after a media outlet reported that the lender had asked the country to cut its expenses. The government has shared fiscal data, including for floods and related expenditures, with the IMF, and a team from the agency is expected to visit Islamabad soon, the ministry added.
Under the IMF's Extended Fund Facility (EFF), Pakistan secured a $6 billion bailout in 2019 that was topped up with another $1 billion earlier this year. "As part of the 9th review under the EFF, remote discussions continue between IMF staff and the Pakistani authorities over policies to re-prioritize and better target support toward humanitarian and rehabilitation needs," the lender's resident representative, Esther Pérez Ruiz, told Reuters in a statement.
Pakistan has been reeling from floods this year that killed more than 1,700 people, destroyed farmland and infrastructure and exacerbated an economic crisis marked by decades-high inflation and dwindling foreign exchange reserves. "The IMF understands that the floods have changed the macroeconomic assumptions on which the programme was designed," the ministry told Reuters.
"Detailed analysis is being conducted by their team using the data provided." Pakistan reserves stood at $7.8 billion as of Nov. 18, barely enough to cover imports for a month.
The Pakistan Stock Exchange fell around 2% on Monday, its first day of trading after the central bank unexpectedly hiked its key policy rate to 16% last week. ARY News reported on Monday that the IMF had asked Pakistan to reduce expenses before talks on the ninth review.
The IMF's board approved the seventh and eight reviews in August, allowing the release of more than $1.1 billion. The ninth review has been pending since September. The IMF told Reuters last week that finalisation of a recovery plan from the floods was essential to support discussions, along with continued financial support from multilateral and bilateral partners.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Aide: Pakistani PM orders review of ban on Oscar-entry film | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/2268080-pakistan-imf-begin-talks-on-7-bln-loan-review | 2022-11-28T20:14:11 | en | 0.964803 |
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A 31-year-old Nigerian man who was seriously injured during a gunfight last year with Danish troops on an anti-piracy mission off West Africa was Monday found guilty of endangering others by a Danish court.
However, the court ruled that the man, had his leg amputated, should be not be jailed because his role during the confrontation at sea was unclear.
On Nov. 25, 2021, the Danish frigate HDMS Esbern Snare was involved in a gun battle with nine suspected pirates whose boat sank. Four of the suspected pirates were killed and one presumably drowned. Four were captured.
A Danish Navy Seahawk helicopter took off from the frigate in response to information that a vessel with pirates was approaching several commercial ships in the Gulf of Guinea, off oil-rich Nigeria.
It reported seeing men with “equipment connected to piracy, including ladders” on the pirates’ vessel. No Danish soldiers, who said they were acting in self-defense, were injured.
After the gunfire exchange, those still alive and the corpses were taken onboard Esbern Snare. Because the ship is Danish territory, a Copenhagen court ordered the four held in custody on the frigate, while authorities investigated the case.
Three were later released because the government in Copenhagen decided not to bring them to the Scandinavian country to face charges. They were placed on a dinghy off West Africa in international waters with enough food, fuel and water to reach land.
The Danes took care of the injured man who was first admitted to a Ghana hospital in December and his leg was amputated. For health and safety reasons it was impossible to leave him there or in the area, so he was transported on Jan. 6 to Denmark where he was charged with endangering others lives for the sake of profit.
On Monday, the Copenhagen District Court rejected his explanation that he didn’t know he was taking part in an act of piracy. However, the court said that there were too many mitigating circumstances in relation to his role that it could not follow the prosecution’s request for prison sentence of up to 15 months.
The prosecution immediately appealed the ruling.
The Gulf of Guinea is one of the world’s most dangerous waterways with regular kidnappings. In 2019, the region accounted for more than 90 percent of global crew member abductions. | https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-denmark-nigerian-pirate-found-guilty-but-not-imprisoned/ | 2022-11-28T20:14:12 | en | 0.990547 |
PIDIE, Indonesia (AP) — Children in school uniforms and toddlers with their parents lined up Monday for polio vaccinations in the Sigli town square on the northern tip of the Indonesian island of Sumatra, after four children were found infected with the highly contagious disease that was declared eliminated in the country less than a decade ago.
The virus was first detected in October in a 7-year-old boy suffering from partial paralysis in the province of Aceh near Sigli, and since then three other cases have been detected, prompting the mass immunization and information drive.
Official say that polio immunization rates in the conservative province are well behind the rest of the country, with efforts hampered by widespread disinformation the vaccine is incompatible with religious beliefs, among other things. The government has also been prioritizing COVID-19 vaccinations since they became available.
The campaign that started Monday aims to vaccinate some 1.2 million children in the province, said Maxi Rein Rondonuwu, the Health Ministry’s director general for disease control and prevention.
“There is no cure for polio, the only treatment is prevention and the tool for prevention is vaccination,” Rondonuwu said, adding that the child is still able to walk, albeit with a limp.
With some 275 million people, Indonesia is the world’s fourth most populous, and the largest Muslim-majority nation.
Aceh is particularly conservative, and is Indonesia’s only province allowed to practice Shariah, which was a concession made by the national government in 2006 to end a war with separatists.
