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CHENGDU, China, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Vernalis Research ("Vernalis"), a fully owned subsidiary of HitGen Inc., and Unison Medicines Inc. ("Unison") are pleased to announce a research collaboration on an undisclosed bacterial target.
Under the terms of the agreement, Vernalis will use its expertise in drug discovery to design small molecules against this particularly challenging target, which has long been considered to be undruggable. Unison will finance all activities at Vernalis and Vernalis will be entitled to receive downstream milestones and royalties should the compounds from the collaboration progress further into development and commercialization. As part of the agreement, Vernalis has also invested in Unison's first round of financing.
Dr. Mike Wood, Managing Director of Vernalis, said: "We are extremely pleased to work with Unison on this promising and difficult bacterial target. This collaboration demonstrates once again that Vernalis is an attractive partner for biotech and pharma companies facing challenges in drug discovery. And the investment in Unison's financing round demonstrates the flexibility of our business model and the willingness to share the risk with our partners. We are looking forward to a successful collaboration with Unison."
Doug Witt, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Unison, said: "We are delighted to begin our collaboration with Vernalis. The team at Vernalis has an unmatched track record against difficult targets and we are confident that together we are positioned for success. The investment in this project by Vernalis and others demonstrates the opportunity we see in tackling the Anti-Microbial Resistance problem with highly innovative approaches."
Dr. Jin Li, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of HitGen Inc., commented: "I am very pleased to see Vernalis and Unison enter this collaboration, which reflects Vernalis' deep expertise and experience in FBDD/SBDD field to solve challenging problems in drug discovery research. Since Vernalis became part of HitGen at the end of 2020, the research teams from Vernalis and HitGen Chengdu have been working closely to advance the synergistic opportunities of the DEL and FBDD/SBDD technology platforms. I believe that the collaboration between Vernalis and Unison will mark important progress in our concerted efforts, and I wish the collaboration every success in this very important area of healthcare."
About Unison
Unison Medicines, Inc. is a discovery stage pharmaceutical company headquartered in Cambridge, MA. In 2022, Unison closed its first round of financing led by industry veterans and institutions. Unison is focused exclusively on the development of small molecule medicines against novel targets that provide a radically different approach to treating bacterial infection.
About Vernalis
For information about Vernalis visit: www.vernalis.com
About HitGen Inc.
HitGen Inc. (SSE: 688222.SH), founded in 2012, is headquartered in Chengdu, China, with subsidiaries in Cambridge, UK and Houston, USA. HitGen is committed to building a world-class innovative biopharmaceutical enterprise and contributing to the better life and health of mankind. Engaged in the discovery and optimization of small molecules and nucleic acid drugs, HitGen dedicates itself to cultivating an internationally leading drug discovery and optimization system centered on four key technology platforms, including DNA-encoded library technology (including DEL design, synthesis and screening, and application expansion), fragment-based drug discovery and structure-based drug design technologies (FBDD/SBDD), synthetic therapeutic oligonucleotide technology (STO), and targeted protein degradation technology (TPD). It provides new molecular entities (NMEs) at different stages of research and development for the pharmaceutical industry, through its diversified business models including research and development services, out-licensing of projects at different R&D stages, and new drug launches in the long term, with an aim to address unmet clinical needs with innovative therapeutic solutions. As a leader in the field of DEL technology, HitGen has been committed to the development, application and improvement of DEL technology since its establishment. By June 30, 2022, HitGen's DELs contains more than 1.2 trillion novel, diverse, drug-like small molecules and macrocyclic compounds. These compounds are members of DELs synthesized from many thousands of distinct chemical scaffolds, designed with tractable chemistry, and have yielded proven results for the discovery of small molecule leads against precedented and unprecedented classes of biological targets. Through systematic DEL compound design, HitGen DELs has involved the use of more than 6000 different types of chemical scaffolds, which includes most of the core scaffolds of currently approved small-molecule drugs and many privileged scaffolds of small-molecules in clinical trials, and the approximately 40,000 different building blocks. HitGen has approximately 20 in-house drug discovery projects at different stages of research and development, among which 4 have obtained IND approvals and entered into clinical trials. HitGen is in collaboration with pharmaceutical, biotech and chemical companies, foundations and research institutes in the Americas, Asia, Europe, Africa, and Oceania.
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SOURCE HitGen Inc. | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/vernalis-research-fully-owned-subsidiary-hitgen-inc-unison-medicines-inc-announce-research-collaboration-field-anti-infectives/ | 2022-09-05T09:17:43Z |
Police are searching for two suspects involved in stabbings that took place across 13 locations in the James Smith Cree Nation and in the village of Weldon in Canada's Saskatchewan province.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Police are searching for two suspects involved in stabbings that took place across 13 locations in the James Smith Cree Nation and in the village of Weldon in Canada's Saskatchewan province.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/at-least-10-are-dead-after-stabbing-attacks-in-canada | 2022-09-05T09:27:42Z |
Chile has voted a resounding NO to a proposed constitution that would have put a focus on social issues and gender parity, enshrine rights for the indigenous population, and address climate change.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Chile has voted a resounding NO to a proposed constitution that would have put a focus on social issues and gender parity, enshrine rights for the indigenous population, and address climate change.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/chile-rejects-its-new-constitution | 2022-09-05T09:27:49Z |
A new documentary follows the unique experience of women videographers covering war. "No Ordinary Life" makes its television debut on CNN.
Copyright 2022 NPR
A new documentary follows the unique experience of women videographers covering war. "No Ordinary Life" makes its television debut on CNN.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/cnns-no-ordinary-life-highlights-the-lives-of-5-women-war-videographers | 2022-09-05T09:27:55Z |
The German government has announced a $65 billion dollar relief package to help citizens facing soaring inflation and surging energy costs as Russia cuts off its gas supplies to Europe.
Copyright 2022 NPR
The German government has announced a $65 billion dollar relief package to help citizens facing soaring inflation and surging energy costs as Russia cuts off its gas supplies to Europe.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/germany-announces-a-multibillion-dollar-inflation-relief-package | 2022-09-05T09:28:01Z |
As a nationwide trend of states banning or placing more restrictions on abortion continues, Kansas, where abortion remains legal, struggles to keep up with out of state client demand
Copyright 2022 KMUW | NPR for Wichita
As a nationwide trend of states banning or placing more restrictions on abortion continues, Kansas, where abortion remains legal, struggles to keep up with out of state client demand
Copyright 2022 KMUW | NPR for Wichita | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/kansas-is-struggling-to-serve-people-from-out-of-state-seeking-abortions | 2022-09-05T09:28:07Z |
BETHEL, Alaska — Democrat Mary Peltola could not wait to get out on the Kuskokwim, the river she grew up on, south of the Yukon and upriver from the Bering Sea.
She's pulled gillnets full of salmon from this river every summer since she was a child. Subsistence fishing and hunting is a way of life here, even for people with office jobs.
This summer, though, Peltola had been away, campaigning for Alaska's sole seat in the U.S. House. She finally flew home to Bethel in late August and was itching to get on the water.
But a storm was moving through. That was a problem because the main goal of this trip was to capture footage of her on the river, for campaign ads.
"It's good fishing weather, but it's not great filming weather," she said. "I think there's some concern that equipment isn't damaged," she said.
So Peltola, wearing a gray blazer and more makeup than she's used to, sat back down under the bright lights set up in her living room and took direction from her media consultant and cameraman.
"I'm Mary Peltola and here's why I'm running for Don Young's seat in Congress," she said, over and over, striving for just the right level of energy.
She didn't know it then, but she had already won her long-shot campaign to replace the late Congressman Young.
After a 15-day waiting period for mailed ballots to arrive in the special election, Peltola learned on Aug. 31 she'd beaten the most famous Alaskan in history, former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin, in one of the reddest states in the nation.
Peltola turned 49 last Wednesday, the same day she became congresswoman-elect of the 49th state. Born Mary Sattler, she's the daughter of a Yup'ik mom and a Nebraskan dad who went north to teach school and later became a Bush pilot.
Peltola will be the first Alaska Native in Congress when she's sworn in this month to fill the remainder of Young's term.
Meanwhile, she and Palin are also on the ballot in November, for the next full House term. Whatever the result of the special election, she knew she needed campaign ads. So, when the storm let up, Peltola threw off her blazer and put on bulky layers, topped with rain gear.
"Everyone has a float coat?" she called out to the film crew. She began throwing things in her aluminum skiff — buckets, an anchor, life jackets.
"Last bit of survival tools and necessities," she said. "OK. We're ready to roll!"
Her rivalry with Sarah Palin is more of a love fest
Peltola went away to college, but at age 24 ran for state House and beat an incumbent. She stayed in office for a decade, overlapping with then-Gov. Palin. They bonded in the state Capitol, as two pregnant moms in office. When Palin left Juneau for the campaign trail, Peltola said, she bequeathed her backyard trampoline to Peltola.
Palin didn't respond to interview requests. She vilifies Democrats in general. After Peltola's win Wednesday, Palin called on Begich — the other Republican in the race — to "take the loss like a real Alaskan man" and withdraw from the November election. But Palin calls Peltola a "sweetheart" and says she's admirable.
The lack of rivalry goes both ways.
"I think she's great," Peltola said.
That politeness is on-brand for her. In the Legislature, Peltola was known for uncommon kindness.
"She was never bitter. She was never angry. She was never partisan," Andrew Halcro said.
He and Peltola were freshman legislators in 1999. (Also new in the state House that year: Lisa Murkowski, now Alaska's senior U.S. senator. She speaks highly of Peltola, too.)
A White Republican who represented a relatively wealthy Anchorage district, Halcro ignited statewide fury with a speech he now regrets. He likened Bush residents to children who don't learn to tie their laces because the state keeps sending Velcro shoes.
A lot of Alaskans wrote Halcro off as a racist.
But within hours, he said, Peltola was at his office door, asking if she could offer a different perspective on Power Cost Equalization, the rural energy subsidy he had derided. He came to see the program as she does, as a matter of equity for regions that didn't benefit from expensive hydroelectric projects the state funded.
"I think with Mary Peltola, you should never, ever misconstrue kindness for somebody who's not going to stand up for what she believes in," Halcro said.
Bev Hoffman of Bethel has known Peltola her whole life.
"She is nice. But she is so tough," Hoffman said with admiration.
They fought together on fish issues, and to get a swimming pool for Bethel, where drownings were common because few people learned to swim. They were at odds for six years, when Peltola worked as manager of sustainability for Donlin Gold, a mine project Peltola no longer supports.
Hoffman said Peltola has a way of listening intently and drawing people of opposing views together.
"She doesn't yell at people," Hoffman said.
Peltola said yelling isn't effective. She credits her upbringing and her mentors for her political style.
"The region where I'm from, there is a big premium on being respectful, on not using inflammatory language or harsh tones," she said.
Peltola believes in the power of small gestures. She said she once defused an urban Republican legislator, just by pointing out that he — being decades her senior — had lived more years in Alaska than she had.
She said they got on great after that, and to her, that's good politics.
Fighting for salmon is Peltola's cause
Back on the river, Peltola was facing a cumbersome mission — driving a boat through the braids of the Kuskokwim with the weight of extra visitors, accommodating microphones and providing good angles for the camera.
There's a more serious problem with this fishing trip: There are no fish. The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is suffering another year of dismal salmon returns.
"Growing up, and until probably 2010, our greatest fear was that we'd catch too many fish," Peltola said, adding that 70 salmon a day is the maximum she and her husband can comfortably cut and clean. "Now, our greatest fear is that we won't catch single-digit numbers of fish."
King salmon used to be the mainstay of the diet here. When those populations plunged, people made do with the smaller chum salmon and then filled in with August silvers if they didn't catch enough to last the winter.
This year, for the first time, even silvers did not return in sufficient numbers. The Kuskokwim was closed to all forms of fishing.
This is a tragedy beyond words for this salmon-based region. Peltola has spent the past five years of her career on it, as director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission. Protecting salmon is a major campaign theme.
"Yeah, this is kind of the center of my universe," she said, at the mouth of a tributary called the Gweek. "Just because my uncles taught me exactly where to put the net to catch certain kinds of fish."
She pointed out the bank on the left where her great-grandparents lived, outside of any village, until the government said they had to enroll their daughter in school.
"My mom was born over here, in Tabungaluk Slough," she said, pointing across to the right. "It was August and berry-picking time, so this is where she was born."
Scientists aren't sure why the salmon aren't returning to this river. Climate change and ocean acidification are factors. Peltola also attributes it to the thousands of salmon caught by accident at sea, by trawlers targeting pollock.
(The At-Sea Processors Association, which represents some of the largest factory trawlers, says it's taking steps to limit bycatch, but says larger factors are to blame.)
Non-salmon producing tributaries of the Kuskokwim are open to fishing. So, primarily for the camera, Peltola leaned over the bow and fed a small set net into the water. Sometimes salmon make a wrong turn. But when reeled the net back into the boat later, it was empty.
"I stay hopeful right until the end, because sometimes you get lucky, right at the end meshes," she said.
Copyright 2022 Alaska Public Media | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/mary-peltola-the-first-alaska-native-heading-to-congress-journeys-home-to-the-river | 2022-09-05T09:28:14Z |
Morning news brief NPR Published September 5, 2022 at 3:03 AM MDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Flipboard Listen • 10:31 Canadian police are searching for two suspects after a stabbing spree. Germany announces a multibillion dollar inflation relief package. And, support for unions is rising. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/morning-news-brief | 2022-09-05T09:28:20Z |
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending updated COVID boosters, for people ages 12 and older.
These newly authorized shots are reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines and they're available at pharmacies, clinics and doctors' offices around the country.
The boosters target both the original strain of the coronavirus and the two omicron subvariants which are causing most of the current infections. Vaccine makers have scrambled to rejigger the vaccines as they've become less effective against new variants.
"This virus has been mutating so quickly over the past two years," says Judith Guzman-Cottrill, an infectious disease specialist at Oregon Health & Science University. "I feel like we've been playing catch up and finally we have caught up," Guzman-Cottrill says.
Pfizer's updated booster is available for anyone 12 and older. The Moderna booster is available for anyone 18 and older.
"If you are eligible, there is no bad time to get your COVID-19 booster,'' CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NPR. "I strongly encourage you to receive it," she says.
But after talking to several infectious disease experts, we found there's a whole range of opinions on who needs to boost and when. So, if you are navigating this decision, here are some things to consider:
Who needs a booster as soon as possible?
"I would recommend this booster shot for those who are immunocompromised or those who are 60 years [old] and above," says Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. Gandhi says people in these groups are at highest risk.
According to CDC guidance, people are eligible if it's been at least two months since they received their last COVID shot, either a booster or an initial vaccine, but some vaccine experts say it would be better to wait at least four months.
"I will get it," says Physician Bob Wachter, who's in his mid-60s and in good health. "I'm about eight months out from shot number four. And so my immunity has waned significantly," Wachter says. He plans to get an updated booster as soon as it's available as a hedge against serious infection, given COVID is still circulating widely with about 400 deaths per day.
"There's no question that getting a booster increases the likelihood that you'll have a benign case," if you do get infected, he says.
Wachter also agrees with the CDC recommendation that younger adults get the booster. Boosting can protect against the risk of long COVID and helps protect the community at large by reducing transmission, if there's another surge, he says.
"There are good reasons to get it, even for people that have a low chance of a super severe infection," Wachter says.
When does it make sense to wait?
If you've had a recent COVID infection, it makes sense to wait.
Guzman-Cottrill and her children had mild infections in August, so she says she'll wait until November to get boosted.
"Our natural antibody response will protect us against COVID for another few months. So I do think it makes sense to wait and get the updated booster about three months after our positive COVID test," she says.
This is in line with the recommendation from CDC vaccine advisers — people who recently had COVID-19 may consider delaying a booster shot by three months. That's what the country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he plans to do. Fauci tested positive in mid-June and says he'll wait three months before he gets his updated booster.
Guzman-Cottrill says both her teenagers will also get the new booster "to protect us from COVID this winter so we can avoid sick days from work and from school," she says.
Can I time my shot for maximum protection at the holidays?
It won't be a surprise if there's another COVID surge this coming winter. Since the protection from boosters may only last several months, some people say they plan to wait to get the new booster in order to have maximum protection when the risk of infection is higher. "You can make a rational argument to wait until case rates are higher," says Wachter.
If you're trying to time it for the period of highest risk, he says, there are likely to be a ton more cases in December and January than there are in September and October.
However, Wachter says, this strategy is a bit like trying to time the stock market. It's hard to predict exactly when the surge will happen, so there's a risk in waiting.
"You are basically accepting a period of vulnerability that you don't need to have," he says. "And as I weigh all that, my thinking is I'd rather not do that."
Another argument against waiting is that the protection from a booster shot is not instantaneous. "It does take a few weeks for our immune systems to be primed," says Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago. He says it could be risky to wait until a surge is already underway.
Hazra points out the vaccines can activate our immune systems in a few ways. Immune cells, known as B cells, help produce antibodies that fight off the virus in the short-term. Research shows COVID vaccines boost antibodies for several months, but then they begin to fade. After that, B cells and another type of immune cell, known as T cells, which can destroy infected cells, stick around to build a deeper immunity.
He says this deeper immunity was triggered and primed from the initial vaccines, so everyone who's been vaccinated should have some protection against COVID But given the omicron subvariants circulating now are so different. "This [new] booster will definitely provide you with higher levels of antibodies, which are short term and short lived. It may also provide more deep-seated immunity," he says.
Will the new booster shots prevent COVID infections completely?
No. There's lots of enthusiasm for the updated boosters, but they are not a magic bullet
As SARS-CoV-2 has evolved, it's become more transmissible, which is why delta and omicron led to such large surges, despite widespread vaccination in the U.S.
"The goal of this vaccine is to prevent severe illness," says Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He argues that many people who've already received three doses of vaccine remain well protected, so he doesn't see a clear benefit to giving the new boosters to everyone 12 and up.
According to CDC data, people who have had one or two boosters have a 0.024% chance of being hospitalized with COVID-19. For people under 50, it's even lower — 0.014%
Offit agrees that certain groups should receive the new booster including elderly adults (he says age 70 and up), people who are immunocompromised and those with chronic conditions that put them at higher risk of serious illness. But he questions the value of another booster for healthy, younger people.
Offit says he had a mild infection in May that lasted a few days. He's decided against getting the new booster. "I think I'm protected against serious disease."
The new boosters offer a few months' protection against infection, he says, but there's no clear evidence of benefit beyond that.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/omicron-boosters-do-i-need-one-and-if-so-when | 2022-09-05T09:28:26Z |
The Big 10 conference just signed a historic multibillion-dollar broadcast deal with a number of networks. Will the college athletes themselves see any portion of that money?
Copyright 2022 NPR
The Big 10 conference just signed a historic multibillion-dollar broadcast deal with a number of networks. Will the college athletes themselves see any portion of that money?
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/the-big-10-conference-signed-a-historic-deal-but-the-athletes-arent-getting-paid | 2022-09-05T09:28:32Z |
Britain's Conservative Party will formally announce its new leader at a conference center close to the country's parliament on Monday, with the current foreign minister, Liz Truss, widely expected to secure the title - and the role of prime minister.
Truss has spent the summer campaigning against her opponent for the Conservative party leadership, the U.K.'s former finance minister, Rishi Sunak. The contest has been decided by the votes of less than 200,000 grassroots party members, rather than a national electorate.
The new prime minister will be formally appointed by Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday, after Boris Johnson has met with the monarch in Scotland to tender his resignation. Johnson, who has acted as a caretaker for the past few months, was laid low by a succession of scandals that crescendoed in the first half of this year. He lost the support of many fellow conservative legislators, and indeed many ministers in his own government, which forced him to resign.
The new leader will enter 10 Downing Street later Tuesday, and will immediately face responsibility for a rapidly escalating energy crisis in Britain, with both consumers and companies facing record high gas and electricity costs thanks to the war in Ukraine, and the corresponding rise in inflation threatening to tip the country into a major recession.
Truss, who has been dubbed "PM in waiting" by one British newspaper, said in an interview with the BBC this weekend that she will formulate proposals to combat this economic challenge within days, and is aiming to "act immediately."
Earlier in the leadership contest she did not command as much support among fellow Conservative legislators as her opponent Sunak, and even though he has promised to support a new government even if he is not leader, political analysts have said it will be difficult for her to unify her divided Conservatives, who still enjoy a sizeable majority in the country's parliament - thanks, ironically, to Johnson's huge success as a campaigner during the last national elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/the-next-prime-minister-for-the-u-k-to-be-announced-monday | 2022-09-05T09:28:39Z |
Volunteers in Jackson, Mississippi are organizing deliveries of bottled water to people who cannot reach distribution sites.
Copyright 2022 Gulf States Newsroom
Volunteers in Jackson, Mississippi are organizing deliveries of bottled water to people who cannot reach distribution sites.
Copyright 2022 Gulf States Newsroom | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/volunteers-are-getting-water-to-jackson-mississippi-recipients-who-cant-drive | 2022-09-05T09:28:45Z |
HONOLULU (KITV)- Labor day is on September 5, 2022. But some celebrated early at the annual Labor Unity Picnic. Labor unions host the event, to reward members' hard year of work. But everyone could enjoy the celebration.
“We come together as Ohana. We may be so many unions, but we come to you today in communion,” was the introductory speech of the Labor Day Unity Picnic for 2022. A big showing for the event this year at the Waikiki Shell in Honolulu. 18 labor groups came, and thousands of other people, after a multi-year hiatus because of the pandemic.
For union shop members, it's a big deal. “The labor union, any union is like family. We treat everybody like family. While we're working, our family is outside of that realm. Now this is an event our family that can join, when we combine family with the labor side,” said union member Tony Jose.
Jose is enjoying seeing his family celebrate labor day a day early. Local unions, local music bands, local food, it seems appropriate for Hawaii which is the top state for union membership. In 2021, 20.4% of the state's wage and salary workers were in some way connected to a labor union according the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Hawaii Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism says 603,000 people were employed in the state last year. The U.S. B.L.S. says 121,000 of those workers were union members. But organizers of this celebration say the history of unions in the US, should interest everyone.
Their strikes and negotiations have affected modern times. “Union or non-union if you work or have a job, it's labor. And you thank a union for all the stuff you got like 40-hour work weeks, weekends off, vacations, Medical, and retirement,” said HBCTC Executive Director Gino Soquena.
Union members got free meal tickets at the event, after all they do pay dues. But free entry, treats, music, and games were open to everyone.
“It's good for everyone to come in and have one big Ohana,” said Tony Jose.
Jefferson Tyler joined KITV after a lengthy stint in Reno, Nev. where he covered a variety of subjects. From wildfires to presidential elections, Jefferson takes pride in creating balanced stories that keep viewers’ attentions. | https://www.kitv.com/news/business/labor-day-unity-picnic-resumes-in-20222/article_3f13027c-2cf5-11ed-9770-e7f25be001ff.html | 2022-09-05T10:03:55Z |
Biden visiting 2 swing states as midterm crunch time begins
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is making his third trip to Pennsylvania in less than a week and returning just two days after his predecessor, Donald Trump, staged his own rally there — illustrating the battleground state’s importance to both parties as Labor Day kicks off a nine-week sprint to crucial midterm elections.
Trump spoke Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton, where Biden was born. The president made his own Wilkes-Barre trip last week to discuss increasing funding for police, decry GOP criticism of the FBI after the raid on Trump’s Florida estate and to argue that new, bipartisan gun safety measures can help reduce violent crime.
Two days after that, Biden went to Independence Hall in Philadelphia for a prime-time address denouncing the “extremism” of Trump’s fiercest supporters. On Monday, he’s attending Labor Day festivities in Milwaukee, in another key swing state, Wisconsin, before traveling to Pittsburgh for that city’s parade.
The White House says Biden will celebrate “the dignity of American workers.” The unofficial start of fall, Labor Day also traditionally kicks off political crunch time, with campaigns scrambling to excite voters ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8. That’s when control of the House and Senate, as well some of the country’s top governorships, will be decided.
Trump has endorsed candidates in key races around the country, and Biden is warning that some Republicans now believe so strongly in Trumpism that they are willing to undermine core American values to promote it. The president said Thursday that the midterms will be a battle “for the soul of the nation,” the same slogan he used to win the 2020 election, and that “blind loyalty to a single leader, and a willingness to engage in political violence, is fatal to democracy.”
Biden added in that speech that “MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign cry and pointing to incidents like last year’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump said during his Saturday rally that Biden’s Philadelphia appearance featured “the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.”
“He’s an enemy of the state,” the former president said.
Monday will see Biden return to another theme that was a centerpiece of his 2020 campaign, that labor unions burnished the middle class, which in turn built and strengthened modern American society.
Endorsements from key unions helped Biden overcome disastrous early finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire to win the Democratic primary and eventually the White House. He has since continued to praise labor unions — even though many voters without college degrees, many working class, remain among Trump’s strongest bloc of supporters.
Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2-million-member Service Employees International Union, called Biden championing unions heading into the midterms “critical” and said that the labor movement must “mobilize in battlegrounds across the country to ensure that working people turn out.”
“We’re really excited about the president speaking directly to workers about, if he had the opportunity, he’d join a union,” Henry said. She added: “This president has signaled which side he’s on. And he’s on the side of working people. And that matters hugely.”
Biden, meanwhile, has personal history with Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade, which is among the nation’s largest. He attended the 2015 installment as vice president and returned in 2018. Both times, Biden, now 79, faced questions about whether he’d run for president in upcoming elections — which he opted against in 2016 before winning the White House in 2020.
This year, the oldest president in the nation’s history has faced speculation about if he’ll seek a second term in 2024 — though he’s insisted that’s his intention, and the pressure has dissipated some in recent weeks, amid a string of policy and political successes for Biden and his party.
Still, both perennial presidential battleground states Biden is visiting on Monday may provide key measures of Democrats’ strength before this November and 2024. With inflation still raging and the president’s approval ratings remaining low, how much Biden can help his party in top races remains to be seen.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is trying to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, but drew criticism from Johnson’s campaign for being noncommittal beforehand about appearing with Biden in Milwaukee. In the state’s other top race, Tim Michels, a construction executive endorsed by Trump, is attempting to deny Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a second term. Evers said he planned to join Biden on Monday.
Pennsylvania voters are choosing a new governor, with state Attorney General John Shapiro facing another Trump-endorsed Republican, Doug Mastriano, and a new senator. That race is between Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Trump-backed celebrity heart physician Mehmet Oz. Shapiro and Fetterman both planned to attend Monday’s Pittsburgh parade.
The Pennsylvania and Wisconsin races could decide which party controls the Senate next year, while the winner of each governorship may influence results in 2024′s presidential election. The stakes are particularly high given that some Trump-aligned candidates have spread lies about widespread fraud that did not occur during the 2020 election — raising questions about what might happen if a candidate they don’t support wins the next presidential contest.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/biden-visiting-2-swing-states-midterm-crunch-time-begins/ | 2022-09-05T10:48:26Z |
Woman, 77, attacked by alligator in gated community
BRADENTON, Fla. (WWSB) - A 77-year-old woman was taken to the hospital after an alligator attack in a gated Florida community.
The incident happened Saturday at a gated community in Bradenton, Florida. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and Manatee County EMS responded around 6 p.m., WWSB reports.
The extent of the 77-year-old victim’s injuries is still unknown, but according to a report from FWC, she was taken to the hospital to be treated.
A nuisance alligator trapper was sent to the scene and removed a 7-foot, 10-inch alligator, according to the report from FWC. No other alligators were found in the area.
Justin Matthews, the owner of Matthews Wildlife Rescue, said an alligator that size usually weighs around 300 lbs and has extensive jaw power. He said the woman is lucky to be alive and the incident most likely happened because of someone feeding the alligator.
“The way to tell if an alligator has been fed by a person is if you’re walking and see one out in the pond, move your arm in a throwing motion. If the gator starts moving toward you, its time to call the Florida Wildlife Commission,” Matthews said.
For the most part, Matthews says alligators won’t pay attention to people walking by unless they have been fed.
The FWC said they are confident the alligator responsible for the attack has been removed, according to their report.
Copyright 2022 WWSB via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/woman-77-attacked-by-alligator-gated-community/ | 2022-09-05T10:48:32Z |
HANGZHOU, China, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- CellOrigin Biotech (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. announced that it has made an agreement with Qilu Pharmaceutical on strategic global collaborations to develop, manufacture and commercialize a proprietary "off-the-shelf" iPSC-derived Chimeric Antigen Receptor Macrophages (CAR-iMAC) for cancer immnotherapy.
This collaboration takes the advantages from both parties by integrating complementary technologies and expertise as well as combining industry-leading R&D, manufacture and marketing capabilities.Both parties will collaborate on new drug development and commercialization, and will push CAR-iMAC pipelines forward to clinical trials.
"Innovation, and bringing the best products to benefit patients are the core values we both appreciate", said Dr. Jin Zhang, the co-founder of CellOrigin Biotech and a principle investigator of Zhejiang University, "that's something that brings us together".
"We are excited to collaborate with Qilu Pharmaceutical because of its prestige in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry as well as its successful track record in new drug discovery. We (CellOrigin) will keep seeking other potential industry collaborators, jointly exploring and developing innovative anti-tumor drugs, and benefiting more cancer patients" said Dr. Tong Jiansong, Chief Executive Office at CellOrigin Biotech.
"CellOrigin is an outstanding startup with a strong research background and valuable industry experience. It has focused on original techniques in cell therapy and gained rich expertise in GMP manufacture. It is an ideal strategic partner for novel cell therapy and it is our pleasure to collaborate with such a great biotech company." said Qilu Pharmaceutical.
About Qilu Pharmaceutical
Qilu Pharmaceutical is one of the leading vertically integrated pharmaceutical companies in China focusing on the development, manufacturing and marketing of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) & finished formulations. Qilu currently has 13 subsidiaries, 11 manufacturing sites and over 30000 employees worldwide, 70% of whom are with bachelor's degrees or above. It ranks No.8 in the Chinese pharmaceutical industry by sales revenue in 2019. Dedicated to offering more affordable medicines to the world and improving people's well-being, Qilu has exported its products to over 80+ countries.
About CellOrigin Biotech (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd.
CellOrigin Biotech (Hangzhou) Co., Ltd. is committed to the development of genetically engineered pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) derived immune cell therapies (such as macrophages, NK cells), with its own proprietary intellectual property. The founders are experienced leaders from Zhejiang University, Harvard University and top pharmaceutical and biotech companies around the world. They apply cutting-edge technologies in editing and differentiating iPSCs to immune cells in order to deliver novel allogeneic off-the-shelf cell therapies for the treatment of cancer patients around the world.
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SOURCE CellOrigin | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/cellorigin-biotech-announced-strategic-global-collaboration-with-qilu-pharmaceutical-develop-off-the-shelf-car-imac-cell-therapy/ | 2022-09-05T10:48:39Z |
Lexicala has already won the first deal from a leading international corporation to provide parallel corpora for its machine translation systems
TEL AVIV, Israel, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lexicala, a content provider for Language Service Providers, has launched new multilingual lexical data solutions for the Language Technology industry and academic research.
The solutions feature expert parallel corpora, domain classification, morphology, text annotation, and other premium cross-lingual resources for natural language processing (NLP) tasks.
Lexicala's methodologies and datasets enable infinite ways of extracting components and applying them for machine translation, spellchecking, speech recognition, semantic technologies, knowledge management, language learning, and online dictionaries.
Lexicala offers services for all languages, including translation, classification, annotation, alignment, and other NLP applications. Its parallel corpora have recently been integrated by one of Asia's top information technology conglomerates into its Neural Machine Translation systems.
As part of the agreement, Lexicala provided over 250,000 sentence pairs to train machine learning models and improve the translation engines' performance.
The parallel corpora consisted of usage examples from dictionary entries between the required Asian language and European ones, developed by converging human-created content with smart data generation methods, and followed by thorough human curation of each sentence pair by local language experts.
"The deal with such a leading global player demonstrates Lexicala's ability to offer highest quality cross-lingual lexical data supported by automated processes and perfected by expert linguists and translators," said Ilan Kernerman, CEO of Lexicala by K Dictionaries. "This signifies our company's transition to the world of NLP and illustrates our readiness to provide outstanding services to the Language Technology community."
Lexicala's expert parallel corpora resources contain millions of sentences across more than 20 languages, including low-resourced combinations.
The company will present its new offerings at these upcoming events:
- LITHMI WG1 Computational Linguistics Workshop, September 5-6, Luxembourg
- SEMANTiCS-LTI 2022, September 13-15, Vienna, Austria
- LLODREAM 2022, September 21-22, Vilnius, Lithuania
- TAUS Massively Multilingual Conference & Expo, October 11-13, San Jose, CA
- COLING 2022, October 12-17, Gyeongju, Korea
About Lexicala
Lexicala provides expert resources for machine translation and other NLP applications, offering multilingual lexical data solutions for 50 languages.
Lexicala is a trade name of K Dictionaries, a global leader in creating cross-lingual data resources, established in 1993.
For more information, visit: https://lexicala.com.
Contact:
Karni Berlad Cohen
Marketing Director
Lexicala
+972-524286471
karni@lexicala.com
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SOURCE Lexicala | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/lexicala-launches-new-multilingual-lexical-data-solutions-language-technology-industry/ | 2022-09-05T10:48:46Z |
SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Shenzhen-Hong Kong cooperation mechanism has introduced a new policy. On September 2, "Shenzhen Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone Administration - Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau on the 18 Measures to support Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Venture Capital Joint Development" (hereinafter referred to as "18 Measures") was released in Shenzhen and Hong Kong, according to the Authority of Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone.
In response to the Hong Kong financial industry's call for broader cooperation channel between Shenzhen and Hong Kong private equity funds, the "18 Measures" clearly stipulates that a one-time reward of 2 million yuan will be given to the Qianhai venture capital institutions listed on the Hong Kong Exchange. The Qianhai venture capital institutions and their wholly owned subsidiaries in Hong Kong will be granted a one-time reward of 1 million yuan for sponsoring a Special Purpose Acquisition Company and getting it listed on the Hong Kong Exchange. For a Qianhai high-quality infrastructure project listed on the Hong Kong Exchange in the form of REIT, a one-time incentive of 1 million yuan will be given to the project's equity owner. Analysts believe that this move will further facilitate the two-way cross-border investment cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
The policy is an important attempt for deepening cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong in Qianhai. Cooperation mechanism innovation, the building of cluster economy, the incentives for closed loop are highlights that sparked industrial attention.
The industry insiders believe that the "18 Measures" is a solution to the challenges of the private equity industry in Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Taking into account the demands of the Hong Kong industry, it will optimize the pilots in the Qianhai qualified foreign limited partners (QFLP), qualified domestic investment enterprises (QDIE) and wholly foreign-owned enterprise private fund management (WFOE PFM); at the same time, Qianhai QDIE management enterprises are encouraged to invest in Hong Kong's technological innovation, with a reward of 2% of the actual investment, or a maximum of 500,000 yuan for single input and annual accumulative sum of up to 2 million yuan for each enterprise.
According to the "18 Measures", a Shenzhen-Hong Kong international venture capital cluster will be established in Qianhai. The cluster is located in Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong International Financial City, with an area of about 800,000 square meters. It will host large funds, international capital management institutions, leading venture capital institutions as well as private equity investment institutions.
Thanks to the in-depth development of financial cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, a number of Hong Kong-funded equity investment enterprises with special advantages and benchmark effects had already set up business in Shenzhen. Statistics show that of all the foreign-invested equity investment management enterprises in Shenzhen, those with Hong Kong funds account for nearly 70%. Likewise, among the two types of QFLP pilot enterprises, those involving Hong Kong funds account for about 80% of the total.
Observers said that the "18 Measures" provides all-round support for venture capital institutions, while promoting private equity secondary market funds (S funds). It covers fund-raising, investment, management and withdrawal, the whole process of venture capital industry. The wide range of benefits make the policy a new breakthrough, which is of great significance to deepening Shenzhen-Hong Kong financial cooperation on practical innovation.
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SOURCE Authority of Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/shenzhen-hong-kong-cooperation-mechanism-innovation-18-measures-qianhai-shenzhen-hong-kong-venture-capital-joint-development-released/ | 2022-09-05T10:48:52Z |
COLOGNE, Germany, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Avenga, a global engineering and consulting platform, announced today that Yuriy Adamchuk has been appointed new CEO, effective immediately. The experienced business leader has been with the company and its predecessor Core Value for seven years and became Avenga Group CDO in 2019 and Group COO just over a year later. Previously, he worked in different senior positions for KM Core, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG, among others. Jan Webering will stay with Avenga as a shareholder and chairman of the Advisory Board.
