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Travertine Hot Springs
Travertine Hot Springs are a group of geothermal mineral springs located near the town of Bridgeport, California.
The springs are located two miles Southeast of Bridgeport, California on several sizeable travertine terraces, overlooking views of the High Sierra mountains. Volunteers have built a series of primitive rock pools and wood-and-concrete enclosures to contain the water, and to control temperature by diverting the flow through stepped channels. The springs are located on California State Park land.
For hundreds of years the hot mineral springs were used by local indigenous people and later early settlers. In the early 1900s the first pool was built for dipping sheep; some of the wooden planks currently at the site are the original boards.
The hot mineral water emerges from several geothermal fissures in the ground at 180°F (82°C) and are cooled to 115°–156°F as they progress through the travertine terraces. Due to underground movement caused local and regional earthquakes, the temperature fluctuates.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63257936
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Larry McCarthy (GAA President)
Larry McCarthy (born 1955) is President-elect of the GAA. A native of Cork city, he is a member of the Sligo football club in New York and has served with New York GAA in a number of capacities, including secretary, chairman and Central Council delegate.
McCarthy is projected to become the first overseas President of the GAA in February 2021. He is a university lecturer by profession.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63257947
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Coralia Cartis
Coralia Cartis is a Romanian mathematician at the University of Oxford whose research interests include compressed sensing, numerical analysis, and regularisation methods in mathematical optimization. At Oxford, she is an associate professor in Numerical Optimization in the Mathematical Institute, and a tutorial fellow of Balliol College.
Cartis earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Babeș-Bolyai University, and completed her PhD in 2005 at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation, "On Interior Point Methods for Linear Programming", was supervised by Michael J. D. Powell. In the same year, she was one of the Second Prize winners of the Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis.
After working as a researcher at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford, she became a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh in 2007. She took her present position at Oxford in 2013.
In 2018 she became a member of the scientific board of
the Smith Institute for Industrial Mathematics and System Engineering, and was a plenary speaker at the 16th EUROPT Workshop on Advances in Continuous Optimization in Spain.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63257978
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2020 Oracle Challenger Series – Indian Wells – Women's Doubles
Kristýna Plíšková and Evgeniya Rodina were the defending champions, but chose not to defend their title.
Asia Muhammad and Taylor Townsend won the title, defeating Caty McNally and Jessica Pegula in the final, 6–4, 6–4.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63257993
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COVID-19 pandemic in the Dominican Republic
The COVID-19 pandemic in the Dominican Republic is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached the Dominican Republic on 1 March 2020.
On 31 December 2019, the Health Commission of Wuhan, Hubei, China, informed the WHO about a cluster of acute pneumonia cases with unknown origin in its province. On 9 January 2020, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDC) reported the identification of a novel coronavirus (later identified as the SARS-CoV-2) as the cause. The disease in China affected over 80,000 people, causing over 3,200 deaths (as of March 25, 2020) and has now spread to over 210 countries and territories across the world.
On 1 March, the first case in the country and the Caribbean was confirmed. A 62-year-old man from Italy entered the country on 22 February and fell ill on 24 February, when he was transferred to Ramón Lara military hospital from the beach resort of Bayahibe. On 6 March, the second case in the country was confirmed as a Canadian tourist (also vacationing in Bayahibe) was detected. On 8 March, three more cases were confirmed from Dominican tourists that came from a trip to Italy. On 14 March, the Minister of Public Health, Rafael Sánchez Cárdenas, confirmed six new cases. All of the individuals had been outside of the country within the past 14 days.
The first documented case of local transmission seems to have originated from a 56-year old Dominican woman from the town of Villa Riva on Duarte Province who had traveled from Italy to the Dominican Republic on 26 February 2020. The woman, named Oneida Herrera Díaz, refused to be sent to Santo Domingo to be in isolation after receiving her COVID-19 positive diagnosis, returning to her home instead. She seems to have passed on the virus to her neighbour. Two weeks later, Duarte Province confirmed number of cases are only surpassed by the two larger urban centers (Distrito Nacional/Santo Domingo and Santiago) in the number of cases (29) and leads in the number of casualties (4). This cluster of cases seems to have originated around those in close contact with Mrs. Herrera Díaz.
On the week of 16 March, a number of COVID-19 cases in San Pedro de Macorís Province (including its Senator José Hazim Frappier) and the Armed Forces Colonel Kalil Haché seem to have contracted the virus during a fundraising dinner on Club 2 de Julio in the city of San Pedro de Macorís.
On 14 March, a high-profile wedding in Cap Cana seemed to be the COVID-19 infection source for a number of its attendees, which included many foreign residents. The wedding received a lot of public criticism for having had a "crazy hour" theme mocking the coronavirus concerns. The chancellor of the Dominican Republic, Miguel Vargas Maldonado would have contracted the virus from his son, who attended the said wedding and also contracted COVID-19.
Twenty Dominican doctors were exposed to the virus while celebrating their 30-year medical school graduation anniversary on board the "Costa Favolosa" cruise ship around the Caribbean. They started the journey on March 2, and before landing on 9 March, at least five in the Dominican party presented COVID-19 symptoms, and later tested as positive for the virus.
The first COVID-19-related death was announced by health authorities on 16 March 2020, of a 47-year old Dominican woman who had recently traveled from Spain On 24 March 2020, renowned designer Jenny Polanco, who tested positive on 15 March, died too. On 27 March, Armed Forces Colonel Kalil Haché died at the Ramón de Lara Hospital; the next day his widow died too. Haché was elevated posthumously to the rank of Brigadier General.
On 31 March 2020 writer René Rodríguez Soriano died.
On 23 March, the Minister of Public Health reported two recoveries, a 12-year-old child and a 26-year-old woman.
A number of schools and universities suspended classes due to COVID-19 concerns on March 16 and 17, with many switching to virtual learning platforms.
On 17 March, President Danilo Medina gave an address to the nation and declared a state of emergency, announcing a series of measures to try and stop the spread of the virus. He ordered all land, sea, and air borders be closed for the next 15 days, taking effect as of 19 March. Additionally, all commercial business activity will be suspended, with the exception of supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations, and pharmacies. Schools will remain closed through 13 April, and public employees who are 60 years of age or over, or those with a pre-existing health condition, must stay confined to their residences.
On 20 March 2020, the government decreed a mandatory night curfew from 8pm to 6am until 3 April. Only doctors and health workers, journalists, and guardsmen were exempt. However, many residents in the Greater Santo Domingo area resisted the measure; on the first night, 1,714 were arrested during the curfew. On the second night, 2,102 were arrested during the curfew.
On 26 March 2020, the government extended the night curfew schedule to 13 hours: from 5pm to 6am.
A number of provinces have decided to limit access to their territories to avoid contagion from COVID-19, such as San José de Ocoa, and El Seibo, which remained case-free (as of 26 March). Other provinces in case-free areas are asking their authorities for similar measures.
On 3 April 2020, the World Bank released US$150 million to support the Dominican Republic's efforts to contain COVID-19.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258096
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Goteo
Goteo is a crowdfunding site which focuses on projects which, apart from giving individual rewards, also generate a collective return through promoting the commons, open source code and/or free knowledge. It allows contributions in the form of monetary donations or in the form of tasks collaborating with the projects. The platform started in 2011, and is ran by the Barcelona-based non-profit Goteo Foundation. According to its site statistics, it has raised $11 million, with a rate of project success of 79% (90% in recent years), and a community of 185.000 users. It claims it was the first free/open source crowdfunding platform, and it tags itself as "the open source crowdfunding platform".
The website started in 2011 as an initiative of Platoniq, a non-profit focused on civic participation and social innovation since 2001. In 2012, Platoniq creates the Goteo Foundation to manage the platform, and open sources the platform source code under a AGPLv3 license.
From 2014 to 2017 it received active support from the European Cultural Foundation, organizing Goteo workshops internationally. In 2014 it won the European Democratic Citizenship Award as "NGO of the Year" by the European Civic Forum. The same year it also won the distinction award Prix Ars Electronica in the Digital Communities category.
Since 2018, it started partnering with funder organizations which have their own "channels" in the platform, including the participatory political party Ahora Madrid, the Barcelona city council, Fiare ethical bank, and the University of Málaga. In the past, it also reached partnerships with cultural portal Europeana, the International University of Andalucía, the regional governments of Extremadura and Basque Country, and the city councils of Zaragoza and Gipuzkoa.
Goteo claims its main distinctive features as a crowdfunding platform, in comparison with other larger ones like Kickstarter, are the following:
The platform supports a broad diversity of projects, as long as they respect their openness requirements. According to its statistics, the largest categories of projects are social (20%), cultural (15%), education (15%) and environmental (13%). Other projects include technological (10%), entrepreneurship (9%), communication (8%) and scientific (7%).
The top 10 funded projects all received 60-100K€, and covered different types of journalism (investigative, feminist, political, fact-checking), migrant-made clothing, a documentary, a reforestation effort, and a children magazine, a primary school. Other smaller funding projects have received press attention, such as those for art experimentation, local cinema, food delivery co-ops, pollution-free schools, programming education, or an anti-eviction platform.
The platform was highlighted by Nesta, and The Guardian included it in its "10 social innovators to watch". It was selected by Crowdsourcing Week in its 2019 "Top 15 Crowdfunding Platforms in Europe". It was mentioned as a salient example of platform cooperative by the Transnational Institute, and as an example of "quiet activism" by news sites Phys.org and The Conversation. Goteo belongs to the European Crowdfunding Network, which highlighted it as one of its three case studies of civic crowdfunding experiences. The OECD highlighted it in its analysis of civic crowdfunding. It has appeared in several research articles around crowdfunding, both in reviews of the field or as a case-study.
Its source code was forked and deployed in Japan, rebranded as the platform Local Good Yokohama, supported by the City Council of Yokohama and Accenture. This platform has received widespread attention in Japanese media.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258143
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Yuying Li
Yuying Li is a Chinese-Canadian professor of computer science in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Her research interests include mathematical optimization, scientific computing, data mining, and tail risk in computational finance.
After earning a bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1982 from Sichuan University, Li completed a PhD at the University of Waterloo, in 1988. Her dissertation, "An Efficient Algorithm for Nonlinear Minimax Problems", was supervised by Andrew Conn.
She worked as a researcher at Cornell University before returning to Waterloo as a faculty member.
Li was the 1993 winner of the Leslie Fox Prize for Numerical Analysis.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258166
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John Percy Groves
John Percy Groves (26 October 185013 February 1916) was a British author, librarian, and soldier. He wrote stirring adventure stories and information books for boys, all with a military theme, as well as military history, mostly about the Scottish regiments.
Groves was born in Bath on 26 October 1850 to John Richard Groves (18031850) and Elizabeth Louisa Groves (née Priaulx) (17901860). His father was a former Major in the Rifle Brigade, and his mother was sister to Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx who donated the Priaulx Library to the people of Guernsey. Groves was baptised at Bathwick St Mary, Somerset, on 27 November 1850.
In 1861 the census found Groves as a pupil at Wing Rectory in Rutland. This was close to Uppingham School which he may have later attended. He certainly did attend the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from where in 1867 he purchased a commission as an Ensign.
Groves purchased a commission as an Ensign in the 67th (South Hampshire) Regiment of Foot on 10 February 1869. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 1 November 1871. This promotion was later backdated (without pay) to 28 October 1871, with the proviso that the commission be non-saleable. This was part of the reform of the purchase system in the British Army under the Cardwell Reforms.
Grove exchanged into the 27th Regiment of Foot (the Inniskilling Fusiliers) on 27 March 1872. He resigned his commission on 25 March 1873, just a fortnight after he got married. He was appointed to the reserve of officers on 11 March 1881. After moving to Guernsey he joined the Royal Guernsey Militia, being appointed Major on 11 May 1889. By July 1892 he was promoted to he rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Guernsey Artillery.
Groves married Harriet Augusta Raines (c. 184924 September 1908) at Christ Church, Marylebone, London on 11 March 1873. Raines was the daughter of Joseph Robert Raines, a retired Colonel and the sister of General Sir Julius Augustus Raines, K.C.B., Colonel of the Buffs. One of the couple's sons assumed the name Groves-Raines, and the other eventually dropped his Groves surname to leave Raines in place.. A fortnight after the marriage, Groves resigned from the military.
The couple had eight children, seven of whom survived to adulthood:
Grove was appointed Bursar of Bradfield College in April 1883, but left the post by the end of the summer term. However, in the meantime, he had reinvogorated the College's Rifle Corps. In the 1881 census Grove (with five children under seven years of age in the house) recorded his occupation as: "Owner Of House Property in Middlesex".
Groves wrote three types of books. The first two were intended for the juvenile market, and the last was for those interested in particular regiments. As a rule all were illustrated.
Groves began to publish juvenile fiction in 1883 with "From Cadet to Captain" of which the "Reading Observer" said: "This is a wholesome and well-written tale put into autobiographical form and detailing in an interesting way the varied incidents of a young aspirant for military honours. A large part of the story is occupied with Mr. Warrington's experiences as a student at the Sandhurst Military College...". His next book was "Charmouth Grange" in 1886, of which "The Graphic" said: "This tale of the seventeenth century is a will written story, full of the doings of Roundhead and Cavaliers, in which the Cavaliers get very much the best of it".
Until his appointment as Librarian at the Priaulx Library, only one of the first ten books written by Groves was a military history, the history of the 66th (Berkshire) Regiment of Foot in 1887. Groves was appointed as Secretary and Librarian to the Priaulx Library in Guernsey and the "cultured librarian" was there for the official opening on 1 May 1889. The library had been donated by Grove's wife's uncle, Osmond de Beauvoir Priaulx, and this no doubt played a part in the selection of Groves for the role.
de Beauvoir died on 15 January 1891, leaving a personal estate (i.e. excluding any real property, which at the time was often entailed) valued at £53,000. Groves got a bequest of 100 shares of Pennsylvania Railroad Company stock. This was probably worth over $10,000 at the time, as the average value of the shares for 18901899 was $109.30.
Once installed at Candie House, the home of the Library, Groves continued his literary career. He and his family had a large apartment at Candie House, but given the size of his family it was not surprising that he was criticised for spilling outside his apartment and appropriating some of the rooms intended for the library. In the 1891 census, Groves describes himself as Major of the Royal Guernsey Artillery Brigade, and an author and journalist.
Grove was still writing, in 1891 alone, he published two juvenile novels, a juvenile history book (with three different publishers). In 1893 he began to publish a series of volumes about the Scottish regiments. He intended to produce 17 in all. Advertisements These were high quality, limited editions (530 for the book on the 21st Royal Scots Fusiliers), with nine "high-class" chromo-lithographed illustrations. They sold for 7s 6d.
Apart from one final work, on the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, published in Guernsey in 1904, Groves had effectively stopped writing books by 1896. By 1901, only three teen-aged children were now living at home. In that year he described himself as Secretary and Curator, Priaulx Library, Author, and Journalist.
Harriet Groves died on 24 September 1908 leaving effects valued at only £22 8s 9d. All of the children were adult. Groves resigned his librarianship in 1910 and left Guernsey (his housing was tied to his post). By the time of the 1911 census, Groves was living in Whitefield, Christchurch, near Bournemouth with his son John Henry, who had left the army to become a poultry farmer. Groves gave his profession at Lt.Col (retired) and Literature.
Groves remarried on 16 February 1912 at Hanwell Middlesex. His second bride was Mary Louisa Ridley (c. 185523 March 1935), the eldest daughter of the late Rev. Oliver Matthew Ridley (c. 182510 January 1907) and Louisa Pole Ridley (c. 1829January 1858). Although Mary's mother had dies when she was around three, her father remarried before she was eight. Groves and Mary were respectively 65 and 61 when they married.
Groves died in Southend-on-Sea on 13 February 1916. While some sources place his death on Guernsey in 1917 or 1918, three contemporary newspapers place the death at Southend in February 1916. Groves was survived by his second wife Mary (by nearly 20 years), and by six of his children).
The majority of what Groves wrote was juvenile fiction when measured by both the number of works or the number of pages.
The "Tar-bucket and Pipe-clay" first appeared as a serial in "Young England", starting in January 1890. Little Folks ran a serial starting in 1895 called "True to his Colours" by Groves.
Grove also wrote or contributed to serial installments on military history, including "Types of the British Army" which ran as a column on regiments in "The Graphic". "The Graphic" also produced coloured illustrations as supplements in a series called "Types of the British Army and Navy". The illustrations were usually of particular regiments such as the "10th and 19th Hussars" by John Charlton, but sometimes were of particular roles, such as "A Captain of the Main-Top" by W Christian Symonds.
The primary source for data on the books was the British Library. The lists indicate if the item was found the in the British Library Catalogue (BL Cat.). Other sources included the COPAC database, publishers catalogues, newspaper reviews, and the used book trade.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258177
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Sirron Norris
Sirron Norris is an American illustrator, muralist, and arts educator. He is best known for his work on the FOX animated television show "Bob's Burgers" and the numerous public murals, including ones at Balmy Alley, Clarion Alley, and Mission Dolores Park, and galleries around San Francisco. His murals often include political messages, local themes, and his signature blue bear. He has worked with several local non-profits, including SPUR and "El Tecolote".
Norris' studio and gallery is based in the Mission District, San Francisco.
Norris was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and moved to San Francisco from Pittsburgh in 1997.
Norris began painting murals in 1999 as a means of advertising his work. His first mural is located outside a corner store at the intersection of 20th and Bryant Street. Prior to this, he worked in video game graphics and had no formal training in painting murals.
In 2000, he was the artist-in-residence at the De Young Museum. In 2002, he was the artist-in-residence at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. In 2005, he spent three months as an artist-in-residence at Recology.
Norris was the lead artist on the pilot of "Bob's Burgers" and designed the backgrounds for the show. The exterior buildings were inspired by the homes around him in the Mission District. Show creator Loren Bouchard lived down the street from him and was hiring local artists to work on the pilot, which included the show's character designer Jay Howell. In 2016, he painted a mural of Bob and Linda Belcher from the show on the outside of the house he resided in while working on the show. It was removed by the homeowner in 2017 due to copyright concerns.
Norris designed the poster for the San Francisco Public Library Summer Read SF program in 2012.
In 2013, Norris collaborated on a line of wristwatch bands for an activity tracker with the now defunct health start-up Basis. In 2017, he was commissioned by Whistle Labs to paint a mural outside the Dog Eared Books bookstore for a charitable promotional campaign.
Norris was featured in the 2018 collection of Hearts in San Francisco benefitting the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation.
Norris was commissioned to paint a Mickey Mouse mural at the Walt Disney Family Museum in 2019.
Some works can also be found indoors, such as his murals in the pediatric emergency rooms of the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, funded through the support of the San Francisco Arts Commission, and SPUR.
His critics have claimed that since his work is commercial in nature, he is "selling out or betraying the street art tradition" and perceive him to be a "gentrification" artist." Some have vandalized his works with graffiti. However, while he has been commissioned by large companies such as Mitsubishi and Sony, Norris is a self-proclaimed commercial artist and doesn't describe his murals as "street art." His "Victorion: El Defensor de la Mission" mural, painted in 2007, features an anthropomorphized giant robot assembled with Victorian homes tackling the issues of gentrification within the Mission District.
In 2010, he was met with community backlash when he was commissioned to paint over an existing mural in the Mission District. He has also since apologized about repainting the existing mural and has worked with the original artist on a new piece at the same location.
In 2017, he received the "Greater Bay Area Journalism Award" for "Kaepernick" in "El Tecolote", a part of his ongoing political comic series entitled "Cityfruit".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258209
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United Arab Emirates Presidential Guard
The UAE Presidential Guard (UAE-PG) () is an elite military special operations unit of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. It is a military unit that operates outside the conventional framework of traditional armed forces. It is considered to be a premier fighting unit in the Middle East and the Arab world. It is also seen as the Emirati version of the United States Secret Service as its duties include protecting the Ra'is albeit they are not limited by that role. The United States Marine Corps officially designates the UAE-PG as its Marine counterpart.
UAE-PG was formed in 2011 as a merger of the Amiri Guard, the Special Operations Command, and the Marine Battalion from the UAE Navy.
Multiple foreign officers, including Major General Mike Hindmarsh from the Australian Army have served and/or are serving in the guard. In the case of Hindmarsh, he serves as the guard's commander. In October 2011, United States State Department approved of training support being provided by the United States Marine Corps for the guard under the Marine Corps Training Mission UAE (MCTM-UAE). At around the same time, the USMC officially designated the UAE-PG as its Marine counterpart.
In January 2017, a 149-member contingent from the Presidential Guard, as well as 35-member band, marched in the presence of Sultan Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and President Pranab Mukherjee on the Rajpath during the Delhi Republic Day parade of 2017.
In 2019, the UAE-PG has inaugurated the opening of Martyr's Park, dedicated to UAE-PG personnel who were killed in the line of duty.
The UAE-PG participated in the War in Afghanistan in support to the coalition efforts against the Taliban. Their role has mostly been active in the delivery of humanitarian aid as well as supporting the development of basic community infrastructure in Afghanistan.
The Presidential Guard has played a role in the Yemeni Civil War in the support of the government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. There are allegations that the UAE-PG has participated in war crimes in the Yemeni Civil War.
The UAE PG has the UAE Special Operations Command under its control.
The guard headquarters is located in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The building consists of a basement, a ground floor and three upper levels. It has a length of about 31,000 square meters.
Training of UAE-PG personnel is provided under the USMC's UAE Marine Corps Training Mission - United Arab Emirates (UAE MCTM - UAE) unit.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258228
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Leslie McCall
Leslie McCall is an American sociologist and political scientist. She is a Presidential Professor of political science and sociology at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and the Associate Director of the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality there. She studies wealth and social inequality in American society, as well as opinions about inequality, from an intersectional perspective.
McCall studied Computer Science and Economic Development Studies at Brown University, graduating with a BA in 1986. She then obtained an MA in sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1990, followed by a PhD in sociology there in 1995.
In 1995, McCall became a professor of both sociology and women's studies at Rutgers University. She remained a professor there until 2006, when she joined the sociology department at Northwestern University. Since 2017, McCall has been a professor of sociology and political science at the City University of New York. She has several times been an invited or visiting professor of sociology at the Sciences Po, as well as a fellow or visiting scholar at Princeton University and Stanford University.
McCall is the author of two books: "Complex Inequality: Gender, Class, and Race in the New Economy" (2001), and "The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution" (2013).
"Complex Inequality" studied the multidimensionality of inequality in the United States, given the intersecting impacts of gender, class, and race. Using data from 1980 and 1990 across more than 500 local labor markets, McCall studies the relationship between gender inequality, class inequality, race, and level of education. The book also aims to inform policy proposals that account for the multidimensionality of inequality while seeking to reduce it. In a review of "Complex Inequality", the sociologist Maria Charles wrote that it is a "pathbreaking book" because it "actually examines the interrelationships among inequality dimensions and identifies distinct structural mechanisms that underlie each", rather than simply acknowledging the problem that the overlap of different influences poses to inequality studies. The book was named as the first runner-up for the C. Wright Mills Award.
McCall's second book, "The Undeserving Rich: American Beliefs about Inequality, Opportunity, and Redistribution", was published in 2013. In "The Undeserving Rich", McCall examined the attitudes of the American public towards the contemporary phenomenon of rising wealth inequality. In particular, the book studies the paradox that despite the reality of growing wealth inequality in the US, American public opinion had not appeared to shift substantially on the issue, and there was no major sustained backlash to the increase in inequality. McCall found that while Americans do largely object to wealth inequality on the basis that it undermines equality of opportunity, opinion on the issue does not respond to changes in the real distribution of wealth within society but rather to media coverage of the issue.
McCall has been on the editorial board of several major journals, such as the "American Sociological Review" and the "Socio-Economic Review". She was also an editor of the 2013 thematic issue of "Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society" called "Intersectionality: Theorizing Power, Empowering Theory". A 2019 citation analysis by the political scientists Hannah June Kim and Bernard Grofman listed McCall as one of the most cited political scientists working at an American university in 3 different categories: the top 40 most cited women scholars, the top 25 most cited political scientists who earned their PhD between 1995 and 1999 (inclusive), and the top 25 most cited political scientists working in the fields of Public Policy, Public Administration, Public Law, or Political Psychology.
McCall's work on wealth inequality has been published or cited in media outlets like "The Washington Post", "The New York Times", and CNN.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258244
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Brazil–São Tomé and Príncipe relations
Brazil–São Tomé and Príncipe relations refer to the bilateral relations between Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe. Both nations are members of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Both Brazil and São Tomé and Príncipe were united for three hundred years as part of the Portuguese Empire. As part of the Portuguese Empire, São Tomé and Príncipe was used as launching point during the Atlantic slave trade from continental Africa to Brazil. From 1815-1822, São Tomé and Príncipe was administered by Brazil during the Transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil.
In July 1975, São Tomé and Príncipe obtained its independence from Portugal. That same year, Brazil recognized São Tomé and Príncipe's independence. In December 1975, Brazil opened an embassy office in São Tomé. In June 1984, both nations signed an Agreement on Cultural Cooperation and an Agreement on Scientific and Technical Cooperation.
In November 2003, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva paid an official visit to São Tomé and Príncipe, becoming the first Brazilian head-of-state to visit the country. During his visit, President da Silva inaugurated the Brazilian embassy in São Tomé and signed cooperation agreements with projects such as Bolsa Família, family farming, literacy, education and sports. President da Silva also made the symbolic delivery of a batch of 2,592 books donated by the Brazilian Ministry of Culture to São Tomé. In 2004, São Toméan President Fradique de Menezes paid an official visit to Brazil.
On March 2008, the Center for Brazilian Studies was inaugurated in São Tomé. The Brazilian Cooperation Agency assists and develops projects in several diverse areas in São Tomé and Príncipe including infrastructure, agriculture, literacy, health and HIV/AIDS prevention.
High-level visits from Brazil to São Tomé and Príncipe
High-level visits from São Tomé and Príncipe to Brazil
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258274
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New Zealand Institute of Skills & Technology
The New Zealand Institute of Skills & Technology (NZIST) is the temporary name for the vocational education provider in New Zealand. In February 2019, the Government announced that the country's sixteen Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics (ITPs) would merge to form the new organisation. The merger happened on 1 April 2020. When the organisation started operating, neither its permanent name nor its head office location had been decided. The establishment office that has worked towards creating the new organisation is based in Christchurch.
Chris Hipkins, the Minister of Education, announced in February 2018 that the education sector—from preschool to tertiary—was up for review. The details were outlined in a cabinet paper and this included "a programme of change for the institute of technology and polytechnic (ITP) subsector and for vocational education more generally". After consultation with the education sector, Hipkins released a proposal in February 2019 that went much further than the options discussed in consultation, with all 16 ITPs to merge into one organisation.
The 16 ITPs are:
Hipkins admitted that "change on this scale will be disruptive". This merger going ahead was confirmed on 1 August 2019 alongside the working title "New Zealand Institute of Skills & Technology", and the following day, Hipkins announced the membership of an establishment ten-person-board based in the Christchurch suburb of Addington and starting work on 5 August 2019:
Regions were invited to submit proposals for the head office location. The Government Electronic Tendering Service (GETS) asked for registrations of interest from 6 December 2019 to 15 January 2020. The outcome was to be announced in March 2020 but when New Zealand went into lockdown due to coronavirus pandemic, this process was put on hold.
The Minister of Education announced the first seven members of the governing council on 18 March 2020:
Chris Collins, the chief executive of the Eastern Institute of Technology, has been appointed interim chief executive for NZIST.
Stephen Town, former CEO of Auckland Council; has been appointed chief executive for NZIS. He will start his new role at the end of June 2020
Forty Māori language names were under consideration for the organisation, and as of 2 March 2020, five of those have been shortlisted:
It was expected that the name would be decided before the start of NZIST but the Establishment Board asked for more time.
The New Zealand Institute of Skills & Technology has almost 10,000 staff, 280,000 students, and assets worth NZ$2 billion. The student body includes those studying at New Zealand's 16 ITPs and various apprentice and industry training programmes. The organisation will be led by Stephen Town, the outgoing CEO of Auckland Council; the announcement from Auckland Council as well as his new role was made on 4 February 2020. Town will start his new role at the end of June 2020, with a salary of NZ$688,235. As of mid April 2020, the location of the organisation's head office has not been announced yet, although it was stated in August 2019 that it would not be located in Auckland or Wellington.
The legislation under which this reform could proceed is the Education (Vocational Education and Training Reform) Amendment Bill. This bill amended the Education Act 1989 and repealed the Industry Training and Apprenticeships Act 1992 to create a unified and cohesive vocational education and training system. The bill received royal assent on 24 February 2020 and came into force on 1 April 2020.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258365
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Ladysbridge
Ladysbridge (), known for census purposes as Knockglass (), is a village in County Cork, Ireland. As of the 2016 census, the area had a population of 658 people.
The village of Ladysbridge lies at the junction of the R632 and R633 regional roads, approximately south of Castlemartyr. Ladysbridge, sometimes spelled Lady's Bridge, is also connected to Castlemartyr via a way-marked nature trail. This walking route crosses the nearby Womanagh River on a pedestrian bridge.
Ightermurragh Castle is a 17th-century fortified house which is located on the south bank of the Womanagh River approximately east of Ladysbridge village. Within the village itself, a number of buildings date from the 19th century, including the former national school (dated 1891) and Ladysbridge Roman Catholic church (dated to c.1820). This church, which is dedicated to Saint Mary, is in the parish of Ballymacoda and Ladysbridge and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cloyne. The local GAA club, Fr. O'Neill's GAA, represents the same parish area.
A monument in the centre of the village commemorates the Manchester Martyrs, one of whom was from the Ladysbridge area.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258366
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Climate Justice Alliance
The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) is a non-governmental collective of over 70 rural and urban community-based organizations focused on sustainability, development of underrepresented communities, race and ethnicity, economic development, and poverty alleviation — all with the wider aim of addressing climate change. Founded in 2013, CJA is rooted in the environmental justice movement in that it centers efforts around protesting and organizing against the disproportionate harm of climate change on marginalized communities.
The stated goal of CJA to create "[apply] the power of deep grassroots organizing to win local, regional, statewide, and national shifts" in regards to climate change and unjust exposure of marginalized communities to its damaging effects.
While CJA was officially formed in 2013, the organization traces its origin to a 3-year period of coordinated grassroots protest activities. Most notably, early members of CJA organized a 400-person assembly for climate justice at the 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit.
Following its formal establishment, CJA launched its first coordinated effort with an organized effort hosted by the Black Mesa Water Coalition in the Black Mesa region of Arizona. The activities sought to coordinate community-led action strategies to alleviate urban development of the region and gathered 100 of its members to protest activities of large coal mining companies and their effects on vulnerable populations in the area.
As part of their Black Mesa activities, CJA established an ongoing effort called the “Our Power Campaign” which involves the construction of what they call a “local living economy”. CJA calls these groups “Our Power Communities” (OPC) and they are based on a model of:
CJA has also established a loan fund as part of the campaign that helps their OPCs become loan-ready via technical support and coaching.
CJA describes its main strategies for climate justice success as:
The Climate Justice Alliance supports the Green New Deal, a climate proposal first introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts.
However, upon the proposal of the Green New Deal, delegates from CJA spoke out publicly about the need for a focus on protecting “frontline communities” (those who are most exposed to the damaging effects of climate change) via public statements and organizing members in Washington D.C. to address United States Congress directly."“The Climate Justice Alliance welcomes the bold Green New Deal initiative from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other Members of Congress; however, to truly address the interlinked crises of a faltering democracy, growing wealth disparity and community devastation caused by climate change and industrial pollution, we must reduce emissions at their source. Allowing for neoliberal constructs such as Net Zero emissions, which equate carbon emission offsets and technology investments with real emissions reductions at source, would only exacerbate existing pollution burdens on frontline communities. Such loopholes for carbon markets and unproven techno-fixes only serve to line the coffers of the polluting corporations, while increasing (not reducing) harm to our communities. Our communities can no longer be used as sacrifice zones.”"
- Angela Adrar, Executive Director, Climate Justice AllianceSince sharing their perspective on necessary additions to the deal, CJA has spearheaded local versions of the Green New Deal and iterations including the “Feminist Green New Deal” and the “Green New Deal for Public Housing” alongside Senator/2020 presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258387
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Columbia River Quarantine Station
The Columbia River Quarantine Station, now known as the Knappton Cove Heritage Center, is a historic site in Knappton, Washington. The station provided fumigation and quarantine services to maritime vessels at the port on the Columbia River from 1899 to 1938, and is the sole remaining quarantine station on the West Coast of the United States as all others were burned for fear of contamination. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
In the late nineteenth century, regulations on immigration to the United States were increasing. There were four west coast ports where immigrants could enter the United States: San Diego and San Francisco in California, Astoria, Oregon, and Port Townsend, Washington. Federal legislation in 1891 required medical inspections for arriving immigrants. Ships arriving at the port of Astoria on the Columbia River had to travel to the disinfecting station in Port Townsend, away, if disease was found on board. The communities of Astoria and Portland agitated for closer quarantine and disinfecting facilities, but did not want them too close and so proposed a site across the river.
The location selected for the station was Knappton Cove, which had a defunct fish cannery with a wharf and buildings that could be converted. The government purchased the site for $8,000 (), over the objections of the Washington residents. The station was established May 9, 1899. The building which had served as the cannery superintendent's house became the residence for the quarantine station caretaker. A new building for disinfecting ships was built in 1900, and a hospital for ill crew and passengers was added in 1912.
The first physician at Columbia River Quarantine Station was Assistant Surgeon Hill Hastings. He was succeeded several months later by Dr. Bayles H. Earle of the United States Marine Hospital Service. Earle was replaced by Passed Assistant Surgeon John Milton Hold in 1906, and in 1911, Assistant Surgeon Jay Tuttle took Hold's place.
Ships anchoring at Astoria were inspected for infestation and communicable diseases. When either were found, the ship were sent to Knappton Cove where passengers went ashore for showers and delousing of their clothing and baggage while the ship was fumigated. Sick passengers would be isolated. To fumigate the ships, which took about 48 hours, pots of sulpher were burned throughout the ship. Initially, those crewmembers and passengers who were not ill slept in tents until they were able to board the ship again. From 1915 to 1929, the "USS Concord" was moored at Knappton to provide lodging.
During its first year of operation, Columbia River Quarantine Station screened 6,120 people from 97 sailing vessels and 35 steam vessels.
"The Sunday Oregonian" described the station in 1921:
Before any vessel coming from a foreign port can discharge or load cargo in the Columbia River it must pass quarantine at Astoria. The 'Ellis Island' for this district is situated on the Washington side of the river, near Knappton; and consists of a dock, disinfecting building and appliances, quarters, hospital, detention quarters, etc. ...Thanks to the vigilance of the quarantine on the Columbia River our cites have yet to experience the plague.
During the 1920s, the number of immigrants decreased and new methods of disinfecting ships while at anchor reduced the need for the quarantine station. The Columbia River Quarantine Station was phased out in 1938.
For a short time after 1938, the Bureau of Lighthouses made use of the quarantine station site for a navigational aid site. The U.S. Public Health Service declared the station surplus and transferred ownership to the U.S. Coast Guard in 1942. In 1950, the property was sold at public auction to Clarence and Katherine Bell of Portland.
The Bell family operated the site as a fishing camp and moorage site, Knappton Cove Camp, in the 1950s. The camp closed in the 1960s, and the wharf was destroyed by a storm in 1971. In 1995, the station was repurposed as a museum, the Knappton Cove Heritage Center. Students of historic preservation at Clatsop Community College assisted with renovations. In 2017, the museum, now run by a nonprofit group, received a $5,000 grant from the National Trust for Preservation.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258578
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Look Long
Look Long is a studio album by American folk rock duo Indigo Girls. The album was originally due to be released on April 24, 2020, but was delayed until May 22, 2020. The album has had a positive reception from critics.
The Indigo Girls recorded the album with previous collaborator John Reynolds. The album was preceded by the single "Shit Kickin'" on February 28, 2020 and the announcement of a promotional tour. Tour dates were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States but the duo performed a series of weekly live-streamed concerts online to raise money for charity as well as promote this release. These events were accompanied by a question and answer session and audience requests for performances. They also performed at a virtual festival of musicians raising money for the United Nations Foundation on Mother's Day, 2020.
Writing for the Associated Press, Pablo Gorondi writes that "Look Long" is a "a passionate and tuneful collection on which the combined voices of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers sound as instinctive and magical as ever". The editorial staff of AllMusic Guide gave the release 3.5 out of five stars, with reviewer Stephen Thomas Erlewine remarking has several "jolt[s] of color or stylistic experimentation" and that "the album's heart lies within the musical departures". In the "Santa Cruz Sentinel", John Malkin notes the variety of themes in the songwriting: "politics and culture including realms like gun violence in America, gender identity, the paradox of love and loss and good ‘old southern living". In "No Depression", Carina Liptak also highlighted the diversity of themes as a strength for the album in addition to the tension between the two vocalists' styles.
Indigo Girls
Additional personnel
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258589
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Stop Mandatory Vaccination
The Stop Mandatory Vaccination website and associated Facebook group constitute one of the major hubs of the American anti-vaccination movement.
The private Facebook group has 178,000 members (February 2020). The website is owned by naturopath Larry Cook, who describes himself as a "healthy lifestyle advocate". A former sound technician and Executive Director of the California Naturopathic Doctors Association, he first used social media platforms to promote conspiracy theories and ineffective treatments for autism before becoming a leader of the anti-vaccination movement. He has no medical background.
Members use the group to disseminate conspiracy theories, for example stating that news about epidemics are manufactured by governments to incite people to vaccinate, that the public health measures taken to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic aim at preparing mass forced vaccination or that the 1918 influenza epidemic was caused by vaccines.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Cook used the group to oppose mask-wearing legislation in certain situations. Cook wrote that opposing mask-wearing is a precondition to opposing COVID-19 vaccines when they would become available.
The Facebook group was at the center of a controversy over the death of a 4 year-old boy, whose mother asked for advice from group members rather than getting the Tamiflu that she was prescribed by a health professional for a bout of Influenza that left him feverish and experiencing seizures. The advice she received pointed to various ineffective treatments popular with naturopaths, such as breastmilk, thyme and elderberry. The child was later hospitalized and died.
