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PARIS (AP) — France’s broadcast watchdog has opened an inquiry into news coverage by Russian state TV channel RT France, after the regulator was alerted to concerns about some of its programs.
The regulator, called Arcom, confirmed the inquiry Friday. It did not elaborate on reasons for the move, but noted that it regularly investigates concerns about channels that broadcast in France. RT France, which launched in 2017, is part of the global RT TV network.
Many in France see RT as a Russian government propaganda tool that amplifies far-right or populist politics. It has repeatedly come under criticism from centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
While the inquiry is just an inquiry at this stage and doesn’t involve any restrictions on the channel’s programming, RT France director Xenia Fedorova tweeted: “Welcome to the new world of censorship” and sarcastically called it “perfect timing” after RT’s recent difficulties in Germany.
A German media regulator ruled Tuesday that RT lacks the necessary permission to broadcast its German-language programs in the country. RT DE started broadcasting in mid-December using a Serbian license.
In retaliation, Russia on Thursday announced that it is shutting down the Moscow office of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle and withdrawing its staff’s accreditations. It was the latest move by Russia's government against foreign or independent journalists.
The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that it “deplores” Moscow’s decision to shut down Deutsche Welle’s activities. “The freedom to inform is a fundamental right that should be protected everywhere,” it said. | https://www.expressnews.com/entertainment/article/French-regulator-investigates-Russian-broadcaster-16832208.php | 2022-02-04T18:41:43 | en | 0.962307 |
White House: Looking at options to lower gas prices for Americans
- Country:
- United States
The White House on Friday said President Joe Biden is still looking at options to lower gasoline prices for Americans and suggested oil companies are not drilling as much as they could be doing.
Press secretary Jen Psaki also told reporters the United States has been in touch with allies and suppliers to ensure a steady flow of natural gas to Europe should Russia invade Ukraine and disrupt supplies. As for whether or not there could be more oil drilling, "I would point you to the oil companies on what available places they have and if they are maximizing that. My understanding is they are not."
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- READ MORE ON:
- Joe Biden
- United States
- Americans
- Ukraine
- Jen Psaki
- The White House
- Europe
- Russia
ALSO READ
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US President Biden issues fresh warning to Russia against invading Ukraine
Spain's foreign minister says Europeans are 'united' on Ukraine crisis | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/1910817-white-house-looking-at-options-to-lower-gas-prices-for-americans | 2022-02-04T18:41:45 | en | 0.94698 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — UCLA men’s basketball player Mac Etienne was arrested and cited on suspicion of misdemeanor assault after appearing to spit toward a fan after the Bruins lost a road game to Pac-12 rival Arizona, a University of Arizona police spokesman said Friday.
The alleged incident occurred Thursday night as UCLA players left the McKale Center playing floor and entered a tunnel to go to their locker room, said the spokesman, Officer Jesus Aguilar.
Etienne was allowed to go to the locker room and was then arrested, cited and released, Aguilar said.
Local media outlets reported that fans jeered UCLA players when the incident occurred. The Wildcats beat the Bruins 76-66.
UCLA officials knew of the incident and were reviewing it, university spokesman Scott Markley said in a statement.
“UCLA Athletics is committed to and expects the highest level of sportsmanship,” the statement said.
Etienne, a redshirt freshman, was not in uniform and did not play in the game.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether saliva landed on any fans but the misdemeanor assault charge alleges intent, Aguilar said.
“We did have a willing victim who did want to press charges,” he said.
Etienne wasn’t taken into custody or booked into jail but he will be expected to either appear in court on a future date or make alternative arrangements with court officials, Aguilar said.
“We had no reason to take him into custody,” he said.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. | https://wtmj.com/sports/2022/02/04/ucla-player-arrested-after-allegedly-spitting-at-arizona-fan-4/ | 2022-02-04T18:41:47 | en | 0.971069 |
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Valentine's Day means romantic comedies, and romantic comedies — often enough — mean Jennifer Lopez. The rom-com mainstay of “Maid in Manhattan" and “The Wedding Planner” returns to the genre in “Marry Me,” which opens Friday in theaters and on Peacock. In it, she plays a J-Lo-like pop star who learns her fiancé has been cheating on her just before their wedding is to be televised. Heartbroken and distraught, she pulls a random fan (Owen Wilson) out of the audience who happens to be holding a “Marry Me” sign. The movie, which Lopez produced and performs songs in, will surely strike some as reflecting the star's own closely followed, always-in-the-spotlight romantic life. It's also her first lead role in a movie since 2019's acclaimed “Hustlers.”
— Amazon Studios, too, has its own prominent rom-com offering, starring Charlie Day and Jenny Slate. In “I Want You Back,” they play a pair of dumped 30-somethings stewing over their breakups. The two friends conspire to ruin their ex's new relationships to win them back. The film, which debuts Friday on Amazon Prime Video, is directed by Jason Orley, who helmed the charming 2019 Pete Davidson film “Big Time Adolescence.” Davidson also makes an appearance in “I Want You Back.”
— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle
MUSIC
— Mary J. Blige may have just said goodbye to viewers in the season finale of her Starz series “Power Book II: Ghost” but she's not going away: Blige pops up in a big way this week with a new album out Friday, Feb. 11, and a spot in the Super Bowl halftime show. The 13-track album, called “Good Morning Gorgeous,” features Anderson .Paak, Usher, DJ Khaled, Dave East and Fivio Foreign. The title track is an affirmation: “Sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and say/'Good morning gorgeous'/No one else can make me feel this way.”
— Spoon roar back with the 10-track, stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll album “Lucifer on the Sofa” out Friday, Feb. 11. It marks the quintet's first set of songs recorded in its hometown of Austin, Texas, in more than a decade, kicked off by the single “Wild.” “We wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll record, a great rock ‘n’ roll record. I just don’t feel like there’s enough great rock ‘n’ roll records being made these days,” frontman Britt Daniel recently told The AP. He also revealed that the title song refers to himself, saying that's “the character that I can become when I’m at my worst.”
— AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy
TELEVISION
— Joseph Sikora’s Tommy Egan is at the center of “Power Book IV: Force,” as is Chicago. It’s where Tommy ends up after ditching the familiar turf of New York, and executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson says the Windy City is both a character and a means of approaching the third “Power Book” spinoff with a clean slate and new tone. For Tommy, what was intended as a quick stop ends up plunging him into the city’s drug game and scheming to become its kingpin. Isaac Keys, Lili Simmons, Gabrielle Ryan and Shane Harper are among the cast members in the drama debuting Sunday, Feb. 6, on Starz.
— Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo star in HBO Max’s “The Girl Before,” adapted from novelist JP Delaney’s best-selling psychological thriller of the same name. Mbatha-Raw’s Jane is delighted to move into an impressively sleek, modern house, the work of an architect (Oyelowo) who requires occupants to follow his demanding rules. When Jane begins to discover parallels between her experience and that of previous tenant Emma (Jessica Plummer), the posh digs start to look far less appealing. The drama’s four episodes are out Thursday.
— All together now: Awww, Puppy Bowl is back! The event rides the coattails of that other, puppy-less bowl game and for the good cause of showcasing animal shelters, their dedicated staffers and the furry residents in need of homes. When Team Ruff and Team Fluff and coaches Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg meet in “Puppy Bowl XVIII,” more pups will take the field than ever before. The three-hour event, on discovery+ and Animal Planet at 2 p.m. EST Sunday, Feb. 13, features 118 adoptable players from 33 states. Among them: Benny, a wheelchair-using Labradoodle, and Pongo, a deaf Dalmatian.
— AP Television Writer Lynn Elber
___
Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment. | https://www.expressnews.com/entertainment/article/New-this-week-Mary-J-Blige-Jennifer-Lopez-and-16832159.php | 2022-02-04T18:41:49 | en | 0.941029 |
Greek farmers stage tractor protest against soaring energy costs
"We ask for substantial measures that will give a real solution to our problems." Greece has spent about 1.7 billion euros ($1.95 billion) subsidising power bills for farmers, households and businesses to help them with rising energy prices. High energy costs have been the main driver of inflation, which accelerated to 5.1% in December, the highest in the country in 11 years.
- Country:
- Greece
Farmers in central Greece on Friday protested with hundreds of tractors against soaring energy costs, dismissing government support measures as inadequate and demanding more help to cope with rising prices.
The farmers parked tractors on a national highway near the town of Larissa in central Greece, where they faced off with police. Kostas Tzelas, head of the Karditsa agricultural association, said the rising prices for fuel and electricity had increased production costs by 50%.
"They don't solve the basic problems that we have to maintain our farms and villages," Tzelas said. "We ask for substantial measures that will give a real solution to our problems." Greece has spent about 1.7 billion euros ($1.95 billion) subsidising power bills for farmers, households and businesses to help them with rising energy prices.
High energy costs have been the main driver of inflation, which accelerated to 5.1% in December, the highest in the country in 11 years. Tzelas, speaking at the rally outside Larissa, the largest city of Greece's central agricultural heartland, said: "That is why we are out on the streets, the countryside will become deserted, villages will be deserted, people will not be able to cultivate and we will no longer be able to live in our villages."
Earlier on Friday, the government unveiled an additional 170 million euros in financial aid for the agriculture sector. Agriculture Minister Spilios Livanos said in a televised statement that despite its tight finances, Greece had offered a 1 billion euros aid to farmers last year.
"At this difficult point of multiple major outside crises, we're standing by our producers," he said. The package includes subsidies to cover 80% of the additional costs farmers face on their power bills from August up to December and half of this cost for January and February.
A sales tax on fertilisers will be cut by 46% to 13%. Farmers, who said the latest measures are not enough, have staged several protests in the past over social security laws and pension contributions.
The farm sector accounts for a small part of Greece's output, but it employs hundreds of thousands of people, most of them seasonal workers. ($1 = 0.8723 euros) (Writing by Angeliki Koutantou. Editing by Jane Merriman)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/1910819-greek-farmers-stage-tractor-protest-against-soaring-energy-costs | 2022-02-04T18:41:52 | en | 0.969951 |
Punjab polls: SSM gets ‘cot’ as election symbol
- Country:
- India
The SSM, a political front of farmers, on Friday said it has been allotted a 'cot' as the party symbol for the February 20 Punjab assembly polls. The development comes days after the Election Commission of India approved the Sanyukt Samaj Morcha (SSM) as the name of a political party subject to fulfilling certain conditions for the formal registration.
SSM leader Prem Singh Bhangu said their party has got 'cot' as the poll symbol and claimed that SSM candidates were getting overwhelming response from the people.
"Villages are supporting us and they are fed up with the traditional political parties," he further said.
The SSM is led by farmer leader Balbir Singh Rajewal.
Various Punjab farmer bodies which had taken part in the stir against the Centre's now-repealed farm laws and had launched their political front are contesting the state assembly polls in alliance with Haryana Bharatiya Kisan Union (Chaduni) leader Gurnam Singh Chaduni-led Sanyukt Sangharsh Party.
Chaduni's party is fighting on 10 seats while the SSM is contesting on the remaining seats out of the total 117 assembly segments.
Voting for Punjab's 117 Assembly seats will be held on February 20 and the counting will take place on March 10.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/1910824-punjab-polls-ssm-gets-cot-as-election-symbol | 2022-02-04T18:41:59 | en | 0.976401 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo only needed one album to earn her the title of Billboard's 2022 Woman of the Year, landing her in the same company as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
The former teen actor turned pop star will be honored as the 2022 Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards on March 2. Previous honorees also include Cardi B, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.
Rodrigo became 2021′s biggest breakout star with her confessional debut album, breaking chart records and racking up awards and nominations. Rodrigo's exploration of heartache, jealousy and insecurity on “SOUR” broke streaming records and led to all 11 tracks landing in the top 30 of Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the first female artist to achieve the feat.
“Olivia’s trajectory to superstardom is the stuff of pop music legend,” said Hannah Karp, Billboard’s Editorial Director, in a statement. “Her talents as a storyteller and songwriter have made Olivia one of the most authentic and exciting new artists to explode onto the scene in years."
Other award recipients at the Billboard Women in Music Awards include Gabby Barrett, Phoebe Bridgers, Doja Cat, Karol G, Bonnie Raitt, Saweetie and Summer Walker.
The awards show will be held at the YouTube Theater at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, hosted by Ciara. Fans will be able to purchase tickets this year for the first time at billboardwomeninmusic.com. | https://www.expressnews.com/entertainment/article/Olivia-Rodrigo-named-Woman-of-the-Year-by-16832051.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:02 | en | 0.921187 |
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 3" game were:
7-2-5
(seven, two, five)
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 3" game were:
7-2-5
(seven, two, five) | https://www.expressnews.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Midday-Daily-3-game-16832234.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:08 | en | 0.92916 |
WRAPUP 3-Russia and China proclaim 'no limits' partnership to stand up to U.S.
"Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no 'forbidden' areas of cooperation," they declared, announcing plans to collaborate in a host of areas including space, climate change, artificial intelligence and control of the internet. The agreement https://www.reuters.com/world/china/moscow-beijing-partnership-has-no-limits-2022-02-04 marked the most detailed and assertive statement of Russian and Chinese resolve to work together - and against the United States - to build a new international order based on their own interpretations of human rights and democracy.
- Country:
- Russian Federation
China and Russia proclaimed a deep strategic partnership on Friday to balance what they portrayed as the malign global influence of the United States as China's President Xi Jinping hosted Russia's Vladimir Putin on the opening day of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
In a joint statement, the two countries affirmed that their new relationship was superior to any political or military alliance of the Cold War era. "Friendship between the two States has no limits, there are no 'forbidden' areas of cooperation," they declared, announcing plans to collaborate in a host of areas including space, climate change, artificial intelligence and control of the internet.
The agreement https://www.reuters.com/world/china/moscow-beijing-partnership-has-no-limits-2022-02-04 marked the most detailed and assertive statement of Russian and Chinese resolve to work together - and against the United States - to build a new international order based on their own interpretations of human rights and democracy. The statement was steeped in ideological discourse and it was not clear whether it would immediately translate into an increase in tangible and practical cooperation - although Putin trumpeted a new gas deal with China on Friday - or was intended as more of a statement of general policy intent.
The United States responded coolly. Asked about the meeting between Xi and Putin, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden has his own relationship with China. Referring to a massing of Russian troops near the Ukraine border, she said the U.S. focus is currently on working with partners in case Russia invades Ukraine, adding "we've also conveyed that destabilizing conflict in Europe would impact China's interests all over the world."
Daniel Russel of the Asia Society think tank, who served as the U.S. State Department's top diplomat for East Asia in the Obama administration, said Xi and Putin were "announcing their determination to stand together and to stand against the U.S. and the West — ready to withstand sanctions and contest American global leadership". While not formally allied, the two "are making common cause as a tactical matter to better defend their respective interests and their authoritarian systems from Western pressure", he said.
Jonathan Eyal of the London-based Royal United Services Institute said the declaration marked a "frontal rebuttal" of the U.S. and Western view of the world and a possible building block towards a military alliance. "They both feel cornered and they feel their moment has arrived to state their vision of the world and promote it aggressively."
MUTUAL SUPPORT The two countries have moved closer together as both have come under pressure from the West on issues including their human rights records and Russia's military build-up near Ukraine. The timing of their announcement was highly symbolic, at a China-hosted Olympics https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/putin-xi-mix-politics-sport-unveiling-alliance-olympics-2022-02-04 that the United States has subjected to a diplomatic boycott.
In the lengthy document - nearly 5,400 words in English translation - each went significantly further than before in backing the other on flashpoints of tension with the West. - Russia voiced its support for China's stance that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposition to any form of independence for the island. Moscow and Beijing also voiced their opposition to the AUKUS alliance between Australia, Britain and the United States, saying it increased the danger of an arms race in the region.
- China joined Russia in calling for an end to NATO enlargement and supported its demand for security guarantees from the West - issues at the heart of Moscow's confrontation with the United States and its allies over Ukraine. The two countries expressed concern about "the advancement of U.S. plans to develop global missile defence and deploy its elements in various regions of the world, combined with capacity building of high-precision non-nuclear weapons for disarming strikes and other strategic objectives".
Elsewhere, without naming Washington, they criticised attempts by "certain states" to establish global hegemony, fan confrontation and impose their own standards of democracy. Scott Kennedy, a China expert at Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that despite the rhetoric, there would be limits to the alliance.
"China is willing to stand with Russia through thin but not thick. This collaboration works as long as it entails few costs. They are expanding their commercial ties, extolling a similar anti-American/pro-authoritarian narrative, and hoping their friendship weakens the West's military position in Europe and Asia," he said, adding, "If a war breaks out over Ukraine or Taiwan, we can expect this partnership to fracture." TECH AND ENERGY
In the technology arena, Russia and China said they were ready to strengthen cooperation on artificial intelligence and information security. They said they believed that "any attempts to limit their sovereign right to regulate national segments of the Internet and ensure their security are unacceptable".
Meanwhile Russian state energy giants Gazprom and Rosneft on Friday agreed new gas and oil supply deals with Beijing worth tens of billions of dollars. The deals capitalise on Putin's drive to diversify Russian energy exports away from the West, which started shortly after he came to power in 1999. Since then Russia has become China's top energy supplier and cut its reliance on the West for revenues.
The Kremlin said the presidents also discussed the need to broaden trade in national currencies because of unpredictability surrounding the use of the dollar. U.S. President Joe Biden has said Russian companies could be cut off from the ability to trade in dollars as part of sanctions if Russia invades Ukraine.
Moscow denies any such intention, but has used a build-up of more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine's border to grab the attention of the West and press its demands for security guarantees.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/headlines/1910850-wrapup-3-russia-and-china-proclaim-no-limits-partnership-to-stand-up-to-us | 2022-02-04T18:42:08 | en | 0.959929 |
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 4" game were:
5-2-1-5
(five, two, one, five)
DETROIT (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Michigan Lottery's "Midday Daily 4" game were:
5-2-1-5
(five, two, one, five) | https://www.expressnews.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Midday-Daily-4-game-16832233.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:14 | en | 0.941492 |
New WHO platform promotes global cancer prevention
With one in five people worldwide developing cancer during their lifetimes, prevention of the disease has become one of the most significant public health challenges of the 21st century.
To mark World Cancer Day, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) International Agency for Research of Cancer (IARC) launched on Friday the World Code Against Cancer Framework, an online platform that will promote prevention globally and the development of Regional Codes to help fight the disease.
Based on current scientific evidence, at least 40 per cent of all cancer cases could be prevented with effective primary prevention measures, and further mortality can be reduced through early detection of tumours.
Regional differences
Dr. Carolina Espina, the IARC scientist who leads the project, explains that some risk factors are common worldwide, but some patterns are specific to certain regions and socioeconomic and cultural conditions.
Today is #WorldCancerDay!
— WHO African Region (@WHOAFRO) February 4, 2022
In the last 20 years, new #cancer cases have more than doubled in the African Region 🌍. Yet 40% of cancer deaths are preventable with simple interventions.👇🏽 pic.twitter.com/WMn72mkW7P
Because of that, the new framework provides a common strategy and methodology to develop recommendations tailored to the context and needs of local populations.
The framework builds on the success of the fourth edition of the European Code Against Cancer.
“This new platform will host existing Regional Codes Against Cancer, such as the European Code...as well as Regional Codes that are currently under development, such as the Latin America and the Caribbean Code Against Cancer, and other future Regional Codes”,Dr.Espina explained.
The Latin America and the Caribbean Code Against Cancer is expected to be launched in 2023. It will be the first regional adaptation of the European Code Against Cancer.
Rays of Hope Initiative
Also on Friday, The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced a new initiative, called Rays of Hope, to support Member States with diagnosis and treatment using radiation technologies, beginning with African countries most in need.
In a joint statement, the World Health Organization (WHO)Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, and the IAEA Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi,explained how low and middle-income countries (LMICs) are disproportionately affected.
By 2040, over 70 per cent of cancer deaths are expected to occur in LMICs.
According to the two officials, recommended interventions for preventing cancer and other noncommunicable diseases have not been adequately implemented, and treatment remains inaccessible in many parts of the world.
“Globally, an estimated half of people diagnosed with cancer may require radiotherapy as part of their care, yet many countries do not have a single radiotherapy machine”, they say.
The disparity is particularly acute in Africa where nearly 70 per cent of countries reported that radiotherapy is generally unavailable.
The IAEA and WHO have a long-standing collaboration to support Member States to address their cancer burdens.
The organizations have successfully supported more than 90 governments through imPACT review missions, and through WHO cancer initiatives in cervical, childhood and breast cancers.
Visit UN News for more.
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Tennis-Champion Osaka crashes out to big-hitting American Anisimova
Entertainment News Roundup: Jon Stewart to receive Mark Twain Prize for American Humor; French actor Gaspard Ulliel dies at 37 after ski accident and more
Latin America and Asia latest to get hit with omicron surge | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910743-newwhoplatform-promotesglobalcancer-prevention | 2022-02-04T18:42:15 | en | 0.926249 |
BRAINTREE, Mass. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Massachusetts Lottery's "Numbers Midday" game were:
2-6-4-6
(two, six, four, six)
BRAINTREE, Mass. (AP) _ The winning numbers in Friday afternoon's drawing of the Massachusetts Lottery's "Numbers Midday" game were:
2-6-4-6
(two, six, four, six) | https://www.expressnews.com/lottery/article/Winning-numbers-drawn-in-Numbers-Midday-game-16832129.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:20 | en | 0.902844 |
Omicron variant behind Mizoram's Covid spike which bucks national trend: Experts
- Country:
- India
Experts in Mizoram believe that spread of the Omicron variant is behind the rapidly rising number of cases of COVID-19 in the state even though this is yet to be confirmed by genome sequencing.
State nodal officer for Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) and official spokesperson on COVID-19, Dr. Pachuau Lalmalsawma, said that Omicron variant could be the reason for the high infection rate in Mizoram although genome sequencing to prove that Omicron variant has spread to this hilly border state is still awaited.
“Our main suspect behind the rapid increase in COVID-19 case is Omicron, as most patients developed symptoms of the new variant,” he told PTI. The number of daily infections in the state rose from 33 cases on December 20, 2021, just before Christmas to 265 a day on New Year's day 2022, to 2,531 cases on February 1, this year. Mizoram's spike continues even as cases have started falling in most major cities and states including eastern India's biggest connectivity hub - Kolkata.
Pachuau, one of the foremost epidemiologists in the state, believes that Omicron variant of COVID-19 has already spread to the state even though the results of about 300 samples sent for genome sequencing in December last year and January this year are still awaited.
According to him, at least 95 samples were sent to the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics in West Bengal's Kalyani in December and another 224 samples were sent to the same institute in January.
The official said that samples sent for genome sequencing in January were suspected for Omicron as majority of them were collected from people who had returned to the state after travel outside and who tested positive for COVID-19 on their arrival at Lengpui airport in Aizawl.
He said that Delta variant too still exists along side Omicron as symptoms of Delta variant were still found in some patients.
Among other health experts, state health and family welfare Dr. Z.R. Thiamsanga, Zoram Medical College (ZMC) director Dr. John Zohmingthanga and Indian Medical Association (IMA) Mizoram state branch vice president Dr. Rosangluai held the same opinion as Pachuau and believed Omicron variant was the reason behind the spike in COVID-19 cases.
Dr. Rosangluaia, who said Mizoram is witnessing the third COVID-19 wave, said most patients ''developed less severe symptoms and loss of smell is less common'', which were indicative of Omicron variant.
''The community transmission rate now is not controllable by imposition of lockdown'', he added.
Z.R. Thiamsanga believed that negligence in adopting COVID-19 appropriate behaviour, re-opening of churches, etc., could be other reasons behind the high infection rate besides Omicron variant.
“It is verified that many people contracted the virus after attending church service, while others got infected from their relatives during home isolation,” he told PTI.
Dr. John Zohmingthanga said that most patients have recovered fast as they developed less severe symptoms.
However, the COVID-19 variant prevalent in the state now is still dangerous for aged people and people with comorbidities.
According to him, about 70-80 per cent of COVID-19 victims in the state had comorbidities.
The state has so far reported 40,302 COVID-19 cases and 75 fatalities from first January to February 4 this year, according to the health department.
On February 2, the state reported 2,573 cases, the highest single-day spike ever.
The northeastern state on Friday reported 1,956 new COVID-19 cases with a single-day positivity rate of 30.91 per cent, pushing the state’s tally to 1,81,696.
According to the health department, one person has succumbed to the infection in the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 618, while 2,406 people have recovered from the infection during the same period.
The state has tested 16.98 lakh samples for COVID-19 and out of this 6,328 samples were tested on Thursday.
Over 7.96 people have been inoculated till Thursday and of this 6.16 lakh people have received full dose, state immunization officer Dr. Lalmuanawma Jongte said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- READ MORE ON:
- Aizawl
- Pachuau Lalmalsawma
- Omicron
- Pachuau
- Z.R.
- India
- West Bengal's
- Mizoram state
- New Year's day 2022
- Kalyani
- health department
- Delta
- Indian Medical Association
- IDSP
- National Institute of Biomedical Genomics
- Mizoram
- Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme
- lakh samples
- Zoram Medical College
- Lalmuanawma | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910751-omicron-variant-behind-mizorams-covid-spike-which-bucks-national-trend-experts | 2022-02-04T18:42:23 | en | 0.969268 |
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Three people have been apprehended and two additional people are being sought in connection with the fatal shooting of a Maine man in Providence last month, police said Friday.
A teenager from Fall River, Massachusetts, who is now 18 but was 17 at the time of the Jan. 16 shooting, is suspected of being the gunman and faces murder and other charges, Providence police Maj. David Lapatin said.
A 25-year-old Fall River man and a 23-year-old Attleboro, Massachusetts man face accessory charges, he said. The two people still at large face murder and conspiracy charges.
The victim was previously identified as Biniam Tsegai, 35, of Portland, Maine. His companion, Merhawi Berhe, 28, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was also shot and remains in the hospital, Lapatin said.
The victims had just left an illegal after-hours nightclub at about 3 a.m. when they encountered the suspects and a physical altercation ensued before the gunfire broke out, police said. It's unclear what sparked the altercation.
The suspects fled but were identified through surveillance video.
There is no known connection between the victims and the suspects and Detective Capt. Tim O’Hara described it as a random shooting.
Tsegai's death was the city's first homicide of 2022. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/3-face-charges-in-Providence-homicide-2-others-16832035.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:26 | en | 0.976469 |
Data on Covid deaths with respect to vaccination status not maintained centrally: Govt tells LS
Unvaccinated persons are at greater risk of mortality from COVID-19 going by the findings of certain scientific studies but data on deaths due to coronavirus infection with respect to their vaccination status is not maintained centrally, the government informed Lok Sabha on Friday.Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar was responding to a question on whether the government is aware that around 75 per cent deaths during the recent Omicron wave of Covid were of unvaccinated persons.
- Country:
- India
Unvaccinated persons are at greater risk of mortality from COVID-19 going by the findings of certain scientific studies but data on deaths due to coronavirus infection with respect to their vaccination status is not maintained centrally, the government informed Lok Sabha on Friday.
Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar was responding to a question on whether the government is aware that around 75 per cent deaths during the recent Omicron wave of Covid were of unvaccinated persons. In a written reply, she said, ''Based on findings of certain scientific studies it is correct that unvaccinated persons are at greater risk of mortality from COVID-19. Data on deaths due to COVID-19 disease with respect to their vaccination status is not maintained centrally.'' Regular review of COVID-19 vaccination is carried out at national, state and district levels to identify various challenges for COVID-19 vaccination to devise corrective measures and to ensure coverage of eligible beneficiaries with vaccine doses, Pawar said in response to another question. On the recommendation of National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI), the government started vaccination of adolescents aged 15 years to less than 18 years from January 3 and administration of precaution dose to healthcare workers, frontline workers and persons aged 60 years and above with comorbidities from January 10. Adequate doses to vaccinate all eligible beneficiaries with first, second and precaution doses have been made available to states and union territories, Pawar said.
Any decision on extension of eligible beneficiaries for precaution dose and vaccination of children below 15 years of age is taken according to the recommendations of NTAGI on the basis of review of available scientific evidences, she said in the written reply.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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- Omicron
- State
- National Technical Advisory Group
- NTAGI
- Pravin Pawar
- Covid
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- Lok Sabha
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ECOWAS chairman says Mali's coup was "contagious" in West Africa | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910760-data-on-covid-deaths-with-respect-to-vaccination-status-not-maintained-centrally-govt-tells-ls | 2022-02-04T18:42:31 | en | 0.957134 |
TIRANA, Albania (AP) — An Albanian court on Friday sentenced a former interior minister to more than three years in prison for abuse of office over ties to a criminal drug trafficking network.
Saimir Tahiri was sentenced three years and four months imprisonment.