"I am proud of what we have achieved together as a team. When I sold my company to Avenga three years ago, we had a plan to create a fully integrated global player with a world-renowned brand and a value-based DNA," says Jan Webering, and continues: "This has now been achieved, and the time is right to ensure an orderly succession. We are fortunate that we didn't have to look far to find the right leader. I have worked closely with Yuriy over the past years building Avenga's success, and I am sure he will take the company to new heights. In my new position as Chairman of the Advisory Board, I look forward to advising him and his team on this journey."
"I'm grateful to Jan for building the foundation of Avenga and leading the company from its inception. Going forward, we will continue to evolve the company as a "buy and build" platform, opening new markets and identifying new growth opportunities. This will allow us to realize our long-term strategy to become a leading digital transformation champion providing high-quality solutions for our customers and a fulfilling work environment for our employees," says Yuriy Adamchuk.
Since 2019, Avenga has grown rapidly, establishing itself as a global growth platform that delivers premier services to enterprise-level customers from its worldwide delivery footprints. The company is backed by funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management L.P. and Cornerstone Investment Management to expand further.
"Jan has been a great partner over the last three years and has been instrumental in transforming Avenga into the global platform that it is today. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership with Jan over the years to come. With Yuriy, we see ourselves excellently positioned for the future. He brings all the skills and qualities as a leader that the company needs to continue on its successful path," says Karim Khairallah, Managing Director & Co-Portfolio Manager, European Principal Group at Oaktree.
About:
Avenga is known as an experienced and reliable business partner with deep industry knowledge, especially in pharma, insurance and finance, and advanced manufacturing. The company's IT specialists operate from 27 offices worldwide and support global corporations and complex organizations in their digital transformation with projects along the entire digital value chain – from digital strategy to the implementation of software, user experience, and IT solutions, including hosting and operations. Among Avenga's many world-renowned clients are organizations like ABB, Allianz, GSK, Santander, and Volvo.
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SOURCE Avenga | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/yuriy-adamchuk-takes-over-jan-webering-ceo-avenga/ | 2022-09-05T10:48:58Z |
Biden visiting 2 swing states as midterm crunch time begins
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is making his third trip to Pennsylvania in less than a week and returning just two days after his predecessor, Donald Trump, staged his own rally there — illustrating the battleground state’s importance to both parties as Labor Day kicks off a nine-week sprint to crucial midterm elections.
Trump spoke Saturday night in Wilkes-Barre, near Scranton, where Biden was born. The president made his own Wilkes-Barre trip last week to discuss increasing funding for police, decry GOP criticism of the FBI after the raid on Trump’s Florida estate and to argue that new, bipartisan gun safety measures can help reduce violent crime.
Two days after that, Biden went to Independence Hall in Philadelphia for a prime-time address denouncing the “extremism” of Trump’s fiercest supporters. On Monday, he’s attending Labor Day festivities in Milwaukee, in another key swing state, Wisconsin, before traveling to Pittsburgh for that city’s parade.
The White House says Biden will celebrate “the dignity of American workers.” The unofficial start of fall, Labor Day also traditionally kicks off political crunch time, with campaigns scrambling to excite voters ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8. That’s when control of the House and Senate, as well some of the country’s top governorships, will be decided.
Trump has endorsed candidates in key races around the country, and Biden is warning that some Republicans now believe so strongly in Trumpism that they are willing to undermine core American values to promote it. The president said Thursday that the midterms will be a battle “for the soul of the nation,” the same slogan he used to win the 2020 election, and that “blind loyalty to a single leader, and a willingness to engage in political violence, is fatal to democracy.”
Biden added in that speech that “MAGA Republicans are destroying American democracy,” referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign cry and pointing to incidents like last year’s mob attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Trump said during his Saturday rally that Biden’s Philadelphia appearance featured “the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president.”
“He’s an enemy of the state,” the former president said.
Monday will see Biden return to another theme that was a centerpiece of his 2020 campaign, that labor unions burnished the middle class, which in turn built and strengthened modern American society.
Endorsements from key unions helped Biden overcome disastrous early finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire to win the Democratic primary and eventually the White House. He has since continued to praise labor unions — even though many voters without college degrees, many working class, remain among Trump’s strongest bloc of supporters.
Mary Kay Henry, president of the 2-million-member Service Employees International Union, called Biden championing unions heading into the midterms “critical” and said that the labor movement must “mobilize in battlegrounds across the country to ensure that working people turn out.”
“We’re really excited about the president speaking directly to workers about, if he had the opportunity, he’d join a union,” Henry said. She added: “This president has signaled which side he’s on. And he’s on the side of working people. And that matters hugely.”
Biden, meanwhile, has personal history with Pittsburgh’s Labor Day parade, which is among the nation’s largest. He attended the 2015 installment as vice president and returned in 2018. Both times, Biden, now 79, faced questions about whether he’d run for president in upcoming elections — which he opted against in 2016 before winning the White House in 2020.
This year, the oldest president in the nation’s history has faced speculation about if he’ll seek a second term in 2024 — though he’s insisted that’s his intention, and the pressure has dissipated some in recent weeks, amid a string of policy and political successes for Biden and his party.
Still, both perennial presidential battleground states Biden is visiting on Monday may provide key measures of Democrats’ strength before this November and 2024. With inflation still raging and the president’s approval ratings remaining low, how much Biden can help his party in top races remains to be seen.
In Wisconsin, Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is trying to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, but drew criticism from Johnson’s campaign for being noncommittal beforehand about appearing with Biden in Milwaukee. In the state’s other top race, Tim Michels, a construction executive endorsed by Trump, is attempting to deny Democratic Gov. Tony Evers a second term. Evers said he planned to join Biden on Monday.
Pennsylvania voters are choosing a new governor, with state Attorney General John Shapiro facing another Trump-endorsed Republican, Doug Mastriano, and a new senator. That race is between Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and Trump-backed celebrity heart physician Mehmet Oz. Shapiro and Fetterman both planned to attend Monday’s Pittsburgh parade.
The Pennsylvania and Wisconsin races could decide which party controls the Senate next year, while the winner of each governorship may influence results in 2024′s presidential election. The stakes are particularly high given that some Trump-aligned candidates have spread lies about widespread fraud that did not occur during the 2020 election — raising questions about what might happen if a candidate they don’t support wins the next presidential contest.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/biden-visiting-2-swing-states-midterm-crunch-time-begins/ | 2022-09-05T10:49:21Z |
Woman, 77, attacked by alligator in gated community
BRADENTON, Fla. (WWSB) - A 77-year-old woman was taken to the hospital after an alligator attack in a gated Florida community.
The incident happened Saturday at a gated community in Bradenton, Florida. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office and Manatee County EMS responded around 6 p.m., WWSB reports.
The extent of the 77-year-old victim’s injuries is still unknown, but according to a report from FWC, she was taken to the hospital to be treated.
A nuisance alligator trapper was sent to the scene and removed a 7-foot, 10-inch alligator, according to the report from FWC. No other alligators were found in the area.
Justin Matthews, the owner of Matthews Wildlife Rescue, said an alligator that size usually weighs around 300 lbs and has extensive jaw power. He said the woman is lucky to be alive and the incident most likely happened because of someone feeding the alligator.
“The way to tell if an alligator has been fed by a person is if you’re walking and see one out in the pond, move your arm in a throwing motion. If the gator starts moving toward you, its time to call the Florida Wildlife Commission,” Matthews said.
For the most part, Matthews says alligators won’t pay attention to people walking by unless they have been fed.
The FWC said they are confident the alligator responsible for the attack has been removed, according to their report.
Copyright 2022 WWSB via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/woman-77-attacked-by-alligator-gated-community/ | 2022-09-05T10:49:29Z |
Updated September 4, 2022 at 8:52 PM ET
SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans resoundingly rejected a new constitution to replace a charter imposed by the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet 41 years ago. The vote dealt a stinging setback to President Gabriel Boric, who argued the document would have ushered in a progressive era.
With 96% of the votes counted in Sunday's plebiscite, the rejection camp had 61.9% support compared to 38.1% for approval amid what appeared to be a heavy turnout with long lines at polling states. Voting was mandatory.
The approval camp conceded defeat, with its spokesman Vlado Mirosevic saying: "We recognize this result and we listen with humility to what the Chilean people have expressed."
The rejection of the document was broadly expected in this country of 19 million as months of pre-election polling had shown Chileans had grown wary of the document that was written up by a constituent assembly in which a majority of delegates were not affiliated with a political party.
"Today we're consolidating a great majority of Chileans who saw rejection as a path of hope," said Carlos Salinas, a spokesman for the Citizens' House for Rejection. "We want to tell the government of President Gabriel Boric... that 'today you must be the president of all Chileans and together we must move forward."
Despite these expectations, no analyst or pollster had predicted such a large margin for the rejection camp, showing how Chileans were not ready to support a charter that would have been one of the most progressive in the world and would have fundamentally change the South American.
The proposed charter was the first in the world to be written by a convention split equally between male and female delegates, but critics said it was too long, lacked clarity and went too far in some of its measures, which included characterizing Chile as a plurinational state, establish autonomous Indigenous territories, and prioritize the environment.
"The constitution that was written now leans too far to one side and does not have the vision of all Chileans," Roberto Briones, 41, said after voting in Chile's capital of Santiago. "We all want a new constitution, but it needs to have a better structure."
The result deals a major blow to Boric, who at 36 is Chile's youngest-ever president. He had tied his fortunes so closely to the new document that analysts said it was likely some voters saw the plebiscite as a referendum on his government at a time when his approval ratings have been plunging since he took office in March.
What happens now amounts to a big question mark. Chilean society at large, and political leadership of all stripes, have agreed the constitution that dates from the country's 1973-1990 dictatorship must change. The process that will be chosen to write up a new proposal still has to be determined and will likely be the subject of hard-fought negotiations between the country's political leadership.
Boric has called on the heads of all political parties for a meeting tomorrow to determine the path forward.
The vote marked the climax of a three-year process that began when the country once seen as a paragon of stability in the region exploded in student-led street protests in 2019. The unrest was sparked by a hike in public transportation prices, but it quickly expanded into broader demands for greater equality and more social protections.
The following year, just under 80% of Chileans voted in favor of changing the country's constitution. Then in 2021, they elected delegates to a constitutional convention.
The 388-article proposed charter sought to put a focus on social issues and gender parity, enshrined rights for the country's Indigenous population and put the environment and climate change center stage in a country that is the world's top copper producer. It also introduced rights to free education, health care and housing.
The new constitution would have established autonomous Indigenous territories and recognized a parallel justice system in those areas, although lawmakers would decide how far-reaching that would be.
In contrast, the current constitution is a market-friendly document that favors the private sector over the state in aspects like education, pensions and health care. It also makes no reference to the country's Indigenous population, which makes up almost 13% of the population.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-04/chileans-reject-new-progressive-constitution | 2022-09-05T11:52:02Z |
How we work, when we work, how much we work – it's all shifting on a scale not seen in decades.
The pandemic left workplaces reimagined and workers changed. The number of job openings right now outnumbers people looking for work by almost two-to-one.
Last year saw a record exodus of workers, and companies say they are still struggling to hire. Millions have re-evaluated what type of work they were willing to do for what type of pay or benefits and in what type of environment.
On Labor Day, here's a snapshot of what's happening with American workers.
Jobs are growing, and workers are still quitting
Despite inflation and economic slowdown, the labor market remains tight. Employers kept adding jobs all summer, particularly in food and retail. Layoffs have been confined to pockets of the economy – the tech sector, cryptocurrency, home buying – and to select companies, like the beleaguered Bed Bath & Beyond.
Most employers would rather hold on to workers. Too many have grappled with short staffing: More than 4 million people quit their jobs each month for the past year, the highest in decades.
It's not just about the money, it's about worker well-being
While millions quit, others have felt emboldened to fight for change.
From baristas to warehouse staff to frontline nurses, more workers are filing charges of unfair labor practices against their employers or staging walkouts and strikes. They're demanding not just higher wages, but improvements to safety and wellbeing: longer breaks, more paid leave, more control over their schedules.
Office culture, too, has changed. Just over a third of workers were going to offices in person at the end of August in New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, according to Kastle Systems, which tracks office card swipes. At Apple, J.P. Morgan, the Washington Post and other companies, workers have pushed back on the notion that they have to return to offices to be productive.
And the TikTok-fueled concept of "quiet quitting" has stormed into summertime work conversations: the idea of doing the bare minimum at work, skipping the hustle and those above-and-beyond tasks. Some, like Arianna Huffington, are dismayed at the idea, calling it a step toward quitting on life; while many experts and workers see the term as a misnomer, better described as boundary-setting for personal time.
Biggest American brands are getting their first unions
Labor organizers declared mid-2022 the #hotlaborsummer. Petitions to form a union are up almost 60% compared to last year, continuing to reverse a long-running decline in union interest. Many of these workers are in food and retail, coffee shops and non-profits, media and tech. Labor experts say more women and particularly women of color are leading the charge.
Unions have won first-time victories at big-name companies: Amazon and REI in New York, an Apple store in Maryland, Trader Joe's in Massachusetts and Minnesota, Chipotle in Michigan and of course Starbucks, where more than 200 stores nationwide have unionized in less than a year.
A union is about collective bargaining, but getting there is arduous
Companies have many paths to try to slow down or even undo labor organizing. A key goal for new unions is a collective-bargaining contract to seal their wage, benefit and other demands. But research finds that when an employer resists, only a small fraction of workers who unionize successfully reach a contract.
Legal delays are abundant. Amazon, for example, launched a monthslong appeal to overturn the historic union win at its Staten Island warehouse. Starbucks has so far begun negotiations with only three of more than 200 stores. Both companies have taken the remarkable step of challenging the fairness of the union election process itself.
Union membership remains low, though support is at a 57-year high
Only about 10% of U.S. workers belonged to a union as of early 2022. At the same time, the level of public support for unions has been growing for over a decade.
This summer, 71% of Americans told Gallup they approve of unions, a level not seen since 1965. Labor experts say support is even higher with younger people, potentially growing a new generation of organizers.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-04/quiet-quitting-real-quitting-unionizing-what-else-are-american-workers-up-to | 2022-09-05T11:52:08Z |
Artists are unhappy with a man who submitted AI artwork to a contest Published September 5, 2022 at 6:07 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 0:27 Jason Allen won $300 using a piece of artwork generated by an artificial intelligence. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/artists-are-unhappy-with-a-man-who-submitted-ai-artwork-to-a-contest | 2022-09-05T11:52:14Z |
Police are searching for two suspects involved in stabbings that took place across 13 locations in the James Smith Cree Nation and in the village of Weldon in Canada's Saskatchewan province.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Police are searching for two suspects involved in stabbings that took place across 13 locations in the James Smith Cree Nation and in the village of Weldon in Canada's Saskatchewan province.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/at-least-10-are-dead-after-stabbing-attacks-in-canada | 2022-09-05T11:52:20Z |
Chile has voted a resounding NO to a proposed constitution that would have put a focus on social issues and gender parity, enshrine rights for the indigenous population, and address climate change.
Copyright 2022 NPR
Chile has voted a resounding NO to a proposed constitution that would have put a focus on social issues and gender parity, enshrine rights for the indigenous population, and address climate change.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/chile-rejects-its-new-constitution | 2022-09-05T11:52:26Z |
CNN's 'No Ordinary Life' highlights the lives of 5 women war videographers Published September 5, 2022 at 4:03 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 7:08 A new documentary follows the unique experience of women videographers covering war. "No Ordinary Life" makes its television debut on CNN. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/cnns-no-ordinary-life-highlights-the-lives-of-5-women-war-videographers | 2022-09-05T11:52:33Z |
The memorial concert in London featured the likes of Paul McCartney and Queen, but the most special guest of the night was Hawkins' 16-year-old son, Shane, who took his dad's spot behind the drum kit.
Copyright 2022 NPR
The memorial concert in London featured the likes of Paul McCartney and Queen, but the most special guest of the night was Hawkins' 16-year-old son, Shane, who took his dad's spot behind the drum kit.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/foo-fighters-holds-its-first-concert-since-the-death-of-taylor-hawkins | 2022-09-05T11:52:39Z |
The German government has announced a $65 billion dollar relief package to help citizens facing soaring inflation and surging energy costs as Russia cuts off its gas supplies to Europe.
Copyright 2022 NPR
The German government has announced a $65 billion dollar relief package to help citizens facing soaring inflation and surging energy costs as Russia cuts off its gas supplies to Europe.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/germany-announces-a-multibillion-dollar-inflation-relief-package | 2022-09-05T11:52:45Z |
As a nationwide trend of states banning or placing more restrictions on abortion continues, Kansas, where abortion remains legal, struggles to keep up with out of state client demand
Copyright 2022 KMUW | NPR for Wichita
As a nationwide trend of states banning or placing more restrictions on abortion continues, Kansas, where abortion remains legal, struggles to keep up with out of state client demand
Copyright 2022 KMUW | NPR for Wichita | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/kansas-is-struggling-to-serve-people-from-out-of-state-seeking-abortions | 2022-09-05T11:52:51Z |
Updated September 5, 2022 at 7:45 AM ET
Liz Truss will be the U.K.'s new prime minister, after the Conservative Party named her as its next leader on Monday, replacing the outgoing Boris Johnson.
Truss, who currently serves as the foreign minister, has spent the summer campaigning against her opponent for the party leadership, the U.K.'s former finance minister, Rishi Sunak. The contest has been decided by the votes of less than 200,000 grassroots party members, rather than a national electorate.
The new prime minister will be formally appointed by Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday, after Johnson meets with the monarch in Scotland to tender his resignation. Johnson, who has acted as a caretaker for the past few months, was laid low by a succession of scandals that crescendoed in the first half of this year. He lost the support of many fellow conservative legislators, and indeed many ministers in his own government, which forced him to resign.
The new leader will enter 10 Downing Street later Tuesday, and will immediately face responsibility for a rapidly escalating energy crisis in Britain, with both consumers and companies facing record high gas and electricity costs thanks to the war in Ukraine, and the corresponding rise in inflation threatening to tip the country into a major recession.
Truss, who has been dubbed "PM in waiting" by one British newspaper, said in an interview with the BBC this weekend that she will formulate proposals to combat this economic challenge within days, and is aiming to "act immediately."
Earlier in the leadership contest she did not command as much support among fellow Conservative legislators as her opponent Sunak, and even though he has promised to support a new government even if he is not leader, political analysts have said it will be difficult for her to unify her divided Conservatives, who still enjoy a sizeable majority in the country's parliament — thanks, ironically, to Johnson's huge success as a campaigner during the last national elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/liz-truss-is-the-u-k-s-next-prime-minister | 2022-09-05T11:52:57Z |
Morning news brief Published September 5, 2022 at 4:03 AM CDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 10:31 Canadian police are searching for two suspects after a stabbing spree. Germany announces a multibillion dollar inflation relief package. And, support for unions is rising. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/morning-news-brief | 2022-09-05T11:53:03Z |
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending updated COVID boosters, for people ages 12 and older.
These newly authorized shots are reformulated versions of the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines and they're available at pharmacies, clinics and doctors' offices around the country.
The boosters target both the original strain of the coronavirus and the two omicron subvariants which are causing most of the current infections. Vaccine makers have scrambled to rejigger the vaccines as they've become less effective against new variants.
"This virus has been mutating so quickly over the past two years," says Judith Guzman-Cottrill, an infectious disease specialist at Oregon Health & Science University. "I feel like we've been playing catch up and finally we have caught up," Guzman-Cottrill says.
Pfizer's updated booster is available for anyone 12 and older. The Moderna booster is available for anyone 18 and older.
"If you are eligible, there is no bad time to get your COVID-19 booster,'' CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told NPR. "I strongly encourage you to receive it," she says.
But after talking to several infectious disease experts, we found there's a whole range of opinions on who needs to boost and when. So, if you are navigating this decision, here are some things to consider:
Who needs a booster as soon as possible?
"I would recommend this booster shot for those who are immunocompromised or those who are 60 years [old] and above," says Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco. Gandhi says people in these groups are at highest risk.
According to CDC guidance, people are eligible if it's been at least two months since they received their last COVID shot, either a booster or an initial vaccine, but some vaccine experts say it would be better to wait at least four months.
"I will get it," says Physician Bob Wachter, who's in his mid-60s and in good health. "I'm about eight months out from shot number four. And so my immunity has waned significantly," Wachter says. He plans to get an updated booster as soon as it's available as a hedge against serious infection, given COVID is still circulating widely with about 400 deaths per day.
"There's no question that getting a booster increases the likelihood that you'll have a benign case," if you do get infected, he says.
Wachter also agrees with the CDC recommendation that younger adults get the booster. Boosting can protect against the risk of long COVID and helps protect the community at large by reducing transmission, if there's another surge, he says.
"There are good reasons to get it, even for people that have a low chance of a super severe infection," Wachter says.
When does it make sense to wait?
If you've had a recent COVID infection, it makes sense to wait.
Guzman-Cottrill and her children had mild infections in August, so she says she'll wait until November to get boosted.
"Our natural antibody response will protect us against COVID for another few months. So I do think it makes sense to wait and get the updated booster about three months after our positive COVID test," she says.
This is in line with the recommendation from CDC vaccine advisers — people who recently had COVID-19 may consider delaying a booster shot by three months. That's what the country's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci says he plans to do. Fauci tested positive in mid-June and says he'll wait three months before he gets his updated booster.
Guzman-Cottrill says both her teenagers will also get the new booster "to protect us from COVID this winter so we can avoid sick days from work and from school," she says.
Can I time my shot for maximum protection at the holidays?
It won't be a surprise if there's another COVID surge this coming winter. Since the protection from boosters may only last several months, some people say they plan to wait to get the new booster in order to have maximum protection when the risk of infection is higher. "You can make a rational argument to wait until case rates are higher," says Wachter.
If you're trying to time it for the period of highest risk, he says, there are likely to be a ton more cases in December and January than there are in September and October.
However, Wachter says, this strategy is a bit like trying to time the stock market. It's hard to predict exactly when the surge will happen, so there's a risk in waiting.
"You are basically accepting a period of vulnerability that you don't need to have," he says. "And as I weigh all that, my thinking is I'd rather not do that."
Another argument against waiting is that the protection from a booster shot is not instantaneous. "It does take a few weeks for our immune systems to be primed," says Dr. Aniruddha Hazra, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Chicago. He says it could be risky to wait until a surge is already underway.
Hazra points out the vaccines can activate our immune systems in a few ways. Immune cells, known as B cells, help produce antibodies that fight off the virus in the short-term. Research shows COVID vaccines boost antibodies for several months, but then they begin to fade. After that, B cells and another type of immune cell, known as T cells, which can destroy infected cells, stick around to build a deeper immunity.
He says this deeper immunity was triggered and primed from the initial vaccines, so everyone who's been vaccinated should have some protection against COVID But given the omicron subvariants circulating now are so different. "This [new] booster will definitely provide you with higher levels of antibodies, which are short term and short lived. It may also provide more deep-seated immunity," he says.
Will the new booster shots prevent COVID infections completely?
No. There's lots of enthusiasm for the updated boosters, but they are not a magic bullet
As SARS-CoV-2 has evolved, it's become more transmissible, which is why delta and omicron led to such large surges, despite widespread vaccination in the U.S.
"The goal of this vaccine is to prevent severe illness," says Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He argues that many people who've already received three doses of vaccine remain well protected, so he doesn't see a clear benefit to giving the new boosters to everyone 12 and up.
According to CDC data, people who have had one or two boosters have a 0.024% chance of being hospitalized with COVID-19. For people under 50, it's even lower — 0.014%
Offit agrees that certain groups should receive the new booster including elderly adults, people who are immunocompromised and those with chronic conditions that put them at higher risk of serious illness. But he questions the value of another booster for healthy, younger people.
Offit says he had a mild infection in May that lasted a few days. He's decided against getting the new booster. "I think I'm protected against serious disease."
The new boosters offer a few months' protection against infection, he says, but there's no clear evidence of benefit beyond that.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/omicron-boosters-do-i-need-one-and-if-so-when | 2022-09-05T11:53:09Z |
The Big 10 conference just signed a historic multibillion-dollar broadcast deal with a number of networks. Will the college athletes themselves see any portion of that money?
Copyright 2022 NPR
The Big 10 conference just signed a historic multibillion-dollar broadcast deal with a number of networks. Will the college athletes themselves see any portion of that money?
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/the-big-10-conference-signed-a-historic-deal-but-the-athletes-arent-getting-paid | 2022-09-05T11:53:15Z |
Volunteers in Jackson, Mississippi are organizing deliveries of bottled water to people who cannot reach distribution sites.
Copyright 2022 Gulf States Newsroom
Volunteers in Jackson, Mississippi are organizing deliveries of bottled water to people who cannot reach distribution sites.
Copyright 2022 Gulf States Newsroom | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/volunteers-are-getting-water-to-jackson-mississippi-recipients-who-cant-drive | 2022-09-05T11:53:21Z |
NPR's A Martinez talks to political strategists Dan Sena and Scott Jennings about President Biden's 'battle for the soul of the nation' message ahead of the midterm elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR's A Martinez talks to political strategists Dan Sena and Scott Jennings about President Biden's 'battle for the soul of the nation' message ahead of the midterm elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.keranews.org/2022-09-05/what-bidens-speech-in-philadelphia-means-for-the-midterms | 2022-09-05T11:53:28Z |
Traffic shift slated for Wednesday amid Abbotsford, Lapeer roundabout construction
Drivers on the border of Clyde and Kimball townships will soon face a delay or detour as construction of the north half of the roundabout at Lapeer and Abbotsford roads gets underway.
Starting Wednesday, turns will not be permitted from Lapeer Road to northbound Abbotsford for roughly 20 days, according to the St. Clair County Road Commission.
Southbound Abbotsford traffic will be maintained with a temporary road, while only westbound traffic will continue to be maintained on Lapeer.
“They’ve only been doing the work for about three weeks now,” said Bill Hazelton, the road commission’s new managing director. He assumes the position with the retirement of Kirk Weston this summer. “So, they’re just getting started doing stuff on the north side of the road — storm sewer and things like that.”
It’s all part of a $3.5 million project that got started last month and slightly later than originally expected.
Last January, road officials said they expected work to begin in June and end in October, but Hazelton said it wasn’t bid until June. At the time, he said part of the issue was because “prices this year are going through the roof” — similar to all ongoing construction projects.
Hazelton added it also “took a while for a contract to get awarded.” The primary contractor is Superior Contracting Group. Now, the roundabout work is slated to end in November.
“Our goal is we’re hoping to finish this year,” Hazelton said. “If all the materials come in, it should be done.”
The posted detour for northbound Abbotsford will be Wadhams Road to Vincent Road to M-136 back to Abbotsford. Local residents were encouraged to plan for delays because of construction.
“The first week or two, it’s always tougher traffic, right?” Hazelton said. “We have one way shut down, and traffic gets confusing the first couple days, and I get it. … But to us, it’s a job started now. It’s kind of settled down. Traffic is kind of moving along, and then, we’re going to start this next phase where we start no northbound traffic on Abbotsford at Lapeer. So, there’ll be another adjustment there, as well. The biggest concern is to make sure traffic understands.”
The Abbotsford and Lapeer roundabout also marks just the latest of a growing list of traffic circles around St. Clair County.
When this installment was still in the works, only a few complaints arose — officials citing residents’ increasing familiarity with the traffic mechanism.
All of them have meant major reconstructions of intersections, though the ongoing work also includes a mile-long reconstruction of Lapeer east of the roundabout at Abbotsford. It’s also among the projects to receive Federal Highway Administration funds.
A roundabout at Palms Road and Gratiot Avenue opened in Columbus Township last year. Others came at Dove and Range roads in Port Huron Township and at Wadhams and Fred Moore Highway on the border of China and St. Clair townships over the two years prior.
Those followed roundabouts at Lapeer and Allen roads in Kimball Township and Griswold and Range roads on the border of Kimball and Port Huron townships.
Earlier this year, work was set for a roundabout via a state project in 2023 at M-136 and North Road in Clyde.
The road commission has also reported roundabouts were slated for Marine City Highway on the border of Ira and Casco townships in 2024, as well as Palms Road and Krafft and State roads in Fort Gratiot in 2026.
For more, contact the road commission at (810) 364-5720.
Contact Jackie Smith at (810) 989-6270 or jssmith@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @Jackie20Smith. | https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/news/2022/09/05/traffic-shift-slated-for-wednesday-amid-abbotsford-lapeer-roundabout-construction/65470170007/ | 2022-09-05T11:58:23Z |
What we learned from Week 2 of the high school football season
Some of the stats were striking. But all of the final scores were ugly.
Every high school football game in the Blue Water Area this week was decided by double digits. The average margin of victory was 34.5 points, as most contests were decided by halftime.
Here's what we learned from Week 2.
Teams are separating themselves in the BWAC
We're getting a clearer picture of the pecking order in the BWAC. Four teams remain unbeaten after two games — Almont, Armada, Croswell-Lexington and North Branch. Those four outscored their opponents 207-32 in Week 2.
It's a little early to definitively tell which team is the best in the conference. But Armada and Cros-Lex did the most to make their case with victories in league play.
The Pioneers were especially impressive in their 61-7 rout of Richmond. Running back Gabriel Groppi led the way with 252 yards and three touchdowns on 20 carries. Quarterback Gavin Espinoza went 10-for-20 passing for 218 yards and four touchdowns (to four different receivers) against two interceptions. It was his second career start.
Meanwhile, The Tigers dismantled Yale, 42-18, at home. Quarterback Lucas Pratt finished 6-for-6 passing for 130 yards and two touchdowns. Vinny Fodale ran for 87 yards and three scores on six carries. Kyle Coenen added 111 yards and one touchdown on the ground. Wideout Zack Dykes totaled four receptions for 72 yards and one score.
These two teams will collide in Week 3 when Cros-Lex hosts Armada on Friday. A win for either side would not only be a huge statement, but could also prove significant in determining a BWAC championship down the road.
The MAC bounces back
All five MAC teams in the area took care of business this week. But four of them showed resolve and responded after losses in Week 1. Marine City, Marysville, Port Huron and St. Clair all avoided an 0-2 start and improved to 1-1.
The Mariners flexed their muscles in a 56-14 road victory over Clawson. Running back Zach Tetler rushed for for 169 yards and four touchdowns on 11 carries. Backup quarterback Lyncoln Osterland got the start and went 7-for-9 passing for 102 yards and two touchdowns.
Marysville rolled Hazel Park, 53-12, behind Carter Saccucci's 210 rushing yards and three touchdowns. Linebacker Tyler Simpson (12 tackles, one safety) was one of three Vikings to record seven or more tackles.
After being shutout in its opener, Port Huron had no trouble finding the end zone in a 55-24 win over Eastpointe. St. Clair defeated Warren Lincoln, 28-6, on a night when Logan Ellis ran for 161 yards and two touchdowns.
It's also worth mentioning that Port Huron Northern improved to 2-0. The Huskies once again destroyed an opponent at home, as they beat Warren Fitzgerald 41-6.
Brendan Haisenleder is a force to be reckoned with
Some running backs beat you with speed. Others rely on brute force to do the job. Haisenleder is a master of both.
The Cardinal Mooney senior solidified himself as one of the area's best players with a sensational performance Friday. He ran for 392 yards and three touchdowns on 30 carries in the Cardinals' 43-32 loss to Saginaw Michigan Lutheran Seminary. After two games this season, he's totaled 688 yards and seven touchdowns.
Mooney coach Joe Quesnelle called him a "thoroughbred running back." And it's not hard to see why.
Haisenleder's strength makes him a nightmare to contain. Multiple defenders are often needed to bring him down. He applies stiff arms and the equivalent of a body check to any opponent in front of him, making open-field tackles extremely difficult. Lutheran Seminary resorted to gain tackling Haisenleder whenever it could.
But sometimes, he doesn't have to use all that power. Haisenleder is flat-out fast. He gets to the edge quickly and has enough agility to change direction on a dime. The senior is destined for a special season if this continues.
Contact Brenden Welper at bwelper@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @BrendenWelper. | https://www.thetimesherald.com/story/sports/2022/09/05/what-we-learned-from-week-2-high-school-football-season/65471845007/ | 2022-09-05T11:58:29Z |
Seventy years ago, Mao Zedong appeared on a balcony overlooking Tiananmen Square and conjured a new country into being. On Tuesday, Xi Jinping, arguably the strongest leader since Mao, appeared on that same balcony to reaffirm his vision of modern China.
That vision includes what Xi has repeatedly referred to as the "Chinese Dream," one pillar of which is the idea that all Chinese should have access to the shared prosperity of the nation.
Hundreds of millions of citizens have climbed out of poverty in the past few decades, but a chasm of inequality has opened up in the country at the same time. Researchers place China within the ranks of the 20 least equal nations in the world.
And as the nation marks 70 years of communist rule, many Chinese people are reflecting on their own stories of struggle and mobility.
"At the start of China's post-Mao period 40 years ago, China had one of the lowest levels of economic inequality in the world," says Bruce Dickson, a China expert at George Washington University. "But that was because everyone was equally poor."
When China's economy opened up to the world starting in the late 1970s, wealth poured in. But that wealth has not trickled down equally to all parts of society.
"There are opportunities, [but it's up to the] individual to seize them," says Cao Shuhao, a 53-year-old migrant worker from rural Hebei province. He came to Beijing when he was in his early 20s to find work. And he has sent the money he has made as a construction worker back to his family in Hebei for nearly 30 years.
As a child, Cao often went hungry. Rice and flour were luxuries that his parents, both farmers, couldn't afford.
There was no future at home with his family, he said. So he made the trek to Beijing to find a better life. "What I did wasn't unusual," Cao says. "Most people in my generation traveled to Beijing or somewhere else to work, and feed their families."
A better life in this case is a corrugated metal shanty at the bottom of a hill in the northern reaches of Beijing's suburbs.
By day, he and a team of construction workers, all migrants, make repairs to a Buddhist temple complex at the top of the hill. Then at night, they troop to the bottom of the hill to their temporary homes. There are about a dozen shanties set up in a long row, and each one sleeps two to three men.
China's decades of economic development have relied partly on the movement of hundreds of millions of laborers from their home provinces to wherever the job market pulls them. Although some have returned home, many continue to travel and set up temporary, often precarious, dwellings where they land.
The floors are a dusty mix of dirt and concrete tiles, there are swarms of ravenous mosquitoes, and in the summer, the heat is nearly unbearable. But the shared kitchen is painted a cheerful blue and a communal table out front has room for a slew of stools to be pulled up to the action.
When his crew finishes the work on the temple, they'll move on to another site and set up their temporary digs once again.
Had he stayed in Hebei, Cao says, there's no way he would have been able to put food on his family's table. In Beijing, that's exactly what he has been able to achieve.
By any measure, Cao is better off than his parents, the definition of economic mobility. But not everyone has access to the same rate of mobility.
"In both China and the U.S., the position one is born into has a big effect on life outcomes," says David Dollar, a China expert at the Brookings Institution. In China, a system called hukou means that children must attend school where they were born, no matter where their parents end up living. Dollar says educational opportunities are vastly inferior in rural areas when compared with cities in China.
"Most children born in the countryside with rural hukou do not go to college, while most urban children do," Dollar says. And a large portion of the income gap is the result of the education gap, he added.
Cao says his two grown children are doing better than him. His daughter is now a kindergarten teacher, and his son works on stage management for government events — working-class jobs that offer much more comfort than Cao has ever experienced. "I hope my children won't be like me; that they won't have just one option for work," he says.
Grace Jin's parents wanted options for her as well. The 28-year-old architect studied dance, music and art as a child. "My mother, when she was young, she didn't have access to the arts. She wanted to learn dance and she wanted to learn piano," she recalls. "But when she was growing up, the lessons were very expensive, and they couldn't afford it. So when I was young, she thought, 'What I couldn't have, I can give to my daughter.' "
Jin grew up in Zhejiang, an affluent eastern coastal province. Her father was an agricultural researcher and her mother was an accountant. Jin went to college after high school — a forgone conclusion for her middle-class upbringing. She then studied architecture at Columbia University in the U.S.
Over passion fruit cucumber sodas at a cat cafe in Beijing, Jin says that the Chinese Dream, for her, is about freedom. "Freedom to choose love, freedom to choose what I do for a living. I also want that for my children. I want them to grow up and have access to what they like — music, art, science, whatever. I want them to live their own lives," she says.
Seventy years ago, freedom of choice was not high on the priority list for the government of the brand-new nation. After centuries of imperial rule, Mao set up a Marxist system that abolished private property and exulted in the equality of all workers. Dickson, of George Washington University, says that when the government decided to rely on the private sector to achieve unprecedented growth after the late 1970s, it effectively abandoned Marxist ideals. But that evolution has been a successful survival strategy for the modern Chinese Communist Party.
"One reason that inequality has not been a politically explosive issue is that most people have benefited from economic growth, even though some have benefited more than others," Dickson says.