Along with other anti-vaccination activists such as Andrew Wakefield and Del Bigtree, Cook seeks to use testimonies of parents who lost young children to causes such as Sudden infant death syndrome and accidental asphyxiation, but got convinced that vaccines are really to blame for the tragedy. Stop Mandatory Vaccination circulates a number of those stories, which are highly effective at growing both the anti-vaccination movement and the website's revenues. In some cases, grieving parents are contacted online by anti-vaccination activists suggesting their infant's death is linked to vaccination and they then share links to the website or Facebook group.
The Facebook group has been used by anti-vaccination activists to identify and issue threats against parents who encourage other parents to have their children vaccinated, feeding intimidation campaigns that are waged on social media. Grieving parents, who discuss how their children died from complication of preventable diseases such as the flu, report being intimidated by anti-vaccination activists. Doctors who promote vaccination online are also targeted. Cook says that while he does not condone such attacks, people promoting vaccination "can expect push back and resistance".
In 2020, Cook created a more overtly political group, Medical Freedom Patriots. The anti-vaccine, pro-Republican group aims at putting pressure on elected officials by mobilizing a far right target audience.
Cook says he received threats because of his online activities and that members of the Facebook group were visited by police officers.
Cook is funding the site through donations, advertising and the sales of his own book and t-shirts. Starting in 2015, he raised more than $100,000 through GoFundMe campaigns. Other donations come in through PayPal, website advertising and his Amazon storefront, where he gets a portion of the sales of the anti-vaccination literature he recommends. In 2019, revenue from his YouTube account dried up when the company stopped running advertising on anti-vaccination videos and he had to find other platforms when GoFundMe cancelled his account.
While Cook advertises that donations fund anti-vaccination initiatives, the money is directed to his personal bank account and also serves to pay his personal expenses.
A study found Stop Mandatory Vaccination was one of the major buyers of anti-vaccine Facebook advertising in December 2018 and February 2019, the other being Children's Health Defense. Heavily targeting women and young couples, the advertising highlighted the alleged risks of vaccines and asked for donations. Advertising purchases by these groups contribute to vaccine hesitancy and ultimately to epidemics.
According to an analysis by NBC News, the group is one of three major sources of false claims on vaccination shared on the internet, the other two being the fake news site Natural News and Children's Health Defense.
In 2018, following up on a parent complaint, the British Advertising Standards Authority had Facebook ads from Stop Mandatory Vaccination taken down for making misleading claims and causing "undue distress". The messages said vaccines kill children and doctors will often report those death as Sudden infant death syndrome.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258645
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Odile Pierre
Odile Pierre (; 12 March 1932 – 29 February 2020) was a French organist, composer and academic teacher. She was the organist at La Madeleine, Paris, and taught organ and improvisation at the Conservatoire de Paris. The last student of Marcel Dupré, she played around 2,000 recitals internationally and made recordings.
Born in Pont-Audemer, Pierre grew up in Loiret. At age seven, she attended a recital on the Cavaillé-Coll organ of the Church of St. Ouen, Rouen, by Marcel Dupré and then took an interest in the instrument. She was an organist and choir leader at the "église de Barentin" at age 15. She attended the , where she studied with Norbert Dufourcq, Maurice Duruflé, Noël Gallon and Marcel Lanquetuit, and the Conservatoire de Paris, where she with Dupré, awarded a first prize for organ and improvisation in 1955, with unanimous approval of the jury, to which Jeanne Demessieux belonged. At age 23, she was the youngest in his class to receive this distinction. She became Dupré's last living student. Pierre took advanced organ classes with Fernando Germani in Siena, and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg with Franz Sauer.
Pierre was assistant organist to Jean-Jacques Grünenwald at the Paris church Saint-Pierre de Montrouge from 1955 to 1957. She taught organ and music history at the Conservatoire de Rouen from 1959 to 1969. She was the organist at La Madeleine, Paris, from 1969 to 1979, succeeding Demessieux in a post which Gabriel Fauré and Camille Saint-Saëns held before. Pierre taught organ and improvisation at the Conservatoire de Paris from 1981 to 1992. Among her students were Michael Matthes, the organist at Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois in Paris, and Ignace Michiels. She also taught at the Scuola Internationale d'Alto Perfezionmento Musicale in Perugia and gave master classes internationally. She was also a jury member in international organ competitions.
In 1977, Pierre represented France at the International Organ Congress in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. She gave over 2,000 organ recitals throughout her career, including 12 tours to the U.S. and 6 to Asia. She performed at major festivals and played as an organ soloist with conductors including A. de Bavier, Pierre Dervaux, Lorin Maazel and Georges Prêtre. She was a member of the "Commission technique consultative pour les orgues" (Consultative Commission for the Restoration and Construction of Organs) in Paris from 1977.
Pierre was married to Pierre Aubé. She died on 29 February 2020 at the age of 87.
Pierre made several recordings, especially for RCA. She recorded works by Charles-Marie Widor, including his Symphony for Organ No. 5, played on the of St. Ulrich und Afra in Augsburg. In the 1980s, she recorded at at the Nieuwe Kerk in Katwijk aan Zee, built by Van den Heuvel.
Pierre composed organ pieces published by Éditions Alphonse Leduc, Schott and Edizioni Carrara. She was the editor for the works of Alexandre Guilmant for Éditions Bornemann.
Among her compositions are:
Pierre received awards including:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258897
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Bathers at San Niccolò
Bathers at San Niccolò is a large oil painting by Domenico Cresti, known as Domenico Passignano, signed and dated 1600. The Mannerist painting depicts men bathing in the River Arno near the crenelated Tower of San Niccolò in Florence.
The subject is a departure from Passignano's usual oeuvre of religious, mythological, and historical paintings. The depictions draw on earlier works depicting naked people, such as religious paintings of the torments of Hell. The painting may also draw on a pair of engravings by Albrecht Dürer of bathing men and women, and paintings of public baths made by Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, particularly Michelangelo's uncompleted (and now lost) fresco of the Battle of Cascina made for the Room of the Great Council now the Salone dei Cinquecento) at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence between 1504 and 1508, known from engravings of the (also lost) cartoon. The battle was fought on a hot summer's day, so the Florentine soldiers removed their armour to bathe in the river: the Pisans attempted to launch a surprise attack, but the refreshed Florentines were warned of the approaching Pisans and re-armed themselves in time to defeat their tired enemies.
Passignano made a number of preliminary drawings in red chalk, perhaps made from life, some of which are held by the Uffizi and the Louvre. The completed oil painting depicts a number of muscular men in or beside the river: stripping off, entering and leaving the water, bathing, conversing, and embracing. It measures and is signed and dated lower center: "OPs. DOMCI. PASSIGNANI / FLO MDC".
The provenance of the painting before the mid-20th century is uncertain. It may have influenced a c.1630 engraving of a similar bathing scene by Jacques Callot. It may be a work mentioned in a catalogue by Filippo Baldinucci published posthumously in 1728, as being owned by Filippo di Lorenzo Niccolini, third Marchese di Ponsacco e Camugliano (1655-1738), in Florence in the late 17th century. It appeared with the art dealers Reid and Lefevre in London by 1959, and passed through several private collections, before being sold at Sotheby's in New York in 2017 for US$732,500. The auction catalogue described it as "perhaps the most important artistic example of homoerotic art of the late Mannerist period", anticipating by 300 years paintings such as Thomas Eakins's "The Swimming Hole".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63258983
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Catch! Teenieping
Catch! Teenieping () is a Korean computer-animated television series produced by SAMG Animation. The series premiered on KBS2 on March 19, 2020.
"Catch! Teenieping" revolves around mischevous creatures called Teenieping that like to enter people's minds, but their playful nature and magical powers can wreak havoc in their hosts' lives. When the Teenieping are set loose on Earth, Princess Romi of the Emotion Kingdom becomes an ordinary girl that has to turn into a magical girl to stop them, all while balancing her new civilian life as a worker for the Bakery Heartrose with her coworkers Ian, Kyle, and Jun.
"Catch! Teenieping" premiered on KBS2 in South Korea on March 19, 2020. The series is also released on VODs and video platforms.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259026
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Kiminori Matsuyama
Kiminori Matsuyama () is a Japanese economist. He is a professor of economics at Northwestern University and, since December 2018, the chief scientific adviser of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research. He is also international senior fellow at the Canon Institute of Global Studies. He was awarded the Nakahara Prize from the Japanese Economic Association in 1996 and was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1999.
After receiving his BA in International Relations from the University of Tokyo in 1980, he received a PhD in economics from Harvard in 1987.
Matsuyama’s main fields of research are international trade and macroeconomics. In particular, he has worked extensively on such topics as north-south trade, economic growth, economic development, income inequality, structural change, and endogenous economic fluctuations. He is, in his own words, “interested in understanding the mechanisms behind macroeconomic instability, structural transformation, as well as inequality across countries, regions, and households, and how they interact with credit market imperfections and product market innovations.”
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259189
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Corn-rent
Corn rent is a type of variable money rent that follows fluctuations in the price of corn.
The principle underlying the concept of corn-rent is that a tenant farmer pays a portion of the produce of a farm to the landlord as rent. However, the price of produce varies and so the money value of this allotted portion varies based on the price.
Different types of rents existed in the feudal system of Medieval Hungary including rent in kind which could mean gifts like chickens, loaves of bread, butter, etc. or the less common (but more burdensome) "corn tax" paid from the yields produced on tenant farm lands. The demand for 1/9th of the corn crop is found in the law of 1351 there is evidence for its collection from 1438 at Pécsvárad Abbey, in 1451 at the bishopric of Varad (modern Romania), Köszvényes, Tolna County in 1465, Károly in Szatmár County in 1481, and Lippó in Baranya County in 1483.
Corn rent was often collected as a fixed quantity rather than a proportion of yield in the villages attached to the estates of Zalavár, Komárom, Karakó, Sempte, Bátmonostor manor in Bodrog, Marótis manor, and numerous villages of the Töttös estates in Baranya. The exact amount varied even among the villages of each estate, for instance only two villages of Csente manor paid the corn rent, while in some areas other cereals like rye and oats were also subject to similar provisions.
The 1830 case "King v. Joddrell" concerned Yelling Parish, the corn rent was imposed as compensation after the practice of paying tithes ended when the parish was enclosed by an act of Parliament.
David Ricardo wrote:
"But there are improvements which may lower the relative value of the produce without lowering the corn rent, though they will lower the money rent of the land. Such improvements do not increase the productive powers of the land; but they enable us to obtain its produce with less labour...Less capital, which is the same thing as less labour , will be emploued on the land; but to obtain the same produce, less land cannot be cultivated. Whether improvements of this kind, however, effect corn rent, must depend on the question, whether the difference between the produce obtained by the employment of different portions of capital be increased, stationary or diminished. If four portions of capital, 50, 60, 70 and 80, be employed on the land, giving each the same results, and any provement in the formation of such capital should enable me to withdraw five from each, so that they should be 45, 55, 65, and 75, no alteration would take place in the corn rent."
In "Principles" Ricardo defines rent as the ""proportion" of the whole produce [of the produce obtained with a given capital on a given farm] without any reference to its exchangeable value". Ricardo reasons that where "the same cause, the difficulty of production, raises the exchangeable value of raw produce paid to the landlord for rent, it is obvious that the landlord is doubly benefited by difficulty of production. First he obtains a "greater share", and secondly the commodity in which he is paid is of greater value." In response to Thomas Malthus' claim that "Improvements in agriculture tend even according to the concessions of Mr. Ricardo to increase the proportion of the whole produce which falls to the landlord's share", Ricardo replied:
"If therefore I have anywhere said that rent rises or falls in the proportion that the produce is obtained is increased or diminished I have committed an error. I am not however conscious of having done so."
In "Notes on Malthus" Ricardo states that the "landlords relative condition to the capitalists will gradually improve with the progres sof the country, although his rent will certainly not increase in the "proportion" of the gross produce." This is inconsistent with the model developed by Ricardo in "Principles". During the "Corn Laws" debates, landlords complained that their relative share of social income had fallen, though the models devised by Ricardo had predicted they would rise with population and capital. According to Malthus' own account:
"During the last forty years...though rents have greatly increased in exchangeable value...it appears by the returns of the Board of Agriculture that they are now only a fifth of the gross produce, whereas they were formerly a fourth or a third."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259195
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B.S. (song)
"B.S." is a song recorded by American singer Jhené Aiko for her third studio album "Chilombo" (2020), featuring vocals from American singer H.E.R.. It was written by Jhené Aiko, Big Sean, Brian Warfield, H.E.R., Mac Robinson and was produced by Fisticuffs. It entered at number 24 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 the week following the album's release.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259271
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Perceptics
Perceptics LLC is a developer and manufacturer of automated license plate recognition (LPR) equipment based in Farragut, Tennessee, founded in approximately 1978. John Dalton is the CEO. A large hack of their data exposed their operations, as well as the locations of installations.
Their technology is used by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at 43 border crossings, both to Mexico and Canada, as part of a partnership with Unisys Federal Systems. Perceptics is the exclusive license plate recognition provider for CBP. Perceptics operated as a subcontractor to Unisys for the license plate reader contract, worth $229 million over several years. As of 2019, Perceptics has worked on CBP contracts for "nearly 30 years". They also provide "under-vehicle surveillance systems", and have contracts with the Drug Enforcement Administration checkpoints, the Canada Border Services Agency, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia's Special Forces, and the Jordanian army.
Perceptics was previously a subsidiary of Northrup Grumman. They have been filling CBP contracts since 1982 and license plate readers since 1997. In 2002 the equipment cost was approximately $90,000 per lane.
Perceptics also discussed promoting their license plate reading technology for use on a congestion pricing scheme to MTA in New York City in a presentation titled "Smart Imaging Solutions for New York City Congestion Pricing". They demoed the technology to MTA's Bridges and Tunnels division. The Perceptics system provides much more capabilities than license plate reading, such as "Vehicle Occupancy Imaging System", which can identify drivers and passengers, as well as tracking car locations and driver behavior as a profile. Perceptics and Unisys were also involved in a CBP trial project called the "Vehicle Face System", involving facial recognition of car occupants.
Perceptics used Amazon Rekognition as of August 2018.
Data from the hack revealed the Canada Border Services Agency had at least two dozen installations, as widespread as the Sumas-Huntingdon Border Crossing in British Columbia, to the Fort Fairfield - Andover Border Crossing in New Brunswick, worth $21 million CND in contracts. Traffic weigh stations in Canada, run by International Road Dynamics, also use Perceptics. Halifax Harbour Bridges trialed the technology. The Buffalo and Fort Erie Public Bridge Authority as purchased Perceptics cameras, they are administered by the US CBP. Canada Revenue Agency had contracts with the company until 2014.
On May 13 2019, Perceptics discovered they were hacked. They notified the FBI within 24 hours, and they notified Unisys on May 17. The hack was revealed by The Register on May 23. The CBP learned of the data breach on May 31, over three weeks after the discovery of the hack. CBP acknowledged a breach on that date but didn't reveal the contractor involved, but the Microsoft Word document title pointed to Perceptics. CBP also stated CBP said "as of today, none of the image data has been identified on the dark web or internet."
Identifiable information such as faces were stolen. Somewhere under 100,000 images were taken, which were part of a 45-day dataset from one port of entry. The data was transferred off of the CBP's systems to Perceptics's systems, a violation of CBP policy. The Register showed that data was available on Tor, and included images, HR records, databases, DHS manuals, signed NDAs, and business plans. Distributed Denial of Secrets mirrored the data to the open web, making it more easily accessible. Later, The Register identified images taken at border crossings at Santa Teresa, New Mexico, and Columbus, New Mexico, and Hidalgo, Texas.
Perceptics demoed the technology for the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and 50 gigabytes of photos over two months in 2017 were identified in the hack and published on Vice News's Motherboard.
CBP suspended the contract, citing "conduct indicating a lack of business honesty or integrity". Suspensions are a rare action. In September 2019, Perceptics and CBP signed an agreement, where CBP stated the collection of data was "completely unacceptable" but not unethical or illegal, and Perceptics agreeing to security reforms and monitoring.
A hacker claimed to have access to Perceptics's systems for four months and demanded a ransom.
The breach led to scrutiny from Sen. Rick Scott, Sen. Edward J. Markey, Sen. Ron Wyden, Rep. Bennie Thompson, and privacy advocates.
Perceptics engaged lobbyists such as Lucia Alonzo of Ferox Strategies to lobby on their behalf, and the hack of Perceptics showed this influence. Cristina Antelo at Podesta Group also lobbied Democrats on their behalf, joining Ferox Strategies after Podesta Group closed.
In emails to Perceptics, Alonzo confirmed that both top alternatives in a 2018 immigration reform bill included provisions with $125 million for "LPR modernization" and $175 million for a border cargo LPR project in Laredo, Texas, presumably benefitting Perceptics as the exclusive provider of LPR equipment to the CBP. The text of the provisions in both alternatives was nearly identical.
Alonzo also supplied talking points to Tennessee's Republican Chuck Fleischmann to use in a session with the head of CBP. After the exchange, Alonzo emailed Perceptics, confirming Fleischmann "asked about CBP's plan to modernize its LPRs as we asked his office to do".
Later, Texas Sen. John Cornyn, included the same Laredo border cargo LPR project and "LPR modernization" projects and figures in two late-2017 Senate immigration bills. Alonzo suggested that Perceptics CEO John Dalton donate money to Cornyn, and Antelo was previously on Cornyn's staff.
In 2014 and 2015, Podesta Group emails said the Podesta staff would "preemptively meet if necessary to ensure LPRs do not get drawn further into the privacy conversation" and about building a "possible coalition against LPR bans". In 2018, Antelo, at Podesta, described meetings with California Democratic congressman Peter Aguilar, Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez.
In February 2020, connections to conservative Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar were published, tracing his involvement with Perceptics back to at last 2009, through Antelo and Podesta Group. He was described as "our Cuellar firepower" and by Perceptics CEO Dalton as a "friendly congressman". Cuellar was involved in the same "talking points" event as Fleischmann, and Cuellar asked other talking points recommended by Perceptics and lobbyists, with Alonzo emailing a report about Cuellar asking "about pilots going on at Laredo that sound a lot like Perceptics’".
Perceptics and Podesta Group lobbied against competitor Axiompass in 2012, as presentations and reports indicated. A 2014 Podesta Group report identified dozens of PACs connected to politicians to make donations to.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259360
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Emmanuel Debarre
Emmanuel Debarre (9 November 1948 – 28 February 2020) was a French sculptor. He focused mostly on abstract art.
In 1965, Debarre decided to devote his life to sculpture and drawing after a meeting with Alberto Giacometti. He studied mathematics at the Lycée Georges Clemenceau in Nantes. After graduation, Debarre moved to Nice and first studied primary colors. He then relocated to Paris in 1973 and began a series of blue monochromes, which he exhibited the following year at the Museum of the Holy Cross Abbey in Les Sables-d'Olonne. At this exhibition, Italian sculptor Antonino Virduzzo invited Debarre to one of his workshops in Rome.
Debarre primarily used black marble from Belgium and blue granite from Brazil for his sculptures. He also worked with a contemporary material, called altuglas.
Debarre erected the bronze statue at the location of the film "Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot" in Saint-Marc-sur-Mer.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259378
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Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture
Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture is a series of software engineering book describing software design patterns
patterns languages.
Architectural patterns
Design patterns
Service access and configuration patterns
Event handling patterns
Synchronization Patterns
Concurrency Patterns
Resource acquisition
Resource lifecycle
Resource release
Software architecture
Distribution Infrastructure
Adaptation and execution
Resource management
Database access
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259392
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William Tennent III
William Tennent III (1740August 11, 1777) was a Presbyterian pastor and South Carolina politician. He was born and educated in northern Colonial America, but spent the latter part of his life in the southern state of South Carolina. He was a prominent advocate for the dis-establishment of any state religion. He is known for his opposition to British colonial policy, publishing patriotic essays in support of the revolution. He was selected to travel in 1775 into the "back county" of South Carolina to convert Loyalists to the cause. In the state assembly, he lobbied for religious liberty in the drafting of state constitutions.
William Tennent III was born in Freehold, New Jersey, the son of William Tennent Jr. and grandson of William Tennent. He graduated from the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in 1758, and earned a master's degree from Harvard University in 1763. He was licensed to preach (1761–62) and then ordained (1762–63) by the Presbytery of New Brunswick.
He preached for about six months in Hanover, Virginia, and then in Norwalk, Connecticut, at the Congregational Church where he was assistant minister. He remained in Norwalk for over six years. He declined an invitation to preach in Boston and instead moved to Charleston, South Carolina. From 1772 until his death in 1777, he was the pastor of The Meeting House in Charleston, which in colonial times was unnamed and known as either the Independent, Congregational, or Presbyterian Church. He was not succeeded until the conclusion of the Revolutionary War in 1783, and during the time the British held Charleston, they used the building as a storehouse. The church evolved to become the present Circular Congregational Church.
Tennent was an advocate for religious equality in South Carolina, which at the time had an established Anglican state religion. An interdenominational meeting chose Tennent on April 27, 1776, as their representative in the assembly to lobby for religious freedom in the new state constitution. The 1776 constitution, while renouncing the Church of England, kept South Carolina Anglican. Tennent addressed the South Carolina General Assembly on January 11, 1777, "praying for a Constitutional Recognition of the Equal Rights of all Religious Denominations". He demanded an end to any state-established religion, and the financial support given to establishment churches by the government. He supported the constitution, adopted in 1778, that moved in that direction by establishing a state religion of Christianity affording equality to all Christian denominations.
Tennent was a Whig (or Patriot) and opposed British colonial policy after 1773. He was a member of the South Carolina General Assembly, then known as the provincial Congress, that functioned as the colony's rebel government, and authored political speeches. He continued as pastor, but successfully segregated his political beliefs in support of the revolution from his preachings, although he strongly believed in both religious and civil liberty.
Tennent published essays in support of the Patriot cause after the passage of the Tea Act and the subsequent Intolerable Acts. His efforts to stimulate Patriotism made him known as the "Firebrand Parson".
Tennent was first elected to the Assembly in 1774 and authored an anti-British jeremiad entitled "An Address, Occasioned by the Late Invasion of the Liberties of the American Colonists by the British Parliament".
In 1775, Tennent and Oliver Hart, a Baptist, were sent by South Carolina's Committee of Safety to the rural areas of South Carolina to counter the Loyalist movement and encourage settlers there to support the Patriot side. The mission was conceived by Colonel William Thomson, a provincial ranger commander. The goal was to explain the reasons for the rebellion and gain the allegiance of their leaders and militia. The mission was led by rebel William Henry Drayton. They were to be assisted by Colonel Richard Richardson and Joseph Kershaw.
The Committee selected Tennent for the mission because, as grandson of William Tennent, he was influential and respected, and was highly educated with two master's degrees. Furthermore, as a Presbyterian, he would be influential in the rural areas where many of the citizens there were also Presbyterian.
Tennent and Drayton arrived at a trading post near Granby on the Congaree River in Orangeburg County in early August 1775, after traveling . Tennent conducted a religious service for a company of dissatisfied militia-men there. Tennent then proceeded to travel north across the Broad River towards Rocky Creek, preaching to Scotch-Irish who were believed to be ready to join the Patriot cause. Tennent's Patriotic speeches succeeded in getting more men to form militia companies loyal to the provincial congress. In one three-day period, he enlisted over four hundred men.
In July 1776, Tennent was on a mission to North Carolina to try to convert some Tories there to switch sides. A companion on the trip, Francis Salvador, the first Georgian Patriot to die in the revolution, was ambushed, shot, and scalped by the Loyalists.
In 1764, Tennent married Susan Vergereau. They had five children, including John Charles Tennent (born 1774), Charles, William Peter Tennent (died 1816), and two others. Tennent died August 11, 1777, at High Hills of the Santee near Stateburg in Sumter County after developing a fever; he had returned from New Jersey where he had gone to accompany his mother, recently widowed, back to South Carolina. A historical marker was erected near there on Highway 261 that reads:
He is buried in the cemetery of the Unitarian Church in Charleston, which is located a short distance from the Meeting House and was formed by the "Society of Dissenters" who needed more space and built a second building to complement the Meeting House.
A commemorative inscription there reads:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259398
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Catastrophe du Boël
The catastrophe du Boël (disaster of Boël) was a landslide that occurred on June 6, 1884 in a quarry at a place named Le Boël in Bruz, Ille-et-Vilaine, in the west of France. The landslide killed eight people including two children. Groundwater that weakened the cliff and damage caused by explosives used to remove red shale (found as a construction material in the local churches) from the quarry were the principle causes of the accident. The search to recover the bodies took five days.
At the time, the event left its mark, probably because of the death of the children and because it impacted different social classes. Editors of several newspapers from Rennes collaborated and sold a magazine at 50 cents apiece to benefit the victims. Donation campaigns were also carried out by the local press.
Le Boël is a place situated along the Vilaine River, to the southwest of Rennes, between the municipalities of Guichen and Bruz.
At the end of the 19th century, the quarries in the area worked to extract red shale which can be found in the masonry of local churches, including the churches of Rheu, Saint-Erblon, L'Hermitage, Cesson-Sévigné and La Chapelle-des-Fougeretz. More precisely, it is a siltstone, a micaceous purple Le Boël type which are "massive rocks, sometimes with an eyed structure associated with bioturbation, roughly cut by a fractured schistosity", the red facies being due to the alteration of the chlorite to hematite. To extract this rock, the quarry workers used explosives on the side of a cliff, often risking their lives.
The river Vilaine served as a route to transport the extracted rock by boat and the river traffic was dense. In 1881, more than 61,500 metric tons of freight transported via 2,849 ships passed through the lock at Boël. During this period, due to the numerous town planning works carried out in Rennes, then headed by the mayor Edgard Le Bastard, the General Council of Ille-et-Vilaine saw an 80% increase in river traffic.
At the time, about twenty quarry workers worked in the quarry of Boël, near the mill of Boël. The quarry was the property of a Mr. Ferrand, the miller of Boël, who bought it two or three months before the incident. The workers were under the orders of Monsieur de la Bourdonnaye, châtelain and mayor of Laillé. They earned about two francs per cubic meter of material. According to the tradition of the country, to work faster and earn more money, the quarrymen had the habit of attacking the rock from below rather than mining it from the top layer.
Friday June 6, 1884, was a day whose stormy heat was accompanied by heavy rain. At the end of the morning, near 11 AM, seven quarry workers who were working in the quarry decided to rest a little and, soon after, they were joined by the miller's stepson who brang cider. In search of relief on this hot morning, the eight people decided to settle in the shade of a huge rock that formed a dome. Shortly after, "a crack followed by a tear was heard, then a roll similar to the sound of thunder." Behind the mill located below, near the lock, large blocks of rock broke away from the cliff, crushing the quarry workers who were resting and drinking. The few people who were nearby, as well as quarry workers in the area who were quick to join them, quickly started looking for possible survivors.
According to the June 8, 1884 edition of "Le Petit Rennais hebdomadaire", the timing of the incident was different. In fact, during this season, the workers generally worked from 5 AM in the morning and took a break around 8 AM to rest and eat. It was then that the landslide would have taken place and, after the alarm was immediately given, the rescue work would have started around 9 AM.
The first bodies to be freed were that of Renaud shortly after the landslide and that of the Chérel Jr. around 7 PM. The search stopped after dark and resumed the next day at dawn. The bodies of Marchand and Josset were found that day before that of Chérel Sr., whose body was removed around 8 PM. On the following days, the excavation work continued and the bodies of Robert, Morin and Grégoire were cleared of the rubble on Sunday evening, Monday and Tuesday morning, respectively.
During the disaster, different social classes were affected. Among the victims were children and adults, but also workers and a family member of the quarry owner.
Groundwater was a danger for the quarry workers because it weakened the cliff. It would thus be one of the causes of the disaster, in addition to the damage caused by the explosives used to extract the shale. Also, around 7:45 AM on the day of the incident, the quarry team leader had a borehole loaded, but although the wick was lit, there was no explosion. It is unclear, however, if the quarry workers loaded a new charge recklessly into the same hole or if a second borehole was put into action.
The funeral for the five deceased that were discovered on Friday and Saturday took place in the church of the village of Pont-Réan on Sunday, June 8. For the last three victims whose bodies were found between Sunday evening and Tuesday morning, their lives were celebrated in the same place on Tuesday. The death certificates were drawn up at the town hall of Bruz, as the Boël quarry is located in Bruz.
On June 29, it was announced in the press that the Minister of the Interior, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, sent 500 francs so that the sum could be distributed among the families of the victims. Various initiatives to help the families of the deceased were made. For example, donation campaigns were carried out by the local press to help them. In Rennes, children forfeit the amount they obtained from distribution at their primary municipal school so that a sum of 20 francs could be paid in their name.
In addition, the editors of various Rennes newspapers collaborated to produce a collection of poems with an account of the disaster and engravings, in a single issue, "for the benefit of the victims of the Boël disaster." Collaboration occurred between the republican, monarchist and theatrical press. In support of this initiative, the printers provided the material free of charge. This illustrated newspaper was put on sale at the price of 50 cents on Sunday July 6, 1884.
In June of 1891, another landslide killed six workers, who died from being crushed under a 30 metric ton block of rock. However, this incident did not elicit the same response as the incident of 1884, probably due to the fact that children and other social classes were not affected.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259407
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Youssef Fares (neurosurgeon)
Youssef Fares () is a Lebanese neurosurgeon, academic and healthcare leader. He is a Professor and the Associate Dean at the Lebanese University Faculty of Medicine, where he serves as the founding director of the Neuroscience Research Center. Fares is also the CEO and Chairman of Al-Zahraa Hospital University Medical Center, the founding president of the Lebanese Association of Spine Surgery and the Senior Executive Vice President of the World Academy of Medical Sciences. In addition, he serves as an editor for the leading neurosurgical journal "Surgical Neurology International".
In March 2020, Fares was elected into the European Academy of Sciences and Arts.
Fares was born and raised in Lebanon. In 1982, he moved to Spain to attain an MD from the University of Granada in 1987 and a PhD in Medicine and Surgery "summa cum laude" from the Autonomous University of Madrid in 1992. He also finished an Executive MBA with honors from the American University of Technology in 2019.
Fares completed his training in neurosurgery at the of the Autonomous University of Madrid and attained his Board Certification from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science in 1993. He further pursued numerous fellowships in stereotactic neurosurgery at the Hospital Infanta Cristina de Badajoz, pediatric neurosurgery at the , epilepsy surgery at the Maudsley Hospital and neuronavigation at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital.
Since 1994, Fares has been a member of the faculty of medicine at the Lebanese University, where he is a professor. In 2012, he was appointed the Associate Dean of the Faculty of Medicine. In 2014, he established the Neuroscience Research Center at the university that he currently serves as the Founding Director. He previously led the Department of Neurosurgery at the Lebanese University as its Chairman between 2009 and 2020.
In 2016, Fares was appointed the CEO and Chairman of Al-Zahraa Hospital–University Medical Center, a major medical center in Lebanon. He inaugurated state-of-the-art facilities, recruited physicians and transitioned the hospital to a full academic medical center.
Fares was appointed as the Senior Executive Vice President of the World Academy of Medical Sciences in 2017. In 2018, he established a headquarters for the academy in Beirut to serve the MENA region.
Fares is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons, a Fellow of the International College of Surgeons and an International Member of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.
Fares’s research in neurosurgery, neuroscience and conflict medicine led to more than 100 peer-reviewed publications that range between books, book chapters, original articles, reviews, editorials and conference proceedings. He co-developed the Fares Scale of Injuries due to Cluster Munitions to evaluate functional impairment in victims of cluster munitions.
Fares was elected into the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in 2020. He is also an elected Fellow of the World Academy of Medical Sciences since 2017.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259455
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Mahila College, Khagaul
Mahila College, Khagaul is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts, science and conducts some vocational courses.
The college was established in 1972. It became a constituent unit of Patliputra University in 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259612
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Theophilus Eagles
Theophilus R. Eagles Jr. (November 10, 1885 – June 7, 1936) was an American football coach and collegiate mathematics faculty member. He served as the head football coach at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina in 1908, compiling arecord of 0–4. Eagles was also as a mathematics professor at the school. Later in his academic career, he was a math professor at Bethany College in Bethany, West Virginia.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259700
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RLSY College, Bakhtiyarpur
RLSY College, Bakhtiyarpur also known as Ram Lakhan Singh Yadav College is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts, science and conducts some vocational courses.
The college was established in 1964. It became a constituent unit of Patliputra University in 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259815
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Al Lipscomb
Albert Louis “Al” Lipscomb (15 June 1925 – 18 June 2011) was a seven-term Dallas City Council member and a longtime advocate for civil rights. He was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit in the 1970s that successfully challenged Dallas’ system of electing every council member citywide, forcing the city to change to a mostly single-member district system.
D Magazine called Lipscomb, who was the first black person to run for mayor, “the Jackie Robinson of Dallas city government." Several African-American officials credited him with opening doors for them. He won eight council elections and was one of the longest-serving council members in Dallas history at 14 years, with the record being 16 years.
Lipscomb was convicted of federal bribery charges in 2000, stemming from what prosecutors said were improper payments from a taxi cab company owner. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2002.
Lipscomb was born in a southeast Dallas neighborhood and grew up in a home built by family members. In 2002, he described how, as a child, he often witnessed his grandfather having to get off the sidewalk whenever a white person passed, and take off his hat to pay respect. Lipscomb was also the frequent target of racially-motivated violence from other children.
These events helped mold Lipscomb into a civil rights advocate, he said. His mother, Lucille Jeffrey, was an organizer for Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty who also greatly influenced him.
Lipscomb graduated from Lincoln High, working part-time as a busboy at the Adolphus Hotel during high school. He joined the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1943 during World War II, serving in California with the military police. After being discharged, he remained in California and said he "got involved in drugs." Lipscomb was arrested for selling heroin and was incarcerated for ten months of a one-year jail sentence. Lipscomb said he planned to return to Dallas sooner after being discharged from the Army since it was “home,” but he got caught up in “a nightmare.”
In the early 1950s, he moved back to Dallas, where he waited tables in restaurants. He met his future wife, Lovie Lipscomb, when they worked for the same hotel. He eventually became the headwaiter at the executive dining room of First National Bank. Among the restaurant’s patrons was wealthy oilman H.L. Hunt, who would only request water and a phone since he brought his lunch in a sack. Hunt would sometimes work on a novel there, and he tipped the waiters well, Lipscomb said.
In 1966, Lipscomb, often sporting an Afro and bell bottoms, became a neighborhood organizer for the Dallas Community Action Agency, a nonprofit organization founded to work in the War on Poverty. Previously, he volunteered some with projects to challenge segregation launched by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, attending protests to open up drugstore counters and other facilities to black people. He also organized with Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and co-founded the Dallas chapter. In addition, he founded a clearinghouse for community problems, the South Dallas Information Center, and claimed to be the first person to be arrested and thrown out of Dallas City Hall.
A major issue of the time was trying to stop developers from buying out black homeowners at unfair prices for a proposed expansion of the State Fair of Texas in Fair Park. In 1969, Lipscomb, the SCLC’s Rev. Peter Johnson and other community activists organized out of Mount Olive Lutheran Church. They were able to negotiate with then-Mayor J. Erik Jonsson for more favorable home buyout prices after threatening to stage a large demonstration during the nationally-televised Cotton Bowl Parade.
In forcing a meeting with the mayor, the group had to endure bomb threats to the point that the police chief went to the church basement where the activists prepared for the protest and told them it wasn’t safe to stay there. Rev. Johnson said he drew a line across the church basement floor and told everyone present that they were free to leave with no hard feelings. Anyone willing to brave the threats and more was asked to cross the line. "The first person to walk across that line was Albert Lipscomb,” Johnson said. The mayor soon caved and agreed to the meeting.
In 1971, Lipscomb became Dallas’ first black candidate for mayor, finishing third in a field of seven. He ran for council and some other offices several more times before he was elected to the Dallas City Council in 1984.
In 1971, he also became the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit to challenge the City Council’s method of electing members all at large. He and others argued in court that the system effectively discriminated against minorities and had resulted in very few non-white council members. U.S. District Judge Eldon Mahon’s opinion, issued in January 1975, stated that the all at-large system was unconstitutional because it was “intentionally adopted and maintained to dilute the voting strength of African-Americans…. When all members of the City Council are elected at-large, the significance of this pattern of blacks carrying their own areas and yet losing on a citywide basis is that black voters of Dallas do have less opportunity than do the white voters to elect candidates of their choice.”
Lipscomb won several more elections and became mayor pro tem in 1991, then left the council in 1993 due to a term-limit rule. Two years later, he won another election to the council and remained until he resigned in 2000 amidst a scandal over alleged improper payments by the owner of a taxi cab company.
Economic development in South Dallas was among the issues Lipscomb worked on during his council terms. He co-sponsored a community-based crime prevention program and was outspoken about police shootings of minorities and minority hiring policies.
In 1999, Lipscomb and taxi cab company owner Floyd Richards were indicted on federal bribery charges. Richards was accused of making about $94,000 in illegal payments to Lipscomb and a son-in-law, Roderick L. Dudley, from 1984 to 1993. The indictment alleged that Lipscomb then strongly lobbied to approve city ordinances that aided Richards’ businesses, effectively undercutting smaller competitors.
Lipscomb and his attorneys denied the charges. An attorney for Richards also denied giving money as “bribes with intent to improperly influence or reward” Lipscomb, but he said any payments were considered “aid and assistance” to Lipscomb. “The list of people and companies that have provided aid and assistance to Mr. Lipscomb would read like a who's who of Dallas,” attorney Reed Prospere said.
Before voters raised Dallas City Council members’ salaries to $37,500 annually in 2001 and $60,000 in 2014, they were only paid $50 per meeting. Critics said the low pay was designed to ensure that only wealthy business people or their spouses – essentially volunteers who had their companies or spouses pay for what became a full-time job in a growing, major city - could serve on the council. Proponents argued that the council-manager form was implemented in Dallas in 1931 to curb corruption in city government and have a professional manager run the city as a business with the council as part-time board of directors.