Judge Engert Pellumbi of the Special Appeals Court for Corruption and Organized Crime said that Tahiri had benefited from "unfair services and gain and at the same time, with his abuse of post, he has abused legal interests.”
Tahiri said after the sentencing that he was innocent.
“I am morally calm. I have not violated the law. I have loved every day of my job,” he said on Facebook. “I am happy I have committed my job in the best possible way. It is simply injustice.”
Prosecutors had tied Tahiri’s case to two brothers who were related to Tahiri. They were arrested or jailed for drug trafficking in Italy and Albania.
Pellumbi said the prosecutors proved their case with documented evidence. Tahiri was ordered to start serving his jail term.
Tahiri didn't react to the journalists in the courtroom, only rushing to make a phone call.
Tahiri’s lawyer, Maksim Haxhiaj, said they would appeal the verdict at the Supreme Court, considering it as a “juridical nonsense.”
“The verdict was just to stain Tahiri,” he said.
In September 2019, Tahiri was sentenced to three years of probation for abuse of office and was acquitted of charges of involvement in drug trafficking.
Last year, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial because of irregular procedures taken by judges and prosecutors.
Tahiri, who served as interior minister during 2013-2017, resigned as a lawmaker with the governing Socialist Party in May 2018 and was briefly held under house arrest.
Albania was once known as a European crossroads for marijuana trafficking, but there are now more cases involving the trafficking of heroin and cocaine to other European countries.
Fighting corruption has been a major problem in post-communist Albania, strongly affecting the country’s democratic, economic and social development.
“We urge judicial institutions to continue to demonstrate that no one — regardless of party, position, or wealth — is above the law. No more impunity,” U.S. Ambassador Yuri Kim tweeted.
The embassy had closely followed the trial.
___
Follow Llazar Semini at https://twitter.com/lsemini | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Albanian-ex-minister-jailed-for-assisting-drug-16832136.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:33 | en | 0.981235 |
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Police say there's been an arrest in the altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan at SoFi Stadium.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. (AP) — Police say there's been an arrest in the altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan at SoFi Stadium. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Alert-Police-say-there-s-been-an-arrest-in-the-16831839.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:39 | en | 0.935542 |
Routine, elective surgeries resume at LNJP, GTB hospitals in Delhi
- Country:
- India
Routine and elective surgeries have been resumed at two Delhi government hospitals in view of declining trend in number of cases of COVID-19 reported daily, according to an official order.
The hospitals are Lok Nayak Jaiprakash (LNJP) and Guru Teg Bahadur (GTB), both serving as major Covid facilities, according to the order issued by the Delhi health department on February 3.
''In supersession of this department earlier order dated 11.01.2022 and in view of the downing trend in number of COVID-19 cases in Delhi, it is hereby directed that routine/elective surgeries shall be started in Lok Nayak Hospital and Guru Teg Bhadur Hospital of GNCTD with immediate effect. This issues with the prior approval of Hon'ble Minister (Health & FW),'' reads the order.
Both the hospitals are sought after by patients for various surgeries.
Delhi on Friday reported 2,272 fresh COVID-19 cases and 20 deaths, while the positivity rate dropped to 3.85 per cent, according to data shared by the city health department.
With this, the national capital's case count increased to 18,40,919 and the death toll climbed to 25,952 the latest health bulletin stated.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910775-routine-elective-surgeries-resume-at-lnjp-gtb-hospitals-in-delhi | 2022-02-04T18:42:39 | en | 0.951646 |
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — For the second time in as many weeks a federal appeals court threw out a permit for the Mountain Valley Pipeline on Thursday.
In a written opinion, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found “serious errors” with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s conclusion that building the pipeline across rugged mountainsides wouldn’t jeopardize endangered species in its path — specifically the Roanoke logperch and the candy darter, The Roanoke Times reported.
Last week, the same three-judge panel shot down a permit that would have allowed the pipeline to pass through a 3.5 mile (5.6 kilometer) section of the Jefferson National Forest. In both cases, the judges faulted the U.S. Forest Service and the wildlife agency for failing to adequately assess the pipeline's environmental impact. The 303-mile (487-kilometer) pipeline would transport natural gas drilled from the Marcellus and Utica shale formations through West Virginia and Virginia.
“We recognize that this decision will further delay the completion of an already mostly finished pipeline, but the Endangered Species Act’s directive to federal agencies could not be clearer: halt and reverse the trend toward species extinction, whatever the cost,” the 40-page opinion concluded.
Mountain Valley said it is reviewing the court’s decision and evaluating its next steps. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Appeals-court-throws-out-another-pipeline-permit-16832192.php | 2022-02-04T18:42:45 | en | 0.939071 |
COVID falling in 49 of 50 states as deaths near 900,000
- Country:
- United States
With the brutal omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of COVID-19 in the US are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation's death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000.
The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the US stood at over 897,000 as of midday Friday, with deaths running at an average of more than 2,400 a day, back up to where they were last winter, when the vaccine drive was still getting started.
New cases per day have tanked by almost a half-million nationwide since mid-January, the curve trending downward in every state but Maine. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen 15% over that period to about 124,000.
Deaths are still on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
But the trends are giving public health officials hope that the worst of omicron is coming to an end, though they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge.
Los Angeles County may end outdoor mask requirements in a few weeks, Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. But that is unlikely to happen before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, which will draw as many as 100,000 people to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Ferrer said COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in California's biggest county are falling, and deaths may start to drop as well.
“Post-surge does not imply that the pandemic is over or that transmission is low, or that there will not be unpredictable waves of surges in the future.” she warned.
Arizona has also seen its daily case and hospitalization numbers decline, though deaths are still on the rise, climbing from average of about 61 a day last week to almost 79 as of Tuesday.
“We have reason to be hopeful, but we are by no means out of the woods,” Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of epidemiology, said Thursday on Twitter.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she is calling an end to the state's coronavirus public health emergency, a move that will limit the release of health data.
The step reflects the governor's long-held belief that it is time to get past pandemic restrictions and move toward the point when COVID-19 becomes, like the flu, a manageable part of everyday life.
Overall, new cases in the US have plummeted from a record-obliterating average of more than 800,000 a day in mid-January to about 357,000.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Twitter suspends hundreds of accounts promoting Philippines' Marcos | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910810-covid-falling-in-49-of-50-states-as-deaths-near-900000 | 2022-02-04T18:42:47 | en | 0.960624 |
Ethiopia: UNHCR rushing aid to 20,000 refugees fleeing clashes
UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, and partners are rushing life-saving aid to more than 20,000 refugees after they fled clashes in Ethiopia’s Benishangul Gumuz region, bordering Sudan and South Sudan.
Fighting broke out on 18 January in the town of Tongo – reportedly between unidentified armed groups and federal forces – and the nearby camp hosting 10,300 refugees was looted and burned.
In 2021, UNHCR and its partners reached over 1.7 million internally displaced people (IDPs) and returning #IDPs with assistance and protection in nine regions of #Ethiopia.
— UNHCR Ethiopia (@UNHCREthiopia) February 4, 2022
Read the full report on our Response to IDPs in Ethiopia: https://t.co/Qoeh154djp pic.twitter.com/7wXYIPtbdW
“All humanitarian staff had to evacuate, and access to the area - including the two camps, Tongo and Gure-Shembola – remains impossible ”, UNHCR spokesperson Boris Cheshirkov told journalists at a regular press briefing in Geneva.
Exhausted and displaced
Since last December, the situation has been very tense in the Benishangul Gumuz region, which hosts more than 70,000 Sudanese and South Sudanese refugees and over 500,000 internally displaced Ethiopians.
The 20,000 refugees who fled, made their way over long distances to three sites closer to the regional capital, Assosa, arriving exhausted and in need of assistance.
“UNHCR is working with the Ethiopian Government’s Refugee and Returnees Service and partners to provide the most urgent assistance to displaced refugees, including hot meals, clean water, and medical care”, said Mr. Cheshirkov.
Benishangul Gumuz regional authorities have shown solidarity with the incoming refugees, said UNHCR, and identified a new temporary site, which can accommodate up to 20,000 people.
“UNHCR is working to install basic services including shelter, water points, and latrines and to begin relocating refugees to the site as soon as possible” the UN official said.
Mr. Cheshirkov added that UNHCR has also recorded the arrival of 70 Sudanese refugees, mostly women and children, who fled the camps and returned to Sudan’s Blue Nile State.
At the same time, UNHCR teams in Sudan, together with the Sudanese authorities and partners, are providing assistance to the returnees, and contingencies are being put in place in case of more arrivals.
Three other refugee camps in the Benishangul Gumuz region – Bambasi, Sherkole and Tsore – remain fully accessible and all services there are functioning.
Mr. Cheshirkov told journalists that the clashes in the region were unrelated to the conflict in Tigray and that refugees had been cohabiting in the same camps.
Continued assistance
In addition to refugee support, the Government, UNHCR and partners, have been aiding the region’s internally displaced, reaching over 100,000 people throughout last year – particularly women and children – with clothing, shelter, psychosocial help, and other emergency items.
To avoid further threats to civilian lives in the region, the UNHCR spokesperson underscored the need for an end to the conflict.
“UNHCR urges the protection of civilians, including refugees and those forcibly displaced”, he said.
Meanwhile, some refugees who had sought and enjoyed safety and were rebuilding their lives have again, have tragically lost everything.
Having only received nine per cent of the countrywide requirements of $35 million for the year, UNHCR’s Ethiopia operation is in urgent need of more resources to respond to this and other emergency needs.
© UNHCR/Adelina Gomez MonteagudUNHCR and partners move refugees to safety in the Benishangul Gumuz region in Ethiopia.Visit UN News for more.
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- UNHCR
- Tigray
- Geneva
- South Sudan
- South Sudanese
- Sudanese
- Sudan
- Ethiopians
- Ethiopia
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Two killed as Sudanese security forces crack down on protest | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910815-ethiopia-unhcr-rushing-aid-to-20000-refugees-fleeing-clashes | 2022-02-04T18:42:54 | en | 0.94959 |
Queen Elizabeth quietly marks 70 years on the British throne
While public affection for her remains strong, with about four in five Britons holding a favourable view, the monarchy itself has suffered a number of recent knocks, including a U.S. sex abuse court case against her second son Prince Andrew, raising questions about the long-term future of the institution https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/royal-crown-slips-elizabeth-prepares-mark-70-years-queen-2022-01-25. "She's almost beyond criticism, I think," said Professor Vernon Bogdanor, an expert in British constitutional history.
Queen Elizabeth marks 70 years on the British throne on Sunday, a milestone never reached by any of her predecessors over the last 1,000 years, and one which only a few monarchs across the globe have ever achieved.
Elizabeth, 95, became the queen of Britain and more than a dozen other realms including Canada, Australia and New Zealand on the death of her father King George VI on Feb. 6, 1952, while she was in Kenya on an international tour. The news was broken to her by her husband Prince Philip, who died last year aged 99 after more than seven decades by her side.
Elizabeth will mark 'Accession Day' in private as is customary, not viewing it as something to celebrate. But there will be four days of national events to mark her Platinum Jubilee in June. "While it is a moment for national celebration, it will be a day of mixed emotions for Her Majesty as the day also marks 70 years since the death of her beloved father George VI," Prime Minister Boris Johnson told parliament on Wednesday, thanking the monarch for "her tireless service".
Elizabeth has continued to carry out official duties well into her 90s, but has been little seen in public since she spent a night in hospital last October for an unspecified ailment and was then instructed by doctors to rest. However, Buckingham Palace on Friday released footage ahead of Sunday's landmark, showing her viewing items from previous royal jubilees, such as a fan given to her great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria to mark her 50th year on the throne in 1887, signed by family, friends and politicians.
Ironically Elizabeth was not destined to be monarch at her birth, and only became queen because her uncle Edward VIII abdicated to be with American divorcee Wallis Simpson. But in 2015, she overtook Victoria as Britain's longest-reigning sovereign in a line that traces its origin back to Norman King William I and his 1066 conquest of England.
MILESTONES "Inevitably a long life can pass by many milestones - my own is no exception," Elizabeth said in 2015, adding that the record was not one "to which I have ever aspired". Her son and heir Prince Charles said it was a moment other people were more excited about than she was.
While small in stature - standing at 5ft 3ins according to reports - she has been a towering figure in Britain for seven decades https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/queen-elizabeths-reign-second-golden-age-britain-2022-02-03. During that time she has overseen huge social, economic and political change, including the end of the British Empire. When she ascended the throne, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong and Harry Truman were running the Soviet Union, China and the United States, respectively, while Winston Churchill was British prime minister.
Including Churchill, she has been served by 14 prime ministers - a quarter of all there have been in Britain since Robert Walpole 300 years ago. During her reign, there have been 14 U.S. presidents, all of whom she has met bar Lyndon Johnson. As the world's current oldest and longest-reigning monarch, her global presence has also been profound, and she retains an almost unrivalled mystique.
"What's telling is when heads of state meet, whether it be at the G7 or the COP conference, they want to meet the queen," said Anna Whitelock, Professor of the History of Monarchy at London's City University. "They may be presidents or heads of state in their own country, but there is something quite magical about this miniature woman."
Only a handful of monarchs are ever thought to have reigned for longer than Elizabeth. King Louis XIV of France, who built the palace of Versailles, is considered to hold the record for a sovereign state, ruling for 72 years, while Sobhuza II was king of Swaziland for almost 83 years until his death in 1982. While public affection for her remains strong, with about four in five Britons holding a favourable view, the monarchy itself has suffered a number of recent knocks, including a U.S. sex abuse court case against her second son Prince Andrew, raising questions about the long-term future of the institution https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/royal-crown-slips-elizabeth-prepares-mark-70-years-queen-2022-01-25.
"She's almost beyond criticism, I think," said Professor Vernon Bogdanor, an expert in British constitutional history. "It's not that she's never put a foot wrong, it's more positive than that. She somehow instinctively understands what you might call the soul of the British people."
(Editing by Guy Faulconbridge Editing by Gareth Jones)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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U.S. House panel turns to oil major boards in next climate probe | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910821-queen-elizabeth-quietly-marks-70-years-on-the-british-throne | 2022-02-04T18:43:02 | en | 0.967047 |
NEW YORK (AP) — The jury considering the fate of California lawyer Michael Avenatti on charges that he cheated his prized client Stormy Daniels out of a large chunk of her book proceeds said Friday that one juror was refusing to look at evidence and was deciding the case based on her feelings and emotions.
In the note, the jury foreperson told U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman that the juror was “not going on evidence” but was basing her conclusions instead on “all emotions.”
The note began: “We have one juror who is refusing to look at evidence and is acting on a feeling.”
The note came early in the second full day of deliberations.
Furman rejected a request by Avenatti, who is representing himself, that he call an immediate mistrial. Instead, Furman told the jury that it must follow its pledge to base any decision on the evidence.
The jury is deciding whether prosecutors proved that Avenatti committed wire fraud and aggravated identity theft by taking nearly $300,000 of the $800,000 advance his client received for her autobiography. Avenatti has insisted that he had a good faith reason to pocket some of the money.
The deliberations are occurring at the end of the second week of a trial that featured two days of testimony by Daniels, a porn actor whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.
Avenatti appeared frequently on cable television news programs in 2018 as he represented Daniels in lawsuits against former President Donald Trump. The lawsuits were aimed at freeing Daniels from the terms of a $130,000 payout she received days before the 2016 presidential election to silence her about claims that she had had a sexual encounter with Trump a decade earlier.
Avenatti, 50, was considering running for president himself when his rise in popularity in Democratic circles was interrupted by his March 2019 arrest on charges that he tried to extort up to $25 million from Nike with threats to spoil its reputation if the sportswear giant did not meet his demands.
The same day, he was charged in federal court in California with cheating clients and others out of millions of dollars. The Daniels case was brought weeks later.
In early 2020, Avenatti was convicted in the Nike case and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison. He has not yet served that sentence. Last year, a trial on the California charges ended in a mistrial. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Avenatti-Stormy-Daniels-talks-stalled-by-1-16832059.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:04 | en | 0.989032 |
Under ECRP I and II, govt gave Rs 15k cr & Rs 23.12k to states for improve health infra: Govt
- Country:
- India
Under Emergency Response Package (ECRP) I and II, the government has provided Rs 15,000 crore and Rs 23,123 crore, respectively, to states for augmentation of health infrastructure, oxygen-supported beds, isolation beds, ICUs and human resources etc, the Lok Sabha was told on Friday.
To review the preparedness of the entire spectrum of oxygen equipment, including ventilators, Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) plants, oxygen concentrators and oxygen cylinders, and for the timely and effective management of COVID-19, the government has constituted different Empowered Groups (EG), including EG 4 on oxygen-related work, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar said in a written reply.
Apart from the monitoring by Empowered Groups, weekly review meetings are being held by the ministry with nodal officers of states and UTs to review medical oxygen infrastructure preparedness and for timely and effective management of rising COVID-19 cases. The outcomes of these meetings are installation and commissioning of all PSA plants under PM-CARES, monitoring of establishment of PSA plants under PSUs, Government of India/state funds, mock drills of all PSA plants conducted, capacity building for PSA plant maintenance, oxygen audit by all states and UTs, training of oxygen stewards for rationale use of the gas.
Government of India has provided the necessary financial and technical assistance to all states and UTs for building up oxygen infrastructure, Pawar said.
''Under Emergency Response Package (ECRP) I and II, the government has provided Rs 15,000 crore and Rs 23,123 crore, respectively, to the states for augmentation of health infrastructure, oxygen supported beds, isolation beds, ICUs and human resources etc,'' she said in a written reply.
Under India COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package(ECRP-II), various initiatives have been taken by the government to augment the demand for proving adequate facilities for children for Covid management in states and UTs, Pawar said in response to another question.
The states and UTs are supported for establishing paediatric care units in all districts. For district paediatric care unit, oxygen beds, ICU beds and HDU beds with equipments are supported. Across the country, 718 paediatric care units have been approved, the minister said.
This budget approved for establishing paediatric care unitw is utilised by states and UTs for infrastructure preparedness at the facility and for preparation of stay of parent or caregiver along with the child in the hospital.
Further, support is provided to the states to augment ICU beds at medical colleges, district hospitals, SDHs, CHCs, etc duly reserving 20 per cent for the paediatric ICU beds. This is in addition, to the Paediatric ICU beds set up in district paediatric units. Also, states and UTs are supported for establishing the paediatric Centre of Excellence (CoE) in each state and UT. The CoEs are providing tele-ICUs, mentoring and technical hand- holding to district paediatric units. Across the country, 43 Paediatric Centre of Excellence are approved. Under the scheme, states are also supported for maintaining buffer stock for essential medicines required for effective COVID-19 management, in addition to provision for required drugs and diagnostics, Pawar said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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India's COVID-19 vaccination coverage crosses 160.43 cr | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910842-under-ecrp-i-and-ii-govt-gave-rs-15k-cr-rs-2312k-to-states-for-improve-health-infra-govt | 2022-02-04T18:43:09 | en | 0.934591 |
With the brutal omicron wave rapidly loosening its grip, new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. are falling in 49 of 50 states, even as the nation's death toll closes in on another bleak round number: 900,000.
The number of lives lost to the pandemic in the U.S. stood at over 897,000 as of midday Friday, with deaths running at an average of more than 2,400 a day, back up to where they were last winter, when the vaccine drive was still getting started.
New cases per day have tanked by almost a half-million nationwide since mid-January, the curve trending downward in every state but Maine. And the number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has fallen 15% over that period to about 124,000.
Similarly, an early-warning program that looks for the virus in sewage found that COVID-19 infections are declining in the majority of participating U.S. communities, according to data posted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Deaths are still on the rise in at least 35 states, reflecting the lag time between when victims become infected and when they succumb.
But the trends are giving public health officials hope that the worst of omicron is coming to an end, though they caution that things could still go bad again and dangerous new variants could emerge.
Los Angeles County may end outdoor mask requirements in a few weeks, Public Health Director Dr. Barbara Ferrer said Thursday. But that is unlikely to happen before the Feb. 13 Super Bowl, which will draw as many as 100,000 people to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.
Ferrer said COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations in California’s biggest county are falling, and deaths may start to drop as well.
“Post-surge does not imply that the pandemic is over or that transmission is low, or that there will not be unpredictable waves of surges in the future,” she warned.
Arizona has also seen its daily case and hospitalization numbers decline, though deaths are still on the rise, climbing from average of about 61 a day last week to almost 79 as of Tuesday.
“We have reason to be hopeful, but we are by no means out of the woods,” Elizabeth Jacobs, a University of Arizona professor of epidemiology, said Thursday on Twitter.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said she is calling an end to the state's coronavirus public health emergency, a move that will limit the release of health data. The step reflects her long-held belief that it is time to get past pandemic restrictions and move toward the point when COVID-19 becomes, like the flu, a manageable part of everyday life.
In Washington state, the Legislature is allowing double the number of senators on the chamber floor starting Monday.
Overall, new cases in the U.S. have plummeted from a record-obliterating average of more than 800,000 a day in mid-January to about 357,000.
____
Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska; Paul Davenport in Phoenix; Robert Jablon in Los Angeles; Michael Stobbe in New York; and Michelle Monroe in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/COVID-falling-in-49-of-50-states-as-deaths-near-16832008.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:10 | en | 0.962078 |
Govt panel recommends emergency use authorisation for single-dose Covid jab Sputnik Light
- Country:
- India
An expert panel of India's central drug authority on Friday recommended granting restricted emergency use authorisation (EUA) to single-dose COVID-19 vaccine Sputnik Light subject to various regulatory provisions, official sources said.
Sputnik Light is the same as component-1 of Sputnik V.
According to an official source, in light of the recommendations made during an SEC meeting on January 31, Dr Reddy's Laboratories presented its proposal for grant of permission to import Sputnik Light for a restricted use in an emergency situation and booster-dose vaccination, along with the analysis of the latest safety and efficacy data, including its benefits against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The firm said the Sputnik Light vaccine is approved in 29 countries, including Argentina, Russia etc.
''The Subject Expert Committee (SEC) on COVID-19 of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), which deliberated on the application by Dr Reddy's Laboratories, noted that the safety and immunogenicity data presented by the firm from the Indian study is comparable with that of the ongoing phase-3 clinical trial interim data from Russia,'' the source said.
The interim data of the efficacy trial from Russia has shown an efficacy of 65.4 per cent against COVID-19, 21 days after immunisation.
''After detailed deliberations, the SEC recommended for grant of permission for a restricted use in an emergency situation, subject to various regulatory provisions,'' the source said.
The recommendations have been sent to the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) for the final approval.
''With regard to the use of the Sputnik Light vaccine as a booster dose, the applicant may provide clinical data, including immunogenicity data in the Indian population, for further evaluation,'' the source said.
According to some of the conditions for granting EUA, the vaccine is indicated for active immunisation to prevent COVID-19 in individuals aged above 18 years and the firm should submit the safety, efficacy and immunogenicity data from the ongoing clinical trials in India and Russia for a review as and when available.
The firm should submit the safety data, including the data on AEFI and AESI, with due analysis every 15 days for the first two months and monthly thereafter till the completion of the ongoing clinical trial in the country. Thereafter, the firm should submit the safety data in accordance with the provisions and standard procedures.
On July 1 last year, India's drug regulator had refused to grant EUA to Sputnik Light.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Argentina signals breakthrough 'understanding' with IMF in $40 bln debt talks | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/health/1910846-govt-panel-recommends-emergency-use-authorisation-for-single-dose-covid-jab-sputnik-light | 2022-02-04T18:43:17 | en | 0.924224 |
Pak leadership has been allowed to get away with promoting terrorism, says european think tank
Media reports in this past week have claimed that the US has held up the acceptance of the Pakistani Ambassador-designate to the US, Masood Khan, over his sympathy for terrorist leaders and organizations.
- Country:
- Netherlands
Media reports in this past week have claimed that the US has held up the acceptance of the Pakistani Ambassador-designate to the US, Masood Khan, over his sympathy for terrorist leaders and organizations. Masood Khan's nomination was sent to Washington by Pakistan Foreign Office in November last year. Media reports say the US deliberately delayed the approval of Pakistan's ambassador-designate's posting in Washington and sought more time for his approval.
A European think thank in its commentary said for far too long, the Pakistani leadership and officialdom have been allowed to get away with brazenly promoting terrorists and terrorism targeting both Afghanistan and J&K. "In J&K, the deceptive moral and diplomatic support that Pakistan claims to be extending has proved mainly to be convenient terminology for pushing a violent terrorist narrative. It is about time that anyone who speaks in favour of terrorism, even if it is an official immaculately suited and booted in western attire and suavely speaking a western language, is made to face the consequences," said Netherlands based think tank European Foundation for South Asian Studies (EFSAS).
Earlier this week, a US Congressman raised grave concern about the appointment of Masood Khan as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States. In a letter to US President Joe Biden, Congressman Scott Perry had asked Biden to reject Masood's appointment, stating that Imran Khan's nomination of a bona fide "terrorist sympathiser" Congressman Perry added that Masood Khan can only be described as a "breathtaking lack of judgment at best," and "a demonstration of Islamabad's unmitigated contempt for the United States at worst."
"While I am encouraged that the State Department has reportedly placed a pause on approving Masood Khan as the new Ambassador from Pakistan, a pause is not enough. I urge you to reject any diplomatic credentials presented to you by Masood Khan and reject any effort by the Government of Pakistan to install this jihadist as Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States," Scott Perry said in his letter to Biden.Perry said that Masood Khan is a supporter of the terrorist groups Jamaat-e-Islami, as well as Helping Hand for Relief and Development, a group that had no qualms establishing a partnership with the foreign terrorist organisation responsible for the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. A US-based think tank also urged Biden to reject Pakistan's appointment of the 'Jihadi-terrorist-sympathizer', Masood Khan, as Pakistan's ambassador to the United States.
Foundation for India and Indian Diaspora Studies (FIIDS), in its press release, said that the diplomatic role of Masood Khan in the United States may open an avenue for access for terrorist organisations to US institutions. (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1910761-pak-leadership-has-been-allowed-to-get-away-with-promoting-terrorism-says-european-think-tank | 2022-02-04T18:43:24 | en | 0.969799 |
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — The newest judge tapped to oversee the investigation into the killing of President Jovenel Moïse told The Associated Press on Friday that he has not decided whether to take the case amid concerns of putting his life in danger.
Judge Chavannes Étienne said his family is pressuring him not to accept the case because they fear for his life. If he were to accept, he would become the third judge to take over the case.
It wasn’t immediately clear if Étienne had to respond by a certain date. He previously oversaw the investigation into the November 2018 massacre of an estimated dozens of people at La Saline, a seaside slum in Haiti’s capital.
Magistrate Bernard Saint-Vil, dean of the Court of First Instance in Port-au-Prince, told AP that he had chosen Étienne but declined further comment as fears grow that the ongoing rotation of judges would delay the case.
Judge Garry Orélien had been overseeing the case but recently stepped down amid corruption accusations that he denied. He also had asked for more time to investigate the July 7 assassination, but Saint-Vil denied the request.
Orélien was appointed after another judge stepped down in August citing personal reasons, a move that came after one of his assistants died under unclear circumstances.
More than 40 people have been arrested in the killing of Moïse at his private residence, including several Haitian police officers, a former senator and 18 ex Colombian soldiers, the majority of whom the Colombian government says were duped.
Two other suspects were extradited recently to the U.S.: a former U.S. drug informant arrested in the Dominican Republic and an ex-Colombian soldier detained in Jamaica.
___
Associated Press writer Dánica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico contributed. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Haiti-seeks-3rd-judge-to-oversee-case-of-slain-16832103.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:29 | en | 0.984716 |
British-Pakistani Lord Nazir Ahmed jailed for child sex offences
Disgraced former Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed has been jailed five-and-a-half years for sexual abuse of two children in the 1970s, UK media reported on Friday.
- Country:
- United Kingdom
Disgraced former Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed has been jailed five-and-a-half years for sexual abuse of two children in the 1970s, UK media reported on Friday. Ahmed, born in Pakistan occupied Kashmir, has carried out anti-India campaigns. He was found guilty last month by the Sheffield Crown Court of sexual offences against two children. He was found guilty of two counts of attempted rape and one of buggery.
Justice Lavender passed the sentence on Friday. In March 2019, Lord Ahmed was charged with historical sexual offences against two children, two counts of attempted rape, and one count of indecent assault in the early 1970s. The charges against Ahmed relate to two complainants - a boy and a girl - and to alleged incidents between 1971 and 1974. The indecent assault charge relates to a boy under 14.
He has been an ardent supporter of Khalistani terror groups and a critic of the Indian government's policies. Though he projected himself as a crusader for Kashmir cause, in reality, he used his position to sexually exploit Kashmiri women.