Jin, for her part, isn't interested in politics. When she studied in the U.S., she became familiar with the political system in the U.S. Ever the architect, she compares the U.S. practice of electing a president every four years to a Frank Gehry creation — you don't know what you're going to get. She says she much prefers the stability of the Chinese system, where she doesn't have to worry about instability at the top. She can focus on her own life, career and success.
Jin has never known a China without rapid economic growth. But the national economy is slowing down. The percentage of GDP growth has been falling over the past decade, from 14.2% in 2007 to 6.6% in 2018.
"If there is such a thing as a social contract in China, it is based on the presumption of continued prosperity under Chinese Communist Party rule," Dickson says.
As long as people believe the government will continue to make their lives better, hope will pacify them. But if growth and wages stagnate, that hope could turn to resentment, he says. And resentment could turn into action.
Then again, he says, the U.S. has often underestimated the Chinese government's ability to survive over the 70 years of its existence.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2019-10-01/communist-china-turns-70-who-shares-its-economic-growth | 2022-09-05T12:01:43Z |
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Now a story about what happens when climate change hits Main Street. NPR's Rebecca Hersher has spent the last year visiting a small community in Maryland that's facing an existential threat from flash floods. It's called Ellicott City, and she has watched as the people who live and work on the town's main street have struggled to save the place they love before it's too late.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: No matter which way you come when you drive into old Ellicott City in Maryland, you have to go down a long, long hill with rivers on all sides. And when you get to the bottom, the rivers converge around Main Street, and then they dip down and go under the buildings. The original buildings down here were mills. Now there's about half a mile of restaurants and boutiques that are much more charming because you can hear the water as you window-shop. It's a small place, the kind of neighborhood where most interactions happen face-to-face and neighbors tend to be friends. Like, for the last 30-something years, the best way to catch up with Sally Tennant was to just walk into her store Discoveries, which I've done a lot in the last year.
We're back.
SALLY TENNANT: Yeah.
HERSHER: How are you doing?
TENNANT: OK.
HERSHER: If you talk to Sally for more than, like, five minutes, she'll tell you what I now think of as the motto of historic Ellicott City.
TENNANT: It's one of the best cities in the state of Maryland, a great destination for people all over the nation.
HERSHER: Ellicott City feels special to the people who live there, which is why what's happening there is so scary. Ellicott City is getting extreme rain.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Just incredible amounts of rain in the Ellicott City area...
RACHEL SMITH: I think the rain started around 6.
HERSHER: In July 2016, Rachel Smith had just graduated from high school, and she was working at a coffee shop on Main Street called Bean Hollow.
SMITH: So it started raining, and - no big deal. And then we see the water going down the street start to get a little bit higher until it's up to the curb of the sidewalk.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #1: Ma'am, what's going on?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We are at Bean Hollow in old Ellicott City on Frederick Road. The water is above the door. It's coming in the building. We need somebody to come in.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #1: What's your address?
HERSHER: It happened fast - like, 15 minutes - for Main Street to go from wet to a raging river.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #2: Howard County 911.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Yes. Hi. This is the Phoenix Emporium.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #2: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #1: We are currently underwater, and I have about 15 to 30 people in here, and we are trapped inside.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: There's people in the water.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Oh, my God. Get out.
SMITH: I remember telling the 911 operator that the floor was buckling...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SMITH: It's buckling.
...And that we didn't have a place to go.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #1: What's going on?
SMITH: We were afraid the place we were going to go was down.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SMITH: (Screaming).
We just didn't know what to do.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #1: What's happening, ma'am?
HERSHER: Finally, they found a set of stairs and a closet in the back and were able to get out, but the coffee shop and dozens of other businesses were gutted. And when the water went down, the police found out that two people who had been driving when the flood started had been swept away. Their bodies were found the next day more than two miles downstream.
ANGIE TERSIGUEL: It was horrifying.
HERSHER: Angie Tersiguel and her husband own a restaurant on Main Street. The kitchen was in shambles - every chair in the dining room, the carpet, the entire wine cellar.
TERSIGUEL: I look back on that time, and I think, God, we were really tested - like, really tested.
HERSHER: It was kind of hard to even comprehend what had happened - 8 feet of white water in the street. For the next few weeks, to get to her building, Angie had to walk by a cute little bridge stuffed underneath with cars and gutters and dumpsters. But there was also a clarity after the flood. The storm had been an act of God, a crazy thing, a thousand-year flood. It wouldn't happen again. So everyone - business owners, residents, even the governor of Maryland - seemed focused on the same thing - getting back to normal as quickly as possible.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
ALLAN KITTLEMAN: It's been 13 days since the devastating flood.
HERSHER: Allan Kittleman was the county executive at the time, the closest thing the town has to a mayor.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KITTLEMAN: Ellicott City will be rebuilt, Ellicott City will be reopened, and Main Street will continue to be a vibrant town for many, many decades to come. OK.
HERSHER: And it worked.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: A major announcement for downtown Ellicott City 10 weeks after the devastating floods killed two people and washed away homes and businesses - tomorrow Main Street will be open for business.
TERSIGUEL: There was a very short period of time that I could look back and think, like, wow. We did that. Like, we persevered. And I don't feel that way anymore (laughter).
HERSHER: No?
TERSIGUEL: No.
(SOUNDBITE OF MONTAGE)
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: Torrential rain sent water rushing into Ellicott City yesterday for the second time in less than two years.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #3: Howard County 911. What's the location of your emergency?
HERSHER: Newly repaired windows were smashed; newly repaved sidewalks, washed away.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: God, this is worse than the last one.
HERSHER: National Guardsman Eddison Hermond was hanging out at a bar on Main Street when he saw a woman struggling in the water. He stepped out to help her.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: There was a gentleman that was trying to cross over the Tiber River location.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #4: In a vehicle?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: No, himself.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #4: OK. What happened?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: He got swept under.
UNIDENTIFIED OPERATOR #4: What did he look like?
HERSHER: It took two days to find Hermond's body downstream.
ANJEL SCARBOROUGH: My organist is practicing the Charles...
HERSHER: At the end of Main Street is a church, St. Peter's. Reverend Anjel Scarborough led the congregation in the weeks after the second deadly flood. The church is up on high ground, so it was a place that everyone came for cleanup supplies, for food, for someone to talk to.
SCARBOROUGH: There was such shock. I mean, it really was the shock of - this can't be happening again. This - you know, there's such denial in the initial stages. But then it was the mourning and the grieving of the, you know, the can-do attitude that - no, we can't go back and do this again. We have to face the hard reality that we have to let go of our life here, you know?
HERSHER: We have to let go of our life here. The second flood had cracked apart the town's veneer of safety. It felt dangerous. In the weeks after the flood, the county leader Allan Kittleman called a town meeting in the high school auditorium and said something extraordinary - I was wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KITTLEMAN: For 246 years, the people of Ellicott City have said, we know better than the river, and we can impose ourselves on the river, and we'll make it work for us. And frankly, I was a believer in that until this flood.
HERSHER: Kittleman had been leading the charge to rebuild just 22 months earlier. Now, he said, the town needed a new plan.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KITTLEMAN: Frankly, now I've realized that we can try all we can do impose ourselves on this river and these streams, but the water doesn't listen, and we need to decide how we can coexist with the river.
HERSHER: And then Kittleman announced a plan for saving Ellicott City. It had been developed using the best hydrological model available, and the plan had three parts. First, temporarily stop building homes and businesses up on the ridges around Main Street to control runoff. Second, build new retention ponds and bigger culverts so the water that did come down wouldn't flood the road as much.
But it was the third part of the plan that would destroy friendships and pit neighbors against each other and nearly destroyed the entire social fabric of old Ellicott City. The third part of the plan was to tear down 10 buildings on Main Street to make room for the river. And this is where the story of the people of Ellicott City becomes the story of climate change in America. When the climate changes and the future no longer looks like the past, people all over the country are forced to make huge, life-changing decisions. There's no playbook for how to do it, and there's no cavalry coming to help, and if it goes wrong, your town can die.
Tomorrow on ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, what happened next in Ellicott City.
Rebecca Hersher, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2019-10-08/how-climate-change-and-flash-flooding-is-affecting-communities-across-the-country | 2022-09-05T12:01:49Z |
AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:
Now to the small town in Maryland hit by two flash floods in two years. This is what it sounded like when residents called 911.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED 911 OPERATOR: Ma'am, what's going on?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: We are at Bean Hollow in old Ellicott City on Frederick Road. The water is above the door.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: We are currently underwater, and I have about 15 to 30 people in here, and we are trapped inside.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: There's people in the water.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Oh, my God.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #5: Oh, my God. Get out.
CORNISH: Three people died in those floods. And when the water receded, it was clear the community couldn't survive another deluge, so they considered a drastic solution. Tearing down part of Main Street to save the rest nearly destroyed the town in a different way. NPR's Rebecca Hersher has more.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: The goal was to keep people safe during the next flash flood because it would happen again. And engineers said that tearing down buildings would help by making room for the water. But the idea that the people of Ellicott City, Md., would allow buildings to be demolished on their beloved historic Main Street was too much for some to bear. And for others, not tearing down those same buildings was unconscionable. And sometimes, those people were neighbors.
GAYLE KILLEN: Hey, Mary Sue (ph). What's up?
MARY SUE: What's up?
KILLEN: Not much.
HERSHER: Gayle Killen's house on Main Street is from the early 1800s.
KILLEN: When you walk through Ellicott City and when you discover what's inside of those buildings, you see where slaves were hidden on their path to freedom. You see a lot of things that connect you to our greater community.
HERSHER: Gayle is aware that the street is prone to flooding. Her house has personally flooded multiple times.
KILLEN: Family and very dear friends will say, what are you doing here? Why are you still here? You know, especially if you know what's coming, why are you here? What's wrong with you?
HERSHER: What do you tell them?
KILLEN: You know, I tell them this place is worth sticking around and working for.
HERSHER: But after the second deadly flash flood, some of her neighbors were ready to leave. Beth Woodruff lived across the street from Gayle. She and her son watched the second flood tear through the neighborhood. And the more she learned about what had caused the floods, the more worried she got.
BETH WOODRUFF: Like, the science is here. This can happen any year. It could happen multiple times in a year. These people are in real danger.
HERSHER: So when the county said it wanted to buy her house to make room for the water, Beth agreed to move.
WOODRUFF: I'm sad. I'm really sad, but I genuinely think that by taking my house down that the people who are upstream from me are going to be safer. You know, that's kind of the emotional reaction, right? And then the logical reaction is, all right, well, my son will need less therapy if we're not living on top of this river all the time.
HERSHER: But Beth's decision caused a rift with Gayle - Gayle, who would never move. Since the 2016 flood, Beth and Gayle had been friendly in the particularly close way that happens when you go through something traumatic with your neighbor. But after Beth agreed to move, Gayle posted a map of the neighborhood on her own window that she felt proved demolition was unnecessary and labeled houses slated for demolition, including Beth's.
WOODRUFF: And I think the implication was that I'm somehow a sellout.
HERSHER: Gayle says she wasn't attacking Beth. She was just arguing for a different plan.
KILLEN: There began to, like, form this idea that I was attacking her directly because she's on the list of demolitions.
HERSHER: To Beth, it felt personal. At one point, Gayle posted Beth's address in a Facebook group.
WOODRUFF: The way I see it, friends don't do that sort of thing to one another. Friends don't stab each other in the back or in the face. If you pretend that human lives are worth less than historic buildings, you're a despicable person. And I don't have any bones about saying that. You're absolutely despicable.
HERSHER: Versions of this happened all up and down Main Street. Front porch conversations went from mundane to conspiratorial. Everything was in upheaval. The social fabric of the place was fraying at the edges. And at its heart, it was about much more than the demolition plan.
BEN ZAITCHIK: Rebuilding decisions are not rational. And I don't think we should pretend they're rational.
HERSHER: Ben Zaitchik is a hydrologist at Johns Hopkins University. He's the kind of guy you might call if you wanted a really rational answer to a question about water. But he's seen a lot of towns deal with catastrophic flooding, and he says there are limits to what hydrologists can offer. He almost sounds like a therapist talking about it. He says think of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
ZAITCHIK: The question of what you do to - about New Orleans is not a rational engineering conversation. It's a conversation about what we want to be as a society, what a place means to us as a community locally and as a country. And so you need to come up with an answer that satisfies the engineering specs and also the human needs.
HERSHER: And the way to do that is for officials to make room for people to make suggestions, to not feel rushed or condescended to. Otherwise, distrust will flourish, and your town could die a social death even before the next storm wipes it out. It all takes time, and time passing helps the fear fade, the grief at what was lost subside.
In the year after the second flood, Ellicott City residents pressured the county government to do just that, and the government responded. Instead of one plan, they presented the townspeople with five options that could protect the town from floods, all of which involves demolishing some buildings.
UNIDENTIFIED GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: So I know that there is a lot of controversy and that everybody agrees.
HERSHER: Hundreds of residents showed up at public events to ask questions...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #6: Most of my question is about safety.
HERSHER: ...To make suggestions...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #7: Have you all studied the economic impact to the existing businesses on Main Street?
HERSHER: ...To be heard.
In May, they announced their decision. Over the next five years or so, the county says it will build a tunnel, buy about a dozen homes and businesses and demolish at least four. It will cost more than $100 million. In June, trucks and cranes arrived on Main Street and started pulling debris out of the buildings.
Gayle is still fighting against the plan, and Gayle and Beth's friendship appears to be over. But in general, the town's social fabric is slowly repairing, and a lot of people are OK with the construction plan.
Sally, hey.
Even people who are also grieving the loss of what the town used to be before the floods - people like Sally Tennant. On a muggy day in August, I found her inside the shell of her old store, which was destroyed by water twice. She's sitting in a folding chair next to a massive hole in the floor. You can see the river running by beneath.
SALLY TENNANT: When I go into town now - I mean, it's hard to get over - I just, like, sometimes just shake my head like, really? Did this really happen here?
HERSHER: Sally is a strong person. You can see it in the way she's here, where she almost died, and the way she showed up to every public meeting for years to talk about what should be done and advocate for business owners who were losing their buildings. She's also incredibly thoughtful for someone who's just lost everything.
TENNANT: My opinion - I'm glad they're not tearing down 10 buildings at this point from a visual standpoint. However, the one thing that they can control is the man-made factors. So sometimes, I feel a sense of optimism, like they're going to fix it. And then the pessimistic side of me says, can they fix it? The odds of it flooding again are very, very high.
HERSHER: And that is what it looks like for Main Street to adapt to climate change. People may not be entirely happy with the plan, and a lot of people are still scared when it rains, but they're also cautiously, maybe even irrationally optimistic because their town has agreed to do something. And that means there's hope.
Rebecca Hersher, NPR News, Ellicott City, Md.
CORNISH: And this story was produced by Ryan Kellman.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2019-10-09/how-a-proposal-to-reduce-flood-risk-in-ellicott-city-nearly-destroyed-the-community | 2022-09-05T12:01:56Z |
In the industrial city of Dongguan, China, the effects of the trade war on the Chinese economy are measured in idled machinery and empty bar stools.
"One year ago, you probably couldn't even get through the crowd because it would be so busy. But right now, even the smallest vendors can't survive," says Song Guanghui, the owner of Crowdbar, a tricked-out food stall in an open-air market in Dongguan.
The market is across the street from an enormous factory complex that specializes in making shoes. Crowdbar's flashy electric sign, cold beer and bombastic owner used to draw crowds of workers at shift change.
But shoes are among the thousands of products that the Trump administration has slapped double-digit tariffs on since the trade war began in early 2018. Trade talks between the U.S. and China resumed Thursday. But a deal is far from done.
Meanwhile, 70% of footwear sold in America is imported from China. And with tariffs cutting into their bottom lines, many manufacturers have already relocated operations to countries like Vietnam and Indonesia.
That has left Song and Crowdbar short of workers to buy his barbecue skewers and beer. "I'm probably going to pick up and move elsewhere. If I stay here for much longer, I'm not going to be able to make it," says Song.
There are clues like this about the Chinese economy's health nearly everywhere in Dongguan. It's a sprawling manufacturing hub of more than 8 million people in southern China, nicknamed the "workshop of the world." Cities like Dongguan are among the hardest hit in a trade war that targets goods manufactured on razor-sharp margins.
"I think there's a pretty major impact if you just look at the numbers," says Victor Shih, a political economist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies the Chinese economy. China exports more goods to the U.S. than to any other country in the world, and those exports have dropped by more than 12% this year alone, he says.
That drop has clearly hit the Chinese manufacturing sector. Industrial output growth in China fell to its lowest level in 17 years this summer.
On top of the trade war, China's economic growth has been slowing down for years. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly how many of China's current economic troubles are due to the trade war or the existing slump. But tariffs have undoubtedly contributed to slower growth since the early months of 2018, when the economic standoff began, experts on the Chinese economy say.
President Trump's trade war has hit the U.S. as well. Economist Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics, says that tariffs have made products imported from China more expensive. "The brunt of the burden of tariffs is being borne by U.S. consumers," Kroeber says.
American farmers who've had retaliatory tariffs placed on the goods they export to China have also suffered, despite aid packages supplied by the U.S. government.
The Chinese government has many more tools at its disposal to alleviate some of the trade war's pressures. The central government recently slashed taxes on businesses and corporations to help cushion the blow. The government also devalued its currency so that Chinese goods were cheaper, and thus would be more attractive, to trade partners around the world.
Another tool available to the central government, experts say, is massaging official data coming out of Beijing. The official unemployment rate in China, for instance, has hovered between 4.3% and 3.6% for nearly 20 years. A lack of fluctuation beyond a percentage point for such a period of time is highly unusual. And the government even shut down the release of regional manufacturing statistics out of Guangdong province, where Dongguan is located, that cast doubt on rosy national numbers.
But if some of the data is not to be trusted, anecdotal evidence on the ground in Dongguan paints a somewhat clearer picture.
On the dusty outskirts of the city, a dog of indeterminate heritage lazes in front of the entrance to the Dongguan Fangjie Printing and Packaging Company. The mood inside the plastic bag factory, however, is one of brisk efficiency. Workers in green polo shirts and blue caps monitor machines spitting out brightly colored plastic bags — bags for detergent, candy and dog poop.
"We make about 15 different kinds of doggie doo-dah bags," says Christopher Devereux, the managing director of Omnidex, a company that connects foreign companies from all over the world with Chinese factories like Fangjie that can manufacture their products.
Until the trade war, Devereux's business was called ChinaSavvy. But earlier this year, he changed the name because, increasingly, he's working with factories outside China. In fact, he recently pulled most of his clients out of the Fangjie factory and moved their business to factories in Vietnam, "because of the tariffs, [because of] the trade war."
And new business has evaporated, he says: "My inquiries from American customers about coming to China have dropped off considerably."
But Devereux concedes that he had already been considering a move to Vietnam when the opening shots of the trade war were fired.
"Wages have been going up steadily over the years, which happens when you get a more educated populace," says U.C. San Diego's Shih.
A more educated population means fewer low-skilled workers for production lines in factories like Fangjie Printing and Packaging Company. Factories have to offer higher wages to attract the best workers. And those wages eat into the bottom lines of the companies that Devereux places in Chinese factories.
"If you look at Vietnam now, you've got wages being roughly one-third of what they are here in China," says Devereux. And so the trade war merely sped up his move out of China and into Vietnam. "Two or three of our American customers, knowing we were looking in Vietnam, asked us to accelerate that" when the trade war began, he says.
"Even in the absence of a trade war, China's growth rate would have come down. The trade war makes it worse, but the trade war is not the primary reason," says Shang-Jin Wei, an expert on the Chinese economy at Columbia University and a former International Monetary Fund official.
The real challenges to the Chinese economy, Wei says, are structural issues like a lack of low-skilled workers to populate factories, an over-reliance on the manufacturing sector and an aging workforce.
Those factors, Wei says, pre-date the trade war. In fact, China's GDP growth has dropped by 3 percentage points in the past decade, from a growth rate of 9.6% in 2008 to 6.6% in 2018.
Still, at the plastic bag factory in Dongguan, a cluster of brand-new machines sits idle. "These four machines they bought especially especially for us," says Devereux, sweeping an arm toward the shiny machines on the factory floor. "And now we're saying bye-bye."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2019-10-10/has-the-trade-war-taken-a-bite-out-of-chinas-economy-yes-but-its-complicated | 2022-09-05T12:02:02Z |
A few times a month, Marhana leaves the village of Krui in southern Sumatra and journeys deep into the woods. Then she finds a tree, lined with triangular holes, each hole dripping with crystalized sap.
Marhana (like many Indonesians, she uses only a first name) takes a woven rattan rope and lassos up the tree, climbing higher and higher, chipping away at the sap using a tiny pickaxe.
"This is the damar," she says in Indonesian, as she looks at the golden droppings.
Marhana may see damar as her way to make a living, but agriculture experts see this rare commodity as something bigger. They see damar as a sort of anti-palm oil — a model to combat deforestation and climate change.
Damar isn't a global household-name, but in Sumatra it goes way back. In the 1800s, Dutch colonists used the sap to bind their wood boats for sea journeys. Today damar is used in varnishes, paints, and cosmetics. According to the UN, Indonesia exports tens of thousands of tons of damar and other resins each year.
But compared to Indonesia's monthly exports of palm oil, that's not so whopping. According to the Indonesian Palm Oil Organization, or GAPKI, Indonesia exports about 2 to 3 million tons of palm oil per month.
And those palm oil exports come at a cost: large-scale deforestation of Indonesian forest, which in turn releases large amounts of climate change gases and destroys habitats for animals like endangered rhinos and orangutans. Last year, the Indonesian government stopped issuing licenses for new palm oil plantations and the European Union is now considering an import ban.
But there's an issue.
Last month Thomas Hertel, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He argued that even if the EU ban comes to pass, and even if it successfully reduces the trade of palm oil, local farmers aren't just going to automatically keep the forests in place.
"Even if the import ban bites, it may not do the job," Hertel says.
Hertel says that farmers might stop planting palm oil, but they might keep cutting down forests to plant other commodities, like soy or rice. "If you focus on certifying one crop, they switch to another crop. The incentive for deforestation will still be there," Hertel says.
That's where damar comes in. Back in Krui, farmer Kamas Usman says he grows damar in something called an agroforest. It may look like a regular forest, but it's actually an intricately planned farm.
"In this agroforest there are lots of varieties of trees. Durian, jengkol, lots of them," Usman says. The farmers plant food crops below — Southeast Asian fruits like durian and jengkol, as well as avocados or coffee. Above in the canopy are the damar trees — also called Shorea javanica — which produce the golden sap. "That's how it becomes not just a forest, but a damar forest," he says.
David Gilbert, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, says the agroforestry model adds value that's key to the forest's survival. First there's the water benefits: Having your farm in the middle of a forest with natural watersheds and rain cycles is a win for crops' health.
And then there's the business side — all these crops growing together means forest farmers like Usman and harvesters like Marhana have lots of economic incentives not to cut down their trees.
Gilbert says whereas palm oil is a monocrop — just rows and rows of the same palm trees — with damar agroforests, farmers aren't reliant on a single product. "If the damar price is too low, they can concentrate on selling their coffee or their avocados, for example," Gilbert says, "So it insulates them from the shocks of these global commodity markets in a way that producing just one crop can't provide."
The forest where Marhana harvests damar in South Sumatra is pretty much Indonesia's poster child for the strength of agroforests versus deforestation. In the 1990s, when the palm oil industry came in and tried to persuade locals to cut down their damar trees, it didn't work. The majority of farmers stuck with damar. Around this time, Indonesia's forestry minister decided to formally grant the community ownership of several thousand hectares of woods.
Now the Indonesian government is in the middle of a plan to increase Indonesia's community-owned forest lands to 12.7 million hectares. And the Indonesian Ministry of Social Forestry is also working on community agroforestry projects on other islands besides Sumatra, including Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.
As for Marhana, she says the agroforestry model works for her, providing her whole livelihood — just like it did for her mother and her grandmother. And at 48 years old, she has no plans to quit climbing damar trees anytime soon.
Julia Simon is a regular contributor to NPR's Planet Money. You can also hear her on the NPR business desk and the NPR podcasts Code Switch and Rough Translation.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2019-10-19/could-this-tree-be-an-eco-friendly-way-to-wean-indonesian-farmers-off-palm-oil | 2022-09-05T12:02:08Z |
Local non-profit trying to end teenage fatal crashes
(WDBJ) - Arriving alive every time they drive is the motto for Teen Driving Solutions school.
“Just been kinda exposed to this for many many years and I finally decided it’s time someone do something about it,” said Founder Daniel Wagner.
Wagner lost a friend when he was 14 years old. Now, he’s trying to prevent teenagers from dying in crashes. The Insurance Information Institute reported young drivers were 5.1 percent of drivers. But accounted for 8.5 percent of fatal crashes in 2020.
“We are here to end the epidemic of automobile driving for teens being the leading cause for death,” explained Wagner.
The two-day program includes training in the classroom and on the track for parents and their children.
“For every parent, I think you want your children to come home safe,” said Charlotte Parent Chris Eddings.
22 families from Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee attended the training hosted at the Virginia International Raceway. 16-year-old Mae Jacobs is from Lynchburg. She says the crash avoidance classes made her more confident to hit the road.
“How to fix oversteer and understeer. That was honestly something I was a little worried about but now I know how to handle it,” said Jacobs.
The school found that 98 percent of their graduates drive *incident free for 4 years after completing the program.
“We get them to think differently about the entire qualification and requirement,” added Wagner. “And we give them all the skills to control that vehicle safely in whatever condition they find themselves.”
The next driving school is in October.
Copyright 2022 WDBJ. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/04/local-non-profit-trying-end-teenage-fatal-crashes/ | 2022-09-05T12:19:48Z |
Liz Truss set to become Britain’s prime minister
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Conservative Party has chosen Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as the party’s new leader, putting her in line to be confirmed as prime minister.
Truss’s selection was announced Monday in London after a leadership election in which only the 180,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party were allowed to vote. Truss beat rival Rishi Sunak, the government’s former Treasury chief, by promising to increase defense spending and cut taxes, while refusing to say how she would address the cost-of-living crisis.
Truss received 81,326 votes to Sunak’s 60,399.
Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to formally name Truss as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday. The ceremony will take place at the queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland, where the monarch is vacationing, rather than at Buckingham Palace.
The two-month leadership contest left Britain with a power vacuum at a time when consumers, workers and businesses were demanding government action to mitigate the impact of soaring food and energy prices. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had no authority to make major policy decisions since July 7, when he announced his intention to resign.
With household energy bills set to increase by 80% next month, charities warn that as many as one in three households will face fuel poverty this winter, leaving millions of people to choose between eating and heating their homes. The Bank of England has forecast that inflation will reach a 42-year high of 13.3% in October, threatening to push Britain into a prolonged recession.
“The new prime minister is facing a very, very difficult inheritance,” said Tim Bale, a political analyst and professor at Queen Mary University of London.
Johnson was forced to resign after a series of ethics scandals that peaked in July when dozens of cabinet ministers and lower-level officials resigned over his handling of allegations of sexual misconduct by a senior member of his government.
Under Britain’s parliamentary system of government, the center-right Conservative Party was allowed to hold an internal election to select a new party leader and prime minister, without going to the wider electorate. A new general election isn’t required until December 2024.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/britain-learn-who-will-succeed-johnson-prime-minister/ | 2022-09-05T12:19:54Z |
Citing imminent danger, Cloudflare drops hate site Kiwi Farms
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Citing an “immediate threat to human life,” Cloudflare has dropped the notorious stalking and harassment site Kiwi Farms from its internet security services following an online campaign started by transgender Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti to pressure it to do so.
“This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with,” CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post Saturday in an about-face after earlier insisting that the company would not block the site. “However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike what we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.”
For years, members of the site created and operated by Joshua Conner Moon, 29, have congregated on what they call a “lighthearted discussion forum” to organize vicious harassment campaigns against transgender people, feminists and others they deem mockable. They gang up on victims and pool their personal details such as addresses and phone numbers in a practice called “doxxing,” spreading vile rumors and targeting workplaces, friends, families and homes. Another favorite tactic has been “swatting” — making false emergency calls to provoke an armed police response at a target’s home. Some people subjected to the group’s abuse have died by suicide.
Sorrenti, who goes by “Keffals” online, has been leading a campaign to pressure Cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms. In August, she fled her home in Canada for Europe after she was doxxed and swatted. Her online stalkers, however, found her in Belfast, Ireland, as well and continued to intensify their harassment campaign against her just as her campaign against Kiwi Farms and its enablers was gaining momentum.
“When a multi-billion dollar corporation like Cloudflare has to drop Kiwi Farms because of an ‘imminent and emergency threat to human life’ it is no longer a matter of free speech. Removing Kiwi Farms from the internet is a matter of public safety for every single person online,” she tweeted on Saturday.
On Sunday, Kiwi Farms was inaccessible. But a version of the site with a .ru domain name was intermittently up and running, though it was not clear whether it would remain up.
The decision to drop Kiwi Farms Saturday was an about-face for Cloudflare and Prince, who earlier in the week put out a 2,600-word blog post — without mentioning the site by name — doubling down on the decision to protect it and comparing Cloudflare to a phone company that “doesn’t terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things.”
But Sorrenti and other targets of the site say it was far worse than that, as trolls on the site relentlessly pursued their victims offline — often for years on end.
“They are trying to get people to lose their jobs. They’re trying to get people to lose their housing, to be starving and homeless,” Liz Fong-Jones, a former Google engineer and cloud computing expert who is transgender, told the AP last week. “And then they go after people’s families and then they tell people that the only way out is to kill themselves.”
Moon started Kiwi Farms nearly a decade ago as a wiki site dedicated to harassing a transgender woman; Moon even used the woman’s initials in an early version of the site’s name. Over time its users began to target other people -- mostly active online users who are transgender, have autism or other mental conditions. Kiwi Farms in its current form was born in 2015.
An overarching theme of the site’s discussions centers on users’ fierce opposition to transgender children receiving gender-affirming medical care. Members typically refer to those who support such treatment as “groomers” and “pedophiles,” rhetoric that is also used increasingly by conservatives in their opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“There has never been a violent incident in our history, which cannot be said for many other sites still on Cloudflare. This narrative feels like a lie spun up to save face,” Moon, who posts on Kiwi Farms under the pseudonym “Null,” posted Saturday in response to Cloudflare’s cutoff. Reached earlier by The Associated Press to comment on the campaign against his site, Moon replied only “the press are scum.”
KiwiFarms.ru is registered to and protected by the Russian company DDoS-Guard, whose customers have in the past included Russian government websites including the Defense Ministry and cybercriminal forums where stolen credit cards are bought and sold.
Last year, DDoS-Guard protected the pro-Trump social media website Parler.com for a time after Amazon withdrew hosting services. KiwiFarms.ru was registered on July 12, suggesting Moon was aware Cloudflare could drop his site and thus created a backup plan.
DDoS-Guard did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Sunday. Kiwi Farms’ internet connection is provided by VegasNAP, a Las Vegas-based company that said in response to queries last week that it does not disclose information about its clients. Contacted again Sunday, the company did not immediately respond.
“In the past, DDoS-Guard has been known to discontinue support for some seriously problematic websites, apparently as a result of press inquiries. That very well may happen again, in this instance, but I wouldn’t bet on it,” said independent internet expert Ron Guilmette. “Obviously, a lot has changed in the world since February 24, 2022, and I do believe that, in general, Russians these days, and over the past 6 months in particular, have learned to care a whole lot less about what the rest of the world thinks of them and/or their actions.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/citing-imminent-danger-cloudflare-drops-hate-site-kiwi-farms/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:00Z |
Smoked salmon recalled due to listeria risk
Published: Sep. 5, 2022 at 7:52 AM EDT|Updated: 27 minutes ago
(CNN) - Seafood fans may want to take a close look inside the fridge.
Miami-based St. James Smokehouse issued a voluntary recall of its smoked salmon.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the food may be tainted with listeria. Listeria can cause serious and possibly fatal infections in children, elderly adults and people with weakened immune systems.
The salmon was sold by distributors between February and June of this year. The product was distributed to stores located in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Virginia and Wisconsin.
As of last week, no related illnesses have been reported.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/smoked-salmon-recalled-due-listeria-risk/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:07Z |
Tensions remain at war-threatened Ukrainian nuclear plant
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Tension still gripped Europe’s largest nuclear plant Monday, a day before U.N. inspectors were due to report on their efforts to avert a potential disaster at the Ukrainian site that has been engulfed by Russia’s war on its neighbor.
The Russian military accused Ukrainian forces of staging “provocations” at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which lies within a Russian-installed administrative area.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that Kyiv’s forces on Sunday targeted the territory of the plant with a drone, which it said Russian troops were able to shoot down.
The ministry said Ukrainian troops also shelled the adjacent city of Enerhodar twice overnight.
The two sides have traded accusations about endangering the plant, which the Kremlin’s forces have held since early March. The plant’s Ukrainian staff continue to operate it.
In a perilous mission, experts with the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled through the war zone to reach the plant last week.
Four of six U.N. nuclear agency inspectors have completed their work and left the site, Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power plant operator, said Monday.
Two of the experts are expected to stay at the plant on a permanent basis, Energoatom said.
The U.N. inspectors are scheduled to brief the Security Council on Tuesday about what they found out on their visit.
The plant is largely crippled, amid a grinding war that has clobbered energy markets.
A prominent Ukrainian nuclear expert said Monday that only a demilitarized zone of at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) around the plant could ensure its safety.
Hryhoriy Plachkov, Ukraine’s former head of nuclear inspections, said he also feared for the morale and mental state of his countrymen working there.
Elsewhere, the fighting raged on for a seventh month, with Ukraine’s presidential office saying Monday at least four civilians were killed and seven others were wounded by Russian shelling in the previous 24 hours across several regions of Ukraine.
Most of the casualties were in the eastern Donetsk region, where three people were killed and four were wounded. A large chunk of Donetsk is held by Russian-allied separatists.
In the Kharkiv region, further north, three people were wounded when a rocket hit a residential building, the president’s office said.
Russian shells struck more than a dozen residential buildings along with a school, cafes and stores, Ukraine said.
Meanwhile, a counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces “is making verifiable progress in the south and the east” of the country, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said.
“The pace of the counteroffensive will likely change dramatically from day to day as Ukrainian forces work to starve the Russians of necessary supplies, disrupt their command and control, and weaken their morale even as counteroffensive ground assaults continue,” the institute said late Sunday.
It predicted that Russian forces will launch “fierce artillery and air attacks” against the advancing Ukrainian troops and on any areas they liberate.
Amid increased Ukrainian strikes on the occupied Kherson region, Russian-installed authorities there said that for security reasons they were putting on hold their plans for a local referendum on whether the region should formally become part of Russia.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/tensions-remain-war-threatened-ukrainian-nuclear-plant/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:14Z |
42Gears customers can continue to manage their upgraded Android devices using its MDM suite
BENGALURU, India, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- With the recent release of Google's Android 13, 42Gears has modified its offering so IT admins using SureMDM, 42Gears' flagship mobile device management solution, can continue to secure, monitor, and manage newly-updated Android devices easily.
The latest Android version, also called Android Tiramisu, comes with significant refinements following Android 12's big redesign. The source code is available on AOSP, so developers can now make their builds compatible with the most recent version of Android.
"Most of our products, including SureMDM, SureLock, SureFox, and SureVideo are fully compatible with Android 13. We've also introduced some changes in them while upgrading our products to support the new Android version," said Prakash Gupta, co-founder and COO of 42Gears Mobility Systems.
According to 42Gears, businesses that decide to upgrade to Android 13 will find that:
- Android 13 requires users to allow runtime permissions for sending notifications from any app; notifications won't be allowed by default. The same holds true while using the 42Gears Android MDM app too.
- Bluetooth Manager will no longer work for device administrator as Google has deprecated a few APIs for the same. It will only work for Device Owner mode, and 42Gears has already updated those APIs so its customers can continue to work with the Bluetooth Manager.
"Given that businesses are adopting either fully remote or hybrid work environments, they need to invest in a robust and reliable device management tool now more than ever. By providing support for Android 13 early on, our objective is to make our MDM platform extremely practical and compatible - one that can take the pain out of Android device management," reiterated Prakash.
To learn more about 42Gears' zero-day support for Android 13, please click here.
About 42Gears
42Gears is a leading UEM solution provider, offering SaaS and on-premise solutions to secure, monitor, and manage business endpoints built on Android, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, macOS, Wear OS, VR, IoT, and Linux platforms. 42Gears products are used in various industries and trusted by over 18,000 customers in more than 115 countries. For more information, please visit https://www.42gears.com.