But the council-manager form led to excesses, such as charges that the mayor and council members voted on contracts and issues that benefited their companies. In addition, lower-income citizens, such as Lipscomb, who had families to support had to make substantial sacrifices if they wanted some council representation. In trying to make ends meet while advocating for issues important to lower-income people, some accepted payments from wealthier citizens. Sometimes payments were made directly in cash, while others times they were diverted through a business run by them or a family member. Lipscomb stated that the payments he accepted came with "no strings attached." Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a long-time ally who Lipscomb mentored, said, “Most civil rights leaders in this city have probably always had beneficiaries in the white business community who could not afford to be identified. That comes all the way from the era of the Underground Railroad. But if the question is, was Al Lipscomb corrupted by that money, then the answer is definitely no.”
In taking money from Richards, Lipscomb “took actions that hurt Mr. Richards' rivals,” federal prosecutor Paul Coggins said. For instance, Lipscomb voted to substantially increase insurance requirements in 1996, which smaller competitors of Richards’ companies claimed would force them out of business. Mayor Ron Kirk said Lipscomb was “a decent and fine human being who ought to be remembered for his efforts to democratize the political process.” But Kirk said Lipscomb “may be guilty of errors in judgment and not having exercised the best business protocol.” A vice president for Richards’ company said the payments to Lipscomb were little different from the salary Kirk earned from “one of the largest law firms in the city that have clients who deal with the city every day.”
The case went before U.S. District Judge Joe Kendall, who moved the venue to Amarillo, saying he thought Lipscomb’s notoriety in Dallas and the case’s publicity would not result in a fair trial there. Prosecutors made a deal with Richards to testify against Lipscomb and plead guilty to conspiring to commit bribery in return for a one-month prison sentence and nine months of home confinement. Lipscomb refused a plea deal, and the case went before an all-white jury in Amarillo.
In the trial, political consultant Linda Pavlik described how she worked with Richards to give money to Dudley, who loaned funds to support Lipscomb’s 1995 council race. She said Richards once told her that he “bought and paid for” Lipscomb and another council member, even calling them the “n-word.” Richards testified that the money he gave to Lipscomb was not contingent on him voting a certain way. But at another point, he admitted, “I'm paying a man a thousand dollars a month. He's going to vote for me.”
The jury found Lipscomb guilty of 65 counts of bribery and conspiracy. He was forced to resign from the council, and Kendall sentenced him to 41 months of home confinement. But in 2002, a federal appeals court reversed the verdict, ruling that Kendall erred in moving the trial to Amarillo without citing evidence that unbiased jurors could not be located in the Dallas area.
While in home confinement, Lipscomb said he was reading the Bible and trying not to hold animosity towards anyone. But he still reserved strong criticism for journalist and politician Laura Miller, who had written about the alleged improper payments from white business people to Lipscomb and other black leaders for several years. Miller wrote in 1996 about problems with a chemical business that Lipscomb helped run, how he allegedly voted for projects backed by his customers and benefactors as a council member. She called him "clueless when it comes to some things - integrity and ethics are good examples."
Lipscomb voluntarily turned over bank records and other revealing business documents to Miller, who detailed numerous payments and votes in an 11,000-word article. "For too long now, Lipscomb, the people who cynically control him, and the media who overlook it all, have made a complete mockery of our local political system," Miller charged. Miller's reporting was among those cited in the federal case against Lipscomb.
As Miller ran for Dallas mayor in late 2001, Lipscomb told a reporter, “If Hitler, Satan and Miller were running, I wouldn't vote for her.” Council member James Fantroy, who beat Lipscomb in a 2005 race, said that many African Americans blamed Miller for black leaders’ legal troubles. In 2003, Miller informed a television reporter about a closed-door council session in which she objected to a Fantroy family company handling security for a proposed housing development, even though Fantroy recused himself from proceedings. While the city attorney said his recusal resolved any conflict, Miller still gave details to a reporter, whose broadcast reportedly caught the attention of local FBI agents. Investigations later resulted in Fantroy being convicted for embezzling money and council member Don Hill convicted for bribery.
Some black leaders and their lawyers charged that Miller herself took improper payments as a council member and mayor, including from the same housing developer who accused Hill of improper payments. Federal authorities said the payments to Miller were documented campaign contributions, while Hill received improper funds.
Lipscomb was a longtime member of St. Mark's Baptist Church in southeast Dallas, where he was a deacon and sang in the choir. He was a board member and leader of numerous community organizations besides the SCLC, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center, Dallas Legal Services and the Progressive Voters League.
Lipscomb and his wife, Lovie, had eight children, four from Lovie's previous marriage.
The Texas Peace Officers Association, a black police officer organization, named Lipscomb “Man of the Year” in 1980. D Magazine listed him as one of “50 People Who Made Dallas” in a 1991 feature, calling him “the Jackie Robinson of Dallas city government.” Lipscomb was “capable of passionate argument, unintentionally comic rhetoric and honeyed homilies from the Bible, but few doubt his commitment to social justice,” the magazine wrote.
Lipscomb also received honors from the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center and a civil rights center. In 2015, the city of Dallas renamed part of Grand Avenue to Al Lipscomb Way. The State Fair Classic annual football game was named after him from 1990 until 2000.
After battling diabetes and other health problems, Lipscomb died in 2011 at the age of 86. Longtime friend Eddie Sewell called him his hero. “He was my Malcolm X. He was my Nelson Mandela. He was my Martin Luther King.” Fellow council member Diane Ragsdale noted that he “was one of the strong warriors and soldiers early on, and sometimes he was out there by himself…. You must have people like Al Lipscomb to push people forward.”
His wife, Lovie, passed away in 2017.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259848
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Ru Thing
Ru Thing was born in the People's Republic of China on 21 December 1993 and was raised in Osaka Prefecture and educated at the Japan Narration Actor Institute.
Her voice acting career began in 2013, and she was cast as Rishuri Maezono in the "Tokyo 7th Sisters" rhythm game. In 2015, she was cast as Syuko Shiomi in "The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls", and her character single, which features the song "Ao no Ichibanhoshi", was releaed on 18 November 2015. It charted on the Oricon Singles Chart for 19 weeks and topped at #13 on 30 November. Syuko Shiomi also appeared in the series' first album to top the Oricon Albums Chart, "Cute jewelries! 003", and in the second season of the "Cinderella Girls" anime adaptation.
In anime, she has had minor roles in "Love Live! Sunshine!!", "Oreshura", and "The Morose Mononokean".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259892
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Virus Research
Virus Research is a peer-reviewed scientific journal which focuses on fundamental research in all aspects of virology. The journal was established in 1984 by Brian Mahy and Richard Compans.
The journal is abstracted and indexed in:
According to the "Journal Citation Reports", the journal has a 2018 impact factor of 2.736.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259937
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Ram Ratan Singh College
Ram Ratan Singh College is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts and science.
The college was established in 1957. It became a constituent unit of Patliputra University in 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63259968
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Western Premier League
The Western Premier League is a regional Australian association football league, comprising teams from the Central West region of New South Wales. The competition is run under the Western NSW Football body, an associate of Football NSW - a member federation of Football Federation Australia. It fits below the national A-League and NSW wide divisions including National Premier Leagues NSW, being level 6 league in the Australian league system.
The Western Premier League was founded in 1994 with East Dubbo United taking out the inaugural championship, defeating Bathurst '75 on penalties 4–3 in the grand final, after the score was locked at 2-all at the end of extra-time.
The competition run from 1994 until the end of 2012 before collapsing after Westside Panthers, Barnstoneworth United and Dubbo Bulls all pulled out in quick succession, leaving just three teams in the competition. The competition was later revived ahead of the 2020 season, with nine teams locked in contest the first WPL season in eight years.
The competition will consist of nine teams from around the Central West, region of New South Wales. Each team plays each other twice, to form a 18-round, round robin format. Six teams progress to a finals series, with the final two teams playing-off in a grand final to determine the winner.
The following clubs will participate in the 2020 Western Premier League:
There are seven clubs who have won the Western Premier League title.
Teams in bold compete in the Western Premier League as of the 2020 season.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260002
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SMD College, Punpun
SMD College, Punpun is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts, science and conducts some vocational courses.
The college was established in 1958. It became a constituent unit of Patliputra University in 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260104
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Dolphin Club (San Francisco)
The Dolphin Club, also known as the Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club, is an athletic club in San Francisco, California. It caters to open water swimming, rowing and 4-wall handball.
The club was founded in 1877. The clubhouse and boat house buildings are owned by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department and leased to the club. The club had 1,000 members in 2010, and claims 1,500 members today.
The Dolphin Swimming and Rowing Club was founded in July 1877 by a small group of German immigrants, including John Wieland, Valentine Kehrlein Sr. and their respective sons, together with Edward J Borremans, Louis Schroeder, Edward Peterson, Adolph C. Lutgens and Ernest H. Lutgens, who wanted to form a private sporting and social club, along similar lines to the Turnverein, a club which they had been members of in Bavaria. Membership of the club was originally limited to 25 members. Emil Arthur Kehrlein, the eldest son of Valentine Sr., served as the club's inaugural president. The club petitioned the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to erect a small clubhouse/equipment shack and pier at the junction of Beach and Leavenworth Streets, an area known as Bilge Water Cove. They were granted permission in April 1878. A surplus building was acquired from the Union Iron Works and the new building took a month to erect.
In 1881, the club expelled seven members including Emil and his brother Valetine Jr. The brothers would later establish the nearby Triton Rowing Club, and, in 1899, founded the Hotel Nymphia brothel. By 1886, the club had increased to over fifty members and was formally incorporated in 1888. In 1887, the club added the river barge, "John Wieland", to its fleet.
In 1895, facing increasing development of the waterfront the club resolved to relocate to a more protected site at the foot of Van Ness Avenue. Adolph C. Lutgens, an architect, was responsible for designing the club's boathouse in 1896 The club constructed a new clubhouse in February 1897, at a cost of $1,800, at the edge of Black Point Cove.
The clubhouse/boathouse has since been moved twice, once in 1927 and again in 1937 to what is its current location on the corner of Hyde and Jefferson Streets. The relocation of the building was necessitated by the extension of Van Ness Avenue, the construction of municipal pier, and the development of Aquatic Park Cove including the municipal public bathing bathhouse (which was originally intended to be the home of the Dolphin and South End clubs) and grandstand in 1936. Since 1949, the club has maintained a print magazine called the "Dolphin Log".
In 1956, Les Hedry, a rowing member who had done races with the club on the San Joaquin River near Stockton, organized a row from the club to Sacramento, approximately 105 miles, initially to visit the State Fair. The club would soon make the Sacramento Row an annual event.
In 1976, six women brought up a lawsuit that resulted in the Dolphin Club and the South End Rowing Club allowing women to become members. Their lawyer noted that "the basis of the suit was not gender bias, but federal law that governed any institution operating on public parkland". Women officially joined in 1977, and as of 2019, make up about a third of the membership.
The Dolphin Club has more than 34 wooden, fiberglass and carbon rowboats, almost all with sliding seats. The club also has kayaks, standup paddleboards, and motorized zodiacs.
The whitehalls and other wooden rowboats are built from oak, mahogany, cedar (seats, breasthook, burden boards), apple (breasthook, knees), and black locust (breasthook, ribs). Three kinds of cedar are used, Port Orford cedar from Oregon, Alaskan yellow and Spanish cedar. Two kinds of mahogany are used, Honduras and African mahogany. Since 1990, the club has harvested black locust wood from a grove in Isleton, California. Black locust are known for its resistance to rot, durability and straight grain, making it desirable for use as fence posts and wooden boats.
Members include local residents and athletes training for swimming the English Channel. According to a video from KQED, many swimmers do not wear wet suits.
The Dolphin Club hosts a polar bear swim challenge where members attempt to swim in the San Francisco Bay inside Aquatic Park during the winter season.
Since 1956, the Dolphin Club has hosted an annual row from the club to Sacramento. In 1984, Jon Bielinski started hosting a weekly boat night, where members and guests would socialize and do maintenance and repair on the club's wooden boats.
About twice a month, the Dolphin Club hosts a weekend swim in the San Francisco Bay. Most of the swims leave the Aquatic Park Cove. Swimmers are piloted by club boats for protection. Out-of-cove swims include swimming the length of the Golden Gate Bridge from south to north (approximately ), swimming from the Bay Bridge to the Dolphin Club (approximately ), and the Escape from Alcatraz swims (approximately ), the last of which has been part of the Escape from Alcatraz triathlons.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260131
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Michelle Lampl
Michelle Lampl is an American physician scientist, academic, and author. She is a distinguished professor and the Director of Emory University’s Center for the Study of Human Health. She is also the co-Director of the Emory-Georgia Tech Predictive Health Institute.
Lampl is internationally recognized for her work identifying normal human growth to be a pattern of saltation and stasis. Her research prompted a paradigm shift in fundamental understanding of normal growth biology and launched further research into the mechanisms that control the sudden growth bursts experienced by healthy infants and developing children. Lampl has written and edited four books and over 130 scientific articles. Her work is featured in the 2020 Netflix
documentary series "Babies".
She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2010.
Lampl was awarded a Bachelor of Arts and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She earned a Doctor of Medicine degree from the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.
On completing her Ph.D., Lampl began lecturing at the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers University and Princeton University before pursuing her medical degree. In 1994, she joined Emory University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and was advanced to Associate Professor in 1998, Full Professor in 2005, and was named the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Anthropology in 2006. Lampl was awarded the Emory Williams Teaching Award in 2003 and the University Exemplary Teacher award in 2018.
Lampl was appointed co-Director of the Emory University Predictive Health and Society Strategic Initiative in 2005, adding responsibility as Associate Director of the Center for Health Discovery and Well-Being in 2007. She has been the co-Director of Emory University/Georgia Institute of Technology Predictive Health Institute since its inception in 2007.
In 2011, Lampl became the founding director of the Emory Center for the Study of Human Health, where she created educational programs that integrate university-wide faculty to teach and award degrees in human health, predictive health, nutrition science, and a collaborative degree program with the Goizueta Business School in Health Innovation. In 2018 she was endowed the Charles Howard Candler Professorship of Human Health.
Lampl's primary research focus is the process of normal human growth and the physiological basis of health, from the first cell onwards. Lampl discovered that children grow by saltation and stasis, a process characterized by sudden jumps (saltare, Lat) in size abruptly interrupting days of unchanging size. Her work documented that more than 90% of the time healthy infants and children are not growing at all, a finding detected by measuring babies daily. Increasing size was found to occur as bones suddenly elongate and propel a baby’s length and child’s height by as much as a centimeter in one day, after not growing for days to weeks in infancy, and weeks to months among children and adolescents. Saltatory growth is a paradigm change in the understanding of normal growth with significant health implications.
Lampl collaborated with Michael Johnson to develop mathematical approaches to investigate and quantify discontinuous vs pulsatile biological signals. Their work initiated mathematical interrogation of the saltation and stasis model of growth in humans, permitting statistical comparisons between different biological models of growth by formal goodness-of-fit comparisons between continuous, pulsatile and discontinuous processes. Collaboration with Norman Wilsman and his team led to the identification of the cellular basis for saltatory bone elongation.
Humans begin life as a single cell and grow in size and complexity into a functional body over the course of nine months. Lampl’s studies employing ultrasound images demonstrated the challenge for the developing fetus to bring together both the architectural elements and energy resources to build the new body. Recognizing that by the time of birth some organs have completed their development (e.g., the kidneys and heart), while others remain to be established (aspects of the immune system), Lampl investigated specific influences on growth patterns and the importance of individual variability. For example, girls and boys do this distinctively, as do different populations. This work led to a collaboration with David Barker and the emerging science of developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD). Barker’s work is reviewed in Lampl and Roseboom’s educational course, "The Origins of Health", available through Coursera.
Predictive health focuses on health, not disease. The emerging science of predictive health proposes that there are many diseases based on few causes, in which fundamental processes associated with immune function, inflammation, oxidative stress, and regenerative potential impact health at the cellular level. Research documenting biomarkers of these processes permit anticipating the course of an individual’s health status over a lifetime, signaling health challenges long before the onset of disease.
Educating individuals about their own health status and how their behavior contributes to modulations in these fundamental processes is at the cutting edge of incorporating prediction in health care. This is foundational to transferring the responsibility for health upkeep from medicine to the individual. Lampl is introducing thousands of college students to this broader vision of health that they will carry with them throughout their careers and across their lives.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260136
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Kisan College, Nalanda
Kisan College, Nalanda is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts, science and conducts some vocational courses.
The college was established in 1957. It became a constituent unit of Patliputra University in 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260182
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Defense Distributed v. United States Department of State
Defense Distributed v. U.S. Dept. of State is a set of court cases brought by Defense Distributed challenging the federal export control of 3D gun files on the Internet.
The case was brought in 2015, two years after Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed were banned from sharing the files for the first 3D printed gun, Liberator, on the Internet. In May of 2013, Wilson had been a law student at the University of Texas, and had published the Liberator plans on his organization's website when the Obama administration asserted export control of the files under the ITAR and directed Wilson and Defense Distributed to remove them from public availability.
Making First, Second, and Fifth Amendment claims, Defense Distributed was represented by attorney Alan Gura, and had local counsel and other assistance from attorneys Josh Blackman, Matthew Goldstein, and the law firm Fish & Richardson, P.C.. In August 2015, the District Court for the Western District of Texas denied Defense Distributed's preliminary injunction request. In September 2016, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit similarly ruled against the motion and subsequently denied a request for rehearing en banc. Defense Distributed appealed this ruling to the Supreme Court in August 2017, who declined to hear the case on January 8, 2018.
On remand to the district court, and on the eve of changes to the federal export regulations, the U.S. State Department offered to settle the case, and on July 27, 2018 Defense Distributed accepted a license to publish its files along with a sum of almost $40,000.
When later asked to justify the settlement in a press conference, State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert defended the agency's decision, saying:
Over its life, the case drew frequent comparisons to Bernstein v. United States, a successful First Amendment challenge to the ITAR from 1996 where the Ninth Circuit held source code to be protected speech.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260218
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Sensei Kunshu
Ayuha Samaru, a straightforward, hardworking high school student, falls in love with Yoshitaka Hiromitsu, who helps her out one day at a restaurant. The next day, she discovers that Mr. Hiromitsu is a new substitute teacher filling in for her homeroom teacher at school. Ayuha believes that she and Mr. Hiromitsu are destined to become lovers and decides to persistently pursue him romantically.
"Sensei Kunshu" is written and illustrated by Momoko Kouda. It was serialized in the monthly magazine "Bessatsu Margaret" from the June 2013 issue released on July 13, 2013 to the May 2017 issue released on June 13, 2017. The chapters were later released in 13 bound volumes by Shueisha under the Margaret Comics imprint.
During the series' run, Shueisha released a vomic (voice comic) starring Rumi Okubo and Junichi Suwabe.
In January 2018, "Bessatsu Margaret" announced that a live-action film adaptation was green-lit, with a release date of August 1, 2018 later revealed in April of that year. The film is directed by Sho Tsukikawa and written by Erika Yoshida, with a starring cast of Minami Hamabe as Ayuha and Ryoma Takeuchi as Mr. Hiromitsu. Exile and Fantastics member Taiki Sato, Rina Kawaei, Yua Shinkawa, and Riko Fukumoto were announced as additional cast members in March 2017. The film's theme song is a cover of "I Want You Back" performed by Twice. A second version of the music video featuring the cast of the film dancing with Twice was released on June 26, 2018. The film is also titled "My Teacher, My Love" for international markets.
The Blu-ray deluxe edition sold a cumulative total of 3,097 copies in its first week and debuted at #15 on the Oricon Weekly Blu-ray Charts. The DVD deluxe edition sold a cumulative total of 2,695 copies in its first week and debuted at #11 on the Oricon Weekly DVD Charts, while the regular edition debuted at #29 and sold 1,389 copies.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260251
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Grant Dawson
Grant Dawson (born February 20, 1994) is an American mixed martial artist currently competing in the Featherweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Born and raised in Stromsburg, Nebraska, Dawson competed in high school wrestling, finishing his senior season with a record of 40-8.
After compiling an amateur record of 8-1, Dawson started his professional MMA career in 2014. He amassed a professional record of 11-1 prior to participating in Dana White's Tuesday Night Contender Series.
Dawson appeared in Dana White Contender Series - Season 1, Episode 6 web-series program. He faced Adrian Diaz on August 17, 2017 and won the fight via a submission in round two.With the win, Dawson was offered a UFC contract.
Dawson made his UFC debut on November 30, 2018 at against Julian Erosa. He won the fight via unanimous decision.
His next fight came on May18, 2019 at against Michael Trizano. He won the fight via a rear-naked choke in round two.
Dawson was scheduled to meet Chas Skelly on January 18, 2020 at UFC 246. However, Dawson was flagged by USADA the second times where the initial flagging was in November 2017 for a residual metabolite of the steroid Turinabol which it was subsequent cleared by USDADA for not able to determine when Dawson had ingested the banned substance, and that resulted in the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) pulling bout from UFC 246. The subsequent finding from USADA found no evidence of performance enhancement of a re-ingestion of a banned drug. However,
NSAC would revisit the matter in July, 2020 to determine to issue Nevada fighter licence Dawson and Dawson would have to undergo testing twice a month.
The bout was rescheduled on February 29, 2020 at at Norfolk, Virginia. On February 7, 2020 it was reported that Skelly was injured during one of his training session and was forced to withdraw from the event, and he was replaced by promotional newcomer Darrick Minner. At the weigh-ins, Dawson also failed to make weight, coming in at 149.5 pounds, 3.5 pounds over the featherweight non-title limit of 146 pounds. He was fined 30% of his fight purse, which went to Minner and the bout proceeded at a catchweight. Dawson won the fight via a submission in round two.
Dawson is expected to face Nad Narimani on July 18, 2020 at UFC Fight Night 173.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260298
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German International
The German International is an international badminton tournament held in Germany. The event is part of the Badminton World Federation's Future Series and part of the Badminton Europe Elite Circuit. It was held for the first time in 2019.
Updated to 2019 edition.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260336
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Sardar Patel Memorial College
Sardar Patel Memorial College is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts and science.
The college was established in 1974 on the ruins of landmark Udantpuri University which was founded by the king of Pala Dynasty, Gopala in 8th century AD. It was converted into a constituent unit of Magadh University in 1980. The college has become a constituent unit of Patliputra University since March 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260394
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SU College, Hilsa
SU College, Hilsa is a degree college in Bihar, India. It is a constituent unit of Patliputra University. The college offers Senior secondary education and Undergraduate degree in arts, science and conducts some vocational courses.
The college was established in 1955. It became a constituent unit of Patliputra University in March 2018.
The college offers the following degrees and courses.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260446
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Timothy Shanahan (educator)
Timothy Shanahan is an educator, researcher, and education policy-maker focused on literacy education. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Education, at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education, Department of Curriculum & Instruction, and he has held a visiting research appointment at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was elected president of the International Literacy Association in 2004. He operates the popular informational website, Shanahan on Literacy.
Shanahan previously served as Director of Reading for the Chicago Public Schools under Chief Executive Officer Arne Duncan. He was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the Board of Advisors of the National Institute of Literacy, and he completed his term under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Shanahan has written or edited numerous books and monographs and has written more than 200 articles, chapters, and other publications on literacy education. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Literacy Research and the Yearbook of the National Reading Association. Currently he serves on several editorial boards, including Review of Educational Research, Journal of Educational Psychology, Scientific Studies in Reading, Reading Research Quarterly, Reading Psychology, and Reading & Writing Quarterly: An International Journal. He was a member of the influential National Reading Panel. He also chaired two other federal research review panels, the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and Youth, and the National Early Literacy Panel, and helped author the widely adopted Common Core State Standards.
Shanahan graduated from Oakland University, Rochester, MI with a degree in Social Science/History in 1972 despite not graduating from high school. He earned a Master of Arts in Teaching in Reading Education in 1974, also from Oakland University. He received his PhD in Education from the University of Delaware in 1980.
Shanahan began his professional career as a primary grade teacher in Holly, MI and Swartz Creek, MI, where he taught third grade, first grade, and remedial reading. While working on his PhD, he served as a Right to Read consultant in Secretary, MD.
Upon completing his PhD, he became an assistant professor in the reading education program at what was then the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. There he taught undergraduate and graduate level courses in the teaching of reading and did research on reading development and instruction. He later was promoted to the Associate Professor and Professor ranks.
While at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), he founded the UIC Center for Literacy
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260616
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Perikatan Nasional
The National Alliance (; PN) is the ruling conservative and nationalist political alliance in Malaysia that was created between the member parties of Barisan Nasional (BN), Malaysian United Indigenous Party (BERSATU) and Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). The alliance has been in majority government at the federal level since March 2020, through the support of Gabungan Parti Sarawak (GPS), Gabungan Bersatu Sabah (GBS).
The alliance was established in February 2020 during the 2020 Malaysian political crisis when BERSATU departed from the then-governing Pakatan Harapan (PH) coalition. The 16th Yang di-Pertuan Agong, Abdullah of Pahang, appointed Muhyiddin Yassin, President of the BERSATU and "de facto" Leader of the Perikatan Nasional, as the 8th Prime Minister of Malaysia, bringing the informal political alliance into government. On 17 May, the leaders and chairpersons of BN, BERSATU, PAS, GPS, Parti Bersatu Sabah (PBS), and the Homeland Solidarity Party (STAR) officially announced a memorandum of understanding formalising Perikatan Nasional.
Perikatan Nasional currently holds 114 seats in the Dewan Rakyat giving the alliance a working majority in Parliament.
Since the morning of 23 February 2020, a faction from Parti Keadilan Rakyat (PKR) led by its deputy president Azmin Ali who also served as Minister for Economic Affairs, BERSATU's supreme council, Muafakat Nasional of Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS)-United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) pact retreat, UMNO's own supreme council, and GPS's member of the parliament (MP); all held separate meetings in various locations. These meetings, particularly that of BERSATU and Azmin Ali's faction led to rumours that the formation of a new governing coalition was being undertaken. Later in the evening, an entourage of party leaders including Azmin, BERSATU president and then-Minister of Home Affairs Muhiyiddin, UMNO president Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, PAS president Hadi Awang, GPS chairman Abang Johari Openg and Parti Warisan Sabah (Warisan) president Shafie Apdal arrived at the Istana Negara to seek an audience with the Yang di-Pertuan Agong It was rumoured that the leaders were there to brief the Agong about the formation of a new coalition government and to declare their support for a new prime minister, effectively blocking PKR's president Anwar Ibrahim from the position. Once the meeting had concluded, several opposition party leaders, including UMNO's Ismail Sabri Yaakob and PAS's Hadi Awang then joined Azmin's supporters at Sheraton Hotel in Petaling Jaya. The purpose of the gathering was later revealed to be a dinner event called ""Majlis Makan Malam Muafakat Ahli Parlimen"" celebrating the achievement of a "consensus" among MPs, of which 131 were in attendance, from both the government and opposition. This sparked controversy as people began to wonder of the purpose and meaning of the event, causing a split in the Pakatan Harapan coalition. The events that day were dubbed the "Sheraton Move", and it was known as one of the longest Sundays in Malaysian politics.
It was later confirmed by former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Razak, that he, as well as MPs from the UMNO, signed statutory declarations (SD) in support of the then-Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohamad lead an alliance called Perikatan Nasional; however, their agreement was conditional.
On the following day, Azmin Ali and PKR vice-president Zuraida Kamaruddin were sacked from the party, as announced by secretary general, Saifuddin Nasution Ismail that afternoon, as several other members of the party announced their departure from the party in solidarity with the two. Following this, Mahathir announced his resignation from his position as Prime Minister, and BERSATU President, Muhyiddin Yassin, announced that the party would officially leave the Pakatan Harapan coalition. This caused the coalition to lose its majority in the Dewan Rakyat, marking the downfall of the almost 2 year old Pakatan Harapan government.
The royal palace announced that the Agong had accepted Mahathir's resignation and appointed him as interim Prime Minister in order to oversee the country's administration until the formation of a new government.
Having other plans in mind, Mahathir decided to call for all MPs to unite under a non-partisan unity government, where all parties in parliament would take part in the government. This was rejected by almost every other party as they refused to be in the same government as their rivals, most notably Muafakat Nasional (UMNO and PAS) and the DAP. Muafakat Nasional called for the dissolution of the parliament and snap elections, stating that the only solution was by letting the people choose the government.
To resolve the issue, the Agong summoned every member of the Dewan Rakyat for an audience so that he may interview each of them personally so as to determine who had the support of the majority of parliament to form a new government as Prime Minister. This is because Article 43 (2) (a) of the Federal Constitution of Malaysia states that the Yang di-Pertuan Agong shall need to appoint the Prime Minister from among the members of the Dewan Rakyat, who in his judgment is likely to command the confidence of the majority of the members of the parliament. However, none of them gained the majority support of the parliament, that is at least 112 members, since Barisan Nasional and Gagasan Sejahtera voted for the dissolution of the parliament, while Pakatan Harapan and BERSATU named Anwar Ibrahim and Mahathir respectively.
On the afternoon of 28 February, BERSATU secretary-general Datuk Marzuki Yahaya announced that all of its' 36 MPs have decided on nominating party president Muhyiddin for the position of Prime Minister instead of Mahathir. However, a number of BERSATU MPs later denied that they had nominated Muhiyiddin and were still supporting Mahathir. In the evening, both Barisan Nasional and Muafakat Nasional also announced their support for Muhiyiddin to succeed Mahathir as the next Prime Minister. This was soon followed by claims made by political analysts in Sabah and Sarawak that local parties such as GBS, GPS, and Warisan intended to support Muhiyiddin as Prime Minister, securing him a majority in parliament.
On the evening of the 29 February 2020, the Agong announced that Muhyiddin had gained majority support and was appointed as the 8th Prime Minister of Malaysia. He was sworn in the following day at Istana Negara.
On 17 May 2020, the leaders of BERSATU, Barisan Nasional, PAS, GPS, PBS, and STAR issued a joint statement saying that all their 111 MPs support formalising the Perikatan Nasional alliance which was previously an ad hoc agreement. The parties' leaders also announced that they had been working on a memorandum of understanding to facilitate cooperation within the PN alliance. Key provisions of the MOU include upholding the Malaysian Constitution, the sovereignty of the Malay Rulers, the principles of Rukun Negara, and ensuring the welfare and interest of Malaysians of all religions and race.
Perikatan Nasional Presidential Council:
Perikatan Nasional and its supporting parties have 114 MPs in the Dewan Rakyat as shown below.
Perlis State Legislative Assembly
Perak State Legislative Assembly
Kedah State Legislative Assembly
Penang State Legislative Assembly
Melaka State Legislative Assembly
Johor State Legislative Assembly
Negeri Sembilan State Legislative Assembly
Selangor State Legislative Assembly
Kelantan State Legislative Assembly
Terengganu State Legislative Assembly
Pahang State Legislative Assembly
Sabah State Legislative Assembly
Sarawak State Legislative Assembly
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260652
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Montague Leverson
Montague Richard Leverson (1830–1925) was a British lawyer who emigrated to the US, where he was a rancher in Colorado, and lawyer and politician in California.
He was born in London on 2 March 1830, the son of Montague Levyson and his wife Elizabeth. He was the brother of the diamond merchant George Bazett Colvin Leverson, and uncle of Ernest David Leverson, husband of Ada Leverson; his brother James was also a diamond merchant, and George and James became the managers of Pittar, Leverson & Co. His family was Jewish, but he abandoned kosher at age 18. From 1852 to 1859 he was a sole practitioner as a patent agent in Bishopsgate, London, then going into partnership.
At this period Leverson was a supporter of the Association for Promoting Jewish Settlements in Palestine founded by Abraham Benisch in 1852. It also involved William Henry Black, and did not continue long. He read a paper to the first conference of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, in 1857, "On the Outlines of Jurisprudence".
The Orsini affair trials of Simon François Bernard and Edward Truelove in 1858 brought Leverson prominence as a radical lawyer, acting as solicitor for their defences, with Edward James as counsel. Luigi Pianciani dedicated his "La Rome des Papes" (1859) to Leverson.
Leverson was on good terms, he claimed, with Giuseppe Mazzini, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Louis Blanc and Victor Hugo. His brother George was involved in fundraising for Garibaldi: the "New York Times" in 1860 wrote that "George Leverson, the well-known advocate of the cause of liberty, and brother to the Solicitor in Dr. Bernard's and the Press Prosecution Defences, is Treasurer pro tem." for a London fund.
In 1861 the secularist Charles Bradlaugh became managing clerk in Leverson's legal practice. In November of that year, Leverson acted on behalf of Bradlaugh in a criminal libel case brought by Sydney Gedge, concerning a church rates issue. In 1862 an arrangement was made for Leverson to give Bradlaugh his articles as a solicitor. Subsequently, the business got into difficulties. Bradlaugh left in 1864. In 1865 Leverson was elected to the Council of the Reform League.
Giving evidence in 1869 to a committee of the House of Representatives on electoral fraud, Leverson stated that he had come to the US in January 1867, and had been admitted to the bar in the United States in May 1868. As he wrote to Andrew Johnson in August 1867, he arrived with a letter from Charles Francis Adams Sr. in London, attesting to Leverson's support for the Union during the American Civil War. He offered to advise the embattled Johnson. He gave evidence in the fraud matter against Tammany Hall and its practices in relation to naturalization.
He himself was naturalized as a US citizen in 1867.
From 1872 Leverson had a ranch in Douglas County, Colorado, near Larkspur, and lectured on political economy at Golden, Colorado.
Leverson involved himself in the Lincoln County War of 1878. He wrote to Carl Schurz in August 1878, describing the situation in Lincoln County. He wrote also to President Rutherford B. Hayes, suggesting that Samuel Beach Axtell should be removed as Governor of the New Mexico Territory. It appeared later that Leverson was angling to have himself appointed as Governor. He was mocked by "The Santa Fe New Mexican".
On the ground, Leverson had a part in the release of John Chisum from the San Miguel County jail. Chisum was being held there in spring 1878, for the sake of a debt owed to Thomas B. Catron. In court, Catron was arguing for a writ of "ne exeat". Leverson has been credited with bringing together Chisum's supporters, with the effect that he left jail on bail of $25,000, and the matter of the debt, related to meat packing business, was settled. In June, Judge Samuel A. Parks ruled that "ne exeat" could not be granted in New Mexico.
Ostensibly, Leverson had been invited to Lincoln, New Mexico by Juan Patrón, a member of the New Mexico Territorial Legislature in Santa Fe, and elected its Speaker in 1877. It has been said that he was already a business associate of Chisum. He represented himself in correspondence as interested in planting a substantial English colony in the lower Pecos valley, where Chisum's ranch lay, obstructed solely by a lack of law and order. His prolific letter-writing chose as targets influential figures of the Santa Fe Ring, such as Catron and Stephen Benton Elkins.
Frank Warner Angel, the Special Agent looking into the New Mexico violence, summed up Leverson as "knows 6 times as much as he can prove & 6 times more than anyone else", and identified him as a strong supporter of Alexander McSween.
Leverson in 1879 moved to San Francisco, where he worked as a lawyer. He was a member of the California State Assembly for the 12th district in 1883–1884. In California he encountered Henry George, around 1880. He presented himself as an political economist, and mentioned his 1876 primer on the topic, published in New York. He dropped the names of his English contacts William Ellis and John Stuart Mill; and stated that, now he had read George's "Progress and Poverty" (1879) to which Joseph LeConte had introduced him, he felt his primer should be rewritten. He became an advocate for Georgism.
At the Proportional Representation Congress in Chicago in 1893, Leverson spoke on "The Proxy System as a Means of Real Representation." He mentioned that such a system, on the model of a joint-stock company, was in his draft proposal for a constitution for Colorado State of 1875. For the moment, he supported a simpler proportional representation approach.
During the Philippine–American War, Leverson supported the American Anti-Imperialist League. On his own initiative, he wrote from Fort Hamilton to Emilio Aguinaldo, which allowed opponents to characterise the League as "seditious". Another letter, to Galicano Apacible, caused the League to claim he was not a member. He spoke at an anti-imperialist rally in Philadelphia in February 1900, and sent the text of his speech to Leo Tolstoy.
In 1893 Leverson obtained a medical degree at Baltimore Medical College. He styled himself "Dr Leverson", and became a homeopathic physician and anti-vaccinator, speaking against vaccination in London in March 1908, with an introduction by letter from Sarah Newcomb Merrick.
Leverson opposed the views of Louis Pasteur, and became a supporter of Antoine Béchamp. He travelled to meet Béchamp in Paris, and attended his funeral in 1908.
Leverson returned to the United Kingdom in 1900, and regained British citizenship in 1922. He lived in Bournemouth.
Leverson published:
The 1923 book by Ethel Douglas Hume, "Béchamp or Pasteur? a Lost Chapter in the History of Biology", was based on manuscripts by Leverson.
Leverson married Kate Hyam. Gerald Finzi was their grandson. The couple separated when he moved to the USA. In old age, around 80, he married again.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260653
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COVID-19 pandemic in Bahrain
The COVID-19 pandemic in Bahrain is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Bahrain on 21 February 2020. As of 29 June, there have been a total of 26,239 confirmed cases, of which 20,928 have recovered and 84 have died. A total of 545,125 tests were conducted.
On 12 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which was reported to the WHO on 31 December 2019.
The case fatality ratio for COVID-19 has been much lower than SARS of 2003, but the transmission has been significantly greater, with a significant total death toll.
On 21 February, Bahrain confirmed the first COVID-19 cases, a school bus driver who came from Iran via Dubai.
On 24 February, a Bahraini woman arriving at the Bahrain International Airport from Iran via Dubai was examined as part of the precautionary measures and tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. She had arrived from Iran with her husband and sister in-law. Everyone was moved to isolation. Bahrain suspended all flights from Dubai Airport and Sharjah Airport for 48 hours. It also announced a travel ban on Iran.
On 25 February, Bahrain confirmed nine new cases, raising the total count to 17 cases. The nine cases involved four Bahraini women and two Bahraini men coming from Iran via Sharjah, two Saudi women coming from Iran through Sharjah and one Bahraini coming through Dubai.