Nazir Ahmed was born in Pakistan occupied Kashmir but his political roots are in Rotherham, where he grew up and still lives. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1969 with his family to join his father who was working in steel factories in Rotherham.
After studying at Sheffield Hallam University, he ran a chain of shops in his home town and became a property developer.In 1998, he became one of the first Muslim peers to be appointed to the House of Lords by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. He resigned from the Labour Party in 2013. Lord Nazir Ahmed, who calls himself "campaigner for Kashmiris" faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and resigned from the House of Lords in 2020. A House committee had recommended that he should have been expelled.
A group of Kashmiri women in London had launched a Hollywood style #MeToo protest campaign against politicians including Nazir Ahmed and faith healers who are exploiting vulnerable women in the Kashmiri community, the committee report stated. (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1910808-british-pakistani-lord-nazir-ahmed-jailed-for-child-sex-offences | 2022-02-04T18:43:31 | en | 0.983448 |
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Black man's argument that he was denied his right to an impartial jury because of a flawed process that excluded Black people and resulted in only white jurors.
It is the second time the state’s high court heard an appeal from Kenneth Lee Lilly, who was convicted for helping a relative rob a southeast Iowa bank in 2016. Lilly alleged that his right to an impartial jury under both the U.S. and Iowa constitutions was violated because neither his jury nor the group from which his jury was selected contained any Black people.
Lilly, 57, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for robbery with a mandatory 17 1/2 years to be served before parole eligibility. He was accused of driving Lafayette A. Evans, a relative from Nashville, Tennessee, to a branch of the Fort Madison Bank on June 29, 2016. Evans fired several shots in the bank and at a police officer. He ran away with $224,000 in a backpack but died after being shot by officers.
Lilly was tried in Lee County, where about 3% of the population of 33,000 is Black.
In the first appeal in 2019, the court returned Lilly's case to the district court for a hearing on whether his rights were violated by the jury selection process. The judge rejected his claims and Lilly again appealed.
The court upheld the lower court's decision that he failed to prove Black citizens are excluded from jury pools because they are underrepresented in the voter registration and driver's license lists from which names are drawn in Iowa.
Lawyers for the Iowa attorney general, Lilly and the NAACP, which wrote a friend of the court brief supporting a new trial for Lilly, did not immediately respond to messages.
Lilly claimed that low-income people tend to register to vote and to acquire driver’s licenses and nonoperator identification cards at a lower rate than other members of the community. He also said Black citizens make up a higher percentage of low-income people in Lee County. And he inferred that Black people are underrepresented in the lists from which jury pools are sourced.
In hearing his case the first time, the court established that such jury pool challenges must identify a practice that led to the underrepresentation, and it cannot be “run-of-the-mill” jury management practices.
Many states use voter registration and driver's license identification lists to construct a list from which to draw jury pools, Justice Matthew McDermott wrote for the court, which unanimously agreed. The lists are the only ones that Iowa law requires courts to use in drawing jury pools.
“Because he challenges a run-of-the-mill practice, and no other practices, Lilly cannot show a violation under the Sixth Amendment,” the court said. The court also concluded Lilly's challenge under the Iowa Constitution fails because he offered no evidence to establish that low-income people register to vote or get driver’s licenses or nonoperator identification cards at lower rates.
While all seven justices agreed with the outcome, Justice Edward Mansfield, joined in his opinion by Justice Brent Appel, left the door open to such challenges, saying if it is found that "a practice that leads to systematic underrepresentation of a distinctive group in jury pools can be identified and corrected, there is no reason to shield that practice from scrutiny just because it is relatively commonplace." He said Iowa lawyers are gathering data.
Justice Christopher McDonald, in a separate opinion joined by Chief Justice Susan Christensen and Thomas Waterman, was more willing to block such challenges, saying allowing such cases to continue to surface “is undermining the administration of justice, rendering it incredibly difficult simply to have a jury trial without months of discovery, expensive motion practice, expensive expert witness testimony, and days of hearings.” | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Iowa-court-affirms-process-that-may-exclude-Black-16832125.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:35 | en | 0.974719 |
Singapore reports 13,208 new COVID-19 cases
Singapore reported 13,208 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, hitting a new record and bringing the total tally to 379,681.
Singapore, February 4 (ANI/Xinhua): Singapore reported 13,208 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 on Friday, hitting a new record and bringing the total tally to 379,681. It is the first time for Singapore to report more than 10,000 new cases in a single day.
Of the new cases, 2,872 were detected through PCR (polymerase chain reaction) tests and 10,336 through ART (antigen rapid test) tests, according to statistics released by the Ministry of Health. Among the PCR cases, 2,734 were local transmissions and 138 were imported cases. Among the ART cases with mild symptoms and assessed to be of low risk, there were 10,312 local transmissions and 24 imported cases respectively.
A total of 998 cases are currently warded in hospitals, with 15 cases in intensive care units. Six more patients have passed away from complications due to COVID-19 infection, bringing the death toll to 866, the ministry said. (ANI/Xinhua)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1910827-singapore-reports-13208-new-covid-19-cases | 2022-02-04T18:43:39 | en | 0.949706 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A Pima County jail inmate's death last month was due to a drug overdose and is now being investigated as a homicide, the Sheriff's Department said.
Pedro Xavier Martinez Palacios, 24, died Jan. 14 at a hospital where Palacios was taken Jan. 10 after he told a corrections officer that he required medical assistance, the office said.
No signs of trauma or suspicious circumstances were observed but that the county Medical Examiner's Office subsequently determined that Palacios' death was due to a fentanyl overdose, the office said late Thursday.
The office said the homicide investigation was ongoing, and no additional information was released.
Palacios was jailed on outstanding warrants in cases alleging drug paraphernalia and unlawful imprisonment. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Jail-inmate-death-due-to-overdose-homicide-probe-16832186.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:41 | en | 0.982875 |
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — A jury in South Carolina awarded $50 million in damages to a mayor in a defamation case against a longtime critic.
The Beaufort County jury decided Thursday that Skip Hoagland has to pay Bluffton Mayor Lisa Sulka $40 million in actual damages and $10 million in punitive damages, The Island Packet reported.
Hoagland — who wasn’t in the courtroom throughout the trial or when the verdicts were read — laughed when the newspaper informed him of the outcome.
“That’s a joke, right? ... That’s insanity,” he said.
Sulka filed the lawsuit against Hoagland over emails he sent in 2015 and 2017 to several people including the state attorney general. The mayor claimed there were defamatory statements in the messages, such as accusations that she committed a crime and was unfit for office.
“An examination of the Defendant’s rambling and at times incoherent emails can lead to only one conclusion: the Defendant had every reason to know that his statements lacked veracity, yet he continued to publish them with vigor,” Sulka’s lawyers wrote in a 2019 court filing.
During the two-day trial, the mayor described the impacts these messages have had on her: “It really hits your psyche, it really affects you. I am his target now, personally.”
Hoagland has frequently and vocally critiqued the Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce, which some elected officials have spoken out against for its failure to share how it spends public money.
Daniel Henderson, one of the mayor’s attorneys, said Hoagland started a “crusade” against Sulka after the town helped the Chamber of Commerce with a membership drive in 2015. Her lawyers said in a filing that Hoagland believed the drive “unfairly benefitted” the Hilton Head chamber at the expense of the Greater Bluffton Chamber of Commerce.
“Mayor Sulka, I hope you fully understand the severity of this as a public official if this is true on using public funds to attempt to put one business out of business,” Hoagland wrote in a 2015 email to the mayor, town attorney, state attorney general, lawmakers and others.
The following year, he filed a complaint with the State Ethics Commission against the mayor, claiming she voted in favor of land purchases that financially benefitted the real estate agency where she worked. The commission eventually cleared her of allegations that she violated the state ethics law.
Sulka’s lawyers argued in the lawsuit that the “defamatory statements” were published with malice and hurt the mayor’s reputation.
Hoagland — who represented himself in the case after firing a lawyer that his insurance company hired — shared his thoughts with the trial judge, the attorney general and others by email instead of participating in the proceedings in person.
“There is zero evidence I defamed anyone,” Hoagland wrote Wednesday night. “The first amendment allows me to exercise my free speech rights to criticize, and shed light on, public corruption.”
He told The Island Packet in a statement Thursday that he was actually happy with the trial’s outcome because it proved there’s “more corruption” in South Carolina.
“This case was all predetermined, a sham, Judicial Malfeasance ... I will now seek damages for violations to my First Amendment Rights caused by this lawless, filthy, frivolous defamation lawsuit to silence a critics voice,” he wrote. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Jury-awards-50-million-to-SC-mayor-in-defamation-16832210.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:47 | en | 0.974541 |
British-Pakistani Lord Nazir Ahmed jailed for child sex offences
Disgraced former Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed has been jailed five-and-a-half years for sexual abuse of two children in the 1970s, UK media reported on Friday.
- Country:
- United Kingdom
Disgraced former Labour peer Lord Nazir Ahmed has been jailed five-and-a-half years for sexual abuse of two children in the 1970s, UK media reported on Friday. Ahmed has carried out anti-India campaigns. He was found guilty last month by the Sheffield Crown Court of sexual offences against two children. He was found guilty of two counts of attempted rape and one of buggery.
Justice Lavender passed the sentence on Friday. In March 2019, Lord Ahmed was charged with historical sexual offences against two children, two counts of attempted rape, and one count of indecent assault in the early 1970s. The charges against Ahmed relate to two complainants - a boy and a girl - and to alleged incidents between 1971 and 1974. The indecent assault charge relates to a boy under 14.
He has been an ardent supporter of Khalistani terror groups and a critic of the Indian government's policies. Though he projected himself as a crusader for Kashmir cause, in reality, he used his position to sexually exploit Kashmiri women.
Nazir Ahmed was born in Pakistan occupied Kashmir but his political roots are in Rotherham, where he grew up and still lives. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1969 with his family to join his father who was working in steel factories in Rotherham.
After studying at Sheffield Hallam University, he ran a chain of shops in his home town and became a property developer. In 1998, he became one of the first Muslim peers to be appointed to the House of Lords by then-Prime Minister Tony Blair. He resigned from the Labour Party in 2013.
Lord Nazir Ahmed, who calls himself "campaigner for Kashmiris" faced multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and resigned from the House of Lords in 2020. A House committee had recommended that he should have been expelled. A group of Kashmiri women in London had launched a Hollywood style #MeToo protest campaign against politicians including Nazir Ahmed and faith healers who are exploiting vulnerable women in the Kashmiri community, the committee report stated. (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1910831-british-pakistani-lord-nazir-ahmed-jailed-for-child-sex-offences | 2022-02-04T18:43:47 | en | 0.983482 |
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court on Friday upheld a Topeka man's conviction in the shooting deaths of three people in Lawrence n 2017.
Anthony L. Roberts Jr., was convicted on June 25, 2019 in the deaths, which occurred after a fight between two groups of people from Topeka erupted into gunfire, with more than 20 shots fired.
The jury found Roberts guilty of one count of second-degree murder, two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted second-degree murder.
The court on Friday rejected Roberts' argument that the Douglas County District Court judge should have instructed the jury that they could consider convicting him of voluntary manslaughter. The court also ruled the evidence was sufficient to uphold Roberts’ convictions.
Colwin L. Henderson III, 20, of Topeka; Leah E. Brown, 22, of Shawnee; and Tre’Mel D. Dean-Rayton, 24, of Topeka, were killed. Tahzay Rayton, of Topeka, survived after being shot twice.
Brown was the only shooting victim who didn’t know anyone involved in the fight, The Lawrence Journal-World reported.
Two co-defendants — Ahmad Malik Rayton, 23, of Topeka, and Dominique Jacquez McMillon, 20, of Topeka — pleaded to lesser charges. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Kansas-Supreme-Court-upholds-conviction-in-triple-16831977.php | 2022-02-04T18:43:53 | en | 0.96765 |
Reenat Sandhu appointed India's next ambassador to Netherlands
Reenat Sandhu, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, has been appointed India's next Ambassador to the Netherlands.
- Country:
- India
Reenat Sandhu, Secretary (West) in the Ministry of External Affairs, has been appointed India's next Ambassador to the Netherlands.
She is a 1989 batch Indian Foreign Service Officer. An MEA release said she is expected to take up the assignment shortly.
(ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Advertisement | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/international/1910834-reenat-sandhu-appointed-indias-next-ambassador-to-netherlands | 2022-02-04T18:43:55 | en | 0.969308 |
Ukraine-Russia crisis: What to know about rising fear of war
Chinese President Xi Jinping has backed Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in his standoff with the West over Ukraine as the two leaders met before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The leaders used a joint statement to call out what they called a “minority on the world stage” for advocating “unilateral approaches to resolving international problems and resort to military policy.” Meanwhile, the leaders of European Union powerhouses France and Germany announced plans to head to Moscow and Kyiv soon for talks aimed at easing tensions.
Here are things to know Friday about the international tensions surrounding Ukraine, which has an estimated 100,000 Russian troops massed along its borders.
Putin got the support of his Chinese counterpart amid fears in the West that Moscow is preparing for military action against Ukraine.
Putin met with Xi before the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing and the leaders issued a joint statement highlighting what it called “interference in the internal affairs” of other states, as Russia amasses troops on its border with Ukraine.
“Some forces representing a minority on the world stage continue to advocate unilateral approaches to resolving international problems and resort to military policy,” it read, in a thinly veiled reference to the US and its allies.
The meeting came amid fears in the West that tensions between Russia and Ukraine could spill over into armed conflict. On Thursday, the US accused the Kremlin of an elaborate plot to fabricate an attack by Ukrainian forces that Russia could use as a pretext to take military action against its neighbor.
Diplomatic moves to ease the crisis are set to continue next week when French President Emmanuel Macron heads to Moscow and Kyiv for talks.
Macron is following a French tradition of striking a separate path from the United States in geopolitics, as well as trying to make his own mark on this crisis and defend Europe's interests.
Macron spoke by phone to US President Joe Biden on Wednesday to update Washington on his diplomatic push. And on Thursday night the French leader discussed with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ways to “identify elements that could lead to de-escalation,” and “conditions for strategic balance in Europe, which should allow for the reduction of risks on the ground and guarantee security on the continent.” While France is a major player in NATO and is moving troops to Romania as part of the alliance's preparation for possible Russian action, Macron has also been actively pushing for dialogue with Putin and has spoken to him several times in recent weeks. The two will hold a one-on-one meeting Monday, Macron's office said Friday.
Macron is not the only European leader heading east. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit Ukraine and Russia in mid-February, adding to diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis centering on Russian troops massed near Ukraine's borders.
Government spokesman Wolfgang Buechner said Friday that Scholz will travel to Kyiv on February 14 and Moscow on February 15.
The trip will follow a previously planned meeting in Washington on Monday with Biden.
Buechner said the German government is consulting with France and Poland on a meeting between the leaders of the three countries, but a date hasn't yet been set.
He said that, on Thursday, Scholz will welcome the leaders of the three Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to the chancellery.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Andrea Sasse said that Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock will visit Ukraine on Monday and Tuesday, a trip that will include a visit to the “contact line” with rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine.
Poland's president was the only European Union leader to attend the Winter Olympics opening Friday, in what his office said was a bid to maintain good ties with China and lobby for an easing of Russia-Ukraine tensions.
President Andrzej Duda is scheduled to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Sunday, his office said, but is not scheduled to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also is in Beijing.
Other EU leaders have followed the United States, Britain, Australia and Canada, among others, in a stated or unstated diplomatic boycott of the Games due to China's human rights record — while allowing their athletes to compete. Duda's foreign policy advisor, Jakub Kumoch, has said the president wants to seize “certain diplomacy chances” that the gathering of many leaders in Beijing.
“The goal of these talks is to encourage the interlocutors to play an active role in leading to Russia-Ukraine talks,” Duda's press office says.
Amid the simmering tensions between their two countries, five-a-side soccer teams from Russia and Ukraine face one another in the semifinals of the Futsal European Championships in Amsterdam.
European soccer's governing body, UEFA, has ensured that Ukrainian and Russian teams aren't drawn to play one another since 2014, the year Russia annexed Crimea.
But in a written statement UEFA said that the measure to keep teams apart “for obvious reasons cannot apply to the entire knockout stages of tournaments like the UEFA Futsal EURO 2022.” “UEFA expects fair play by the two teams, on and off the pitch,” the organisation said, adding that local organisers of the tournament in the Dutch capital are working “to ensure that the event will take place safely and, in this respect, is working on implementing specific security plans.”
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Ukraine president welcomes Canadian loan as boosting European security | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910745-ukraine-russia-crisis-what-to-know-about-rising-fear-of-war | 2022-02-04T18:44:02 | en | 0.964422 |
MEEKER, Colo. (AP) — Authorities on Friday were investigating the alleged kidnapping of a woman who works at a Colorado ranch owned by former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Joseph Beecher, 48, allegedly took the woman from the ranch at gunpoint Wednesday and then to several places in the Denver area before heading to neighboring Wyoming, the Rio Blanco Sheriff's Office said in a statement.
Beecher was arrested Thursday after he and the woman were found at a motel in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the statement said.
Beecher is from the small city of Craig, Colorado and does not have any connection to the Bloomberg family or the alleged victim, the statement said. He had multiple firearms with him when he was arrested, the statement added.
Beecher was being held in jail in Cheyenne, the statement said. No charges have been filed against him in Wyoming, according to court records and it was not known if he has a lawyer representing him.
The Bloomberg family was not at the ranch at the time and why Beecher went there is under investigation, the sheriff's office said.
Bloomberg's spokesperson, Ty Trippet, expressed gratitude to law enforcement for their “swift and heroic action” in the case and returning the victim to her family safely. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Man-arrested-in-alleged-kidnapping-of-Bloomberg-16831975.php | 2022-02-04T18:44:06 | en | 0.987304 |
Allahabad HC to conduct hearings in hybrid mode from Monday
- Country:
- India
The Allahabad High Court administration has decided that the mode of hearing in the court, both in Prayagraj and Lucknow, will be in hybrid mode from Monday with strict adherence to Covid guidelines.
Earlier, in view of rising cases of COVID-19, the high court at both the places had switched to complete virtual mode from January 10.
Registrar (Protocol) of Allahabad High Court Ashish Kumar Srivastava said there will be restriction on the entry of clerks of advocates and litigants other than those whose personal presence has been directed by an order of the court.
It will be further ensured that at a time, there should not be more than 10 advocates inside the court room, he said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- READ MORE ON:
- Protocol
- Allahabad High Court
- Kumar Srivastava
- Covid
- Prayagraj and Lucknow
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Britain says there's 'a deal to be done' on N.Ireland protocol | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910753-allahabad-hc-to-conduct-hearings-in-hybrid-mode-from-monday | 2022-02-04T18:44:10 | en | 0.933945 |
DDMA releases order relaxing COVID-19 curbs in Delhi
Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Friday released an order relaxing COVID-19 curbs in Delhi.
- Country:
- India
Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) on Friday released an order relaxing COVID-19 curbs in Delhi. "Schools, colleges, educational institutions from class 9th onwards to reopen from February 7, Duration of night curfew reduced by one hour (between 11 pm & 5 am) Gyms, swimming pools, Spas have been allowed to reopen," reads the order.
Meanwhile, Delhi reported 2,272 new cases of COVID-19 during the last 24 hours, with the positivity rate dipping to 3.85 per cent. As per the bulletin shared by the state Health Department, a total of 59,036 samples were tested during the last 24 hours.
With this, the number of COVID-19 cases in the state has gone up to 18,40,919. During the last 24 hours, 4,166 people recovered from the infection, taking the total recoveries in the national capital to 18,03,251.
20 people lost their lives to the deadly virus during the last 24 hours. The death toll in the state due to the virus currently stands at 25,952. There are currently 11,716 active COVID-19 cases in Delhi, out of which 8,170 are in home isolation. There are currently 32,780 active containment zones in the national capital. (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910756-ddma-releases-order-relaxing-covid-19-curbs-in-delhi | 2022-02-04T18:44:19 | en | 0.950862 |
NEW YORK (AP) — More than 50 years after Frank Serpico testified about endemic corruption in the New York Police Department, the department finally recognized his service and injury in the line of duty with an official certificate and inscribed medal of honor.
The former undercover detective, 85, received the honor in the mail Thursday, the New York Daily News reported.
Serpico testified in December 1971 to a panel appointed by Mayor John Lindsay to investigate police corruption, breaking the “blue wall of silence,” the protection that fellow officers sometimes give each other, such as refusing to testify.
Al Pacino went on to portray him in the hit 1973 movie “Serpico,” and his story is also relayed in a book by Peter Maas.
Current Daily News and former Associated Press reporter Larry McShane interviewed Serpico in December about the 50th anniversary of his appearance before the Knapp Commission.
"I felt that finally I was going to tell the world and nobody’s going to interrupt me,” Serpico told the newspaper, speaking from his home in upstate New York. “I thought, ‘I know the truth.’ ... Every single word was mine, and it came from the heart.”
Serpico was shot in the face during a drug arrest in Brooklyn in 1971 months before he testified and has maintained that the other officers he was with never made a call for an “officer down.”
While the department gave Serpico a medal recognizing his injury in 1972, it was handed over without ceremony or the accompanying certificate, he told the newspaper.
In recent years, the department has awarded medals to recipients at annual large public events.
Mayor Eric Adams responded to the coverage, saying Serpico's “bravery inspired my law enforcement career. Frank — we’re going to make sure you get your medal.”
On Thursday, Serpico tweeted a photo of the framed medal of honor and certificate that reads in part, “in recognition of an individual act of extraordinary bravery performed in the line of duty."
He has continued to speak out against corruption and abuse by the police since his retirement in 1972 and says he has supported and listened to other whistleblowers over the years, including those who testified about the now-terminated stop-and-frisk policy.
In 2017, he publicly supported quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who protested against racial injustice while playing in the NFL. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/NYPD-honors-whistleblower-Frank-Serpico-50-years-16832102.php | 2022-02-04T18:44:24 | en | 0.984211 |
WRAPUP 3-Olympics-Beijing Games burst into life under shadow of COVID and conflict
Chinese President Xi Jinping opened a Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday that not only bear the mark of the global coronavirus pandemic but are also mixing sport and global politics as few others have since the era of the Cold War. The scintillating opening ceremony ended with a member of China's Uyghur minority - the focus of international human rights criticism - helping to light the Olympic cauldron, hours after Xi announced a new strategic alliance with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Three thousand performers took to a stage comprising 11,600 sq metres of high-definition LED screens in the famed Bird's Nest stadium, before a crowd thinned out by COVID-19 restrictions. Dancers poured in waving glowing green stalks to mark the first day of spring on the Chinese calendar, followed by an explosion of white and green fireworks that spelled the word "Spring" .
On a three-dimensional cube resembling a block of ice, lasers carved figures from each of the previous 23 Winter Games. The block was then "broken" by ice hockey players, enabling the Olympic rings to emerge, all in white. The lighting of the stadium cauldron by the last athlete in the torch relay, their identity kept secret until the last moment, usually provides the climax at the end of the Olympic opening ceremony, and this one proved especially significant.
Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a 20-year-old cross-country skier born in Altay in the western Xinjiang region, lit the flame along with Nordic combined athlete Zhao Jiawen. China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang - which Washington deems genocide - was the trigger for a diplomatic boycott by several Western countries including the United States.
ETHNIC GROUPS China rejects allegations of human rights abuses and sought to convey a spirit of inclusion during the ceremony, in which the Chinese flag was passed among 56 people representing its ethnic groups before being raised for the national anthem.
The ceremony was staged by movie director Zhang Yimou, reprising his role from Beijing's 2008 Summer Games triumph. But as in Japan half a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed severe constraints, not least by paring down the number of visitors able to see the spectacle in person.
With China still sticking to a "zero Covid" policy despite the Omicron variant spreading fast across the globe, organisers decided last month not to sell tickets to the public, kept outside a "closed loop" of competitors and other personnel. Though smaller in scale than the 2008 Games - dubbed China's "coming out party" - the Beijing Winter Olympics are being staged by a China that is much more prosperous, powerful, confident and confrontational under Xi.
Hours before they began, Xi and Putin unveiled their alliance https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-china-tell-nato-stop-expansion-moscow-backs-beijing-taiwan-2022-02-04, proclaiming a "no limits" friendship between their countries. It was a stark reminder of a backdrop of geopolitical rivalry unseen since the tit-for-tat Cold War boycotts of the 1980s, when the United States refused to attend the Olympics in Moscow and the Soviet Union stayed away from Los Angeles.
With tensions on both sides of the Eurasian land mass at their highest for decades, Putin and Xi publicly took each other's sides over a range of grievances, most notably Ukraine, where the West accuses Putin of preparing for war. MUTUAL SUPPORT
The Russian leader - who hosted his own Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, days before sending troops to seize Ukraine's Crimean peninsula - thanked Xi for inviting him, adding: "We know first-hand that this is a huge job." In a joint Russian-Chinese statement https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-tells-xi-new-deal-that-could-sell-more-russian-gas-china-2022-02-04, Beijing backed Russia's longstanding call for NATO to halt its expansion - Moscow's central demand in a dispute with Western countries that say they believe Putin is preparing for war in Ukraine.
Russia, which has deployed more than 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian frontier, denies planning to invade but says it could take unspecified military action unless its security demands are met. Moscow, for its part, said it fully supported Beijing's stance on Taiwan and opposed Taiwanese independence in any form.
International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach urged the world's political leaders to observe an "Olympic truce" and "give peace a chance". But political leaders from the United States and other Western countries were absent, having cited persecution of the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, which Beijing denies.
Rights groups accuse China of torture, forced labour and detention of 1 million people in internment camps in Xinjiang. China calls them re-education and training facilities, says it is fighting religious extremism, and denies abuses.
"By selecting a Uyghur athlete to light the torch, China is trying to address criticism by the West about genocide or persecution of the Uyghurs, and about sinocisation of ethnic minorities," said Ma Haiyun, an expert on Xinjiang and an associate professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland. "But I don't think this can have much effect on the West, which tends to think most of what China puts up is a show anyway."
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Chinese President Xi Jinping to launch Beijing Winter Olympics with Vladimir Putin, Imran Khan | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910759-wrapup-3-olympics-beijing-games-burst-into-life-under-shadow-of-covid-and-conflict | 2022-02-04T18:44:26 | en | 0.946451 |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska hospital system has announced it will begin resuming non-emergency surgeries and procedures that had been postponed last month due to a surge in COVID-19 cases.
Beginning Monday, Nebraska Medicine will move out of its “crisis standard of care” plan enacted on Jan. 13, the health system said in a statement Friday. The plan, which put a hold on most non-emergency procedures, was made as the omicron variant of the coronavirus saw a spike in demand for hospital beds and led to staff shortages as medical personnel themselves became infected or had to care for family members who were ill.
In the past week, there has been an overall decrease in COVID-19 admissions, Nebraska Medicine said, and the number of staff members in isolation and quarantine has also decreased significantly.
The system says it's now contacting those patients who saw procedures put on hold and is working to reschedule them. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Nebraska-hospital-system-to-resume-delayed-16832161.php | 2022-02-04T18:44:31 | en | 0.985229 |
Two couples combine passion to create Triangle Roasters coffee
Triangle Roasters is the passion project of two couples sharing a friendship and a business. Joy and Joe Zernhelt and Jeana and Mikey Master have combined a passion for making a difference and roasting coffee and cacao.
The couples started with coffee, sourcing beans from fair trade and women-owned farms.
Each bag of coffee is labeled with the country it came from and the distinct flavor notes the source provides.
Shortly after coffee, the couples started making chocolate. The similarities in roasting cacao and coffee beans inspired the next step.
They make 17 flavors. Offerings include 3-ingredient bars that highlight the distinct flavor of the beans.
They also make inclusion bars that incorporate ingredients like whiskey, pretzels and, of course, coffee.
Triangle Roasters | Facebook | Instagram
Made at Globe Dye Works
4500 Worth Street, Philadelphia, PA
Good Good Chocolates is your place for Valentine's Day sweets
Professional chocolatier Lisa Shoenbeck started Good Good Chocolates in 2017 with a specialty in chocolate bonbons and chocolate bars of all colors and with artistic designs.
Most are glistening shells with gourmet fillings that she painstakingly creates using the best chocolates and scientific methods.
Her husband Brian also has a culinary background, forming the perfect partner to support Lisa in the business. Besides her website and pop-ups around the area, the gourmet chocolates can also be found in local shops - check her website for a list of places currently carrying these sweet treats.
Good Good Chocolates | Instagram | Facebook
3525 "I" Street, Ste. 107, Philadelphia, PA 19134
773-621-1684
Wine & Chocolate Pairings every weekend in February: Penns Woods Winery Events
Date Night: Valentine's DayPaint & Sip event at Artrageous
If you're looking for a romantic date night idea, there's a place in Germantown where you sip some wine while you create some original art.