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SOURCE 42Gears Mobility Systems | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/all-42gears-products-compatible-with-android-13/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:20Z |
SHANGHAI, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Boqii Holding Limited ("Boqii" or the "Company") (NYSE: BQ), a leading pet-focused platform in China, today announced that Mr. Kai Fang has resigned from his position as the Company's Chief Strategy Officer and all his roles as a director or an officer of the applicable affiliates of the Company due to personal reasons. Mr. Kai Fang has served as the Company's Chief Strategy Officer since 2021 and has been primarily responsible for our strategic planning and capital market management.
The board of directors of Boqii wishes to extend its deep gratitude to Mr. Kai Fang for his contributions to the continued growth of Boqii throughout the years. Mr. Hao Liang, Boqii's Founder, Chairman and chief Executive Officer, said: "Kai has extensive experience in capital market and strategic planning. He has helped us continually optimize our strategic direction. We wish him the very best in his future endeavors."
About Boqii Holding Limited
Boqii Holding Limited (NYSE: BQ) is a leading pet-focused platform in China. We are the leading online destination for pet products and supplies in China with our broad selection of high-quality products including global leading brands, local emerging brands, and our own private label, Yoken and Mocare, offered at competitive prices. Our online sales platforms, including Boqii Mall and our flagship stores on third-party e-commerce platforms, provide customers with convenient access to a wide selection of high-quality pet products and an engaging and personalized shopping experience. Our Boqii Community provides an informative and interactive content platform for users to share their knowledge and love for pets.
For investor and media inquiries, please contact:
Boqii Holding Limited
Investor Relations
Tel: +86-21-6882-6051
Email: ir@boqii.com
DLK Advisory Limited
Tel: +852-2857-7101
Email: ir@dlkadvisory.com
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SOURCE Boqii Holding Limited | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/boqii-announces-senior-management-change/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:27Z |
BEIJING, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- As the only on-demand retail industry representative at the New Digital Consumption Forum of the China International Fair for Trade in Services (CIFTIS) in Beijing this year, General Manager of JDDJ Mr. Changming Li gave a speech to discuss how JDDJ supports real economy and boosts consumption as an on-demand retail platform.
"In the next few years, on-demand retail will grow explosively and become the megatrend," Li stated. "On-demand retail is the new driver for the high-quality development of the real economy. As a player under the on-demand open platform model, JDDJ is leveraging digital capabilities and delivery infrastructure, to accelerate the digitalization of traditional retail."
New model, new growth
More consumers are embracing on-demand retail. In July, a report about China's online retail market issued by the Ministry of Commerce mentioned "on-demand retail" for the first time, and recognized its value in integrating offline and online retail.
Meanwhile, Dada Group released the "White Paper On Open On-Demand Retail Platform Model" in collaboration with China Chain Store & Franchise Association (CCFA) and JD.com's Consumption and Industry Development Research Institute.
The White Paper demonstrated that on-demand retail, which is an important part of the to-home business segment within China's overall O2O market, is ushering in a phase of rapid growth. It is estimated that by 2025, the size of the open on-demand retail platform model will exceed the trillion-yuan threshold, reaching about 1.2 trillion yuan and becoming an important component of the to-home business.
During this year's 618 Grand Promotion, JDDJ and Shop Now engaged over 150,000 brick-and-mortar stores across over 1,700 cities and counties in China to provide consumers with products of all categories and a faster and more convenient shopping experience, making on-demand retail a key driver for offline retailers and brands' omni-channel growth. The sales on both platforms increased by 77% year-on-year, with the number of consumers buying through Shop Now this year during the promotion increasing by over 400% compared to the same period last year.
Traditional retailers' digitalization
Li pointed out that the core components of on-demand retail are still efficiency and experience, in line with traditional retail. The on-demand retail model connects the offline and online, requiring more efficient coordination among platforms, retailers and brand owners. An increasing number of physical retailers now realize the importance of on-demand retail, while facing the difficulties of transformation.
Based on seven years of experience, JDDJ's digital solutions for on-demand retail are maturing, including traffic operation, products management, fulfillment and digital tools, facilitating traditional retailers and brand owners' entry into the on-demand arena.
Taking CR Vanguard as an example, through its cooperation with JDDJ, its online sales increased by 2.2 times in 2020 compared with 2019. The marketing campaign "Super Merchant Day", jointly created by JDDJ and CR Vanguard, drove an over 200% increase month-over-month in sales.
In the past six years, JD.com has transformed from an e-commerce business into a supply chain-based technology and service provider. It also emerged resiliently from the COVID disruptions with a strong sense of responsibility to create not only business and industrial values, but also social values with its infrastructure and digital know-how, contributing to society's higher efficiency in production, circulation, consumption, services and more. In doing so, JD.com has been devoted to the knitting together and fusion of three networks, including a transaction network that covers around-the-clock omni-channel shopping scenarios, a warehousing and distribution network that serves nationwide and extends globally, and a service network that is enabled by intelligent technologies, with partners across a variety of industries that are conducive to the development of the real economy.
As the on-demand retail business in JD's ecosystem, JDDJ deeply links various physical retail stores, playing an important role in the product transaction network to improve the overall efficiency of goods picking and delivery.
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SOURCE DADA GROUP | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/jddj-ciftis-on-demand-retail-action-assist-real-economy-boost-consumption/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:33Z |
Results from the longest global Phase 3 open-label extension trial in this age group in asthma show sustained improvement in lung function, low rate of asthma attacks and a consistent safety profile for up to two years
TARRYTOWN, N.Y. and PARIS, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: REGN) and Sanofi today announced results from a Phase 3 open-label extension trial demonstrating the efficacy and safety profile of Dupixent® (dupilumab) as a maintenance therapy when added to other asthma medications was consistent for up to two years in children aged 6 to 11 years with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe asthma with evidence of type 2 inflammation. These results were presented today in a late-breaking session at the 2022 European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress, which coincides with the milestone that more than 500,000 people around the world have been treated with Dupixent across all of its approved indications.
"Children with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe asthma may experience long-term persistent coughing, difficulty breathing, unpredictable asthma attacks and impaired lung function, which can lead to complications later in life as they grow and develop," said Leonard B. Bacharier, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Center for Pediatric Asthma Research, Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, and principal investigator of the trial. "An established safety profile balanced with efficacy is always a priority when treating children with a chronic disease, such as those with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe asthma with an eosinophilic phenotype or oral corticosteroid dependent asthma. These new data further support the consistent safety profile of long-term Dupixent - which is indicated for the treatment of uncontrolled moderate-to-severe asthma with an eosinophilic phenotype or oral corticosteroid dependent asthma - and its ability to provide sustained improvements in lung function and reductions in asthma exacerbations in children as young as 6 years old."
The results are from data in children who entered the extension trial after finishing active treatment or placebo in the Phase 3 trial (pivotal trial). Children in the extension trial were treated for up to an additional year with Dupixent, providing up to two years of data in total. Children treated with Dupixent in the extension trial experienced a:
- Low rate of severe asthma attacks with an average of 0.118-0.124 events per year, compared to 2.16-2.56 events per year at baseline in the pivotal trial.
- Sustained improvement in lung function at 52 weeks of 9.43-12.6 percentage points from baseline in the pivotal trial, measured by percent predicted FEV1 (FEV1pp). FEV1pp seeks to evaluate a patient's change in lung function compared to their predicted lung function based on age, height, sex and ethnicity to account for children's growing lung capacity at different stages of development.
The safety results of the trial were generally consistent with the known safety profile of Dupixent in its approved respiratory indications. Over the 52-week treatment period, the overall rates of adverse events (AEs) were 61-68%. The most common AEs (≥5%) were nasopharyngitis (9-10%), pharyngitis (6-10%), upper respiratory tract infection (4-8%), influenza (5-6%), eosinophilia (3-6%), allergic rhinitis (3-7%), diarrhea (4-6%) and injection site reactions (3-7%).
About Pediatric Asthma
Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases in children. Up to 85% of children with asthma may have type 2 inflammation and are more likely to have higher disease burden. Despite treatment with current standard-of-care inhaled corticosteroids and bronchodilators, these children may continue to experience serious symptoms such as coughing, wheezing and difficulty breathing. They also may require the use of multiple courses of systemic corticosteroids that carry significant risks.
About the LIBERTY ASTHMA EXCURSION Trial
The Phase 3, multicenter, open-label extension trial evaluated the long-term safety and efficacy of Dupixent in 365 children with uncontrolled moderate-to-severe asthma who had previously participated in the placebo-controlled VOYAGE trial (the pivotal trial) when they were 6 to 11 years of age. Based on body weight, patients in the open-label extension trial received Dupixent 100 mg or 200 mg every two weeks or Dupixent 300 mg every four weeks, for 52 weeks.
The primary endpoint assessed the number of patients experiencing any treatment emergent adverse event. Secondary endpoints included the annualized rate of severe asthma exacerbations over one year and change from pivotal trial baseline in FEV1pp.
About Dupixent
Dupixent, which was invented using Regeneron's proprietary VelocImmune® technology, is a fully human monoclonal antibody that inhibits the signaling of the interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interleukin-13 (IL-13) pathways and is not an immunosuppressant. The Dupixent development program has shown significant clinical benefit and a decrease in type 2 inflammation in Phase 3 trials, establishing that IL-4 and IL-13 are key and central drivers of the type 2 inflammation that plays a major role in multiple related and often co-morbid diseases. These diseases include approved indications for Dupixent such as asthma, atopic dermatitis, chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis (CRSwNP) and eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE), as well as investigational diseases such as prurigo nodularis.
In the EU, Dupixent is approved in children aged 6 to 11 years as an add-on maintenance treatment for severe asthma with type 2 inflammation characterized by raised blood eosinophils and/or raised FeNO, who are inadequately controlled with medium to high dose inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) plus another medicinal product for maintenance treatment. For adolescents and adults 12 years and older with severe asthma with type 2 inflammation, patients must be inadequately controlled with high dose ICS plus another medicinal product for maintenance treatment.
Dupixent has received regulatory approvals around the world for use in in certain patients with atopic dermatitis, asthma, CRSwNP or EoE in different age populations. Dupixent is currently approved across these indications in the U.S. and for one or more of these indications in more than 60 countries, including in the European Union and Japan.
About Regeneron's VelocImmune Technology
Regeneron's VelocImmune technology utilizes a proprietary genetically engineered mouse platform endowed with a genetically humanized immune system to produce optimized fully human antibodies. When Regeneron's co-Founder, President and Chief Scientific Officer George D. Yancopoulos was a graduate student with his mentor Frederick W. Alt in 1985, they were the first to envision making such a genetically humanized mouse, and Regeneron has spent decades inventing and developing VelocImmune and related VelociSuite® technologies. Dr. Yancopoulos and his team have used VelocImmune technology to create approximately one in five of all original, FDA-approved or authorized fully human monoclonal antibodies. This includes REGEN-COV® (casirivimab and imdevimab), Dupixent, Libtayo® (cemiplimab-rwlc), Praluent® (alirocumab), Kevzara® (sarilumab), Evkeeza® (evinacumab-dgnb) and Inmazeb™ (atoltivimab, maftivimab and odesivimab-ebgn).
Dupilumab Development Program
Dupilumab is being jointly developed by Regeneron and Sanofi under a global collaboration agreement. To date, dupilumab has been studied across more than 60 clinical trials involving more than 10,000 patients with various chronic diseases driven in part by type 2 inflammation.
In addition to the currently approved indications, Regeneron and Sanofi are studying dupilumab in a broad range of diseases driven by type 2 inflammation or other allergic processes in Phase 3 trials, including prurigo nodularis, pediatric eosinophilic esophagitis, hand and foot atopic dermatitis, chronic inducible urticaria-cold, chronic spontaneous urticaria, chronic pruritis of unknown origin, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with evidence of type 2 inflammation, chronic rhinosinusitis without nasal polyposis, allergic fungal rhinosinusitis, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis and bullous pemphigoid. These potential uses of dupilumab are currently under clinical investigation, and the safety and efficacy in these conditions have not been fully evaluated by any regulatory authority.
U.S. Indications
DUPIXENT is a prescription medicine used:
- to treat adults and children 6 months of age and older with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (eczema) that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin (topical), or who cannot use topical therapies. DUPIXENT can be used with or without topical corticosteroids. It is not known if DUPIXENT is safe and effective in children with atopic dermatitis under 6 months of age.
- with other asthma medicines for the maintenance treatment of moderate-to-severe eosinophilic or oral steroid dependent asthma in adults and children 6 years of age and older whose asthma is not controlled with their current asthma medicines. DUPIXENT helps prevent severe asthma attacks (exacerbations) and can improve your breathing. DUPIXENT may also help reduce the amount of oral corticosteroids you need while preventing severe asthma attacks and improving your breathing. DUPIXENT is not used to treat sudden breathing problems. It is not known if DUPIXENT is safe and effective in children with asthma under 6 years of age.
- with other medicines for the maintenance treatment of chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis (CRSwNP) in adults whose disease is not controlled. It is not known if DUPIXENT is safe and effective in children with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis under 18 years of age.
- to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older, who weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kg), with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE). It is not known if DUPIXENT is safe and effective in children with eosinophilic esophagitis under 12 years of age and who weigh at least 88 pounds (40 kg).
IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION
Do not use if you are allergic to dupilumab or to any of the ingredients in DUPIXENT®.
Before using DUPIXENT, tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including if you:
- have eye problems.
- have a parasitic (helminth) infection.
- are scheduled to receive any vaccinations. You should not receive a "live vaccine" right before and during treatment with DUPIXENT.
- are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known whether DUPIXENT will harm your unborn baby.
- are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known whether DUPIXENT passes into your breast milk.
Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins and herbal supplements.
Especially tell your healthcare provider if you are taking oral, topical, or inhaled corticosteroid medicines; have asthma and use an asthma medicine; or have atopic dermatitis, CRSwNP, or EoE, and also have asthma. Do not change or stop your corticosteroid medicine or other asthma medicine without talking to your healthcare provider. This may cause other symptoms that were controlled by the corticosteroid medicine or other asthma medicine to come back.
DUPIXENT can cause serious side effects, including:
- Allergic reactions. DUPIXENT can cause allergic reactions that can sometimes be severe. Stop using DUPIXENT and tell your healthcare provider or get emergency help right away if you get any of the following signs or symptoms: breathing problems or wheezing, swelling of the face, lips, mouth, tongue or throat, fainting, dizziness, feeling lightheaded, fast pulse, fever, hives, joint pain, general ill feeling, itching, skin rash, swollen lymph nodes, nausea or vomiting, or cramps in your stomach-area.
- Eye problems. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new or worsening eye problems, including eye pain or changes in vision, such as blurred vision. Your healthcare provider may send you to an ophthalmologist for an exam if needed.
- Inflammation of your blood vessels. Rarely, this can happen in people with asthma who receive DUPIXENT. This may happen in people who also take a steroid medicine by mouth that is being stopped or the dose is being lowered. It is not known whether this is caused by DUPIXENT. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have: rash, chest pain, worsening shortness of breath, a feeling of pins and needles or numbness of your arms or legs, or persistent fever.
- Joint aches and pain. Some people who use DUPIXENT have had trouble walking or moving due to their joint symptoms, and in some cases needed to be hospitalized. Tell your healthcare provider about any new or worsening joint symptoms. Your healthcare provider may stop DUPIXENT if you develop joint symptoms.
The most common side effects include:
- Atopic dermatitis: injection site reactions, eye and eyelid inflammation, including redness, swelling, and itching, sometimes with blurred vision, cold sores in your mouth or on your lips, and high count of a certain white blood cell (eosinophilia).
- Asthma: injection site reactions, pain in the throat (oropharyngeal pain), high count of a certain white blood cell (eosinophilia), and parasitic (helminth) infections.
- Chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyposis: injection site reactions, eye and eyelid inflammation, including redness, swelling, and itching, sometimes with blurred vision, high count of a certain white blood cell (eosinophilia), trouble sleeping (insomnia), toothache, gastritis, and joint pain (arthralgia).
- Eosinophilic esophagitis: injection site reactions, upper respiratory tract infections, cold sores in your mouth or on your lips, and joint pain (arthralgia).
Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away.
These are not all the possible side effects of DUPIXENT. Call your doctor for medical advice about side effects. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Use DUPIXENT exactly as prescribed by your healthcare provider. It's an injection given under the skin (subcutaneous injection). Your healthcare provider will decide if you or your caregiver can inject DUPIXENT. Do not try to prepare and inject DUPIXENT until you or your caregiver have been trained by your healthcare provider. In children 12 years of age and older, it's recommended DUPIXENT be administered by or under supervision of an adult. In children under 12 years of age, DUPIXENT should be given by a caregiver.
Please see accompanying full Prescribing Information including Patient Information.
About Regeneron
Regeneron is a leading biotechnology company that invents, develops and commercializes life-transforming medicines for people with serious diseases. Founded and led for nearly 35 years by physician-scientists, our unique ability to repeatedly and consistently translate science into medicine has led to numerous FDA-approved treatments and product candidates in development, almost all of which were homegrown in our laboratories. Our medicines and pipeline are designed to help patients with eye diseases, allergic and inflammatory diseases, cancer, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, pain, hematologic conditions, infectious diseases and rare diseases.
Regeneron is accelerating and improving the traditional drug development process through our proprietary VelociSuite® technologies, such as VelocImmune®, which uses unique genetically humanized mice to produce optimized fully human antibodies and bispecific antibodies, and through ambitious research initiatives such as the Regeneron Genetics Center, which is conducting one of the largest genetics sequencing efforts in the world.
For more information, please visit www.Regeneron.com or follow @Regeneron on Twitter.
About Sanofi
We are an innovative global healthcare company, driven by one purpose: we chase the miracles of science to improve people's lives. Our team, across some 100 countries, is dedicated to transforming the practice of medicine by working to turn the impossible into the possible. We provide potentially life-changing treatment options and life-saving vaccine protection to millions of people globally, while putting sustainability and social responsibility at the center of our ambitions.
Sanofi is listed on EURONEXT: SAN and NASDAQ: SNY.
Regeneron Forward-Looking Statements and Use of Digital Media
This press release includes forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties relating to future events and the future performance of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. ("Regeneron" or the "Company"), and actual events or results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements. Words such as "anticipate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "believe," "seek," "estimate," variations of such words, and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. These statements concern, and these risks and uncertainties include, among others, the impact of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that has caused the COVID-19 pandemic) on Regeneron's business and its employees, collaborators, and suppliers and other third parties on which Regeneron relies, Regeneron's and its collaborators' ability to continue to conduct research and clinical programs, Regeneron's ability to manage its supply chain, net product sales of products marketed or otherwise commercialized by Regeneron and/or its collaborators or licensees (collectively, "Regeneron's Products"), and the global economy; the nature, timing, and possible success and therapeutic applications of Regeneron's Products and product candidates being developed by Regeneron and/or its collaborators or licensees (collectively, "Regeneron's Product Candidates") and research and clinical programs now underway or planned, including without limitation Dupixent® (dupilumab); uncertainty of the utilization, market acceptance, and commercial success of Regeneron's Products (such as Dupixent) and Regeneron's Product Candidates and the impact of studies (whether conducted by Regeneron or others and whether mandated or voluntary), including the study discussed in this press release, on any of the foregoing or any potential regulatory approval of Regeneron's Products (such as Dupixent) and Regeneron's Product Candidates; the likelihood, timing, and scope of possible regulatory approval and commercial launch of Regeneron's Product Candidates and new indications for Regeneron's Products, such as Dupixent for the treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with evidence of type 2 inflammation, hand and foot atopic dermatitis, pediatric eosinophilic esophagitis, bullous pemphigoid, prurigo nodularis, chronic spontaneous urticaria, chronic pruritis of unknown origin, chronic inducible urticaria-cold, chronic rhinosinusitis without nasal polyposis, allergic fungal rhinosinusitis, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, and other potential indications; the ability of Regeneron's collaborators, suppliers, or other third parties (as applicable) to perform manufacturing, filling, finishing, packaging, labeling, distribution, and other steps related to Regeneron's Products and Regeneron's Product Candidates; the ability of Regeneron to manage supply chains for multiple products and product candidates; safety issues resulting from the administration of Regeneron's Products (such as Dupixent) and Regeneron's Product Candidates in patients, including serious complications or side effects in connection with the use of Regeneron's Products and Regeneron's Product Candidates in clinical trials; determinations by regulatory and administrative governmental authorities which may delay or restrict Regeneron's ability to continue to develop or commercialize Regeneron's Products and Regeneron's Product Candidates, including without limitation Dupixent; ongoing regulatory obligations and oversight impacting Regeneron's Products, research and clinical programs, and business, including those relating to patient privacy; the availability and extent of reimbursement of Regeneron's Products from third-party payers, including private payer healthcare and insurance programs, health maintenance organizations, pharmacy benefit management companies, and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid; coverage and reimbursement determinations by such payers and new policies and procedures adopted by such payers; competing drugs and product candidates that may be superior to, or more cost effective than, Regeneron's Products and Regeneron's Product Candidates; the extent to which the results from the research and development programs conducted by Regeneron and/or its collaborators may be replicated in other studies and/or lead to advancement of product candidates to clinical trials, therapeutic applications, or regulatory approval; unanticipated expenses; the costs of developing, producing, and selling products; the ability of Regeneron to meet any of its financial projections or guidance and changes to the assumptions underlying those projections or guidance; the potential for any license or collaboration agreement, including Regeneron's agreements with Sanofi, Bayer, and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. (or their respective affiliated companies, as applicable), to be cancelled or terminated; and risks associated with intellectual property of other parties and pending or future litigation relating thereto (including without limitation the patent litigation and other related proceedings relating to EYLEA® (aflibercept) Injection, Dupixent, Praluent® (alirocumab), and REGEN-COV® (casirivimab and imdevimab)), other litigation and other proceedings and government investigations relating to the Company and/or its operations, the ultimate outcome of any such proceedings and investigations, and the impact any of the foregoing may have on Regeneron's business, prospects, operating results, and financial condition. A more complete description of these and other material risks can be found in Regeneron's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2021 and its Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended June 30, 2022. Any forward-looking statements are made based on management's current beliefs and judgment, and the reader is cautioned not to rely on any forward-looking statements made by Regeneron. Regeneron does not undertake any obligation to update (publicly or otherwise) any forward-looking statement, including without limitation any financial projection or guidance, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.
Regeneron uses its media and investor relations website and social media outlets to publish important information about the Company, including information that may be deemed material to investors. Financial and other information about Regeneron is routinely posted and is accessible on Regeneron's media and investor relations website (http://newsroom.regeneron.com) and its Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/regeneron).
Sanofi Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts. These statements include projections and estimates regarding the marketing and other potential of the product, or regarding potential future revenues from the product. Forward-looking statements are generally identified by the words "expects", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "plans" and similar expressions. Although Sanofi's management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of Sanofi, that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include among other things, unexpected regulatory actions or delays, or government regulation generally, that could affect the availability or commercial potential of the product, the fact that product may not be commercially successful, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including future clinical data and analysis of existing clinical data relating to the product, including post marketing, unexpected safety, quality or manufacturing issues, competition in general, risks associated with intellectual property and any related future litigation and the ultimate outcome of such litigation, and volatile economic and market conditions, and the impact that COVID-19 will have on us, our customers, suppliers, vendors, and other business partners, and the financial condition of any one of them, as well as on our employees and on the global economy as a whole. Any material effect of COVID-19 on any of the foregoing could also adversely impact us. This situation is changing rapidly and additional impacts may arise of which we are not currently aware and may exacerbate other previously identified risks. The risks and uncertainties also include the uncertainties discussed or identified in the public filings with the SEC and the AMF made by Sanofi, including those listed under "Risk Factors" and "Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" in Sanofi's annual report on Form 20-F for the year ended December 31, 2021. Other than as required by applicable law, Sanofi does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information or statements.
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SOURCE Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/late-breaking-dupixent-dupilumab-data-ers-2022-show-consistent-efficacy-safety-profile-up-two-years-children-aged-6-11-years-with-moderate-to-severe-asthma/ | 2022-09-05T12:20:39Z |
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says he told President Trump on Wednesday that the United States should grant hazard pay — additional pay for hazardous duty — to frontline federal employees responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
Speaking to NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, the New York Democrat also said there will be another coronavirus relief package, and that legislation should require hazard pay for all frontline workers like nurses, doctors and first responders.
"These nurses, these doctors, health care workers, they're risking their lives," he said. "I'm sure when they walk to work or take the subway to work, they're wondering, will I catch this virus? But they're like the firefighters and police officers and construction workers were heroes of 9/11; these are our heroes today. And they should get hazard pay."
Schumer is currently practicing social distancing from his home in Brooklyn. He said he's been spending most of the time working the phone, except for a couple hours a day when he's responsible for childcare for his young grandson.
The Senate minority leader also said he's been pushing Trump to appoint a distribution czar, ideally a general with logistics experience, to manage the deployment of medical supplies like ventilators and masks to states.
A week after the Senate passed a historic $2 trillion rescue package — the third bill responding to the pandemic — he said Congress "will do" a fourth coronavirus relief package, though his vision for what that bill will prioritize seems to differ some from Trump's suggestion Tuesday of a massive infrastructure bill.
"We have to look at election reform," Schumer said. "How are people going to vote? ... And we may have to look at how Congress is going to vote. I think we have to do things with paid leave, paid sick leave, paid family leave."
Schumer said infrastructure investment is a key tool for stimulating the economy, but it might come further down the road.
"I think that the first job is to beat this health care crisis and deal with people who have their immediate problems," he said. "I would not at all be adverse to an infrastructure package. ... It's a longer range view of getting the economy back, but job No. 1 is get those materials to our hospitals and health care workers, get those unemployment checks out."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-01/schumer-calls-for-hazard-pay-for-frontline-workers-in-coronavirus-fight | 2022-09-05T12:21:26Z |
Among the more than 1,200 people in Michigan who have died during the coronavirus pandemic is Otis Knapp Lee, better known as Detroit's king of corned beef. He died Sunday, at age 72.
Lee opened Mr. Fofo's Deli in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood in the early 1970s when he was 25.
"It took off like wildfire," his son, Keith Lee, told TV station Fox 2 Detroit earlier this week. "People loved it. It was basically an overnight success."
The deli's name came from Keith's childhood nickname, Fofo.
The elder Lee's specialties included huge sheet cakes, macaroni and cheese, and a sweet potato pie his grandmother taught him to make.
But he was most famous for heaping corned-beef sandwiches.
The words "corned beef" were written on the deli's front windows. A big "Thank you Detroit" sign stretched overhead.
"It was the go-to place," Keith Lee said. "You know, after church, after the club, just it was the place to be."
The deli catered to some important clients. According to Keith Lee, his father made cakes for both of Bill Clinton's inaugurations.
And every Thanksgiving, lines stretched around the deli when the elder Lee would give away thousands of turkeys.
After nearly 35 years in business, Lee retired and closed the deli.
He got sick about 2 weeks ago.
When the hospital called to say he wasn't getting better, his son Keith raced there to say goodbye. Now, the family is planning a funeral, which they hope to livestream.
Asked what he will miss most about his dad, Keith's voice wavered.
"Him, you know," he said, wiping away tears. "Just him."
All Things Considered has been remembering some of the people who have died from COVID-19, including New Orleans DJ Black N Mild, Brooklyn principal Dez-Ann Romain and New York sociologist William Helmreich.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-10/detroits-king-of-corned-beef-dies-from-coronavirus-complications | 2022-09-05T12:21:32Z |
In Indiana, restaurants and bars are shuttered, schools are closed, and like much of the country, people are being ordered to stay home.
The Indiana Historical Society is trying to document what it's like to live in this time, and have asked the public to help.
"We thought, this is a period of time people are going to study for centuries," says Jody Blankenship, president of the Indiana Historical Society. "And we need to collect the voices of our community right now."
The historical society is asking the public to submit videos, photos, recordings, art or writing that will help tell the story of the pandemic.
We have collected items that document Indiana’s past since 1830. Right now, we are all grappling with a unique historical moment. We want to add your story of how you and your family are experiencing the current “new normal.” Share your stories here: https://t.co/edFgqJSFvs
— Indiana Historical Society (@IndianaHistory) March 25, 2020
The Indiana Historical Society is one of several institutions around the country that has started thinking about recording oral histories or collecting items related to the coronavirus pandemic, an approach known as "rapid-response collecting."
At the Indiana Historical Society, a few hundred submissions have streamed in so far.
Jenny Larson sent a video of her four kids, sitting on the couch after lunchtime, performing a song they wrote, with lyrics such as:
"The social distancing makes us feel sad because we want to see our friends real bad. And now we're staring only at our screens, because we're stuck in this quarantine."
Liberty Bible Church in northwest Indiana submitted a virtual devotional.
Principal Robert Lugo of North Elementary School in Noblesville, Ind., uploaded a video of his decorated car as he prepared to set off on a parade of teachers for students stuck at home.
Indianapolis resident Rafia Khader sent an oral history. In it, she said she is thinking about her parents a lot.
"Instead of my dad checking in on me every weekend, the roles now have reversed," she said. "I'm checking in on them almost daily."
The submissions will join the millions of other documents and artifacts in the historical society's archives.
"It's the aggregation of all these individual stories and experiences that create this very rich narrative that tells us who we are and what we value," Blankenship says. "Without everyday people's history, my history, your history, we don't get those nuances that tell the full story."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-10/indiana-historical-society-begins-building-a-coronavirus-collection | 2022-09-05T12:21:38Z |
April is National Poetry Month. All this month, we've been asking listeners to tweet us their poems. Each week, we enlist a celebrated poet to help us read through some of the submissions. Click the audio link to hear poet Jane Hirshfield read a handful of her favorites.
In unpredictable times, poetry can offer much needed reassurance, says poet Jane Hirshfield.
"In a way, a poet is quite prepared for a pandemic," Hirshfield says in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered, "because we're always trying to look into the most difficult things and find a way to navigate to a deeper relationship to those events."
As the first shelter-in-place orders were being rolled out in California, the Bay Area poet exercised that preparation. She wrote a poem that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, titled "Today When I Could Do Nothing," which offers a slice of the socially-distanced life.
Hirshfield's ninth book of poems, Ledger, came out last month. You can read an excerpted poem from the new collection below.
"Vest" by Jane Hirshfield
I put on again the vest of many pockets.
It is easy to forget
which holds the reading glasses,
which the small pen,
which the house keys,
the compass and whistle, the passport.
To forget at last for weeks
even the pocket holding the day
of digging a place for my sister's ashes,
the one holding the day
where someone will soon enough put my own.
To misplace the pocket
of touching the walls at Auschwitz
would seem impossible.
It is not.
To misplace, for a decade,
the pocket of tears.
I rummage and rummage—
transfers
for Munich, for Melbourne,
to Oslo.
A receipt for a Singapore kopi.
A device holding music:
Bach, Garcia, Richter, Porter, Pärt.
A woman long dead now
gave me, when I told her I could not sing,
a kazoo.
Now in a pocket.
Somewhere, a pocket
holding a Steinway.
Somewhere, a pocket
holding a packet of salt.
Borgesian vest,
Oxford English Dictionary vest
with a magnifying glass
tucked inside one snapped-closed pocket,
Wikipedia vest, Rosetta vest,
Enigma vest of decoding,
how is it one person can carry
your weight for a lifetime,
one person
slip into your open arms for a lifetime?
Who was given the world,
and hunted for tissues, for ChapStick.
Ledger copyright 2020 by Jane Hirshfield. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC, New York. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/a-poet-is-quite-prepared-for-a-pandemic-says-ledger-author-jane-hirshfield | 2022-09-05T12:21:44Z |
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
From the policy to the personal now. If you've ever had a loved one in the hospital, then you know how important it can be to have a trusted advocate close by. But the COVID-19 pandemic has made that impossible. Sarah Hulett of Michigan Radio reports on how families are trying to cope.
SARAH HULETT, BYLINE: Monique Baker McCormick had a hard time getting her dad to agree to go to the hospital. She says he could barely stand but would not get in her car. Eventually, he relented. McCormick, who's a county official in Detroit, took him to nearby receiving hospital.
MONIQUE BAKER MCCORMICK: Once I got in the back, they told me I couldn't be there and that I had to leave. It's scary. It's scary for him, and I could see it in his eyes.
HULETT: That was Day 1. Day 2, she heard nothing. That was her dad's birthday. He turned 74. She says those two days were the hardest - the not knowing. Day three, she tracked down somebody who told her her dad was stable. But his room didn't have a phone, so she couldn't talk to him. She kept calling her dad's doctor, not getting an answer. She's watching the news. It's all death and dying. On Day 5, she got ahold of his doctor. He sent her a picture of her dad.
MCCORMICK: Oh, it was just, like - just a wonderful feeling just to see him and know that he's still with us.
HULETT: McCormick finally got some even better news. Her dad came home. Across the country, Kecia Kelly is nursing division chief for Dignity Health, which runs seven California hospitals, including Saint Francis in San Francisco. She's written about the importance of patient visitation.
KECIA KELLY: When patients are sick and they're in crisis, they're not always hearing everything that we're telling them. You know, they may nod and acknowledge that they're hearing us, but it doesn't mean that they hear us. It doesn't mean that they truly understand us. And so family advocacy is very important in that very space.
HULETT: Saint Francis Hospital made that easier after a foundation bought iPads for patients to connect to their families. Kelly says that's helped, especially for patients without cell phones. She urges anyone with a loved one in the hospital to demand daily communication.
KELLY: Say, I'd like to have a conference with you and maybe the nurse, the social worker and the case manager. And I'd like to have a conversation about, what is the plan of care for my loved one?
HULETT: A lot of families designate one person to navigate care and talk to medical staff. Biba Adams is that person in her family. Adams rushed her mom to the hospital in late March. She was later diagnosed with COVID-19. Adams says one thing that's helped her is to call the hospital at the same time every day.
BIBA ADAMS: It shouldn't be, like, a whole bunch of people calling up there, just letting it be one person who calls. Let them know that person by name. You know, that really - I think that's helping our families.
HULETT: On the very same day Adams brought her mom to the hospital, her grandmother was admitted, too. She died about a week later. Biba Adams says coronavirus also killed her aunt.
ADAMS: I think that the thought of losing so much of my family history at one time - that started hitting me today.
HULETT: Four weeks into her hospital stay, Biba Adams' mom died. Biba's an only child. She says there won't be a service. I will do something as I see fit when I feel it is right to, she wrote on Facebook. She says she would like to see a citywide memorial service in Detroit, where the virus has killed hundreds and hundreds of people.
For NPR News, I'm Sarah Hulett in Detroit.
(SOUNDBITE OF THIS WILL DESTROY YOU'S "THEY MOVE ON TRACKS OF NEVER-ENDING LIGHT") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/families-on-outside-try-to-advocate-for-hospitalized-loved-ones | 2022-09-05T12:21:51Z |
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
By now you've probably seen demonstrations popping up around the country against stay-at-home orders issued by government officials in an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus. And you've also seen that many of these demonstrators are refusing to follow the guidelines laid out by officials - to avoid large gatherings, to say 6 feet apart, wear face coverings and the like. Well, some people say they're demonstrating because they can't afford to shut their businesses or stop going to work. Others are making the point that these demands violate their freedom.
And we wanted to dig into those arguments for a few minutes, which are generally described as libertarian. We wanted to get a libertarian perspective on this from someone who also has a background in health policy. And that led us to Michael Cannon, who is the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, which is based here in Washington, D.C. Michael Cannon, welcome. Thanks so much for joining us.
MICHAEL CANNON: Thanks for having me.
MARTIN: Now, the Cato Institute says it's dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. So as briefly as you can, what is the role of the government in a health crisis like this one according to those principles?
CANNON: Well, it's the same as the role of government when there isn't a health crisis, which is to protect us from people who would do us harm. And when there is a deadly contagious disease that is spreading throughout the public, there can be a role for government to take additional steps that it wouldn't take during ordinary times in order to prevent people from harming each other with that deadly virus. Now, what those steps are is a different question, a very complicated one. But most libertarians do agree that there is a role for government to play in a pandemic.
MARTIN: So let's talk specifically about the government orders mandating the use of masks in certain situations like grocery stores or pharmacies, these social distancing mechanisms. Is there something wrong with that in your view?
CANNON: Well, it's a very difficult balancing act because nobody knows just how deadly it is. Nobody knows just how much additional good each of these individual measures that the government wants to implement are going to do in terms of reducing the incidence of transmissions of this deadly disease versus how much harm those measures will do in terms of harming people's livelihoods or even leading to interactions with police that could themselves lead to harmful situations.
MARTIN: So you're familiar with the expression your right to swing your fist ends at my nose. So an infection is an assault on the body. So why shouldn't the government be able to ask people or even require people to take these minimal steps to avoid assaulting other people with this virus?