Bahrain suspended all schools, nurseries and universities for two weeks to curb the spread of COVID-19 infection. CBSE exams were postponed.
On 26 February, Bahrain confirmed nine new cases, raising the total count to 26 cases, including three new cases involving three women travelling to the country from Iran.
Civil Aviation Affairs in Bahrain announced that suspension of flights to and from Dubai International Airport was extended for an additional 48 hours. Flights to and from Iraq and Lebanon were suspended until further notice. The Health Ministry announced compulsory health check ups for all citizens and residents who traveled to Iran in February.
On 27 February, Bahrain confirmed seven new cases, raising the total count to 33 cases. Most of the new cases came from Iran via indirect flights. Infected individuals were taken to Ebrahim Khalil Kanoo Community Medical Center for isolation.
On 28 February, Bahrain confirmed two new cases, a Bahraini national and a Saudi Arabia national who had come from Iran via indirect flights. As of 28 February, there have been 38 confirmed cases in Bahrain.
On 8 March, the Health minister of Bahrain said that there are 94 confirmed cases and 14 recovered cases.
On 12 March, hundreds of prisoners were ordered released. At this point, among countries with at least one million citizens, Bahrain had the world's fourth-highest per capita rate of positive COVID-19 cases in the world, at 114.6 cases per million people (twice the rate of China).
On 16 March, the Ministry of Health reported that a 65-year-old Bahraini woman had died from the coronavirus, marking the first death in Bahrain and the Gulf from the disease. The woman was believed to suffer from chronic diseases. On the same day, the national coronavirus task force launched an appeal for volunteers to provide medical and administrative support during the crisis. The Civil Aviation Authority also announced a significant reduction of incoming flights to Bahrain.
On 17 March, the Bahraini government unveiled an $11.39 billion stimulus package to support the country's economy during the pandemic, also covering water and electricity bills over the next 3 months.
On 22 March, a 51 year old Bahraini female was reported to have died from coronavirus, becoming the second confirmed death in the country. The woman contracted the disease while in Iran and was amongst a group of Bahrainis repatriated from the country in February. She was believed to have had chronic health problems and was quarantined upon arrival to Bahrain. On the same day, Bahrain banned public gatherings of more than 5 individuals with all gatherings in public parks and beaches being strictly prohibited - violators could be punished by a fine of 5000 Bahraini dinars
and/or 3 years imprisonment. The country also announced it was participating in the World Health Organization's SOLIDARITY trial which researches new evidence-based treatment modalities for coronavirus - being the first such Arab country to participate.
On 23 March, the National Taskforce for Combating the Coronavirus designated the Bahrain International Exhibition & Convention Centre as the main testing centre for COVID-19. The centre is divided into three separate halls depending on COVID-19 exposure, a rapid treatment area, and a pharmacy. It has at least 500 beds and 1,200 seats for patients.
On 24 March, a 65-year-old Bahraini male with chronic illnesses died of the coronavirus, becoming the third confirmed death in the country. Bahrain banned the export of hand sanitizers and detergents for a period of 3 months owing to unprecedented domestic demand. The same day, the Central Bank of Bahrain ordered currency exchange companies to sterilise local and international currencies by exposing banknotes to ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, high temperatures, or isolating them for at least three days as a precautionary act to safeguard bank employees and the public. The country's lower house of parliament approved an urgent proposal for a partial curfew from 6 pm to 5 am which is to be reviewed by the upper house of parliament. Only 23 out of the 40 MPs were present during the three-hour session and 19 voted in favour, with 2 against and 2 abstaining.
On 25 March, a 78-year-old Bahraini male with chronic illnesses reportedly died of the coronavirus, becoming the fourth confirmed death in the country. On the same day, a group of 61 Bahraini pilgrims were evacuated from Iran on a chartered flight and placed in quarantine or treatment centers, 30% of whom tested positive for COVID-19.
The executive committee of the Bahraini government announced the closure of all non-essential commercial enterprises from March 26 onward. Exceptions to this rule included supermarkets, banks, bakeries, and healthcare facilities. The closure would take effect at 7 pm on March 26 and last until 7 pm on April 9. All businesses will be allowed to re-open from April 9 to April 23.
On 28 March, the National Health Regulatory Authority announced that asymptomatic patients can seek private healthcare treatment at their own expense at the Regis Hotel, Best Western Hotel, and Taj Plaza Hotel which would be staffed by healthcare professionals from the Middle East Hospital. A later announcement on 17 April 2020 by the Regis Hotel owner Varghese Kurian declared that Bahrainis would be treated for free at that specific hotel. Furthermore, the Novotel Hotel is also manned by medical staff from the Bahrain Specialist Hospital.
On 30 March, the Ministry of Health set up COVID-19 sampling stations in Manama, Durrat Al Bahrain and Budaiya, aimed at processing random test samples from the elderly and populations at risk to the virus. This included workers in supermarkets, bakeries and pharmacies. The Civil Defence announced that it had conducted 5,618 disinfection operations across the country. St. Christopher's School began 3-D printing face visors for healthcare staff at the Bahrain Defence Force Hospital and Awali Cardiac Centre.
On 31 March, Bahrain's Information & eGovernment Authority released the "BeAware Bahrain" application on the Apple & Google Play store. The application uses GPS location data to alert users about nearby active cases of COVID-19 or locations visited by positive cases of the disease.
On 1 April, the Ministry of Health announced over 316 patients with COVID-19 have recovered since the start of the outbreak and that more than 34,159 people had been tested for the virus.
On 6 April, the iGA began distributing electronic waterproof wristbands with location-tracking to monitor individuals under home quarantine. The measures were announced to reduce the spread of COVID-19 from non-compliant quarantined individuals; the wristband is paired with the user's smartphone and sends an automatic warning once there is a 15-metre distance between the two. Violators are liable to imprisonment for 3 months and a fine of 1000-10000 Bahraini dinars. Random testing of the population revealed a Bangladeshi man testing positive for COVID-19. Contact tracing revealed all 15 of his neighbours in the same building had also tested positive - all of whom have been quarantined.
On 7 April, the Ministry of Health announced 55 new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total active cases to 349. The Ministry also revealed a total of 50,127 individuals had been tested for the virus. On the same day, the Ministry also announced the 5th death due to COVID-19; a 70 year old Bahraini man with chronic diseases. The Bahraini Ministry of Foreign Affairs have announced that the country had repatriated 1,200 Bahrainis worldwide since the start of the pandemic in January. The government announced a continuation of restrictions on public gatherings but permitted the opening of commercial enterprises from April 9 to April 23, provided that they follow hygiene guidelines. The government also announced that wearing face masks is mandatory while in public.
On 8 April, the government announced that it would spend US$570 million to pay for the salaries of all Bahraini employees (an estimated 100,000) working in the private sector from April to June 2020.
On 10 April, the Ministry of Health announced the 6th death from COVID-19; a 63 year old Bahraini male with chronic illnesses who had returned from Iran. On the same day, the Bahrain Defence Force Hospital opened a 130-bed field intensive care unit, intended for treating COVID-19 patients. The field unit took 7 days to establish and is located on the third floor of the hospital's car park.
On 13 April, the Ministry of Health announced the largest spike of confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 212 new cases, of which 206 were migrant workers.
On 15 April, the Ministry of Health announced the 7th death from COVID-19; a 60 year old Bahraini male with chronic illnesses who contracted the virus from a returnee. On the same day, it was announced that 3 public bus drivers had tested positive for COVID-19 during random testing at a labour camp in Askar, this led to reductions in bus route frequencies and schedule changes.
On 16 April, the Royal Humanitarian Foundation launched the "Feena Khair" (There is Good in Us) campaign that aims to collect financial and material donations to assist in tackling the pandemic in Bahrain. Donations received include food, medical equipment and at least 5 million BHD.
On 17 April, 44 new cases of COVID-19 were announced; 22 were returnees from Iran, 10 contracted the disease from contacts, 2 were migrant workers while the aetiology of the spread is unspecified in the remaining 10 patients.
On 18 April, 125 stranded Bahraini nationals in India were evacuated from Pune and brought back to the country.
On 22 April, the Bahraini Government Executive Committee announced the extension of social-distancing protocols into the Islamic month of Ramadan, adding that the general public should refrain from attending public iftars, ghabgas, and majlises.
On 23 April, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce opened a virtual mall website called mall.bh. The e-service was setup to enable more than 100 participating shops to sell goods and services to customers amid physical closures of stores.
On 24 April, the country reported its largest single-day increase in new cases, with 301 confirmed cases of COVID-19 detected, 212 of whom are migrant workers.
On 25 April, the government announced it converted a number of public transport buses into mobile testing centres.
On 27 April, research from Google reportedly showed that Bahrain had the least reduction in mobility (-21.2%) amongst the Gulf Cooperation Council states, largely believed to be due to an avoidance of a complete lockdown as opposed to its neighbours.
By the end of April and as Ramadan began, the country announced that total active cases had reached 1,493 out of a total of 2,811 confirmed cases since the outbreak began, in addition to 121,706 tests being conducted in total.
Bahrain had many cases in May as well. The cases have increased to more than 7,000 as of 17th May. According to statistics as of May 5th, cases are averaging at a rate of 277 per day.
On 13 May, 31 members of the same family had all tested positive for COVID-19 after not following appropriate social distance protocols.
On 14 May, Bahrain's National Health Regulatory Authority issued permits to private hospitals to conduct COVID-19 testing on non-infected patients or asymptomatic cases for a fee. The samples would still be sent to the public health laboratory for testing.
On 18 May, the country reported that total active cases exceeded 4,000 individuals and that the total number of tests stood at 236,828.
On 29 May, Bahraini police arrested a man who claimed COVID-19 was a hoax and for spreading false news in contravention of the country's public health law .
At the start of June 2020, the country reported a total number of 11,804 infected cases of COVID-19 with 19 deaths to date.
On 8 June, Bahrain reported the highest number of COVID-19 positive cases recorded in a single day with 654 cases. The following day, it was revealed through contact tracing that one COVID-19 positive patient had directly and indirectly infected 91 people with the virus.
On 18 June, the Bahraini newspaper Al Watan reported the termination of a large number of foreigners in the public sector, according to an anonymous parliamentary source. The paper also reported the government studying plans to continue subsidies on electricity and water for citizens. Government statistics revealed that Bahrain's exports fell to 55% of normal, passenger traffic at Bahrain International Airport reduced by 98%, and occupancy rates at hotels fell by 72% since the start of the pandemic. Bahrain also reported the highest number of COVID-19 deaths recorded in a single day with 6 deaths, raising the total death toll to 55.
On 22 June, the first doctor to die from COVID-19 in Bahrain was reported by the media. Soloman Vinay Kumar was a primary care physician who worked at the American Mission Hospital and died after a four-week battle in intensive care.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260687
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COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico
The COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico is part of the ongoing worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Mexico in February 2020. However, the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) reported two cases of COVID-19 in mid-January 2020 in the states of Nayarit and Tabasco, one case per state. As of July 1, there had been 231,770 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico and 28,510 reported deaths, although the Secretariat of Health estimated in early May 2020 that there were more than 104,562 cases in Mexico, because they were considering the total number of cases confirmed as a statistical sample.
On January 12, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan City, Hubei Province, China, which was reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) on December 31, 2019.
The case fatality ratio for COVID-19 has been much lower than SARS of 2003, but the transmission has been significantly greater, with a significant total death toll.
On January 22, 2020, the Secretariat of Health issued a statement saying that the novel coronavirus COVID-19 did not present a danger to Mexico. 441 cases had been confirmed in China, Thailand, South Korea, and the United States, and a travel advisory was issued on January 9.
On January 30, 2020, before the declaration of a pandemic by the World Health Organization the Government of Mexico designed a "Preparation and Response Plan" that was made by the National Committee for Health Safety, a working group led by Secretariat of Health composed by different health entities aiming to act upon the imminent arrival of the pandemic. This group carried out a series of alert measures, rehabilitation and updating of epidemiological regulations based on the International Health Regulations, being the first Latam country that deployed a mathematical modelling of infectious disease.
The cruise ship "Grand Princess" docked in Puerto Vallarta (February 15), Manzanillo (February 16), Mazatlán (February 17) and Cabo San Lucas (February 18), spending 9 to 12 hours in each port. The first COVID-19 death in California was a man who had been on this ship on an earlier cruise. This ship was later quarantined off San Francisco and docked in Oakland March 11 with 21 onboard who tested positive for the coronavirus.
The cruise ship , which was not allowed to dock in the Cayman Islands or Jamaica, docked in Cozumel, Quintana Roo, on February 27. Three passengers were diagnosed with "influenza A virus", but no cases of coronavirus were found.
On February 28, Mexico confirmed its first three cases. A 35-year-old man and a 59-year-old man in Mexico City and a 41-year-old man in the northern state of Sinaloa tested positive and were held in isolation at a hospital and a hotel, respectively. They had travelled to Bergamo, Italy, for a week in mid-February.
On February 29, a fourth case was detected and confirmed in the city of Torreón, in the state of Coahuila, from a 20-year-old woman who traveled to Italy.
On March 1, a fifth case was announced in Chiapas in a student who had just returned from Italy. On March 6, a sixth case was confirmed in the State of Mexico in a 71-year-old man who had returned from Italy on February 21.
COVID-19 was the topic of conversation at the meeting of the National Governors' Conference (Conago) held on March 5, 2020. In addition to governors from different states (or state health representatives), the directors of Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar (INSABI), IMSS, and ISSSTE participated.
On March 6 during the first session of National Council of Health, Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, one of the main strategists and spokespersons of Mexican Government on pandemics, led the first daily press conference on Covid-19.
On March 7, a seventh case was also confirmed in Mexico City in a 46-year-old male who had previously had contact with another confirmed case in the United States.
On March 10, an eighth case was reported in Puebla, a 47-year-old German man who had returned from a business trip to Italy. On the same date, 40 members of a dance company in Puebla, returning from a tour in Italy, were quarantined. The Mexican Stock Exchange fell to a record low on March 10 due to fears of the coronavirus and because of falling oil prices. The Bank of Mexico (Banxico) stepped in to prop up the value of the peso, which fell 14% to 22.929 per US dollar.
On March 11, a ninth case was confirmed in the city of Monterrey, Nuevo León. A 57-year-old man, who had recently come back from a trip all across Europe, was placed under quarantine. The man, who has remained anonymous, came back from his trip a week before and had contact with eight other people who have also been placed under quarantine in their houses. The man has been confirmed to reside in the city of San Pedro Garza García.
On March 12, Mexico announced it had a total of 15 confirmed cases, with new cases in Puebla and Durango. A day later, senator accused the federal government of hiding the true number of confirmed cases.
On March 13, it was confirmed that the Mexican Stock Exchange Chairman, Jaime Ruiz Sacristan, tested positive as an asymptomatic case. Later, the Secretariat of Health announced in press conference that the number of confirmed cases had risen to 26. Several universities, including the UNAM and Tec de Monterrey, switched to virtual classes. Authorities announced to be considering the cancellation of the "Festival Internacional de Cine de Guadalajara". In Mérida, the "Tianguis Turístico" was postponed to September. Several major sporting events were also canceled.
On March 14, Fernando Petersen, the secretary of health of the state of Jalisco, confirmed the first two cases of COVID-19 were detected in Hospital Civil de Guadalajara. Two new cases were confirmed in Nuevo León, and the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) announced that all sporting and civic events in schools would be canceled. The same day, the Secretariat of Education announced that Easter break, originally planned from April 6 to 17, would be extended from March 20 to April 20 as a preventive measure. The Secretariat of Finance and Public Credit (SCHP) announced it was taking measures to prevent a 0.5% fall in gross domestic product (GDP). Drugstores in Cuernavaca report shortages of masks, antibacterial gel, and other items. On the same day the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon, (UANL) (the country's third largest university in terms of student population) suspended classes for its more than 206,000 students starting on March 17 and ending on April 20.
Businessman José Kuri was reported in critical condition on March 14 after a trip to Vail, Colorado, United States, although early reports of his death were false. As of March 14, there have been 41 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Mexico.
The March 14 and 15 "Festival Vive Latino" (rock and Latin music) in Mexico City opened according to schedule, in spite of fears of contagion. Temperatures of the 70,000 people who attend each day were taken at the door and anti-bacterial gel was widely distributed. Organizers said that the "Passion Play of Iztapalapa" would continue as scheduled in Holy Week. Tito Domínguez, vice president of the organizing committee, noted that a miracle had saved Iztapalapa during the cholera outbreak in 1833.
On March 15, mayor Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters that an additional MXN $100 million (US$4.4 million) would be reassigned from an undefined allocation of the City's budget, citing road maintenance as an example. The first confirmed case of coronavirus in Acapulco, Guerrero, was reported. Querétaro reported two new cases, bringing the total to six. Nuevo León reported its fifth case. The Norteño group Los Tres Tristes Tigres released a song on March 15 titled "El corrido del coronavirus".
As of March 16, President López Obrador continued to downplay the impact of coronavirus. "Pandemics ... won't do anything to us," and accused the press and the opposition for its reportage. On March 16, lawyer Marco Antonio del Toro petitioned the federal courts to cease all but essential activities for a period of 30 to 40 days because of the coronavirus outbreak. The total of confirmed cases reached 82. The Autonomous University of the State of Morelos, (UAEM) suspended classes for its 22,000 students. A diplomatic incident arose between the governments of Mexico and El Salvador, concerning 12 Salvadorean citizens wearing face masks on a plane departing from Mexico City to San Salvador. Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador denounced as "irresponsible" that they were allowed to board the plane along with other passengers and offered to send a plane to transport them without contact with other people. The claim was supported by Avianca airline while the Mexican government said that there were no reasons to assume that they were positive for COVID-19. Eventually, the flight was cancelled. Marcelo Ebrard, head of Foreign Affairs announced after negative results of COVID tests of that Salvadorean passengers.
On March 17, 11 new cases were confirmed, raising the national total to 93, with Campeche being the only state with no confirmed cases. Mexico's limited response, including allowing a large concert and the women's soccer championship, as well as a lack of testing, have been criticized. Critics note that president López Obrador does not practice social distancing but continues to greet large crowds, and the borders have not been closed. Of particular concern is the health of thousands of migrants in temporary camps along the border with the United States. The former national commissioner for influenza in Mexico during the 2009 flu pandemic, Alejandro Macías, said the problem is compounded by the fact that Mexico lacks sufficient intensive care unit beds, medical care workers and ventilators.
On March 18, 25 more cases were confirmed raising the total to 118 cases and 314 suspected cases. Authorities in Jalisco are concerned about a group of 400 people who recently returned from Vail, Colorado; 40 people have symptoms of COVID-19. The same day, the Mexican government announced that they will allocate 3.5 billion pesos ( 146 million US dollars) to buy medical and laboratory equipment, washing and disinfection material, and ventilators. During the night the first COVID-19 related death in the country was confirmed, a 41-year-old man without a travel history outside the country who was hospitalized at the National Institute of Respiratory Diseases (INER). Colima Governor José Ignacio Peralta declared a state of emergency after the state's first case, a man who had recently returned from Germany, was reported on March 17. Ford, Honda, and Audi closed their manufacturing plants in Mexico. Hundreds of hotel employees in Cancún were fired.
Authorities announced on March 18 that they were looking for hundreds of citizens who may be carriers of the coronavirus, especially in the states of Puebla, Jalisco, Aguascalientes, and Guerrero. A four-member family in Puebla who had traveled to the United States kept their symptoms secret as they visited neighbors in La Vista and visited a gym. Authorities were still trying to track down the 400 people in Jalisco and Nayarit who recently traveled to Vail, Colorado. In Aguascalientes they were looking to track down passengers of Flight 2638 who traveled with a sick man from New York. The Autonomous University of Guerrero (UAGRO) in Chilpancingo closed after a female student tested positive for the virus. The Technical Institute of Guerrero and the state Supreme Court also closed.
Morelos had its first two confirmed cases on March 19—a 54-year-old woman from Cuautla and a 37-year-old man from Cuernavaca. Sinaloa announced its third case, a 20-year-old woman from Culiacán.
U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on March 20 there would be restrictions on travel across the Mexico–United States border. Said restrictions would not apply to cargo. The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced that the archaeological zones Teotihuacán, Xochicalco, and El Tepozteco will be closed on March 21–22. Chichén Itzá will close indefinitely starting March 21. Guachimontones will close 21, 22, and March 23. Palenque, Tula and Tingambato will close March 21. Alsea, which operates restaurants such as Starbucks, VIPS, and Domino's Pizza offered its employees unpaid leave. Mayor Juanita Romero (PAN) of Nacozari de García Municipality, Sonora, declares a curfew, in effect until April 20. Only the President of Mexico has the legal authority to declare such a declaration. During the night, 38 more cases and one more death were confirmed raising the total to 203 cases, 2 deaths, and 606 suspected cases.
On March 21 the total confirmed cases were 251. One day later 65 more cases were confirmed and the total of suspected cases grew to 793.
On March 22, bars, nightclubs, movie theaters, and museums were closed in Mexico City. Governor Enrique Alfaro Ramírez of Jalisco announced that beginning Thursday, March 26, Jalisco and seven other states in the Bajío and western Mexico will block flights from areas such as California that have a high rate of coronavirus. He also said that they will purchase 25,000 testing kits.
Mexico entered Phase 2 of the coronavirus pandemic on March 23, according to the World Health Organization, with 367 confirmed cases. Phase 2 includes cases where the sick individuals did not have direct contact with someone who had recently been in another country. On the same day it was confirmed that two more people died from COVID-19, raising the total to 4 reported deaths. That day was announced on President López Obrador's daily press conference the realization of the National Campaign of Healthy Distancing () a national program of non-pharmaceutical measures based on social distancing among the behavioral changes suggested by WHO as hand washing, covering one's mouth when coughing, maintaining distance from other people, and monitoring and self-isolation for people who suspect they are infected. On that same day in the daily press conference was announced also a media campaign led by "Susana Distancia" ("Susan Distance", a wordplay with "Su sana distancia/ Your healthy distance") a fictional female superhero aiming to promote social distancing into the people.
Meanwhile, a Mitofsky poll showed that 63% of Mexicans feared contracting Covid-19 and 25.5% feared dying from it. 28% said they were not willing to stay in their homes. 38.6% believed President López Obrador was handling the situation well, and 37% disapproved. Access to supermarkets in Coahuila was limited to one person per family, and the temperature of that person was taken before entering. The same rule applies to drugstores and convenience stores in the state, which has 12 confirmed cases of Covid-19.
At his morning news conference on March 24, President López Obrador announced that Mexico entered Phase 2 of the coronavirus pandemic, in effect until April 30. Gatherings of more than 100 people are prohibited, and both the army and the navy will participate. The armed forces have 1,738 doctors, 1,727 nurses, 100 intensive therapy ambulances, and 400 ambulances for transportation. The military also has 5 high specialty hospitals, 36 second-level hospitals, and 272 first-level hospitals with 262 health brigades across the country. Four deaths, 367 confirmed cases, and 826 suspected cases of COVID-19 have been reported. The first Mexican woman died from COVID-19 on March 24, raising the total to 5 reported deaths in the country. On the same day 405 total cases of COVID-19 were confirmed.
On March 25, Dr. Abelardo Ávila, researcher at the Salvador Zubirán National Institute of Health Sciences and Nutrition warned that Mexico was particularly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic because of underlying chronic illnesses such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. Also on March 25 President López Obrador ordered the Mexican Air Force to rescue Mexicans trapped in Argentina. In Baja California, PROFECO closed two businesses in Tijuana for price-gouging. In Mexico City, Head of Government Claudia Sheinbaum announced financial support for families and micro industries affected by the pandemic. She also announced that automobile verification would be suspended through April 19. Movie theaters, bars, nightclubs, gyms, and other entertainment centers will remain closed. The same day it was reported that one man died from COVID-19 in San Luis Potosí, raising the total to 6 reported deaths in Mexico and 475 confirmed cases. Governor Miguel Barbosa Huerta (Morena) claimed that only the wealthy were at risk, since the poor are immune to COVID-19.
On March 26, President López Obrador revealed he asked the G20 to ensure that wealthy countries cannot take control of the world's medical supplies. He also called for assurances that borders would not be closed to commerce and that tariffs would not be unilaterally increased. Lastly, he called for an end to racism and discrimination. The Mexican government announced it would suspend most sectors' activities starting March 26 until April 19, with the exception of health and energy sectors, the oil industry; and public services such as water supply, waste management and public safety. Protesters in Sonora insisted that the government limit border crossings with the United States. Chihuahua announced, "in the next few days" it will start to quarantine migrants who are returned to the Ciudad Juárez border crossing. About 65 migrants are deported from El Paso, Texas daily, about 5,200 this year. Two more deaths were reported on this day; 585 cases were confirmed, and there were 2,156 suspected cases. Human Rights Watch accused AMLO of endangering lives by not providing accurate information about the pandemic. The government of San Luis Potosi reported the death of a 57-year-old man on March 26, bringing the total number of deaths in the country to nine. He had hypertension and diabetes. Citizens of Nogales, Sonora, blocked border crossing from Nogales, Arizona, in order to prevent the entrance of individuals with the virus infection and to prevent shortages of food, bottled water, toilet paper and cleaning supplies in local stores.
According to the Secretary of Health, a plurality of the 585 people infected in Mexico, 70, are between 30 and 34 years old. People over 65 are second, followed by those 25 to 29 and 45 to 49. The states with the most incidents are Mexico City (83), Jalisco (64) and Nuevo León (57).
On March 27 the federal government bought 5,000 ventilators from China as the government prepares for Phase 3 of the pandemic. The total confirmed cases rose to 717; twelve deaths were reported, and there were 2,475 suspected cases. PROFECO (Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Consumer) said it will fine merchants who unfairly raise the prices on household goods. The governors of Nuevo León, Tamaulipas and Coahuila asked the federal government to close the border with the United States.
On March 28, Governor Omar Fayad of Hidalgo announced in a tweet that he tested positive for the virus and said that he was in self-quarantine. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico said services should be held indoors with no more than twenty people present. They may cancel all Holy Week celebrations if things do not improve. In the evening the Secretariat of Health reported 131 new confirmed cases and four more deaths, raising the total to 848 confirmed cases and 16 deaths. Governor Cuauhtémoc Blanco of Morelos announced the seventh case and first death due to COVID-19 in the state, a 37-year-old man who had recently traveled to the United States. San Luis Potosi suspended wakes and funerals; the dead should be taken directly from the hospital to the crematorium.
Tabasco Governor Adán Augusto López Hernández tested positive for COVID-19 on March 29. Two tunnels with disinfectant spray were installed in the subways system of Escobedo, Nuevo León. The government of Yucatán threatens fines of $86,000 pesos and up to three years in prison for individuals who have tested positive for coronavirus and do not self-quarantine. The state of Querétaro registered its first death from COVID-19, a 56-year-old man. The same day 993 cases of COVID-19 and 20 deaths from the disease were confirmed. Between 27 and March 29, 566 Mexicans were brought home from other countries: 62 from Colombia, 53 from Ecuador, 299 from Peru, 28 from Guatemala (via land), and 134 from Cuba. In turn, the Mexican government helped 86 people return to Ecuador, 99 to Peru, and 49 to Cuba.
On March 30, the total number of cases of COVID-19 surpassed one thousand with 1,094 confirmed cases and 28 reported deaths in the country. In the evening, a national health emergency was declared by Secretary Marcelo Ebrard; all sectors in the country are urged to stop most of their activities.
In the early morning of March 31, 50,000 test kits, 100,000 masks and five ventilators (donated by Jack Ma and the Alibaba Foundation of China) arrived at the Mexico City International Airport. Nurses in Jalisco have been forced to get off public transportation and physically attacked by people fearful of COVID-19. Medical workers there and elsewhere have been advised not to wear their uniforms outside the hospital. The same day the total confirmed cases of COVID-19 reached 1215 and one more death was reported. The government of Mexico City announced that 90% of the businesses in Mexico City would have to close because of the national health emergency declaration of the day before. In Austin, Texas, Public Health officials started investigating an apparent cluster of COVID-19 after 28 of 70 "spring breakers" (students at the University of Texas at Austin) tested positive following their trip to Cabo San Lucas, Baja California Sur, in early March. The Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) in Monclova, Coahuila, reported that 29 medical and nursing staff tested positive for COVID-19. No patients have been infected.
It was reported on April 1 that seven migrants from Puebla residing in New York have died of COVID-19. Authorities reported 46% of cases as recoveries, which represents approximately 634 recoveries. In Coahuila, 21 health workers contracted the virus and one doctor died from it, bringing the number of deaths among doctors employed by IMSS to four. Nineteen of the 21 cases in Coahuila are mild and the individuals are ambulatory. Later the same day, 1,378 cases and 37 deaths of COVID-19 were reported in Mexico.
On April 2, 1,510 cases of COVID-19 and 13 more deaths related to the disease were confirmed by Mexican authorities. In Mexico City, as hotels are forced to close, hotel guests are evicted from their rooms. That same day President López Obrador gave a press conference in which he downplayed the crisis and, after vaguely linking it with his reiterated promise to erradicate corruption, said the situation "vino como anillo al dedo" (literally, fit like a ring to the finger), which is equivalent to the idiom "fit like a glove to the hand" in that it expresses timeliness and adequateness.
On April 3, 1,688 cases and 60 deaths were confirmed by the Secretariat of Health. The following day, 202 more cases and 19 more deaths were confirmed by Mexican authorities.
On April 5, President López Obrador presented his plan to reactivate the economy. He said he did not want to increase fuel prices or taxes, and he was looking to hire more medical professionals for the armed forces. He said there was sufficient money to build the proposed thermoelectric plants that are needed in Yucatán, Baja California and elsewhere. He stated that he had support from the private sector and he expressed his confidence that Mexico would soon overcome the current crisis. On the same day, the total number of cases surpassed two thousand with 2143 cases and 94 deaths.
President López Obrador and Governor Blanco of Morelos dedicated the ISSSTE hospital "Carlos Calero" in Cuernavaca that was going to be set aside to care for patients with COVID-19. Fifteen new deaths were registered on April 5, bringing the total to 94. The age range of the deceased was from 26 to 91 years old with a median age of 56.5. Of the 94 dead, 79% were males and 21% were females.
On April 6, 2,439 cases were confirmed and the total number of deaths surpassed one hundred with 125 deaths reported.
The Mexican Consulate in Shanghai, China, announced on April 7 that the Aeroméxico "Misionero de Paz", a Boeing 787-8 filled with emergency medical supplies was en route to Mexico. That same day, 2785 cases and 141 deaths related to COVID-19 were confirmed.
On April 8, twenty medical and nursing schools withdrew their students from social service in hospitals due to the lack of adequate protection. Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez, head of the Undersecretariat of Prevention and Health Promotion at the Mexican Secretariat of Health, estimated there were unconfirmed 26,519 cases of COVID-19 in the country. In the evening it was announced that Mexico surpassed the three thousand confirmed cases with 3,181 cases and 174 deaths. The following day, 260 more cases and 20 more deaths were reported by Mexican authorities. José Ignacio Precaido Santos of the General Health Council announced that at least 146 private hospitals will make beds available to treat COVID-19 patients on a non-profit basis.
Two pregnant women are among the 119 deaths reported as of April 9. These are the first two cases of pregnant women in Mexico to die from COVID-19; both had problems with obesity and diabetes.
On April 10, the total confirmed deaths surpassed two hundred with 233 deaths and 3,844 cases confirmed by Mexican authorities. The government of Baja California closed a plant belonging to the multinational giant Smiths Group after the firm refused to sell ventilators to the Mexican government. On the same day, Mexican consulates in the United States announced the deaths of 181 Mexican nationals due to the COVID-19 pandemic. One hundred forty-nine of those cases were in New York. The national network of women shelters reports a 60% increase in calls for help since the coronavirus pandemic began.
On April 11, 375 more cases and 40 more deaths were confirmed. Nineteen Mexican agricultural workers in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada, have contracted the disease but none are reported as serious.
On April 12, the government established the "National Contingency Center" (CNC) to fight COVID-19. It will be led by the military and will have scientists and health technicians advising about steps to combat the pandemic.
On April 13, the number of COVID-19 infections in the country passed 5,000; there were 332 deaths. The Mexican Navy announced it would open ten voluntary self-isolation units to shelter 4,000 COVID-19 victims in Mexico City, Guerrero, Jalisco, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas and Veracruz. Sonora became the first state in the country to declare a curfew.
On April 14, Governor Antonio Echevarría García of Nayarit said he wanted to close the state's borders to visitors from Jalisco and Sinaloa, noting that young, apparently healthy people from other areas have visited their elderly relatives in the state. "Y son las personas que han fallecido y estas personas que vienen del otro lado traen el virus, no presentan ningún síntoma y hacen la contaminadera," ("And they are the people who have died and these people who come from the other side bring the virus, do not present any symptoms and cause the contamination,") said Echevarría. Oaxaca Governor Alejandro Murat Hinojosa reported the theft of more than 20 kits of medical supplies used for treatment of COVID-19 were stolen from the Aurelio Valdivieso General Hospital. A week earlier, seven ventilators had been stolen from the IMSS hospital. Baja California Governor Jaime Bonilla Valdez said that doctors in Tijuana are "falling like flies" as 21 medical workers at IMSS clinic #20 have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 15 others are suspected of having it; one doctor at the IMSS general hospital has been infected and six have suspected cases.
An April 15 report by "Quinto Elemento Lab" showed that 30% of Mexicans cannot get local information about COVID-19 infections. Mexico City does not break down statistics for its 16 boroughs, and the State of Mexico, Querétaro, Tlaxcala, and Yucatán do not reveal information on the municipal level. Governments said revealing the information would violate patients' privacy. The National Guard began providing security support for hospitals run by the IMSS in nineteen states on April 15.
The first death attributed to COVID-19 of a minor under 25 is reported in Tabasco on April 16, a two-year-old girl with Down syndrome and congenital heart disease. The government announced on April 16 that it will restrict transportation between areas of the country that are infected with COVID-19 (mostly large cities) and areas that are not infected, without specifying what areas are included or how it will be enforced. President López Obrador also said that based upon current projections, the 979 municipalities that have not had reported cases of coronavirus will be able to reopen schools and workplaces on May 17; the date is June 1 for the 463 municipalities that have. The elderly and other vulnerable groups will still be requested to stay home, and physical distancing should remain in place until May 30. It is expected that the pandemic will end in the metropolitan area on June 25.
TV Azteca called for the public to ignore information and warnings from Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez on April 17: "Like every night, the Undersecretary of Health, Hugo López-Gatell led the conference on COVID-19 in Mexico. But his numbers and conferences have already become irrelevant. Moreover, we tell him with all his words, no longer pay attention to Hugo López-Gatell." President López Obrador′s proposal for a United Nations General Assembly resolution to prevent price gouging or hoarding of medical supplies by wealthy countries has 161 co-sponsors. The proposal was first made during a video conference of the G20. Pemex reports 10 deaths, 92 cases, and 1,052 suspected cases of COVID-19. 17 have recovered.
On April 18, Alonso Pérez Rico, Health Secretary for Baja California, reported that at least 30 doctors in the state, principally in Mexicali, have tested positive for COVID-19. None is critical.
On April 20 the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena) announced that it had hired 3,158 of the 4,572 health professionals it needs. A Venezuelan YouTuber residing in Mexico City broke quarantine after being diagnosed with COVID-19 on April 20. Authorities had to sanitize the grocery store he contaminated and his immigration status was being investigated. His girlfriend similarly broke quarantine a few days earlier.
Mexico entered Phase 3 of its contingency plan on April 21. 712 deaths and 8,772 confirmed cases were reported. The Mexico City General Hospital delivered the wrong body to the widow of Ángel Dorado Salinas, 52. She discovered the mistake when she saw a photograph of the corpse.
Recently it has come to media attention that the Mexican drug cartels, in an effort to boost their own popularity and in response to poor efforts by the Mexican presidency, have been distributing supplies to impoverished citizens in the street. The president of Mexico has since called on the cartels to stop distributing supplies and "end violence" instead.
The number of coronavirus cases surges past 10,000 to 10,544 with 970 deaths on April 21.
Six people were arrested in San Pedro Tlaquepaque and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga, Jalisco, for violating the state's quarantine orders on April 22. Another six people were denied permission to enter the state. Two women were arrested in Querétaro for attacking a health worker. They face up to three years in prison and a fine of 24,644 pesos (US $977). A field hospital with 854 beds is inaugurated in Mexico City; it should be fully operational on June 1.
On April 26, the Mexican Council of Businessmen (CMN) and IDB Invest announce a US$12 billion plan to provide credit to 30,000 micro-, small-, and medium-sized industries. AMLO opposes the plan, likening it to "Fobaproa", the 1995 bank-rescue plan that cost taxpayers billions. PAN supports the plan.
The death toll surpassed the 1,000 figure on April 23. Tijuana expects its hospitals to run out of space over the weekend.
On April 29, eight public and three private hospitals in Mexico City stopped accepting COVID-19 patients due to a lack of space and ventilators. Mexico City Head of Government Claudia Scheinbaum said there were 54 hospitals with 1,500 beds available. On the same day, Iñaki Landáburu, president of the National Association of Wholesale Grocers (ANAM), threatened to stop the supermarkets' supply chain in the State of Mexico, Tabasco, Guerrero, Morelos, and Veracruz if safety measure are not enforced and if they are not provided with safety on highways. Landáburu said he believes food trucks are robbed by the organized crime who then redistribute the food for free in an attempt to demonstrate a false sense of solidarity among the population.
On May 1, Mexico surpassed 20,000 infections of COVID-19. "Mexicanos contra la corrupción" (Mexicans against corruption) alleged that Léon Manuel Bartlett, son of Manuel Bartlett the head of the Comisión Federal de Electricidad (CFE), fraudulently tried to sell overpriced ventilators to the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) in Hidalgo.
On May 2, Mexico surpassed 2,000 deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic. At least forty Mexican and Guatemalan farm workers in Canada contracted coronavirus, that according to the United Food and Commercial Workers.