ARTrageous Brush & Flow is hosting Valentine's Day Paint and Sip-themed paint parties. The event is BYOB with complimentary wine, plus games and prizes.
Founder Moneek Pines is a Philadelphia native and a graduate of Moore College of Art and Design where she earned her degree in sculptural studies.
She operated an art-based daycare for 15 years. Last summer, with the pandemic still raging, she launched the mixed media studio to bring the healing power of art to her community. She offers everything from classes to private sessions and special events. She'll give you step-by-step instructions and with each stroke you're creating a new memory.
With Valentine's Day on a Monday she's holding two Paint and Sip Parties, one on Saturday and the other on the actual holiday.
ARTrageous Brush And Flow | Instagram | Facebook
6345 Germantown Ave, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19144
Valentine's Day Paint & Sip, Feb. 12-14
Philadelphia Diamond Company helping couples say I do
At Philadelphia Diamond Company, you'll find diamond tennis rings, bracelets and necklaces, diamond-studded hoop earrings and pearls with diamonds.
But what these husband-and-wife shop owners really specialize in is engagement rings, wedding bands and custom designs.
Kenyatta Black is a gemologist and second-generation jeweler. He started Philadelphia Diamond Co. with his wife, Nicole, 20 years ago this month.
They've offered virtual consultations through the pandemic, working one-on-one with clients. They say COVID lockdown was actually good for business, as people, quarantining together at a time when the world was seemingly ending, decided to commit.
And as we enter the third year of forgoing vacations and nights on the town, Nicole says people are looking for that silver or gold lining to the pandemic and deciding to treat themselves with something special.
Philadelphia Diamond Co. | Website | Instagram
The Bank Building, 421 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19106
215-607-6706
Get inspired at the 2022 Philly Home + Garden Show
The Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, Pennsylvania, will be transformed into the Philly Home + Garden Show from February 25-27.
There will be more than 200 vendors, interactive exhibitions and celebrity guest speakers on hand for the three-day event.
Cameron Peters will have her pop-up fresh flower market at the show. The Phoenixville florist brings a variety of fresh-cut flowers to the show for guests looking to go home with a little sprout of spring.
She is also bringing some of the unique gifts she has collected at her store including flowers in a bag, candles and unique locally made items.
Floral and Hardy of Skippack is bringing the succulent bar they offer at the Skippack café and gift shop to the Home Show. Guests will be able to pick a pot, pick a plant and decorate their very own succulents to bring home. Floral and Hardy are also featuring a collection of house plants the garden center specializes in.
Philly Home + Garden Show | Facebook | Instagram
February 25-27 at Greater Philadelphia Expo Center At Oaks
Cameron Peters Floral Design | Facebook | Instagram
34 South Main Street, Phoenixville, PA 19460
Floral & Hardy of Skippack | Facebook | Instagram
4007 West Skippack Pike, Skippack, PA 19474
Pure Roots Provisions features 7 menus from 7 chefs on one app
Inside a massive kitchen in King of Prussia, there's a pastry chef making cookies and a sushi chef making salmon rolls and poke bowls
There's a pasta dish with broccoli rabe cooking on the stove and burgers on the grill.
It's 7 restaurants, 7 chefs, 7 menus under one roof called Pure Roots Provisions.
Yohann Zinier and Andrew Masciangelo came up with the concept based on their own family struggles of trying to please everyone at mealtime.
The two met while working together at Savona restaurant in Gulph Mills.
While Savona is all about fine dining. Pure Roots is about bringing value to the table, while still using high-quality ingredients and good cooking techniques.
While fine dining took a big hit during COVID and takeout and delivery reigned, the two say they got the idea long before that.
For Valentines Day, you can mix and match to your heart's content.
There's Cobb salad from Wonder Leaf restaurant, homemade meatballs from Grazia, and a trio of sliders from Sparq barbecue. For dessert, maybe a berry cobbler from Upstate Burgers and Wings...all on your dinner table with the tap of a single app.
Pure Roots Provisions | Website | Facebook |Instagram
411 Swedeland Rd, King of Prussia, PA 19406
484-222-2288
Delivery is available within a 5-mile radius but you can pickup
Main Line Health's heart-healthy recipes for Valentine's Day dinner
At Main Line Health, registered dietician-nutritionist Amy Deahl-Greenlaw uses the Teaching Kitchen for classes and demonstrations.
The classes are not just for patients, but for the community as well.
Offerings are still virtual for now due to the pandemic, but their website has online webinars on a variety of heart health and nutrition topics.
Until the kitchen can open again, Deahl-Greenlaw shared two heart-healthy recipes perfect for cooking your Valentine's Day dinner at home.
Main Line Health | Facebook | YouTube channel | Events & Classes
Marinated Vegetable Salad with Citrus Vinaigrette
INGREDIENTSFor the Vegetable Salad:
- 1 cup green beans
- 1 cup fresh broccoli, cut into bite-size pieces
- 3 medium carrots, sliced
- 3/4 small red onion, cut into thin strips
- 1 medium diced tomato
- 1 small can mandarin oranges, drained and rinsed
- 1/2 cup 100% orange juice
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, or 2 Tablespoons dried cilantro
- 1 tablespoon bottled lime juice, or juice of 1 medium lime
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, extra virgin preferred
- 1 teaspoon honey
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- 1/2 teaspoon low-sodium soy sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, or 1 teaspoon grated, peeled gingerroot
+ In a large bowl, toss together the salad ingredients.
+ In a small bowl, whisk together the vinaigrette ingredients. (If using a food processor or blender, process the vinaigrette ingredients.
+ Pour the dressing over the salad, tossing to coat.
+ Cover and marinate for at least 4 hours.
Bean and Corn Salsa
- 1 15-oz can black beans, drained and rinsed (no-salt-added, or low-sodium)
- 1 15-oz can whole-kernel corn, drained and rinsed (no-salt-added, or low-sodium) OR 3/4 cup frozen corn, thawed
- 1 medium bell pepper, diced
- 1 medium tomato, diced
- 1/2 cup red onion, diced
- 1 teaspoon minced garlic (from jar)
- 2 teaspoons chopped cilantro
- 2 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- Juice of 1 medium lime
+ In a large salad bowl, toss together all the ingredients. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving.
Tip: This dish can be served chilled with a meal or microwave it to use as a filling for tacos.
Tip: To avoid tearing up when dicing the red onion, refrigerate the onion for 30 minutes prior.
Double dip for Super Bowl, Valentine's Day at Live! Casino
Live! Casino and Hotel has the perfect double-dip for couples looking for entertainment on Super Bowl Sunday and a romantic dinner on Valentine's Monday.
With both big events happening back-to-back, you can start at Sports and Social on Sunday with one of the area's largest TV screens, a 52-inch picture, where the game will be front and center.
The space offers custom tailgate packages for the big game where you can order food and drink.
And, since it is a casino, they have a list of betting options for the big game if you want to put a friendly wager down.
Then on Valentine's Day, The Prime Rib is offering a special menu that includes the top-choice beef they specialize in, seafood and decadent desserts.
The culinary team has prepared a wine pairing menu adding easy choices for guests to accentuate the meal.
Live! Casino & Hotel | Facebook | Instagram
900 Packer Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19148
Singer Laurin Talese set to premiere new jazz album in Philly
Laurin Talese is being hailed as the voice of jazz for this generation and she's performing at the Kimmel Center's Perelman Theater in just a few weeks.
Talese will be premiering her new album Museum of Living Stories.
"And I titled it that because when you go to a museum, you're appreciating the richness and the beauty of it, and the experience. And that's what I think people should do with songs," says Talese.
"One of the really captivating things about Laurin Talese is the energy," says Matias Tarnopolsky, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Kimmel Center, Inc.
Talese wrote the music during the pandemic.
"There was civil unrest that took place and a whole flurry of just frenetic energy, but also energy to carve out for yourself to actually just breathe and hear your thoughts," says Talese.
"We can begin to see the fruits that artists have invested since the pandemic that comes from both heart and soul. That is so rare," says Tarnopolsky.
Talese grew up in Ohio in a family of singers.
"I've been singing since I was about 7 years old," says Talese.
She started singing jazz at 15 and came to Philadelphia to attend the University of the Arts.
"I would walk down from school and go straight to Zanzibar Blue. Such a rich legacy is here. So much glamour, so much grit," says Talese.
Now, Talese is a teacher and Cultural Ambassador for the State Department.
"She is part of the cultural DNA of Philadelphia. She has appeared with the Philadelphia Orchestra on numerous occasions," says Tarnopolsky.
This will be her first solo show in Philadelphia since the start of the pandemic
"You really should come if you want to hear some good, complex but also soul-stirring and soul-soothing music," says Talese.
Talese will be at the Perelman Theater Saturday, February 19th.
--
Laurin Talese at the Perelman Theater | Facebook | Instagram
Kimmel Cultural Campus
300 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102
Performing Saturday, February 19th, 2022
Oyster House is normally closed on Mondays but since Valentine's Day falls on a Monday this year, the restaurant will be open with some special items on the menu.
There's also a special couple's shucking class, called Shuckbuddies 101 from 2-3 pm on Valentine's Day. Couples will get a tutorial along with a how-to book and a shucking knife to take home.
Oyster House | Website | Facebook | Instagram
1516 Sansom Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
215-567-7683
Looking to get physical on date night?
Society Hill Dance Academy is hosting couples dance classes throughout the evening on Saturday, Feb. 12 and the 14th, offering lessons on 'the dances of love,' bachata and tango.
Society Hill Dance Academy | Facebook | Instagram | Couples Dance Lessons
1919 East Passyunk Avenue
215-574-3574
At Concierge Ballroom in Old City, you can let your love soar with Acro for lovers from Acro.
The special Valentine's class includes chocolate and champagne and the chance to lean on your partner-stretching your body and open your heart-both literally and figuratively.
Acro&: Acro for Lovers | Acro for Lovers Event | Instagram
Saturday, 2/12, 11am-12:30pm AND 1:30-3:00pm $80/pair. Acro, therapeutic flying, partner massage, champagne, chocolate, and MORE!!
Concierge ballroom | Website. | Instagram
30 S 7th St, Philadelphia, PA 19106
(267) 609-9340
Looking to take in some culture with your love?
Broadway Philly is putting on Hadestown February 9-20, bringing not one love story but two to the Academy of Music stage.
Broadway Philadelphia presents Hadestown | Tickets
Academy of Music
240 South Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102
For film lovers, the Philadelphia Film Society is honoring the life and legacy of Academy Award winner, Sydney Poitier, showing some of his most popular movies throughout the month of February.
Philadelphia Film Center
1412 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
A RAISIN IN THE SUN, Feb. 5 | IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, Feb. 11 | GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER, Feb. 19 | SNEAKERS, Feb. 27
And you can go Dancin' in the Streets with the Philly POPS: The Music of Motown.
The concert will feature music by Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, Martha Reeves, Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, the Temptations, Stevie Wonder and more. And there's a special nod to Philly's own legendary producers, Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.
Philly POPS present Dancin' In the Streets: The Music of Motown | Tickets
Feb. 18-20
Kimmel Center, Verizon Hall
300 S Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
For football fans looking to celebrate love while watching the game, Del Rossi's Cheesesteak and Pizza Company has lots of game day specialties. Their name says it all; they have beef and chicken cheesesteaks on the menu, along with square pizza pies served thin and crispy Brooklyn style.
The dough takes 3 days to make so order ahead for the big game.
Del Rossi's Cheesesteak and Pizza Co. | Facebook | Instagram
538 N 4th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19123
267-687-8874
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Super Bowl Sunday is also Puppy Bowl Sunday and Devil's Den in South Philadelphia is hosting a Puppy Bowl Watch Party with adorable, adoptable dogs on-site from Morris Animal Refuge
Devil's Den Puppy Bowl Watch Party | Instagram
Sunday, February 13th @ 2-5pm
1148 S 11th St, Philadelphia, Pa. 19147
215-339-0855
Morris Animal Refuge | Facebook | Instagram
1242 Lombard Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19147
215-735-9570 | https://6abc.com/valentines-day-2022-vday-in-philadelphia-date-night-restaurants/11532919/ | 2022-02-04T18:44:34 | en | 0.922328 |
As many as 15,05,92,811 health IDs created: Govt
Inclusion is one of the key principles of ABDM, Pawar stated.The digital health ecosystem created by ABDM supports continuity of care across primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare in a seamless manner.
- Country:
- India
As many as 15,05,92,811 health IDs, now known as Ayushman Bharat Health Account (ABHA), have been created, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar informed the Lok Sabha on Friday.
The National Digital Health Mission has been renamed the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission. The creation of health IDs is voluntary, Pawar said in a written reply.
The National Health Authority (NHA) is creating awareness among citizens about the use and advantages of health IDs to maximise participation from citizen. The government has taken various steps to ensure that the benefits of the mission reach every citizen. Inclusion is one of the key principles of ABDM, Pawar stated.
The digital health ecosystem created by ABDM supports continuity of care across primary, secondary and tertiary healthcare in a seamless manner. It aids availability of healthcare services particularly in remote and rural areas through technology interventions like telemedicine, she stated.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Amit Shah to address people of Tripura on their 50th statehood day today
Free State records highest pass rate of learners in 2021 NSC exams | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910770-as-many-as-150592811-health-ids-created-govt | 2022-02-04T18:44:34 | en | 0.948519 |
NEW YORK (AP) — Forget mystery meat or cheese pizza. Instead, chickpea wraps and veggie tacos will be on the menu for New York City public school students as the nation's largest school district shifts to “Vegan Fridays” in school cafeterias.
The move was pushed by the city's new Mayor Eric Adams, who follows and promotes a plant-based diet that he credits for improving his health.
“I can’t tell people what to put on their grills on the weekend. But darn it, we should not be feeding the health care crisis in our prisons, our hospitals, and most importantly, in our schools, so we want to go in a more healthy direction,” Adams said in an interview on WNBC-TV on Friday.
Vegan options are already available in all of the city's public schools every day, but starting Friday and continuing weekly, the lunch offering will be vegan. Students can still request a non-vegan option, according to the city’s Department of Education, and milk, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, hummus and pretzels will always be available to students.
New York City public schools, which have about 938,000 students, have been offering Meatless Mondays since 2019 and Meatless Fridays since April. Around the country, 14% of school districts offered vegan meals and 56% offered vegetarian meals in at least one of their schools, according to a 2018 survey from the School Nutrition Association, a trade group representing school nutrition programs and workers.
It's unclear whether any other districts around the country plan to go vegan one day a week like New York City schools.
New York City schools says its vegan meals have been tested and approved by small groups of students.
Friday's menu included “vegan veggie tacos,” with a tortilla and salsa, with broccoli, and a carrot and lemon salad on the side. Other planned offerings this month include a Mediterranean chickpea dish with rice or pasta, and a black bean and plantain rice bowl.
Adams, a former New York City police captain, has said he traded in a lifestyle with junk food for a plant-based diet that helped him overcome diabetes. He wrote a book about his diet, “Healthy at Last.”
Nearly 40% of New York City public school children in grades K-8 were overweight or obese, according to data cited by the city in 2019. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/New-York-City-school-lunch-menu-going-vegan-on-16832044.php | 2022-02-04T18:44:37 | en | 0.96783 |
Arbery's shooter withdraws guilty plea on hate crime charge
The man convicted of murder for shooting Ahmaud Arbery withdrew his guilty plea on a federal hate crime charge Friday, electing to stand trial for a second time in the 2020 killing of a Black man that became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice.Travis McMichael reversed his plan to plead guilty in the federal case days after a US District Court judge rejected terms of a plea deal between defense attorneys and prosecutors that was met with passionate objections by Arberys parents.
- Country:
- Australia
The man convicted of murder for shooting Ahmaud Arbery withdrew his guilty plea on a federal hate crime charge Friday, electing to stand trial for a second time in the 2020 killing of a Black man that became part of a larger national reckoning over racial injustice.
Travis McMichael reversed his plan to plead guilty in the federal case days after a US District Court judge rejected terms of a plea deal between defense attorneys and prosecutors that was met with passionate objections by Arbery's parents. Asked by US District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood for his decision, McMichael said: “I withdraw the plea.” That means all three white men convicted of Arbery's murder will return to court for the federal trial next week, after plea deals for McMichael and his father fell apart. Greg McMichael backed down from a plan to plead guilty in a legal filing late Thursday. Wood has scheduled jury selection in the hate crimes trial will begin Monday.
The Friday plea hearing for Travis McMichael was so brief that Arbery's father missed it. He was standing by the elevators downstairs as reporters were leaving the courthouse. “All we want is 100 per cent justice for the Arbery family,'' Marcus Arbery Sr. said. ''That's all we're looking for.” The McMichaels and a neighbour, William “Roddie” Bryan, were convicted of murder in a Georgia state court last fall and sentenced to life in prison. Georgia lacked a hate crimes law at the time of the killing. The US Department of Justice had them indicted on charges that the three white men violated Arbery's civil rights and targeted him because he was Black.
The McMichaels armed themselves and chased Arbery in a pickup truck after spotting the 25-year-old man running past their home just outside the port city of Brunswick on February 23, 2020. Bryan joined the pursuit in his own truck and recorded cellphone video of Travis McMichael blasting Arbery with a shotgun.
The father and son had planned to plead guilty to a hate crime charge after prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed to propose a 30-year sentence that would include a request to transfer the McMichaels from Georgia's state prison system to federal custody. The deal would have required the McMichaels to admit to racist motives and forfeit the right to appeal their federal sentence. Wood rejected the deal Monday after Arbery's parents argued that conditions in federal prison wouldn't be as harsh. Wood said she ultimately denied the deal because it would have locked her into a specific sentence.
Prosecutors asked the judge to approve the plea deals despite the objections from Arbery's family. Prosecutor Tara Lyons said that attorneys for Arbery's parents had told the US Justice Department that the family wouldn't object.
But Lee Merritt, an attorney for Arbery's mother, said the slain man's family had previously rejected the same terms and “no longer wanted to engage” with prosecutors, who ''took that as a deferral.” During the murder trial in state court, defense attorneys argued the McMichaels were justified in pursuing Arbery because they had a reasonable suspicion that he had committed crimes in their neighbourhood. Travis McMichael testified that he opened fire with his shotgun after Arbery attacked him with fists and tried to grab the weapon.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910774-arberys-shooter-withdraws-guilty-plea-on-hate-crime-charge | 2022-02-04T18:44:42 | en | 0.982611 |
The district attorneys for Philadelphia and Allegheny County have lost a round in their legal challenge of the $26 billion national opioid settlement, with a Pennsylvania appeals court ruling Friday that their suit against the state attorney general was premature.
The prosecutors want the right to continue with their own lawsuits against the drug industry, saying the national settlement would pay their communities only a fraction of the money needed to cover the epidemic's financial toll. They had asked the court to rule that Attorney General Josh Shapiro has no authority to bind them to the settlement.
A Commonwealth Court judge ruled Friday that because the national settlement has yet to be finalized, the prosecutors' challenge cannot be heard.
“Unless and until” the agreement is ratified and affects “the DAs’ rights in a substantial and concrete manner, any opinion that this court would issue at this stage of the proceedings would be an impermissible advisory opinion,” said the ruling by Judge Michael Wojcik.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who is pursuing his own, potentially more lucrative, ligation against the opioid industry, vowed to continue the legal fight.
“These attorneys general have basically committed that they will work with Big Opioids against lawsuits to get more money," Krasner said Friday. “It is a fundamental sellout of places like Allegheny County, Philadelphia County, where we have an astronomical number people dying of fatal overdoses every single year.”
Shapiro's office said it would issue comment later. The attorney general has previously accused Krasner of misrepresenting the national settlement, which he says would jump-start funding for treatment in communities ravaged by the epidemic.
A message was sent to the office of Allegheny County DA Stephen Zappala Jr. seeking comment.
Last year, drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and the three largest U.S. drug distribution companies announced a $26 billion settlement with state and local governments to resolve thousands of state and local government lawsuits. An overwhelming majority of governments have signed on. The defendants can still back out before the agreement is finalized.
In Pennsylvania, Shapiro announced last week that as of the Jan. 26 deadline to sign on, all 67 counties had decided to join the settlement. He said Pennsylvania is slated to receive about $1 billion. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Philly-Pittsburgh-DAs-lose-round-in-opioid-16831990.php | 2022-02-04T18:44:49 | en | 0.973605 |
Poland's audit office says it was hit by over 6,000 Pegasus spyware incidents
Poland's Supreme Audit Office (NIK) has been subject to over 6,000 attempted online attacks with Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware affecting more than 500 devices in the past two years, a spokesperson said on Friday, confirming Polish media reports.
- Country:
- Poland
Poland's Supreme Audit Office (NIK) has been subject to over 6,000 attempted online attacks with Israeli-developed Pegasus spyware affecting more than 500 devices in the past two years, a spokesperson said on Friday, confirming Polish media reports. The head of the NIK is a longtime critic of Poland's ruling, right-wing nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) party.
Reports by the Associated Press that NSO Group's Pegasus software was used to hack the phones of government critics, including a senator for the largest opposition party, have drawn accusations that security services are eroding democratic norms. Security services spokesperson Stanislaw Zaryn denied this on Friday. "The insinuations inspired by (NIK director) Marian Banaś concerning the alleged surveillance of NIK employees by the special services are false," he said in a tweet.
Senior figures in the PiS government have confirmed that it bought sophisticated spyware developed by the Israel-based NSO Group, but denied that it had been used against political opponents. A PiS spokesperson did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment on the NIK statement.
Polish private radio RMF first reported the attacks using Pegasus spyware on NIK on Friday. NIK spokesperson Lukasz Pawelski, as well as a member of a team assessing the technology's effect on NIK who requested anonymity, confirmed RMF's reporting to Reuters, adding that it affected over 100 smart phones, according to their findings. The other 400 targets included various SIM card-operated devices.
They said the most attempted attacks occurred in May 2020 while the NIK was investigating a planned presidential election during a coronavirus lockdown in which only mail-in ballots were to be allowed, and in October and November 2021 when the office was publishing a report on a fund tied to the justice ministry. Last May, Banas asked prosecutors to launch a criminal investigation against Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and other government officials over the organisation of the 2020 presidential election.
Israel has come under global pressure over allegations that Pegasus has been abused by some foreign client governments to spy on human rights activists, journalists and politicians. NSO has said it cannot confirm or deny any existing or potential customers for Pegasus. It said it does not operate the system once sold to its governmental customers nor is it involved in any way in the system’s operation.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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- Polish
- Israeli
- Associated Press
- NSO Group's
- Mateusz Morawiecki
- Israel
- NSO Group
- Poland
- Pegasus
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Israeli expert panel advises 4th vaccine dose for adults | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910783-polands-audit-office-says-it-was-hit-by-over-6000-pegasus-spyware-incidents | 2022-02-04T18:44:50 | en | 0.966402 |
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The SeaWorld theme park in Orlando is opening new pools to care for Florida manatees that are dying from starvation due to poor water quality in their normal habitat.
The lovable, round-tailed marine mammals had their worst die-off last year, more than 1,100 of them, and there are federal and state efforts ongoing to save the threatened creatures. One of these efforts is to have a place like SeaWorld, with the marine assets it has, provide rehabilitation to those that can be rescued.
SeaWorld announced Friday that it has added five 40-foot (12-meter) pools to accomodate up to 20 manatees within two weeks. The theme park is one of five facilities in the U.S. taking care of sick and injured manatees. It had 28 manatees in its care as of Friday, according to a company release.
“We are bringing animals in that are skeletons. These animals need long-term care,” said Jon Peterson, chief of zoological operations at SeaWorld who chairs a manatee rescue partnership with government agencies.
"We’ve got the space. We will continue to use that space,” he added.
Manatees on the east coast of Florida, in particular, have suffered during winter months from a lack of food. They are large creatures that feed on sea grass, and poor water quality has reduced their natural food source, causing many to starve to death. It's mostly agricultural, urban and septic tank sources of pollution that are depriving them of food.
As of Jan. 28, 97 manatees have been found dead in Florida, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which has taken a leading role in the manatee rescue effort. Five of those were killed by boat strikes. Most of the rest are starving.
“That is the same pattern we had last winter, and these numbers will continue,” said Dr. Martine deWit, the veterinarian who examines dead manatees for the state of Florida.
The Fish and Wildlife Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have embarked on an experimental attempt to feed manatees with romaine lettuce at a Florida Power & Light plant on the east coast. The animals typically gather there in winter months because of the warm outflow waters and at a time when there is very little natural food.
Recently, wildlife officials said there were more than 700 manatees in that area, although it's hard to say how many were eating lettuce.
“They are going to go where the food is,” said Tom Reinert, South regional director at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. “We hope to make a difference." | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/SeaWorld-ramps-up-care-for-threatened-Florida-16832203.php | 2022-02-04T18:44:56 | en | 0.977126 |
Pakistani military conduct search for militants 38 hours after base attacks
"They used explosive-laden vehicles at gates, they have the latest weaponry left behind by NATO forces," Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad, Minister of Interior said on Friday, adding that the attack was defeated and both bases were under the control of the Pakistani military. Ethnic Baloch guerrillas have been fighting the government for decades, demanding a separate state, saying the central government unfairly exploits Balochistan's rich gas and mineral resources.
At least three militants were killed by Pakistani security forces and six were injured in a grenade attack in two attacks on Friday following a search for insurgents who had attacked two military bases, killing seven soldiers and 13 of their own, in the latest violence in southwest Pakistan. At least three militants, including two 'high value targets' were killed in a clearance operation conducted in Kech district to flush out militants from hideouts linked to Wednesday’s attacks on military bases in Balochitan province,” Pakistan’s military media wing said on Friday night.
In another attack, at Chaman, a town bordering Afghanistan at least six people were injured in a grenade attack at para-military post. The Wednesday attacks, the biggest in recent years by ethnic Baloch insurgents, came hours before Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan arrived in Beijing for the opening of the Winter Olympics, where he will have meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping and other leaders.
Two Pakistani security officials, requesting anonymity as they are not permitted to speak publicly, said the operation was not yet over. "The army is conducting search operations in the area. There might be some more elements hiding in the surroundings," one official told Reuters.
The army said the attacks were simultaneous and coordinated. "They used explosive-laden vehicles at gates, they have the latest weaponry left behind by NATO forces," Sheikh Rasheed Ahmad, Minister of Interior said on Friday, adding that the attack was defeated and both bases were under the control of the Pakistani military.
Ethnic Baloch guerrillas have been fighting the government for decades, demanding a separate state, saying the central government unfairly exploits Balochistan's rich gas and mineral resources. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) group said it was behind the attacks in a statement sent to a Reuters reporter, adding that one of the two bases was still under its control after 38 hours. This could not immediately be verified independently.
Last week, the insurgents killed 10 soldiers in an attack on a post near the port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, the heaviest casualty toll for the army in the Balochistan insurgency in years. Islamabad blames arch-rival India for supporting the insurgency, a charge Delhi denies, and says such anti-Pakistan groups often use neighbouring Afghanistan to plan attacks - a charge denied by Taliban government spokesman Bilal Karimi.
India's external affairs ministry did not respond to a request for comment. (Additional reporting by Asif Shahzad in Islamabad, Raza Hassan in Karachi Editing by Louise Heavens)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Taliban to hold meeting in Norway next week | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910784-pakistani-military-conduct-search-for-militants-38-hours-after-base-attacks | 2022-02-04T18:44:57 | en | 0.96944 |
The Vermont House on Friday approved a constitutional amendment that would remove what supporters say is ambiguous language and make clear that slavery and indentured servitude are prohibited in the state.
The constitutional amendment now goes before voters in November.
Vermont's constitution states that no person 21 or older should serve as a slave unless bound by their own consent or “by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.” The amendment would remove that language and add that slavery and indentured servitude in any form are banned.
The current language is “harmful and threatening to Vermonters who experience the vestiges of slavery,” said Rep. Hal Colston of Winooski to his colleagues. “My truth as a descendent of slave advocates is that this current language gives the appearance that there may be an exception for the existence of slavery and indentured servitude. Language is powerful and the truth shall set us free.”
To amend the Vermont Constitution, the proposal must be approved by two consecutively elected Legislatures and then approved in a statewide referendum. The Vermont House unanimously approved the measure in 2020 and the state Senate passed the proposal in the previous session. The House vote on Friday was 139-3.
In 2018, voters in Colorado backed a measure to clarify language in the state Constitution to ban slavery and involuntary servitude under all circumstance. Since then, voters in Nebraska and Utah have approved initiatives amending their state constitutions to remove language that allows slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments.