CANNON: It should take steps to do that, but you have to keep in mind that what we're talking about are decisions and costs and benefits that are occurring at the margin. Now, what I mean by that is if you look at the data from Google about how much people are moving around or social distancing, you'll find that before the government issued any of these orders that people had to shelter in place, stay at home or shut down businesses, businesses were telling people to work from home. People were avoiding each other. So the question becomes, given the responses that people are going to undertake on their own, what marginal benefit is the government going to be able to yield by issuing a stay-at-home order or requiring people to wear masks? Because it may not reduce transmission very much at all if people are already doing all of those things themselves.
MARTIN: We've already seen some of these demonstrators in Wisconsin. There were thousands of people who were at these rallies who did not undertake any of the self-protective measures that the government has asked them to take. So then how can you say that if the government were merely to suggest these things, people would do it?
CANNON: Well, I'm not sure that everyone would. But there is something to be said for the government might get more people to comply if it were asking or suggesting rather than mandating.
MARTIN: But isn't the government's mandate part of a social contract? What the government is saying is that we expect people to have some mutual obligation at this moment. In exchange for that mutual obligation, I mean, that is why the government is offering, say, financial support for individuals who have been harmed by this. I mean, is what you're saying, we should wait and see? I mean, is that what a President Cato would do, a President Cannon - Michael Cannon would do, just say wait and see what happens? Is that really what you're saying the libertarian principle would suggest?
CANNON: I would not say take a wait-and-see approach. What I would do is I would want the government to very - and I have advocated that the government do more to gather the information we need so that the governors can make careful decisions about how to reduce the harm of both the virus and the efforts to contain it.
MARTIN: That was Michael Cannon, who is the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute here in Washington, D.C. That's a libertarian research and advocacy organization, a think tank. Michael Cannon, thanks so much for talking to us.
CANNON: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/libertarian-perspective-on-governments-role-in-health-crisis | 2022-09-05T12:21:57Z |
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
States have been making their own decisions about how to confront the coronavirus pandemic - whether to shut certain businesses down and for how long. And now they're making their own decisions about when and how to reopen. So we're going to hear from a governor who is in that process, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts. He is a Republican. He was first elected in 2015.
The state hasn't had nearly as many confirmed cases or death from COVID-19 as other states, but confirmed cases of infections have been increasing among workers in at least one of its meat-processing plants, so we wanted to hear about how the governor is thinking all this through.
Governor Ricketts, thanks so much for talking to us.
PETE RICKETTS: My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
MARTIN: The department of - your Department of Health and Human Services tweeted that as of yesterday evening, the state had 53 confirmed COVID-19-related deaths and a total of 2,732 cases. Now, you've said you're planning to try to begin reopening businesses and getting back to a more normal schedule on May 4. What gives you the confidence that that is the right date, and this is the right time?
RICKETTS: Well, what we're looking at is what's happening to health care systems. When we put our plan together at the beginning of March, that's what our public health experts and our folks, our resources at the University of Nebraska Medical School Center told us - is, you know, what you're doing is you're slowing down the spread of the virus so that it doesn't all peak at once, and all these people don't flood your hospital system and need to get that hospital bed, that intensive care unit bed or that ventilator, and you can't provide it.
And so that's what has really been my North Star on this - is OK, if we're keeping our hospital system in place, then we're doing the right things. You know, this is a virus. We can't stop it from coming, right? We have flu season every year. But we can slow it down so that we can make sure we build up that capacity, that we can build up the PPE and all the things to be able to take care of people.
And so when I look at Omaha, and I say, jeez, when we've got, you know, over 40% of our hospital beds are available, over 40% of our ICU beds available and 75% of our ventilators are available in our biggest metropolitan area, then we can start loosening some of the restrictions. We're just going to do this a step at a time to make sure that we watch very closely what happens because if it looks like we're starting to see more people going to use those resources, than we may have to slow it down a little bit.
But if we can take this step and keep (unintelligible) relatively stable, then maybe the latter half of May or in early June, we can take another step.
MARTIN: So we know that meat processing is a big part of Nebraska's economy. It's obviously something that the rest of the country appreciates as well, right?
RICKETTS: Yeah.
MARTIN: But other states have seen meat processing plants become hotspots of infection. It's been reported that in Dakota County, which is home to a Tyson plant, it's - there's been reported 133 new COVID-19 cases as of last week, bringing the total to 246. Do you have a role in ensuring the safety of the workers there and the communities in which they live? What steps is the state taking? Do you feel you have a role here?
RICKETTS: Yeah, absolutely. So we are working very closely with our local public health departments and the companies themselves to be able to establish - for example, I've got weekly calls with all our food processors here in the state of Nebraska to be able to share best practices and talk about what's going on in each of the different counties.
In fact, the University of Nebraska Medical Center has actually created a meat-processing facility COVID-19 playbook to be able to distribute to everybody in this industry so that they can start following these best practices. And now that playbook has actually been distributed to Iowa and Missouri as well.
And last week, they did a survey of all the meat processors to kind of determine what steps they were taking. You know, for example, you know, all of them had implemented social distancing strategies during breaks, instituted screening processes, instituted flexible workplace and sick leave policies. There was areas for improvement.
But we've also sent our experts out to visit the plants and walk in to say, hey, OK. Look at your air handling systems. You can probably do this a little bit better here. Or you need more sanitizing stations here and here, or you need to be cleaning these surfaces more frequently.
MARTIN: Forgive me, Governor - some employees have reported, though, that they don't think that the nature of the work does lend itself to social distancing. Do you think that that might be true? And if so, what do you do then?
RICKETTS: Oh, there's lots of challenges to be able to make - do social distancing, not just at the plant but also in the home life. And so we're tackling that as well by working with our health clinics, our public health departments. I do actually now two days a week Spanish-language press briefings to be able to help get that message out.
So there's multiple facets to this that we have to address. The plants themselves are not, you know, the sole cause of the problem here because they're concentrated, yes, and they're taking such a social distance. But the entire spectrum of everything we've got to address is got to be working there, too, from the language to the home life and everything.
MARTIN: There are governors, including some Republican governors, who - like yourself who've felt that this has just been much more of a Wild West experience than they feel that it should have been. They feel that there should have been much more sort of coordination. It sounds like you're handling this on on your own, and - as most of these governors, frankly, are. But do you think that that's true? Do you think that there should have been more federal coordination of this?
RICKETTS: Well, I've been living through this just like everybody else. And hindsight is always 20/20. There were things two months ago that I knew now, I would do things differently. But that's called experience. Let's go back and remember - as late as January 20, both the WHO and the Chinese Communist Party said there was no human-to-human transmission. So if you think back to January, and the entire world believes there was no human-to-human transmission of this, then what steps do you take, right?
So I think people who want to say, well, there should have been more coordination - well, yeah, in an ideal world, you would have loved to have more coordination. Well, let's remember that nobody was really expecting this to be a big deal. Let's go back to H1N1 a decade ago. The United States government spent billions of dollars on PPE that nobody used. You know, the United States government bought a bunch of PPE, which we actually benefited from now, right? Because that's what they distributed out through the strategic national stockpile.
But that was - everybody thought it was going to be a big deal, and it turned out to be nothing. So I think it's hard to go back and say you'd like to have better coordination when nobody really knew what this is going to be like.
MARTIN: Well, with respect, Governor, though the national security agencies did report another coronavirus epidemic was likely and reported all of these things. And also, there are American scientists working with the WHO who also did report to national authorities that they were deeply concerned - that they said that the story that they were - that was being reported was not accurate. So there were people who reported this, and there were American intelligence officials who have predicted this for a long time. So I just - respectfully, I just feel like I have to say...
RICKETTS: Michel, that's exactly the point, right? Four years ago, they reported that there was a virus coming. Well, OK. So we waited for four years. And, you know, over four years, the vigilance of having that ready to go, what are we going to do turned out to be nothing for four years until it turned out to be something.
MARTIN: You talked about this earlier. I just wanted to get you to tell me again. Like, what's your North Star here? Like, what is guiding you as you make these decisions? Because, you know, there's no shortage of advice and information coming from lots of different quarters here. How would you describe what you're going to be paying attention to as you go forward?
RICKETTS: So the whole point of everything we do with regard to social distancing and the restrictions we put in place is to slow the spread of the virus so that you do not overwhelm your health care system. It's a virus. We can't stop it from coming. It's coming. We can slow it down to make sure that everybody who needs that hospital bed or that ventilator can have access to it when they need it. That's what we're focused on. So as long as we're doing that, we're winning.
MARTIN: All right. That is the governor of Nebraska, Pete Ricketts.
Governor, thank you so much for talking to us. I hope we'll talk again.
RICKETTS: Great. Thanks a lot, Michel. I appreciate having me on. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/nebraska-governor-on-decision-to-partially-reopen-state-in-may | 2022-09-05T12:22:03Z |
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's 1938 in Los Angeles. America's first freeway is about to be built. Throw in a demon, a saint and a Mexican American family, and you have some of the many elements of the TV show "Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels," which premieres tonight on Showtime. NPR's Mandalit del Barco tells us about it.
MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: This "Penny Dreadful" series is a real mash-up - a murder mystery, a supernatural drama and a somewhat fictionalized history of LA. its lead characters are Tiago Vega, a Mexican American rookie detective, and his OG Jewish partner, played by Nathan Lane. There's also a charismatic radio evangelist, a crooked city councilman, zoot-suited pachucos - oh, and Nazis in LA.
JOHN LOGAN: Look. Our show is set in 1938. It is about 2020 - you know, because the sort of ideas that were in the air now are parallels to what was happening then.
DEL BARCO: John Logan is the show's creator, writer and executive producer. We met him on the set of "Penny Dreadful" before COVID-19. At that time, Logan said he wanted his show to depict Los Angeles terrorized by the monsters of demagoguery, discrimination and gentrification.
(SOUNDBITE OF PAPER UNROLLING)
DEL BARCO: To illustrate how the city developed, Logan pulled down a map of 1938 Los Angeles overlaid with today's modern freeways.
LOGAN: And the first thing you notice are the blood-red slashes that are our freeways - the 10, the 405, the 101, the 110 - and how they have divided up what was once a free-form, open city into little areas.
DEL BARCO: Logan said he wanted to show parts of LA rarely depicted on TV, and he did all the research himself. At Melody Ranch studios, where many a Western movie was shot, he showed us elaborate sets. His crew had recreated a Mexican American boulevard in downtown LA and an entire barrio.
LOGAN: This is the heart of our show - is Belvedere Heights, where the Vega family lives. If you look around, it feels sun-baked. It feels poor. It feels desperate. It feels real. You know, this is where the Arroyo Seco is coming - the 110 freeway right here.
DEL BARCO: Right through the middle of this whole community.
LOGAN: Right through the church.
DEL BARCO: The new freeway destroying the barrio is just one of the many subplots. Logan also adds supernatural elements into the mix, as he did with the first "Penny Dreadful" series that featured Frankenstein and Dorian Gray in Victorian London. This time, Logan created a demon named Magda. She saunters around in different guises, whispering in people's ears to cause death and destruction.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, singing in Spanish).
DEL BARCO: The fictional Magda has a sister who is an actual Mexican folk saint, la Santa Muerte, who carries spirits away to the afterlife.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS")
ADRIANA BARRAZA: (As Maria Vega, speaking Spanish).
DEL BARCO: Actress Adriana Barraza plays Maria, the patriarch of the Vega family, who summons la Santa Muerte for protection.
BARRAZA: I have compassion for (unintelligible) because Santa Muerte is so sad all the time. It's so clear that Magda, her sister is the other side.
DEL BARCO: The sisters touch the lives of almost everyone on the show, including a German American doctor who is a Nazi sympathizer. They also change the destinies of Maria's three sons - a union organizer, a gang member and an LAPD detective.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS")
BARRAZA: (As Maria Vega) You are the first Chicano detective in the Los Angeles Police Department. You wear that badge proudly.
DEL BARCO: Daniel Zovatto plays Tiago Vega as he investigates murders and gets romantically entangled with a suspect. He also endures the racism of his fellow cops.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "PENNY DREADFUL: CITY OF ANGELS")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) But a Chicano patrolman is (unintelligible) from a detective (unintelligible) likes it.
DEL BARCO: The fictional drama takes liberties with history. For example, the term Chicano wasn't widely used until the late 1960s. That first freeway didn't actually bulldoze a Latino community. Those subsequent freeways did. Abelardo de la Pena, communications director for the museum LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, says he appreciates the show's spotlight on LA's Latino community. But it bothers him that none of the show's writers or main actors are Mexican American from Los Angeles.
ABELARDO DE LA PENA: It's not that difficult. I mean, we're here. And there's plenty of talent out there that can be tapped into.
JOSE RIVERA: I think that's a very - absolute fair criticism.
DEL BARCO: Puerto Rican playwright Jose Rivera says he wasn't involved with the casting or hiring. He wrote one of the episodes and reviewed all 10 scripts.
RIVERA: To really keep elements of Latino culture that's depicted in the series to seem authentic and not, you know, voyeuristic or exotic.
DEL BARCO: "Penny Dreadful: City Of Angels" has many real and imagined elements. With its fictional monsters, the genre-defying show offers an alternative to the real-life invisible monster currently plaguing the planet.
Mandalit del Barco, NPR News, Los Angeles. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/new-penny-dreadful-set-in-los-angeles | 2022-09-05T12:22:09Z |
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is criticizing President Trump's effort to withhold funding from the World Health Organization and other steps his administration is reportedly taking to sideline the global health agency.
"It's stupid — it's more than stupid; it's dangerous," Pelosi told NPR.
In an interview Sunday with All Things Considered, Pelosi referenced reporting from The Washington Post, which found that members of the Trump administration had removed references to the WHO in its COVID-19 materials and initiatives. She says the administration is effectively isolating the United States during a global pandemic.
"Worse than [the funding] — if you can believe it — worse than that is that he and the secretary of state have been deleting any reference to the World Health Organization in any of our strategies on how we can deal with the pandemic. That may be more harmful than just the money," Pelosi said.
NPR has not independently confirmed the Post's reporting on steps the administration is taking to sideline the WHO.
Earlier this month, the president said he would halt funding to the WHO, an agency he's accused of being too "China-centric." The Democratic speaker added that while Trump could temporarily withhold funding, he couldn't make it policy.
"If he wants to hold up some money, that is questionable in terms of his legality, but he cannot stop the money ever from going," Pelosi said.
A next legislative effort
On the latest coronavirus relief package, which was signed into law on Friday, Pelosi dubbed House Democrats the "intellectual resources" in establishing the legislation's priorities. The $484 billion package included an additional $321 billion to replenish the quickly depleted Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses.
It passed the House Thursday with an overwhelming 388-5 vote, but it has been criticized by some Democrats, including New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who said the bill did not provide funds for state and local governments. Another New York Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, voted against the bill, arguing it didn't do enough to protect working families.
In response to the criticism, Pelosi said "she wasn't defending" the legislation, but was "very proud" of what Democrats had accomplished.
Pelosi also said future coronavirus relief would focus on providing more funds for state and local governments.
"We will go forward and we will have in that legislation as large a number as possible to reflect the needs of our state and local governments, and that means to help them address the outlays they're making for the coronavirus and also to address the revenue loss that they're suffering," Pelosi said.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/speaker-pelosi-president-trumps-effort-to-sideline-the-who-is-dangerous | 2022-09-05T12:22:15Z |
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
The sports world has been at a standstill since most major sports league suspended their seasons back in March. Sports fans are hungry for excitement. Now they have it in the form of a 10-part ESPN documentary series about Michael Jordan and everything that led to his sixth and final NBA championship with the Chicago Bulls. It's called "The Last Dance." And it offers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look at the basketball legend and the team he led. And it's filled with previously unseen footage that highlights Jordan's famously aggressive style.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE LAST DANCE")
MICHAEL JORDAN: And if you're trying to maintain dominance over people, you don't want to give them a chance to gain confidence.
MARTIN: We wanted to hear more about what we've learned in this documentary about Jordan, who remained remarkably private even as he became one of the world's most famous men. So we called someone who followed his career closely, Michael Wilbon, a former Washington Post columnist and co-host of ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption." He's featured in the documentary, and he wrote about it for The Undefeated. And he's with us now. Michael Wilbon, welcome.
MICHAEL WILBON: Michel, thanks for having me.
MARTIN: As I understand it, the footage featured in the documentary was taken during the 1998 season, and it was never released to the public until now. What's the story behind this?
WILBON: Michael Jordan certainly just did not grant that permission, did not want it done. So much of the behind-the-scenes footage, Michel, is of very candid moments in practice, in the dressing room, in the locker room, where Michael may get on teammates, may ride them quite a bit to get them to the point where they were going to be a championship team. And he never thought that people would understand seeing that type of approach from a leader. And so finally, after saying no for all these years, the director of "The Last Dance" said to Michael, OK, people don't understand. You make them understand. You get them to understand after all these years what you were doing and why it worked.
And this time Michael said, OK. It's interesting 'cause in that first episode, Michel, you see Michael Jordan in practice riding his teammates. And a whole generation - two generations of people who did not see Michael Jordan in real time, they're looking at this going, oh, my God, what is that? And that's the reaction Michael was concerned about the first place.
MARTIN: OK. Let's play a short clip where we can hear that.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "THE LAST DANCE")
JORDAN: I let my anger motivate the players by saying, I want this. Do you guys want it?
BILL WENNINGTON: He's not worried about hurting your feelings. If he hurt your feelings, you could leave. He would gladly tell you. Get out. You don't want to play hard? Get out.
(CROSSTALK)
JORDAN: Let's go out and get our first win. I ain't going to say that [expletive] again.
MARTIN: He was, as you just said, he was concerned that people would think that he was horrible. You know, what do you think changed his mind?
WILBON: (Laughter) Nothing changed his mind. I can tell you he's still concerned about it. I had a chat with him a few days ago, and he was concerned about it. He was asking me, what does your son - my son is a 12-year-old sixth grader but a basketball player and a fanatic about pro basketball and the Bulls and Michael Jordan. And one of his concerns is, I want to know what he thinks. And I have said to Michael over the years, decades, why do you care what people think? You won six times. You were - you have been the most famous person on the planet, not just most famous athlete. I don't understand that.
MARTIN: But it's - OK. Let me just try this one theory out, though. He reportedly approved this documentary the same day that LeBron James celebrated his championship in Cleveland. We know that Michael Jordan is famously competitive. That's at the root of so much of - that drives him. Could this rivalry have been part of the reason that he was interested in making himself better known?
WILBON: I wouldn't buy that for one second, Michel. I mean, the rivalry is from LeBron James. LeBron James has said that he - I - am the greatest, sort of a Ali-like - he said that the victory that Cleveland achieved in 2016 proved he was the greatest player. Michael Jordan's never said that in fact. And I did the interview with him 10 years ago on the morning of his enshrinement into the Hall of Fame. And I said, is it important to you to be known as the greatest player ever? And he said, absolutely not. You're never going to hear that from me.
MARTIN: Well, it is a measure of his impact, not just on the sport but in the world at the time. I mean, you noted this yourself that the filmmakers got both former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in the film, which is remarkable. On the other hand, as you pointed out in your piece for The Undefeated, it does - his - the impression he gives is not one that everyone is going to like. I mean, you even wrote in your piece that your son even asked you, Dad, did yelling like that actually help them? So how do you think history will look at him as a leader? And what do you think the metric is going to be? I mean, there's even a story about him punching a fellow player in the face. I mean, it's not - you know what I mean? It's not like this guy - he wasn't Santa Claus. So what is your thinking about that?
WILBON: I think that the ends justify the means, Michel. And what I say to my son is, he won. Yeah. Yeah, the yelling helped. But they're going to look at the six championships. They're going to look at - being the center of the Dream Team, the single greatest team ever assembled. And I think they're going to look at him being the greatest basketball player, if not the greatest athlete in team sports in the history of at least North America, if not the world. He'd be on anybody's short list. I think the sort of harshness of what happened in practice can be overstated. But I haven't seen the rest of the footage either. I haven't seen the rest of documentary and don't know how that lands.
MARTIN: That was Michael Wilbon. He was a longtime columnist for The Washington Post. He is co-host of ESPN's "Pardon The Interruption." And he is featured in the 10-part ESPN documentary series about Michael Jordan. It's called "The Last Dance." Michael Wilbon, thank you so much for talking to us from your backyard, where we can hear the birds tweeting. Thank you.
WILBON: Michel, thanks for having me. And I hope you're getting to watch all of this because it's - even for those of us who lived it, it's fascinating. But thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/the-last-dance-espn-releases-michael-jordan-documentary | 2022-09-05T12:22:21Z |
MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Time now for another selection from our no-stress playlist. That's our regular feature where we play some of the songs you've shared with us - songs that help you stay calm during these challenging times. Today's pick comes from Twitter user Cecilia Gonzales Andrieu. Here's the one and only Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra with "Xanadu."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "XANADU")
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND THE ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA: (Singing) A place where nobody dared to go, the love that we came to know, they called it Xanadu. And now open your eyes and see what we have made is real. We are in Xanadu. A million lights are dancing, and there you are, a shooting star. An everlasting world, and you're here with me eternally.
MARTIN: That's "Xanadu" by Olivia Newton-John and the Electric Light Orchestra. You can keep adding to our playlist if you've got a song that helps you relieve stress. Tweet us at @npratc, and use the hashtag #nostressplaylist.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "XANADU")
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND THE ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA: (Singing) Xanadu, Xanadu. Now we are here in Xanadu... Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. | https://www.keranews.org/2020-04-26/your-anti-anxiety-playlist-xanadu | 2022-09-05T12:22:27Z |
Liz Truss set to become Britain’s prime minister
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s Conservative Party has chosen Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as the party’s new leader, putting her in line to be confirmed as prime minister.
Truss’s selection was announced Monday in London after a leadership election in which only the 180,000 dues-paying members of the Conservative Party were allowed to vote. Truss beat rival Rishi Sunak, the government’s former Treasury chief, by promising to increase defense spending and cut taxes, while refusing to say how she would address the cost-of-living crisis.
Truss received 81,326 votes to Sunak’s 60,399.
Queen Elizabeth II is scheduled to formally name Truss as Britain’s prime minister on Tuesday. The ceremony will take place at the queen’s Balmoral estate in Scotland, where the monarch is vacationing, rather than at Buckingham Palace.
The two-month leadership contest left Britain with a power vacuum at a time when consumers, workers and businesses were demanding government action to mitigate the impact of soaring food and energy prices. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has had no authority to make major policy decisions since July 7, when he announced his intention to resign.
With household energy bills set to increase by 80% next month, charities warn that as many as one in three households will face fuel poverty this winter, leaving millions of people to choose between eating and heating their homes. The Bank of England has forecast that inflation will reach a 42-year high of 13.3% in October, threatening to push Britain into a prolonged recession.
“The new prime minister is facing a very, very difficult inheritance,” said Tim Bale, a political analyst and professor at Queen Mary University of London.
Johnson was forced to resign after a series of ethics scandals that peaked in July when dozens of cabinet ministers and lower-level officials resigned over his handling of allegations of sexual misconduct by a senior member of his government.
Under Britain’s parliamentary system of government, the center-right Conservative Party was allowed to hold an internal election to select a new party leader and prime minister, without going to the wider electorate. A new general election isn’t required until December 2024.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/britain-learn-who-will-succeed-johnson-prime-minister/ | 2022-09-05T12:24:58Z |
Citing imminent danger, Cloudflare drops hate site Kiwi Farms
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Citing an “immediate threat to human life,” Cloudflare has dropped the notorious stalking and harassment site Kiwi Farms from its internet security services following an online campaign started by transgender Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti to pressure it to do so.
“This is an extraordinary decision for us to make and given Cloudflare’s role as an Internet infrastructure provider, a dangerous one that we are not comfortable with,” CEO Matthew Prince wrote in a blog post Saturday in an about-face after earlier insisting that the company would not block the site. “However, the rhetoric on the Kiwifarms site and specific, targeted threats have escalated over the last 48 hours to the point that we believe there is an unprecedented emergency and immediate threat to human life unlike what we have previously seen from Kiwifarms or any other customer before.”
For years, members of the site created and operated by Joshua Conner Moon, 29, have congregated on what they call a “lighthearted discussion forum” to organize vicious harassment campaigns against transgender people, feminists and others they deem mockable. They gang up on victims and pool their personal details such as addresses and phone numbers in a practice called “doxxing,” spreading vile rumors and targeting workplaces, friends, families and homes. Another favorite tactic has been “swatting” — making false emergency calls to provoke an armed police response at a target’s home. Some people subjected to the group’s abuse have died by suicide.
Sorrenti, who goes by “Keffals” online, has been leading a campaign to pressure Cloudflare to drop Kiwi Farms. In August, she fled her home in Canada for Europe after she was doxxed and swatted. Her online stalkers, however, found her in Belfast, Ireland, as well and continued to intensify their harassment campaign against her just as her campaign against Kiwi Farms and its enablers was gaining momentum.
“When a multi-billion dollar corporation like Cloudflare has to drop Kiwi Farms because of an ‘imminent and emergency threat to human life’ it is no longer a matter of free speech. Removing Kiwi Farms from the internet is a matter of public safety for every single person online,” she tweeted on Saturday.
On Sunday, Kiwi Farms was inaccessible. But a version of the site with a .ru domain name was intermittently up and running, though it was not clear whether it would remain up.
The decision to drop Kiwi Farms Saturday was an about-face for Cloudflare and Prince, who earlier in the week put out a 2,600-word blog post — without mentioning the site by name — doubling down on the decision to protect it and comparing Cloudflare to a phone company that “doesn’t terminate your line if you say awful, racist, bigoted things.”
But Sorrenti and other targets of the site say it was far worse than that, as trolls on the site relentlessly pursued their victims offline — often for years on end.
“They are trying to get people to lose their jobs. They’re trying to get people to lose their housing, to be starving and homeless,” Liz Fong-Jones, a former Google engineer and cloud computing expert who is transgender, told the AP last week. “And then they go after people’s families and then they tell people that the only way out is to kill themselves.”
Moon started Kiwi Farms nearly a decade ago as a wiki site dedicated to harassing a transgender woman; Moon even used the woman’s initials in an early version of the site’s name. Over time its users began to target other people -- mostly active online users who are transgender, have autism or other mental conditions. Kiwi Farms in its current form was born in 2015.
An overarching theme of the site’s discussions centers on users’ fierce opposition to transgender children receiving gender-affirming medical care. Members typically refer to those who support such treatment as “groomers” and “pedophiles,” rhetoric that is also used increasingly by conservatives in their opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“There has never been a violent incident in our history, which cannot be said for many other sites still on Cloudflare. This narrative feels like a lie spun up to save face,” Moon, who posts on Kiwi Farms under the pseudonym “Null,” posted Saturday in response to Cloudflare’s cutoff. Reached earlier by The Associated Press to comment on the campaign against his site, Moon replied only “the press are scum.”
KiwiFarms.ru is registered to and protected by the Russian company DDoS-Guard, whose customers have in the past included Russian government websites including the Defense Ministry and cybercriminal forums where stolen credit cards are bought and sold.
Last year, DDoS-Guard protected the pro-Trump social media website Parler.com for a time after Amazon withdrew hosting services. KiwiFarms.ru was registered on July 12, suggesting Moon was aware Cloudflare could drop his site and thus created a backup plan.
DDoS-Guard did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment on Sunday. Kiwi Farms’ internet connection is provided by VegasNAP, a Las Vegas-based company that said in response to queries last week that it does not disclose information about its clients. Contacted again Sunday, the company did not immediately respond.
“In the past, DDoS-Guard has been known to discontinue support for some seriously problematic websites, apparently as a result of press inquiries. That very well may happen again, in this instance, but I wouldn’t bet on it,” said independent internet expert Ron Guilmette. “Obviously, a lot has changed in the world since February 24, 2022, and I do believe that, in general, Russians these days, and over the past 6 months in particular, have learned to care a whole lot less about what the rest of the world thinks of them and/or their actions.”
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/citing-imminent-danger-cloudflare-drops-hate-site-kiwi-farms/ | 2022-09-05T12:25:04Z |
Flooding will be a concern this Labor Day
A Flood Watch is in effect for the entire region
A FLOOD WATCH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 11 PM TONIGHT FOR THE ENTIRE REGION. FLASH FLOODING CAUSED BY EXCESSIVE RAINFALL IS POSSIBLE TODAY.
We’ll see some scattered showers continue this morning and rounds of rain and storms this afternoon. Some storms could produce some heavy rainfall which may result in some localized flooding issues. The rain and clouds will keep us cooler with highs in the upper 60s and low 70s.
Rain and storms will continue this evening, but coverage should lessen after midnight. Otherwise, we’ll see mainly cloudy skies with lows in the 60s for most.
A mix of sun and clouds with scattered showers is expected tomorrow. Temperatures will top off in the 70s Tuesday afternoon.
We look to stay unsettled through the rest of the week with scattered showers and thunderstorms. Our chance of rain will be lower as we head into the end of the workweek.
Scattered showers and storms will continue into the weekend. Make sure to stay tuned and catch the latest on WVVA.
Copyright 2022 WVVA. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/flooding-will-be-concern-this-labor-day/ | 2022-09-05T12:25:11Z |
Smoked salmon recalled due to listeria risk
Published: Sep. 5, 2022 at 7:52 AM EDT|Updated: 32 minutes ago
(CNN) - Seafood fans may want to take a close look inside the fridge.
Miami-based St. James Smokehouse issued a voluntary recall of its smoked salmon.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the food may be tainted with listeria. Listeria can cause serious and possibly fatal infections in children, elderly adults and people with weakened immune systems.
The salmon was sold by distributors between February and June of this year. The product was distributed to stores located in Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Virginia and Wisconsin.
As of last week, no related illnesses have been reported.
Copyright 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/smoked-salmon-recalled-due-listeria-risk/ | 2022-09-05T12:25:17Z |
Tensions remain at war-threatened Ukrainian nuclear plant
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Tension still gripped Europe’s largest nuclear plant Monday, a day before U.N. inspectors were due to report on their efforts to avert a potential disaster at the Ukrainian site that has been engulfed by Russia’s war on its neighbor.
The Russian military accused Ukrainian forces of staging “provocations” at the Zaporizhzhia plant, which lies within a Russian-installed administrative area.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed that Kyiv’s forces on Sunday targeted the territory of the plant with a drone, which it said Russian troops were able to shoot down.
The ministry said Ukrainian troops also shelled the adjacent city of Enerhodar twice overnight.
The two sides have traded accusations about endangering the plant, which the Kremlin’s forces have held since early March. The plant’s Ukrainian staff continue to operate it.
In a perilous mission, experts with the International Atomic Energy Agency traveled through the war zone to reach the plant last week.
Four of six U.N. nuclear agency inspectors have completed their work and left the site, Energoatom, Ukraine’s state nuclear power plant operator, said Monday.
Two of the experts are expected to stay at the plant on a permanent basis, Energoatom said.
The U.N. inspectors are scheduled to brief the Security Council on Tuesday about what they found out on their visit.
The plant is largely crippled, amid a grinding war that has clobbered energy markets.
A prominent Ukrainian nuclear expert said Monday that only a demilitarized zone of at least 10 kilometers (6 miles) around the plant could ensure its safety.
Hryhoriy Plachkov, Ukraine’s former head of nuclear inspections, said he also feared for the morale and mental state of his countrymen working there.
Elsewhere, the fighting raged on for a seventh month, with Ukraine’s presidential office saying Monday at least four civilians were killed and seven others were wounded by Russian shelling in the previous 24 hours across several regions of Ukraine.
Most of the casualties were in the eastern Donetsk region, where three people were killed and four were wounded. A large chunk of Donetsk is held by Russian-allied separatists.
In the Kharkiv region, further north, three people were wounded when a rocket hit a residential building, the president’s office said.
Russian shells struck more than a dozen residential buildings along with a school, cafes and stores, Ukraine said.
Meanwhile, a counteroffensive by Ukrainian forces “is making verifiable progress in the south and the east” of the country, the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said.
“The pace of the counteroffensive will likely change dramatically from day to day as Ukrainian forces work to starve the Russians of necessary supplies, disrupt their command and control, and weaken their morale even as counteroffensive ground assaults continue,” the institute said late Sunday.
It predicted that Russian forces will launch “fierce artillery and air attacks” against the advancing Ukrainian troops and on any areas they liberate.
Amid increased Ukrainian strikes on the occupied Kherson region, Russian-installed authorities there said that for security reasons they were putting on hold their plans for a local referendum on whether the region should formally become part of Russia.
___
Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/tensions-remain-war-threatened-ukrainian-nuclear-plant/ | 2022-09-05T12:25:24Z |
This recap of House of the Dragon's third episode contains spoilers for ... well, for House of the Dragon's third episode. That's pretty much what a recap is. Proceed accordingly.
If you're just joining us, here are recaps of episode one and episode two and a glossary of people and places you may have forgotten.
That's a bit more like it.
Don't get me wrong: House of the Dragon remains as listlessly talky as ever, and is still telegraphing its each and every narrative punch by having different characters make the same point over and over, for our putative benefit. But you can't deny that the pace is quickening, the plot is thickening, and a third dragon gets added to the slooowly growing roster, with a fiery and efficient debut.
Woo, say I. A qualified woo.
We'll get to it all, but first: A word about those deeply snazzy opening credits. (Didn't mention them last week because the episode that was screened for press didn't have 'em, but this one did.)
We're back to an elaborate clockwork apparatus, like O.G. Game of Thrones. But instead of one that looks out at the wider world, this one looks inward — and to the past. Which is to say: These credits very much represent what House of the Dragon is all about, neatly teeing up the central conflicts that drive it. Good job on that, show.
The first symbol we see is the Doom of Valyria, the volcanic cataclysm that destroyed the ancestral home of the Targaryens and Velaryons (both Houses only survived because they'd relocated to Westeros years before).
Blood flows in rivulets through the machine, gathering in pools around pairs of sigils, then branching off again. The cool thing: Each of these sigils represents a different member of the royal family — so what the camera's really up to, of course, is following the literal bloodline(s) — get it? — of House Targaryen.
You'll notice a couple of times when two different bloodlines branch off from one pair of sigils and then kinda ... go back and pair up themselves. Yep: this represents siblings marrying siblings, a grand, gross, Targaryen family tradition: For richer, for poorer, in sickness, and incest.
GoT's opening credits gave viewers a heads-up as to which geographic locations would feature in a given week's episode. I venture to say that the HotD credits will change from week to week as well, to reflect the growth of the Targaryen dynasty — more members, more marriages, more blood from other Houses (or, you know, the same old House) entering the machine.
Crabs feed, kings breed
Three years have passed since the last episode. King Viserys has married his teen bride Alicent and they've had a son named Aegon, after the founder of the Targaryen Dynasty. Alicent is expecting a second child, as well.
Meanwhile, Daemon and Corlys, without seeking the permission of the king, have been attempting to take the Stepstones back from the Triarchy admiral known as the Crabfeeder.
It's, uh. Not going great.
First, Daemon rides his dragon Caraxes into battle, chasing the Crabfeeder and his men into the caves on the island of Bloodstone, where they dig in for a siege. In the process, Daemon plays Godzilla to one of his own soldier's Bambi, because dragons are many things, but dainty is not one of them.
Back in King's Landing, Ser Tyland Lannister nervously reports to Viserys that Daemon and Corlys are losing the Stepstones, and begs the king to intervene. But Viserys dismisses him, too preoccupied with his son Aegon's upcoming second birthday, and the royal hunt that has been arranged in his honor.
This hunt, you'll note, takes place in the Kingswood, a forest south of King's Landing that contains a private hunting area for the occupant of the Iron Throne. (It's in this same wood that King Robert I will later be mortally wounded by a boar, kicking off the events of Game of Thrones.)
Rhaenyra, between Casterly Rock and a hard place
Rhaenyra is reading up on history while getting dutifully serenaded by a minstrel named Samwell. Alicent comes to invite her to join the royal hunt, but conditions are frosty indeed between the two former pals. Rhaenyra feels overlooked and disregarded by the king and ... pretty much everyone else.
She's wrong about the king, who still wants her to inherit the Iron Throne, but she's right about the "everyone else" part, as various lords spend this episode whispering in Viserys' ear that his firstborn male son should be named the heir.
At the elaborate campsite — glampsite, really — of the royal hunt, there is feasting and gossip, the two-stroke engine of courtly life. Ladies Redwyne and Lannister urge Rhaenyra to get her father to do something about the Crabfeeder (drink!) and we meet Larys Strong, who'd rather sit with the ladies than the men. (Keep an eye on this Larys fella, he's got a role to play in what's coming.)
The oafish and overconfident Jason Lannister — the identical twin of nervous Tyland Lannister (whom we met earlier, played by the same actor) — attempts to flirt with Rhaenyra. This sets her fuming, and she confronts the king, accusing him of pawning her off for political gain. (Last week, with Rhaenys, she acted as if she understood she might get overlooked for the Iron Throne; this week, we see that was clearly acting, on her part.) (Or maybe she's made her peace with that, it's the "being forced to marry" thing that's truly bothering her?)