On May 3, IMSS published videos of the progress made on the construction of a field hospital in Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez racetrack in Mexico City. The hospital is expected to go into operation on May 13. The same day, Undersecretary López-Gatell estimated that there were 104,562 cases of COVID-19 in Mexico, 80,000 more than the ones confirmed.
The former presidential mansion Los Pinos opened as a shelter for IMSS health providers in Mexico City on May 4.
The "Instituto de Verificación Administrativa" (Invea) announced it had closed eight non-essential businesses on May 4 and 5 that were in violation of the lockdown orders in Mexico City. This was in addition to the 58 that had been suspended between March 26 and April 30.
According to estimates by Undersecretary López-Gatell, at least 250,000 people may eventually be infected and the death toll may reach 8,000. A group from Médecins Sans Frontières arrived in Tijuana, Baja California, on May 6. Baja California is third only to Mexico City and the State of Mexico in the number of COVID-19 infections reported. The from Los Angeles has been allowed to dock in Puerta Vallarta for thirty days for "humanitarian reasons". The ship does not currently carry any passengers and is scheduled to sail for La Paz, Baja California Sur, on June 6.
A nursing home in Nuevo León was closed on May 7 after an outbreak was reported on May 4.
An article published on "The New York Times" on May 8 assured that both the federal government and the state government of Mexico City ignored the wave of coronavirus deaths in the capital city. The article criticized the way that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been handling the pandemic citing the lack of testing done and the fact that the government has been hiding the real number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. It was also mentioned that despite the fact that Undersecretary Hugo López-Gatell has been saying that "We [Mexico] have flattened the curve" and that only 5% of those infected will show symptoms, and only 5% of those patients with symptoms will go to the hospital, experts say that "their model is wrong" and that "there's a very good consensus on that".
More than 100 health workers (doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc.) are among the 3,573 dead from the virus on May 12. Also that a 40-year-old man who works in the President's office has died.
On May 13, Mexico registered more than 2,000 new cases in 24-hours for the first time. The four entities with the most confirmed cases At the time were Mexico City, the State of Mexico, Tabasco, and Veracruz. The country had a total of 42,595 confirmed cases and 4,447 confirmed deaths. President López Obrador presented a four-phased plan beginning May 18 for a gradual, orderly economic reopening of the country.
Between May 9 and May 15, 13,000 new cases were confirmed. The totals were 42,595 cases, 10,057 active cases, and 4,477 deaths on May 15.
It was reported on May 18 that in the outskirts of Mexico City more than 3.5 tons of infectious waste were piling up and being illegally dumped.
On May 19, Mexicans Against Corruption ("Mexicanos contra la corrupción" in Spanish) said that the authorities of Mexico City were hiding the real number of COVID-19 deaths. The organization claimed that the actual number of deaths in the city was 4,577, as opposed to the 1,332 confirmed at the time by the authorities. The same day, fourteen health workers were kidnapped and released from a hotel in Tacubaya, Mexico City.
On May 20, the government of the State of Mexico said that they were going to use refrigerated trucks and trailers to store the corpses coming from 16 hospitals for periods of 48 to 72 hours in order to avoid the overcrowding of morgues and to support families that want to cremate the bodies. The same day, the government of Mexico City appointed a "Comisión Científico Técnica para el Análisis de la Mortalidad" (″Scientific Technical Commission for Mortality Analysis″) headed by Arturo Galindo Fragua of the "Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición" ("National Institute of Medical Sciences and Nutrition″) to investigate whether the official number of COVID-19 deaths is lower than the actual number. Doctor Christopher Edward Ormsby, of the "Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Respiratorias" ("National Institute of Respiratory Diseases,″ INER) is also working on the commission. The same day, Claudia Sheinbaum presented her "Gradual Plan towards the New Normality in Mexico City", and said that Mexico City will be at a red light until at least June 15.
On May 22, the number of new cases and deaths reported in 24-hours reached a record high of 2,973 and 420 respectively. General Motors partially reopened two of its four plants—a motor plant in Ramos Arizpe, Colima, and a motor and transmission plant in Silao, Guanajuato.
It was reported on May 23 that Mexico's 10.8% mortality rate from COVID-19 is the eighth highest in the world, most likely due to a lack of testing. Globally the mortality rate was about 6.7% at the time.
The Instituto de Salud para el Bienestar (INSABI) announced on May 25 it paid MXN $60,435,000 for 300,000 COVID-19 tests in June and July. An individual test costs $204.
On May 26, the number of new cases and deaths reported in 24-hours reached another record high with 3,455 new cases and 501 new deaths in twenty-four hours.
On May 27, a 55-year-old nurse who heads the intensive care unit at the ISSSTE hospital in Mérida, Yucatán, denounced death threats and the burning of her house and car.
Cars line up for miles at the Tijuana-San Diego County, California border crossing, despite restrictions on non-essential travel. Baja California reports a 33% shortfall of hospital beds on May 28. Fake news about toxic substances being spread by drones leads to disturbances in Venustiano Carranza, Chiapas, including the burning of city hall.
Thirty states and CDMX are classified as ′′Rojo′′ (Red: Maximum Risk); the only exception is the State of Zacatecas, which is Orange: High Risk, after 81,400 confirmed cases and 9,044 deaths are reported on May 28.
Day 1 of the "New Normality was on June 1. President López Obrador motors to Cancún and inaugurated the construction of the Mayan train. On the same day, the first foreign tourists, since imposition of the quarantine, arrived in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur. Rules about safe-distancing, use of a facemask, and against overcrowded public transportation were largely ignored.
On June 2, the number of new cases of infection increased by 4.2% (3,891) compared to the day before. Women made up 57% of the 97,326 confirmed cases in the country at the time.
For the first time, on June 3, IMSS-Morelos uses plasma donated by recovered patients as an alternative, experimental treatment for individuals infected with the SARS-COV-2 virus.
The 817 new deaths reported in one day on June 4 is more than the combined daily figures from the United States (174), Brazil (33), Russia (144), and the United Kingdom (357). Mexico's 4,422 new cases are fewer than Russia's 8,726 and India's 7,450 new casss, but more than the United States' 4,091 new cases.
The Mexico City prosecutor's office began an investigation on June 5 into the alleged alteration and falsification of 500 death certificates by ten doctors, as well as the robbery of five of them. Missing or falsified death certificates brought into question the veracity of statistics, making predictions more difficult. The National Human Rights Commission reported that prisons are especially vulnerable to spread of the virus and notes there have been 395 confirmed cases, 232 suspected cases, 53 deaths, and three riots or fights in prison related to COVID-19. Of those, 99 of the cases were confirmed in Jalisco and 55 in Mexico City.
The newspaper "Excélsior" published a report stating that between April 12 and June 4 the number of COVID-19 infections among children increased from 84 to 2,248. Save the Children noted that 46 girls, boys, and teenagers have died, emphasizing the large numbers of minors who must work to help provide for their families.
Meeting in Tequila, Jalisco on June 7, the Block of Eight governors (Coahuila, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas) denounce the federal government's traffic light system of reopening the economy and demand more autonomy for states. It was reported that Zoé Alejandro Robledo, the director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and three other top bureaucrats of the institution were infected with coronavirus.
The traffic light map for June 8–14 showed the entire country in red and Hugo López-Gatell emphatically denied on June 8 that the country could now return to normality. The states of Tamaulipas, Oaxaca, and Quintana Roo were stable but still "stably high." Guerrero, Yucatán, and Querétaro had lower contagion rates than 14 days earlier, but López-Gatell warned of a possible rebound.
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation of the University of Washington in Seattle projects between 37,397 and 75,516 deaths due to the coronavirus in Mexico by August 4. On June 9 Governor Héctor Astudillo Flores of Guerrero reported he had contracted COVID-19 but that he planned to continue working from home.
A health clinic and city hall are burned by armed inhabitants of Las Rosas, Chiapas after the death of a peasant on June 10, apparently from COVID-19.
The first international tourists return to Quintana Roo on June 11.
A Mexicali health clinic supported by former Baja California gubernatorial candidate Enrique Acosta Fregoso (PRI) was closed on June 15 after selling a supposed COVID-19 "cure" for between MXN $10,000 and $50,000.
A set of triplets were born prematurely with COVID-19 at the Ignacio Morones Prieto Central Hospital in San Luis Potosi on June 17. Both parents tested negative and the children were reported stable.
51.2% of all infections (94,958 cases) occurred in the so-called “new normal” from May 18 to June 23 as the period after the country’s general quarantine was lifted and states began to resume their economic and social activities in stages. Deaths also grew by 56% (12,654 cases) in these 22 days of “new normal.”
Jarbas Barbosa, deputy director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), reported on June 24 that in Mexico there is an evident increase in COVID-19 infections, a situation similar to that of Brazil, Chile, and Peru. She recommended that the authorities allocate at least 6% of GDP to the health sector and direct 30% of said investment to the first level of medical care.
Arturo Herrera, Secretary of Finance and Public Credit (SHCP) contracted COVID-19 on June 25. Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, set a daily record for COVID-19 deaths with six new deaths in the city. There have been 723 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the city, with 33 new cases added on June 25, also a new daily record for the city. This is two weeks after the economy and beaches reopening and seven days after people flocked to the beaches for the Father’s Day Weekend in Puerto Vallarta where little social distancing or mask usage was observed.
On April 20, the Secretariat of Health started to report active cases at the daily press conference.
Graphs based on daily reports from the Mexican Secretariat of Health on confirmed cases of COVID-19.
On June 3 Hugo López-Gatell Ramírez at daily press conference on COVID-19 explained daily announced deaths were tested positive for COVID-19 on that day but it does not imply all deaths occurred on this same day. There is a lag, for several causes, between the date of occurrence of the death and the day of positive COVID-19 test result is received.
Number and categorization of hospitalized cases presented by the Secretariat of Health at the daily press conference. After April 20 the Secretariat of Health stopped reporting this type of classification of hospitalized cases. This chart is left here for historical purposes.
According to the Secretariat of Health, there are three phases before the disease (COVID-19) can be considered as an epidemic in the country:
On May 13, 2020, the Secretary of Economy Graciela Márquez Colín announced the «Plan for the return to the new normality» ("Plan para el regreso a la nueva normalidad" in Spanish). The purpose of the plan is to progressively resume productive, social and educational activities that were halted during the phases of contingency in order to reopen the economy:
The "traffic light" color system will be implemented for the gradual reopening of the country starting June 1, 2020. It will consist of four colors (green, yellow, orange, and red) that represent the severity of the pandemic in each state. The "traffic light" will be updated weekly and each color will indicate which activities are safe to resume.
The INEGI says the unemployment rate increased from 3.6% in January 2020 to 3.7% in February 2020. The informal sector increased to 56.3% in February compared to 56.0% in February 2019.
The Mexican Stock Exchange fell to a record low on March 10 due to fears of the coronavirus and because of falling oil prices. The Bank of Mexico (Banxico) stepped in to prop up the value of the peso, which fell 14% to 22.929 per US dollar. World markets are seeing falls similar to those of 1987. Moody's Investors Service predicted that the economy will contract 5.2% during the first trimester of the year and 3.7% by the end of the year. Banxico announced on April 1 that foreign investors have withdrawn MXN $150 billion (US $6.3 billion) from Mexico, mostly in "Certificados de la Tesorería" (Treasury Certificates, Cetes) since February 27 when the first COVID-19 case in Mexico was diagnosed. The problem is compounded by the low oil price, only US $10.37 per barrel, a 20.29% drop since the beginning of the 2020 Russia–Saudi Arabia oil price war.
Some financial analysts say there has been too little, too late. Carlos Serrano of BBVA México predicts a 4.5% economic contraction in 2020, while analysts at Capital Economics in London argue that the government has to do more to support the economy. They forecast a 6% contraction this year. HR Ratings, Latin America's first credit rating agency, said that the performance of the economy this year will depend on the government's response to the COVID-19 crisis. Inflation slowed to 2.08% during the first half of April, the lowest figure in four years.
In May, BBVA predicted that 58.4% of the Mexican population would live below the poverty line by the end of 2020, an increase of 12 million people. Extreme poverty is expected to grow by 12.3 million people, 26.6% of the population. The bank predicts GDP will fall by 12%. Citibanamex predicts a 7.6% decline in GDP.
The "Consejo Nacional Empresarial Turístico" (National Tourism Business Council, CNET) sent two letters in March to Alfonso Romo, Chief of Staff to the President, outlining the importance of tourism to the economy and asking for government support for the sector. Tourism provides 4 million jobs in Mexico, and 93% of the companies have ten or fewer employees. COVID-19 has forced the closure of 4,000 hotels (52,400 rooms) and 2,000 restaurants, while the airline industry has lost MXN $30 billion (US $1.3 billion). Tourism accounts for 10% of Gross domestic product (GDP) in the world.
The association of car dealers, ADMA, predicts a decrease in sales in Mexico between 16% and 25% this year. J.D. Power estimated a 20% decrease, 264,000 vehicles, in Mexico and a 15% drop across the world. The Employers Confederation of the Mexican Republic (COPARMEX) criticized the government on March 29 for not suspending the payment of taxes, saying the government does not care about unemployment. Fernando Treviño Núñez, president of the organization, explained that businesses cannot afford to pay salaries for more than three months without receiving income. Gasoline and diesel fuel importers have not noted a decrease in demand since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they fear that health precautions could cause fuel delays at ports of entry. Watco Companies said that cargo on the Houston Ship Channel for delivery to San Luis Potosí increased 25% in March compared to January. Mexico imports 65% of its gasoline.
On March 24, Grupo Modelo, makers of Corona beer, promised to donate 300,000 bottles of antibacterial gel to the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS). The "Canacintra" (National Chamber of the Processing Industry) announced on April 2 they were suspending all beer production in the country, as breweries are not an essential industry and there was sufficient supply in the country for a month. Tequila producers plan to stay open.
As of April 22, Grupo Salinas with its 70,000 employees, continues to operate as if the pandemic were nonexistent. Even after the rest of the country entered Phase 3 in late April, its stores remain open, social distancing is not enforced, and employees do not use face masks. The United States pressed Mexico in late April to reopen factories that are key to the U.S. supply chain, including those with military contracts, as employees staged walkouts and expressed fear of contracting COVID-19. Lear Corporation acknowledges there have been coronavirus-related deaths among its 24,000 employees in Ciudad Juárez, but won't say how many.
General Motors (GM) announced that by late April 2020 its Toluca plant would start producing 1.5 million surgical face masks per month for use in hospitals in the states of Mexico, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, Guanajuato, and Mexico City.
A team of medical experts and veterinarians led by Pedro Guillermo Mar Hernadez of Hermosillo Technological Center (CTH) and Pedro Ortega Romero of Sonora State University (UES) developed a ventilator that can be used by six COVID-19 patients at a time.
Gasoline sales fell 70% between April 10 and 18, threatening the financial future of gas stations. Meanwhile, the port of Veracruz is saturated and tankers are stranded off the coast due to low prices.Airbnb offers free accommodations for health care workers.
The ′′Unión de Retailers de México" ("Union of Retailers of Mexico, URM") said that between 1,500 and 2,500 businesses in shopping centers, between 9.3% and 18% of the 14,000 stores in Mexico City, were forced to close in April 2020 because they could not pay their rent.
On May 27, film director Alfonso Cuarón plead employers to continue to pay the wages of more than 2.3 million housekeepers that have been left without wages because of the outbreak stating that "It is our responsibility as employers to pay their wages in this time of uncertainty".
Panic buying in mid-March is causing shortages in Mexico of Hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, which U.S. President Donald Trump, with no backing from the scientific or medical communities, says is helpful in preventing COVID-19. The "Comisión Federal para la Protección de Riesgos Sanitarios" (Federal Commission for the Protection of Health Risks, Cofepris) has put controls on the sale of both products. Hidroxicloroquina is used in the treatment of malaria, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Plaquenil tablets are produced in Mexico by the French company Sanofi; the raw material comes from Hungary. Shortages of medicine for these diseases can be expected soon.
In mid-March, retailers in the border city of Tijuana experienced shortages of water and toilet paper as Americans from southern California began crossing the border to panic-buy these items. Purchase limits were placed on several item categories following the first wave of panic-buying by foreigners.
Authorities are concerned about supermarket robberies. A gang of 70 people robbed a grocery store in Tecámac, State of Mexico, on March 23, and a gang of 30 looted a supermarket in the city of Oaxaca on March 24. Calls for supermarket looting, warning of food shortages, are making the rounds of social media. Four such social media groups in Tijuana were broken up in Baja California on March 29. The number of murders has not decreased due to the coronavirus pandemic, and drug cartels are fighting each other in Guerrero and Michoacan.
On April 14, José Luis Calderón, vice president of the Mexican Association of Private Security Companies (AMESP), commenting on the increase of crime, told "El Informador",
Travel restrictions are making it more difficult for Mexican drug cartels to operate, because chemicals from China, which are the raw materials for synthesizing illegal drugs, cannot be imported. As a result, the price of illegal methamphetamine has increased from 2,500 pesos (€95/$102) to 15,000 pesos per pound. Cartels are also struggling to smuggle drugs across the border to the United States, where many customers live, because border crossings have been shut down. The reduction in international air travel has made it easier for authorities to track planes used for transporting illegal drugs.
In May, three different families, relatives of victims of COVID-19, were attacked in Cuajimalpa, Mexico City.
Teotihuacán, Xochicalco, El Tepozteco closed March 21–22. Chichén Itzá closed indefinitely starting March 21.
OCESA cancelled all its events until April 19.
President López Obrador suspended non-essential activities from March 26 to April 19. The health and energy sectors, the oil industry, and public services such as water supply, waste management and public safety continued to function.
Ford Motor Company, Honda and Audi closed their manufacturing plants in Mexico on March 18. Hundreds of hotel employees in Cancún were fired. Alsea (Starbucks, VIPS, Domino's Pizza, Burger King, Italianni's, Chili's, California Pizza Kitchen, P. F. Chang's China Bistro and The Cheesecake Factory) offered its employees unpaid leave. PROFECO closed two businesses in Tijuana Baja California, for price-gouging on March 25. Cinépolis and Cinemex announced that they will temporarily close all of their theaters starting March 25.
Jalisco Open (tennis tournament) and CONCACAF Champions League (soccer) cancelled March 13.
On March 17, the Passion Play of Iztapalapa in Mexico City moved to an undisclosed location indoors and televised on April 10.
San Luis Potosí suspended wakes and funerals on March 29.
Mayor Juanita Romero (PAN) of Nacozari de García, Sonora, declared a curfew in effect until April 20.
Mexico Post suspended international mail service outside the United States and Canada due to cancellation of international passenger airline flights.
Mexico's federal government was perceived as slow to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as of late March 2020, and it was met with criticism from certain sectors of society and the media. Through April 1, the government only performed 10,000 tests, compared to 200,000 that had been completed in New York state. Therefore, official statistics are likely to greatly underestimate the actual number of cases. "The New York Times" reported on May 8 that the federal government is underreporting deaths in Mexico City; the federal government reports 700 deaths in the city while local officials have detected over 2,500.
President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has continued to hold rallies, be tactile with crowds, and downplay the threat of coronavirus to health and the economy.
Miguel Barbosa Huerta, the governor of Puebla, claimed that only the wealthy were at risk of COVID-19, since the poor are immune. There is no evidence that wealth affects a person's vulnerability to the virus.
Rumors about a curfew sparked the barricading of streets in San Felipe del Progreso, State of Mexico, on May 8. A rumor spread via WhatsApp that authorities were spreading gas contaminated with COVID-19 provoked vandalism of police cars in San Mateo Capulhuac, Otzolotepec, on May 9.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260725
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Cyber-kinetic attack
A cyber-kinetic attack is a cybersecurity threat that has the potential to destroy physical assets and human lives. Notable attacks in this category in the recent past have targeted nuclear power plants,, oil refineries,, and medical facilities.
In the early days of computing, security threats were limited to those that caused destruction of data, or at the worst, computer hardware. However, the last several decades have seen technologies--ranging from embedded systems to Internet of Things--which directly control critical physical infrastructure. Such a system is termed as a Cyber-physical_system. Such systems cross the traditional divide between purely in-computer systems (software) and real-life systems (physical systems), with algorithms being autonomously able to control physical systems.
As computing crosses the cyber-physical barrier, there is significant effort spent on 'smart' systems, for instance smart cities, smart homes, smart manufacturing and smart vehicles. In the context of cybersecurity, new threats are emerging that target these smart systems. The timeline of cyber-kinetic attacks attests incidents from as early as 1982.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260799
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Digia
Digia Oyj (formerly SYSOPENDIGIA, SysOpen Digia and SysOpen) is a Finnish software company listed on the Helsinki Stock Exhange. Digia delivers ICT solutions and services to various industries, focusing especially on financial services, the public sector, social welfare and healthcare, trade, services, industry and energy.
In 2020, Digia has more than 1,200 employees in Finland and Sweden (Stockholm). The Finnish offices are located in Helsinki, Jyväskylä, Lahti, Oulu, Rauma, Tampere, Turku and Vaasa.
SysOpen was founded in 1990 by Kari Karvinen, Jorma Kylätie and Matti Savolainen. SysOpen was listed on the stock exchange in 1999 and grew strongly through corporate acquisitions until around the turn of the millennium.
In 1997, Pekka Sivonen, Mika Malin and Jarkko Virtanen founded Digia Oy.
SysOpen Oyj and Digia Oy merged on 4 March 2005 to form SysOpen Digia Oyj. According to Talouselämä magazine, the merger was a cheap way for Digia to get listed on the stock exchange. In the new company, Digia employees were granted the positions of both Chairman of the Board (Pekka Sivonen) and CEO (Jari Mielonen). The reason for this was Digia's better profitability: its earnings before interest, taxes and goodwill amortisation were 15 per cent, while SysOpen's were 9 per cent.
The new company's main customers included device manufacturers, such as Nokia, operators and corporate customers. In addition to Sivonen, SysOpen-Digia's Board of Directors included Kari Karvinen (Vice Chairman), Pekka Eloholma, Pertti Kyttälä, Matti Mujunen and Mikko Terho.
In the summer of 2006, SysOpen Digia Oyj acquired the integration and production management software company Sentera Oyj and Sentera's business was merged into SysOpen Digia. The company's name was changed to SYSOPENDIGIA Oyj in 2007.
SysOpen Digia's Pekka Sivonen won the Services category of the Entrepreneur of the Year competition for growth companies organised by Ernst and Young in 2004–2006. SysOpen Digia was Finland's leading integrator of information system and communications solutions, employing 1,100 people with a turnover of EUR 61 million in 2005. In the justifications for the award, Sivonen was praised as a persevering serial entrepreneur who is always looking for new business opportunities, and who had recruited good, motivated key persons and been able to create added value through mergers and acquisitions.
The company was renamed Digia Oyj in 2008.
In March 2011, Digia acquired Nokia's Qt commercial and open source licensing and service business.
As a subcontractor, Digia suffered from Nokia's problems, resulting in several employer-employee negotiations. The end of Nokia subcontracting led to the loss of one third of turnover as well as employees, but the company's IT services sustained it through the worst times.
In 2012, Digia acquired the entire Qt development environment and related business from Nokia. With the acquisition, Digia took over all operations related to Qt technology, such as product development. The most important goal of the acquisition was to improve Digia's position in the Qt ecosystem and to expand the availability of Qt technology to an increasing number of platforms. The Qt investment of EUR 4 million yielded at least tens of millions of euros to shareholders. Digia's CEO Juha Varelius negotiated the Qt deal with Nokia after Nokia had abandoned its old subcontractors. In 2016, Talouselämä magazine estimated that the deal was made at a dumping price. Nokia had acquired the Norwegian company Trolltech and its application development environment Qt for EUR 104 million in January 2008.
In August 2015, Digia Oyj's Board of Directors decided to explore a possible spin-off that would separate its domestic and Qt businesses and create two distinct companies, with identical ownership, listed on the Helsinki Stock Exchange. Digia's largest shareholder was Ingman Development, owned by the Ingman family, which held a stake of more than one fifth. Digia's turnover totalled EUR 108 million.
Digia Oyj's Annual General Meeting decided on Digia's partial demerger in March 2016, and the demerger was registered in the Trade Register on 1 May. Digia's Qt business was transferred to Qt Group with Digia's domestic business remaining under the Digia brand. Digia's CEO Juha Varelius became the CEO of Qt Group while Timo Levoranta, who had started as the head of the domestic business unit early in the year, took up the post as CEO of the new Digia. In June 2016, Digia acquired Igence, a consulting firm owned by Transaktum, to improve its position in the e-commerce market. Igence employed 24 people and its service portfolio included e-commerce, product information management, order management and personalisation solutions as well as expert services, with a turnover of EUR 2.26 million in 2015. In October 2016, the Finnish Tax Administration announced that it had selected Digia to implement the National Incomes Register.
In the spring of 2017, Digia acquired Omni Partners Oy and its subsidiary Oy Nord Software Ltd. In May, Digia's Board of Directors announced that it would organise a rights issue in order to raise approximately EUR 12.05 million in net assets for corporate acquisitions, growth investments, to bolster the company's capital structure and for general financing needs. The rights issue was oversubscribed with over 6.8 million shares subscribed, representing approximately 115% of the shares offered. The issue generated gross proceeds amounting to approximately EUR 12.5 million. The company established Financial Operations to support the growth of its product and service business and combined Horizontal Services with the functions reporting to the CTO. In December, Digia acquired Integration House. Digia had more than 800 employees and its turnover totalled EUR 96.2 million.
In March 2018, Digia acquired Avarea Oy, a Helsinki-based company specialising in analytics solutions, which had a turnover of approximately EUR 3.6 million. Avarea's product business was excluded from the acquisition and transferred into its own company. 41 employees joined Digia. In the summer of 2018, Digia announced the acquisition of Mavisystems and its subsidiary Mirosys Oy. The companies, which employed a total of 34 people, specialised in Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems and CRM solutions and their turnover totalled approximately EUR 3.2 million in the financial period ended in June 2017. Digia's turnover totalled EUR 112.1 million and it employed 1,069 people. The company's operating margin was 5.8 per cent.
In June 2019, Digia announced the acquisition of Accountor Enterprise Solutions, a subsidiary of Accountor focused on business platforms and services whose solutions centred around Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Oracle NetSuite services. The purchase price was EUR 9.4 million. Accountor Enterprise Solutions had a turnover of EUR 12.7 million in 2018 and it employed 114 people in June 2019. Digia's turnover was increased especially by good demand for online business, integrations and software interface services, Microsoft ERP systems and business analytics.
The company's CEO has been Timo Levoranta since 2016.
In 2020, Digia's Board of Directors included, in addition to Chairman Robert Ingman, Seppo Ruotsalainen, Martti Ala-Härkönen, Päivi Hokkanen, Santtu Elsinen and Outi Taivainen.
In December 2019, Digia's largest shareholders were Ingman Development, Ilmarinen, Etola, Tiiviste-Group, Varma Mutual Pension Insurance Company, Matti Savolainen, SEB Group, Nordea, and OP Financial Group.
In 2020, Digia's services were divided into six categories:
Digia's customers include Gasum, the Helsinki Regional Transport Authority, the Emergency Response Centre Agency in Finland, the Finnish Defence Forces, St1 and the Finnish Tax Administration. Digia has redesigned, for example, the Stockmann online shop and its ERP platform is used by Etola, among others.
Digia's cultural principles of learning, sharing, courage and professional pride have been created and decided together to have the employees committed to them. Digia's expert teams are very independent and organise their work on their own. Digia invests in, for example, training in time management and prioritisation. Employees must be able to manage themselves. Digia has introduced various channels for employees who are interested in the same things to meet and ‘spar’ with each other.
In 2019, Digia organised a competition seeking digital ideas generating genuine value that could help Finland's competitiveness, social development and well-being. The winner of the competition was the Finnish Red Cross, whose service idea “No one will be left alone” will receive EUR 100,000 worth of Digia's help to implement the idea.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260867
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Styrian International
The Styrian International is an international badminton tournament to be held for the first time in Graz, Styria, Austria, in June 2020. The event is part of the Badminton World Federation's Future Series and part of the Badminton Europe Elite Circuit.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260894
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John Wesley Prowers
John Wesley Prowers (January 29, 1838–February 14, 1884) was an American trader, cattle rancher, legislator, and businessman in the territory and state of Colorado. Married to Amache Prowers, a Cheyenne woman, his father-in-law was a Cheyenne chief who negotiated for peace and was killed during the Sand Creek massacre.
He began his career as a trader when he was eighteen years of age. After several years, he began buying cattle, the first man to drive cattle westward to Colorado. He was among the first white men to settle in southeastern Colorado. Known as the cattle baron of the Arkansas (River Valley), he was the first known person to introduce Hereford cattle to Colorado and the first cattle rancher in the area. He raised horses and sheep and operated a farm, which supplied Fort Lyon.
The Prowers House—which operated as a stagecoach station, general store, school, county office, and hotel—is one of the two Boggsville properties listed on the National Register of Historic Places. After the railroads came to the area, he moved to Las Animas and established a store, helped found a bank, and, with Charles Goodnight, co-founded a meat packing plant.
Prowers was born on January 29, 1838 near Westport, Kansas City, Missouri. As a young boy, he acquired a stepfather when his mother married John Vogil, who was hard on his stepson. Prowers spent just 13 months in the public schools.
When he was eighteen years of age, he was hired by Robert Miller who was an agent for Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowas, Comanche, and Apache tribes of the upper Arkansas area. They traveled from Westport, Missouri to Bent's Fort in what is now Colorado. Their wagon contained annuity goods—sugar, oatmeal, bacon, salt, beans, coffee, cornmeal, and other goods—which Miller and Prowers passed out to Native Americans who came to the fort. Bent's Fort was a trading post where Native Americans traded buffalo robes and mountain men traded beaver skins for goods. Their customers included French-Canadians and Mexicans. He worked at Bent's Fort for seven years, from 1856 to 1863, as a trader who led wagon trains to and from Missouri, returning with supplies for Bent's Fort. From 1865 to 1871, he delivered government supplies from Leavenworth, Kansas to Fort Union. He also delivered supplies to Fort Laramie. He learned the Cheyenne language and was sometimes called upon to act as an interpreter. Respected by Native Americans and whites, he often provided background information about the lifestyle and issues of the indigenous people of Colorado to help whites understand their perspectives.
When Prowers began to settle in what is now southeastern Colorado, there were very few white settlers and they were isolated from one another. Albert G. Boone, the grandson of Daniel Boone and an Indian agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho, lived 80 miles west of Fort Lyon and helped negotiate the Treaty of Fort Wise (later renamed Fort Lyon) in 1861. William Bent's Bent's Old Fort, established in 1833, was a stagecoach station, trading post, and a meeting place for people of Mexican, Native American, and European-American descent. Robison Malory Moore, husband of William Bent's daughter, Mary, settled at the mouth of the Purgatoire River in 1860.
Over time, as more white people moved into what is now Colorado, relations between the Plains Indians and the whites became increasingly hostile. Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders did not understand the cultural ways and perspectives of the whites. In 1864, Chief Black Kettle and Chief Ochinee (One-Eye) met with Governor John Evans and Colonel John Chivington. Although they did not have a formal treaty, they believed that they had an agreement for peace and complied with their requirements for peace, including arriving at Fort Lyon to enter into discussion with Major Wynkoop, who was replaced by the time they arrived by Major Anthony. Anthony supported their goal for peace and the Cheyenne leaders explained that the young men were planning on leaving on a buffalo hunt. The Cheyenne were told that they would be safe if they stayed at their Sand Creek encampment. Soldiers from the fort arrived at the Prowers home and held the family and ranch hands hostages for 2 and a half days before the Sand Creek massacre on November 29, 1864, in which Chief Ochinee and 160 people from the village, mostly women and children, died that day.
The first man to drive cattle to the west, Prowers began purchasing cattle in 1861, first shorthorn cattle and then Hereford cattle, who better survived the Colorado winters. He drove them to Colorado during his wagon train trips. He was considered the first and largest rancher in the area. In 1863, he increased his land holdings when he bought land across from Fort Lyons. Prowers' wife Amache, their two oldest daughters, and Amache's mother each received reparations by the United States government in the form of 640 acres of land along the Arkansas River. Amache used her land to expand her family's cattle ranch. He purchased some of his land for his cattle ranching from the half-Native American children who received war reparations following the Sand Creek massacre (1864) and from local whites.
The Prowers also raised sheep and horses and operated a farm. Fort Lyon bought nearly all the produce that the farm produced. Tarbox Ditch, a seven-mile irrigation ditch that served 1,000 acres, was utilized by the Prowers farm, as well as the Boggs and Robert Bent farms. Due to the irrigation, the three farms grew potatoes, corn, wheat, alfalfa, and vegetables. He contracted with the United States government to provide large quantities of hay.
The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway (AT&SF) came to Colorado in 1873 and its tracks ran along a border of the Prowers ranch. A train station was established at Granada, Colorado. Cattle was then shipped via train, rather than having to be driven to stockyards. By 1876, Prowers, known as the cattle baron of the Arkansas (Arkansas River Valley), and Charles Goodnight established a meatpacking plant in Las Animas. The Prowers had 15,000 head of cattle and had acquired more land so that they had 30 miles of waterfront alongside the Arkansas River by 1881. They had 70,000 head of cattle at one fall roundup.
After living first at Bent's Fort, John and his wife operated a stagecoach station at their home in Caddoa, Colorado. During the winter, they boarded mules and horses for Fort Lyon and in the summer grew vegetables for the military. They also sold horses and livestock to the fort. In the spring of 1867, a flood of the Arkansas River nearly destroyed the fort. It was moved 20 miles west and the Prowers moved to be closer to the new location.
In 1867, the Prowers family established a two-story, 14-room house in Boggsville, Colorado. The U-shaped building was the site of a stagecoach station, school, and general store. They raised cattle there. After 1870, Bent County's county office was located in the Prowers house, which served as Boggsville's town center. About that time, a school was established near the Prowers house. Established in 1869 with 21 students, it was the first public school in southeastern Colorado. Kit Carson was a neighbor there.
Located on the Purgatory branch of the Santa Fe Trail, the stagecoach station provided meals for travelers, while the stagecoach horses were traded for fresh horses. Officers at For Lyon were guests at the Prowers House. Parties and dances were held in Boggsville, which drew settlers and cowboys from a 50-mile radius. The Prowers house became a property on the Boggsville Historic Site in 1985, and it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places the following year. It is a certified site of the Santa Fe Trail.
After the Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and the Kansas Pacific Railway established rail service into southeastern Colorado in 1873, The Prowers moved to the new town of Las Animas, Colorado in 1873 or 1874, where they lived and operated a large general store. John helped found the Bent County Bank and established the commission house of Prowers & Hough, which received goods delivered to him in Las Animas and he had delivered to merchants in southeastern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona—until railroad service extended deeper into Colorado.
Bent County became a county within Colorado in February 1870 and Las Animas was the county seat. Prowers was elected the first county commissioner and Boggsville was made the county seat in November. A Democrat, Prowers served in the territorial legislature in 1873 and the state legislature in 1880; Colorado became a state in 1876. He was defeated when he ran for lieutenant governor, with Hon. J.B. Grant on the ticket for governor.
Prowers met a Cheyenne girl, Amache Ochinee, the daughter of a Cheyenne sub-chief Ochinee and later gained acceptance from her father to marry her. The 15 year-old Amache and Prowers were married in the Indian Territory near Camp Supply in 1861. They started their married life at Bent's Fort in the commissary building.
During his winter 1862 trip to Missouri, Prowers left Amache with his aunt in Westport and their first child, Mary, was born there on July 18, 1863. Prowers picked up his family a few months later for the two-month return trip to Colorado. They settled with their baby daughter at a cattle ranch with three stone buildings that Prowers established on Caddoa Creek in the area of Big Timbers. Mary married A.D. Hudnall and had three children. Their second child, Katherine, married W.A. Haws and had two children. Inez married Glen O. Comstock and had two children. The only surviving son, John Wesley, Jr. was followed by George, who died at age eleven. Leona, the wife of T.H. Marshall, died at 20 years of age. Ida married Louis F. Horton. Amy had not married by 1899. The children were educated in Colorado at Rice Institute in Trinidad, at local schools, and Wolfe Hall in Denver, and then sent to Lexington and Independence, Missouri to for higher level schooling or college. For instance, John Wesley, Jr. went to Lexington, where he was educated at Wentworth Military Academy between 1883 and 1888, from ages 13 to 18.
When the family lived in Boggsville, Native American tribes camped nearby as they visited their relatives, like Amache, who were married to white men. He is welcoming, accommodating and generous with Amache's Cheyenne family members, who honored and respected him. Settlers stayed at Boggsville in September 1868 when renegade Cheyenne warriors stole and killed livestock and killed one person. The Cheyenne were keenly aware that the construction of railway lines in Colorado meant an end to their way of life. Prowers averted an attack by the Cheyenne on Las Animas, where there was a railway station.
In 1880, with an intention to increase the wildlife in the area, Prowers shipped in white-tail deer—three does and two bucks—and turned them loose near his ranch. As of 1945, white-tailed deer were found in New Mexico, near Trinidad on Fishers Peak, and near where they were originally released along the Arkansas River. An earlier attempt by Prowers to introduce eight dozen prairie chickens was not successful, but his friends Luke Cahill and Judge M. Robinson were successful at introducing bobwhite quail in the area.
In late 1883 or 1884, Prowers was seriously ill and went to Kansas City, Missouri for medical treatment. He died there at the home of his sister Mrs. John Simpson Hough on February 14, 1884, leaving an estate of $750,000 (). He was buried at Las Animas cemetery, as was Amache, who died in Boston. Prowers County, Colorado was named after him.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260895
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Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana
Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (MACLA) is a contemporary arts space focused on the Latinx and Chicano experience and history, located in the SoFA district at 510 South First Street in San Jose, California. The museum was founded in 1989, in order to encourage civic dialog and social equity. The current programming includes visual art, performing and literary arts, youth arts education, and a community art program. The space has two performing arts spaces, a gallery and the MACLA Castellano Playhouse and they frequently host poetry readings and film screenings.