Legislation was also introduced in Congress in June to end a loophole in the U.S. Constitution that allowed forced labor for those convicted of some crimes. The measure would revise the 13th Amendment, which bans enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Slavery-ban-amendment-approved-goes-to-voters-in-16832187.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:02 | en | 0.960278 |
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A judge has partially dismissed two lawsuits alleging abuse at New Hampshire’s youth detention center, saying one complaint “consists of nothing more than invective and bald conclusions.” But attorneys who have filed hundreds of similar cases say they will fill in the details soon.
Nearly 450 men and women have sued the state alleging they were abused as children at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly the Youth Development Center. Their allegations span six decades and involve more than 150 staffers at the Manchester facility, but most of the lawsuits are nearly identical and include few specifics.
Since late December, the state has filed motions seeking to have claims against the state and the agency that oversees the center dismissed in more than 40 cases. Judge Andrew Schulman agreed in two cases this week, leaving intact claims against individual former employees of the center.
“The complaint does not describe the facts that constitute any of these categories of harm. What was the physical abuse? What excessive restraints were used?” he wrote. “If there was sexual abuse, what happened? The plaintiff did not say anything about what he specifically experienced.”
The plaintiff in that case is Michael Gilpatrick, who also is suing five of the 11 men who were arrested in April and charged with either sexually assaulting or acting as accomplices to the assaults of more than a dozen teenagers. Two of them are charged with restraining Gilpatrick while he was sexually assaulted by two of the others.
The Associated Press typically does not name victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly as Gilpatrick has done.
Gilpatrick, who spent three years at the center in the 1990s, wouldn’t discuss that episode in an interview with The Associated Press in September. But he said in addition to being subject to physical and sexual abuse, he was held in solitary confinement for as long as three months.
“There was nobody you could go to at YDC to talk to. You were literally stuck in your own thoughts, in your own fear every single day,” he said.
The judge’s order in the second case wasn’t available Friday, but he also dismissed claims against the state in another case brought by an anonymous plaintiff, according to the attorney general’s office.
State officials have said that filing the dismissal requests should not be considered a lack of support for crime victims, but the plaintiffs' attorney disagreed. Rus Rilee, said Friday he plans to amend all 450 lawsuits in the next 60 days but that there is no “legal or other need to force the victims to disclose all the details of their painful abuse in public.”
“This is nothing more than a continued effort by the State to try to silence these crime victims and deter others from coming forward in order to avoid accountability for decades of systemic governmental child abuse," he said. "It is becoming clear that the State doesn’t really sympathize with or care about these child crime victims - it just wants them to shut up and go away.” | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Some-claims-against-state-tossed-in-youth-center-16832109.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:02 | en | 0.982827 |
Assam: Suspected IEDs seized from construction site
- Country:
- India
Two suspected Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) were seized from a construction site in Assam's Nagaon district on Friday, police said.
Construction workers found two packets containing ''bomb-like objects'' during excavation in Ranthali area, where locals claimed there was a camp of the banned ULFA outfit 25 years ago, a police officer said.
Locals informed the police and a bomb disposal squad was sent to the area and the items seized, he said.
The two items are suspected to be IEDs but further investigation is underway, the officer added.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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- Ranthali
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- ULFA | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910785-assam-suspected-ieds-seized-from-construction-site | 2022-02-04T18:45:05 | en | 0.961809 |
Each week, we answer frequently asked questions about life during the coronavirus crisis. If you have a question you'd like us to consider for a future post, email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line: "Weekly Coronavirus Questions." See an archive of our FAQs here.
My drugstore has started advertising antibody tests. Does that mean I can tell how protected I am from COVID by forking over a fee — I've seen $10 to $140 — and a vial of blood?
Although antibody tests are increasingly available, the answer is unfortunately, no. We put this question to experts, who explained why these tests — also called serology tests — are not yet useful for most individuals, and why you definitely shouldn't change your behavior based on the results.
First, some background: A COVID antibody measures one component of your body's immune response to the virus or vaccine. Unlike PCR tests and often hard-to-find rapid antigen tests, an antibody test is not a test of whether or not you currently have COVID.
"It absolutely cannot tell you if you're [currently] infected," says Cynthia Leifer, a professor at Cornell University's Department of Microbiology and Immunology.
Antibody tests analyze a sample of your blood in order to determine whether your immune system has mounted one type of defense, either from being infected with the SARS-coV-2 virus or the vaccine. Specifically, the test tries to measure how many antibodies are in your blood. If your result is positive, it means you've likely had some form of exposure. But if it's negative, it could mean a few different things: That you haven't been exposed to the virus or the vaccine or that your antibodies have diminished to a point that the test can no longer detect them.
Early on in the pandemic, the idea of an immunity passport based on antibody levels seemed promising. But, "the thing that everyone wants to know — am I protected? — can't be answered with an antibody test," Leifer says.
There are several reasons why: First, the amount of antibody protection that people get from vaccines and exposures varies greatly — and not just by a small amount: If you sampled 100 people a month after they were vaccinated, their antibodies could differ by orders of magnitude, Leifer says.
And the amount of antibodies each person needs for protection likely varies as well, she says. Research, such as this study of 1,497 fully vaccinated health care workers in Israel, has shown a link between higher levels of antibodies and higher levels of protection. But no one can say exactly how many antibodies is enough.
Secondly, not all antibodies are the same, Leifer points out. Your body spits out IGM antibodies at the first sign of exposure, but then switches to IGGs, which are better at protecting you from viral diseases like COVID-19. You could have a lot of one type of antibody but fewer of the other, and that could affect your level of protection. But most tests won't tell you the difference — and even those that do are only marginally more useful, since there's no known standardized threshold that indicates how protected you are.
Finally, antibodies are – by a long shot – not the only thing that protects you from getting sick with COVID. T-cells that attack infected cells also come to your defense when activated by a vaccine or virus. And no current test measures that response. (Plus, there's a whole other arm of the immune system that also helps clear out the virus).
So a positive test will simply tell you if you've had the vaccine (which shouldn't be news to anyone!) or if you've been exposed but not how protected you are. If you haven't gotten the vaccine and you're tempted to take an antibody test to see if you might have been infected and not realized it, that still doesn't mean you'd have any guarantee against reinfection. And, regardless of the result, the recommendation from public health agencies is to get vaccinated.
Also, although the FDA has authorized dozens of antibody tests to identify individuals who "may have developed an adaptive immune response to SARS-CoV-2" — and the tests have become more affordable and available in other countries as well, including France and South Africa — the FDA does not recommend them as a means of testing your immunity level.
So is there any potential use for an antibody test?
Yes! In some immuno-compromised people, a doctor may advise an antibody test to get a general sense of how their bodies have responded to the vaccine, says Charlotte Baker, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Virginia Tech.
And these tests can be very helpful in studying the population as a whole, Baker and Leifer say. Antibody tests can help "researchers figure out how much of this [virus] is floating around," Baker explains. "And in research we use them to figure out how long antibodies last," she adds, which could help scientists determine the optimal timing and number of booster shots. Studies using antibody tests are going on now.
If you think an antibody test might be useful for personal health reasons, you can contact your doctor or a provider at an urgent care center or your health department, Baker says. Make sure to ask which test your clinic or drugstore offers, then check the FDA website for information on how accurate that specific test is and whether it will give you specific levels or simply a general "positive" or "negative" result.
But if you just really want to know if you've had COVID? Maybe someday, when more details are known about what exactly protects you, an antibody test will give you a meaningful result, Baker says. But for now, you're probably out of luck.
Sheila Mulrooney Eldred is a freelance health journalist in Minneapolis. She has written about COVID-19 for many publications, including The New York Times, Kaiser Health News, Medscape and The Washington Post. More at sheilaeldred.pressfolios.com. On Twitter: @milepostmedia.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/coronavirus-faq-my-drugstore-now-offers-antibody-tests-is-it-worth-getting-one | 2022-02-04T18:45:07 | en | 0.965562 |
PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi man is behind bars after a fight with his father left the man dead, authorities said.
Henry Kevin Edwards, 40, of Lucedale, is being held at the George County jail on one count of second-degree murder in the killing of Henry Cornelius Edwards, 80, the sheriff's office said Thursday. It was unknown if Edwards has an attorney who could speak on his behalf.
Investigators discovered Edwards’ body in a vehicle outside of a residence in Lucedale at 4 p.m. Wednesday, news outlets reported. Police determined there had been a physical altercation between the father and son, and the elderly man died from injuries sustained in the fight. Authorities have not said what sparked the fight. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Son-arrested-after-fight-leaves-his-father-dead-16832226.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:08 | en | 0.981938 |
Decorated bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor was supposed to lead the way for Team USA as flag bearer at the Beijing Winter Games opening ceremony on Friday. Instead, she hunkered down in isolation cheering on her teammates as she waited for the infection to pass.
Although she's asymptomatic, one more negative test stands in between the three-time medalist and a shot at becoming the most decorated woman bobsledder in Olympics history. (Winter Games participants must produce two consecutive negative PCR tests within a 24-hour span before they can leave isolation.)
Meyers Taylor is among three U.S. bobsledders to have tested positive for the virus within days of the Games' start.
The bobsledders have a little over a week until their competitions begin on Feb. 13.
Like Meyers Taylor, all infected athletes are sequestered in isolation hotels and risk missing pre-competition practices as well as the events themselves.
COVID-19 has already dashed medal dreams for several Olympians. Positive tests have taken athletes from the Ukraine, Germany and Norway out of figure skating and skiing events.
In total, there have been 308 positive COVID-19 tests confirmed at the Olympics since Jan. 23, including from people arriving at the airport. Athletes and officials made up 111 of that total, while the group of other participants made up the remaining 197.
Upon arrival in Beijing, Olympic participants enter what authorities are calling a "closed loop," where they live, work, train and compete in communities cut off from the Chinese public. Daily testing is a requirement in the strict list of COVID-19 protocols at the Games.
China is also inviting a limited selection of spectators to watch the games, including diplomats, schoolchildren and "winter sport enthusiasts." Further muting the fandom, in order to curb viral spread, attendees are encouraged to clap instead of cheering or singing.
And Olympic athletes and team officials who are already inside of Beijing's "closed loop" sites are testing positive for COVID-19 at much higher rates than other people inside the Winter Games sites.
The positive test rate on Thursday for athletes and officials inside the Olympic bubble was far higher for athletes and officials compared with positive rates of workers and others, according to the latest data from local organizers. Two of 6,572 tests from the athletes-officials group turned up positive on Thursday; only five of more than 64,000 daily tests from other Games participants — staff, media and other "stakeholders" — were positive. Since Jan. 23, the positive screening test rate for athletes and team officials is about 10 times higher than that of the other stakeholders in the bubble.
Still, Olympic health officials have said they aren't concerned about the likelihood of an uncontrolled spread of the coronavirus into China.
Both pre-departure and post-arrival airport testing identifies those who are positive, Dr. Brian McCloskey, the chief of the Beijing 2022 medical expert panel, said during a press conference this week. That minimizes the pool of potentially infected people who enter the Olympic bubble in Beijing.
"After four or five days in the closed loop, the risk comes down to equivalent to [that of] the local population, which is very low," McCloskey said. "At that stage, they're working within the closed loop effectively."
In speech at the opening ceremony, Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, thanked the many health professionals and the Chinese public for making the 2022 Games a reality.
"In the same spirit, our heart goes out to all the athletes who because of the pandemic could not make their Olympic dream come true," Bach said.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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Sudanese protest group refuses to meet with UN representative
In recent weeks the United Nations has been holding consultations in an effort to help achieve a negotiated solution to Sudan's political crisis. "We continue to receive requests from a wide range of Sudanese stakeholders to meet with us and engage in the U.N.- facilitated consultations process," UNITAMS said in a statement sent to Reuters.
A faction that played a leading role in protests in the uprising that toppled Sudan's former President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 said on Friday it was refusing to meet Volker Perthes, the U.N. Special Representative to Sudan.
In a statement on Twitter, the Sudanese Professionals Association faction also accused the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS), which Perthes heads, of failing to condemn Sudan's Oct. 25 coup and siding with military leaders. In recent weeks the United Nations has been holding consultations in an effort to help achieve a negotiated solution to Sudan's political crisis.
"We continue to receive requests from a wide range of Sudanese stakeholders to meet with us and engage in the U.N.- facilitated consultations process," UNITAMS said in a statement sent to Reuters. "UNITAMS launched this process to support a Sudanese-owned solution to the political deadlock after the 25th October coup which UN Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres) has explicitly condemned."
Security forces have cracked down on frequent mass protests against military rule since the coup, and at least 79 civilians have died, according to medics aligned with the protest movement. Many civilian groups including the resistance committees https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/sudans-resistance-committees-take-centre-stage-fight-against-military-rule-2022-02-02 that are the driving force behind the current protests have said they refuse to negotiate with the military.
Before the coup the military had been sharing power with civilian groups under a transitional agreement struck following Bashir's overthrow in 2019.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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HASSAKEH, Syria (AP) — Weeks after the long, furious battle with militants from the Islamic State group over a prison in northwestern Syria, the mangled wreckage of a car used by suicide bombers still sat outside its perimeter. Cranes put in place new cement blast walls to close off the entrance.
Gaping holes remained in the prison’s outer wall, an ominous reminder of the IS inmates who escaped during the fighting.
The battle for Gweiran Prison is over; it took 10 days, but U.S.-backed, Syrian Kurdish-led forces finally defeated the militants who attacked the facility in the city of Hassakeh, aiming to break free their comrades jailed inside, in the group’s largest and most stunning operation in years.
But the impact continues to reverberate. Residents in neighboring districts are locked down as Kurdish fighters hunt for fugitive militants hiding among them.
“Ask everyone here, they will tell you the same: We are terrified,” said Muna Farid, a mother of five who lives in the Gweiran neighborhood, which gives the prison its name — echoing the worries of dozens of residents over hidden IS fighters.
The region’s Kurdish administrators say the attack shows what they have long been saying: They are not getting enough help to face the Islamic State group as it regains strength.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces say the Jan. 20 prison attack was not a surprise to them. Local intelligence sources had been showing a growing number of IS sleeper cells in the area. But they say they were hampered in acting because of multiple pressures, including conflicts with Turkey, insufficient international help and Syria’s economic crisis.
“The main reason that IS sleeper cells got enhanced and strong is because of international silence and weak support (for SDF) to stand against terrorism,” said Haval Qortay, head of the commando unit that fought IS at the prison, using his nom de guerre. “We are relying on resources that are not enough to fight.”
IS suffered a blow with the U.S. raid Thursday in northwest Syria that killed the group’s leader, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. But it is unlikely to derail the group’s persistent insurgency in Iraq and Syria since its command became much more decentralized after the group's territorial defeat two years ago.
“For some time now ISIS top leadership have been providing broad, strategic guidance to the global organization, but not day-to-day command and control,” said Dareen Khalifa, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group. “ISIS’s various elements will continue implementing their local insurgencies until the new successor is named.”
Since IS lost its last hold on any territory in 2019, its militants have gone underground in cells that have been carrying out low-level hit-and-run attacks in Syria and Iraq, mainly targeting security forces. Those attacks have been growing, raising fears the group is gaining momentum.
In northeast Syria, governed by a Kurdish-dominated administration, the SDF has been the main force trying to suppress IS, with the backing of several hundred U.S. troops.
At the same time, the SDF has to watch over some 10,000 captured IS fighters in around two dozen detention facilities — including 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them. It also oversees some 62,000 family members of IS fighters, mostly women and children in al-Hol camp. Many of those family members remain die-hard IS supporters, and the camp has seen bouts of militant violence.
Khalifa said the SDF has done a “remarkable job” in fighting IS and in stabilizing the areas it captured from the group during the long campaign that brought down the “caliphate.”
But she said it is also hampered on multiple fronts. Particularly, its frequent clashes with Turkey, which views the Kurdish faction running eastern Syria as a terrorist group, undermine the anti-IS fight. Also, many Arab residents of the region don’t trust that the SDF will remain, fearing the Americans will pull out or the Damascus government will regain control of the area — so they are reluctant to endanger themselves by providing intelligence against militants.
Gweiran Prison, the biggest of the SDF-run prisons, was set up in a school campus, underscoring how the SDF has had to cobble together detention centers for the militants.
On Jan. 20, around 200 militants attacked the prison, in coordination with a riot by inmates inside. The attackers broke in, freed some prisoners, took guards hostage, and held out against SDF fighters for days, even as aircraft from the U.S.-led coalition struck their positions repeatedly.
At least 121 SDF fighters and prison guards and more than 380 militants killed before the SDF finally restored full control.
The commando chief Qortay said the SDF had long been aware the prison would be an IS target and had been receiving intelligence of a growing number of IS sleeper cells in the area. Some militants seamlessly pass for civilians at checkpoints, he said. Others move into towns, rent apartments and maintain a low profile.
When the attack erupted, Qortay’s units formed a belt around the prison and the nearby residential neighborhoods. During the fighting, some IS members hid in civilian homes, slowing the SDF as it tried to avoid civilian casualties, Qortay said.
Now the prison is fully under SDF control, he said, but he expects more attacks. Militants remain hidden, literally, across the street. SDF troops are still conducting raids to find sleeper cells, relying on intelligence from residents.
One resident of Gweiran neighborhood told The Associated Press how he informs the local authorities whenever he sees a stranger on his street. He has told them of at least eight since the prison break, including one hiding in a water tank.
“I know everyone in this area, if I see a new face I report them directly,” he said. The AP is not identifying him for his safety.
But residents are also angered by the SDF’s clampdown on three neighborhoods near the prison. With guns slung, SDF soldiers at the districts’ entrances forbid locals from leaving until their areas are cleared of militants.
Supplies are allowed in, but residents say it’s not enough. Dozens complained of shortages in food and drinking water. Mothers said they didn’t have enough milk for their babies or food to feed their families.
Fatma al-Khodr sat on the steps outside her home on the phone, begging a neighbor for any leftover bread.
“We are the ones who are suffering the most after this attack. ... We fear Daesh, but we also need water,” she said, using the Arabic name for IS.
The militants’ ability to carry out such a major attack even amid intelligence warnings was a stinging blow to the SDF. The force is hoping it will show world powers that it needs more support, after long complaining it is left largely on its own to prevent the group’s revival in Syria.
On a recent day, the clouds hung low at a funeral for 23 of the SDF soldiers killed in the prison battle. Thousands came to pay their respects. Among them, Ibrahim Ismail, a merchant from the area.
“Their deaths were a shock to us all,” he said.
Then the crowd fell silent in remembrance. Portraits of the dead were held high as coffins draped in the region's Kurdish colors passed along the sea of human bodies.
A loudspeaker blared a verse from the Quran, “Do not think those who die in God’s path are dead.” Ismail completed the verse in a whisper to himself, “They are alive, with their Lord, prospering.” | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Stung-by-prison-battle-Kurds-say-they-need-help-16832236.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:15 | en | 0.970794 |
A variant of HIV that is faster at progressing to serious illness and more contagious than other versions of the virus has been circulating in the Netherlands for decades, researchers have found.
The findings, which were published in the journal Science on Thursday, demonstrate how HIV can mutate to create more severe disease and more rapid transmission.
"Even after 100 years of HIV infecting humans, it still has the capacity to evolve and change," says Joel Wertheim, associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Diego, who was not involved in the study but wrote a perspective about the research findings, also published in Science on Thursday.
The study serves as a reminder – in the age of COVID variants – that viruses don't always weaken over time. "We should never underestimate the potential for viral evolution," Wertheim says. "Let this study stand in stark contrast to the claim that all viruses will inevitably evolve to be benign."
A contagious new discovery
The discovery of the HIV variant was sparked by a curious set of samples.
In late 2018, Chris Wymant, the lead author of the study and senior researcher at the Big Data Institute at University of Oxford, noticed something interesting in a database for a project called BEEHIVE, which collects HIV samples from Uganda and several countries in Europe to help scientists understand how the virus is evolving.
There was a recent cluster of 17 samples that showed a lot of unusual mutations, he says — and 15 of the samples came from the Netherlands.
Wymant and his co-authors wanted to know more, so they dove into another Dutch study with more data. They discovered a total of 109 people who had this particular variant and never knew it, dating all the way back to 1992. The variant probably emerged in the late '80s, Wymant says, picking up steam around 2000 and then eventually slowing down around 2010.
People with this variant have a viral load that is three to four times higher than usual for those with HIV. This characteristic means the virus progresses into serious illness twice as fast – and also makes it more contagious, says Wymant.
The good news: Existing medications work very well to treat even very virulent variants like this one, cutting down on transmission and reducing the chance of developing severe illness, he says.
"Nobody should be alarmed," Wymant says. "It responds exactly as well to treatment as HIV normally does."
There's no need to develop special treatments for this variant, he adds. It shows no signs at all of resisting medications, as some HIV variants do. But because the variant moves quickly, people need to receive medicine as fast as possible.
How to slow down the variant
This research was "nicely done" and "well-designed," says Adeeba Kamarulzaman, president of the International AIDS Society and professor of medicine at the University of Malaya, who did not work on the study.
It also helps answer a pressing question in the field of HIV research, she notes. Previously, researchers wondered if people get sicker or are more contagious because of how their immune systems respond to the virus. The study found that individual responses are part of it but not all. It can also happen if a virus evolves to cause more severe illness and readier transmission.
Kamarulzaman warns that a mutation like this could happen in other places. If a number of HIV patients in a particular area have this kind of variant but isn't taking medication, "you are going to have a lot more people with advanced disease a lot more quickly," she says.
To prevent this from happening, she says, "early tests or frequent testing and immediate initiation of treatment is the way to go." The goal isn't to identify a specific variant but rather to diagnose new cases of HIV so that treatment may start as soon as possible. But some countries still struggle to do that, and they need more support, she adds.
That's how this variant eventually slowed down in the Netherlands before researchers even identified it.
"The public health intervention that's been rolled out and expanded in the Netherlands over the last decade or so – improving access to treatments, getting people tested as soon as possible, getting them onto treatment as soon as possible — has helped reduce the numbers of this variant, even though we didn't know that it existed," Wymant says.
Rapid treatment also helps slow viral evolution, so variants like these are less likely to emerge.
"This doesn't mean we need to change strategy," Wertheim says. "It just means we need to do more of what we're already doing."
Melody Schreiber (@m_scribe) is a journalist and the editor of What We Didn't Expect: Personal Stories About Premature Birth.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/discovery-of-hiv-variant-shows-virus-can-evolve-to-be-more-severe-and-contagious | 2022-02-04T18:45:16 | en | 0.974861 |
News Corp. — which owns the publishers of The Wall Street Journal and the New York Post — announced the discovery of a "persistent cyberattack" targeting a limited number of employees. An official with a cybersecurity firm working with the mass media conglomerate said the attack has links to China.
The company, the publishing arm originally founded as part of the Murdoch family's media empire, disclosed the breach Friday in a financial filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as through an internal email to employees.
According to News Corp., the digital attack was discovered in January, at which point executives contacted law enforcement and a private cybersecurity company, Mandiant, for assistance.
The investigation is ongoing, but perhaps most concerning is News Corp.'s assertion that the culprits have ties to a foreign government.
While Mandiant did not explicitly link the cyberattack to the Chinese government, David Wong, the vice president for incident response at Mandiant, said in a statement that the cybersecurity firm's analysts have concluded that "those behind this activity have a China nexus." They were spying, or "involved in espionage activities" to gather information "to benefit China's interests," he added.
The Chinese government has a documented track record of launching persistent, sophisticated cyberattacks on businesses, academia, research institutions and government agencies, often with the intention of stealing information that would benefit Chinese interests.
During the Trump administration, the Justice Department launched a "China initiative" aimed at cracking down on what it described as a growing tide of Chinese espionage and intellectual property theft costing businesses around the world hefty sums.
Just last week, FBI Director Chris Wray told an audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum that the Bureau launches a counterintelligence investigation linked to the Chinese government "about every 12 hours or so." Currently, the FBI has over 2,000 investigations focusing on "the Chinese government trying to steal our information and technology," he said.
In addition to any business assets News Corp. owns that might be of interest to China, journalists with sensitive information and contacts with knowledgeable sources make for attractive targets for espionage. Chinese hackers have gone to great lengths in the past to track, in particular, Chinese dissidents, including through attacks pretending to be hosting popular websites including the New York Times homepage. Security officials within China have plans to deploy an extensive surveillance system to track journalists, international students and other persons of interest.
News Corp. has dispatched security experts to work with individual journalists they believe may have been affected, including "a limited number of business email accounts and documents from News Corp headquarters, News Technology Services, Dow Jones, News UK, and New York Post," according to the internal email sent to employees. News Corp. concluded that some data was stolen, but did not comment further on which information or how much.
Neither News Corp. nor Mandiant shared further information about how the hackers got in, though in the SEC filing, News Corp. referred to both "network and information systems" as well as "third-party providers for certain technology and 'cloud based' systems and services," one of which was the target of the attack. If a third-party cloud provider was the target, the activity could be linked to a broader supply chain-based attack, which could mean other clients using that technology could be vulnerable as well.
"We believe it is important that other media organizations be made aware of this threat in order to take appropriate precautions, and we are providing technical details of the attack to the Media Information Sharing and Analysis Organization," News Corp. Chief Technology Officer David Kline and Chief Information Security Officer Billy O'Brien, write in the internal email to staff.
Currently, News Corp. says it believes the "threat activity" has been "contained," though Kline and O'Brien did not share information about why they believed that to be the case, nor details on how long the hackers may have been inside the network.
"We will not tolerate attacks on our journalism, nor will we be deterred from our reporting, which provides readers everywhere with the news that matters," they concluded.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/hackers-tied-to-china-are-suspected-of-spying-on-news-corp-journalists | 2022-02-04T18:45:17 | en | 0.959034 |
The pre-dawn raid Thursday that led to the death of Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi was meant to take ISIS leader alive, according to Pentagon press secretary John Kirby.
Kirby, in an interview with Morning Edition hosts Steve Inskeep and Rachel Martin, said the U.S. operation in northern Syria against al-Qurayshi took two hours, more than twice the time U.S. forces needed to attack Osama bin Laden's compound. That's because, he said, there was an innocent family on the first floor of al-Qurayshi's building.
"We wanted to make sure we could get them out safely," he said.
Kirby said that the U.S. "had hoped to be able to capture Abdullah alive and that we figured would require some doing, including the fact that he would resist or fight back."
The U.S. is certain that al-Qurayshi is dead, he said, based on forensic evidence.
"They were able to get fingerprints off of his body right there on site and compare it immediately before they even left the site," Kirby said. DNA analysis was done as well "that confirmed it," he said.
He said U.S. officials have yet to determine whether to release any video evidence of the attack. "We're working our way through that. And if we think that that's something that can be done and should be done, we'll certainly explore it," he said.
Kirby also discussed claims that Russia would stage a false-flag attack
Kirby also said U.S. intelligence believes Russia is planning to "manufacture an atrocity" in order to justify invading Ukraine. Intelligence officials, he said, believe Russia "would manufacture an atrocity, an event, a killing, perhaps a mass killing. And they would they would do it with, you know, a slick video that would show corpses on the ground, perhaps corpses that they took out of other places, mortuaries or something like that."
Kirby said the Russians would use actors as mourners and perhaps stage imagery of military equipment "that would make it look like it was actually Ukrainian instead of Russian."
It's believed Russia has amassed over 100,000 troops at its border with Ukraine.
As for what proof the U.S. has that Russia would stage a false flag operation to justify moving into Ukraine, Kirby said, "If there was a way to do this and that wouldn't reveal how we know it, I think, you know, we'd be willing to look at that. But we also don't necessarily want the Russians to know how we know stuff." The comments echo what State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Thursday when pressed for evidence that Russia of a potential false-flag attack.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/pentagon-spokesman-says-the-u-s-hoped-to-capture-isis-leader-alive | 2022-02-04T18:45:18 | en | 0.987849 |
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected Republican gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch's request that it take over an absentee ballot box challenge in Wisconsin, in a ruling Friday.
Kleefisch, a former lieutenant governor, asked the conservative-controlled Supreme Court to take directly to take the case directly after a lower court's ruling that kept current law in place.
A Waukesha County judge on Jan. 13 ruled that absentee ballot drop boxes cannot be located anywhere other than at offices of local clerks and that no one other than the voter may return such a ballot.
An appeals court’s ruling put the lower court order on hold only until after the primary when the court was then going to consider the merits of the entire case.
Kleefisch's request is similar to one filed last month by a conservative group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.
Judge Patience Roggensack was among three dissenting judges on Kleefisch's request.
“Because Wisconsin voters deserve elections conducted in a manner that we have reviewed and approved, I would grant Kleefisch’s petition to commence an original action. Because the majority sidesteps its obligation to hear the continuing cry of Wisconsin voters and address absentee ballot issues, I respectfully dissent,” she wrote.