That Rhaenyra confronts him in such a public place is bad form on her part, but the king escalates things, in the very same, very public place, by fuming at her about her need to marry. Everyone notices, which can't be good.
Rhaenyra storms off on her horse, followed by her bodyguard Ser Criston Cole. She cools down a bit, and suggests they go for a walk through the Kingswood because "It's a beautiful day."
It's not, particularly — it's overcast and the woods are beige and very, very buggy. But they do, and Criston gently reminds her of her privilege.
And we were never being boar-ing
Back at glamp, there are reports of a white stag in the forest — a rare and noble beast that the king's advisors see as a sign, given that it was spotted during young Aegon's birthday celebration. The king looks troubled by this.
He's troubled, also, by Jason Lannister's offer of a spear with which to kill the beast, as well as his offering himself up as Rhaenyra Suitor Number 1. Otto makes things worse by stepping up to instead suggest a match "closer to home" — young Aegon as Rhaenyra Suitor Number 2.
That's right, her own two-year-old brother. (Let's stipulate that this pairing is not so much "closer to home" as "the calls are coming from inside the House!")
Still another lord suggests Ser Laenor Velaryon, the son of Corlys and Rhaenys, as Rhaenyra Suitor Number 3. (Don't worry, we haven't met him yet, but we will, before the episode is over.) You'll remember that awkward walk the king took last week with the 12-year-old? Yeah. Laenor is her older brother.
Think you need a scorecard now? Hang in there, there's more coming.
Night. Rhaenyra and Ser Criston have made their own camp. They're attacked by a boar that Criston skewers, but Rhaenrya makes shredded pork out of. That'll do, pig.
The king drunkenly, weepily confides in Alicent. He had a vision when Rhaenyra was young: He dreamed that he'd have a male son. It grew into an obsession, which drove him to sacrifice his first wife's life in favor of her infant son, who died. He thought naming Rhaenyra his heir would ameliorate his grief and regret. But all this political jockeying around him has got him second-guessing himself.
This scene is a big emotional breakthrough for Viserys — yes, he's drunk, but he's clearly been putting in the work on himself, processing, self-actualizing, filling out the workbooks — but Alicent just sort of ... stands there. I get that she's torn — she's still on Rhaenyra's side, but she also wouldn't hate seeing her son on the Iron Throne. So what are we to make of this utterly blank affect she's serving us — is this character inscrutable, or simply underwritten?
Hart-breaker, don't you mess around with me
The next morning, a profoundly hungover Viserys gets some good news and bad: They've captured a hart, but it's just your basic, Kingswood-variety brown stag, not the White Hart of Symbolic Importance to the Future of the Seven KingdomsTM.
He kills the animal in an effectively ugly and pathetic manner. The crowd applauds.
High on a ridge overlooking this sad scene, the true White Hart of Yeah No For Real You Are the True Heir to the Iron Throne, GurlTM appears to Rhaenyra and Ser Criston. This right here is the gods of Westeros (or at least the showrunners of House of the Dragon) making it official: They're Team Rhaenyra, and so should we be.
Back in King's Landing, Ser Otto Hightower urges his daughter Alicent — the Queen, let's remember! — to convince the king that Aegon should be named heir. Alicent is still on Team Rhaenyra, but she's vacillating. Otto presses his case, thusly:
It is Aegon that's being robbed. He's the firstborn son of the king! To deny that he is heir to the throne is to assail the laws of gods and men!
Yeah well. More the latter than the former, there, Sparky.
When Alicent sees the king, who is nursing a cup of Westerosi Alka-Seltzer, she doesn't press widdle Aegon's case. Yet.
She does urge him to respond to a plea for aid from Vaemond Velaryon.
Ping! A new character has entered the chat!
Vaemond is the younger brother of Corlys, and he's gone behind his and Daemon's back because they remain too proud to ask the king for help, even though they're losing the Stepstones.
And send aid he does. He also seems to have shaken off his earlier self-doubt, and assures Rhaenyra that she is still the one and only heir to the Iron Throne, and nothing will ever change that.
Cut to: Something that will probably change that.
A crab boil without Old Bay seasoning?
In the Stepstones, Daemon and Corlys are doing their best, but the Crabfeeder and his men are still hunkered down in the caves of Bloodstone, and firing on passing ships.
Corlys, his son Laenor (Remember him? Rhaenyra Suitor Number 3?) and Corlys' brother Vaemond (he of the secret S.O.S.) are standing over a very artsy-craftsy tactical map of the Stepstones on which — man, again with the tchotchkes, on this show! — House Velaryon is represented by cool-ass metal seahorse tokens, House Targaryen by jawbones that look like dragon wings, and the Crabfeeder by crab claws.
There are ... still a whole lot of crab claws on the map. Just need some wooden mallets, coleslaw, cornbread and a few tubs of butter and you got yourself a great summer Saturday afternoon in Annapolis.
Which is why they're worried. They're running out of food and determination, and the dragons aren't making headway, because the Crabfeeder's men just retreat back into their caves.
Their ... caves.
Their ... dungeness, you might say. No, you shut up.
What's needed, they decide, is a volunteer to head over to Bloodstone, the island they're holed up on, and draw them out. But who?
Here's who: Daemon. When a poor, hot messenger from King's Landing informs him that Viserys' help is on the way, he attacks the self-same poor, hot messenger, because the show wishes to remind us at this juncture that Daemon has a fiery temper and remains a jerk.
Daemon rows, rows, rows his boat over to Bloodstone, and promptly starts turning a really surprising number of the enemy into lump crabmeat. But then the archers pin him down, and get a few good shots in.
By this point, a lot of the Crabfeeder's soldiers have been drawn out of the caves, which leaves them open to attack from Corlys' men, not to mention ...
Laenor Velaryon, astride his dragon Seasmoke!
(Were you surprised by this? Did you think only Targaryens could ride dragons? Remember who Laenor's mother is. He carries the dragon-riding gene down deep in his ol' endoplasmic reticulum. As do — clip and save for later — his siblings.)
Seasmoke takes out the archers, and Corlys' men tie up the Crabfeeder's, leaving a wounded but unbowed Daemon to chase the Crabfeeder into his hole and make short work of him.
... Offscreen.
Oh, sure, we see the aftermath: Daemon dragging the top one-third of the Crabfeeder's corpse out of the cave for all to see. But we didn't get to actually see Daemon slicing the Crabfeeder on the bias, giving him a fashionable, kicky, off-the-shoulder kind of death.
Parting Thoughts:
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-04/house-of-the-dragon-episode-3-the-king-and-the-show-go-hunting-for-validation | 2022-09-05T12:31:27Z |
Artists are unhappy with a man who submitted AI artwork to a contest NPR Published September 5, 2022 at 5:07 AM MDT Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Flipboard Listen • 0:27 Jason Allen won $300 using a piece of artwork generated by an artificial intelligence. Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/artists-are-unhappy-with-a-man-who-submitted-ai-artwork-to-a-contest | 2022-09-05T12:31:34Z |
The memorial concert in London featured the likes of Paul McCartney and Queen, but the most special guest of the night was Hawkins' 16-year-old son, Shane, who took his dad's spot behind the drum kit.
Copyright 2022 NPR
The memorial concert in London featured the likes of Paul McCartney and Queen, but the most special guest of the night was Hawkins' 16-year-old son, Shane, who took his dad's spot behind the drum kit.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/foo-fighters-holds-its-first-concert-since-the-death-of-taylor-hawkins | 2022-09-05T12:31:40Z |
Updated September 5, 2022 at 7:45 AM ET
Liz Truss will be the U.K.'s new prime minister, after the Conservative Party named her as its next leader on Monday, replacing the outgoing Boris Johnson.
Truss, who currently serves as the foreign minister, has spent the summer campaigning against her opponent for the party leadership, the U.K.'s former finance minister, Rishi Sunak. The contest has been decided by the votes of less than 200,000 grassroots party members, rather than a national electorate.
The new prime minister will be formally appointed by Queen Elizabeth on Tuesday, after Johnson meets with the monarch in Scotland to tender his resignation. Johnson, who has acted as a caretaker for the past few months, was laid low by a succession of scandals that crescendoed in the first half of this year. He lost the support of many fellow conservative legislators, and indeed many ministers in his own government, which forced him to resign.
The new leader will enter 10 Downing Street later Tuesday, and will immediately face responsibility for a rapidly escalating energy crisis in Britain, with both consumers and companies facing record high gas and electricity costs thanks to the war in Ukraine, and the corresponding rise in inflation threatening to tip the country into a major recession.
Truss, who has been dubbed "PM in waiting" by one British newspaper, said in an interview with the BBC this weekend that she will formulate proposals to combat this economic challenge within days, and is aiming to "act immediately."
Earlier in the leadership contest she did not command as much support among fellow Conservative legislators as her opponent Sunak, and even though he has promised to support a new government even if he is not leader, political analysts have said it will be difficult for her to unify her divided Conservatives, who still enjoy a sizeable majority in the country's parliament — thanks, ironically, to Johnson's huge success as a campaigner during the last national elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/liz-truss-is-the-u-k-s-next-prime-minister | 2022-09-05T12:31:47Z |
For months, the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season was notable for one reason: a complete lack of hurricanes. That finally changed on Friday, when Danielle strengthened into the Atlantic's first hurricane since last October.
The 2022 season had been predicted to continue the recent run of storm activity that pushed meteorologists deep into their annual list of alphabetized storm names, even exhausting it entirely.
But so far, it's been a quiet summer: 60 days elapsed from Tropical Storm Colin's demise on July 3 and Danielle's arrival on Sept. 1.
"No tropical cyclones formed in the basin during August," as the National Hurricane Center said in its monthly recap. "This is quite unusual and is the first time that has occurred since 1997, and is only the third time that has happened since 1950."
Weather conditions can change rapidly, and dangerous storms could still form in the coming weeks, experts warn. Just days after Danielle formed, for instance, another tropical storm, Earl, formed.
Why is there a gap between the prediction and reality?
This is not the above-average hurricane season experts predicted — at least, not yet. Scientists at Colorado State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted the Atlantic's seventh above-normal season in a row, with more than the average of 14 named storms.
Their reasons were solid: The climate pattern known as La Niña in the Pacific Ocean normally brings a more active hurricane season in the Atlantic. In addition, water temperatures in the tropical Atlantic have been among the warmest ever recorded, providing plenty of fuel for storms.
"Those two factors alone were expected to drive an active Atlantic hurricane season, but it hasn't turned out that way," meteorologist Jeff Masters told NPR. He's a hurricane expert for Yale Climate Connections and a co-founder of Weather Underground.
"It was not expected and the reasons for it are not well understood," Masters said (more on that below).
What does history say about a slow start to storm season?
It's a mixed picture, with a small sample size. But experts warn not to assume there's less risk just because the first months of hurricane season have been calm.
Since routine aircraft reconnaissance began in 1944, only two other seasons didn't see a named storm in August. The first came in 1961, which pivoted into a very active season. A flurry of dangerous hurricanes formed in September alone — including Hurricane Carla, which devastated the Texas coast.
The second such season, in 1997, remained a quiet one. But Jamie Rhome, acting director at the National Hurricane Center, noted in a statement sent to NPR that in 1992, the storm season had also been quiet, before Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida and Louisiana in August.
"It only takes one landfalling hurricane to make it a bad season for you, and we still have three months to go before the end of the Atlantic hurricane season," Rhome said.
So, what's happened so far this year?
Hurricanes, it turns out, have two big enemies: dry air and wind shear. This year, those conditions are being boosted by the Bermuda High, a high-pressure system that sits over the Atlantic Ocean.
The Bermuda High is currently smaller and farther north than normal — leading to high temperatures from Canada to Europe. It's also allowing the powerful jet stream to dip far to the south over the central Atlantic, preventing hurricanes from forming.
"When high winds get up on top of a developing system that's trying to be a hurricane, those high winds will tear it apart," Masters said.
The same dynamic is funneling dry air to the Atlantic that also saps storms.
"Things are all upside-down" this summer, a hurricane expert says
Climate change is causing hurricanes to get more powerful on average. In general, air that's becoming warmer and more moist provides more fuel for extreme weather, from hurricanes to intense inland storms. Researchers are still working to learn how rising temperatures might affect the overall number of storms that form.
"Hurricanes fundamentally form in response to unequal heating of the poles compared to the equator. They're meant to redistribute heat," Masters said.
But their services have not been required this summer, because sunny conditions have brought heat waves to northern latitudes and raised ocean temperatures in the far north to resemble tropical warmth.
With little need for hurricanes to transport heat, the Atlantic isn't the only place seeing a calmer storm season.
"The western Pacific has also been super quiet. We're somewhere around maybe 60% of average activity there," Masters said. "So it's kind of a global thing going on here. It's not just the Atlantic: Things are all upside-down."
Does this mean we're in for an easier hurricane season?
We might see less powerful hurricanes compared to recent years, Masters said, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be dangerous. Because of warm ocean temperatures, he expects any cyclone that does form to pack a great deal of water, raising the risk of flooding — the main cause of death from hurricanes.
"It's unlikely we're going to have an above-average season now," he said, noting that the hurricane season is nearing its traditional halfway point of Sept. 10.
But forecasters warn not to become complacent in the absence of hurricanes.
"It's still early. It only takes one bad storm to make a hurricane season for the ages," Masters said. "So we still have to be vigilant."
As Colorado State's researchers said when they made their seasonal forecast, anyone who lives in an area that could be affected by a hurricane or tropical storm "should prepare the same for every season, regardless of how much activity is predicted."
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/the-first-hurricane-of-the-season-arrived-late-but-dont-let-your-guard-down | 2022-09-05T12:31:53Z |
NPR's A Martinez talks to political strategists Dan Sena and Scott Jennings about President Biden's 'battle for the soul of the nation' message ahead of the midterm elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR's A Martinez talks to political strategists Dan Sena and Scott Jennings about President Biden's 'battle for the soul of the nation' message ahead of the midterm elections.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/2022-09-05/what-bidens-speech-in-philadelphia-means-for-the-midterms | 2022-09-05T12:31:59Z |
Two staffers, including its director, departing Cheyenne Botanic Gardens
Some staff changes are in store for the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens, it was announced this past week.
Thursday was the last day for two staffers, including the organization’s director, according to an email that day from Friends of the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens. “Even with these very warm temperatures in Southeast Wyoming, we are looking toward fall. With the changing seasons, we are anticipating some changes at the gardens.”
The email went on to say that Director Tina Worthman “is moving on to enjoy family and farm life in Nebraska.” She was promoted in 2018 to the director post, after serving as an assistant director and then as interim director.
Horticulture Supervisor Nettie Hardy “is headed back to her native Alabama and exciting horticulture opportunities there.”
The announcement added that “we are grateful for their service to the Cheyenne Botanic Gardens over these last several years and wish them well. Both will be missed by colleagues, volunteers, members, and visitors.”
Further details weren’t immediately available on Friday afternoon.
Wyoming national forests receive federal money for improvements
The Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service has projects in Wyoming that are being funded as part of $65 million in investments nationwide to help the agency improve water quality, roads, trails and fish habitat, it was announced via email this past week.
The exact amount of money the national forests in Wyoming are getting was not included in a related online announcement. Further details couldn’t be learned on Friday.
Projects getting assistance include:
Bighorn National Forest for Cedar Creek and Driveway Trail bridge construction. “Reconstruction of two trail bridges above the high-water mark will improve stream functioning and protect the bridges and adjacent trails from erosion,” the Forest Service said. And for the Canyon Creek Road and channel, there will be reconstruction and relocation of some 600 feet of road, and a bridge will be built.
Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest for decommissioning five miles of North Savery road, which, per the agency, “will restore fish and aquatic species habitat and improve water quality.” For the Middle Douglas Priority Watershed, the park will decommission five miles of previously closed roads and as many miles miles of unauthorized roads, “placing approximately 30 miles of road into long term storage, and relocating approximately 17 miles of motorized trail.” The Whiskey Creek-Little Snake Watershed also will see some roads converted for other purposes, taken out of use and similar actions.
Shoshone National Forest will see the reconstruction of roads and crossings, which the Forest Service expects “to improve water and aquatic habitat.”
Milestones
Monique Meese has resigned from the Wyoming Secretary of State’s Office, according to an out of office auto-reply email on Friday to the Wyoming Tribune Eagle. Her last day was Aug. 19, according to the email. She told Cowboy State Daily she has accepted a job as deputy county attorney in Laramie County. The WTE was unable to reach Meese and her current and former employer on Friday. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/business_briefs/business-briefs-for-9-3-22/article_78662192-2aea-11ed-a027-47161a6dc4ec.html | 2022-09-05T12:53:30Z |
CHEYENNE – The No. 16-ranked Laramie County Community College women’s soccer team dropped a 3-1 match to seventh-ranked Butler Community College on Sunday in El Dorado, Kansas.
The Grizzlies got goals from Brooke Sullivan, Maria Amor and Emma Kolbe. Kolbe assisted on Amor’s goal.
LCCC’s tally came from Caroline Kuhn in the 74th when she picked up the rebound of a shot that hit off Butler defenders.
The Golden Eagles were outshot 18-14, including 10-5 in shots on goal. They did get nine corner kicks to Butler’s five.
Interim LCCC coach Jim Gardner liked the way his team bounced back from a disappointing 3-0 loss to Coffeyville on Saturday.
“They got character,” Gardner said. “This score was no indicative of the match. We changed up and played more like we did last week. We had three big defensive mistakes, but they’re fixable.”
LCCC men lose at Arizona Western
CHEYENNE – Daniel Barajas scored two goals and assisted on another, but it wasn’t enough for the Laramie County Community College men’s soccer team’s 6-4 loss at Arizona Western on Sunday in Yuma, Arizona.
Barajas scored in the eighth minute off an assist from Christian Nunez and in the 48th with an assist from Isaac Perez. He also assisted Brayan Aguirre’s second minute goal.
Mario Ramirez rounded out the Golden Eagles’ scoring with an assist from Darwin Leiva in the 90th.
“We started off great, but didn’t have enough discipline for 90 minutes,” LCCC interim coach Fernando Perez said. | https://www.wyomingnews.com/wyosports/other_sports/lccc/colleges-lccc-women-fall-at-no-7-butler/article_1d369b70-2cc6-11ed-b74c-131051c591de.html | 2022-09-05T12:53:34Z |
94-year-old WWII veteran volunteers at children’s hospital, handing out smiles
ST. LOUIS (KSDK) – A World War II hero is still serving his community but in a very different way.
At 94 years old, Carl Hall is a hero to kids at Shriners Children’s Hospital in St. Louis. The veteran has seemingly seen it all in his lifetime.
“I got over to Europe at the end of the war, Going to the South Pole, the Berlin Airlift. I was in Iran when they still had a king,” he explained.
Since retiring in 1990, Hall has dedicated his life to a different kind of service. For the past 32 years, Hall has handed out smiles to everyone who walked through the door.
“Carl treats us all like we’re a part of his family,” said Pauline Mopkins, a nurse at the hospital.
“It’s really helpful to your physical and mental health because you’re helping kids get better,” Hall explained. “I’ve seen kids come in here that couldn’t even walk or do anything. When they leave, they’re like a regular kid. It’s just amazing.”
In addition to the happiness he brings into the hospital, Hall has worked with a number of church groups and community organizations over the years and has raised more than $270,000 in donations for the facility.
“People give me money to bring in, and I bring it in,” Hall said. “I’ve seen some, what I saw as babies, coming in now with their babies. That gives you a good feeling because you know that somebody is here to help.”
Hall plans to continue manning his post at the hospital for as long as he can.
“I have no idea how long that will be,” he said. “As long as God helps me, I’ll do it.”
Copyright KSDK 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/94-year-old-wwii-veteran-volunteers-childrens-hospital-handing-out-smiles/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:10Z |
Dozens of Native American remains found on University of North Dakota campus
GRAND FORKS, N.D. (KVLY/Gray News) - The University of North Dakota’s President Andrew Armacost said the university found Native American remains in a closet on campus earlier this year.
Armacost said on Wednesday the discovery was made while looking for a missing sacred item on campus. He estimated that there are dozens of remains.
Including other sacred artifacts, the university has found more than 250 boxes with Native American belongings on the university campus, KVLY reported.
“Coming on the heels of other recent revelations about historic wrongs inflicted on Indigenous people in the United States and Canada, members of our tribal communities in the region will undoubtedly be deeply affected by this news from UND. While I cannot take away their pain, I can apologize on behalf of UND for our mistakes,” Armacost said.
He said the school immediately reached out to representatives from area tribes, collaborating with them and seeking advice for more than four months to “... make certain this work is done correctly.” In a recent visit to the campus, tribal leaders blessed spaces where the ancestors and sacred items were stored and found.
Armacost said the response from each tribal representative has been common: “Anger, sadness, acceptance of our apologies and appreciation that we are involving them from the outset of this work.”
They said their goal is to work diligently until all ancestors and sacred objects are returned home, no matter how long it takes. University officials are now working to connect ancestors and artifacts with their places of origin and are hiring experts to help.
Armacost said the sacred items will be returned in a manner consistent with the Native American Grave and Repatriation Act, involving tribal nations, as well as federal and state agencies.
Students on the campus were taken aback at the finding.
“That’s the craziest part is that remains were found. It wasn’t just objects found, and that’s just wild to think about,” said Haiden Huschka, a freshman.
Another freshman, Riley Schreiner added, “We’re just finding out about them now, and you have no clue who that could be or the significance of that person back in their time.”
“I never would have expected it to happen. I’m not Indigenous, but I imagine for those Indigenous folk it’s more unsettling than for others,” stated sophomore Max Taylor.
Some Indigenous faculty and students gathered together to watch the virtual presser. While they declined to comment, the emotion could be felt in the room.
Wednesday’s announcement brought shock, with many sharing hopes that the artifacts and ancestral remains are returned to their respective tribes.
Professor Doug McDonald runs the university’s Indians into Psychology Doctoral Education program, and he and his team are available with counseling services in support of Native American students, faculty and staff. The University Counseling Center is also providing support to students.
The university has launched a repatriation webpage that explains its repatriation process to date. It also includes an email address, UND.inforequest@UND.edu, for repatriation-related questions.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum released a statement Wednesday, saying in part: “We are heartbroken by the deeply insensitive treatment of these Indigenous ancestral remains and artifacts and extend our deepest apologies to the sovereign tribal nations in North Dakota and beyond. This dark chapter, while extremely hurtful, also presents an opportunity to enhance our understanding and respect for Indigenous cultures and to become a model for the nation by conducting this process with the utmost deference to the wishes, customs and traditions of tribal nations.”
Copyright 2022 KVLY via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/dozens-native-american-remains-found-university-north-dakota-campus/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:17Z |
Law enforcement warns parents about increase in reported sextortion cases of teens
CIBOLO, Texas (KWTX/Gray News) – A police department in Texas is warning parents about cases of sextortion targeting teens and young adults.
The Cibolo Police Department said in a post on Facebook it has seen an increase in reported cases where people are being threatened, coerced or blackmailed into sending money or explicit images online through social media or games.
According to authorities, sextortion most often occurs on Snapchat and Instagram, but can also happen on children’s games like Roblox or Minecraft.
“The victim often believes they are communicating with someone their own age who is interested in a relationship. The victim is asked to send a revealing or nude photo of themselves oftentimes after first receiving a revealing or nude photo from the suspect,” the police said.
After the person has one or more pictures of the target, they will threaten or blackmail them saying they will put the explicit images on the social media site if they don’t send money.
Cibolo PD and the FBI recommend that all parents with children who have access to online content talk to their kids about the potential dangers of the internet.
The FBI recommends the following:
1. Be selective about what you share online. If your social media accounts are open to everyone, a predator may be able to figure out a lot of information about you.
2. Be wary of anyone you encounter for the first time online. Block or ignore messages from strangers.
3. Be aware that people can pretend to be anything or anyone online. Videos and photos are not proof that people are who they claim to be. Images can be altered or stolen. In some cases, predators have even taken over the social media accounts of their victims.
4. Be suspicious if you meet someone on one game or app and this person asks you to start talking on a different platform.
5. Be in the know. Any content you create online—whether it is a text message, photo, or video—can be made public. And nothing actually “disappears” online. Once you send something, you don’t have any control over where it goes next.
6. Be willing to ask for help. If you are getting messages or requests online that don’t seem right, block the sender, report the behavior to the site administrator or go to an adult. If you have been victimized online, tell someone.
Copyright 2022 KWTX via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/law-enforcement-warns-parents-about-increase-reported-sextortion-cases-teens/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:23Z |
OPEC+ cuts oil supplies to the world as prices have fallen
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — OPEC and allied oil-producing countries, including Russia, cut their supplies to the global economy by 100,000 barrels per day, underlining their unhappiness with crude prices that have sagged because of recession fears.
The decision Monday by energy ministers means the cut for October rolls back the mostly symbolic increase of the same amount in September. The move follows a statement last month from Saudi Arabia’s energy minister that the group could reduce output at any time.
Oil producers such as Saudi Arabia have resisted calls from U.S. President Joe Biden to pump more oil to lower gasoline prices and the burden on consumers.
But worries about slumping future demand have helped send prices down from June peaks of over $120 per barrel, cutting into the windfall for the government budgets of OPEC+ countries but proving a blessing for drivers in the U.S. as pump prices have eased.
The energy minsters said in a statement that the September increase was only for that month, and that the group could meet again at any time to address market developments.
Other factors are lurking that could influence the price of oil. For one, the Group of Seven major democracies plan to impose a price cap on imports of Russian oil and what effect that might have on the market. The price level for the cap has not yet been set.
Meanwhile, a deal between Western countries and Iran to limit Tehran’s nuclear program could ease sanctions and see more than 1 million barrels of Iranian oil return to the market in coming months. However, tensions between the U.S. and Iran appear to have risen in recent days: Iran seized two U.S. naval drones in the Red Sea, and U.S., Kuwaiti and Saudi warplanes flew over the Middle East on Sunday in a show of force.
Oil prices have gyrated in recent months: Recession fears have pushed them down, while worries of a loss of Russian oil because of sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine pushed them up.
Recently, recession fears have taken the upper hand. Economists in Europe are penciling in a recession at the end of this year due to skyrocketing inflation fed by energy costs, while China’s severe restrictions aimed at halting the spread of the coronavirus have sapped growth in that major world economy.
Those falling oil prices have been a boon to U.S. drivers, sending gasoline prices down to $3.82 per gallon from record highs of over $5 in June.
That month, fears that U.S. and European sanctions would take Russian oil off the market helped push Brent to over $123. Those concerns are still out there because European sanctions aimed at Russian oil shipments won’t take effect until the end of the year.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/opec-cuts-oil-supplies-world-prices-have-fallen/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:29Z |
Red wave crashing? GOP momentum slips as fall sprint begins
NEW YORK (AP) — The possibility of a great red wave still looms.
But as the 2022 midterm elections enter their final two-month sprint, leading Republicans concede that their party’s advantage may be slipping even as Democrats confront their president’s weak standing, deep voter pessimism and the weight of history this fall.
The political landscape, while still in flux, follows a string of President Joe Biden’s legislative victories on climate, health care and gun violence, just as Donald Trump’s hand-picked candidates in electoral battlegrounds like Arizona, Georgia, Ohio and Pennsylvania struggle to broaden their appeal. But nothing has undermined the GOP’s momentum more than the Supreme Court’s stunning decision in June to end abortion protections, which triggered a swift backlash even in the reddest of red states.
“This midterm looks and feels significantly different than it did six months ago,” said veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. The abortion ruling “has energized some segments, especially the Democratic constituency, and it has thrown a wrench, at least to some extent, into the hopes of winning a ton of seats.”
History suggests Republicans should dominate the November elections.
In the modern era, the party that holds the White House has lost congressional seats in virtually every first-term president’s first midterm election. Ronald Reagan lost 26 House seats, Bill Clinton lost 52, Barack Obama 63 and Trump 40. Only George W. Bush’s Republican Party enjoyed a modest eight-seat gain in his first midterm, coming after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Nine weeks before Election Day, leading operatives in both parties expect Republicans to pick up roughly 10 to 20 House seats, which would give the GOP a narrow majority in the chamber in November and break up Democrats’ control of the federal government. But many Republicans are losing confidence in the high-stakes fight for the Senate majority and key governorships across the nation.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro argues that his focus on public safety, education, the economy and freedom is driving his momentum but concedes that his opponent is also a major factor.
“Folks trust me to get it done,” Shapiro, the state attorney general, told The Associated Press. “And in fairness, in part, it’s because I’m running against the guy who’s by far the most extreme and dangerous candidate in the nation.”
In one of the nation’s most important swing states, Republicans nominated Doug Mastriano as their nominee for governor, even after learning about his leading role in Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 election.
The state senator and retired military officer helped organize the state’s effort to submit fake presidential electors beholden to Trump and was seen outside the Capitol as pro-Trump demonstrators attacked police on Jan. 6, 2021. He has also alienated moderate voters and even some Republicans with divisive positions on several issues, including abortion, which he opposes in all circumstances.
Mastriano’s campaign didn’t respond to an interview request for this story.
Shapiro will launch his first TV ad of the fall campaign on Tuesday, casting Mastriano’s fierce opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage as a threat to Pennsylvania’s economy. The ad is the first spot in a $16.9 million television advertising investment the campaign reserved for the nine weeks leading up to Election Day.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel acknowledged that the GOP must sharpen its message on abortion given the Democrats’ apparent momentum.
“We can’t allow them to control the narrative,” McDaniel said in an interview.
She emphasized Republican leaders’ record of supporting exceptions for abortion in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother, sidestepping questions about candidates like Mastriano, Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who oppose such exceptions.
“I’m not going to speak about every candidate and where they’re at,” McDaniel said. “But the past four Republican presidents since Roe believe in the exception, and that is where I think a lot of the American people are, according to polling. But they also believe in limitations, and Democrats have shown no inclination to have any limitation.”
On the Republican Party’s broader midterm outlook, McDaniel said top races were always likely to tighten, despite the conventional wisdom that a massive red wave was building.
“Many of these states are battleground states,” she said. “It’s going to be tight.”
On paper, Republicans continue to enjoy tremendous advantages.
Beyond the weight of history, Democrats are saddled with Biden’s low favorability ratings as roughly 7 in 10 voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. Democratic strategists acknowledge serious political headwinds as inflation and pessimism surge, but they note gas prices have ticked down, pandemic worries have waned and Biden has won major legislative victories on several key issues.
“Republicans haven’t taken advantage of the bad political environment. And they punted on having any agenda or getting anything done,” said Biden pollster John Anzalone, who was far less confident about the midterm outlook at the beginning of the summer.
“Historically, this should be a 30- or 40-seat win by Republicans,” he added. “The entire Republican Party has been one big mistake for the past four or five months.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has blamed GOP “candidate quality” for why his party was more likely to win the House than the Senate.
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who leads the Senate GOP campaign arm, sees it differently.
“He and I clearly have a disagreement on this. I think we’ve got great candidates,” Scott told the AP, citing opportunities to challenge Democrats in blue states like Colorado and Washington state. “I think we’re doing fine.”
Scott did acknowledge some uncertainty involving Trump’s role in the coming weeks.
The former president helped his loyalists, most of whom embraced his conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, win primary elections across the country throughout the spring and summer. But it’s unclear how Trump will help them, if at all, as the election moves into the fall.
“He’s got a choice about what he wants to do. He clearly has some candidates that he wanted to get through the primaries and they did,” Scott said. “He’ll make his own decision on what he wants to do.”
At the same time, a disproportionate number of women are registering to vote. And if recent voting patterns hold, that’s good news for Democrats.
In at least seven states, women made up a higher share of newly registered voters following the overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to an AP analysis of voter data from L2, a nonpartisan data provider.
In the five weeks after the court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, women made up 64% of new Kansas registrations. Then, on Aug. 2, Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected a ballot measure that would have let state lawmakers impose new restrictions on abortions.
Trump-backed Republicans who oppose abortion rights are fighting for momentum in several swing states.
A leading Republican Senate super PAC recently canceled television ad reservations in Arizona, where Blake Masters is running, while committing $28 million to help Trump loyalist JD Vance in Ohio, a state Trump carried by 8 points in the last election. In Pennsylvania, there are concerns that Mastriano is dragging down the rest of the Republican ticket, while Trump-endorsed GOP Senate nominee Mehmet Oz is struggling with residency questions. And in Georgia, Walker is facing difficult questions about his past and his opposition to abortion in all cases.
Rep. Tom Emmer, the Minnesota Republican who leads the House GOP campaign arm, warned his party against taking anything for granted.
He noted that most of the seats Republicans are targeting this fall are set in districts Biden carried, a contrast from past elections where Republicans found success in GOP-leaning districts.
“Don’t be measuring the drapes,” Emmer told the AP in a message to Republican colleagues. “This isn’t the typical midterm that we’re talking about.”
___
Associated Press writers Aaron Kessler, Hannah Fingerhut and Zeke Miller in Washington and Bill Barrow in Atlanta contributed to this report.
___
Follow AP for full coverage of the midterms at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections and on Twitter, https://twitter.com/ap_politics
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.whsv.com/2022/09/05/red-wave-crashing-gop-momentum-slips-fall-sprint-begins/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:36Z |
STOCKHOLM, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- During the period August 29 - September 2, 2022 AB Electrolux (LEI code 549300Y3HHZB1ZGFPJ93) has repurchased in total 895,290 own series B shares (ISIN: SE0016589188) as part of the buyback program initiated by the Board of Directors in order to optimize the company's capital structure. The buyback program that was initiated on May 2, 2022 is hereby completed as a total of 8,000,000 series B shares have been repurchased for a total amount of SEK 1,138 million.
The share buybacks form part of the buyback program of a maximum of 8,000,000 series B shares for a total maximum amount of SEK 1,250 million, which AB Electrolux announced on April 29, 2022. The buyback program, which runs between May 2, 2022 - October 21, 2022, is being carried out in accordance with the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 ("MAR") and the Commission Delegated Regulation 2016/1052 (the "Safe Harbour Regulation"). The objective of the share buybacks is to optimize the company's capital structure and the intention is to reduce Electrolux share capital through subsequent share cancellations.
Series B shares in AB Electrolux have been repurchased (in SEK) as follows:
All acquisitions have been carried out on Nasdaq Stockholm by Citigroup Global Markets Europe AG on behalf of AB Electrolux. Following the above acquisitions, AB Electrolux holding of own shares as of September 2, 2022 amounts to 13,049,115 series B shares. The total number of shares in AB Electrolux amounts to 283,077,393.
A full breakdown of the transactions pursuant to article 5.3 of MAR and article 2.3 of the Safe Harbour Regulation is attached to this announcement.
For further information, please contact:
Sophie Arnius, Investor Relations, +46 70 590 80 72
Electrolux Press Hotline, +46 8 657 65 07
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SOURCE Electrolux | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/buybacks-series-b-shares-ab-electrolux-during-week-35-2022-buyback-program-completed/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:42Z |
BEIJING, PARIS and STELLENBOSCH, South Africa, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- 2022 is unusual in many aspects, as expressed by Todd Stern, the former special envoy for climate change of the United States, in a recent interview. From the extreme droughts resulting in famine in the Horn of Africa to the heat waves across Europe and the flooding in Asia, 2022 shows the world what this 'code red' of climate change is like.
It is crucial to prepare today's youth to lead global climate governance in the future, as well as to engage the society as a whole in this cause, especially with a perspective focusing on the synergy between climate change and other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), if we are to succeed in building a sustainable net-zero future for all.
The Global Alliance of Universities on Climate (GAUC) was established in 2019 to provide leadership of global higher education efforts to address climate change. Today it consists of 15 of the world's leading universities from nine countries and across six continents. By launching the 'Climate x' Campaign, GAUC aims to offer a systematic solution to the progress of global climate governance and a concrete contribution to the success of COP27 by preparing the youth, promoting a synergetic approach, and mobilizing the multi-stakeholders.
"This is a time of enormous challenges. Our health and well-being, peace and prosperity, and nature itself are under threat. The most pressing problems confronting nations are ultimately global in nature, and they demand global solutions. The focus of the 'Climate x' campaign is an excellent example of this," said Amina J. Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, in her address during the launch of the campaign.
The campaign, which pools the collective strength of GAUC's 15 member universities, features a three-level structure: a national program of 'Climate x' Leadership Training Pilot (the Pilot) co-initiated by Sciences Po in Paris and Tsinghua University in Beijing; a regional event of the African Regional Forum on Climate Change organized by Stellenbosch University, GAUC's only member university in Africa; and three events at the international level, namely the Global Youth Climate Week, the GAUC Climate x Summit, and the GAUC COP27 high-level event.