Founded in 1989. For decades there was a disagreement with MACLA and the city of San Jose, the city wanted the museum to be based in the Mexican Heritage Plaza but MACLA wanted to be part of the contemporary art dialog happening in the city in the downtown area. Between 2009 until 2013, MACLA started the process of securing grants and funds to buy their building. The building closed escrow in May 2013, which secured a future of Latinx engagement and physical space in the downtown San Jose community during gentrification. Anjee Helstrup-Alvarez has served as the executive director of MACLA since 2011 until present.
A 2016 mural by artist Aaron De La Cruz is on the outside of the museum building
This is a list of select visual art exhibitions at MACLA, to give example of programming.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260922
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Kamala Hayman
Kamala Hayman is a New Zealand newspaper journalist and editor. In 2018 she was appointed editor of "The Press", a metropolitan daily newspaper in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Hayman studied journalism at the University of Canterbury. She was a journalist in London, England, for ten years, where she wrote about politics and crime for a local newspaper, and worked for BBC's "News Online" service. She moved to Christchurch in 2001. After working as a reporter for "The Press", she became chief reporter and then editor of thepress.co.nz website. In the 2004 Qantas Media Awards, Hayman won the Environment and Conservation category for her article "DOC to remove hundreds of baches".
In 2015, Hayman was appointed deputy editor, Canterbury and Otago region by her then-employer, Fairfax Media. In 2017, Hayman was executive producer of a true crime podcast, "Black Hands", which explored the 1994 Bain family murders. The series topped the podcast charts in New Zealand, Australia, Britain and Ireland.
In 2017 Joanna Norris resigned her position as editor of "The Press" and Hayman was appointed acting editor. She was confirmed as editor in 2018.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63260985
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Kyōko Saitō
Saitō's musical career began on 11 May 2016, when she passed the auditions for new members of Keyakizaka46's subgroup Hiragana Keyakizaka46, which was hosted on the streaming platform Showroom. Saitō, along with ten other people that passed the audition, joined Neru Nagahama in Hiragana Keyakizaka46 and was known as the "first generation". Her first concert occurred on 28 October of the same year at Akasaka Blitz, where she performed Kanji Keyakizaka46's songs "Silent Majority" and "Sekai ni wa Ai Shika Nai", as well as Hiragana Keyakizaka46's own "Hiragana Keyaki".
During her time at Hiragana Keyakizaka46, she has consistently appeared in every single between "Sekai ni wa Ai Shika Nai" and "Kuroi Hitsuji", including a center position in the song "Soredemo Aruiteru", a B-side for the single "Kaze ni Fukarete mo". After Hiragana Keyakizaka46 was renamed into Hinatazka46, Saitō has also appeared in every single to date. She also performed in the song "Hatsukoi Door", a B-side of "Jiwaru Days" performed by Sakamichi AKB, which included members of AKB48 and Sakamichi Series members.
Saitō is an regular model for the fashion magazine "ar", published monthly.
Saitō is known among fans for being a "ramen" enthusiast, prompting her to choose as her personal catchphrase. She was featured in a 2018 television show titled "Keyakizaka46 Ramen Daisuki, Saitō Kyōko Desu", which is taken from her catchphrase. On the show, Saitō, along with other Hiragana Keyakizaka46 members, tried multiple "ramen" restaurants to find her favorite one. In April 2019, she was invited to be an ambassador for the 2019 Ramen Girls Expo in Shizuoka.
Saitō is also known for speaking very quickly, a language game. She demonstrates this ability often through variety shows, with fellow member Kumi Sasaki as "interpreter".
The songs listed below are not included in any singles above.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261071
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Leonid Chernishyov
Leonid Aleksandrovich Chernishyov (Russian: Леонид Александрович Чернышёв ; (15 May 1875, Sukhobuzim, Yeniseysk Governorate - 1932, Krasnoyarsk) was a Russian and Soviet architect and designer.
He was born into a peasant family. His mother was the daughter of a priest. In 1880, they moved from their village to Krasnoyarsk, where his father took work as a scribe. While studying at the gymnasium, he made friends with his classmate, . At that time, an artist named M. A. Rudchenko was lodging with Karatanov's family. He introduced both boys to drawing and painting. These hobbies were encouraged by the artist, Vasily Surikov, who was an old acquaintance of Leonid's family.
In 1892, on Surikov's advice, he left Krasnoyarsk to enroll at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. One of the students he met there was (no relation), who would one day become Moscow's Chief Architect. Under his influence, Leonid decided to devote himself to architecture. He graduated in 1901. Two years later, he continued his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, under Professor Alexander Pomerantsev. In 1904, he participated in the construction of the Hotel Metropol Moscow and, in 1905, began a tour of Southern Russia to seek inspiration from nature. He returned to Krasnoyarsk in 1906, without completing his studies at the Academy. The following year, he opened a small art school, with the assistance of Surikov.
His first major projects, the House of Merchants and various buildings for the resort at Lake Shira, were performed from 1909 to 1910. In the latter year, Siberia's first drawing school was opened and the Governor of Yeniseysk, , appointed him head teacher. His old friend, Karatanov, also became a teacher there..
During these years, he was also a member of the city council (Duma), a member of the Directorate at the and a member of the school commission. In 1911, he designed pavilions for the First West Siberian Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition in Omsk. One of these was in Egyptian style and became the prototype for the . For this work, he received a commission of 11,000 Rubles, which enabled him to build his own home.
In 1918, he accepted the post of Provincial Engineer. Two years later, after the Soviet takeover, he was transferred to the "Department of State Structures", operated by the Provincial Economic Council, and became head of the Design Bureau. He was also a lecturer in architecture at the Higher Krasnoyarsk Polytechnic and a teacher at the School of the Union of Builders. In 1922, following a major reorganization, he once again became Provincial Engineer.
He never married and devoted all of his time to work; sometimes as much as twenty hours per day. He was also a heavy smoker. As a result, his health deteriorated and he died of heart failure, sometime during the first year of the Soviet famine of 1932–33.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261100
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Algebra and Tiling: Homomorphisms in the Service of Geometry
Algebra and Tiling: Homomorphisms in the Service of Geometry is a mathematics textbook on the use of group theory to answer questions about tessellations and higher dimensional honeycombs, partitions of the Euclidean plane or higher-dimensional spaces into congruent tiles. It was written by Sherman K. Stein and Sándor Szabó, and published by the Mathematical Association of America as volume 25 of their Carus Mathematical Monographs series in 1994. It won the 1998 Beckenbach Book Prize, and was reprinted in paperback in 2008.
The seven chapters of the book are largely self-contained, and consider different problems combining tessellations and algebra. Throughout the book, the history of the subject as well as the state of the art is discussed, and there are many illustrations.
The first chapter concerns a conjecture of Hermann Minkowski that, in any lattice tiling of a Euclidean space by unit hypercubes (a tiling in which a lattice of translational symmetries takes any hypercube to any other hypercube) some two cubes must meet face-to-face. This result was resolved positively by Hajós's theorem in group theory, but a generalization of this question to non-lattice tilings (Keller's conjecture) was disproved shortly before the publication of the book, in part by using similar group-theoretic methods.
Following this, three chapters concern lattice tilings by polycubes. The question here is to determine, from the shape of the polycube, whether all cubes in the tiling meet face-to-face or, equivalently, whether the lattice of symmetries must be a subgroup of the integer lattice. After a chapter on the general version of this problem, two chapters consider special classes of cross and "semicross"-shaped polycubes, both with regard to tiling and then, when these shapes do not tile, with regard to how densely they can be packed. In three dimensions, this is the notorious tripod packing problem.
Chapter five considers Monsky's theorem on the impossibility of partitioning a square into an odd number of equal-area triangles, and its proof using the 2-adic valuation, and chapter six applies Galois theory to more general problems of tiling polygons by congruent triangles, such as the impossibility of tiling a square with 30-60-90 right triangles.
The final chapter returns to the topic of the first, with material on László Rédei's generalization of Hajós's theorem. Appendices cover background material on lattice theory, exact sequences, free abelian groups, and the theory of cyclotomic polynomials.
"Algebra and Tiling" can be read by undergraduate or graduate mathematics students who have some background in abstract algebra, and provides a source of applications for this topic. It can be used as a textbook, with exercises scattered throughout its chapters.
Reviewer William J. Walton writes that "The student or mathematician whose area of interest is algebra should enjoy this text". In 1998, the Mathematical Association of America gave it their Beckenbach Book Prize as one of the best of their book publications. The award citation called it "a simultaneously erudite and inviting ex- position of this substantial and timeless area of mathematics".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261108
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Tatranky
Tatranky are the Czech five-layer (originally six-layer) wafers with chocolate coating only on narrower edges. They were introduced in 1945.
Originally they were supposed to have a triangular shape like the peaks of the mountains, from which the name was also derived, but due to the technical difficulties of making the circuit topping in serial production and packing in cellophane, it was finally decided to have a rectangular shape. The filling originally had the taste of hazelnuts, later chocolate and peanut. After 1989, further variations appeared, but also the number of layers was reduced to five.
In 1960 a version called Stadionka was created, which had a chocolate coating over the entire surface, but due to the greater demand for chocolate, this version was abandoned and started to be produced again after 1989 under the name čokotatranky. Tatranky were first produced by the state-owned company Čokoládovny, which was founded in 1947 by the nationalization of Theodor Fiedor and the merger of other companies, and now it is produced by Opavia. Apart from the Czech Republic, it is produced in Slovakia.
Similar five-layer wafers are produced under the brand name "Horalky".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261124
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Makoto Yano
Makoto Yano (矢野誠, "Yano Makoto", born 27 May 1952) is a Japanese economist, currently the President and Chief Research Officer of the Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI). He is also a Professor Emeritus at Kyoto University and a Professor by Special Appointment at Kyoto University's Institute of Economic Research and Sophia University.
Yano completed undergraduate study at Tokyo University in 1977 before moving to the United States to pursue graduate studies at Rochester University. At Rochester, he focused on dynamic general equilibrium theory and trade theory, working with Lionel W. McKenzie and Ronald. W. Jones as his thesis advisors. After receiving his Ph.D. from Rochester in 1981, Yano taught at Cornell University and Rutgers University before returning to Japan in 1986. Before assuming his current position with RIETI, he spent more than ten years as a Professor at Kyoto University's Institute of Economic Research Institute, including two years as Chair of the Institute and five years as Head of the Institute's Research Center for Advanced Policy Studies.Before joining Kyoto University, he also served as a Professor on the Faculties of Economics at Keio University and Yokohama National University. He is a founding editor of the International Journal of Economic Theory, and has served as President of the Japanese Economic Association from April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009 and as Managing Editor of the Japanese Economic Review.
Yano is known for his contributions in the field of dynamic general equilibrium theory (Turnpike theory). He is also known for his work in incorporating chaos theory into economic theory. In recent years, he has developed a new field of market quality economics that measures the efficiency of allocation and the fairness of dealing and pricing.
1. Yano, M., "The Foundation of Market Quality Economics," Japanese Economic Review 60–1, 2009.
2. Yano, M., and J. Nugent, "Aid, Non-Traded Goods and the Transfer Paradox in Small Countries," American Economic Review 89–3, 431–449, 1999.
3. Yano, M., "On the Dual Stability of a von Neumann Facet and the Inefficacy of Temporary Fiscal Policy," Econometrica 66–2, 1998.
4. Nishimura, K., and M. Yano. "Non-Linear Dynamics and Chaos in Optimal Growth: An Example," Econometrica 63–4, 1995.
5. Weller, P., and M. Yano. "Forward Exchange, Futures Trading and Spot Price Variability: A General Equilibrium Approach," Econometrica 55–6, 1433–1450, 1987.
6. Yano, M., "The Turnpike of Dynamic General Equilibrium Paths in Its Insensitivity to Initial Conditions," Journal of Mathematical Economics 13–3, 235–254.
7. McKenzie, L., and M. Yano, "Turnpike Theory: Some Corrections," Econometrica 48, 1980.
・Personal web page
・Yano Makoto's page at RIETI
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261184
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Peter P. Chen Award
Peter P. Chen Award is an annually presented award to honor one individual for their contributions to the field of conceptual modeling. Named after the computer scientist Peter Chen, the award was started in 2008 by the publisher Elsevier as a means of celebrating the 25th anniversary of the journal "Data & Knowledge Engineering". It is presented at the Entity Relationship (ER) International Conference on Conceptual Modeling. Winners are given a plaque, a cash prize, and are invited to give a keynote speech.
There are five criteria for selecting the winner; research, how the nominee has contributed to advance the field of conceptual modeling; service, organizational contributions for related meetings, conferences, and editorial boards; education, mentoring of doctoral students in the field; contribution to practice, contributions to technology transfer, commercialization, and industrial projects; and international reputation. The selection committee is composed of the Steering Committee chair, two Program Committee members that have been appointed by the Steering Committee chair, and recipients of the last two years.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261187
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Political positions of Mitch McConnell
The political positions of Mitch McConnell are reflected by his United States Senate voting record, public speeches, and interviews, as well as his actions as Senate majority and minority leader. McConnell was known as a pragmatist and a moderate Republican early in his political career, but shifted to the right over time. He led opposition to stricter campaign finance laws, culminating in the Supreme Court ruling that partially overturned the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (McCain-Feingold) in 2010.
In 2010, McConnell voted against the Zadroga Act, which was designed to provide medical treatment for 9/11 first responders who experienced health complications related to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. McConnell refused to support the bill unless the Bush tax cuts were extended first. In 2015, McConnell blocked legislation seeking to replenish funds for the 9/11 responders, so that it could not go up for a vote in the Senate. McConnell refused to support the bill unless legislation was also passed to lift a U.S. ban on oil exports. Former "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart, a prominent advocate for the bill, singled out McConnell's role, saying McConnell did not care about anything "other than politics" amid reports that McConnell was holding the bill hostage to get Democrats to meet his demands on unrelated issues.
In 2019, Jon Stewart gave emotional testimony in the House of Representatives, asking for the 9/11 responders' health care funds to be replenished anew. Shortly thereafter, the House approved legislation to renew the health care funds. Stewart subsequently criticized McConnell for not prioritizing passage of the bill in the Senate, saying the issue "has never been dealt with compassionately by Senator McConnell" and that only "under intense lobbying and public shaming has he even deigned to move on it." McConnell responded, saying the legislation would be addressed in the Senate and that "it sounds to me like he is looking for some way to take offense."
McConnell led opposition to stricter campaign finance regulations, with the "Lexington Herald Leader" describing it as McConnell's "pet issue." He has argued that campaign finance regulations reduce participation in political campaigns and protect incumbents from competition. In 1990, he led a filibuster against a campaign finance reform bill. He spearheaded the movement against the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (known since 1995 as the "McCain–Feingold bill" and from 1989 to 1994 as the "Boren–Mitchell bill"), calling it "neither fair, nor balanced, nor constitutional." His opposition to the bill culminated in the 2003 Supreme Court case "McConnell v. Federal Election Commission" and the 2010 "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission", the latter of which ruled part of the act unconstitutional. McConnell has been an advocate for free speech at least as far back as the early 1970s when he was teaching night courses at the University of Louisville. "No issue has shaped his career more than the intersection of campaign financing and free speech," political reporter Robert Costa wrote in 2012. In a recording of a 2014 fundraiser McConnell expressed his disapproval of the McCain-Feingold law, saying, "The worst day of my political life was when President George W. Bush signed McCain-Feingold into law in the early part of his first Administration."
On January 2, 2013, the Public Campaign Action Fund, a liberal nonprofit group that backs stronger campaign finance regulation, released a report highlighting eight instances from McConnell's political career in which a vote or a blocked vote (filibuster), coincided with an influx of campaign contributions to McConnell's campaign.
In December 2018, McConnell opposed a Democratic resolution that overturned IRS guidance to reduce the amount of donor information certain tax-exempt groups would have to give the IRS, saying, "In a climate that is increasingly hostile to certain kinds of political expression and open debate, the last thing Washington needs to do is to chill the exercise of free speech and add to the sense of intimidation."
Prior to his Senate run, McConnell favored campaign finance reform, describing money in politics as a "cancer" in 1973.
In late 2018, McConnell stalled the passage of the First Step Act (a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill) in the Senate. As of December 2018, McConnell had yet to endorse the bill, which had been endorsed by President Donald Trump. Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Kamala Harris stated that McConnell was the only impediment to the bill's passage. The Senate passed the First Step Act on December 18, 2018, and the bill was signed into law by President Donald Trump on December 21, 2018. McConnell voted in favor of the bill. McConnell had been reluctant to call for a vote because the Senate Republican Conference was divided on the bill.
In 2010, McConnell requested earmarks for the defense contractor BAE Systems while the company was under investigation by the Department of Justice for alleged bribery of foreign officials.
In June 2011, McConnell introduced a Constitutional Balanced Budget Amendment. The amendment would require two-thirds votes in Congress to increase taxes or for federal spending to exceed the current year's tax receipts or 18% of the prior year's GDP. The amendment specifies situations when these requirements would be waived.
During the Great Recession, as Congress and the Obama administration negotiated reforms of the banking system, McConnell played an important role in preventing the addition of a provision requiring banks to prefund a reserve intended to be used to rescue insolvent banks in the future. When there appeared to be bipartisan and majority support for such a bank-funded reserve, McConnell criticized the provision, referred to it as a "bailout fund" and turned "opposition to it a litmus test for Senate Republicans", according to one study. According to the study, "McConnell's attack, along with his insistence that opposition would be a matter of party principle, undermined the fragile coalition supporting the prefunded reserve, and the White Housefearing that advocating a bank levy as part of the president's broader reform would enable opponents to kill the whole billshelved the idea."
After two intercessions to get federal grants for Alltech, whose president T. Pearse Lyons made subsequent campaign contributions to McConnell, to build a plant in Kentucky for producing ethanol from algae, corncobs, and switchgrass, McConnell criticized President Obama in 2012 for twice mentioning biofuel production from algae in a speech touting his "all-of-the-above" energy policy.
In 2014, McConnell voted to help break Ted Cruz's filibuster attempt against a debt limit increase and then against the bill itself. In 2014, McConnell opposed the Paycheck Fairness Act (a bill that "punishes employers for retaliating against workers who share wage information, puts the justification burden on employers as to why someone is paid less and allows workers to sue for punitive damages of wage discrimination") because it would "line the pockets of trial lawyers", not help women.
In July 2014, McConnell expressed opposition to a U.S. Senate bill that would limit the practice of corporate inversion by U.S. corporations seeking to limit U.S. tax liability.
Under McConnell, the Republican-led Senate voted to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
In 2018, McConnell called for entitlement cuts and raised concern about government deficits. He blamed the deficit on government spending, and dismissed criticisms of the tax cuts bill he passed the year prior, which added more than $1 trillion in debt.
In 2019, McConnell introduced legislation to eliminate the estate tax (which is a tax on inheritances over $11.2 million).
In 1992, after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had found conclusive evidence that human activities significantly contribute to climate change, McConnell stated that there was "no conclusive evidence of significant long-term global warming", that there was no scientific consensus on the subject, misleadingly claimed that scientists were alarmed about global cooling in the 1970s, and that climate mitigation efforts would be "the most expensive attack on jobs and the economy in this country." In 2014, McConnell continued to express skepticism that climate change was a problem, telling the "Cincinnati Enquirer" editorial board, "I'm not a scientist, I am interested in protecting Kentucky's economy, I'm interested in having low cost electricity." McConnell was the sponsor of the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008, which would have allowed states to engage in increased offshore and domestic oil exploration. In 2015, McConnell encouraged state governors not to comply with the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan, which was aimed at tackling climate change.
In December 2014, McConnell stated that the incoming Republican-controlled Senate's first priority would be approving the Keystone XL pipeline, announcing his intent to allow a vote on legislation in favor of the pipeline by John Hoeven and his hope "that senators on both sides will offer energy-related amendments, but there will be no effort to micromanage the amendment process." McConnell disputed that the Keystone XL pipeline would harm the environment by citing fellow Republican senator Lisa Murkowski's claim that the US already had 19 pipelines in effect and multiple studies "showing over and over again no measurable harm to the environment." He furthered that the pipeline would create high paying jobs and had received bipartisan support. In February 2015, President Obama vetoed the Keystone XL bill on the grounds that it conflicted "with established executive branch procedures and cuts short thorough consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest". The following month, the Senate was unable to reach a two-thirds majority to override the veto, McConnell afterward stating that the veto represented "a victory for partisanship and for powerful special interests" and "a defeat for jobs, infrastructure, and the middle class."
In November 2016, McConnell requested that President-elect Trump prioritize the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline upon taking office during a meeting and told reporters that President Obama "sat on the Keystone pipeline throughout his entire eight years, even though his own State Department said it had no measurable impact on climate."
McConnell was one of 22 Republican senators to sign a letter urging President Donald Trump to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Agreement. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, McConnell has received over $1.5 million from the oil and gas industry since 2012.
In 1985, McConnell backed anti-apartheid legislation with Chris Dodd. McConnell went on to engineer new IMF funding to "faithfully protect aid to Egypt and Israel," and "promote free elections and better treatment of Muslim refugees" in Myanmar, Cambodia and Macedonia. According to a March 2014 article in "Politico", "McConnell was a 'go-to guy' for presidents of both parties seeking foreign aid," but he has lost some of his idealism and has evolved to be more wary of foreign assistance.
In August 2007, McConnell introduced the Protect America Act of 2007, which allowed the National Security Agency to monitor telephone and electronic communications of suspected terrorists outside the United States without obtaining a warrant.
In April 2017, McConnell organized a White House briefing of all senators conducted by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Defense Secretary James Mattis, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford regarding threats from the North Korean government. In May 2018, after President Trump called off the North Korea–United States summit, McConnell said that Trump "wanted to make sure that North Koreans understood he was serious, willing to engage, provided they didn't continue to play these kinds of games as they've historically done with other administrations and gotten away with it" and that further progress would be staked on the subsequent actions of North Korea. Trump shortly thereafter announced that the summit could resume as scheduled following a "very nice statement" he received from North Korea and that talks were now resuming. At the Greater Louisville Inc. Congressional Summit, McConnell stated that North Korea would likely pursue "sanctions and other relief" while giving up as little as possible; he added that to achieve a successful negotiation, Trump would "have to not want the deal too much".
In August 2018, McConnell said Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been accused of ignoring the genocide of Myanmar's Rohingya Muslim minority, could not be blamed for atrocities committed by the Myanmar's armed forces.
McConnell supported sanctions on Cuba for most of his Senate career, including the trade embargo imposed by the United States during the presidency of John F. Kennedy.
In December 2014, McConnell announced his opposition to the Obama administration's intent to normalize American relations with Cuba, calling it "a mistake" and that Congress would be able to intervene due to multiple sanctions having been implemented into law along with any American ambassador to Cuba requiring Senate approval. McConnell noted the US normalizing relations with Vietnam as its government continued repressing denizens as an example of American engagement sometimes not working.
In a July 2015 interview, McConnell stated that Obama believed that the US would "get a positive result" by merely engaging Cuba and that he saw no evidence in Cuba changing its behavior.
In March 2016, following Obama's travel to Cuba, McConnell said that for Obama "to go down there and act like this is a normal regime, has been embarrassing" while stating that the president believed engagement with Cuba was "going to improve things." After the death of Fidel Castro later that year, McConnell said the passing was an opportunity for the Cuban government to reform itself toward the principles of freedom and democracy, adding that "the oppression" Castro imposed remained in Cuba despite his death.
In August 2015, McConnell charged President Obama with treating his rallying for support of the Iran nuclear deal "like a political campaign" and stated his preference for senators spending time in their seats while debating the deal: "Demonize your opponents, gin up the base, get Democrats all angry and, you know, rally around the president. To me, it's a different kind of issue." In a September interview, McConnell stated that the battle over the Iran nuclear deal possibly would have to wait until after the Obama administration was over while vowing to tee another vote on the matter to show bipartisan opposition to the matter. He said the Iran nuclear deal would be a defining issue in the following presidential election in the event that the Republicans still did not have enough votes to overcome a filibuster from Democrats and called the deal "an agreement between Barack Obama and the Iranian regime."
In January 2016, as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee weighed consideration of sanctions on North Korea after its test of a nuclear device, McConnell called Iran "an obvious rogue regime with which we have this outrageous deal that they don't intend to comply with" and confirmed the intent of the Senate to look into Iran. In May, McConnell called for Democrats to vote for an underlying spending bill ahead of authorizing the appropriations process to move forward as Democrats opposed the measure on the grounds of a Republican amendment related to Iran. After their third filibuster on the bill, McConnell set up a vote on both the Iran amendment and spending bill.
In May 2018, after President Trump announced the United States was withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, McConnell said the deal was "a flawed deal and we can do better" and stated congressional optimism to seeing what Trump would propose in its place.
On 3 January 2020, the high-level Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, was killed, along with nine others, in a targeted air strike by the United States. The event considerably heightened existing tensions between the two countries. McConnell supported the attack, referring to Soleimani as "Iran's master terrorist".
In October 2002, McConnell voted for the Iraq Resolution, which authorized military action against Iraq. McConnell supported the Iraq War troop surge of 2007. In 2010, McConnell "accused the White House of being more concerned about a messaging strategy than prosecuting a war against terrorism."
In 2006, McConnell publicly criticized Senate Democrats for urging that troops be brought back from Iraq. According to Bush's "Decision Points" memoir, however, McConnell was privately urging the then President to "bring some troops home from Iraq" to lessen the political risks. McConnell's hometown paper, the "Louisville Courier-Journal", in an editorial titled "McConnell's True Colors", criticized McConnell for his actions and asked him to "explain why the fortunes of the Republican Party are of greater importance than the safety of the United States."
Regarding the failure of the Iraqi government to make reforms, McConnell said the following on "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer": "The Iraqi government is a huge disappointment. Republicans overwhelmingly feel disappointed about the Iraqi government. I read just this week that a significant number of the Iraqi parliament want to vote to ask us to leave. I want to assure you, Wolf, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request."
On April 21, 2009, McConnell delivered a speech to the Senate criticizing President Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, and questioned the additional 81 million dollar White House request for funds to transfer prisoners to the United States.
In July 2011, following the acquittal of Casey Anthony in the murder of her daughter Caylee, McConnell stated the trial showed "how difficult is to get a conviction in a U.S. court" and advocated for foreign-born terrorists to be sent to Guantanamo Bay.
McConnell is a long-standing supporter of Israel. In January 2017, McConnell signed onto a resolution authored by Marco Rubio and Ben Cardin objecting to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which condemned Israeli settlement building in the occupied Palestinian territories as a violation of international law, and calling for all American presidents to "uphold the practice of vetoing all United Nations Security Council resolutions that seek to insert the Council into the peace process, recognize unilateral Palestinian actions including declaration of a Palestinian state, or dictate terms and a timeline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."
McConnell said the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement "is a clear example of rising anti-Israel sentiment in our country which is very disturbing". In 2019, Senator Marco Rubio, who cosponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, introduced the Combating BDS Act, whose original cosponsors include McConnell. The bill is meant to do exactly what the Israel Anti-Boycott Act was meant to do, and enable states to pass anti-boycott legislation with federal blessing.
In December 2010, McConnell was one of 26 senators who voted against the ratification of New Start, a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russian Federation obliging both countries to have no more than 1,550 strategic warheads as well as 700 launchers deployed during the next seven years along with providing a continuation of on-site inspections that halted when START I expired the previous year. It was the first arms treaty with Russia in eight years.
In 2012, he supported the Magnitsky Act that has allowed the U.S. government to sanction those who it sees as human rights offenders, freezing their assets, and ban them from entering the United States.
On March 27, 2014, McConnell introduced the United States International Programming to Ukraine and Neighboring Regions bill, which would provide additional funding and instructions to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in response to the 2014 Crimea crisis.
In September 2016, McConnell was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of State John Kerry advocating for the United States using "all available tools to dissuade Russia from continuing its airstrikes in Syria" from an Iranian airbase near the city of Hamadan, and stating that there should be clear enforcement by the US of the airstrikes violating "a legally binding Security Council Resolution" on Iran.
In July 2017, McConnell voted in favor of the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act that placed sanctions on Russia together with Iran and North Korea.
In January 2018, Senators Marco Rubio and Chris Van Hollen introduced a bipartisan bill that would impose new sanctions on Russia in the event the country attempted interfering in another American election. In July, McConnell mentioned the bill as one option on the table for the Senate and asked the Banking and Foreign Relations panels to hold new hearings on the implementation of the bipartisan Russia sanctions bill from the previous year in addition to suggesting potential further steps lawmakers could pursue as part of efforts to counter Russian malfeasance ahead of that year's midterm elections.
In September 2016, the Senate voted 71 to 27 against the Chris Murphy–Rand Paul resolution to block the $1.15 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian-led coalition in Yemen has been accused of war crimes. Following the vote, McConnell said: "I think it's important to the United States to maintain as good a relationship with Saudi Arabia as possible." In November 2018, McConnell stated that the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi "is completely abhorrent to everything the United States holds dear and stands for in the world", reasoning that this contrast warranted a response from the US. He later expressed opposition to a complete fracture in relations between the US and Saudi Arabia as not in the "best interest long term" and added that Saudi Arabia had been a "great" ally of the US as it related to Iran. On December 12, McConnell advocated for the Senate to reject a measure authored by Bernie Sanders and Mike Lee that would end American support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, calling the resolution "neither precise enough or prudent enough." McConnell endorsed a resolution by Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, which if enacted would charge crown prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman with Khashoggi's death, as doing "a good job capturing bipartisan concerns about the war in Yemen and the behavior of Saudi partners more broadly without triggering an extended debate over war powers while we hasten to finish all our other work."
Also in September 2016, both the Senate and the House of Representatives overrode President Obama's veto to pass the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), which targets Saudi Arabia, into law. Despite McConnell voting to override the President, McConnell would criticize JASTA within a day of the bill's passing, saying that it might have "unintended ramifications". McConnell appeared to blame the White House regarding this as he quoted that there was "failure to communicate early about the potential consequences" of JASTA, and said he told Obama that JASTA "was an example of an issue that we should have talked about much earlier". In vetoing the bill, Obama had provided three reasons for objecting to JASTA: that the courts would be less effective than "national security and foreign policy professionals" in responding to a foreign government supporting terrorism, that it would upset "longstanding international principles regarding sovereign immunity", and that it would complicate international relations.
McConnell was the only party leader in Congress to oppose the resolution that would authorize military strikes against Syria in September 2013, citing a lack of national security risk.
In January 2016, McConnell delivered a Senate floor speech endorsing the Senate voting to approve of a bill requiring additional FBI background checks and individual sign-offs from three high-ranking federal officials before refugees from either Syria or Iraq were admitted to the United States.
McConnell supported the 2017 Shayrat missile strike, saying it "was well-planned, well-executed, went right to the heart of the matter, which is using chemical weapons."
In April 2018, following the missile strikes against Syria carried out by the United States, France, and the United Kingdom, McConnell said he found it "an appropriate and measured response to the use of chemical weapons" when asked of the Trump administration's legal justification for the authorization of military action.
In January 2019, McConnell joined Marco Rubio, Jim Risch, and Cory Gardner in introducing legislation that would impose sanctions on the government of President of Syria Bashar al-Assad and bolster American cooperation with Israel and Jordan. McConnell stated that the legislation spoke "directly to some critical American interests in that part of the world" and affirmed "that the United States needs to walk the walk and authorize military assistance, cooperative missile defense as well as loan guarantees." McConnell introduced an amendment warning the Trump administration against "precipitous" withdrawals of American troops in Syria and Afghanistan, saying he chose to introduce it "so the Senate can speak clearly and directly about the importance of our nation's ongoing missions in Afghanistan and Syria."The amendment was approved 70-26 on February 4.
On the weekend of January 19–21, 2013, the McConnell for Senate campaign emailed and robo-called gun-rights supporters telling them that "President Obama and his team are doing everything in their power to restrict your constitutional right to keep and bear arms." McConnell also said, "I'm doing everything in my power to protect your 2nd Amendment rights." On April 17, 2013, McConnell voted against expanding background checks for gun purchases.
In January 2016, after President Obama announced new executive actions to combat gun violence, McConnell charged Obama with playing politics and panned the administration's record on prosecuting gun law violations as "abysmal". McConnell stated that examinations of the mass shootings "sort of underscores the argument that if somebody there had had a weapon fewer people would have died" and predicted Obama's proposals would fail to keep "guns out of the hands of criminals". In June, after the Orlando nightclub shooting occurred, then the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in American history, four partisan gun measures came up for vote in the Senate and were all rejected. McConnell opined that Democrats were using the shooting as a political talking point while Republicans John Cornyn and Chuck Grassley were "pursuing real solutions that can help keep Americans safer from the threat of terrorism."
In October 2017, following the Las Vegas shooting, McConnell told reporters that the investigation into the incident "has not even been completed, and I think it's premature to be discussing legislative solutions if there are any." He stated that he believed it "particularly inappropriate to politicize an event like this" and the issue of tax reform should remain the priority while the investigation was ongoing.
On Tuesday, August 6, 2019, a group of clergymen appeared outside of McConnell's office urging the Republican Senate majority leader to take action after two mass shootings (in El Paso and Dayton) in 2019 within the past weeks. About two dozen religious leaders called the Coalition of Concerned Clergy prayed and voiced their stand on gun violence. Among those was Reverend Rob Schenck, a founding signer of an evangelical Christian pledge to take action on gun violence and Bishop Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, D.C., a longtime advocate for gun violence prevention. Other protesters gathered outside of McConnell's Kentucky home chanting death threats and advocating violence against the Senator. One protester asked for bystanders to stab McConnell in the heart. When videos of the protesters were posted on McConnell's Twitter feed by his staff, his account was temporarily suspended for the use of violent imagery.
McConnell led efforts against President Barack Obama's health care reform, ensuring that no Republican senator supported Obama's 2009–2010 health care reform legislation. McConnell explained the reasoning behind withholding Republican support as, "It was absolutely critical that everybody be together because if the proponents of the bill were able to say it was bipartisan, it tended to convey to the public that this is O.K., they must have figured it out." McConnell voted against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly called ObamaCare or the Affordable Care Act) in December 2009, and he voted against the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. In 2014, McConnell repeated his call for the full repeal of Obamacare and said that Kentucky should be allowed to keep the state's health insurance exchange website, Kynect, or set up a similar system. McConnell is part of the group of 13 senators drafting the Senate version of the AHCA behind closed doors. The Senator refused over 15 patient advocacy organization's requests to meet with his congressional staff to discuss the legislation. This included groups like the American Heart Association, March of Dimes, American Lung Association. and the American Diabetes Association.
In 2015, both houses of Congress passed a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It was vetoed by President Obama in January 2016.
After President Trump took office in January 2017, Senate Republicans, under McConnell's leadership, began to work on a plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. They faced opposition from both Democrats and moderate Republicans, who claimed that the bill would leave too many people uninsured, and more conservative Republicans, who protested that the bill kept too many of the ACA's regulation and spending increases, and was thus not a full repeal. Numerous attempts at repeal failed. On June 27, after a meeting with President Trump at the White House, McConnell signaled improvements for the repeal and replacement: "We're not quite there. But I think we've got a really good chance of getting there. It'll just take us a little bit longer." During a Rotary Club lunch on July 6, McConnell said, "If my side is unable to agree on an adequate replacement, then some kind of action with regard to the private health insurance market must occur."
In October 2018, after the Trump administration joined Texas leaders and 19 other Republican state attorneys general in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the ACA, McConnell said it was no secret Republicans preferred to reboot their efforts in repealing the ACA and that he did not "fault the administration for trying to give us an opportunity to do this differently and to go in a different direction."
In February 2019, when Senator Sherrod Brown and Representative Lloyd Doggett unveiled legislation to allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, Brown stated that he hoped for a vote in the House that would "put the pressure" on McConnell.
During his Senate tenure, McConnell has consistently voiced support for stronger border security. In 2006 he voted for building an improved fence along the Mexican border. Seven years later in 2013, he opposed bi-partisan immigration legislation because it did not include sufficient border security measures. While McConnell has stressed a need for increased vetting of foreigners traveling to the United States, he has also been critical of Trump's travel and immigration proposals that target Muslims. In 2015, he voiced opposition to then candidate Donald Trump's plan to bar Muslim immigration by saying proposals to bar visitors based on religion was "completely inconsistent" with American values. After Trump's election, McConnell warned the administration that they should not impose religious restrictions on those seeking entry to the United States, saying in an interview with ABC's Martha Raddatz, "I don't want to criticize them for improving vetting. I think we need to be careful; we don't have religious tests in this country." Subsequently, in June 2018, after the Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration's travel ban targeting seven countries, five of which were Muslim-majority, McConnell tweeted a picture of him shaking hands with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch whose vote was instrumental in upholding the administration's travel ban. Multiple news outlets considered the timing of the photo's release to be an endorsement of the Supreme Court's decision.
In December 2010, after the Republicans gained control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections, McConnell delivered a Senate floor speech rebuking the intention of the Federal Communications Commission to instate net neutrality in its monthly commission meeting, saying the Obama administration was moving forward "with what could be a first step in controlling how Americans use the Internet by establishing federal regulations on its use" after having already nationalized healthcare, the auto industry, companies that could be insured, and loans for students and banks and called for the Internet to be left alone as it was "an invaluable resource." McConnell pledged that the incoming 112th United States Congress would push back against additional regulations.
In November 2014, after President Obama announced a series of proposals including regulations that he stated would keep the Internet open and free, McConnell released a statement saying the FCC would be wise to reject the proposal and charged Obama's plan with endorsing "more heavy-handed regulation that will stifle innovation."
In December 2017, after the FCC voted to repeal net neutrality, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced his intent to force a vote on the FCC's decision, a spokesman for McConnell confirming that the Majority Leader opposed Schumer's plan and favored the FCC's decision to repeal.
In February 2018, the Internet Association sent a letter to McConnell and Schumer endorsing the retention of net neutrality as "necessitated by, among other factors, the lack of competition in the broadband service market" and calling "for a bipartisan effort to establish permanent net neutrality rules for consumers, startups, established internet businesses, and internet service providers."