The Wisconsin Elections Commission has advised that local clerks can put drop boxes wherever they want.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers last year vetoed Republican bills that would have limited the location of absentee ballot drop boxes and who could return the ballots. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Supreme-Court-won-t-take-challenge-to-absentee-16832127.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:21 | en | 0.949904 |
SC emerged as world leader in virtual hearings amid lockdown: Govt
- Country:
- India
The Supreme Court held over 1.81 lakh hearings since the beginning of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown till last month, making it the ''world leader'' in virtual hearings, Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.
In reply to a written question, Law Minister Kiren Rijiju said video-conferencing emerged as the mainstay of the courts during the Covid lockdown period as physical hearings and normal court proceedings in the congregational mode were not possible.
Since the Covid lockdown started on March 25, 2020, the district courts heard 1,08,36,087 cases while the high courts heard 57,39,966 cases (totalling 1.65 crore) till November 30, 2021 using video-conferencing only, he said.
''The Supreme Court held 1,81,909 hearings till January 8, 2022 since the beginning of lockdown period, making it the world leader in video conferencing hearings,'' he said.
One video conference equipment each has been provided to all court complexes, including taluk-level courts, and additionally, funds have been sanctioned for additional VC equipment for 14,443 court rooms, he said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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China daily local confirmed COVID cases fall to nearly two-month low | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910789-sc-emerged-as-world-leader-in-virtual-hearings-amid-lockdown-govt | 2022-02-04T18:45:21 | en | 0.934267 |
ATLANTA (AP) — A Texas man accused of posting a message on Craigslist after the 2020 election calling on “patriots” in Georgia to “put a bullet” in three government officials has pleaded not guilty to a criminal charge.
Chad Stark and his attorney appeared briefly by video Friday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Russell Vineyard in Atlanta. Stark, 54, pleaded not guilty to one count of communicating interstate threats. He remains free on bond.
The Justice Department has said Stark's prosecution was the first criminal case brought by its new Election Threats Task Force that was created last summer. According to prosecutors, Stark posted a message on Jan. 5, 2021, titled: “Georgia Patriots it’s time to kill (Official A) the Chinese agent - $10,000."
The message stated, “Georgia Patriots it’s time for us to take back our state from these Lawless treasonous traitors.” It goes on to urge Georgia residents to “militia up” and calls for shooting the three officials as well as “corrupt” local and federal judges.
Prosecutors did not name the officials in documents filed in federal court in Georgia.
Former President Donald Trump has made repeated false claims that widespread fraud cost him the election, and some of his supporters have targeted election officials and workers in Georgia and elsewhere, making violent threats against them. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Texas-man-pleads-not-guilty-to-making-threats-16832006.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:22 | en | 0.965023 |
The Olympic flame is now burning in Beijing's Bird's Nest, poised in the center of an extremely unique cauldron that's shaped like a huge snowflake. Rather than an inferno, its flame comes from a single torch, and the identity of one of its lighters made a major political statement.
Winter Olympics opening ceremony director Zhang Yimou had promised the cauldron would "certainly be different" and would take people by surprise. And those are the impressions many people quickly shared — along with questions such as "Is that it?"
The large snowflake is made up of smaller snowflakes bearing participating countries' names. And while many viewers appreciated that symbolism, they often circled back to a larger debate over a small issue: the cauldron.
Both the Beijing 2022 and the Olympics' official tweets met with a wide range of responses, as some people criticized the cauldron, and others defended it as being part of a broader theme of putting on a less wasteful Olympics.
The Olympic cauldron is lit by Dinigeer Yilamujiang and Zhao Jiawen! 🔥
— Olympics (@Olympics) February 4, 2022
#StrongerTogether | #OpeningCeremony | #Beijing2022 pic.twitter.com/ATJjZVx3yQ
Beijing organizers called it "innovative and inspiring" — and in their tweet, they avoided calling it a cauldron altogether, simply stating, "The Olympic flame has been lit inside the beautiful snowflake" at the ceremony.
The snowflake then rose high above the stadium floor as a barrage of fireworks erupted over the Bird's Nest, creating the pattern of the Olympic rings.
The flame was placed inside the unusual cauldron by two young athletes: cross-country skier Dinigeer Yilamujiang, 20 — who was born in the Xinjiang autonomous region, according to her Olympic bio — and Zhao Jiawen, 21, who hails from Shanxi province and will compete in the Nordic combined (which includes cross-country and ski jumping).
The identity of the person who lights the Olympic cauldron is always a tightly guarded secret. Many observers had predicted China might select one of several high-profile gold medalists, such as retired speedskater Yang Yang or retired pairs figure skaters Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo.
Selecting Dinigeer Yilamujiang, who is originally from Xinjiang, to play such a prominent role was immediately seen as a rebuke from China toward the U.S. and others in the international community, who have repeatedly called out Beijing for its repressive policies toward the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang.
Uyghurs are a largely Muslim ethnic group. When the U.S. announced a diplomatic boycott of these Games in December, the White House cited the Chinese government's "ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity" in Xinjiang as the reason for its diplomatic boycott.
As NPR's Emily Feng recently reported:
"Since 2017, authorities in Xinjiang have rounded up hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs, a largely Muslim ethnic minority group, and sent them to detention centers where they are taught Mandarin Chinese and Chinese political ideology. Camp detainees have reported being forced to work in factories during their detention or after they are released. The children of those detained or arrested are often sent to state boarding schools, even when relatives are willing to take them in."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/the-beijing-winter-olympics-cauldron-lighting-made-a-political-statement | 2022-02-04T18:45:27 | en | 0.961588 |
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — UCLA men's basketball player Mac Etienne was arrested and cited on suspicion of misdemeanor assault after appearing to spit toward a fan after the Bruins lost a road game to Pac-12 rival Arizona, a University of Arizona police spokesman said Friday.
The alleged incident occurred Thursday night as UCLA players left the McKale Center playing floor and entered a tunnel to go to their locker room, said the spokesman, Officer Jesus Aguilar.
Etienne was allowed to go to the locker room and was then arrested, cited and released, Aguilar said.
Local media outlets reported that fans jeered UCLA players when the incident occurred. The Wildcats beat the Bruins 76-66.
UCLA officials knew of the incident and were reviewing it, university spokesman Scott Markley said in a statement.
“UCLA Athletics is committed to and expects the highest level of sportsmanship," the statement said.
Etienne, a redshirt freshman, was not in uniform and did not play in the game.
It wasn't immediately clear whether saliva landed on any fans but the misdemeanor assault charge alleges intent, Aguilar said.
“We did have a willing victim who did want to press charges," he said.
Etienne wasn't taken into custody or booked into jail but he will be expected to either appear in court on a future date or make alternative arrangements with court officials, Aguilar said.
“We had no reason to take him into custody," he said. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/UCLA-player-arrested-after-allegedly-spitting-at-16831781.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:28 | en | 0.982779 |
Core issue whether any state can restrict employment on domicile basis: Punjab and Haryana HC
- Country:
- India
The Punjab and Haryana High Court, which has granted stay on a Haryana law providing 75 per cent reservation in private sector jobs for the state's residents, has made it clear that the core issue for adjudication before it is whether any state can restrict employment, even in the private sector, on the basis of domicile.
''We have considered these arguments, but the core issue is whether any state can restrict employment (even in the private sector) on the basis of domicile,'' a bench comprising justices Ajay Tewari and Pankaj Jain said in the detailed order that stayed the implementation of the law.
The court had, on Thursday, passed the order on pleas filed by an industry body from Faridabad and some other associations, and the detailed order was released on Friday.
''In these circumstances, we are constrained to stay the implementation of the Act,'' the bench said.
It added that the counsel for the petitioners had prayed for interim relief.
On the question of stay, the solicitor general candidly conceded that the writ petitions involve substantial questions, but vehemently opposed the prayer for interim relief, the court said.
The solicitor general pointed out three facts, which according to him would have a material bearing on the matter, it pointed out.
''The first argument of the Solicitor General of India is that there is always a presumption of constitutionality of a statutory provision and though the writ court has ample jurisdiction to ultimately hold that a statutory provision is unconstitutional, yet interim orders should not be granted.
''His second argument is that there is an insinuation that this law would affect even existing employees, which is incorrect. The law is prospective and it saves all the existing staff,'' the bench said.
It noted that the solicitor general's third argument is that about 38,000 registered domicile workers and around 900 establishments have registered under the Act and this itself shows that only a handful of people are opposed to the implementation of the law.
The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear on February 7 the Haryana government's appeal challenging the high court order.
Tushar Sharma, the counsel for one of the petitioners, had on Thursday said they had challenged the vires of the Act in the high court.
''I was representing one of the petitioners -- IMT Manesar Association and Manesar Industrial Welfare Association. We were challenging the vires of the Act. We were saying this Act is unconstitutional, discriminatory and violative of the fundamental rights of our members and were seeking quashing of the Act. The high court admitted the petition,'' he had said.
The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act, 2020 provides for 75 per cent reservation in the private sector to job seekers having state domicile. It came into force on January 15 after being notified in November last year. It applies to jobs offering a maximum gross monthly salary or wages of Rs 30,000.
The Act is applicable to the employers of private sector companies, societies, trusts, limited liability partnership firms, partnership firms and anyone who employs 10 or more people on salary, wages or other remuneration for the purpose of manufacturing, carrying on business or rendering any service in Haryana.
In March 2021, Governor Bandaru Dattatreya had given his assent to the Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Bill, 2020.
Opposition parties have slammed the BJP-JJP government in the state over the move, with Congress leader Bhupinder Singh Hooda criticising the Manohar Lal Khattar dispensation on Thursday for its alleged failure ''to defend its own jumla of providing 75 per cent reservation to local youngsters before the courts''.
Haryana Congress chief Kumari Selja had said the intentions of the BJP-JJP government were doubtful from the very beginning.
''This is the reason why the government did not fight the case strongly in the court,'' she had said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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- Manohar Lal
- Bandaru Dattatreya
- India
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- Kumari Selja
- Bhupinder Singh Hooda
- Act
- BJP-JJP
- Faridabad
- Ajay Tewari
- Punjab
- Pankaj
- Congress
- the Act
- IMT Manesar Association
- Manesar Industrial Welfare Association
- Haryana High Court
- The Haryana State Employment of Local Candidates Act
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Congress constructed new things for families, this govt builds monuments of national importance: PM Modi | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910793-core-issue-whether-any-state-can-restrict-employment-on-domicile-basis-punjab-and-haryana-hc | 2022-02-04T18:45:28 | en | 0.952827 |
The House passed a bill Friday that Democrats say will increase U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and boost American competitiveness with China.
The America Competes Act passed, 222-210, largely along party lines.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the bill "will ensure that America is preeminent in manufacturing, innovation and economic strength and can outcompete any nation."
The bill has a number of provisions, including $52 billion to make chips, $45 billion to improve supply chains for critical items, and $160 billion for scientific research and innovation.
House Science Committee Chair Eddie Bernice Johnson told NPR that a major federal infusion in research is badly overdue — especially to help the U.S. go toe-to-toe with China.
"We've just got to compete. And we've got to hopefully feel like we're a little step ahead. And that's really a big goal," Johnson told NPR. "Because as you know, our society is very different in the kind of freedom versus communism type of behaviors."
Johnson said the legislation was also aimed at developing talent in the U.S. and fostering innovations in government labs that private companies could tap into for future products. Much of the research pieces in the bill, which has been in the works for years, included input from a range of private industry, academic experts and scientists who argue the U.S. needs a long term commitment to seeding future breakthroughs that will prevent more jobs and manufacturing from moving overseas.
Florida Republican Congressman Daniel Webster told NPR he backed the research agenda, but felt the House bill concentrated to much of the effort at the federal level.
"We're trying to get something that is less government and more open private sector. What they're doing is basically trying to get a government funded program to decide all the things that are happening. Just not going to go for that," he said.
Many House Republicans defended their vote against the bill saying it did not do enough to counter China, is loaded up with other priorities, such as clean energy, and would worsen inflation.
The bill is the House's reply to $250 billion bipartisan competition bill, the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, the Senate passed last June.
The two chambers will spend the next weeks hammering out the differences between the two bill and eventually send it to President Biden's desk.
While the Senate bill also has more than $50 billion for chip manufacturing, but takes a different approach in how the about $250 billion it has earmarked for scientific research should be used.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who helped broker the bipartisan deal in the Senate which garnered the support of 19 Republicans, downplayed the differences between the two bills.
"The framework they set up and the framework we set up are not that far apart," he said. "I believe all the gaps are very bridgeable."
Schumer said investments in American manufacturing is long overdue. Proponents of the bill, however, admitted that it will still take some time to see the impact of the federal investments.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-02-04/the-house-passed-a-bill-aimed-at-boosting-u-s-competitiveness-with-china | 2022-02-04T18:45:34 | en | 0.966692 |
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — The Louisiana Workforce Commission is launching a new program to help combat the nationwide truck driver shortage.
The “Drive Your Future” training grant offers those who qualify a chance to participate in a five-week apprenticeship that, if completed, will result in the student obtaining a commercial driver’s license, WBRZ-TV reported. The program comes at no cost to the student. The LWC pays for classes at accredited truck driving schools.
“We’ve devoted substantial funding to this effort to make sure that we can put CDL drivers on the road to help with delivering goods all across the country,” said Ava Cates, secretary at the LWC.
Starting wages range from $40,000 to $60,000 annually, Cates said.
“We’re looking for those individuals that are just getting into the workforce, maybe haven’t been in the workforce, and those looking for a new career as well so the sky is the limit,” she said.
Anyone interested in the program can find an application here. Classes begin in mid-February. | https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/Workforce-Commission-launches-program-for-16831988.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:35 | en | 0.961827 |
Physical hearing to resume in Madras HC
- Country:
- India
Hearing of cases would be on physical, virtual and hybrid mode with effect from February 7 subject to strict adherence of COVID-19 norms, the Madras High Court Registrar General said on Friday.
''Hearing of cases will be on physical/virutual/hybrid mode, subject to strict adherence of COVID-19 safety protocol such as maintaining social distancing, wearing of mask, frequent hand wash etc,'' said a notification issued by Registrar General P Dhanabal.
In view of decline in Omicron variant/COVID cases in Tamil Nadu, the Acting Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari issued directions with regard to functioning of the High Court both at the principal seat here and at the Madurai Bench with effect from February 7, the notification said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- READ MORE ON:
- High Court
- COVID
- Omicron
- Munishwar Nath Bhandari
- Madurai Bench
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China daily local confirmed COVID cases fall to nearly two-month low | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910794-physical-hearing-to-resume-in-madras-hc | 2022-02-04T18:45:36 | en | 0.927255 |
Blinken to visit Asia to emphasize commitment despite Ukraine crisis
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken goes to Asia next week for talks with Indo-Pacific allies, including a meeting of foreign ministers of the four-nation Quad, the State Department said on Friday. Blinken is making the trip despite the mounting crisis over Ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/first-us-reinforcement-troops-europe-arrive-germany-2022-02-04 and policy analysts say the aim is to show the Indo-Pacific region support and that pushing back against China's expanding influence remains Washington's top priority.
Blinken will leave Washington on Monday and be in Australia from Feb.9-12 for the meeting of the Quad - the United States, Japan, India and Australia. Blinken will then meet Pacific Island leaders in Fiji before heading to Hawaii to confer with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts to discuss the North Korea issue.
The State Department said the purpose of the trip was "to engage Indo-Pacific allies and partners to advance peace, resilience, and prosperity across the region and demonstrate that these partnerships deliver." The trip was announced even as China and Russia proclaimed a deep strategic partnership https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/sports/putin-xi-mix-politics-sport-unveiling-alliance-olympics-2022-02-04 on Friday to balance what they portrayed as the malign global influence of the United States.
The State Department said that in Fiji on Feb. 12 Blinken would discuss the climate crisis, COVID-19, disaster assistance, and "ways to further our shared commitment to democracy, regional solidarity, and prosperity" with Pacific Island leaders. He will be the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Fiji since 1985.
A senior U.S. official has said President Joe Biden's administration plans to start a new Pacific Islands initiative with allies and partners that would bring together regional countries to "raise our ambition in the region, including on climate, maritime, and transportation issues." The official said it would at the same time finalize negotiations on Compacts of Free Association: agreements with three Pacific Island countries - the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau - that facilitate U.S. military access. They are due to expire in 2023 in the case of the former two states and in 2024 in the case of Palau.
U.S. Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell has said that the Pacific could be the part of the world most likely to see "strategic surprise" - comments apparently referring to possible Chinese ambitions to establish Pacific-island bases. Washington had not done enough to assist the region and that there was a very short amount of time, Campbell said, to work with Australia, New Zealand, Japan and fellow Pacific power France, "to step up our game across the board."
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910801-blinken-to-visit-asia-to-emphasize-commitment-despite-ukraine-crisis | 2022-02-04T18:45:44 | en | 0.944365 |
Joe Burrow knew Evan McPherson must be a special kicker if the Cincinnati Bengals were willing to spend a fifth-round pick on a position usually filled by undrafted players and journeyman.
But the Bengals targeted McPherson and made him the only kicker taken in the 2021 draft, a decision that has been validated by one of the NFL's greatest postseason kicking runs.
“Obviously kickers aren’t usually drafted that high, but I figured if we’re drafting a kicker, he’s going to be really good for us,” Burrow said this week. “Then I met Evan and you kind of know how a kicker is going to perform based on how he reacts and interacts with people in the locker room. All the kickers can kick it and put it through the uprights, but it’s really how you handle the intense situations that’s going to really make or break your reputation as a kicker.”
McPherson survived the friendly ribbing from his new teammates and dished it back himself, showing the Bengals he was ready for the NFL. But nothing has been more intense — and no performance has been better than McPherson has done so far in the playoffs.
He has been perfect on kicks through three games, making four field goals in each win and delivering walk-off kicks on the road the past two weeks to beat Tennessee and Kansas City and send Cincinnati to the Super Bowl.
“He’s been everything that we expected him to be and and then some,” special teams coach Darrin Simmons said. “But his mental makeup is fantastic. It’s exactly what you’re looking for in that position.”
McPherson's 12 field goals so far are two shy of Adam Vinatieri's record from the 2006 postseason and he already has as many four field-goal games in the playoffs as any player ever, tying the record Vinatieri set in his 24-year career.
McPherson's 12 field goals from at least 50 yards are the most in a single regular season and playoffs combined, and his three makes from long range in the playoffs are two shy of Vinatieri's record.
Longtime NFL kicker and CBS kicking analyst Jay Feely said the only postseason he would put ahead of McPherson's is what Vinatieri did in the 2001 season when he made “the greatest kick of all time,” a 45-yarder in the snow to force overtime against the Raiders. Vinatieri then made a 23-yarder to win that game, and a walk-off 48-yarder to beat the Rams in the Super Bowl.
But McPherson is doing this as a rookie under the bright playoff lights.
“A little bit of it is he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know,” Feely said. “So he’s just out there having fun. He hasn’t had the big misses. He did have the one game against Green Bay where he missed, but he was able to overcome that. That’s what defines great NFL kickers is their ability to overcome failure, to not allow it deter him. That’s the point this season where your entire rookie year could go off the rails and it could make you not be confident in yourself and your swing starts to change, especially when you’re a draft pick.”
McPherson missed three field goals in his first five games, including two in an OT loss to Green Bay in Week 5. He even memorably celebrated one of those misses as if he had made a game-winner.
But he has nailed 35 of 37 field goals since then, validating the scouting report Simmons got from his former kicker Shayne Graham, who coached McPherson in college at Florida.
“He talked to me a lot about what Evan’s makeup was and how confident he was without being cocky, and that’s an important differentiation to make,” Simmons said. “You want these guys to have short-term memory that if good or bad, that they live to perform in the next kick. The most important kick is not the last kick, it’s the next kick.”
The Bengals have marked McPherson's winning kicks the past two weeks with Tweets, saying “THAT’S WHY YOU DRAFT A KICKER!”
But Feely said he doesn't expect McPherson's success to lead to a run on kickers going in the draft. He said determining which kickers have the fortitude to succeed like McPherson and which ones will flame out like Tampa Bay 2016 second-round pick Roberto Aguayo is nearly impossible to know.
“I think it’s really hard to draft a kicker and be successful," Feely said. “I think it’s difficult for a personnel department to be able to look at a guy no matter where he played, no matter what level, and determine if he has the ability mentally and the mental makeup to come into the NFL to succeed.”
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More AP Super Bowl coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Bengals-rookie-kicker-McPherson-on-record-playoff-16832169.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:49 | en | 0.983387 |
Ukrainian troops hold drills with US missiles as military aid shipments continue
Soldiers, some in white camouflage gear, fired missiles or stood observing, while military vehicles drove across a snowy landscape. Ukraine has received planeloads of U.S. military aid as it braces for a possible attack after Russia massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine's borders in recent weeks.
- Country:
- Ukraine
Ukrainian troops on Friday trained at the Yavoriv military base in western Ukraine, using anti-tank missiles, launchers and other military hardware delivered by the United States as part of a $200 million security package. Soldiers, some in white camouflage gear, fired missiles or stood observing, while military vehicles drove across a snowy landscape.
Ukraine has received planeloads of U.S. military aid as it braces for a possible attack after Russia massed tens of thousands of troops near Ukraine's borders in recent weeks. Moscow denies planning any such offensive. "These weapons will help stop military vehicles, damage them and in the urban environment they will allow us to destroy buildings where the enemy hides," said Andriy Bestyuk, spokesman for the General Staff of the Ukrainian army.
"If you want peace, get ready for war," said one soldier, whose face was covered and did not disclose his name. Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov on Friday evening said that the next planeload of U.S. weapons was expected to arrive soon. (Editing by Matthias Williams; editing by Diane Craft)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Russian defence minister invites British counterpart to Moscow - report | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910802-ukrainian-troops-hold-drills-with-us-missiles-as-military-aid-shipments-continue | 2022-02-04T18:45:51 | en | 0.959103 |
BEIJING (AP) — Brittany Bowe was having quite an Olympics — before she even hit the ice.
First, she claimed another speedskating race in Beijing — or, more appropriately, reclaimed it — when a third spot opened up for the Americans in the 500 meters.
Then, Bowe was selected to be one of the U.S. flagbearers in Friday night's opening ceremony at the Bird's Nest stadium after the original choice, bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor, was forced into isolation by a positive COVID-19 test.
“It's a shame that Elana can't do it because we all felt she was the deserving front-runner to have that honor,” U.S. speedskating coach Ryan Shimabukuro said after Friday's training session at the Ice Ribbon oval, which Bowe skipped to rest up for her evening duties.
"But Brittany is obviously taking that responsibility seriously and she's going to lead that delegation like the champion she is. I think there's no better runner-up than Brittany to do that."
Bowe, a six-time world champion and bronze medalist at the 2018 Winter Games, finished first in the 500 at the U.S. trials last month. But she gave up her Olympic spot after event favorite Erin Jackson slipped in her heat and shockingly finished third overall.
At the time, the Americans only had two guaranteed spots in the event, so Bowe withdrew to ensure that Jackson got a chance to skate in Beijing.
However, the U.S. picked up a third skater after the International Skating Union recently issued its final allotments.
So Bowe is back in, joining Jackson and Kimi Goetz.
Jackson, the first Back woman to win a World Cup race, is one of the gold-medal favorites in the 500.
Bowe's best races are the 1,000 and 1,500, both of which are considered strong medal possibilities for the 33-year-old Floridian.
But she's no slouch in the 500, which made her original withdrawal all the more poignant to Jackson and Bowe's other teammates.
“All things considered, to give up an opportunity for a medal is insane,” Joey Mantia said with a smile after his training session. ”What she did was absolutely crazy. I think it’s an amazing gesture that she was able to bring herself to do, and not knowing for sure if she was going to get that spot or not because our criteria for how we get spots is a little open-ended up until the last minute.”
To Mantia, that made it all the more fitting that Bowe got a chance to carry the U.S. flag along with curler John Shuster.
“She definitely deserves it,” Mantia said. “We were pushing hard for her, so it was really nice to see that.”
___
Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at https://twitter.com/pnewberry1963 and find his work at https://apnews.com/search/paulnewberry
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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Bowe-having-quite-an-Olympics-before-she-even-16832095.php | 2022-02-04T18:45:55 | en | 0.978751 |
WRAPUP 4-Olympics-Beijing Games burst into life under shadow of COVID and conflict
Chinese President Xi Jinping opened a Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday that not only bear the mark of the global coronavirus pandemic but are also mixing sport and global politics as few others have since the era of the Cold War. The scintillating opening ceremony ended with a member of China's Uyghur minority - whose treatment is the focus of international human rights criticism - helping to light the Olympic cauldron, hours after Xi announced a new strategic alliance with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Chinese President Xi Jinping opened a Beijing Winter Olympics on Friday that not only bear the mark of the global coronavirus pandemic but are also mixing sport and global politics as few others have since the era of the Cold War.
The scintillating opening ceremony ended with a member of China's Uyghur minority - whose treatment is the focus of international human rights criticism - helping to light the Olympic cauldron, hours after Xi announced a new strategic alliance with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin. Three thousand performers took to a stage comprising 11,600 sq metres of high-definition LED screens in the famed Bird's Nest stadium, before a crowd thinned out by COVID-19 restrictions.
Dancers poured in waving glowing green stalks to mark the first day of spring on the Chinese calendar, followed by an explosion of white and green fireworks that spelled the word "Spring". On a three-dimensional cube resembling a block of ice, lasers carved figures from each of the previous 23 Winter Games. The block was then "broken" by ice hockey players, enabling the Olympic rings to emerge, all in white.
The lighting of the stadium cauldron by the last athlete in the torch relay, their identity kept secret until the last moment, usually provides the climax at the end of the Olympic opening ceremony, and this one proved especially significant. Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a 20-year-old cross-country skier born in Altay in the western Xinjiang region, lit the flame along with Nordic combined athlete Zhao Jiawen.
China's treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang - which Washington deems genocide - was the trigger for a diplomatic boycott by several Western countries including the United States. ETHNIC GROUPS
China rejects allegations of human rights abuses and sought to convey a spirit of inclusion during the ceremony, in which the Chinese flag was passed among 56 people representing its ethnic groups before being raised for the national anthem. The ceremony was staged by movie director Zhang Yimou, reprising his role from Beijing's 2008 Summer Games triumph.
But as in Japan half a year ago, the COVID-19 pandemic imposed severe constraints, not least by paring down the number of visitors able to see the spectacle in person. With China still sticking to a "zero Covid" policy despite the Omicron variant spreading fast across the globe, organisers decided last month not to sell tickets to the public, kept outside a "closed loop" of competitors and other personnel.
Though smaller in scale than the 2008 Games - dubbed China's "coming out party" - the Beijing Winter Olympics are being staged by a China that is much more prosperous, powerful, confident and confrontational under Xi. Hours before they began, Xi and Putin unveiled their alliance https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-china-tell-nato-stop-expansion-moscow-backs-beijing-taiwan-2022-02-04, proclaiming a "no limits" friendship between their countries.
It was a stark reminder of a backdrop of geopolitical rivalry unseen since the tit-for-tat Cold War boycotts of the 1980s, when the United States refused to attend the Olympics in Moscow and the Soviet Union stayed away from Los Angeles. With tensions on both sides of the Eurasian land mass at their highest for decades, Putin and Xi publicly took each other's sides over a range of grievances, most notably Ukraine, where the West accuses Putin of preparing for war.
MUTUAL SUPPORT The Russian leader - who hosted his own Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, days before sending troops to seize Ukraine's Crimean peninsula - thanked Xi for inviting him, adding: "We know first-hand that this is a huge job."
In a joint Russian-Chinese statement https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-tells-xi-new-deal-that-could-sell-more-russian-gas-china-2022-02-04, Beijing backed Russia's longstanding call for NATO to halt its expansion - Moscow's central demand in a dispute with Western countries that say they believe Putin is preparing for war in Ukraine. Russia, which has deployed more than 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian frontier, denies planning to invade but says it could take unspecified military action unless its security demands are met.
Moscow, for its part, said it fully supported Beijing's stance on Taiwan and opposed Taiwanese independence in any form. International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach urged the world's political leaders to observe an "Olympic truce" and "give peace a chance".
But political leaders from the United States and other Western countries were absent, having cited persecution of the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities, which Beijing denies. Rights groups accuse China of torture, forced labour and detention of 1 million people in internment camps in Xinjiang.
China calls them re-education and training facilities, says it is fighting religious extremism, and denies abuses. "By selecting a Uyghur athlete to light the torch, China is trying to address criticism by the West about genocide or persecution of the Uyghurs, and about sinocisation of ethnic minorities," said Ma Haiyun, an expert on Xinjiang and an associate professor at Frostburg State University in Maryland.