The youth plays a vital role
Climate change is a challenge that will cast long-lasting impact over our descendants in the future, which makes youth the backbone of the net-zero future.
Ahead of the campaign's official launch, the Pilot program enrolled and cultivated over 150 students from GAUC member universities, forming the first cohort of GAUC Global Youth Ambassadors. Those students, divided into 21 interdisciplinary and cross-culture teams, have developed innovative solutions, ranging from digital games and mobile applications to panel discussions and community engagement, which will be featured during the campaign.
Synergetic approach is essential
Climate change is closely intertwined with all the SDGs and holds transforming power over broader social and economic sectors, making a synergetic approach that integrates the realization of the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda essential in building a sustainable net-zero future. Considering the trending global topics, GAUC distinguished four areas to focus the synergy with climate change in 2022, namely Sustainable & Secure Energy; Finance; Nature, Biodiversity & Food; Adaptation & Resilience.
The campaign's regional event, the African Regional Forum on Climate Change (ARF) will be a hybrid event from 5-9 September 2022, covering topics such as food and water security, disaster risk reduction, sustainable and reliable energy, and the impact of climate change on people and businesses. Leading up to the COP27, ARF aims to provide a platform for engaging multiple institutions and stakeholders in climate change science and its applied social and policy implications in Africa.
Getting the whole of society on board
The success of the cause requires getting on board society as a whole. In 2021, GAUC's Climate x Summit attracted over 1.25 million participants worldwide during the COP26. In 2022, the three-level structure of the Climate x Campaign is going to engage even more multi-stakeholders.
At the launch ceremony, GAUC extended the invitation to global organizations and institutions to co-initiate the Global Youth Climate Week. Scheduled ahead of each COP, it is a mechanism that GAUC proposed to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to coordinate the actions of the youth for more impactful contribution. Ms. Patricia Espinosa, the then Executive Secretariat of UNFCCC appraised that the proposal would provide an impactful contribution to the UNFCCC process by mobilizing and institutionalizing the efforts being made by global youth in the response to climate change.
For more information about GAUC, please visit: https://gauc.net/
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SOURCE Global Alliance of Universities on Climate | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/gauc-launches-2022-climate-x-campaign/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:49Z |
The series provides users with a comfortable noise-free experience when using electricity outdoors
NINGBO, China, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GONEO, an international brand owned by Gongniu Group, a Chinese manufacturer of consumer-demand oriented electrical products, has made its new Silent series portable power stations available on Amazon.com. With a sufficient and stable power supply that powers electrical devices outdoors, the Silent series features a noise-free design that allows users to immerse themselves in nature while camping, delivering a quiet and comfortable experience when using electricity.
By using GONEO's unique outdoor power cooling technology, the fan that is a necessary component of traditional outdoor energy storage products is eliminated, bringing the noise level down to below 5dB. The fanless Silent series significantly enhances the camping experience for campers and outdoors enthusiasts by addressing the noise problem they may face when charging electrical products in the wild.
- When fishing lakeside, or from a kayak or canoe in quiet waters, the Silent series can provide power to electronic devices without making noise that may disturb and scare away the fish.
- When used in combination with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine for an overnight retreat at the campground, the Silent Series soundlessly provides uninterrupted power to the machine so that the campers can sleep undisturbed.
- When camping out with the whole family, the power station can charge everyone's devices overnight without making any noise, creating a quieter and more comfortable sleeping environment for both children and adults.
The Goneo Silent series includes 300W/303Wh, 600W/607Wh and 1000W/1016Wh models with 3 different power outputs and battery capacities that meet the expectations of campers and outdoors enthusiasts who need to charge outdoor appliances with different power outputs in various camping scenarios.
About GONEO
Goneo, the international renewable energy brand of Gongniu Group, formally entered world markets in 2021 with an ongoing commitment to providing consumers with a safe and comfortable experience of using electricity through innovation in technologies and materials.
About Gongniu Group
Founded in 1995, Gongniu Group is one of the top 500 manufacturing companies in China and is mainly engaged in the R&D, production and sales of electrical products for consumer use. The company listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange's Main Board (stock code: 603195) on February 6, 2020. Based on its years of experience in professional technologies for and manufacturing of consumer demand-oriented electrical devices and equipment, the firm established a renewable energy business unit in early 2021 that focuses on the R&D and production of products powered from renewable and sustainable energy sources, with the aim of providing consumers worldwide with high-quality renewable energy solutions.
GONEO's official website: https://goneohome.com/
Contact: Distributors: sales@goneohome.com
Influencers & Key Opinion Leaders: marketing@goneohome.com
Goneo Testers: marketing@goneohome.com
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SOURCE Goneo | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/goneo-launches-new-silent-series-portable-power-stations/ | 2022-09-05T13:51:55Z |
NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Eco Wave Power Global AB (publ) (Nasdaq Capital Market: WAVE) ("Eco Wave Power" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that Inna Braverman, the company's founder and CEO, will speak at the University of Haifa's Art and Science reception, hosted by philanthropist Tzili Charney and the American Society of the University of Haifa (ASUH), Braverman's alma mater.
Braverman will offer remarks in front of an invitation-only crowd of distinguished alumni and supporters at 6 PM (NYC time) on September 15.
Others slated to give remarks include Ambassador Asaf Zamir, Consul General of Israel in New York; and Ron Huldai, Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo, who supported and enabled the implementation of Eco Wave Power's newest wave energy project (the EWP-EDF One project) in Jaffa Port, Israel.
Hosting the event is Tzili Charney, a New York-based philanthropist. Charney, Vice Chairman of the University of Haifa's Board of Governors, is the Chairman at her late husband's real estate business, L.H. Charney Associates, whose holdings include 10 Times Square and 1410 Broadway, the new home of ASUH.
The event will also celebrate the university's Leon H. Charney School of Marine Science's extraordinary research to listen, interpret, and communicate with one of the earth's largest and longest-living creatures—the sperm whale. The Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative) is a scientific quest with partner universities to reshape humanity's understanding of its place on the planet and to inspire environmental awareness.
"As a proud alumnus of the University of Haifa, and as an entrepreneur deeply involved in the marine sector through my work with Eco Wave Power, I am honored to be invited to speak at such an important milestone for the university and be a part of the celebration of establishing deeper roots for the University in the United States, as Eco Wave Power also expands our operations in the United States," said Braverman.
Earlier this year, Braverman became the youngest person in the University of Haifa's history to receive an honorary fellowship in recognition for her groundbreaking work towards wave energy commercialization. She received the honorary fellowship at the university's 50th Board of Governors Gala, alongside fellow honorees Maj. Gen. Orna Barbivay, Minister of Economy and Industry; Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel, Director General of the Ministry of Defense; and Mr. Idan Ofer, Philanthropist and Entrepreneur.
This is the third event Braverman will be speaking at during her current visit to the United States.
During the month of September, Braverman will also speak in Vox's CODE Conference in Los Angeles, joining tech executives including Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, and Entrepreneur Mark Cuban.
For more info about The Code Conference please see the following link: https://voxmediaevents.com/code2022
Also, on the 15th of September, Inna will participate at Calcalist's Mind the Tech NY Conference, with notable speakers such as: Israel Minister of Innovation, Science, and Technology Orit Farkash-Hacohen, Bank Leumi CEO Hanan Friedman, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, Blackstone Chief Technology Officer John Stecher and Nas CEO Nuseir Yassin.
Additional info about the event can be found here.
About Eco Wave Power Global AB (publ)
Eco Wave Power is a leading onshore wave energy technology company that developed a patented, smart and cost-efficient technology for turning ocean and sea waves into green electricity. Eco Wave Power's mission is to assist in the fight against climate change by enabling commercial power production from the ocean and sea waves.
The Company is currently finalizing the construction of its grid connected project in Israel, with co-investment from the Israeli Energy Ministry, which recognized the Eco Wave Power technology as "Pioneering Technology" and will soon commence the installation of its newest pilot in AltaSea's premises in the Port of Los Angeles. The Company also holds concession agreements for commercial installations in Europe and has a total projects pipeline of 327.7MW.
Eco Wave Power received funding from the European Union Regional Development Fund, Innovate UK and the European Commission's Horizon 2020 framework program. The Company has also received the "Global Climate Action Award" from the United Nations.
Eco Wave Power's American Depositary Shares (WAVE) are traded on the Nasdaq Capital Market. More info: www.ecowavepower.com.
Information on, or accessible through, the websites mentioned above does not form part of this press release.
For more information, please contact:
Inna Braverman, CEO
Inna@ecowavepower.com
+97235094017
For additional investor/media inquiries, please contact:
Investor Contact:
Matt Chesler, CFA
FNK IR
+1.646.809.2183
wave@fnkir.com
Media Inquiries:
Jacob Scott, Vectis Strategies
+1.412.445.7719
jscott@vectisstrategies.com
About University of Haifa
The University of Haifa, the largest research university in northern Israel, is the first Israeli university to adopt the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The University's distinctive mission is to foster academic excellence in an atmosphere of tolerance and multiculturalism. Our faculty and student population is unique in its composition. Here, Jews, Arabs, Druze, Haredi and secular students, new immigrants and military and security personnel come together to study, teach and learn.
Driven by unusual crossings between fields of research and social responsibility, the University of Haifa is creating a new learning environment, a stronger community, and a better Israeli society.
The American Society of the University of Haifa (ASUH) is dedicated to increasing awareness and financial support for University of Haifa to ensure its continued excellence in innovation, sustainability, and shared society. ASUH cultivates relationships and serves as a vital connection between the University and its friends, supporters, alumni, and partner institutions in the United States.
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SOURCE EWPG Holding AB (publ) | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/inna-braverman-eco-wave-powers-founder-ceo-speak-an-event-by-university-haifa-nyc-hosted-by-philanthropist-tzili-charney/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:02Z |
NOVI, Mich., Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- ITC Holdings Corp. ("ITC"), a subsidiary of Fortis Inc., today announced it has commenced a private offering of senior unsecured notes (the "notes").
ITC intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to redeem in full $500 million aggregate principal amount of its 2.700% Senior Notes due November 15, 2022, to pay the associated call premium, with the remainder to repay indebtedness outstanding under its revolving credit facility and its commercial paper program, and for general corporate purposes.
The notes will be offered in the United States only to persons reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers in accordance with Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and to certain non-U.S. persons in transactions outside the United States in reliance on Regulation S under the Securities Act. The notes have not, and will not be registered under the Securities Act or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction, and the notes may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable securities laws of any other jurisdiction. This press release does not and will not constitute an offer to sell any of the notes or the solicitation of an offer to buy any of the notes described herein or any other securities, nor shall there be any sale of the notes in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.
About ITC Holdings Corp.
ITC Holdings Corp. is the largest independent electricity transmission company in the United States. ITC provides transmission grid solutions to improve reliability, expand access to markets, allow new generating resources to interconnect to its systems and lower the overall cost of delivered energy. Through its regulated operating subsidiaries ITCTransmission, Michigan Electric Transmission Company, ITC Midwest and ITC Great Plains, ITC owns and operates high-voltage transmission infrastructure in Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma, and in development in Wisconsin. These systems serve a combined peak load exceeding 26,000 megawatts along 16,000 circuit miles of transmission line, supported by 700 employees and 1,000 contractors. ITC is based in Novi, Michigan. For further information visit www.itc-holdings.com. ITC is a subsidiary of Fortis Inc., a leader in the North American regulated electric and gas utility industry. For further information visit www.fortisinc.com. None of the information on ITC's or Fortis Inc.'s websites is incorporated into, or forms a part of, this press release.
Safe Harbor Statement
This press release contains certain statements that describe our management's beliefs concerning future business conditions, plans and prospects, growth opportunities and the outlook for our business and the electric transmission industry based upon information currently available. Such statements are "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Wherever possible, we have identified these forward-looking statements by words such as "will," "may," "anticipates," "believes," "intends," "estimates," "forecasts," "forecasted," "expects," "projects," "likely," "plans," and similar phrases. These forward-looking statements are based upon assumptions our management believes are reasonable. Such forward-looking statements are based on estimates and assumptions and subject to significant risks and uncertainties which could cause our actual results, performance and achievements to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, these statements, including, among others, the risks and uncertainties disclosed in our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and other filings made with the SEC from time to time. There can be no assurance that the offering will be completed. ITC assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements.
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SOURCE ITC Holdings Corp. | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/itc-holdings-corp-announces-offering-senior-notes/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:08Z |
Guests to Include Charles Barkley, Sean Payton, and Other Notable Figures from Sports and Entertainment
NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Kay Adams is back! Grab your coffee and join "Up and Adams" – FanDuel TV's flagship daily morning show.
The hour-long show airs Monday through Friday live from Los Angeles at 11am ET. Expect guests from across the sports and entertainment universe, plus NFL game and fantasy breakdowns you won't get anywhere else. The daily studio program will be available on YouTube and other social media platforms.
"I love an adventure and couldn't be more excited to be a part of a team that's leading the way into the future of sports," said Adams. "Breaking news. Good vibes. You. Me. Guests! Let's go already!"
On the guest roster are former professional basketball player and television analyst, Charles Barkley, Super Bowl winning head coach Sean Payton, Super Bowl Champion Eric Weddle, Darius Butler and FanDuel partner Dr. Disrespect, to name a few.
"Kay has a certain electric energy about her and her approachable presence creates an authentic connection with her fans that is rooted in trust," said Mike Raffensperger, Chief Commercial Officer, FanDuel. "We think that makes her a unique personality in sports media and we're beyond excited for her to bring that magic to the set of 'Up and Adams' and showcase her signature flair to FanDuel TV audiences."
FanDuel Group, the premier online gaming company in North America, launched FanDuel TV and its new OTT platform to be known as FanDuel+ today. Both FanDuel TV and FanDuel+ are the first linear/digital network dedicated to sports wagering content and delivering more live sports programming than any other network in America, including becoming the new home of international basketball in the U.S. as part of a licensing agreement with Sportradar. As part of the launch, the company announced that FanDuel+ will be free to download for existing FanDuel customers with accounts on any of its sportsbook, casino, horse racing or daily fantasy platforms.
Come celebrate the start of the season with Adams on September 6 at 11am ET!
About FanDuel Group
FanDuel Group is an innovative sports-tech entertainment company that is changing the way consumers engage with their favorite sports, teams, and leagues. The premier gaming destination in the United States, FanDuel Group consists of a portfolio of leading brands across gaming, sports betting, daily fantasy sports, advance-deposit wagering, and TV/media. FanDuel Group has a presence across all 50 states with approximately 17 million customers and nearly 30 retail locations. The company is based in New York with offices in California, New Jersey, Florida, Oregon, Georgia, Portugal, Romania and Scotland. It's network FanDuel TV and FanDuel+ are broadly distributed on linear cable television and through its relationships with leading direct-to-consumer OTT platforms. FanDuel Group is a subsidiary of Flutter Entertainment plc, the world's largest sports betting and gaming operator with a portfolio of globally recognized brands and a constituent of the FTSE 100 index of the London Stock Exchange.
Contact: Kevin Hennessy / FanDuel / press@Fanduel.com
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SOURCE FanDuel Group | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/kay-adams-make-her-debut-fanduel-tv-with-up-adams-september-6/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:15Z |
TAIPEI, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading crypto exchange KuCoin has announced that it has listed ThunderCore's token (TT), the native cryptocurrency that powers the ThunderCore network – a high-performance layer-1 chain and burgeoning Web3 ecosystem.
Since launching in 2017, KuCoin has made inroads into over 200 countries, with over 600 coins available to buy, sell, and trade. The exchange attracts a large cross-section of traffic due to its low fees, wide selection, and interest-earning functions.
ThunderCore is an EVM-compatible public blockchain that seeks to balance speed and scalability with superior security. It was founded in 2017 by Chris Wang, a prominent Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur and former Google and Disney executive. The chain delivers sub-second confirmation times, ultra-low gas fees, and is one of the top 10 most used public blockchains, according to DappRadar.
With its own native wallet, TT Wallet, ThunderCore makes it easy for startups to outsource storage security functions to the blockchain's core developer team. The company is committed to continually improving the wallet's UI/UX design, streamlining various "fiat-in" options, and adding new features such as NFT functionality.
ThunderCore's aggressive expansion in 2022
The ThunderCore blockchain has made enormous strides not only in the development of its ecosystem, which now includes hundreds of projects and has reached over 400K daily active users at times, but also in terms of partnerships, technology, and adoption.
Since late 2021, ThunderCore has aggressively pursued new opportunities and achieved the following milestones:
- In October 2021, ThunderCore initiated the Iris Hard Fork, which boosted its cross-chain capacities due to improvements in EVM compatibility. This helped the chain to become more appealing to projects aiming to scale.
- In November 2021, they launched the $10M Developer Growth Fund, incentivizing a broad array of blockchain projects and developers to build on ThunderCore. Divided into multiple phases, the initiative has seen many companies receive grants, promotions, technical aid, and business consultations for on-chain projects.
- In March 2022, of this year, the team partnered with innovative cross-chain aggregator XY Finance to enhance ThunderCore's bridging capacities. XY Finance is a crypto exchange aggregator for the metaverse and DeFi.
- In April 2022, the blockchain rebranded to better reflect the company's identity as an all-encompassing platform aiming to revolutionize Web3 and onboard new users through mobile entertainment, thereby attracting many new partners and developers.
- In July 2022, ThunderCore joined with leading cross-chain routing protocol Multichain to further boost bridging functionalities. Multichain is a dominant player in the cross-chain sector, with a daily volume of over $100 million.
- An eclectic range of entertainment-facing DApps were rolled out throughout 2022, massively expanding the ThunderCore ecosystem, while a huge influx of new users helped the chain to gain sizable traction and network effect in dynamic new industry sectors. These include the NFT platform OurSong, VR SocialFi platform MomentX, GameFi offering Galaxy Blocks, and NFT/e-commerce pioneer RE:DREAMER.
ThunderCore Outlook
Given the proven background and deep expertise of its founder Chris Wang in the videogame industry (Chris previously sold his social gaming company Playdom to Disney for around $750 million), it's no surprise that ThunderCore views entertainment as the secret gateway to onboard the next 1 billion users to Web3. The company has sought to attract legions of fun DApps, whether they be related to NFTs, GameFi, or the metaverse, by offering strong funding incentives and continually rolling out new features and partnership
For the remainder of 2022, ThunderCore predicts there will be more projects onboarded through ThunderGene. This is likely to boost the daily active user totals over the half-a-million mark, according to the company.
ThunderGene tool to simplify Web2 to Web3 migration
Currently, the company is in the process of launching its newest product, the ThunderGene API tool. Made for its growing developer community, the team at ThunderCore makes it extraordinarily easy for Web2 programmers to make the jump to Web3. The API tool streamlines the process of creating coins and NFTs on ThunderCore as well as integrating DApps directly into TT Wallet.
With a long slate of projects set to take off in the fall and winter, ThunderCore expects the utility of TT is only at the beginning of its growth cycle.
About ThunderCore
ThunderCore is a powerful and ultra-fast Web3 ecosystem and layer-1 chain that delivers elite performance and cost-effective scalability for thousands of crypto projects. Its proof-of-stake (PoS) architecture and strong developer support provide a battle-tested home for the next generation of crypto builders to create in Web3, DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, and the metaverse with limitless scope.
The growing ThunderCore ecosystem is powered by its popular native asset, TT, which can be stored in the feature-rich TT Wallet, together with other supported project assets.
ThunderCore's breakthrough consensus protocol "PaLa" overcomes the scalability "trilemma," helping the ThunderCore network generate up to 4,000 transactions per second (TPS) with sub-second confirmation times and ultra-low gas fees at a fraction of a cent.
Created in 2017 by Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur Chris Wang to help solve Ethereum's scalability issues, ThunderCore has an international user base that spans over 100 countries. It measured over 500,000 monthly active users in December 2021, making it one of the most actively used chains in the world, according to DappRadar.
Institutional investors in ThunderCore include MetaStable, Hashed, Electric Capital, Huobi Capital, Pantera, Zhen Fund, Kenetic Capital, Arrington XRP, Capitaland, and Draper Dragon, among others.
Media Contact:
Chanel Chuang (Senior Marketing Manager)
chanel.chuang@thundercore.tw
+886-963.086.259
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SOURCE ThunderCore | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/kucoin-announces-listing-thundercores-native-token-tt/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:22Z |
LOS ANGELES, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- LIPOWER launched new product MARS-1000 PRO on August 15th, which has attracted widespread attention in the industry.
Compared with the MARS-1000, the charging speed, battery lifespan, safety guarantee, and user experience have been greatly improved. MARS-1000 PRO is compatible with 90% of electronic devices, providing safer and more durable power for indoor and outdoor.
Long-lasting and long-life battery
The MARS-1000 PRO features the same LiFePO4 battery packs as Mercedes-Benz, Tesla and other car brands, which safely passes special tests such as short circuit, overcharge, extrusion, acupuncture, etc.
The MARS-1000 PRO lasts for an astonishing 3500 cycles. This gives the battery about 7 times the lifespan of those found in most other power stations. If you fully drain and charge the MARS-1000 PRO once per day, the power station will last for more than 10 years.
Intelligent Cooling System
LIPOWER's system combines an extremely efficient large-area heat dissipation module with metal heat conduction brackets to ensure the device dissipates heat quickly. The result is a constant cooling system that ensures the MARS-1000 PRO is never in danger of overheating.
Green and Endless Power Supply
If you spend time camping and traveling in an RV, MARS-1000 PRO can be a cost-effective, environmentally friendly, and convenient way to use electricity on the go.
MARS-1000 PRO takes the utmost 240W solar input and 200W AC input. When charging with 2 solar panels, it will get a full capacity within 5-6 hours. For RV or camping enthusiasts, It can realize daily circulating power supply. MARS-1000 PRO solar battery also supports AC + USB-C PD 60W Bi-directional charging and takes only 4–5 hours to be fully charged.
MARS-1000 PRO provides a 4-year long-term warranty after sale. Compared with the general 2-year warranty period in the industry, LIPOWER provides you with longer-term protection.
To celebrate Labor Day, we are offering free shipping and 15% off. Click Here to Buy Now on LIPOWER Official Website or Amazon Shop.
About LIPOWER
LIPOWER, a preeminent portable power station provider with ten years of experience, is committed to providing sustainable, portable, light, fast-charging energy storage power for people who love adventure and outdoor life all over the world.
Website: https://www.lipower.com/
Amazon Shop: https://www.amazon.com/lipower
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SOURCE LIPOWER | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/lipower-mars-1000-pro-solar-generator-limitless-power-rv-life-power-outages/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:30Z |
NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ --
WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, announces the filing of a class action lawsuit on behalf of purchasers of the securities of Latch, Inc. (NASDAQ: LTCH, LTCHW) between May 13, 2021 and August 25, 2022, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than October 31, 2022.
SO WHAT: If you purchased Latch securities during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.
WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Latch class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=8369 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than October 31, 2022. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.
WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.
DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, defendants throughout the Class Period made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business operations and prospects. Specifically, defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) there were unreported sales arrangements related to hardware devices; (2) as a result, Latch had improperly recognized revenue throughout fiscal 2021 and first quarter 2022; (3) there were material weaknesses in Latch's internal control over financial reporting related to revenue recognition; (4) as a result of the foregoing, Latch would restate financial statements for fiscal 2021 and first quarter 2022; and (5) as a result of the foregoing, Defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.
To join the Latch class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=8369 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.
No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.
Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.
Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Contact Information:
Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
Toll Free: (866) 767-3653
Fax: (212) 202-3827
lrosen@rosenlegal.com
pkim@rosenlegal.com
cases@rosenlegal.com
www.rosenlegal.com
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SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A. | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/ltch-investor-notice-rosen-top-ranked-law-firm-encourages-latch-inc-investors-with-losses-secure-counsel-before-important-deadline-securities-class-action-ltch-ltchw/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:36Z |
- Lunit to present five posters at ESMO 2022 featuring the company's AI-biomarker platform
- Studies corroborate the capability of Lunit SCOPE suite to address an expanding set of clinical and research questions based on world-leading digital pathology AI
SEOUL, South Korea, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Lunit (KRX: 328130.KQ) today announced the presentation of five abstracts highlighting the effectiveness of its AI-biomarker platform - Lunit SCOPE - at the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Congress 2022, held in Paris from September 9 to 13.
ESMO is a professional organization for medical oncology, with more than 25,000 members representing oncology professionals from over 160 countries worldwide.
One of Lunit's abstracts focuses on the assessment of tumor purity directly from H&E whole slide images by using Lunit SCOPE AI technology (AI-P) and concordance between AI-P and variant allele frequency (VAF)[1] as determined by next-generation sequencing (NGS). The study showed a strong correlation between the assessment of tumor purity using Lunit SCOPE and VAF across 23 cancer types. The result validates the effectiveness of Lunit SCOPE as a valuable tool to assess tumor purity easily and quickly from H&E slides.
Another study conducted with Dr. SooYoun Cho, Dr. EunYoon Cho and Dr. SangYong Song of Samsung Medical Center, evaluates the performance of Lunit SCOPE HER2 in pathological practices for breast cancer patients. This joint study showed that Lunit's HER2 scoring and tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) analysis solution supports the prediction of clinical response for HER2-positive early breast cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC).
In addition, Lunit will also present clinical findings that demonstrate the accuracy of Lunit SCOPE PD-L1 CPS. After classifying PD-L1 Combined Positive Score (CPS) levels in 543 urothelial carcinoma (UC) cases, the AI-powered CPS analyzer showed an equivalent level of accuracy to that of pathologists.
Another study from Lunit reveals the capability of the AI-powered TIL and PD-L1 CPS analysis solution to be utilized as a predictive biomarker for immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) response in neuroendocrine neoplasms (NEN).
The last study shows that Lunit SCOPE can discover novel targets for antibody-drug conjugates (ADC) by precisely analyzing linked NGS and IHC data in tumors, highlighting the potential of multimodal analysis linking molecular and visual methods.
Meet the Lunit team in person at ESMO at booth #249.
"Through these studies, Lunit has validated that the Lunit SCOPE suite can expand its range of impact across more types of cancer, to address an expanding number of clinical and research questions," said Brandon Suh, CEO of Lunit. "We intend to continue our research activities and present groundbreaking studies at global cancer congresses every year."
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SOURCE Lunit | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/lunit-showcase-5-abstracts-esmo-2022/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:43Z |
- InPedILD Phase III trial showed encouraging results for both primary endpoints. Full data were published in the European Respiratory Journal and presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Barcelona, Spain
- If approved, nintedanib would become the first approved treatment for pediatric patients with fibrosing interstitial lung disease, addressing a high unmet need
- Findings supplement the long-term and established clinical efficacy of nintedanib in adults, supporting Boehringer Ingelheim's leadership in pulmonary fibrosis and determination to transform lives for generations
RIDGEFIELD, Conn. and INGELHEIM, Germany, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Boehringer Ingelheim announced Phase III data from the InPedILD trial, which assessed the pharmacokinetics (dosing) and safety profile of nintedanib (OFEV®) in children and adolescents between 6 and 17 years old with clinically significant fibrosing interstitial lung disease (ILD). The trial showed encouraging data for both primary endpoints and results were published in the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ) and presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) International Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
"Based on the nintedanib mode of action, preclinical evidence and the clinical benefit in adults, there was a compelling rationale for examining its effect in children living with interstitial lung disease," said the coordinating investigator, Prof. Robin Deterding, M.D., Director of the Breathing Institute, Children's Hospital Colorado. "This trial supports its potential use as a treatment with an acceptable safety profile for children and adolescents, for whom no approved evidence-based therapies exist."
The InPedILD results showed that the weight-based dosing regimen of nintedanib in children and adolescents with fibrosing ILD resulted in comparable exposure to that observed in adult patients with fibrosing ILD. In addition, nintedanib had an acceptable safety and tolerability profile with no new safety signals observed when compared to adult patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), other progressive fibrosing interstitial lung disease (PF-ILD), and systemic sclerosis-associated interstitial lung disease (SSc-ILD). Based on these findings, regulatory applications will be submitted to the European Medicines Agency and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
"While childhood interstitial lung diseases are very rare, their impact on children, teenagers and their loved ones can be devastating," said Dr. Susanne Stowasser, Associate Head of Medicine Pulmonology at Boehringer Ingelheim. "The findings from InPedILD help meet the urgent need for well-characterized therapies for these children and adolescents living with ILD. These data further support Boehringer Ingelheim's ongoing commitment to address unmet needs and advance research for people across all generations living with pulmonary fibrosis."
Childhood interstitial lung disease (chILD) includes more than 200 rare disorders with debilitating symptoms that can include cough, difficulty breathing and rapid breathing. Its exact prevalence is unknown, but it can be considered very rare with a reported incidence ranging from 1.5 to 3.8 per million. Pulmonary fibrosis within chILD is even less frequent, with no known global prevalence estimates, and no international studies prior to InPedILD. chILD is associated with significant mortality and morbidity. When their condition deteriorates, many pediatric patients will need oxygen to go about their daily lives and require lung transplants. There are no established diagnostic criteria and few management guidelines. The current standard of care involves off-label use of treatments including steroids and steroid-sparing immunosuppressants, which have known adverse events and limited evidence for their use.
- InPedILD (NCT04093024) is a Phase III double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial assessing dose exposure and safety of nintedanib on top of standard of care for 24 weeks, followed by open-label treatment with nintedanib of variable duration in children and adolescents aged 6-17 years with clinically significant fibrosing ILD. It is one of the first randomized controlled clinical trials focused on childhood interstitial lung diseases.
- The pharmacokinetic results demonstrated that the exposure to nintedanib in children was within the variability of that observed in adults treated with the approved dose, supporting the use of a weight-based dosing regimen in the pediatric population.
- The safety endpoint was based on the proportion of patients with treatment-emergent adverse events at Week 24. As in adults, the most common adverse event associated with nintedanib in the InPedILD trial was diarrhea. All reported diarrhea adverse effects could be resolved without premature discontinuation of trial medication.
OFEV is already approved in the U.S. and more than 80 countries for the treatment of patients living with IPF. In September 2019, OFEV was approved in the U.S. to slow the rate of decline in pulmonary function in patients with SSc-ILD, and then in March 2020 to treat patients with chronic fibrosing ILDs with a progressive phenotype.
What is OFEV?
- OFEV is a prescription medicine used:
- It is not known if OFEV is safe and effective in children.
What is the most important information I should know about OFEV?
OFEV can cause harm, birth defects, or death to an unborn baby. Women should not become pregnant while taking OFEV. Women who are able to become pregnant should have a pregnancy test before starting treatment and should use highly effective birth control at the start of treatment, during treatment, and for at least 3 months after your last dose. Talk with your doctor about what birth control method is right for you during this time. Birth control pills may not work as well in women having vomiting, diarrhea, or other problems reducing the drug absorption. If you have any of these problems, talk with your doctor about what highly effective birth control method is right for you. If you become pregnant or think you are pregnant while taking OFEV, tell your doctor right away.
What should I tell my doctor before using OFEV?
Before you take OFEV, tell your doctor about all of your medical conditions, including if you have:
- liver problems.
- heart problems.
- a history of blood clots.
- a bleeding problem or a family history of a bleeding problem.
- had recent surgery in your stomach (abdominal) area.
Tell your doctor if you:
- are pregnant or plan to become pregnant.
- are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if OFEV passes into your breast milk.
You should not breastfeed while taking OFEV. - are a smoker. You should stop smoking prior to taking OFEV and avoid smoking during treatment.
Tell your doctor about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the-counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements such as St. John's wort.
What are the possible side effects of OFEV?
OFEV may cause serious side effects.
TELL YOUR DOCTOR RIGHT AWAY if you are experiencing any side effects, including:
- Liver problems. Unexplained symptoms may include yellowing of your skin or the white part of your eyes (jaundice), dark or brown (tea-colored) urine, pain on the upper right side of your stomach area (abdomen), bleeding or bruising more easily than normal, feeling tired, or loss of appetite. Your doctor will do blood tests to check how well your liver is working before starting and during your treatment with OFEV.
- Diarrhea, nausea, and vomiting. Your doctor may recommend that you drink fluids or take medicine to treat these side effects. Tell your doctor if you have these symptoms, if they do not go away, or get worse, and if you are taking over-the-counter laxatives, stool softeners, and other medicines or dietary supplements.
- Heart attack. Symptoms of a heart problem may include chest pain or pressure, pain in your arms, back, neck, or jaw, or shortness of breath.
- Stroke. Symptoms of a stroke may include numbness or weakness on one side of your body, trouble talking, headache, or dizziness.
- Bleeding problems. OFEV may increase your chances of having bleeding problems. Tell your doctor if you have unusual bleeding, bruising, wounds that do not heal, and/or if you are taking a blood thinner, including prescription blood thinners and over-the-counter aspirin.
- Tear in your stomach or intestinal wall (perforation). OFEV may increase your chances of having a tear in your stomach or intestinal wall. Tell your doctor if you have pain or swelling in your stomach area.
- Increased protein in your urine (proteinuria). OFEV may increase your chances of having protein in your urine. Tell your doctor if you have any signs and symptoms of protein in the urine such as foamy urine, swelling, including in your hands, arms, legs, or feet, or sudden weight gain.
The most common side effects of OFEV are diarrhea, nausea, stomach pain, vomiting, liver problems, decreased appetite, headache, weight loss, and high blood pressure.
These are not all the possible side effects of OFEV. For more information, ask your doctor or pharmacist. You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Please see full Prescribing Information, including Patient Information.
CL-OF-100056 01.18.2022
Boehringer Ingelheim is working on breakthrough therapies that improve the lives of humans and animals. As a leading research-driven biopharmaceutical company, the company creates value through innovation in areas of high unmet medical need. Founded in 1885 and family-owned ever since, Boehringer Ingelheim takes a long-term perspective. Around 52,000 employees serve more than 130 markets in the three business areas, Human Pharma, Animal Health, and Biopharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing.
Learn more at www.boehringer-ingelheim.us
Contact:
Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Name: Kerry Wycislo
Human Pharma Communications, Corporate Affairs
Phone: 203-561-2829
Email: kerry.wycislo@boehringer-ingelheim.com
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SOURCE Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/new-data-boehringer-ingelheim-support-potential-use-nintedanib-children-adolescents-with-fibrosing-interstitial-lung-disease/ | 2022-09-05T13:52:52Z |
BAODING, China, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- On August 26, the brand new pickup Shanhai POER (for the Chinese Market), developed by GWM POER, debuted at the Chengdu Motor Show 2022, attracting much attention.
"The model (Shanhai POER) fills the gap of Chinese brands in the market of large-size and high-performance pickups and lets the world know the creativity of Chinese brands in the pickup field," commented PCAUTO, a leading Chinese automotive media.
The vehicle is designed with numerous rugged details. The front design adopts a wide grille consisting of multiple horizontal chrome trims. The robust front bumper and the potent body line design create a strong impulsive force, which makes the vehicle look very powerful.
The rear box of this new model adopts a three-door space layout, and the partition of the rear box can be adjusted and removed if needed. It also has several anchors reserved, leaving more possibilities for users to modify it depending on different needs. Particularly, the two choices of side-to-side or flat opened tailgate can provide convenience in various circumstances.
In terms of power performance, the model on display is equipped with a high-performance 3.0T V6 engine, matched with the 9AT gearbox. It is fitted with a BorgWarner 4A+LOCK four-wheel-drive system, which can further enhance off-road performance.
"Shanhai POER (for the Chinese Market) has made the product layout of GWM POER more refined, which will cater to more diversified consumer demands," commented Autohome, a well-known automotive website in China.
At the show, GWM POER also exhibited several special models to the audience, including Jingang POER New Farmer Edition (for the Chinese Market) and Huodan (for the Chinese Market).
GWM POER has been sold in more than 50 countries worldwide and has won well-known awards in many markets. Just one month after its launch in Chile, GWM POER won the "Best Pickup of the Year" awarded by MT Online, a local professional automotive media.
GWM POER attaches importance to users' demands and integrates the full-scenario lifestyle endorsed by the brand with local culture. This brand has sponsored many famous sporting events across the world, such as IRONMAN in Australia, One-Mile Beach Running in South Africa, and OXFORD Cycling in Chile.
The sales data released by the company in July shows that the cumulative global sales of GWM POER from January to June this year grew by 14% compared with last year.
"GWM POER has ushered in the brand 2.0 era and started an all-round upgrading. Our global product layout will achieve full line-up and full scenarios coverage soon," said Haobao Zhang, CEO of GWM PICKUP.
The company plans to launch two brand-new models, POER off-road edition and Jingang POER (for the Chinese Market), to the global market by the end of this year. Shanhai POER (for the Chinese Market) will also be promoted in various markets.