In June 2019, McConnell stated in an interview on "The Ingraham Angle" that he does not support statehood for Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia. He explained that Democrats in Congress "plan to make the District of Columbia a state – that'd give them two new Democratic senators – Puerto Rico a state, that would give them two more new Democratic senators". McConnell stated concern that this would lead to "full-bore socialism on the march in the House. And yeah, as long as I'm the majority leader of the Senate, none of that stuff is going anywhere".
According to a NPR investigation of McConnell's relationship with the tobacco industry, "McConnell repeatedly cast doubt on the health consequences of smoking, repeated industry talking points word-for-word, attacked federal regulators at the industry's request and opposed bipartisan tobacco regulations going back decades." At the same time, the tobacco industry "provided McConnell with millions of dollars in speaking fees, personal gifts, campaign contributions, and charitable donations to the McConnell Center, which is home to his personal and professional archives."
In January 2018, McConnell was one of thirty-six Republican senators to sign a letter to President Trump requesting he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st century. In March, McConnell was asked at a news conference about the Trump administration's intent to impose tariffs on imported aluminum and steel, answering that there was "a lot of concern among Republican senators that this could sort of metastasize into a larger trade war" and that there were discussions between senators and the administration on "just how broad, how sweeping this might be, and there is a high level of concern about interfering with what appears to be an economy that is taking off." McConnell defended NAFTA as having been successful in his state of Kentucky. In July, during a press conference, McConnell said, "I'm concerned about getting into a trade war and it seems like... we may actually be in the early stages of it. Nobody wins a trade war, and so it would be good if it ended soon." In October, after the United States, Canada, and Mexico concluded talks relating to rearranging NAFTA, McConnell said the subject would "be a next-year issue because the process we have to go through doesn't allow that to come up before the end of this year" along with confirming that the U.S. International Trade Commission would take priority the following year.
McConnell opposes restoring the voting rights of felons. In 2019, McConnell blocked Democrats from bringing a voting reform bill up for a vote in the Senate.
In 2019, he claimed that Democrats were at fault for election fraud in the 2018 North Carolina 9th congressional district election, and that voter ID laws would have prevented the fraud. There was substantial evidence that the operatives working for Republican candidate Mark Harris, not the Democratic candidate, engaged in an illegal ballot harvesting operation. Voter ID laws would not have prevented the ballot harvesting that took place; experts said that McConnell was conflating ballot fraud (where someone manipulates ballots of legitimate voters) with voter fraud (voting by illegitimate voters). The Associated Press and PolitiFact described McConnell's remarks as "misleading."
In 2019, McConnell blocked a range of bipartisan proposals to improve election security amid the threat of foreign election interference. The blocked bills included the Secure Elections Act, the Protecting the Right to Independent and Democratic Elections (PRIDE) Act, the Protecting American Votes and Elections (PAVE) Act, and the Honest Ads Act. He again blocked two election security bills the day after Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified in the House of Representatives that U.S. election security was threatened by foreign powers.
In response to McConnell's blocking election security bills, he has been sarcastically nicknamed "Moscow Mitch," with the hashtag having trended on Twitter.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261199
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Afsos
Afsos () is an Indian black comedy web series directed by Anubhuti Kashyap. Starring Gulshan Devaiah, Sulagna Panigrahi, Anjali Patil and Heeba Shah, the series follows a depressed man who wants to commit suicide but is unable to die. It premiered on Amazon Video on 6 February 2020.
The series is made up of 8 mini-episodes adding to a total runtime of 204 minutes. Below are the list of episodes with summary:
Nakul (Gulshan Devaiah) is a struggling writer based in Mumbai who is having a hard time coping with unemployment, lovelessness and personal guilt. This leads him on a suicidal path as he tries creative ways of ending his life. On one occasion he lies down in front of an incoming train, but is saved by a senile beggar who ends up dead instead. Nakul then jumps in a lake, but is saved by onlookers. His psychiatrist Shloka (Anjali Patil) argues that deep down he doesn't want to die, as his survival instinct always kicks in and saves him from his misadventures.
In the Harsil town of Uttarakhand a local cop, Bir Singh (Aakash Dahiya) is investigating the murder of 11 monks in a Hindu monastery. The 12th monk and the prime suspect is missing.
Meanwhile Nakul approaches an agency "Emergency Exit" which specialises in assisted suicide and orders a hit on himself. The agent Maria Gomes(Ratnabali Bhattacharjee) assures him that his death is certain as the job will be handled by Updadhyay (Heeba Shah). Updadhyay is a ruthless killer who is very committed to her assignment. She maintains a kill count of her victims by slashing her arms with a blade.
Later in the day Nakul receives call from a publishing house expressing interest in his work. It seems luck is beginning to turn in Nakul's favour.
Nakul had accidentally given the wrong address of his apartments because of which Updadhyay kills a person in the neighbouring block. As Nakul relishes his last living day, he settles all debts with local shopkeepers and meets up with Shloka at a tea stall.
Two days earlier, the head monk of Harshil monastery had handed over the Elixir of life (Amrut) to the 12th monk, Fokatiya. The Elixir would grant immortality if it is served by an immortal, otherwise it would act as poison. Fokatiya had to find the "immortal man" in Mumbai. The monks are not the only ones in the quest for immortality. A scientist based out of London, Dr.Goldfish (Jamie Alter) is actively conducting research on the subject.
Shloka tells Nakul that her husband had committed suicide hence does not want the same fate for him. She also admits her feelings for Nakul. This is motivation enough for him, as he now has someone who cares for him and hence a purpose in life. As they speak on, Nakul is shot in the head by Updadhyay. Fokatiya happens to be around the tea stall and along with Shloka they rush him to hospital.
Nakul has luckily survived the head shot, however the bullet is now permanently stuck on his forehead. On hearing that he had survived several suicide attempts earlier, Fokatiya is convinced that Nakul is the immortal man he is looking for. Updadhyay is dining with Maria and her daughter when a patron verbally abuses Maria's daughter for a trivial mishap. Despite Maria's insistence Updadhyay retaliates by plucking out his eyeball out with a fork.
An investigative journalist Ayesha Mirani (Sulagna Panigrahi) had authored an article about the existence of Amrut within the Harshil monastery following which the monks were killed. Her editor is critical of this and warns her not to pursue this further. She hears about the suicide agency "emergency exit" and decides to do a story on them instead. Meanwhile Bir Singh travels to Mumbai where the 12th monk, Fokatiya was seen.
Nakul approaches the suicide agency to cancel the hit he has ordered on himself, however Maria tells him its impossible as Updadhyay doesn't let any assignment incomplete. As they speak, Updadhyay arrives on the spot and tries to kill Nakul however the trio escape with the help of a Russian tourist who happened to be around.
After escaping from Updadhyay, the trio along with the Russian tourist Jim (Danish Sait) arrive at Shloka's house. Fokatiya explains the legend of Elixir and tell Nakul he is the immortal man. Later in the day Fokatiya explains Nakul that the Amrut was produced by Samudra Manthan, the mythological churning of sea and since then has been preserved by the monks' order. The British East India company was looking for the same, but with the help of Maharaja of Lahore they tricked the British into thinking the Kohinoor diamond was the Elixir. However they realised the trickery after the death of Queen Victoria.
Meanwhile Bir Singh goes around sticking wanted posters of Fokatiya branding him as murder suspect. While at a local police station, Shloka notices the wanted poster and immediately calls Nakul to warn him of this. Nakul immediately dashes out of the apartments when Updadhyay catches his scent. She chases him to a construction site where he manages to slip with the help of Jim. However Shloka who was at the construction site to help Nakul gets taken as hostage.
As Jim is driving Nakul to safety, it is revealed that he is the hired assassin who had killed the monks at Harshil monastery in his quest for the Elixir.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261212
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Miroslav Bobek
Miroslav Bobek (born February 10th, 1967 in Mlada Boleslav) is a Czech natural scientist and manager, since 2010 he has been the director of Prague Zoo and from 2014 to 2016 he was also president of the Union of Czech and Slovak Zoos. He worked for a long time in Czech Radio, where he became famous for his show “Revealed”, in which he observed the life of the gorillas at Prague Zoo in the form of a reality show.
Miroslav Bobek studied zoology at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. From 1993 to 2009 he worked for Czech Radio, where he initially worked as an editor and reporter. He was primarily involved in popularising science. In 1997, he was the head of the Rainbow Bridge project, which ensured broadcasting during the floods in Moravia.
From 1998 to 2000 he was editor-in-chief of the radio station Prague. In 2000 he founded Czech Radio 8 (Online) and became its editor-in-chief. In 2005, he drew up the construction of the popular-science radio station Leonardo, of which he was the director until 2009. At the end of 2009 he won the selection procedure for the director of Prague Zoo and took over this function on January 1st, 2010. In June 2014 he was elected president of the Union of Czech and Slovak Zoos (UCSZOO). He held this position until 2016.
Miroslav Bobek is married to Klára, they have a son, Kryštof, and a daughter, Markéta.
In 1994, Miroslav Bobek initiated the African Odyssey project, which he subsequently ran for many years. It involved monitoring the migration of black storks from Czechia to their African wintering grounds and back to Bohemia using satellite and VHF telemetry. The storks were fitted with “backpacks” containing radios and satellite telemetry. He led several expeditions to Africa, from where he made hundreds of live broadcasts. He also played a leading role in the New Odyssey project looking at stork migration in Asia, which was launched in 2002 and was loosely linked to the "African Odyssey" project.
Afterwards, he organised a two-year (2001–2002) on-line transmission of the falcons at the Tyn Church in Prague as well as the Czech Radio building on Vinohradská Street. The project was called "Falcons in the Heart of the City" and even caught live hatchings.
Among the other projects he has participated in are "Call for the Day", which introduced various instances of birdsong by means of an audio CD and Czech Radio’s Internet, or Via Pontica which monitored the migration of birds of prey in eastern Turkey.
Miroslav Bobek became the author and head of the Revealed project which had the subtitle “A Slightly Different Reality Show” (2005–2008). It was one of Czech Radio’s most prominent multimedia projects. The project began with the launch of an online video broadcast from the gorilla pavilion at Prague Zoo and became a regular radio and television show in autumn 2005. Czech Radio received a “Wild Oscar” for it at the prestigious Wildscreen Festival in Bristol and the Seal of Comenius EduMedia in Berlin. The main aim was to compare gorillas’ behaviour with that of humans, whilst conveying some relevant information about apes and thus contribute to their conservation. The project partly parodied the reality shows that were being broadcast at that time on commercial television (e.g. Big Brother or VyVolení). Tereza Šefrnová and Radomír Šofr also took part in the screenplay for Revealed.
See the article The Revealed for more information.
Based on this project, Tereza Šefrnová and Miroslav Bobek wrote a book of fairy tales for children Moja and Páv (2006). Subsequently Bobek wrote the second volume Moja, Tatu and the Biting Midges (2009), again with the participation of the actress Tereza Šefrnová. The books were also published in English and French for African children. Tereza Šefrnová narrated them in Czech for the Leonardo show on Czech Radio, she was then replaced by actress Lucie Bílá.
Together with Martin Smrček he wrote a book of the same name about the Revealed project.
After Petr Fejk left, Miroslav Bobek applied for the post of the director of Prague Zoo. He advanced to the final round, together with the economist Miroslav Zámečník and former head of news at TV Nova, Jan Vávra. The committee for the selection of the new director recommended Miroslav Bobek and Prague City Council appointed him to this position. The ceremonial inauguration took place on December 22nd, 2009 at the zoo. At the time he saw his main task to be maintaining Prague Zoo’s success. He wanted to use modern technology in the zoo, including the Internet, thus being able to present the animals more in the context of their natural environment. A particularly big task he set himself was the construction of a new pavilion for the elephants and hippos.
Under his leadership the zoo managed to break its record for annual attendance, it increased its level of economic self-sufficiency, deepened its breeding successes and increased its efforts in the conservation of endangered species. One of the things Prague Zoo did was to cooperate with the Czech Army in transporting Przewalski’s horses to Mongolia (The Return of the Wild Horses from 2011) and it actively engaged in the conservation of western gorillas in Africa (in particular by means of The Wandering Bus project since 2013).
During his time at Prague Zoo they have built new grounds for the elephants (Elephant Valley), a hippo house, an aquarium for giant salamanders, the Bororo Reserve and Rákos’ Parrot house for mainly exotic birds. The Feline and Reptile House has been reconstructed, Gočár's houses have been restored and, after decades of neglect, the Zakázanka trail has reopened. He considers the acquisition of elephants from Sri Lanka to be a great success.
In 2012, Miroslav Bobek published his first anthology of the columns and notes that he regularly publishes in the leading major news media every week as the director of Prague Zoo. The book was called Bobbles from Bobek and was followed by A Giraffe on Monday and Trojan Lion in 2016. The latest publication of Miroslav Bobek’s Journal was published in May 2018.
In 2008 he received an honorary Vojtěch Náprstek medal for popularising science. It was awarded by the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, mainly for the Revealed and African Odyssey projects. In 2014 he was awarded the Medal of Friendship by the Mongolian President.
Director's view
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261215
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Rosa Miller Avery
Rosa Miller Avery (pen name, Sue Smith and unknown male pseudonyms; May 21, 1830 – November 9, 1894) was an American abolitionist, political reformer, second-generation suffragist, and writer.
Avery's childhood home was a noted "underground ralroad station". As an adult, while living in Ashtabula, Ohio, she organized the first anti-slavery society of that time in that section of the United States. During the Civil War, she wrote constantly for the various papers and journals of that day on the union and emancipation, being obliged to use a male signature in order to gain attention. Many of her articles and responses to the opponents of franchise for women appeared in the "Chicago Inter-Ocean". Her pen-name signed to her later writings was "Sue Smith.” These were on social questions and things helpful to young people. After removing to Chicago, she took up the work of social purity and equal suffrage, writing many articles for the Chicago press on these subjects.
Rosa Mary Miller was born in Madison, Ohio, May 21, 1830.
Her father, Nahum Miller, was born in Vermont. He was one of the first settlers in the Madison area of Lake County, Ohio. He located on the county's Middle Ridge before there was a road there, made a clearing in the woods and built his cabin, and there developed a farm and passed his life. He was a reader of biblical and political history, and held broad humanitarian views. He loved children, adopting two in addition to five children of his own. Her mother, Esther McDaniels or McDonald, was a daughter of James McDonald, an early settler of Ashtabula County, Ohio. Esther hinted now and then, that "the laws pertaining to property and the holding of children were as oppressive for women as for negroes". Remembering this, Avery always spoke of her mother as her inspiration to work for woman's advancement. One of Avery's sisters was Roxana.
While attending the Madison seminary, Avery wrote stirring anti-slavery essays, which were met with derision and abuse. Two students in her school confessed to her that her anti-slavery papers induced them to give up their ambition for a career in religion to study law and politics.
On September 1, 1853, she married Cyrus Avery, of Oberlin, Ohio. During their residence in Ashtabula, Ohio, she organized the first anti-slavery society ever known in that village, but not a clergyman in the town would give notice of its meetings so late as two years before the American Civil War, and that, too, in the county home of Joshua Reed Giddings and Benjamin Wade. The leading men of wealth and influence were so indignant because the churches would not read a notice of her missionary effort for African Americans, that they counseled together and withdrew from their respective churches and built a brick church for the congregational sentiment of the town, which was decidedly anti-slavery.
During the years of the civil war, Avery's was actively engaged in writing for various journals on the subject of union and emancipation, using male pseudonyms, in order to command attention. Her letters and other articles attracted the notice of Gov. Richard Yates, of Illinois, James A. Garfield, James Redpath, and Lydia Maria Child, all of whom sent her appreciative letters, with their portraits.
During ten years' residence in Erie, Pennsylvania, besides writing occasional articles for the newspaper, she disseminated her views on social questions, love, matrimony and religion in romance to the high-school graduates, of which her son was a member, in their organ, the "High School News", over the pen-name, "Sue Smith". About that time, her husband was appointed by the Young Men's Christian Association of Erie as visitor to the criminals confined in the city prison. Mrs. Avery assisted her husband in this work and became interested in the underlying motives and allurements to crime. As the result of her investigation, she maintained, "that there is not a criminal on this broad earth but that there lies back of him a crime greater than he represents and for which he, we, and everyone suffers in a greater or less degree."
Avery's son, Cyrus, married the suffragist, Rachel Foster Avery.
Mr. and Mrs. Avery removed to Chicago in 1877. Her "Rose Cottage", in Edgewater, a suburb of Chicago, faced Lake Michigan.
In Chicago, Avery's attention was largely focused on social purity and suffrage work. She wrote many articles and responses to the opponents of franchise for women, which appeared from time to time in the "Chicago Inter-Ocean" under her signature. At the time of the dedication of the Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi statue (Statue of Liberty), Avery, when called upon to respond to the sentiment of "Liberty", at a banquet of representative men and women, spoke as follows:— "The idea of liberty for woman has become so prevailing, so penetrating, that even the stones cry out and take upon themselves the form of womanhood and proclaim 'Liberty Enlightening the World.'"
Avery died November 9, 1894, in Chicago.
Soon after Avery's funeral, a "Mrs. D." wrote to Sara A. Underwood:—
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261299
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Iris and the Giant
Iris and the Giant is a role-playing strategy video game developed by French designer Louis Rigaud and published by Goblinz Studio, Maple Whispering Limited and Mugen Creations. It was released on 27 February 2020. The game blends RPG and Roguelike, but is mainly a collectible card game.
The game was inspired by the developer Louis Rigaud's experiences with creating "interactive papercraft books" for kids. According to the developer, post-launch updates will add new features after the release of the game. These include gamepad support and UI improvements based on feedback from the players.
"Iris and the Giant" starts off with the main character getting dropped off at a swimming lesson. She finds herself struggling to jump into the pool and kids are laughing at her from below. This scene can be seen as a metaphor that describes the general plot-line of the game, a plot-line that explores the main character's struggles with depression and anxiety. Iris (the name of the main character) later finds herself on the river Styx, but the story does not follow the one explained in Greek mythology, that will say, that the river Styx is the connection between the living on earth and the underworld. Instead, Styx is shown as the land that distinguishes "the real from the imaginary". It's on this land that Iris fights her way to the top of the structure and every floor represents her inner demons.
The game begins with a limited number of cards representing different attacks and defenses that will be used in combat against enemies on a grid. There are different types of weapons, for example, an axe that will attack all the enemies in the front row of the grid. Furthermore, there are swords that can be used sequentially if the player has more than one in their deck. If the player dies, the game restarts but the player will then earn rewards in the form of new cards and abilities that will make it easier to succeed in further efforts. There are a total of 51 cards to earn throughout the game that can enable specialized directions in combat and also various secrets and surprises to find while discovering the world. There are around 45 different types of enemies that the player will meet, these do often act in different ways. Some can, to mention a few actions, steal cards from the player and some can instead give the player benefits, more time with a shield and the ability to use more archers in a single turn, for example. The player can also use magic in different ways as well as cards involving elemental effects, fire and lighting, for instance.
"Iris and the Giant" did not get much attention from video game critics at its release. However, the reviewer for "Buried Treasure" compared the game to the deck-building game "Meteorfall: Journeys", saying the following: "I really never thought I would ever be someone who played deckbuilding games. I never managed to get into "Slay The Spire" or "Darkest Dungeon", and figured it wasn't a genre I'd ever get to grips with. And then I stumbled on "Meteorfall". It was love at first sight. It clicked. I got it. I got really good at it! I played it until I was on game+++ modes for every character, in a way I never play games! I'm having very similar feelings about "Iris And The Giant"."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261317
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Banani graveyard
The Banani graveyard is a cemetery in the Banani neighbourhood of Dhaka. It is one of eight state-run graveyards in Dhaka and with a capacity of around 22.000 graves it is one of the largest graveyards in that city. It covers an area of approximately 10 acres of land and two to three burials take place every day. Banani graveyard is the burial place of a number of notable Bangladeshis, amongst them the victims of the coup d'ètat of August 15, 1975. The graveyard was established in 1973.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63261321
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Future History (TV series)
Future History is a Canadian documentary series, which premiered in 2018 on APTN. Hosted by Kris Nahrgang and Sarain Fox, the series profiles efforts to reclaim and revive indigenous cultures in Canada.
The hosts were selected for contrast; Fox is a younger indigenous activist, while Nahrgang is an older man who was raised largely disconnected from his own indigenous heritage, and is himself on a journey of discovery.
The series was created by actress and producer Jennifer Podemski.
The series received three Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 8th Canadian Screen Awards in 2020, all for the episode "Awaken/Goshkoziwin": Best Editing in a Factual Program or Series (Ian Sit), Best Direction in a Factual Program or Series (Jennifer Podemski) and Best Writing in a Factual Program or Series (Tamara Podemski). Jennifer Podemski won the award for Best Direction.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63238634
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Only (film)
Only is a 2019 post-apocalyptic romance film, directed by Takaschi Doscher and starring Freida Pinto and Leslie Odom Jr.. In the film, a couple, Will and Eva (played by Odom and Pinto), are forced to hide after a disease kills most of the women in the world. The film premiered at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and was released in cinemas on 6 March 2020. "Only" was Doscher's second film, after "Still", which he directed in 2018. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, with a 40% score on the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes (with 15 reviews in total). One critic praised the film's "somber, reflective screenplay", but others criticised the film, with some describing its portrayal of Will and Eva's relationship as misogynistic. The film has a non-chronological structure, with scenes from earlier in the outbreak interspersed with the main storyline. The plot involves Will attempting to keep Eva safe from the government and bounty hunters, since women have become extremely valuable. It has been compared to the comic series "".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63238647
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Paula Lambert (puppeteer)
Paula Lambert is an Irish puppeteer, most famously she is the puppeteer of Bosco. She was a member of the Lambert Puppet Theatre in Monkstown, County Dublin.
Paula Lambert is the youngest daughter of puppeteers Eugene and Mai Lambert, one of the couple's ten children. From childhood, Lambert was a puppeteer with the family's Lambert Puppet Theatre, which was founded in 1972, and on their first television show, "Wanderly Wagon". On the "Wanderly Wagon" Lambert was one of the mice who lived in the wallpaper and later one of the squirrels who lived in the loft. She was also on the spin-off series "Fortycoats & Co." as Spooky the Cat.
Lambert took over from her sister Miriam as the puppeteer and voice of Bosco in 1981. After the cancellation of the television show, Lambert continued to tour Bosco around Ireland with the Paula Lambert Puppet Theatre. 2019 marked 40 years of Lambert's Bosco tours.
Lambert is married to fellow puppeteer, Michael Monaghan. They have three children, Ronan, Emily, and Johnny. Johnny has joined the Paula Lambert Puppet Theatre as a third generation puppeteer.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63238765
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Acadia National Cemetery
Acadia National Cemetery is a 6.22 acre Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) national cemetery located in Washington County, Maine. The cemetery will serve the burial needs of Veterans, their spouses and eligible family members.
On September 27, 2017, the land at 1799 U. S. Route 1, Jonesboro, Maine was donated to the VA by Worcester Holdings, LLC. Worcester Holdings, LLC was founded by Morrill and Karen Worcester, who also run the nonprofit group Wreaths Across America.
This cemetery will be the second national cemetery in Maine and is part of the VA National Cemetery Administration Rural Initiative to provide access to VA burial benefits for Veterans who reside rural areas and who have not previously had reasonable access to a national or state Veterans cemetery. Togus National Cemetery in Chelsea, Maine, is the only other VA national cemetery in the state and is currently closed to new interments.
A contract to build the cemetery was awarded in August 2018 and is expected to be completed in early 2020. The first phase of cemetery development will offer more than 1,400 casket and cremation spaces. The cemetery will provide burials for caskets, in-ground and columbarium burials for cremations, as well as a memorial wall for remains that are unrecoverable or identified, were buried at sea, donated to science or cremated and remains scattered. The cemetery will have a capacity of 7,086 gravesites when fully constructed.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63238876
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Rome Reborn
Rome Reborn is a paid virtual reality project consisting of apps and videos that allows users to experience a digital reconstruction of Rome at the peak of its civilization. The project produced five individual modules that showcase different monuments and locations in the city during 320 A.D. Two additional modules are under development with releases expected soon.
The project is regarded as a success among critics, with reviewers seeing it as an educational innovation for the archaeological field.
The idea for "Rome Reborn" initially came from virtual heritage scholar, Bernard Frischer, in 1974. After witnessing Italo Gismondi's miniaturized 3D model of Rome in the Museum of Roman Civilization, Frischer took interest in the possibility of recreating Rome in a virtual format.
The project was launched in 1996 under the development of the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory with Frischer as director. Version 1.0 was completed in 2007 and version 2.0 rolled out in 2008. This version received two subsequent updates with version 2.1 releasing in 2010 and version 2.2 releasing in 2012. The team completely reworked the software for the current 3.0 version, making it available to the public through virtual reality devices. It is currently available for Microsoft Windows, macOS, Oculus Rift, Oculus Go, Smasung GearVR, and HTC Vive. The project's budget is estimated to be around $3 million.
For their initial reconstruction of Rome, the University of Virginia development team used the existing physical 3D model of Rome from Gismondi. This allowed them to create their own digital 3D model of Rome which would then be digitally modeled to their standards. In total, the project was developed by roughly 100 people spanning Italy, the United States, Britain, and Germany.
Version 1.0's release was accompanied by a ceremony held on Rome's Capitoline Hill. It was attended by the Frischer, the Roman mayor, and many American researchers.
Users are positioned in a virtual hot air balloon overlooking the city of Rome that is transported to stationary locations. Frischer guides viewers through over 35 different locations in the city, providing commentary that gives historical context to each area. Some of the spaces included are the Circus Maximus, the tombs of Augustus and Hadrian, the Imperial Fora, the Forum, and the Colosseum. It serves as a general introduction into the city of Rome with its many landmarks.
The Roman Forum module lets users to traverse what was the center of Rome during 320 A.D. The free-roaming camera allows for up close looks at relatively detailed buildings, monuments, and statues located in the Forum. Some of the buildings included in the environment are the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Basilica Aemilia, the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Temple of Vesta, the Curia Julia, the Basilica Julia, and the Arch of Augustus. It also includes the Rostra's statues of Pompey, Sulla, Camilius, and many other political figures from Rome's history.
An optional guided tour is provided by the Frischer if they wish to hear about the historical significance of the structures located in the Forum. Users are also presented with a "Time Warp" feature that switches the setting to the current day ruins.
The user is inserted into the final civic building of the Roman Empire before its Christianization, the Basilica of Maxentius. Smarthistory hosts, Beth Harris and Steven Zucker, provide users with a virtual tour of the building. The experience showcases 3D reconstructions of the painted marble walls, the barrel vaulted ceiling, and Constantine's 15 meter statue.
The Pantheon is the most recent module to be released by this project. Users are able to tour a reconstructed visualization of one of Rome's most famous and well preserved temples. Just like the previous modules, this addition includes a virtual tour delving into the significance of the structure in 320 A.D.
Users can experience the district of the Flavian Amphitheater ("Colosseum") as well as its surrounding structures with an optional guided tour. The recreated structures in this module include the Colossus of the Sun, the Ludus Magnus, the Meta Sudans, the Temple of Venus and Rome, the Arch of Constantine, the Arch of Titus, and the Colosseum. The free-roaming camera allows for detailed looks at the recreated reliefs, architecture, and statues found in the district.
This virtual environment gives access to reconstructed sections of the Colosseum's underground chambers.
The Imperial Fora had a projected release date of 2019, but is currently still under development. A virtual tour will provide information on its construction and influence from Julius Caesar, Augustus, Vespasian, Nerva, and Trajan.
The Imperial Palace has a projected release date of 2020. Users will be able to visit the palace of the imperial family located on Palatine Hill.
Frischer created the initial version of the project with the help of historians and 3D modellers from UCLA. Development on version 2.0 was then uprooted to the University of Virginia where graduate students were tasked with the version's completion. Upon the release of version 2.0, the project was free to download through a 3D Google Earth layer. The project's development has since been relocated again to Indiana University.
During version 3.0's development, Frischer shifted "Rome Reborn" towards a paid downloadable format and copyrighted the program under his business, Frischer Consulting.
In early 2019, it was reported that members of the development team for "Rome Reborn" were subject to exploitation from Frischer. Former members of the development staff at UCLA and the University of Virginia were dissatisfied with the director using student labour and university funds to release a paid service under his own copyright. Concerns were also raised under the occlusion of credit towards developers in the about section of the project's website.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63238919
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By the Fireside (Hubbell)
By the Fireside is a painting by Henry Salem Hubbell, completed in 1908. Hubbell painted the work while living in Giverny, France as a part of the American Impressionism movement that had taken up residence there, alongside Claude Monet. The models for the painting were Marjory Gane and Grace Southwick, two acquaintances of Hubbell's who visited Giverny during the winter of 1908 to 1909. It displays Hubbell's Impressionistic use of loose brushstrokes and masterful colorwork in an appreciable evolution from his first known painting, "Mother and Child" "after W. Bouguereau."
The painting premiered at the 1909 Paris Salon, receiving critical acclaim. While learning under James Whistler, his teacher had stated that "one day you will be called a great colorist," and the Paris press agreed that Hubbell had reached that pinacle with this work.
"By the Fireside" was one of Hubbell's favorite works, and he kept it for himself during his lifetime. A year before his death, he donated the painting in 1948 to his high school in Lawrence, Kansas, now Liberty Memorial Central Middle School, "to inspire future growth of the arts" there.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63238982
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COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden
The COVID-19 pandemic in Sweden is part of the pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Sweden on 31 January 2020, when a woman returning from Wuhan tested positive. On 26 February, following outbreaks in Italy and in Iran, multiple travel-related clusters appeared in Sweden. Community transmission was confirmed on 9 March in the Stockholm region. Since then, individuals in every län (county) have tested positive for COVID-19. The first death was reported on 11 March in Stockholm, a case of community transmission. However, it's believed that the virus could have reached Sweden as early as December 2019, when several individuals sought care for respiratory illness in Falun after contact with an individual with recent travel history to Wuhan.
Sweden has not imposed a lockdown, unlike many other countries, and kept large parts of its society open. The Swedish Constitution legally protects the freedom of movement for the people, thus preventing a lockdown in peace time. The Swedish public is expected to follow a series of non-voluntary recommendations from the government agency responsible for this area, in this case the Public Health Agency of Sweden ("Folkhälsomyndigheten"). The Swedish Constitution prohibits ministerial rule – politicians overruling the advice from its agencies is extremely unusual in Sweden – and mandates that the relevant government body, in this case an expert agency – the Public Health Agency – must initiate all actions to prevent the virus in accordance with Swedish law, rendering state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell a central figure in the crisis. Having an expert agency almost completely in control of the country's COVID-19 response without the involvement of politicians set Sweden apart from other countries.
Following agency advice, the government has passed legislation limiting freedom of assembly by temporarily banning gatherings of over 50 individuals, banning people from visiting nursing homes, and physically closing secondary schools and universities. Primary schools have remained open, in part to avoid healthcare workers staying home with their children.
The Public Health Agency issued recommendations to: if possible, work from home; avoid unnecessary travel within the country; engage in social distancing; and for people above 70 to stay at home, as much as possible. Those with even minimal symptoms that could be caused by COVID-19 are recommended to stay home. The "karensdag", or initial day without paid sick-leave, has been removed by the government and the length of time one can stay home with pay without a doctor's note has been raised from 7 to 21 days.
The pandemic has put the Swedish healthcare system under severe strain, with tens of thousands of operations having been postponed. Initially, Swedish hospitals and other facilities reported a shortage of personal protective equipment. At the start of the pandemic, concerns were made that Swedish hospitals wouldn't have enough capacity to treat all who could become ill with the disease, especially in regard to those needing intensive care. Swedish hospitals were eventually able to double the number of intensive care beds in a few weeks, and the maximum capacity was never exceeded.
Sweden began testing for the virus in January, and , approximately 276,000 samples had been analysed. , there have been 62,324 confirmed cases, of which 2,387 have received intensive care, and 5,209 confirmed deaths related to COVID-19 in Sweden, with Stockholm County being the most affected. As of early June, the number of deaths with confirmed COVID-19 has been significantly higher in Sweden compared to most of Europe, including other Scandinavian countries. Similar to other European countries, close to half of those who died had been living at nursing homes.
Many outside Sweden considered the Swedish response to the pandemic to be strikingly different to that of other countries. This resulted in an unprecedented increase of international news coverage on Sweden.
On 12 January, the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed that a novel coronavirus (nCoV) was the cause of a respiratory illness in a cluster of people in Wuhan, in Hubei, China, who had initially come to the WHO's attention on 31 December 2019. This cluster was initially linked to the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan City. A few days later, on 16 January, the Swedish Public Health Agency issued a press release highlighting the discovery of the novel coronavirus, and the agency monitoring the situation. The risk of spread to Sweden was described as "very low" as there was yet no evidence that the virus could spread between humans, but they recommended that individuals developing cough or fever after visiting Wuhan should seek medical care, and asked for healthcare professionals to be observant.
After the World Health Organization classified the novel Coronavirus as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on 30 January and demanded that all member states should cooperate to prevent further spread of the virus, the Agency requested for the Swedish government to classify the novel disease as a notifiable infectious disease in the Swedish Communicable Diseases Act as both dangerous to public health (allmänfarlig) and dangerous to society (samhällsfarlig), where contact tracing is required, giving the disease the same legislative status as Ebola, SARS and Smallpox. The agency also announced that they have analysing methods that can diagnose a case of the novel disease ‘within hours’ after testing, and that such tests had already been carried out, but that all had turned out negative.
Following the 2005 outbreak of the H5N1 avian flu, Sweden drafted their first national pandemic plan which since then had undergone several revisions. Since a 2008 revision to prepare for the 2009 swine flu pandemic, the plan includes the formation of a National Pandemic Group (NPG) in the event of a possible pandemic. The group involves several Swedish government agencies and defines each agency's role.
The plan states that the Public Health Agency of Sweden will be the expert agency responsible for monitoring diseases with a pandemic potential, and with the mandate to assemble the National Pandemic Group to coordinate pandemic preparations and strategies on a national level between the relevant agencies. The pandemic group includes four additional Swedish government agencies: the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, the Swedish Medical Products Agency, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Work Environment Authority, as well as the county administrative boards of Sweden and the employer's organisation Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions.
Swedish crisis management is built on a "principle of responsibility" which means that the organisation who is responsible for an area of activity under normal circumstances is also responsible for that area of activity during a crisis. As the Public Health Agency of Sweden, headed by director general Johan Carlson, is the agency responsible of monitoring and preventing the spread of infectious diseases, the agency had a central role in the Swedish response to the pandemic. The Public Health Agency also tasked with having a coordinating role for the national response to a pandemic according to the National Pandemic Plan, together with the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency headed by Dan Eliasson and the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare headed by Olivia Wigzell.
In risk and impact assessments by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, the Swedish expert agency on crisis management, the risk of Sweden in the future being affected by a severe pandemic was assessed as "high" with a "catastrophic" impact on human health and economics. They believed that a future pandemic would be inevitable within 5–50 years.
In the 2019 Global Health Security Index of the ‘most prepared’ countries in the world for an epidemic or a pandemic published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, Sweden was ranked 7th overall. Sweden received high rankings regarding prevention of the emergence of a new pathogen, early detection and reporting of an epidemic of international concern and having a low risk environment. However, the Swedish healthcare system received a lower score, questioning if it was sufficient and robust enough to treat the sick and protect health workers.
By the time of the Fall of the Berlin Wall, the Swedish Defence Forces was equipped with a total of 35 field hospitals, with what some considered to be the most modern battlefield medicine in the world, with the Swedish Navy having an additional 15 hospitals. The field hospitals had a combined capacity of treating 10.000 patients and performing 1000 surgeries every 24 hours, as well as stockpiles with drugs, medical supplies and personal protective equipment to treat 150.000 war casualties. Additionally, the Swedish state had several preparedness hospitals and Swedish schools were constructed to be converted into hospital units in case of a military conflict and with a total capacity of treating 125.000 patients, supported by a network of preparedness storages containing medicine and medical equipment. From 1990 and onwards, the system was gradually dismantled to eventually disappear altogether, with the equipment, including more than 600 new ventilators, being either given away or disposed of. At the start of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the Swedish Defence Forces owned 2 medical units with a total of 96 beds, out of which 16 were ICU beds, and there were no civil preparedness storages for medical equipment left in Sweden.. Until 2009, the Swedish state-run pharmacy chain Apoteket had the responsibility to ensure drug supply in case of emergency. Following a controversial privatisation, the responsibility was handed over to the private sector. However, a lack of regulations meant that the companies had no incentive to keep a bigger stock than necessary, effectively leaving Sweden without an entity responsible for medicine preparedness. At the start of the pandemic, the Swedish healthcare system were instead relying on a "just-in-time" deliveries of medication and medical equipment, and Sweden had no medicine manufacturing of its own, which was considered to make the country's drug supply vulnerable as it relied on global trade and long supply lines. The Swedish healthcare system was already experiencing a growing number of backordered drugs in the years leading up to the pandemic. The lack of medicine preparedness had been strongly criticised in several inquiries and reports since 2013 by a number of Swedish governmental agencies, including the Swedish National Audit Office, the Swedish Defence Research Agency and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. The latter had regarded disturbances in the drug supply as one of their biggest concerns in their annual risk assessments.