"But I don't think this can have much effect on the West, which tends to think most of what China puts up is a show anyway."
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Chinese President Xi Jinping to launch Beijing Winter Olympics with Vladimir Putin, Imran Khan | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910811-wrapup-4-olympics-beijing-games-burst-into-life-under-shadow-of-covid-and-conflict | 2022-02-04T18:45:59 | en | 0.947641 |
GENEVA (AP) — The dissident Chinese architect behind the Beijing stadium hosting Friday’s opening ceremony of the Winter Games has scoffed at the head of the U.N. health agency, saying China should award him “a gold medal” for not asking hard questions about its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ai Weiwei, possibly China’s best-known dissident, aired criticism of Beijing’s human rights record and response to the pandemic, in an interview with The Associated Press Friday, in which he also took aim at World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Ai also accused governments of showing too much deference to China for business or political interests.
He chuckled derisively after hearing that Tedros had posted a photo on Twitter showing himself in a red-and-white “Beijing 2022” winter track suit and matching wool cap as he carried the Olympic flame during the torch relay in China.
“My God. He should get a gold medal from China because he never asked the right question,” Ai said in a video conversation. “Where is his conscience, this guy? You know, all those people who are supposed to defend the human health and give the right information, but never ask the right question and (are) always on the side of the propaganda.”
“They’re so ridiculous.”
Under Tedros, the WHO came in for severe criticism from then U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in 2020 for its alleged missteps and excessive deference to, and praise for, China when the COVID-19 pandemic first appeared in the city of Wuhan some two years ago.
Tedros, in his tweet on Friday, wrote that he was “humbled” to participate in the torch relay.
“The Olympic Games are about hope & I wish for this flame to bring hope to people around the world that we can end #COVID19 together,” he wrote, while thanking the IOC president for the invitation.
Above all, Ai highlighted the Chinese government’s poor human rights record, saying hopes that it might have improved since Beijing hosted the 2008 Summer Games have gone unfulfilled.
“I think it’s really, really unbelievable after 14 years of this — this game, same game — we turn to the same country, a country (that has) not developed an inch towards better human rights and the better freedom of speech conditions, but rather become very arrogant,” Ai said.
He said the Chinese Communist Party’s government has brainwashed fellow citizens of his homeland who “kind of show their patriotic support for the party,” and said any comments that stray from that on social media like China’s Weibo “will disappear.”
Ai also took aim at the International Olympic Committee, saying the Games means “big business for them.” He said the IOC “never protected” human rights and has shown itself to “always defend … whatever China is doing — which is a pity.”
Ai didn’t give a pass to other countries either — both those like Russia, which were represented at the highest official levels, and some Western countries which boycotted the Games or decided to stay away for reasons like COVID-19 concerns. He faulted them for a double standard.
“They very, like, softly say, ‘we are not officially attending.’ For me, that is like a joke,” AI said. “So the West, the problem is, cannot find a better strategy, but to use that as like a smoke gun to say, ‘O.K., we’re defending those principles.’”
“But in the reality, they are not: They are business as normal,” he added. “Many countries are hypocritical.”
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More AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Chinese-dissident-Ai-voices-criticism-as-Winter-16832185.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:01 | en | 0.971563 |
Macron hopes for rewards but faces risks in Moscow trip to see Putin
The trip, coordinated with Washington and Berlin, is part of diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions after Russia massed some 100,000 troops near Ukraine and demanded NATO and U.S. security guarantees, including that NATO never admit Kyiv as a member. For Macron, it will be a chance to showcase his leadership credentials ahead of his expected re-election bid in April, while trying to get concessions from Putin, especially in talks to end the pro-Russian separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014.
French President Emmanuel Macron heads to talks with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday hoping to ensure Europe gets a say in broader U.S.-Russian negotiations over Ukraine, but risks embarrassment if he returns empty-handed.
France, Russia and Ukraine have had numerous phone conversations over the past 10 days that culminated on Friday with Macron's office confirming that he would travel to Moscow and the Ukrainian capital Kyiv on Feb. 7 and 8. The trip, coordinated with Washington and Berlin, is part of diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions after Russia massed some 100,000 troops near Ukraine and demanded NATO and U.S. security guarantees, including that NATO never admit Kyiv as a member.
For Macron, it will be a chance to showcase his leadership credentials ahead of his expected re-election bid in April, while trying to get concessions from Putin, especially in talks to end the pro-Russian separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. "The Russians gave us signals so we have to jump on them... In a way we're calling their bluff," said a senior French official. "But whether we can get anything, nobody can predict. What it does is help to gain time and reduce these tensions."
Macron aims to capitalise on limited progress made during four-way "Normandy format" peace talks on Ukraine in Paris last month. He hopes to get a commitment from Putin to continue the talks and dial down tensions on the Russia-Ukraine border, two sources close to Macron said. "We're heading to Putin's lair, in many ways it's a throw of the dice," one source close to Macron told Reuters.
A French presidential official told reporters on Friday that Macron would see what could be negotiated to reduce Russia's military build-up so that it was in a less threatening posture and thus help to start defusing tensions. The Kremlin has made clear the priority of the talks will be Moscow's demands for security guarantees from the West.
"Putin doesn't need to offer Macron anything because for him the negotiation is with the Americans," said a former French envoy to the region, adding that Putin was likely to use the session with Macron to play divide and rule between NATO allies. Since taking power in 2017, Macron has nurtured relationships with what Western diplomats say are awkward leaders such as Putin, receiving him at the Palace of Versailles and his summer retreat in Bregancon with much fanfare as he sought a reset of relations with Moscow.
IRRITATED EASTERN COUNTRIES But Macron has had scant success and his efforts to establish a strategic dialogue with Putin have often irritated some eastern European and Baltic partners who have bemoaned his lack of transparency and coordination.
French officials say they have learnt from previous errors of judgment to ensure European Union and NATO allies are kept fully in the loop. The French presidency has been calling EU partners to brief them ahead of Macron's trip but three EU diplomats said the contacts lacked substance, focusing more on just re-engaging with Putin and showing solidarity with Kyiv. Macron's pending visit to Moscow has also raised eyebrows among Western leaders backing Ukraine in its volatile standoff with Russia.
While German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will host three Baltic leaders in Berlin before going first to Kyiv and then Moscow for talks, Macron will head first to Russia, a choice that has disappointed Ukrainian officials. "The optics for Macron's internal politics ahead of the election are good because they show the French he is 'saving the world,' but we don't like the methods," said a senior official from an eastern European nation.
"There's always a lack of transparency and coordination, which is ironic as they (France) are always asking for transparency from the Americans." The French presidential official defended Paris' stance. "The problem we have today, it's in Moscow that it needs to be solved..., it's not in Kyiv. So we go to Moscow to solve the problem," he said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — Iowa men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday and will miss the Hawkeyes' home game against Minnesota on Sunday.
Assistant Billy Taylor will serve as the acting head coach in McCaffery’s absence.
Iowa (14-7, 4-6 Big Ten) has lost three of its last four games. The Hawkeyes' game at Ohio State that was scheduled for Thursday was postponed because of inclement weather.
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More AP college basketball: http://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and http://www.twitter.com/AP_Top25 | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Iowa-s-Fran-McCaffery-will-miss-Sunday-game-with-16832034.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:07 | en | 0.968002 |
BEIJING (AP) — The first day of medals at the Beijing Olympics could be the start of another Norwegian gold rush.
Aleksander Aamodt Kilde is among the favorites in the men's downhill — one of the marquee events of NBC's prime-time coverage Saturday — and fellow Norwegian Therese Johaug looks poised to add to the three Olympic medals she's already won in cross-country skiing. Norway led all nations with 39 medals at Pyeongchang four years ago, including 14 golds.
The U.S., of course, has its share of contenders. Snowboarder Jamie Anderson is trying for a third straight slopestyle gold, and the final is Saturday night. The team figure skating competition resumes that evening, too. The Americans lead that after a strong start by Nathan Chen and Co.
Here are some things to watch (all times Eastern):
ALPINE SKIING
The world's top downhill racers had little time to familiarize themselves with the Rock course after test events were canceled because of the pandemic.
“For everybody it is new, us athletes as well as the coaches," Switzerland's Marco Odermatt said. “It’s a big challenge for the whole team to find a perfect setup.”
The downhill will be shown live on NBC and Peacock. It’s scheduled to start at 10 p.m.
Kilde, the World Cup leader, is dating American star Mikaela Shiffrin.
FIGURE SKATING
The U.S. leads the powerful Russians and third-place China so far in the team competition. Chen won the men's short program, and Madison Hubbell and Zachary Donohue did the same in the rhythm dance.
Up next are the women's short program and men's free skate. NBC is airing that part of the team event live in prime time.
“We have a really strong team, so we have a lot of chess pieces to play with,” Chen said. "Whatever is the strongest piece at that time is the strongest piece at that time.”
SNOWBOARDING
USA Network is showing men's and women's slopestyle live Saturday night. The final runs of the women's competition are followed by qualifying for the men. NBC will include encore coverage of the women's final on its late-night slate.
The U.S. swept slopestyle snowboarding in 2018, with Anderson and Red Gerard both winning.
The slopestyle course in Zhangjiakou includes a snow replica of the Great Wall that serves as a backdrop for the rails and jumps athletes will navigate.
NORWEGIAN STAR
Johaug won gold in a relay in 2010 and took two more cross-country skiing medals in 2014. She missed the 2018 Games following a doping ban, but the 14-time world champion is back now. The skiathlon — an event that includes both classical and freestyle techniques — is live on USA Network on Saturday morning with encore coverage on NBC in the afternoon.
ALSO OF NOTE
Of the 13 gold medals China has won at the Winter Games, 10 were in short track speedskating. The hosts have high hopes again in that sport, and the first short track medal will be awarded in the mixed team relay. USA Network is showing that final during its 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. time slot, and NBC will air it in prime time. ... Canada's Mikael Kingsbury is the defending champ in men's moguls. USA Network will show qualifying and the final live Saturday morning, and the final will also be shown as part of NBC's late-night coverage. ... The U.S. women's hockey team, which began defending its Olympic title with a win over Finland, faces the Russians live on USA Network at 8:10 a.m. That game will be shown again at 5 p.m. on the same channel.
___
Follow Noah Trister at www.Twitter.com/noahtrister
___
More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Men-s-downhill-highlights-first-day-of-Olympic-16832057.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:13 | en | 0.966458 |
Lethal US raid on IS encounters a doll, crib, bomb, bullets
So was the paraphernalia of violence such as the bomb Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi is said by US officials to have used to blow up himself, his family and perhaps others in his immediate proximity.It was an audacious raid in an extremist stronghold of northwest Syria, months in the works and executed with the understanding that children might die as well as the hunted IS chief if the buildings occupants did not get out when given the chance to leave.The apparent suicide bombing came before or early in a two-hour gun battle Thursday.
- Country:
- United States
When helicopters carrying some 50 US commandos thumped onto the ground in Syria an hour after midnight, the raiders confronted a houseful of extremists and children.
Baby comforts were inside — a stuffed bunny, a blue plastic swing, a crib. So was the paraphernalia of violence — such as the bomb Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi is said by US officials to have used to blow up himself, his family and perhaps others in his immediate proximity.
It was an audacious raid in an extremist stronghold of northwest Syria, months in the works and executed with the understanding that children might die as well as the hunted IS chief if the building's occupants did not get out when given the chance to leave.
The apparent suicide bombing came before or early in a two-hour gun battle Thursday. First responders said 13 people died, six of them children. No US commandos were wounded, military officials said.
President Joe Biden, who ordered the raid, said the world is rid of a man he described as the driving force behind the “genocide of the Yazidi people in northwestern Iraq in 2014,'' when slaughters wiped out villages, thousands of women and young girls were sold into slavery and rape was used as a weapon of war.
“Thanks to the bravery of our troops, this horrible terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said.
The preparation Over months of planning, US intelligence first had to locate al-Qurayshi's whereabouts and understand his movements — or lack thereof. Officials concluded he rarely, if ever, left his family's third-floor quarters except to bathe on the building's roof. Anticipating that al-Qurayshi could well choose death by self-detonation if cornered by US. forces, U.S. officials commissioned an engineering study-from-afar of the three-story, cinder-block building to see if it would collapse in that event and kill everyone inside.
They concluded that enough of the building was likely to survive such a blast to spare those not near him.
They constructed a tabletop model of the house and in December set it up in the Situation Room, the ultra-secure White House command and communications post where presidents and their national security aides manage crises. The second floor of the Syrian house, also white, was occupied by a lower-ranking Islamic State leader and his family. The ground floor, partly a basement, housed a family unconnected to the Islamic State and unaware of al-Qurayshi's presence or significance, US officials said.
Biden was first briefed in depth more than a month ago by operational commanders after US forces were satisfied they would find al-Qurayshi — also known as Haji Abdullah — where they did.
The Islamic State, which once controlled most of the territory in Iraq and parts of Syria, has been attempting to regenerate, and staged its most ambitious operation in years when it seized a prison in northeast Syria last month holding at least 3,000 IS detainees. US-backed Kurdish forces fought IS militants for 10 days to take back the prison, and a watchdog organization reported Friday that hundreds of boys who'd been held there are missing.
For all his brinkmanship with Russia as it amasses its forces for a possible new invasion of Ukraine, Biden could not afford to take his eyes off IS.
On Tuesday morning, he met Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Oval Office and gave the go-ahead. Wednesday evening in Washington, Biden was in the Situation Room, monitoring a live feed of the mission as it unfolded.
The mission At his refugee camp near the raid, Jamil el-Deddo heard aircraft and an explosion ripping through the night and thought at first it might be the notorious barrel bombs “that used to be dropped on us.” President Bashar Assad's forces used the explosives-packed barrels against opponents during the Syrian conflict, inflicting indiscriminate death and injury.
“The first moments were terrifying,'' el-Deddo told AP. “No one knew what was happening.” The US launched the raid from a unidentified base in the region after having “deconflicted” the mission with “a range of entities.'' That's jargon for giving certain other military forces or interests in the region — perhaps Russia — notice of a US operation underway.
At the outset, the building's occupants were told to get out.
“If you don't leave, we have orders,'' a man speaking with Iraqi dialect could be heard saying through a loudspeaker. “We will fire missiles toward the house. There are drones overhead.” Ten people left the building, said Pentagon spokesman John Kirby — a man and woman from the first floor and eight children in all from the first and second.
Not long after came the explosion that collapsed much of the third story and blew bodies out of the house, al-Qurayshi's among them. Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of US Central Command, said the blast was more massive than one that would be expected from a suicide vest.
From the second floor, the barricaded IS lieutenant, whom officials did not identify, and a woman thought to be his wife exchanged sustained gunfire with the commandos, US officials said. Both died in the firefight, US officials said, and one child with them was also found dead, McKenzie said.
The special operations forces conducting the mission faced danger from outside the building as well.
While the commandos were clearing the second floor, a number of foreign fighters linked to al-Qaida in Syria “began maneuvering with weapons toward US forces” at the scene, McKenzie said. Gunfire from a US helicopter killed at least two of them, he said.
Another helicopter developed a significant malfunction, McKenzie said. After landing it safely, away from the scene, the Americans rigged it to explode, then struck it with munitions from the air to be doubly sure ''no sensitive equipment would remain in Syria.” Videos released by the Syrian opposition group Syrian Civil Defense, also known as White Helmets, showed a paramedic rushing a little girl from the house into an ambulance. A photo of a girl circulated on social media later showing a girl who appeared to be about five with blood on her face.
When the commandos safely departed, Biden uttered “God bless our troops,” according to a US official who briefed the press on condition of anonymity. Biden was kept abreast of their long flight out of Syria overnight by Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser.
Aftermath In images afterward, blood could be seen on the walls and floor in what remains of the structure. A wrecked bedroom had a wooden crib and the stuffed rabbit doll. On one damaged wall, the baby swing was still hanging. In the fog-of-war aftermath, there was no immediate accounting from the US of how many children died in all, and how. The White House attributed the deaths of three of the children to al-Qurayshi's blast while the Pentagon spoke of two, both leaving unexplained, for now, how many might have been killed in the firefight. Biden said US forces chose a riskier commando raid instead of an attack from the air so as to minimise civilian casualties.
Yet the US launched the operation knowing the IS leader might respond by killing innocent people around him as well as himself. McKenzie said the US “as always” will look into whether innocent people were killed by its forces.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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ISIS chief al-Qurayshi killed in counterterrorism operation in Syria
White House: Looking at options to lower gas prices for Americans | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910825-lethal-us-raid-on-is-encounters-a-doll-crib-bomb-bullets | 2022-02-04T18:46:14 | en | 0.978117 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A suspect was arrested in an altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan in a parking lot outside SoFi Stadium during last weekend’s NFC championship game between the 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams, authorities said Friday.
A 33-year-old man was arrested for investigation of assault by means to produce great bodily injury and was released on $30,000 bail, Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. told a press conference.
Investigators traced the suspect through a vehicle at the scene and after the suspect declined to come in, they went to him and he voluntarily came to the police station where he was advised of his rights, Butts said.
The mayor said the case will be presented to prosecutors.
The 49ers fan, Daniel Luna, 40, had to be put into a medically induced coma after he was punched, fell and struck his head on the ground, according to Butts. The mayor said Friday that Luna's condition had neither improved nor degraded.
Butts said police sought the man who threw a punch in a brief fight based on a blurry video and the license plate of a car.
Luna, who owns a restaurant in Oakland, was mingling in a crowd of about 16 people at SoFi Stadium, most of them wearing what appeared to be 49ers jerseys, when he pushed a man wearing a Rams jersey from behind, Butts said Thursday after viewing the video.
Before that, Butts said, “there didn’t seem to be any hostilities.”
When Luna turned to walk away, the man pushed Luna back, the mayor said. When Luna turned, the man punched him in the mouth, causing Luna to fall to the ground and hit the back of his head, Butts said, estimating that the encounter lasted less than five seconds.
“It looked like a small altercation that went very bad,” he said. “From one punch and someone falling, hitting their head on the ground. It wasn’t like you had people ganging up on somebody and beating them.”
Luna’s face was fractured and he was placed in a medically induced coma to prevent internal bleeding from swelling his brain, Butts said.
The mayor said the video isn’t clear enough to provide a description of the suspect but he was seen talking to some people in a car. Security won’t be increased because of the incident, the mayor said.
“I’m very comfortable there was sufficient security” in the parking lot, he said. “There is plenty of security in the parking lot. You’re not going to stop every altercation, argument between fans. It’s just not going to happen.”
The Rams beat the 49ers on Sunday 20-17 to advance to the Super Bowl, where they will play the Cincinnati Bengals on Feb. 13.
The attack was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Police-Arrest-in-altercation-that-badly-injured-16831849.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:20 | en | 0.984675 |
Journalist arrested in J&K for uploading 'anti-national' content on social media
How many Fahads will you arrest she wrote on Twitter.
- Country:
- India
A journalist in Jammu and Kashmir was arrested for allegedly uploading anti-national content on social media with a ''criminal intention'' to provoke the public to disturb law and order, police said on Friday.
Fahad Shah, an editor of a news portal, was arrested after a case was registered by police in Pulwama district in south Kashmir.
''It was reliably learnt by the Pulwama police that some Facebook users and portals were uploading anti-national content, including photographs, videos and posts, with a criminal intention to create fear among the public and the content so uploaded can provoke the public to disturb law and order,'' a police spokesperson said.
He said it was also learnt that these Facebook users were uploading posts glorifying terrorist activities and causing dent to the image of law-enforcing agencies, besides causing ill-will and disaffection against the country.
''As the aforementioned activities by some of the Facebook users amount to commission of cognizable offences, the Pulwama police registered a case vide FIR No. 19/2022 under the relevant sections of law and initiated an investigation,'' the spokesperson said.
Shah was arrested during the course of the investigation, he said, adding that the accused is in police custody.
Shah was earlier questioned by police after the news portal uploaded a story based on a claim by the family of a terrorist, who was killed in an encounter in the Naira area of Pulwama on January 30.
Four ultras were killed in the encounter, police had said, but the family of one of the slain terrorists had claimed that their kin was innocent.
Reacting to the journalist's arrest, People's Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti said standing up for the truth is deemed anti-national.
''Standing up for the truth is deemed anti national. Showing the mirror to a deeply intolerant and authoritarian government is also anti national. Fahad's journalistic work speaks for itself and depicts the ground reality unpalatable to GOI. How many Fahads will you arrest?'' she wrote on Twitter.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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One arrested in Pulwama for posting anti-national content on Facebook
IAF Special Forces played key role in Pulwama operation in which 4 terrorists killed, two Garuds injured | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910832-journalist-arrested-in-jk-for-uploading-anti-national-content-on-social-media | 2022-02-04T18:46:22 | en | 0.974898 |
PARIS (AP) — France’s broadcast watchdog has opened an inquiry into news coverage by Russian state TV channel RT France, after the regulator was alerted to concerns about some of its programs.
The regulator, called Arcom, confirmed the inquiry Friday. It did not elaborate on reasons for the move, but noted that it regularly investigates concerns about channels that broadcast in France. RT France, which launched in 2017, is part of the global RT TV network.
Many in France see RT as a Russian government propaganda tool that amplifies far-right or populist politics. It has repeatedly come under criticism from centrist President Emmanuel Macron.
While the inquiry is just an inquiry at this stage and doesn’t involve any restrictions on the channel’s programming, RT France director Xenia Fedorova tweeted: “Welcome to the new world of censorship” and sarcastically called it “perfect timing” after RT’s recent difficulties in Germany.
A German media regulator ruled Tuesday that RT lacks the necessary permission to broadcast its German-language programs in the country. RT DE started broadcasting in mid-December using a Serbian license.
In retaliation, Russia on Thursday announced that it is shutting down the Moscow office of German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle and withdrawing its staff’s accreditations. It was the latest move by Russia's government against foreign or independent journalists.
The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that it “deplores” Moscow’s decision to shut down Deutsche Welle’s activities. “The freedom to inform is a fundamental right that should be protected everywhere,” it said. | https://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/French-regulator-investigates-Russian-broadcaster-16832208.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:24 | en | 0.962307 |
BEIJING (AP) — The clock is ticking for American speedskater Casey Dawson to get to his first Olympics.
He tested positive for COVID-19 three weeks ago. Recently, Dawson had been testing negative and he believed that by producing two consecutive negative tests he would be cleared to join his teammates in Beijing.
"Everything was good until I received news that they now require four negative tests to even consider sending me over,” Dawson wrote in an Instagram post.
He's also had issues with testing centers in Utah that must be approved by the Chinese consulate.
“My expectation is that he'll get here,” Matt Kooreman, long track program director for US Speedskating, said Friday.
Kooreman said they’re targeting an arrival date of Monday for Dawson.
“He’s such a level-headed guy,” Kooreman said. “I’m more worried about the people around him freaking out than I am him freaking out.”
Dawson's first individual event is the 5,000 meters on Sunday. He would be replaced by Emery Lehman, a two-time Olympian. Dawson also qualified for the 1,500 on Tuesday, and could be replaced by Ethan Cepuran.
US Speedskating is eager to get Dawson to Beijing in time to join in the team pursuit. The quarterfinals are Feb. 13, with semifinals and the final two days later. The U.S. men are strong medal contenders in the event.
Dawson, a 21-year-old skater from Park City, Utah, has been training at the Utah Olympic Oval to stay sharp while his COVID-19 situation plays out. He is set to receive his U.S. Olympic clothing and gear this weekend.
“Now let's just pass this test," Kooreman said, "and get a plane ticket.”
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More AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/winter-olympics and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Speedskater-Dawson-stuck-in-US-still-hopes-to-16832094.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:26 | en | 0.984258 |
If you've never seen any of these movies before, or if you think it's not for you based on what little you've seen here, then it's probably *not your thing.
But if you've seen any of their earlier stuff, then go see this. It takes it all to a whole `nuther level.
Posted at 11:20 AM, Feb 04, 2022
and last updated 2022-02-04 13:20:32-05
Copyright 2022 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. | https://www.fox13now.com/entertainment/movie-review-jack-ass-forever | 2022-02-04T18:46:27 | en | 0.951247 |
Delhi Police arrests 2 car thieves
The Delhi Police has arrested two men and seized three vehicles, including one bearing a home ministry sticker, stolen by them, officials said on Friday. During investigation of the theft at Kashmere Gate, police checked CCTV footage of the area and saw the stolen car bearing registration number of Delhi being driven towards Khajuri Khas, a senior police officer said.
- Country:
- India
The Delhi Police has arrested two men and seized three vehicles, including one bearing a home ministry sticker, stolen by them, officials said on Friday. The accused have been identified as Tayyab (38), a resident of Seelampur, and Salman (24), a resident of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, they said. On January 17, a car bearing Haryana number was stolen from Hamilton Road, Kashmere Gate. Later, on the intervening night of January 19 and 20, a car having a home ministry sticker was stolen from Paharganj, police said. As Republic Day celebrations were on, the theft of a car bearing a home ministry sticker could have proven to be a security hazard and posed a threat to the security of the VVIPs attending the function at India Gate, police said. During investigation of the theft at Kashmere Gate, police checked CCTV footage of the area and saw the stolen car bearing registration number of Delhi being driven towards Khajuri Khas, a senior police officer said. Later, police found that the alleged thieves were using fake number plates, they said. Police analysed the CCTV footage of the Paharganj incident and the same car was seen involved in the crime. The CCTV footage again took the police team towards Khajuri Khas area, the officer said. Thereafter, a trap was laid at Yudhister Setu flyover and after more than 12 days, the suspected car was intercepted and Tayyab and Salman were apprehended, Deputy Commissioner of Police (north) Sagar Singh Kalsi said. The accused confessed to their involvement in both the cases. They further revealed that they used to sell the stolen vehicles in Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh, the DCP said. Five teams were sent along with accused to recover the stolen vehicles. The team was able to recover both the stolen cars, police said. Two country-made pistols and the stolen cars were seized, police said.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910835-delhi-police-arrests-2-car-thieves | 2022-02-04T18:46:30 | en | 0.980486 |
SALT LAKE CITY — All of Utah will now have much easier access to the state's court system then ever before. With a few clicks and a $5 fee, anyone can now learn the truth about someone’s criminal history or lack thereof.
Xchange is something FOX 13 News has been using for quite some time to check court records. But now, anyone can log in discover whether those they're dealing with have criminal histories.
The access launched quietly last weekend, but it’s now up and running.
The sponsor of the legislation that made this happen says he did it in part due to the proliferation of online dating, and that it’s only fair for people to know if the individual they were conversing with in cyberspace is telling the truth in their social media profile.
“I know that this was passed specifically, really, with domestic violence in mind," said Tania Mashburn with the Utah State Courts. "If someone is going on a date with somebody else, you can easily now get online and check and see if they have a criminal history, if they could be violent, if they have any convictions for domestic violence, that kind of thing.
"It really just gives everybody more access to do their own background checks.”
The small fee establishes the account and allows anyone to look up a person to see if they do indeed have convictions or even allegations. It’s $.20 for each search, and then $.50 if you want to pull and print certain documents.
Officials say the $5 fee will go towards maintaining the website because they know more people will be accessing the system. And it will also pay for customer service because they also know people are going to have questions. | https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/utahns-can-now-check-anyones-criminal-history | 2022-02-04T18:46:32 | en | 0.971643 |
With millions of dollars pouring into endorsements for college athletes, the latest battleground in the recruiting wars is the statehouse: A handful of states are already considering changing barely-dried rules to help their flagship schools land — or keep — top prospects.
Over the past three years, at least 25 states put laws or executive orders in place addressing name, image and likeness compensation for college athletes. All the measures make it clear that the NCAA can no longer limit this kind of revenue but some did set some ground rules.
It’s those restrictions, which vary from state to state, that are now getting a second look as competition to land the nation's top high school athletes heats up.
Alabama and Florida lawmakers are already considering repealing or making major changes to laws governing college athlete compensation less than a year after enacting them. Ohio State officials last week made it easier for their school to link athletes to big-dollar contracts.
The moves could be the start of a neverending effort to redefine the landscape for college recruiting where states try to constantly outdo each other, said Gabe Feldman, director of Tulane’s sports law program.
“If the latest state law is more permissive, then other states are going to have to follow suit, and will follow suit. That’s exactly what we’re seeing now," Feldman said. “Schools will do as much as they can do within the rules to compete. The only way to stay on a level playing field is to remove those state laws.”
In Alabama, a bill to repeal a 7-month-old college athlete compensation law sailed through the state House 97-1 and awaits action in the Senate.
“It may be the shortest-lived (bill) to stay in law ever,” said Alabama state Rep. Kyle South, the sponsor of both the law and the bill to dump it. “Pass it one year, repeal it the next.”