False rumors that the polio vaccine contains pork or alcohol, prohibited according to Muslim beliefs, have proliferated, especially in rural areas, complicating vaccination efforts, said the head of the Aceh Health Office, Hanif, who only goes by one name like many Indonesians.
“We cannot work alone, we need support from all parties, including religious leaders, to that people understand the importance of immunization,” said Hanif.
Azhar, the father of the 7-year-old who contracted polio, said he had opted not to immunize his son after other villagers where he lived told him the vaccines may cause harmful chemicals or non-halal substances.
“My neighbors said that my son don’t need to be immunized and I didn’t want my son get sick because of harmful chemicals that are against Islam,” the 45-year-old said.
For Dewi Safitri, a mother of three who was getting them vaccinated on Monday, it was simply a matter of not knowing it was necessary.
She said she was convinced after health workers spelled out the risks of paralysis or death if her children were to go unvaccinated.
“I didn’t even know about immunization,” she said.
The World Health Assembly adopted a resolution for the global eradication of polio in 1988 and since then, wild poliovirus cases have decreased by more than 99%, according to the World Health Organization.
It was eliminated in Indonesia in 2014, and is today only still endemic in two countries — Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Polio primarily affects children under the age of 5, according to the WHO. Unvaccinated people of any ages can contract the disease, however, and sporadic cases continue to crop up.
In September in New York, for example, the state stepped up its polio-fighting efforts after the disease was detected in the wastewater in the New York City area.
Officials began checking for signs of the virus there after the first case of polio in the United States was identified in July in Rockland County, which is north of the city. It was confirmed in a young adult who was unvaccinated.
The statewide polio vaccination rate is 79% but Rockland’s rate was lower, and New York health officials urged all unvaccinated residents, including children by 2 months of age, to get vaccinated immediately.
Last week, new poliovirus cases were found in Afghanistan, Algeria, Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria, according to the WHO’s Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
Of the three other children in Indonesia from the same village as the initially confirmed case none had their basic vaccinations, Rondonuwu said.
“It has to be reported as an outbreak, because it had been declared eradicated in Indonesia, but it turns out that there is still wild polio virus,” he said.
Rondonuwu said his ministry is keeping a close watch on the cases by doing door-to-door screening to ensure that there are no additional infections that have not been reported.
The polio virus is transmitted person-to-person, generally through the “fecal-oral” route, according to the WHO. In Indonesia, authorities have also pointed to unsanitary conditions as a probable cause of the new infections after finding out that some local residents still defecate directly into a river where children are often found playing.
Across Indonesia, polio vaccination coverage has been slipping since the outbreak of COVID-19. Despite the challenges of reaching people in the archipelago nation of five main islands and thousands of smaller ones, 73.4% of Indonesians are now fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and 87.5% have at least one shot.
For polio, 86.8% of babies were vaccinated in their first year in 2020 nationwide, which fell to 80.7% in 2021 as the country was forced to focus most of its health facilities and workers on addressing the pandemic.
By comparison, only 50.9% of the infants born in Aceh in 2021 received a polio vaccination. It was the second lowest on a national scale after West Papua, where only 43.4% of babies were vaccinated.
The nationwide decline was part of a broader drop in basic immunizations, such as for measles and rubella, according to UNICEF.
Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist from Australia’s Griffith University, said the discovery of polio in Aceh must be responded to seriously because “the threat is real for Indonesia,” noting that basic immunization coverage is still low, putting the country in a high-risk category.
“This is what the government really has to pursue, because it’s dangerous if we don’t,” Budiman said.
“We must move immediately by strengthening basic immunization or there will be a potential additional health disaster for Indonesia.”
___
Karmini reported from Jakarta, Indonesia. | https://www.news10.com/health/ap-health/ap-polio-is-back-in-indonesia-sparking-vaccination-campaign/ | 2022-11-28T20:14:13 | en | 0.978267 |
The well-known Hadassah Medical Centre, an Israeli hospital have fired a Palestinian doctor for giving sweets to a Palestinian teenager wounded during an Israeli raid in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, Quds Press reported on Sunday.
Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem fired Dr Ahmed Mahajna, a specialist in heart and lung surgery, from the occupied city of Umm al-Fahm in 1948, because he provided sweets to the injured child, Ahmed Abu Qutaish.
16-year-old Ahmed Abu Qutaish, has been lying in “Hadassah” hospital for more than a month.
The occupation police shot him in the middle of Sheikh Jarrah playgrounds in occupied Jerusalem, while dozens of children were with him, claiming that he intended to carry out a stabbing operation.
Human rights activists in press statements said, “Hadassah Hospital is a model of the occupation state’s racism towards everything that is Arab and Palestinian, and that incitement by the Israeli media had the largest share in the dismissal decision.” | https://www.siasat.com/israeli-hospital-fires-doctor-for-offering-sweets-to-palestinian-boy-2468243/ | 2022-11-28T20:14:17 | en | 0.957949 |
You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. | https://sportspyder.com/nhl/colorado-avalanche/articles/41677508 | 2022-11-28T20:14:18 | en | 0.738227 |
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