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SYDNEY, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Clarity Pharmaceuticals (ASX: CU6) ("Clarity"), a clinical stage radiopharmaceutical company with a mission to develop next-generation products that improve treatment outcomes for children and adults with cancer, is pleased to announce that the US-based diagnostic 64Cu SAR-Bombesin trial (SABRE NCT05407311)[1] for patients with PSMA-negative prostate cancer is open for recruitment.
SABRE (Copper-64 SAR-BisPSMA in Biochemical Recurrence of prostate cancer) is a Phase II Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging trial of participants with PSMA-negative biochemical recurrence (BCR) of prostate cancer following definitive therapy. It is a multi-centre, single arm, non-randomised, open-label trial of 64Cu-labelled SAR-Bombesin in 50 participants. The primary objectives of the trial are to investigate safety and tolerability of the product as well as its ability to correctly detect recurrence of prostate cancer.
Dr Andrei Iagaru, Lead Principal Investigator in the SABRE trial, commented, "We are very excited to initiate patient accrual for the SABRE trial which will explore and validate the clinical benefits associated with the novel SAR-Bombesin agent. We have been investigating Bombesin for many years and believe it is an agent with high diagnostic and therapeutic potential. We hope this trial will inform us on the role of SAR-Bombesin in diagnosing disease in PSMA-negative prostate cancer patients by imaging patients on day of injection and at ~24 hours after injection, with the delayed imaging being a novel feature enabled by 64Cu. In addition to investigating the clinical benefits of the product, we also look forward to leveraging centralised manufacture and on-demand delivery advantages of copper-based products. These features have potential to facilitate universal access to SAR-Bombesin and enhance accessibility to treatment facilities throughout the US.
"We look forward to expanding the trial sites and generating data for this next-generation product which could ensure both ease of access and improved treatment outcomes for BCR prostate cancer patients," said Dr Iagaru.
The SABRE trial was developed in response to strong demand from clinicians with prostate cancer patients whose cancer was not visible with currently approved PSMA diagnostic agents or conventional imaging (such as CT or MRI). It builds on the data generated in PSMA-negative prostate cancer patients at St Vincent's Hospital imaged under the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) Special Access Scheme (SAS).[2] This data has demonstrated diagnostic imaging potential in PSMA-negative prostate cancer and highlighted potential utility of the product as a theranostic agent. SABRE also builds on a pilot diagnostic trial of SAR-Bombesin in breast cancer patients, the C-BOBCAT trial, which was recently presented at the prestigious American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) 2022 Annual Meeting.[3]
Clarity's Executive Chairman, Dr Alan Taylor, commented, "We are excited to commence recruitment into the SABRE trial, having only received our Study May Proceed letter from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in June. SABRE reinforces our commitment to running Clarity's clinical trials for first approvals in the US under clinical protocols which have been reviewed by the US FDA. Subject to the outcomes of this Phase II trial, we will look to progress this diagnostic product into Phase III trials in the US as soon as possible.
"Given the promising data to date, indicating potential diagnostic and therapeutic benefits of SAR-Bombesin, we are committed to continuing generating data on the product with the SABRE trial following in quick succession from the BOP investigator-initiated trial in PSMA-negative prostate cancer participants that commenced at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney earlier this month. In parallel, we are also preparing a submission to the US FDA for an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for a therapeutic clinical trial with the product later this year.
"We look forward to recruiting and imaging participants in the SABRE trial and gathering further evidence of clinical, environmental and logistical benefits of SAR-Bombesin, hoping that it will provide a large patient population with accurate and precise detection and treatment of PSMA-negative prostate cancer," said Dr Taylor.
About SAR-Bombesin
SAR-Bombesin is a highly targeted pan-cancer radiopharmaceutical with broad cancer application. It targets the gastrin-releasing peptide receptor (GRPr) present on cells of a range of cancers, including but not limited to prostate, breast and ovarian cancers. GRPr is found in approximately 75-100% of prostate cancers, including prostate cancers that don't express PSMA (PSMA-negative)[4-8]. The product utilises Clarity's proprietary sarcophagine (SAR) technology that securely holds copper isotopes inside a cage-like structure, called a chelator. Unlike other commercially available chelators, the SAR technology prevents copper leakage into the body. SAR-Bombesin is a Targeted Copper Theranostic (TCT) that can be used with isotopes of copper-64 (Cu-64 or 64Cu) for imaging and copper-67 (Cu-67 or 67Cu for therapy).
About Prostate Cancer
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed in men globally and the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide[9]. The National Cancer Institute estimates in 2022 there will be 268,490 new cases of prostate cancer in the US and around 34,500 deaths from the disease[10].
Approximately 20% of prostate cancers with BCR are PSMA-PET negative[11-14]. These patients are therefore unlikely to respond to therapeutic PSMA-targeted products and currently have few treatment options available to them. Given the prostate cancer indication is one of the largest in oncology, there is a significant unmet medical need in this segment.
About Clarity Pharmaceuticals
Clarity is a clinical stage radiopharmaceutical company focused on the treatment of serious disease. The Company is a leader in innovative radiopharmaceuticals, developing targeted copper theranostics based on its SAR Technology Platform for the treatment of cancer in children and adults.
www.claritypharmaceuticals.com
For more information, please contact:
Clarity Pharmaceuticals
Dr Alan Taylor Catherine Strong
Executive Chairman Investor/Media Relations
ataylor@claritypharm.com cstrong@citadelmagnus.com
+61 406 759 268
This announcement has been authorised for release by the Executive Chairman.
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NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR TO ANY JURISDICTION WHERE TO DO SO WOULD CONSTITUTE A VIOLATION OF THE RELEVANT LAWS OR REGULATIONS OF SUCH JURISDICTION.
SUGAR LAND, Texas, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Reference is made to the voluntary public share exchange offer (the "Exchange Offer") by Noble Corporation plc ("Topco") to acquire the entire share capital (excluding any treasury shares) in The Drilling Company of 1972 A/S ("Maersk Drilling") in connection with the business combination of Noble Corporation ("Noble") and Maersk Drilling.
The offer document, setting out the full terms and conditions to the Exchange Offer (the "Offer Document") was approved by the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority on 8 August 2022 and published by Topco on the same day. Pursuant to the Offer Document, the Exchange Offer became valid as of 10 August 2022 and expires on 8 September 2022 at 23:59 (CEST) (the "Offer Period"). The Exchange Offer is recommended by the board of directors of Maersk Drilling.
Topco would like to remind all shareholders of Maersk Drilling ("Maersk Drilling Shareholders") who have not yet tendered their shares in Maersk Drilling ("Maersk Drilling Shares"), of the expiry of the Offer Period on 8 September 2022 at 23:59 (CEST) and encourage all Maersk Drilling Shareholders, who have not yet tendered their Maersk Drilling Shares to do so in advance of the expiry of the Offer Period.
Shareholders who want to accept the Exchange Offer are referred to the Offer Document, which sets forth the terms and conditions of the Exchange Offer, including the procedures for acceptance and settlement hereof. Maersk Drilling Shareholders are requested to note that they must communicate their acceptance of the Exchange Offer to their account holding institution in due time to allow their account holding institution to process and communicate such acceptance to Topco prior to the expiration of the Offer Period.
The full terms, conditions and essential elements of the Exchange Offer are contained within the Offer Document, which is available for download via Topco's website www.noblecorp.com, subject to regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions. The Maersk Drilling Shareholders are also urged to read the exemption document prepared in accordance with the exemptions in Articles 1(4)(f) and 1(5)(e) of Regulation (EU) 2017/1129 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 14 June 2017, as amended, (the "Prospectus Regulation") and in compliance with the requirements set out in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2021/528 of 16 December 2020 (the "Exemption Document") setting out other relevant information, a description of the business combination and its impact on Noble and Maersk Drilling. The Exemption Document is appended to the Offer Document and is also available for download via Topco's website www.noblecorp.com, subject to regulatory restrictions in certain jurisdictions.
This announcement has been prepared both in English and Danish. In the event of any discrepancies between the English and Danish version, the Danish version shall prevail. Capitalised terms used but not defined herein shall have the meaning ascribed to them in the Exemption Document.
For further information:
For additional information, visit www.noblecorp.com or email investors@noblecorp.com.
About Topco
Topco is a public limited company formed under the laws of England and Wales and is an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of Noble. To date, Topco does not own any material business assets or operate any business. Upon consummation of the business combination with Maersk Drilling, Topco will be listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq Copenhagen A/S, and Topco will own the businesses of Noble, Maersk Drilling and their respective subsidiaries. For additional information on Topco, visit www.noblecorp.com.
About Noble
Noble (NYSE: NE) is a leading offshore drilling contractor for the oil and gas industry. Noble owns and operates one of the most modern, versatile, and technically advanced fleets in the offshore drilling industry. Noble and its predecessors have been engaged in the contract drilling of oil and gas wells since 1921. Currently, Noble performs, through its subsidiaries, contract drilling services focused largely on ultra-deepwater and high-specification jackup drilling opportunities in both established and emerging regions worldwide. Additional information on Noble is available at www.noblecorp.com.
About Maersk Drilling
With 50 years of experience operating in the most challenging offshore environments, Maersk Drilling (CSE:DRLCO) provides responsible drilling services to energy companies worldwide. Headquartered in Denmark, Maersk Drilling owns and operates a fleet of offshore drilling rigs and specialises in harsh environment and deepwater operations. For more information about Maersk Drilling, visit www.maerskdrilling.com.
Additional Information and Where to Find It
In connection with the proposed business combination, Topco has filed a registration statement on Form S-4 (the "Registration Statement") with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") that includes (i) a proxy statement of Noble that also constitutes a prospectus (the "Prospectus") for Topco and (ii) an offering prospectus of Topco to be used in connection with Topco's offer to exchange shares in Maersk Drilling for Topco Shares. The Registration Statement, as amended, was declared effective by the SEC on 11 April 2022. In addition, on 8 August 2022, the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority approved the publication of the Exemption Document and the Offer Document in connection with the Exchange Offer. Topco published the Exemption Document and the Offer Document on 8 August 2022.
INVESTORS AND SHAREHOLDERS ARE URGED TO CAREFULLY READ THE PROXY STATEMENT/PROSPECTUS, THE EXEMPTION DOCUMENT AND THE OFFER DOCUMENT RELATING TO THE PROPOSED BUSINESS COMBINATION IN THEIR ENTIRETY, AS WELL AS ANY OTHER DOCUMENTS THAT HAVE BEEN OR WILL BE FILED BY EACH OF TOPCO, MAERSK DRILLING, AND NOBLE WITH THE SEC OR THE DANISH FINANCIAL SUPERVISORY AUTHORITY OR PUBLISHED ON TOPCO'S WEBSITE AT WWW.NOBLECORP.COM IN CONNECTION WITH THE BUSINESS COMBINATION OR INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE THEREIN BECAUSE THEY WILL CONTAIN IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT TOPCO, MAERSK DRILLING AND NOBLE, THE PROPOSED BUSINESS COMBINATION AND RELATED MATTERS.
Investors and shareholders can obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus and all other documents filed with the SEC by Topco and Noble through the website maintained by the SEC at www.sec.gov. In addition, investors and shareholders are able to obtain free copies of the proxy statement/prospectus and other documents related thereto on Maersk Drilling's website at www.maerskdrilling.com or Noble's website at www.noblecorp.com, or by written request to Noble at Noble Corporation, Attn: Richard B. Barker, 13135 Dairy Ashford, Suite 800, Sugar Land, Texas 77478.
Important Notice
This announcement is for information purposes only and does not constitute or contain any invitation, solicitation, recommendation, offer or advice to any person to subscribe for or otherwise acquire or dispose of any securities of Noble, Maersk Drilling or Topco. Final terms and further provisions regarding the Exchange Offer are disclosed in the Offer Document, the Exemption Document and in documents filed or that will be filed with the SEC.
Unless required by mandatory law, no action has been or will be taken in any jurisdiction other than Denmark and the United States that would permit a public offering of shares in Topco, the Topco Offer Shares, the Acceptance Shares or Cash Acceptance Shares, or permit possession or distribution of the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document or any advertising material relating to the shares in Topco, the Topco Offer Shares the Acceptance Shares or Cash Acceptance Shares, except as described in the Offer Document or the Exemption Document.
NEITHER THE U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION NOR ANY U.S. STATE SECURITIES COMMISSION OR REGULATORY AUTHORITY HAS APPROVED OR DISAPPROVED OF THE SECURITIES TO BE ISSUED IN CONNECTION WITH THE BUSINESS COMBINATION BETWEEN NOBLE AND MAERSK DRILLING OR PASSED UPON THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THE EXEMPTION DOCUMENT, THE OFFER DOCUMENT OR ANY OTHER DOCUMENTS REGARDING THE EXCHANGE OFFER. ANY REPRESENTATION TO THE CONTRARY IS A CRIMINAL OFFENSE UNDER U.S. LAW.
In any member state of the European Economic Area other than Denmark (each a "Relevant State"), this announcement, including any attachments hereto, is only addressed to, and is only directed at Maersk Drilling Shareholders in that Relevant State that fulfil the criteria for exemption from the obligation to publish a prospectus, including qualified investors, within the meaning of the Prospectus Regulation.
This announcement, including any attachments hereto, has been prepared on the basis that all offers of Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares and Cash Acceptance Shares offered in the Exchange Offer, other than the offer contemplated in Denmark, will be made pursuant to an exemption under the Prospectus Regulation from the requirement to produce a prospectus for offers of Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares and Cash Acceptance Shares. Accordingly, any person making or intending to make any offer within a Relevant State of Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares or Cash Acceptance may only do so in circumstances in which no obligation arises for Topco to produce a prospectus for such offer. Topco has not authorised, and Topco will not authorise, the making of any offer of Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares or Cash Acceptance Shares through any financial intermediary, other than offers made by Topco which constitute the final offer of Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares and Cash Acceptance Shares as contemplated through the Exchange Offer.
The Topco Offer Shares, the Acceptance Shares and the Cash Acceptance Shares offered in the Exchange Offer have not been, and will not be, offered to the public in any Relevant State. Notwithstanding the foregoing, an offering of the Topco Offer Shares, the Acceptance Shares and the Cash Acceptance Shares offered in the Exchange Offer may be made in a Relevant State: (i) to any qualified investor as defined in the Prospectus Regulation; (ii) to fewer than 150 natural or legal persons per Relevant State (other than qualified investors as defined in the Prospectus Regulation); (iii) to investors who acquire Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares and Cash Acceptance Shares for a total consideration of at least EUR 100,000 per investor, for each separate offer; and (iv) in any other circumstances falling within Article 1(4) of the Prospectus Regulation, subject to obtaining the prior consent of Topco and provided that no such offer of Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares or Cash Acceptance Shares shall result in a requirement for the publication by Topco of a prospectus pursuant to Article 3 of the Prospectus Regulation or a supplementary prospectus pursuant to Article 23 of the Prospectus Regulation.
For the purposes of the foregoing paragraph, the expression an "offer to the public" in relation to any Topco Offer Shares, Acceptance Shares or Cash Acceptance Shares in any Relevant State means the communication in any form and by any means of sufficient information on the terms of the Exchange Offer as to enable an investor to decide to participate in the Exchange Offer.
In the United Kingdom, this announcement, including any attachments hereto, is only addressed to and directed at persons who are (a) both "qualified investors" (within the meaning of the UK version of the Prospectus Regulation as it forms part of UK law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, and either (i) persons who have professional experience in matters relating to investments falling within Article 19(5) of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (Financial Promotion) Order 2005, as amended (the "FSMA Order"); or (ii) persons who are high net worth entities falling within Article 49(2)(a) to (d) of the FSMA Order; and/or (b) persons to whom it may otherwise lawfully be communicated to, including under the FSMA Order (all such persons (a) and (b) together being referred to as "U.K. Relevant Persons"). Any investment activity to which this announcement, including any attachments hereto, is only available to U.K. Relevant Persons. Any person who is not a U.K. Relevant Person should not act on or rely on this announcement, including any attachments hereto, or any of its contents.
The Exchange Offer and this announcement, including any attachments hereto, are subject to the laws of Denmark. The Exchange Offer relates to the securities of a Danish company and is subject to the disclosure requirements applicable under Danish law, which may be different in material aspects from those applicable in the United States, the United Kingdom or any other applicable jurisdiction.
The Exchange Offer is being made in the U.S. pursuant to Section 14(e) of, and Regulation 14E promulgated under, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"), subject to the exemptions provided by Rule 14d-1(c) under the Exchange Act and otherwise in accordance with the requirements of Danish law. The Exchange Offer is not subject to Section 14(d)(1) of, or Regulation 14D promulgated under, the Exchange Act. Maersk Drilling is not currently subject to the periodic reporting requirements under the Exchange Act and is not required to, and does not, file any reports with the SEC thereunder.
The Exchange Offer is made to Maersk Drilling Shareholders who are residing in the United States, or who are U.K. Relevant Persons residing in the United Kingdom, on the same terms and conditions as those made to all other Maersk Drilling Shareholders to whom the Exchange Offer is made. Any information documents are being disseminated to Maersk Drilling Shareholders who are resident in the United States, or who are U.K. Relevant Persons residing in the United Kingdom, on a basis reasonably comparable to the method that such documents are provided to the other Maersk Drilling Shareholders.
In addition, the procedures for the tender of Maersk Drilling Shares and settlement of the consideration due to each Maersk Drilling Shareholder who accepts the Exchange Offer will be carried out in accordance with the rules applicable in Denmark, which may differ in material aspects from the rules and procedures applicable to a tender offer for the securities of a domestic company in the United States or the United Kingdom, in particular with respect to withdrawal rights, offer timetable, settlement procedures and the payment date of the securities.
This announcement, including any attachments hereto, does not comprise a prospectus for the purposes of the U.K. Prospectus Regulation and has not been approved by or filed with the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom.
If Topco obtains the requisite number of Maersk Drilling Shares, each Maersk Drilling Shareholder residing in the United Kingdom who is not a U.K. Relevant Person may have their Maersk Drilling Shares compulsorily purchased under the compulsory purchase provisions of the Danish Companies Act.
The Exchange Offer is not being made, and the Maersk Drilling Shares will not be accepted for purchase from or on behalf of persons, in any jurisdiction in which the making or acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities laws or other laws, rules or regulations of such jurisdiction or would require any registration, approval or filing with any regulatory authority not expressly contemplated by the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document. Persons obtaining the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document and/or into whose possession the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document comes are required to take due note and observe all such restrictions and obtain any necessary authorisations, approvals or consents. Neither Topco nor any of its advisors accept any liability for any violation by any person of any such restriction. Any person (including, without limitation, custodians, nominees and trustees) who intends to forward the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document or any related document to any jurisdiction outside Denmark should inform themselves of the laws of the relevant jurisdiction and should also carefully read the information contained in the Offer Document and the Exemption Document, before taking any action. The distribution of the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document in jurisdictions other than Denmark may be restricted by law, and, therefore, persons who come into possession of the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document should inform themselves about and observe such restrictions. Any failure to comply with any such restrictions may constitute a violation of the securities laws and regulations of any such jurisdiction.
Any failure to comply with these restrictions may constitute a violation of applicable securities laws. It is the responsibility of all persons obtaining the Offer Document, the Acceptance Form included as Appendix 1 in the Offer Document, the Exemption Document and/or other documents relating to the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document or to the Exchange Offer or into whose possession such documents otherwise come, to inform themselves of and observe all such restrictions. Any recipient of the Offer Document and/or the Exemption Document who is in any doubt in relation to these restrictions should consult its, his or her professional advisors in the relevant jurisdiction. Neither Topco nor the financial advisors to Noble accept or assume any responsibility or liability for any violation by any person whomsoever of any such restriction.
In accordance with customary Danish practice and subject to the requirements of Danish law, rules and regulations, Topco or any entity acting in concert with Topco and any of their respective nominees or brokers (acting as agents or in a similar capacity), may from time to time make certain purchases of, or arrangements to purchase, Maersk Drilling Shares or securities that are convertible into, exchangeable for or exercisable for Maersk Drilling Shares outside the Exchange Offer, before or during the period in which the Exchange Offer remains open for acceptance. These purchases may occur either in the open market at prevailing prices or in private transactions at negotiated prices, in each case to the extent permissible under law (include Rule 14e-5 under the Exchange Act). Any information about such purchases will be announced through Nasdaq Copenhagen A/S and relevant electronic media if, and to the extent, such announcement is required under applicable Danish law, rules or regulations. In addition, in the ordinary course of business, the financial advisors to Topco, Noble, any entity acting in concert with Topco, or Danske Bank A/S as the settlement agent, and their respective affiliates, may make or hold a broad array of investments including serving as counterparties to certain derivative and hedging arrangements and actively trade debt and equity financial instruments (or related derivative financial instruments) and other types of financial instruments (including bank loans) for their own account and for the accounts of their customers, and such investment and financial instrument activities may involve securities and/or instruments of Maersk Drilling.
CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
Certain statements in this announcement, including any attachments hereto, may constitute forward-looking statements.
Forward-looking statements are statements (other than statements of historical fact) relating to future events and Noble and its subsidiaries (collectively, the "Noble Group"), Maersk Drilling and its subsidiaries (the "Maersk Drilling Group") and the combined Noble Group and Maersk Drilling Group following completion of the transactions contemplated by the Business Combination Agreement entered into by and between Noble and Maersk Drilling to combine (the "Combined Group") anticipated or planned financial and operational performance. The words "targets", "believes", "continues", "expects", "aims", "intends", "plans", "seeks", "will", "may", "might", "anticipates", "would", "could", "should", "estimates", "projects", "potentially" or similar expressions or the negatives thereof, identify certain of these forward-looking statements. The absence of these words, however, does not mean that the statements are not forward-looking. Other forward-looking statements can be identified in the context in which the statements are made.
Although Topco believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable as of the date of this announcement, such forward-looking statements are based on Topco's current expectations, estimates, forecasts, assumptions and projections about the Noble Group's, the Maersk Drilling Group's and the Combined Group's business and the industry in which the Noble Group and the Maersk Drilling Group operate as well as on information which Topco has received from the Maersk Drilling Group (including with respect to forecasts prepared by Noble's management with respect to expected future financial and operating performance of Maersk Drilling) and/or which has been extracted from publications, reports and other documents prepared by the Maersk Drilling Group and/or the Noble Group and are not guarantees of future performance or development and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors beyond the Noble Group's, the Maersk Drilling Group's or the Combined Group's control that could cause the Noble Group's, the Maersk Drilling Group's and/or the Combined Group's actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements.
Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialise, or should any underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, the Noble Group's, the Maersk Drilling Group's and/or the Combined Group's actual financial condition, cash flow or results of operations could differ materially from what is described in the Exemption Document and the Offer Document, including any attachment thereto, as anticipated, believed, estimated or expected. Topco urges the Maersk Drilling Shareholders to read the Offer Document and the Exemption Document in their entirety for a more complete discussion of the factors that could affect the Combined Group's future performance and the market in which it operates.
Any forward-looking statements included in this announcement, including any attachment hereto, speak only as of today.
Topco does not intend, and does not assume, any obligations to update any forward-looking statements contained herein, except as may be required by law or the rules of the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Copenhagen. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to Topco or to persons acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements referred to above and contained in this announcement, including any attachment hereto.
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SOURCE Noble Corporation plc | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/reminder-expiry-offer-period-recommended-voluntary-public-share-exchange-offer-shareholders-maersk-drilling-8-september-2022-2359-cest/ | 2022-09-05T13:53:12Z |
The appointment was undertaken on the back of the company's aspirations of aggressive expansion in the North American territory
NEW YORK, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Netcore Cloud, a profitable SaaS company and global leader in customer communication, engagement, and retention, has appointed David Stewart as Senior Vice President for Sales and Business Development. This appointment comes following the company's recent announcement to be generating 40% of revenue from international markets by 2025, with a greater focus on the US and Europe.
Netcore Cloud's recent Email Benchmark Report, which is a study of 100bn emails, has highlighted that adoption of AI & ML technology is driving higher inboxing in North America. Given its expertise in using the power of AI and ML in email marketing, Netcore Cloud sees an opportunity to expand further in this region. David represents a seasoned sales leader with in-depth domain expertise in Digital Marketing, Mobile, Data, and ML. He has honed various leadership roles at global organizations across Camera IQ, ZineOne and Treeline Inc.,to name a few.
Commenting on the appointment, Abhitabh Bhaskar, International CEO at Netcore Cloud, said, "With David's appointment, we at Netcore Cloud have undertaken another strategic move towards our US expansion aspiration. Given his extensive pool of experience in Sales and, more specifically, his in-depth understanding of SaaS, we are confident about his contribution towards scaling up our business in these regions. We look forward to reaching new targets with his support."
David Stewart added, "I am thrilled to join the senior leadership team at Netcore to continue our growth in North and South America. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to join a company of this size that is profitable, boot-strapped, and aggressively growing. I look forward to leading the next phase of growth for the company and scaling the team."
In the last year, the company has been appointing a number of key senior leaders in the North American region. The company has also very recently ventured into a strategic relationship with AWS, Inc. targeting a high uptime across multiple geographies resulting in a better customer experience.
About Netcore Cloud:
Netcore Cloud is a bootstrapped SaaS company that helps B2C brands and marketers create AI-powered new-age customer experiences at every touchpoint of a customer's journey. Netcore Cloud's full-stack marketing platform enables highly personalized digital experiences that are easily scalable and provide actionable analytics, real-time reporting, and quick-to-implement solutions across channels. Brands using Netcore Cloud can have a unified view of their customers and optimize their user experience.
Headquartered in Mumbai, India, with 11 offices across the USA, Singapore, Malaysia, Nigeria, Indonesia, UAE, UK, and Germany, Netcore Cloud serves 5000+ customers across the globe. It delivers 17+ billion emails and tracks 100+ billion marketing events every month. Netcore Cloud is a trusted partner across industries with some of the most respected brands like MaxLife Insurance, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered, Flipkart, Myntra, Miss Amara, Airtel, Disney Hotstar, Canon, Puma, Tobi, EaseMyTrip, PizzaHut and McDonald's. For more information, visit https://netcorecloud.com/
Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1495164/Netcore_Cloud_Logo.jpg
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SOURCE Netcore Cloud | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/saas-major-netcore-cloud-appoints-david-stewart-senior-vice-president-sales-business-development-north-america/ | 2022-09-05T13:53:18Z |
CARLSBAD, Calif., Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Tyra Biosciences, Inc. (Nasdaq: TYRA), a precision oncology company focused on developing purpose-built therapies to overcome tumor resistance and improve outcomes for patients with cancer, today announced that the Company will be presenting preclinical data on TYRA-300 during a poster session at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2022 Congress, being held in person September 9-13, 2022 in Paris, France.
"We believe the preclinical results being presented at the ESMO Congress showcase the enhanced anti-tumor activity and selectivity of TYRA-300 as compared to other agents in the class," said Todd Harris, CEO of TYRA. "These encouraging data support the advancement of TYRA-300 into the clinic, and we look forward to initiating our SURF301 Phase 1/2 study in the near term."
Details of the poster presentation are as follows:
Title: TYRA-300: FGFR3 selective and gatekeeper agnostic
Presenter: Jacqueline Starrett
Date: Monday, September 12, 2022
Session: Developmental therapeutics
Presentation Number: 462P
Regular abstracts will be published on the ESMO website on September 5, 2022. The poster presentation on TYRA-300 will be made available on the TYRA website under the "For Investors" section on September 12, 2022.
About TYRA-300
TYRA-300 is the Company's lead precision oncology program generated from TYRA's proprietary SNÅP drug discovery platform. TYRA-300 is an FGFR3-selective inhibitor designed to be agnostic to the gatekeeper mutation and has demonstrated less hyperphosphatemia mediated by FGFR1 inhibition than pan-FGFR inhibitors in preclinical models. In July 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared TYRA to proceed with its Phase 1/2 SURF301 clinical study of TYRA-300 under its Investigational New Drug application (IND), in patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma of the bladder and urinary tract. SURF301 is a two-part study designed to determine the optimal and maximum tolerated doses (MTD) and the recommended Phase 2 dose (RP2D) of TYRA-300.
About Tyra Biosciences
Tyra Biosciences, Inc. is a precision oncology company focused on developing purpose-built therapies to overcome tumor resistance and improve outcomes for patients with cancer. TYRA's proprietary in-house discovery platform, SNÅP, enables the rapid and precise refinement of structural design through iterative molecular SNÅPshots that help predict genetic alterations most likely to cause acquired resistance to existing therapies. Leveraging SNÅP, TYRA is developing a pipeline of selective inhibitors of Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptors (FGFR), which are altered in approximately 7% of all cancers. TYRA-300 is an FGFR3 selective inhibitor for oncology. TYRA-200 is an FGFR2 inhibitor that TYRA is developing initially in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. TYRA is also targeting achondroplasia and other FGFR3-related skeletal dysplasias, FGFR4-related cancers, and REarranged during Transfection kinase (RET). TYRA is based in Carlsbad, CA. For more information about our science, pipeline and people, please visit www.tyra.bio and engage with us on LinkedIn.
Forward-Looking Statements
TYRA cautions you that statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations and include, but are not limited to: the potential to develop purpose-built therapies that improve clinical outcomes; and the expected timing of initiating the SURF301 Phase 1/2 trial. Actual results may differ from those set forth in this press release due to the risks and uncertainties inherent in our business, including, without limitation: we are early in our development efforts, have not tested any of our product candidates in clinical trials and the approach we are taking to discover and develop drugs based on our SNÅP platform is novel and unproven and it may never lead to product candidates that are successful in clinical development or approved products of commercial value; potential delays in the commencement, enrollment, and completion of clinical trials; our dependence on third parties in connection with manufacturing, research and preclinical testing; our ability to maintain undisrupted business operations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including delaying or disrupting our preclinical studies, manufacturing, and supply chain; regulatory developments in the United States and foreign countries; and other risks described in our prior filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including under the heading "Risk Factors" in our annual report on Form 10-K and any subsequent filings with the SEC. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and we undertake no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date hereof. All forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement, which is made under the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.
Contact:
Amy Conrad
aconrad@tyra.bio
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SOURCE Tyra Biosciences | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/tyra-biosciences-present-preclinical-data-tyra-300-an-fgfr3-selective-inhibitor-esmo-2022-congress/ | 2022-09-05T13:53:25Z |
SHENZHEN, China, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- World-leading vaping brand VAPORESSO has unveiled a new set of six colors for its VAPORESSO XROS 2 product, the only open-pod-system vaping product on the market to bring home a Red Dot Award in 2022 for design.
The VAPORESSO XROS 2 is the company's bold attempt to incorporate stylish visuals with an intricate 150-degree-curved high-gloss surface.It gives users an aesthetic that brings together elements inspired by science fiction and the avant-garde, drawing plaudits from users and industry authorities worldwide. The product received the ultimate recognition in May 2022 when it took home the Red Dot Award: Product Design [2022] in Germany.
"B esides XROS 2, both XROS MINI and XROS NANO have also iterated with new configurations and colors. It has always been our aim to help our devoted users to wear their hearts on their sleeves and fully express their personality when using our products," said Thalia Cheng, CMO of VAPORESSO. "We feel this vibrant and eye-opening spectrum of colors does just that. Users can make a big impression wherever they are with these eye-catching and bespoke new shades."
The new colors, named Aurora, Neon, Vitality, Violet, Sierra Blue, and Gold, will grant VAPORESSO users even greater artistic license to express themselves when using these award-winning products.
This year's Red Dot Award win was not the first time that the German industrial design house has recognized VAPORESSO products. The company took home a Red Dot Award for an environmentally friendly product that combined recyclable paper with the design concept in 2021. This particular plaudit demonstrates just how much the company places consumers as well as the societal good at the top of its agenda when approaching new products.
Established in 2015 by SMOORE, VAPORESSO quickly ascended the vaping product ladder to become one of the industry's most innovative and prominent players. The parent company also rapidly rose to prominence, becoming the first vaping device provider to publicly list, with a valuation of over 25 billion USD, marking a major historic breakthrough for the sector.
About VAPORESSO
VAPORESSO was created in 2015 and is dedicated to establishing a smoke-free world while raising the quality of life for its users. Based on its continuous innovation, strict quality control, and substantial commitment, VAPORESSO creates products that can fit all levels and styles of vapers.
Media Contact
media@vaporesso.com
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SOURCE VAPORESSO | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/vaporesso-the-red-dot-award-winning-product-xros-2-unleashes-new-color/ | 2022-09-05T13:53:31Z |
BEIJING, Sept. 5, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A news report from China.org.cn on Chongqing's mountain fire and the greatness of the ordinary people:
This video you see was filmed just several days ago in Chongqing, China.
The red captures the blazing forest mountain fires, while the light blue emanates from the headlamps of all those walking towards the fire.
Chongqing, a metropolis in south-west China, is aptly dubbed the "mountain city". So much of the city is built on the mountains that it's hard to distinguish between the two. The scorching heat in late August set alight mountain fires across multiple spots in Chongqing. Some of the fires lasted for days, and in order to prevent them from rampaging to residential areas, fire fighters immediately got down to business.
The mountains, home to dense forests and perilous slopes, render them virtually impassable to automobiles. In such case, motorcycles are the most ideal option for carrying goods and personnel to the frontline. On hearing this, motorcycle dealers, motorcycle lovers, or even delivery drivers lined up to volunteer. Ding Yuncong, a fresh college graduate who claims himself to be "a lazy heat-fearing" guy, joined the volunteers without the slightest hesitation. Lacking a luggage rack on his motorbike, Ding carried all the goods on his shoulder. 25-year-old female rider Wu Puhui is an experienced motorcyclist. She rode up the mountain several dozen times every day, carrying more than 40 kilos of goods. The red bow she tied on her helmet adds a vivid spectacle to the dusty mountain paths. After a few days of volunteering, many motorbikes were worn out and needed repair. The owners, who have always cherished their motorbikes, did not say a single word of complaint.
While the motorcyclists kept the lifeblood of supplies running, many others did not sit around idly. Francis Stonier, an associate professor at Southwest University, responded quickly when he learned that experienced chainsaw users were needed. Together with other volunteers, he assembled 50 chainsaws on short notice. He said Chongqing is also his home. A restaurant owner in Chongqing provided food for frontline firefighters, and when preparing the food, she kept telling her staff to "pack more meat" for them. Firefighters who went downhill after fighting the flames took a rest at a villager's courtyard, and some were so tired that they fell asleep on the ground. The 95-year-old owner felt great sympathy and cooked porridge for them. She said: "I just want to feed these kids." Helping with fire-fighting, patrolling, creating fire breaks, transporting supplies, coordinating, logistical support… People despite their age, gender or origin, devoted themselves to these challenging tasks. They are all just ordinary people. But in the face of devouring fires, the love and selflessness that come from within has made every ordinary person a hero.
All the mountain fires in Chongqing have now been put out. In the wake of this disaster, locals are planning to plant new trees to rejuvenate the mountains in Chongqing next spring.
China Mosaic
http://www.china.org.cn/video/node_7230027.htm
Walking towards fire Everyday citizens, also heroes
http://www.china.org.cn/video/2022-09/05/content_78405464.htm
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SOURCE China.org.cn | https://www.whsv.com/prnewswire/2022/09/05/walking-towards-fire-everyday-citizens-also-heroes/ | 2022-09-05T13:53:38Z |
94-year-old WWII veteran volunteers at children’s hospital, handing out smiles
ST. LOUIS (KSDK) – A World War II hero is still serving his community but in a very different way.
At 94 years old, Carl Hall is a hero to kids at Shriners Children’s Hospital in St. Louis. The veteran has seemingly seen it all in his lifetime.
“I got over to Europe at the end of the war, Going to the South Pole, the Berlin Airlift. I was in Iran when they still had a king,” he explained.
Since retiring in 1990, Hall has dedicated his life to a different kind of service. For the past 32 years, Hall has handed out smiles to everyone who walked through the door.
“Carl treats us all like we’re a part of his family,” said Pauline Mopkins, a nurse at the hospital.
“It’s really helpful to your physical and mental health because you’re helping kids get better,” Hall explained. “I’ve seen kids come in here that couldn’t even walk or do anything. When they leave, they’re like a regular kid. It’s just amazing.”
In addition to the happiness he brings into the hospital, Hall has worked with a number of church groups and community organizations over the years and has raised more than $270,000 in donations for the facility.
“People give me money to bring in, and I bring it in,” Hall said. “I’ve seen some, what I saw as babies, coming in now with their babies. That gives you a good feeling because you know that somebody is here to help.”
Hall plans to continue manning his post at the hospital for as long as he can.
“I have no idea how long that will be,” he said. “As long as God helps me, I’ll do it.”
Copyright KSDK 2022 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.wvva.com/2022/09/05/94-year-old-wwii-veteran-volunteers-childrens-hospital-handing-out-smiles/ | 2022-09-05T13:56:15Z |
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