South said the two biggest schools in his state, Alabama and Auburn, support the repeal effort. Alabama has a 2022 recruiting class ranked among the best in the country and Auburn was top 20.
“They want to be able to go out on the recruiting trail and say, ’We’re playing by the same set of rules .... We’re on the same level playing field as Texas and Michigan,'” South said.
The rules mashup was created when court decisions and public opinion prompted a number of states, California first among them, to pass laws securing the right for athletes to earn endorsement money. With little choice, the NCAA on July 1 cleared the way for its athletes to start cashing in, laying down the barest of guidelines that bar pay-for-play and using endorsements as recruiting inducements.
Schools were told to create their own polices and follow any applicable state laws. And while many state laws share similar characteristics, they remain uneven. For example, states may have different rules regarding use of team logos in endorsements, or limit school involvement in connecting athletes to businesses. A few simply give wide latitude to their schools to write their own rules within the minimal guidelines of the NCAA.
“The simple fact is some states have a competitive advantage (for recruits) over others,” said South, the Alabama lawmaker.
Some Florida lawmakers want to eliminate the state’s ban on schools helping facilitate player endorsement deals. The change was proposed the same day Florida State lost a five-star recruit to tiny Jackson State; the sponsor of the measure insists the timing was a coincidence.
Florida state Rep. Chip LaMarca, author of the original law and the proposed change, said he is not interested in repealing the whole thing, just tweaking it to let schools get more directly involved in helping athletes make deals. LaMarca said he doesn’t want to eliminate other provisions, such as mandatory financial training designed to help athletes manage their contracts and earnings.
“Repealing the bill would not be about protecting the athletes,” LaMarca said.
His effort has struggled to gain traction, however. House Speaker Chris Sprowls this week called it a low priority while adding, "to a certain extent it’s like a race to bottom in college sports. Like, how many sports cars can we put in the hands of 18-year-olds?”
In Ohio, athlete compensation rules were set by an executive order from the governor. Buckeyes officials determined they could change their own rules to create a new program and have the school be a link between players and businesses.
“Our guidelines were initially created to be restrictive, but now that we have a better understanding of NIL, it’s clear that we can provide more assistance in connecting student-athletes with interested brands," Ohio State senior associate athletic director Carey Hoyt said. “Updating our NIL guidelines at this time is what we needed to do to stay competitive in this ultra-competitive landscape."
Buckeyes football coach Ryan Day welcomed the move. He described “uneasiness” among coaches and schools “because what one place can do maybe another place can’t, and trying to figure out what those norms are going to be because it’s so new. But we’re adapting fast.”
Being nimble is key amid the fierce competition. Supporters of major programs fight to stand out while giving a wink and a nod to the NCAA ban on using NIL deals as recruiting inducements. At more than a dozen major programs across the country, third-party “collectives” and nonprofits have formed to pool millions from businesses and donors to offer endorsement deals.
At Texas, for example, the Clark Field Collective said it had up to $10 million pledged to support NIL deals for Longhorns athletes. Days later, the nonprofit Horns with Heart launched with a promise of $50,000 annually to scholarship offensive linemen for NIL deals supporting charities.
Feldman cautioned that if a lot of states follow Alabama's effort to repeal rather than tweak their NIL laws, it would give the NCAA the chance to move in and create a new set of regulations.
“The states that are hamstrung are the ones with restrictions on school involvement and use of logos,” Feldman said. “I frankly think it would be a mistake to completely repeal as that would open up a space for the NCAA to step in.”
___
AP Sports Writer Mitch Stacy contributed from Columbus, Ohio.
___
More AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://apnews.com/cfbtop25 | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Statehouses-latest-front-in-college-athlete-16832007.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:32 | en | 0.967321 |
KANSAS CITY, MO — Mark Byrd is in the business of second chances.
An HVAC specialist by trade, his passion to help people re-entering society from the prison system started more than a decade ago when he started KC Redemtion and the New Reflections Technical Institute, a job training program that prepares students for their new life.
"We try to help them get to a point where they can survive and be sustainable and to have a good life, you know, and most of them never realized they could have it," he said.
He's helping students like Otis Steen, who went from the judicial system, to financial stability by becoming a truck driver.
"As a person looking from the outside in, it seemed like a dream, like a fantasy. But going through it, it's still like a dream, like a dream state, like, 'Wow, is this true?'" said Steen.
Employment reduced recidivism and makes communities safer. While Byrd believes in his students, it can be an uphill battle convincing employers to give them their second chance.
However, he’s noticed recently that the Great Resignation has been opening more doors.
"When we first started it, we had one company that was felon-friendly. Now, we have over 70," he said.
In November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said a record high of 4.5 million people quit their job that month alone. We’ve seen the impacts of the Great Resignation reflected in food service, deliveries, and supply chain tangles.
Every year, 600,000 Americans leave the judicial system looking for employment. Although more than 1 in 4 people re-entering society is unemployed, studies have shown that they stay at their jobs longer and are less likely to quit than the general workforce.
"This person here wants that opportunity. This is their second chance might even be their third chance, but in most cases, it's their last chance. So, when they get this opportunity there, their work starts at seven o'clock. They're there at 6:30, drinking coffee in their hand, ready to go," said Byrd.
"We get calls or emails on a weekly basis," said Dwayne Williams, the president and CEO of 12th Street Heritage Development Corporation in Kansas City.
A decade years ago, they started a re-entry program and are noticing exactly what Mark has been: more employers looking to hire their clients.
"We have individuals who are looking for jobs. And so now, they've got another resource that they can, that they can tap," Williams said.
"I think a lot of employers will be surprised at the work ethic of individuals who come out of the system, you know, because a lot of them, they really not trying to go back to the system," said Gary Riley.
Riley has been with 12th Street for years. He says getting that second chance turned his life around.
"It helped me be a better man for tomorrow. You know what I mean? It showed me how to dig within deep, within to be the leader that I know I can be the follower I know I can be," he said.
As people like Byrd and Williams continue to match their students with employers, they hope this trend of hiring more people looking for a second chance continues well after the great resignation subsides.
"I advise our employees to look deep into themselves and figure out that mistake they made and what they needed and who helped them, who helped them. Now, it's their time to help someone else, and we can rebuild America. We can rebuild our workforce," said Byrd. | https://www.fox13now.com/news/national-politics/the-race/the-great-resignation-is-making-more-opportunities-for-those-re-entering-society | 2022-02-04T18:46:33 | en | 0.986561 |
Passengers will soon be able to buy booze on Southwest flights.
The airline is bringing back alcohol sales starting February 16 on most flights.
Beer, wine, rum, tequila and vodka will be available on trips that are at least 176 miles long.
This comes after Southwest paused alcohol sales for nearly two years.
Southwest stopped serving alcohol and other services in March 2020, when the pandemic was just beginning.
It had extended the break on booze when there was a surge of disruptive passengers.
The airline’s flight attendant union, TWU Local 556, said selling alcohol on flights while there are mask mandates in place was “unsafe and irresponsible.”
The vice president of customer experience and customer at Southwest, Tony Roach said in a news release, “customers have expressed a desire for more beverage options, so we're delighted to restore additional on-board offerings as a part of the Southwest hospitality that our customers know and love.”
Southwest will also bring back non-alcoholic beverages.
Other airlines have also restarted their alcohol sales.
United resumed sales of hard liquor in November.
Delta brought back beer and wine to the Main Cabin on some domestic flights last April. | https://www.fox13now.com/news/national/bringing-booze-back-southwest-is-latest-airline-to-resume-alcohol-sales | 2022-02-04T18:46:34 | en | 0.969316 |
Over the course of the last two years, the American worker has faced a lot of uncertainty. President Biden’s most recent mandate requiring healthcare workers in Medicare and Medicaid-funded facilities to get vaccinated has only increased that uncertainty.
According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), 82% of staff in facilities nationwide are vaccinated, but the remaining 18% face termination from their jobs if they do not apply and are granted a federally recognized health or religious exemption.
“I think it was disheartening to hear many people, including some Supreme Court justices discussing the fact that they feel healthcare workers have no right to their own bodily autonomy,” said Jean-Marie Nacer, a registered nurse in Florida, who has chosen not to get vaccinated due to health concerns surrounding the vaccine’s side effects. “The real reason I went into healthcare was to help people and this ruling is basically saying if you don’t take this medical intervention, you can’t help people.”
“This mandate imposes on top of an already-historic workforce crisis,” added Kristen Knapp, spokeswoman for the Florida Healthcare Association, which oversees most of Florida’s nursing homes.
The current shortages plaguing the healthcare field right now are well-documented. According to Morning Consult, 1 in 5 healthcare workers have quit their jobs during the pandemic due to low pay and burnout that has been exacerbated by COVID-19, and 1 in 3 workers have considered quitting.
The record-low numbers have forced hospitals and other healthcare facilities to look for temporary fill-ins from freelance firms that can charge as much as 3x the rate of a staff member.
The prospect of losing even more workers due to the president’s mandate could worsen the problem, particularly in states where facility vaccination rates are below 70%, like Montana, Ohio, and Missouri. For every infraction where a faculty member is not vaccinated, a healthcare facility risks losing its Medicare and Medicaid funding.
“It’s a challenge. I’ve been working in long-term care for almost 14 years, and I’ve never seen a workforce shortage or workforce challenges like we’re experiencing right now,” said Knapp.
To help relieve the stress on the system, some nursing homes are limiting admissions of new patients so they can comply with a proper staff-to-client ratio, but that limits the ability of hospitals to discharge patients in some cases. In other cases, it forces families to search for nursing facilities farther from their home.
To help workers, some states have passed legislation that allows unemployment benefits to be extended to individuals who are fired because they refuse to get vaccinated.
Since vaccination status is considered a controllable circumstance, most states will not offer unemployment to those who are let go because they refuse to get the vaccine, but Kansas, Arkansas, Florida, Tennessee, and Iowa have passed legislation extending unemployment to those individuals.
Healthcare facilities in 25 states are required to comply with the vaccine mandate by Feb. 28. For 24 states, the mandate will not kick in until March 15. The only state exempted from Biden’s mandate is Texas, where a preliminary injunction prevents such requirements. | https://www.fox13now.com/news/national/healthcare-facilities-brace-for-vaccine-mandate-to-kick-in | 2022-02-04T18:46:35 | en | 0.961511 |
Here’s a collection curated by The Associated Press’ entertainment journalists of what’s arriving on TV, streaming services and music platforms this week.
MOVIES
— Valentine's Day means romantic comedies, and romantic comedies — often enough — mean Jennifer Lopez. The rom-com mainstay of “Maid in Manhattan" and “The Wedding Planner” returns to the genre in “Marry Me,” which opens Friday in theaters and on Peacock. In it, she plays a J-Lo-like pop star who learns her fiancé has been cheating on her just before their wedding is to be televised. Heartbroken and distraught, she pulls a random fan (Owen Wilson) out of the audience who happens to be holding a “Marry Me” sign. The movie, which Lopez produced and performs songs in, will surely strike some as reflecting the star's own closely followed, always-in-the-spotlight romantic life. It's also her first lead role in a movie since 2019's acclaimed “Hustlers.”
— Amazon Studios, too, has its own prominent rom-com offering, starring Charlie Day and Jenny Slate. In “I Want You Back,” they play a pair of dumped 30-somethings stewing over their breakups. The two friends conspire to ruin their ex's new relationships to win them back. The film, which debuts Friday on Amazon Prime Video, is directed by Jason Orley, who helmed the charming 2019 Pete Davidson film “Big Time Adolescence.” Davidson also makes an appearance in “I Want You Back.”
— AP Film Writer Jake Coyle
MUSIC
— Mary J. Blige may have just said goodbye to viewers in the season finale of her Starz series “Power Book II: Ghost” but she's not going away: Blige pops up in a big way this week with a new album out Friday, Feb. 11, and a spot in the Super Bowl halftime show. The 13-track album, called “Good Morning Gorgeous,” features Anderson .Paak, Usher, DJ Khaled, Dave East and Fivio Foreign. The title track is an affirmation: “Sometimes you gotta look in the mirror and say/'Good morning gorgeous'/No one else can make me feel this way.”
— Spoon roar back with the 10-track, stripped-down rock ‘n’ roll album “Lucifer on the Sofa” out Friday, Feb. 11. It marks the quintet's first set of songs recorded in its hometown of Austin, Texas, in more than a decade, kicked off by the single “Wild.” “We wanted to make a rock ‘n’ roll record, a great rock ‘n’ roll record. I just don’t feel like there’s enough great rock ‘n’ roll records being made these days,” frontman Britt Daniel recently told The AP. He also revealed that the title song refers to himself, saying that's “the character that I can become when I’m at my worst.”
— AP Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy
TELEVISION
— Joseph Sikora’s Tommy Egan is at the center of “Power Book IV: Force,” as is Chicago. It’s where Tommy ends up after ditching the familiar turf of New York, and executive producer Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson says the Windy City is both a character and a means of approaching the third “Power Book” spinoff with a clean slate and new tone. For Tommy, what was intended as a quick stop ends up plunging him into the city’s drug game and scheming to become its kingpin. Isaac Keys, Lili Simmons, Gabrielle Ryan and Shane Harper are among the cast members in the drama debuting Sunday, Feb. 6, on Starz.
— Gugu Mbatha-Raw and David Oyelowo star in HBO Max’s “The Girl Before,” adapted from novelist JP Delaney’s best-selling psychological thriller of the same name. Mbatha-Raw’s Jane is delighted to move into an impressively sleek, modern house, the work of an architect (Oyelowo) who requires occupants to follow his demanding rules. When Jane begins to discover parallels between her experience and that of previous tenant Emma (Jessica Plummer), the posh digs start to look far less appealing. The drama’s four episodes are out Thursday.
— All together now: Awww, Puppy Bowl is back! The event rides the coattails of that other, puppy-less bowl game and for the good cause of showcasing animal shelters, their dedicated staffers and the furry residents in need of homes. When Team Ruff and Team Fluff and coaches Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg meet in “Puppy Bowl XVIII,” more pups will take the field than ever before. The three-hour event, on discovery+ and Animal Planet at 2 p.m. EST Sunday, Feb. 13, features 118 adoptable players from 33 states. Among them: Benny, a wheelchair-using Labradoodle, and Pongo, a deaf Dalmatian.
— AP Television Writer Lynn Elber
___
Catch up on AP’s entertainment coverage here: https://apnews.com/apf-entertainment. | https://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/New-this-week-Mary-J-Blige-Jennifer-Lopez-and-16832159.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:36 | en | 0.941029 |
Auto-rickshaw driver arrested for killing stepdaughter
- Country:
- India
An auto-rickshaw driver has been arrested on charges of killing his two-year-old stepdaughter in Bhayandar here in Maharashtra, police said on Friday.
Senior inspector Mukutrao Patil of the Bhayandar police station said an offence under section 302 (murder) of the IPC has been registered against the accused based on a complaint.
The man gagged the toddler to death in his home on Wednesday after her mother left for work, he said.
The victim was the woman's child from first marriage and the accused, her husband, did not like his stepdaughter and hence killed her, the police officer said.
The accused was produced before a local magistrate who remanded him in police custody till February 7.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- READ MORE ON:
- Maharashtra
- Bhayandar
- section 302
- Mukutrao Patil
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Maharashtra: BJP MLA's son among 7 medical students killed as car falls from bridge near Selsura | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910836-auto-rickshaw-driver-arrested-for-killing-stepdaughter | 2022-02-04T18:46:38 | en | 0.970791 |
Across both Super Bowl rosters, there is a great divide.
The Rams are the team loaded with veterans and the Bengals are the new kids on the block. Los Angeles has the star power, which figures with Hollywood next door. Cincinnati has a bunch of relative no names outside of Joe Burrow and Ja'Marr Chase.
Bengals coach Zac Taylor worked for Rams boss Sean McVay — even though Taylor is more than two years older.
Both teams were No. 4 seeds after winning their divisions, so there are some similarities. It might be the differences that, well, make the difference on Feb. 13 at SoFi Stadium. Oh, yeah, that happens to be the Rams' new home.
WHEN THE BENGALS HAVE THE BALL:
Burrow (9) and Chase (1) are the Dynamic Duo for Cincinnati. They were at LSU and nothing changed when Chase, who sat out the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, was chosen fifth overall in last April's draft. His effect has been immense, scoring 13 times on 81 receptions for 1,455 yards in the regular season.
Of course, Burrow has been just as impactful. He went 2-7-1 in a rookie season cut short by a knee injury and made a sensational return, as accurate as any passer in the league. Cool as they come — yes, Joe Cool — he had 34 touchdown passes, and in the Bengals' three postseason victories after having none since 1991, Burrow has gone 75 for 109 for 842 yards and four TDs, showing scrambling skills as well.
The key for LA to slow down that combination lies with the pass rush; Cincinnati allowed a league-high 51 sacks during the season, 12 more in the postseason. So unanimous All-Pro DT Aaron Donald (99), LB Leonard Floyd (54) and revitalized Von Miller (40), the MVP of the 2016 Super Bowl, must be negated somewhat. If the Bengals' offensive line, from tackles Jonah Williams (73) and Isaiah Prince (71) to center Trey Hopkins (66) to guards Quinton Spain (67) and the rotation of Hakeem Adeniji (77) and rookie Jackson Carman (79) don't step up, Burrow will go down a bunch.
If he gets the protection that has been missing too often, Chase's matchups with All-Pro CB Jalen Ramsey (5) could be epic. But Ramsey won't always be on Chase, who can break free on any route, and he also has some potent partners in WRs Tyler Boyd (83) and Tee Higgins (85), their battles with the remainder of the secondary could be significant.
In his seventh pro season, TE C.J. Uzomah (87) has emerged as a threat, but he damaged a knee last week and his status is uncertain.
RB Joe Mixon (28), who ranked third with 1,205 rushing yards, can wear down defenses, but the Rams ranked sixth against the rush.
WHEN THE RAMS HAVE THE BALL:
Like with the trades that brought Miller and Ramsey on defense, the Rams have bolstered their offense immeasurably in recent years. They solidified left tackle five seasons back with Andrew Whitworth (77), who remains a stud at age 40.
Much more recently came QB Matthew Stafford (9), RB Sony Michel (25) and WR Odell Beckham Jr. (3). All of have been key contributors, though Stafford is by far the biggest upgrade.
Sure, the Rams made the 2019 Super Bowl with Jared Goff, but Stafford, finishing his 13th pro season, is a class above. After languishing in Detroit for a dozen years, he's been a main cog in the Rams getting this far.
No one is better against the blitz than Stafford, and while he can make some head-scratching throws and turn over the ball, he also makes some head-shaking passes that put you in awe.
And, like Burrow, he has one of the league's best targets in unanimous All-Pro WR Cooper Kupp (10). Opponents could put all 11 defenders on the guy and he'd still get free, as his triple crown of receiving shows: 145 receptions for 1,947 yards and 16 TDs. He's been just as unstoppable in the playoffs, and this could be a major mismatch. Bengals CBs Eli Apple (20), Chidobe Awuzie (22), Mike Hilton (21) and Tre Flowers (33) will be tests bigtime.
Cincinnati is stronger at safety with Vonn Bell (24), whose pick of Patrick Mahomes set up the winning field goal for the AFC title, and Jessie Bates III (30). The entire bunch also must account for Beckham, who seems to be re-energized in LA, and Van Jefferson (12).
Michel and Cam Akers (23), who came back quickly from a torn Achilles tendon, share backfield duties, but this is a throw-first team operating behind standouts such as Whitworth. The 16-year veteran figures to be challenged by Cincinnati's top pass rusher, Trey Hendrickson (91), and DE Sam Hubbard (94), who was terrific against the Chiefs.
The Bengals don't have a linebacker in Miller's class, but Logan Wilson (55) and Germaine Pratt (57) have made some key plays in the postseason.
SPECIAL TEAMS:
It's all about rookie Evan McPherson (2). The fifth-round draft choice — no, Cincinnati did not bungle a pick on a kicker here — the kid has hit all 12 of his field goals, including four in the wild-card round, then winners at Tennessee and Kansas City.
P Kevin Huber (10) did not have a particularly strong season, but he's a veteran who has kicked in the postseason before.
LA's Matt Gay (8) is steady enough, and he also has two straight winning field goals in the playoffs.
P Johnny Hekker (6) has been one of the league’s best punters for a decade, and is a threat on fake punts.
Neither team scares you on kick returns.
COACHING:
This is so juicy.
Taylor spent two years working for McVay and didn't even reach coordinator status when the Bengals came calling in 2019. He went 6-25-1 his first two seasons, but the Bengals were building their roster. His work in the past six weeks has been particularly exemplary.
McVay remains the poster child — OK, he's a wise old 36 — for hot-shot offensive minds. His game management has been questioned, but it's hard to argue with four playoff trips in five seasons, and a Super Bowl loss three years ago.
Two assistants worth high praise: Bengals defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo, who has done a lot with no real stars except Hendrickson, and Rams offensive coordinator Kevin O'Connell, who like Anarumo has gotten some head coaching interviews.
INTANGIBLES:
The Rams are built for now. They have been all-in on this season, using lots of draft capital — not to mention $$$ capital — on this roster.
They also have the bitter memory of a putrid performance against New England in the 2019 Super Bowl.
For those who think this is gravy for the surprising Bengals, remember they are 0-2 in Super Bowls, both losses to the dynastic 49ers, though in close contests. They also hadn't won a postseason game since 1991. What do they have to lose now?
___
More AP Super Bowl coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/super-bowl and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/Super-Bowl-Matchup-Veteran-Rams-versus-upstart-16832177.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:38 | en | 0.970538 |
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — USA Swimming canceled a meet in Iowa and is reviewing its calendar for the rest of 2022 after the world championships were pushed back another year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The TYR Pro Swim Series Des Moines, set for March 2-5 at the MidAmerican Energy Aquatic Center at the Wellmark YMCA, was to be a qualifying meet for the Phillips 66 International Team Trials in April.
But the decision by world governing body FINA to delay the world championships in Fukuoka, Japan, for a second time has thrown the U.S. plans into turmoil.
The worlds were initially set for 2021, then pushed back to this May after the Tokyo Olympics were postponed a year. With the pandemic still raging, the championships are now set for July 14-30, 2023.
While that means three huge events in a one-year period — two world championships and the 2024 Paris Olympics — the powerhouse American team now has a huge gap in its schedule this year.
USA Swimming is “reviewing its domestic calendar to ensure it provides the best competitive opportunities at the most impactful times,” the organization said Friday in a statement.
A revised schedule will be released in the coming weeks.
___
More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.expressnews.com/sports/article/USA-Swimming-cancels-meet-reviews-plans-with-16832128.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:44 | en | 0.964651 |
Union home secretary reviews implementation of developmental schemes in Ladakh
- Country:
- India
Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla on Friday reviewed the pace of implementation of developmental projects in Ladakh.
Chairing a virtual review meeting, Bhalla directed the administration to ensure that all projects planned in 2022-23 start at the earliest possible, and those completed in 2021-22 are utilised by the stakeholders and beneficiaries in the union territory.
Bhalla was briefed by Advisor, Ladakh, Umang Narula about the progress of developmental projects and schemes in the union territory, an official spokesperson said.
The administrative secretaries gave detailed presentations on the developmental achievement of their respective departments for the financial year 2021-2022, he said.
The Union home secretary was informed that under the Jal Jeevan Mission, about 30 per cent of households have been provided tap water connections, the spokesman said.
Bhalla was also apprised about the collaboration with IITs of Delhi, Bombay, and Kanpur for establishing an engineering college in Kargil, besides collaboration for internship and fellowship.
Lauding the efforts of the UT administration, the Union home secretary appreciated the progress in various projects undertaken in Leh and Kargil districts and assured of all requisite support from the Ministry of Home Affairs.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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China's blind pursuit of 'absolute national security' may lead to Soviet-style collapse, warns advisor | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910837-union-home-secretary-reviews-implementation-of-developmental-schemes-in-ladakh | 2022-02-04T18:46:45 | en | 0.940775 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities say a suspect was arrested in an altercation that badly injured a San Francisco 49ers fan in a parking lot outside SoFi Stadium during last weekend's NFC championship game between the 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams.
Inglewood police Lt. Nicole Loudermilk confirmed that the suspect was taken into custody Thursday night, but released no further details.
According to CBS News, Oakland restaurant owner Daniel Luna was found by paramedics about a half-hour into the NFC Championship game.
Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts Jr. said the 49ers fan, had to be put into a medically induced coma after he was punched, fell, and struck his head on the ground.
During the press conference on Thursday, Butts said the suspect was sought by police based on a blurry video and a car's license plate, the Associated Press reported.
According to the news outlet, after reviewing the video, Butts told reporters that before the incident, Luna was standing in a crowd with what appeared to be other 49ers fans when he pushed a man from behind that was wearing a Rams jersey.
The man then pushed Luna back as he turned to walk away and then when Luna turned around, the man punched him in the mouth, causing
him to fall and his head hit the ground, the AP reported.
The incident has raised concerns about security at the upcoming Super Bowl to be played at SoFi.
The mayor said security won’t be increased because of the incident, the AP reported. | https://www.fox13now.com/news/national/police-arrest-in-altercation-that-badly-injured-49ers-fan | 2022-02-04T18:46:47 | en | 0.983778 |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo only needed one album to earn her the title of Billboard's 2022 Woman of the Year, landing her in the same company as Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga.
The former teen actor turned pop star will be honored as the 2022 Woman of the Year at the Billboard Women in Music Awards on March 2. Previous honorees also include Cardi B, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande.
Rodrigo became 2021′s biggest breakout star with her confessional debut album, breaking chart records and racking up awards and nominations. Rodrigo's exploration of heartache, jealousy and insecurity on “SOUR” broke streaming records and led to all 11 tracks landing in the top 30 of Billboard Hot 100 chart, making her the first female artist to achieve the feat.
“Olivia’s trajectory to superstardom is the stuff of pop music legend,” said Hannah Karp, Billboard’s Editorial Director, in a statement. “Her talents as a storyteller and songwriter have made Olivia one of the most authentic and exciting new artists to explode onto the scene in years."
Other award recipients at the Billboard Women in Music Awards include Gabby Barrett, Phoebe Bridgers, Doja Cat, Karol G, Bonnie Raitt, Saweetie and Summer Walker.
The awards show will be held at the YouTube Theater at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, hosted by Ciara. Fans will be able to purchase tickets this year for the first time at billboardwomeninmusic.com. | https://www.chron.com/entertainment/article/Olivia-Rodrigo-named-Woman-of-the-Year-by-16832051.php | 2022-02-04T18:46:48 | en | 0.921187 |
Death toll from mass shootings in United States is rising, study finds
A government-funded research project released on Friday sheds new light on the upward trend of mass shootings in the United States, finding that the number of Americans dying from mass shooters is on the rise, and most people who commit such acts of violence have a history of trauma or were in a state of crisis. The Violence Project https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database-3/key-findings, funded by the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice, examined 172 mass shootings -defined as killing four or more people - dating back more than 50 years.
A government-funded research project released on Friday sheds new light on the upward trend of mass shootings in the United States, finding that the number of Americans dying from mass shooters is on the rise, and most people who commit such acts of violence have a history of trauma or were in a state of crisis.
The Violence Project https://www.theviolenceproject.org/mass-shooter-database-3/key-findings, funded by the Justice Department's National Institute of Justice, examined 172 mass shootings -defined as killing four or more people - dating back more than 50 years. It found that of all the mass shootings that took place between 1966 and 2019, more than half took place since 2000, with 20% of them occurring between 2010 and 2019. In the last five years of the study period, an average of 51 people died from mass shootings per year, compared with only eight people in the 1970s.
The Justice Department unveiled some of the study's highlights the day after President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland met with https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-push-gun-safety-new-york-city-with-police-chief-2022-02-03 New York City's mayor to call for greater investments in local police to combat a recent rise in gun violence. "This study — one of the most extensive assessments of mass violence to date — reveals a deeply unsettling trend: more Americans are dying at the hands of mass shooters than at any point in recent history," said Amy Solomon, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs.
Researchers analyzed data on mass shootings using a publicly-available database, which draws from open source material such as social media and newspapers. An analysis https://nij.ojp.gov/topics/articles/public-mass-shootings-database-amasses-details-half-century-us-mass-shootings?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery of some of the data by the National Institute of Justice found that suicidal intention is a "strong predictor" for mass shooting perpetrators, and that 31% of the people who committed mass shootings had experienced childhood trauma while 80% were "in crisis."
A large percentage of the shooters - 48% - also took steps to leak their plans in advance to family, friends, law enforcement or strangers.
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) | https://www.devdiscourse.com/article/law-order/1910841-death-toll-from-mass-shootings-in-united-states-is-rising-study-finds | 2022-02-04T18:46:53 | en | 0.952735 |
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