On 31 January, the first Swedish case was confirmed in a woman in Jönköping who had travelled to Sweden from Wuhan, China, on 24 January directly from Wuhan. The case was fully isolated and there are no reports of further spread. It's believed that the virus could have reached Sweden as early as December 2019 when several individuals sought care at a primary care clinic in Svärdsjö, Falun with signs of respiratory disease, as all of them had been in contact with an individual with a recent travel history to Wuhan, and later tested positive for antibodies against the disease. There is however no evidence of further spread in connection with those early cases. The second confirmed case was diagnosed at Sahlgrenska University Hospital, Gothenburg on 26 February, after a man who had recently returned from northern Italy following the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy had developed symptoms. With five additional cases confirmed on 27 February, the Public Health Agency put out a statement that these cases were all related to travel to high-risk zones and that there was no evidence of community transmission. Disease control measures, including extensive contact tracing, turned up over 200 travel-related cases in the following weeks, all with connection to confirmed cases or travel to high risk regions. Many of those who tested positive for the virus during this early stage of the outbreak in Sweden had been infected while on vacation in Italy during the one-week spring break in late February. During the four-week period from February to March in which the spring break takes place in different areas of Sweden, around one million Swedes (about one tenth of the total population) had travelled abroad. Testing were initially primarily done on individuals who had developed symptoms after travelling from the areas hardest hit by the outbreak, such as China, Iran, northern Italy, Tyrol and South Korea, or those with pneumonia of unknown cause. Subsequent whole genome sequencing studies carried out by the Public Health Agency proved that disease control measures including isolation and contact tracing had been largely successful in preventing the infection to spread from Italy. The studies also revealed that early assumptions that Swedes returning from Northern Italy and Tyrol were the main drivers of the outbreak in Sweden was incorrect, as the virus had likely been brought to Sweden by "hundreds" of different people from a range of countries, as the outbreak by that time had "gone under the radar" in many other parts of the world and that other countries already had a large spread. Analyses of early Swedish cases suggested that several early cases had carried the virus from the United Kingdom and the United States, and also from France and the Netherlands. From the start of the outbreak in Sweden, Stockholm County saw a significantly higher number of cases in the Stockholm region compared to other regions of Sweden, including the densely populated regions Skåne and Västra Götaland. According to Johan Carlson, director-general at the Public Health Agency, one reason was believed to be that the Stockholm spring break in took place later than in other regions.
On 27 February, Uppsala County confirmed its first case in a woman with a travel history to Germany, where she had met with an Italian colleague, and had been admitted to Uppsala University Hospital after seeking medical attention with flu-like symptoms.
This came as the first cases of community transmission was confirmed among two patients who had sought care at S:t Göran Hospital, Stockholm, on 6 March. They were assumed to have been infected through community transmission. The following day, Jämtland and Västernorrland also confirmed initial cases.
Responding to indications of local transmission in the Stockholm area and Västra Götaland, the Public Health Agency on 10 March raised the risk assessment of community spread from "moderate" to "very high", which is the highest level. The first death was reported on 11 March, the same day as the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the WHO, when a person in their 70s from the Stockholm region died in the intensive care unit of Karolinska University Hospital. The person was reported to have acquired the virus through community transmission, believed to have occurred about one week before death. The person also belonged to a risk group. After the first case in Västmanland County was confirmed on 13 March, the disease had reached all of the 21 regions in Sweden.
The Public Health Agency of Sweden declared on 13 March that stopping the spread of COVID-19 has entered a "new phase" which requires "other efforts". The continued focus is now to delay spread among the population and to protect the elderly and most vulnerable against the disease. Contact tracing would no longer be part of the strategy, and testing would instead focus on people already in hospital or those considered to belong to be of a bigger risk of a more severe disease.
The health agency believed that 5–10% of the population in Stockholm County were carrying the virus on 9 April. In mid-April, it was reported that out of the approximately 1,300 people who had died after having caught the virus, one third had been living at nursing homes. The figure differed between the regions. In Stockholm, the city most affected by the pandemic, half of the deaths had been residents in one of its many nursing homes. The situation led to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate to begin carrying out controls at the homes.
According to estimations by the Health Agency in early May, the R value had dropped below 1.0 for the first time on 21 April. In June, the Health Agency declared that several regions had entered a "late pandemic phase" with a decrease in the number of new cases, and called for those regions to return to the strategy of stopping the disease, through increased testing and detailed contact tracing.
The Swedish government considered its overall objective in the Swedish response to the pandemic was to limit the spread of infection in the country to not exceed the capacity of the Swedish health system. They also aimed to ensure that the municipalities and regions responsible for the health care would have the necessary resources to handle the pandemic. The government has tried to focus efforts on encouraging the right behaviour and creating social norms rather than mandatory restrictions. Government officials including Swedish prime minister Stefan Löfven has encouraged each individual to take responsibility for their own health and the health of others, and to follow the recommendations from the Public Health Agency of Sweden, as the agency responsible for monitoring a pandemic and coordinating the response. The Swedish Constitution mandates that government agencies should work independently from the government and that the relevant expert agencies must issue advice prior to any government actions within the agency's area, in this case aiming to prevent the spread of the virus, with a strong mandate that the expert agencies should initiate actions, avoiding rule by ministers. Having its public health agency almost completely controlling the strategy without the involvement of politicians set Sweden apart from most, perhaps all, other countries. However, the agencies do not have the power to pass laws. Instead, they give out recommendations on how someone can or should act to meet a binding regulation within the agency's area of activity (in this case The Swedish Communicable Diseases Act). Although there is no legal framework for a governmental agency to impose sanctions on someone for going against its recommendations, it isn't optional as the recommendations work as guidelines on how to act to follow a regulation (in this case an obligation to help halting the spread of am infectious disease). The independence of Swedish agencies and the choice of 'recommendations' instead of legislation has received much coverage in international media. Swedish foreign minister, Ann Linde described Sweden as having ‘rather small ministries, but rather big authorities’ (with the Public Health Agency being one such authority), and this going back 300–400 years, and Sweden being characterised by a very high level of trust in its authorities from both the people and the politicians, and that Swedes had a very strong urge to following recommendations from authorities, thus making legislation largely unnecessary. When asked if Sweden would consider tougher restrictions, Löfven and Linde both made clear that the Swedish government wouldn't hesitate to do so if deemed necessary and on advice from the expert agencies, but that such measures needed to be taken at the right time, and they believe it's hard to make people adhere to lockdowns for an extended period. Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden Isabella Lövin referred to the pandemic being "not a sprint, but a marathon"
According to the Swedish Public Health Agency, the Swedish strategy aimed to protect its senior and/or vulnerable citizens, and to slow down the spread of the virus, to keep the healthcare system from getting overwhelmed. They are also mandated by law to make their response based on scientific evidence. The Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has questioned the scientific basis of some of the "stricter" measures taken by other governments, including lockdowns and border closures. While many countries imposed nationwide lockdowns and curfews, such measures were prohibited by the Swedish constitution as it's considered to be a violation of freedom of movement, and the Swedish laws on communicable diseases ("Smittskyddslagen") only allows for quarantining individuals and small areas such as buildings, not for entire geographical areas. Instead, it's mostly based around the individual responsibility. Although the government were later granted more authority for imposing restrictions on transport following a temporary amendment in April, the Swedish authorities considered lockdowns to be unnecessary, as they believed that voluntary measures could be just as effective as bans. Although many considered this to be a 'relaxed' approach, it was defended by the authorities as well as government officials, among them Prime Minister Stefan Löfvén, to be more sustainable, as unlike lockdowns, it could be in place for "months, even years" as it wasn't assumed to be likely that the disease could be stopped until a vaccine was produced, thus de Therefore, the Swedish response only included measures where an exit strategy wasn't needed.
Unlike many European countries, including neighbouring Denmark and Norway, Sweden did not close its preschools or elementary schools as a preventive measure. This was met with criticism within Sweden. According to the Health Agency, the main reasons for not closing schools was that as a preventive measure it lacked support by research or scientific literature, and because of its negative effects on society. They argued that many parents, including healthcare professionals, would have no choice but to stay home from work to care for their children if schools were closed. There was also concern for a situation where elderly people babysit their grandchildren, as they are of bigger risk of severe symptoms in case of infection. According to agency's estimations, closures of elementary schools and preschool could result in an absence of up to 43,000 healthcare professionals, including doctors, Nurses and nurse's assistants, equalling 10 per cent of the total workforce in the sector. Additionally, there was concern of school closures having negative consequences for disadvantaged and vulnerable children, and according to the agency yet no evidence of children playing a major role in the spread of the virus, nor of a high infection rate among children or preschool teachers, and that children who become infected showed mild symptoms. In May, Tegnell said that the decision was right, as the healthcare system would not have managed the situation the past months if Swedish authorities had chosen to close elementary schools. He later said that the decision to close secondary schools might have been unnecessary, because it possibly had little effect in slowing the spread of the disease.
After the Danish government went against the advice of the Danish Health Authority and closed their national borders in March, Tegnell remarked that there were currently no scientific studies supporting border closures to be an effective measure against a pandemic, and that "history has proven it to be completely meaningless measure", and argued that it could, at best, delay the outbreak for one week, and also pointed out that border closures went against the recommendations from the WHO. He later said closures would be "ridiculous" in a situation where the disease had spread across all of Europe, saying that movements within the country were of more concern.
Representatives of the Swedish government, as well as its agencies, have repeatedly denied that pursuing herd immunity is part of the Swedish strategy, as claimed by foreign press and scientists in and outside Sweden. According to state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, herd immunity had not been calculated in the strategy, and if it had been the goal, "we would have done nothing and let coronavirus run rampant". But he believed, in April 2020, that Sweden would benefit from herd immunity in the long run, and reasoned that all countries would eventually have to achieve it to beat the virus. In May 2020 he said that he believed it was unlikely that Sweden, or any other country, would ever reach full herd immunity, and also that it would be a mistake to base a strategy on a hypothetical vaccine, as it would likely be years until there is a vaccine that can be distributed to an entire population. Instead, he believed COVID-19 was something "we’re going to have to live with for a very long time".
As the strategy was built by the health experts at the Public Health Agency without any influence from the government, it was built solely on a public health perspective, without any political considerations to the economy. The agency did however regard the economy as part of its broader public health considerations, due to unemployment and a weakening economy typically leading to a poorer public health.
Although Sweden was regarded to have succeed with making sure the hospitals would keep at pace, it admitted to have failed with protecting its elderly, as three-fourths of its deaths had occurred among nursing home residents or those receiving home care. The Health Agency saw the spread at the homes as their biggest concern, but "not as a failure of our overall strategy, but as a failure of our way to protect the elderly". In an interview with Sveriges Radio in early June, Tegnell was asked if he would have done things differently if he could ‘back the tape’, to which he replied that Sweden should have done more earlier during the outbreak. This received extensive coverage in national as well as international media and was interpreted as he was distancing himself from the Swedish strategy. Tegnell however denied this being the case, and said they still believed the strategy being good, but that "you can always improve things, especially in hindsight". When asked to give examples, he said that it would have been much better if they had been more prepared at nursing homes, and that it would have been better if the testing capacity had been increased earlier on during the outbreak. He also said that the closure of secondary schools might have been unnecessary.
On 10 March 2020, responding to indications of community transmission, the Public Health Agency advised everyone with respiratory infections, even mild cases, to refrain from social contacts where there is a risk of spreading the virus, in private as well as working life. They also ask health care staff working with risk groups, including nursing homes, not work if they have any symptoms of respiratory infection. Relatives of elderly should also avoid unnecessary visits at hospitals and in facilities for elderly, and never visit if there are any respiratory symptoms.
On 16 March 2020, the agency recommended that people over 70 should limit close contact with other people, and avoid crowded areas such as stores, public transport and public spaces. At the end of March, 93% of those older than 70 said that they were following the recommendations from the health service to some extent, with the majority having decreased their contacts with friends and family. In May, the agency looked at easening the recommendations for the 'young elderly' of good health, but ultimately decided against it. They did however encourage those over 70 not to isolate completely in their homes, but to go outside for walks while still following the recommendations. On 16 March 2020, they also recommended that employers should recommend their employees work from home. One month later, statistics showed that roughly half the Swedish workforce was working from home. The following day, the agency recommended that secondary schools and universities use distance learning, with schools following suit all over the country. The decision to recommend distance education for secondary and tertiary education, but not for elementary schools, was that studies at secondary schools and universities to a higher extent require commuting and travelling, and that students would not depend on parental care while not in schools, and school closings therefore did not risk interrupting society. In May, it was announced that the Health Agency were to lift the recommendations on 15 June, and thereby allowing secondary schools and universities to open up as normal after the summer holidays.
In April, many of the organisations running the public transport systems for the Swedish counties had reported a 50% drop in public transport usage, including Kalmar Länstrafik in Kalmar County, Skånetrafiken in Skåne County, Stockholm Public Transit in Stockholm County, and Västtrafik in Västra Götaland County. In Stockholm, the streets grew increasingly emptier, with a 30% drop in the number of cars, and 70% fewer pedestrians.
In mid-May, and on the request of the Public Health Agency, the Swedish Transport Agency temporarily suspended the regulations that allowed for passenger transport on lorries or trailers pulled by tractors, trucks or engineering vehicles at graduations and carnivals. The new rules were to be in place between 15 May and 31 December.
These social distancing recommendations have been effective in part because Swedes tend to have a "disposition to social distancing anyway."
The same day as the first Swedish death to COVID-19, 11 March, the Swedish government passed a new law at the request of the Public Health Agency, limiting freedom of assembly by banning all gatherings larger than 500 people, with threat of fine and prison. The ban would apply until further notice. According to the Health Agency, the reasoning behind drawing the line at 500 was to limit long-distance travel within the nation's borders, as bigger events are more likely to attract visitors from all over the country. Although freedom of assembly is protected by the Swedish constitution in the Fundamental Law on Freedom of Expression, the constitution allows for a government to restrict the freedom, if needed to limit the spread of an epidemic. On 27 March the government announced that the ban on public gatherings would be lowered to include all gatherings of more than 50 people, to further decrease the spread of the infection, again at the request of the Public Health Agency. The ban would apply to arts and entertainment events including theatre, cinema and concerts, religious meetings, demonstrations, lectures, competitive sports, amusement parks, fairs and markets. The ban did not include gatherings in schools, workplaces, public transport, grocery stores or shopping malls, health clubs or private events. The agency also recommended that plans for events and gatherings of fewer than 50 people should be preceded by a risk assessment and, if necessary, followed by mitigation measures. Additionally, they recommend that digital meetings should be considered. The ban on large gatherings had no end-date, and as of late April, the Health Agency was reported as having no plans for when the ban should be lifted.
On 18 March, the Health Agency recommended that everyone should avoid travelling within the country. This came after signs of ongoing community transmission in parts of the country, due to concern that a rapid spread over the country would make redistribution of healthcare resources more difficult. They also called for the public to reconsider any planned holidays during the upcoming Easter weekend. The calls to avoid travelling and social interactions during the Easter weekend were repeated several times by agency and government officials, among them Prime Minister Stefan Löfvén and King, Carl XVI Gustaf. Telia, a Swedish multinational mobile network operator, did an analysis of mobile network data during the week of Easter, and found that most Swedes had followed the agency's recommendations to avoid unnecessary travels during the Easter holidays. Overall, travel from the Stockholm region had decreased by 80–90%, and the number of citizens of Stockholm travelling to popular holiday destinations like Gotland and the ski resorts in Åre had fallen with more than 90%. Travel between other regions in Sweden had fallen as well. Ferry-line operator Destination Gotland, who previously had called on their customers to rethink their planned trips for Easter, reported that 85% of all bookings had been rescheduled.
The restrictions on domestic travel were somewhat softened on 13 May, allowing for travels equalling one to two hours from home by car would be allowed under some circumstances to which Löfvén referred to as ‘common sense’, such as not risking to burden healthcare in other regions, keeping contact with others low and not travelling to visit new social contacts, the elderly or those at risk of severe disease. On 4 June, the government announced that the restrictions on domestic travel were to be lifted on 13 June, allowing everyone to freely travel in the country if they were without symptoms and rules on social distancing were followed. However, they cautioned that new restrictions could be introduced if the situation were to worsen, and that the County administrative boards of Sweden were tasked to monitor the situation.
Beginning in March, press conferences were held daily to at 14:00 local time, with representatives from the three government agencies responsible for coordinating Sweden's response to the pandemic; the Public Health Agency, usually represented by state epidemiologist Tegnell or deputy state epidemiologist Anders Wallensten, the National Board of Health and Welfare and the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency. According to the latter, close to one million people followed each press conference on the TV or the radio. The ratings excluded other types of media.
For official information on the disease and the situation in Sweden, the authorities referred the public to the website "krisinformation.se", which compiles official emergency information from Swedish authorities. The website is operated by the Civil Contingencies Agency, as the agency responsible for emergency information to the public during emergencies. The agency reported a big increase in the number of people visiting the website during the beginning of the pandemic, with 4.5 million views between January and April 2020, compared to 200,000 during the same period in 2019.
In March, the Civil Contingencies Agency received 75 million SEK from the government for public service announcements to inform the public about the virus, and how to reduce the spread of the disease to slow down the spread of the virus.
On 16 April, the Riksdag passed a bill on a temporary amendment on the Swedish law on infectious diseases (2004:168). The new law granted the Swedish government more authority, by allowing it to make decisions without a preceding vote in the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag. The purpose of the law was to enable the government to make speedy decisions on measures against an ongoing pandemic. The bill had initially been criticised by the parties in opposition and the Council on Legislation for being too vague, but was accepted by the riksdag following a revision defining the measures, and an amendment stating that all measures needed to be reviewed by the parliament, which came after negotiations between the government and the opposition. Thus, the Riksdag would be able to revoke any imposed measures after they had come into effect. The law would only apply for measures linked to the ongoing pandemic, and it would apply for a limited time only. The law came into effect on 18 April, and would last until 20 June. The bill would allow the government to quickly and independently impose measures such as restrictions on transport and closures of bus station and train stations, ferries and ports, businesses such as restaurants, health clubs or malls, libraries and museums, or schools. The law would also allow the government to make decisions on redistribution of medicine and other healthcare equipment, such as personal protective equipment between different healthcare providers, including privately owned companies. The new law would not allow for the government to impose measures to that of would restrict people's ability to go outside, similar to the curfews in other countries, as it would limit people's constitutional right to free movement.
The "karensdag", the unpaid first day of sick leave, was temporarily discontinued on 11 March in an effort to encourage people to stay home if they were experiencing symptoms consistent with COVID-19. On 13 March, the government decided to temporarily abolish the demand of a doctor's certificate for 14 days for people staying home from work due to illness (i.e. sick pay period). Previously a doctor's certificate was needed after seven days.
On 24 March 2020, the government introduced new restrictions to bars and restaurants requiring all service to be table service only. Restaurants were also recommended increase the space between the tables. Venues that do not adhere to the new restrictions could be shut down. Several bars and restaurants were later ordered to close by municipal health inspectors.Initially, the infectious disease control medical officers had the responsibility and mandate to close down establishments not adhering to the restrictions through the Swedish Law on Communicable Diseases, while the municipalities had been given the responsibility for the supervision. This changed when a new temporary legislation came into effect on 1 July, making them the sole regulatory body in the same way as in the Swedish Alcohol Act and the Swedish Food Act. The law were to stay in effect until the end of the year. Beginning on 1 April, all private visits to nursing homes was outlawed by the government. Many municipalities had already forbidden such visits. The national ban was however general, and those in charge of the facilities would be able to make exceptions under special circumstances, provided that the risk of spread of the virus was low.
Following reports of people hoarding medication and concerns of drug shortages, the Medical Products Agency requested for the Swedish government to impose restrictions on purchases. This resulted in a new regulation limiting the amount of drugs purchased at the same occasion to three months worth of consumption, down from a previous limit of one year. The new regulations came to effect on 1 April and would be in place until further notice, and included to both prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
The government has issued progressively stricter advisories against travel. Beginning on 17 February, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs advised against all trips to Hubei, China, as well as non-essential travel to the rest of China apart from Hong Kong and Macao.
On 2 March the Ministry for Foreign Affairs advised against trips to Iran, due to the uncontrolled spread of the COVID-19 in the country. The Swedish Transport Agency also revoked Iran Air's permit for Iranian flights to land in Sweden from the same date. According to the foreign ministry, there were several thousand Swedish citizens in Iran at the time of the ban, many of them with difficulties getting back to Sweden. On 6 March, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs advised against all non-necessary trips to northern Italy, specifically the regions of Piemonte, Liguria, Lombardia, Emilia-Romagna, Trentino-Alto Adige, Valle d'Aosta, Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Marche and Toscana. Turin, Milan, Venice, Verona, Trieste and Florence are large cities in these regions. The Public Health Agency of Sweden, who initiated the recommendation for the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, stated that the decision was based solely on the strain of the Italian health care system. On similar grounds, the foreign affairs ministry also advised against all non-necessary travel to the city of Daegu and the province of Gyeongbuk in South Korea. The advice regarding travel to Italy was extended 10 March to include all of its regions. Finally, all international travel was discouraged on 14 March. The advice was to be in place for one month, after which it would be up for review. Travel from non-EU/EEA member states was stopped on 17 March and unnecessary travel within Sweden was advised against on 19 March.
The foreign ministry estimated that between 40,000 and 60,000 Swedes were stranded abroad in late March. According to Swedish policy, Swedes travelling abroad have their own responsibility to arrange for any return travels, without assistance from Swedish diplomatic missions, and travellers trying to travel home are referred to airlines, travel agencies or insurance companies. Some of those were critical of the foreign ministry, and were asking for help from the Swedish authorities. The foreign ministry were initially reluctant to depart from the policy. However, as a growing number of countries closed their airports and many Swedes found themselves stranded in a foreign country unable to arrange travels themselves, the foreign ministry began work on evacuating Swedish citizens. In early May, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that the only location from which stranded Swedish citizens hadn't been evacuated was The Gambia.
On 7 April, the foreign ministry extended the advice against all non-essential travel abroad until 15 June, when it would again be reconsidered. On 9 May, Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde said that although a decision about an extension was yet to be made, she made clear that travel wouldn't return to normal after 15 June. On 13 May, the Foreign Ministry again extended the advice for non-necessary foreign travel to 15 July. From 30 June, the advice against non-essential travel were lifted for 10 EU countries, namely Belgium, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Croatia, Luxembourg, Portugal, Switzerland and Spain, as well as for Monaco, San Marino and the Vatican City. The advice against travel to other countries within the EU, EEA and the Schengen Area would remain in effect until 15 July, while advice were extended until 31 August for countries outside those areas.
In early March, the Health Agency expanded the sentinel surveillance system in use for monitoring the influenza season, so that samples from patients with flu-like symptoms would also be tested for SARS-CoV-2 along with the influenza viruses. In early May, approximately 1500 samples had been analysed within the sentinel system.
Between 27 March and 3 April, the health agency tested approximately 800 randomly selected individuals in Stockholm County, to seek knowledge of the then current infection rate.
As it was estimated that Stockholm County by then had the highest infection rate in Sweden, the agency choose to focus on that region. According to the results, 2.5% of the local population were carrying the virus in the upper respiratory tract during the surveyed period. Based on the study and a doubling time of 6–7 days, the agency concluded that 5–10% of the population in the region were carrying the virus on 9 April.
This was followed by a similar study on national level. In the study, approximately 4000 people would be tested for an active infection. It was followed by a second national study on 4000 individuals in late April, and a similar national study where "thousands" would be tested for antibodies.
In an April study by researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and the Science for Life Laboratory, home sample kits were mailed to 1,000 randomly selected individuals in Stockholm to be tested for the presence of antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes the COVID-19 disease. After analysing 440 out of the 550 blood samples returned, the scientists concluded that 10% of the donors were infected during or prior to late March. A follow-up study was carried out later that month with an additional 1,000 tests to determine how much the spread has increased during the weeks between the two studies. The same month, a study was carried out by researchers at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Danderyd Hospital where staff at the hospitals were tested for antibodies. After analysing 527 samples, the researchers reported that approximately 20% of the staff had developed antibodies against the virus. The researchers intended to continue testing the entire staff, and to carry out several follow-up tests during the following 12 months to learn how long the antibodies will stay in the body. In late April, approximately 11,000 out of the staff at Karolinska University Hospital were tested for the virus in either PCR based or serological tests. The tested individuals included both those with clinical medical and non-clinical medical jobs, as well as staff with non-medical jobs. When 5,500 PCR tests and 3,200 serological tests had been analysed, a total of 15% samples came back positive (7% of PCR tests, 10% of serology tests, with 2% being positive in both tests). Only people without symptoms were tested.
The first tests were carried out in January, and according to the Swedish Public Health Agency, ‘around twenty tests’ had already been carried out before the first positive case was confirmed on 30 January. The agency considered that all individuals who developed any symptoms of disease in the respiratory tract after visiting Wuhan should be tested, even those with less severe symptoms. The Public Health Agency expanded testing for COVID-19 on 4 March beyond only those who have been in risk areas abroad, to also test cases of pneumonia without known cause. Initially, all tests were carried out at the agency's high-containment laboratory in Solna. But in mid-February, to increase testing capacity and allow for faster test results, testing also began at the clinical medical laboratories in Göteborg, Halmstad, Lund, Skövde, Stockholm, Umeå and Uppsala. The Public Health agency considered testing and contact tracing to be more important in the early and late pandemic phases, to stop the spread of the disease and find every case, as "it isn't possible to test millions of individuals in the country" during the pandemic phase.
At the end of March, the number of tests carried out each week numbered 10,000. In mid-April, the number of weekly tests had doubled to approximately 20,000. In early April, the government instructed for the testing capacity to be vastly increased to be able to analyse 100.000 samples every week. This was mainly to make it possible to test people with jobs considered crucial to society, for instance policemen and those working in rescue service or with electric power supply, while still having enough capacity to handle all tests needed for the health-care sector. In mid-May, the number of tests carried out were still far from the goal, with approximately 30.000 tests carried out weekly, and according to a representative for Swedish municipalities and regions it would likely be 'weeks' until goals were met. On 4 June, the government announced that due to several regions in Sweden having entered a late phase of the pandemic, coronavirus testing and contact tracing were to be broadened so that everyone with suspected COVID-19 symptoms could be tested free of cost. On 31 May, a total of 275,819 samples had been tested since the start of the Swedish outbreak.
The Stockholm International Fairs, Stockholmsmässan, are being converted into a field hospital with the help of the Swedish Defence Force. The field hospital will be able to house 600 seriously and critically sick patients. The Swedish Defence Forces will provide equipment for 30 of the 600 beds and the Stockholm Regional Council will provide the remaining 570. The facilities were initially used for treating less severe cases, as opposed to those needing intensive care. In late April, it was reported that the Defence Force had provided 50 intensive care beds as part of the two field hospitals. Field hospitals were also erected in Gothenburg, and Helsingborg. The field hospital in Älvsjö were never needed to be taken into use, and were dismantled in early June. The Gothenburg hospital was used for intensive care during a short time span, but was soon taken out of use following massive criticism from health-care workers who voiced concern for patient safety, increased risks of infection and working conditions.
The increasing number of cases in March resulted in the cancellation or postponement of close to 50% of planned surgeries, including cancer-related surgeries, in all of Sweden, and up to 90% in large areas such as Stockholm and Uppsala. By May, 44,000 planned surgeries had been postponed in Sweden, increasing the total number of Swedes in line for a surgery to over 150,000. Several regions also chose to cancel many, or all, planned non-acute dentistry as a measure to redistribute healthcare equipment like disposable gloves and masks.
Before the pandemic, the Swedish healthcare system had the capacity to treat approximately 500 persons in Intensive Care Units (ICU). The relatively low number of beds had stayed a source of concern as the crisis evolved, and even though the number had increased to 800 at the beginning of April, healthcare professionals continued to express worry that their hospitals would eventually run out of beds. According to the calculations of the Swedish health agency, up to 1300 ICU beds would be needed when Sweden reached the top of the pandemic. Sweden was eventually able to double the number of intensive care beds in a few weeks, and on 13 April, the National Board of Health and Welfare reported that the total number of ICU beds had risen to 1039, with an occupancy of 80%.
On 13 March, media reported that there is a shortage in personal protective equipment (PPE) for health care staff, and hospitals in Stockholm have been forced to reuse disposable PPEs after sanitation. The regional Health Care Director warned about this scenario in early March and government agencies have temporarily waived the public procurement law to hastily procure more supplies. The National Board of Health and Welfare ("'Socialstyrelsen"') confirmed that there is no preparedness storage and nothing to distribute to the health care sector. In early April, several counties expressed concern that they might run out of some vital drugs used in intensive care. Later that month, Stockholm County reported of an acute shortage of the anaesthetic propofol.
As one of the main tasks of the Swedish Defence Force is to support the civil community in case of disasters, their resources were used to lessen equipment shortages in the health-care system. The material supplied by the military included crucial medical equipment; X-ray generators, electrocardiographic machines, 154 ventilators and 154 intensive care monitors. The military also supplied personal protective equipment, including 60,000 gas masks and 40,000 protective suits.
On 25 March 2020, Björn Eriksson, the Director of Healthcare in Stockholm, appealed to anyone in the Stockholm region who had experience in healthcare to volunteer. As of the 26 March 2020, 5100 people with healthcare experience had registered as volunteers.
The increasing number of cases in large areas such as Stockholm and Uppsala has resulted in the cancellation or postponement of up to 90% of planned surgeries, including cancer related surgeries.
When it became clear that the civil society would face difficulties managing the emergent crisis, the Swedish Defence Force were called in to assist the civilian society with manpower, equipment, and logistics. The preparations began in February and the first servicemen were deployed in March. By early April the total military deployed in civilian society numbered 400 servicemen, among them a number of officers to support the National Board of Health and Welfare with crisis management and laboratory technicians to support the Public Health Agency of Sweden. Tasks for the military personnel also including collecting and transporting samples. A number of military ambulances were also taken in use within the civilian health system.
In March, Swedish Minister for Finance Magdalena Andersson said that the government believed that the Swedish economy would be hardly hit by the pandemic, with a 4% downturn in gross domestic product (GDP), similar to the levels seen following the 2008 financial crisis. Andersson also warned that they also expected unemployment to increase up to 9% during the year. In a forecast by the Swedish National Institute of Economic Research published in late April, the Swedish GDP was expected to fall with 7% during 2020 due to the impact of the ongoing pandemic. The European Commission predicted that the Swedish economy would contract -6.1%, a level similar to that of the eurozone (-7.7%). In June, the Swedish central bank Sveriges Riksbank forecasted a fall of 10%. This was mainly due to the Swedish economy being heavily reliant on exports (which attributes to around half of the Swedish GDP) with the shrinking global economy being predicted to decrease international demand of Swedish goods and services. The Economy were also affected by problems with global supply lines, which had forced some of the biggest manufacturing companies in Sweden, including Scania and Volvo Cars, to halt their production in March, as well as a decrease in consumption. The National Institute of Economic Research also exptected that unemployment in Sweden would rise to 11% during 2020, and the Swedish Pensions Agency calculated a 1.5% drop in pensions for 2021, as Swedish pensions are attached to GDP and income. While some predicted a rebound already in the second half of 2020, Magdalena Andersson warned that things "could get worse before they get better" In mid-June, Andersson said it was possible that Sweden had reached the bottom of the downturnn, as the government had revised their forecast to a -6% GDP downturn in GDP and an unemployment level of 9.3% (down from -7% and 11% respectively in their previous forcast) although they expected unemployment to further increase in 2021 to 10.3%. However, she cautioned that there was still a big uncertainty regarding the numbers. Similarly, the National Institute of Economic Research also revised their forecast downwards, to a -5.5% fall in GDP and for unemployment to increase to 8.5% during 2020, with a further increase up to 10% in 2021.
In mid-March, the government proposed a 300 billion SEK (€27bn) emergency package to reduce the economic impact of the crisis. The proposal included a system with a reduction in work hours where the government will pay half to salary, aiming to help businesses stay afloat without having to do layoffs. Further, the government would pay the employer's expenses for any sick leaves, which is normally shared between the employer and the state. The normal costs of employer contributions have also been temporarily discontinued for small business owners. This will save small businesses approximately 5000 SEK per employee each month but will result in a loss of tax revenue of 33 billion SEK. The budget emergency package proposed by the government in mid-March to lessen the economic impact of the crisis was supported across the political spectrum, including all parties in opposition in the Riksdag. It was also welcomed by trade unions as well as the private and business sectors. However, some union representatives stressed that 'it won't be enough', a view shared by the biggest employer's organisation, the Confederation of Swedish Enterprise.
On 2 April, the Financial Supervisory Authority ("'Finansinspektionen"') decided that Swedish banks temporarily can allow exemptions for housing mortgage lenders regarding amortising of loans.
Air transportation in Sweden is primarily run by public and private companies – principally Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) and Norwegian Air Shuttle – and has been severely impacted by the pandemic and greatly reduced. Like airlines around the world, Sweden's carriers have reduced the frequency of their flights, reduced their work force and asked the local government for financial assistance. On 15 March, SAS announced that they would temporarily reduce their workforce by 10,000 people, which constitutes about 90% of their workforce. Soon almost all domestic flights were cancelled. Swedish authorities advised against all non-essential travel inside and out of Sweden. SAS Group decided to fly only four domestic departures and four domestic arrivals from Arlanda from 6 April 2020, plus some international flights, while Norwegian cancelled all domestic flights in Sweden. Several airports closed temporarily.
Rail transport in Sweden, which is principally run by the public operator SJ AB, has continued to operate throughout the pandemic, albeit with a slightly reduced schedule so that additional carriages can be added to trains, which in conjunction with fewer tickets being made available for sale, aims to ensure social distancing of those passengers that continue to travel. The decrease in travel had a big impact on the public transport sector due to a loss of revenue in ticket sales, which led to trade association Swedish Public Transport Association ("Svensk kollektivtrafik") asking the government for financial aid.
In mid-March, the parliamentary leaders from the parties in the Riksdag agreed on using
pairing for the upcoming weeks, to make it possible to decrease the number of members of parliament present during voting sessions, from the usual 349 to 55. This decision was taken both as a measure to lower the risk of spread of the infection (social distancing), and to make sure the daily work in the parliament could proceed even if a big number of MPs would become sick. Similar decisions were taken in many of Swedish municipal councils. Several regional assemblies also decreased the number of politicians present each session, including Västerbotten County who did it as a measure to decrease long-distance travelling, and Skåne County.
On 25 March, The Swedish Social Democratic Party together with the Swedish Trade Union Confederation decided to cancel their traditional May Day demonstrations. They will instead hold an event on a digital platform, which will include speeches by the Swedish prime minister and leader of the Social Democrats, Stefan Löfven, as well as union confederation leader Karl-Petter Thorwaldsson. The Left Party also cancelled their nationwide demonstrations, and announced that there would instead be a digital celebration, including a speech by party leader Jonas Sjöstedt. The Almedalen Week, considered to be the biggest and most important forum in Sweden for seminars, debates and political speeches on current social issues, held in Visby every summer, was cancelled as a result of the ban on large gatherings. The decision was taken on 1 April by the organiser after consultation with the major political parties. Prime Minister Stefan Löfvén had already announced that he had cancelled his planned participation in the upcoming event. A similar event in Stockholm, 'Järvaveckan', was also cancelled, and won't be held until 2021.
The annual LGBT festival West Pride in Gothenburg was also cancelled as a result of the pandemic. Instead, the organisers proclaimed 25 May to 7 June a 'flag period', encouraging organisations and individuals to hoist the rainbow flag.
Following the recommendation from the Swedish authorities that those over the age of 70 should self-isolate, the Swedish King and Queen, Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia, aged 74 and 76, both chose to leave the palace to work from distance in the estate Stenhammar in Sörmland.
On 5 April, at the first day of the Holy week, King Carl XVI Gustaf addressed the nation in a televised speech. In his speech, he stressed that all Swedes had an obligation to the country to "act responsibly and selflessly". He also stressed that many who otherwise would travel, spend time with friends and family or go to church would need to make sacrifices during the upcoming Easter holiday. In his speech, he specifically addressed those working or volunteering in the health-care sector, saying "This is a huge task. It requires courage. And it will require endurance. To all of you involved in this vital work, I offer my heartfelt thanks", as well as other people doing vital work in society, to ensure Swedes "can buy food, that public transport continues to operate, and everything else we so easily take for granted – my warmest thanks to you all". He finished saying that all would embrace the message "The journey is long and arduous. But in the end, light triumphs over darkness, and we will be able to feel hope again", ending his speech wishing everyone a happy Easter.
On 13 March 2020, the spring Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test ("′Högskoleprovet′") was cancelled affecting approximately 70,000 prospective students who had registered themselves. This was the first time the Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test has been cancelled since it was established in 1977. On 23 March 2020 the Swedish National Agency for Education ("'Skolverket"'), cancelled the national tests to give teachers in Sweden more time to prepare for the possibility of distance education.
The Swedish Armed Forces cancelled the international military exercise Aurora 20 which was scheduled to be held between May and June. Austria and Canada had previously announced their cancellation of their planned participation.
The ban of public gatherings with more than 500 people, later revised down to 50, led to concerts and other events being cancelled or postponed. Concerts cancelled due to the ban on large crowds included four sold-out concerts with Håkan Hellström at the Nya Ullevi Arena, Gothenburg, scheduled for June and August. As the total number of tickets sold to the concerts numbered 300,000, it was believed to be a significant blow to Gothenburg's tourism industry, with a potential loss of 900 million SEK (€84 million) if all concerts scheduled at the arena were to be cancelled. The organiser of the music festival Summerburst had previously announced cancelling their scheduled event at Nya Ullevi. The rock festival Sweden Rock, held every year since 1992 in Blekinge and scheduled for June, was cancelled due to the ongoing pandemic. Theatre and opera were affected, with major venues such as Gothenburg opera house, Malmö Opera, Royal Dramatic Theatre and Royal Swedish Opera all closing their venues and cancel upcoming events. Cinema were affected as well, and Sweden's largest cinema chain, Filmstaden, decided to close all their cinemas on 17 March until further notice. In April, the Swedish amusement parks Gröna Lund in Stockholm and Liseberg in Gothenburg announced that they were to cancel or reschedule all concerts scheduled before midsummer. The former had already postponed the season opening indefinitely, while the latter were still hoping to open the park as planned in mid-May. As the amusement parks mostly rely on seasonal workers, closures would result in thousands of cancelled employment contracts.
Starting 30 March 2020 the public library in Gävle will start with a book delivery service for people aged 70 or older. The library will also start a take-away service where you can pre-loan books and pick them in a take-away bag.
On 6 March, Swedish National Broadcaster SVT held a crisis meeting to consider broadcasting the live finals of Melodifestivalen 2020 on 7 March without an audience, as a response to the growing outbreak. The Danish equivalent had recently decided to broadcast their version of the finals without an audience. Ultimately, SVT decided to allow the audience to enter the arena, although they advised people who felt sick to stay at home.
The popular TV show Antikrundan, broadcast by public broadcaster SVT, where a number of antiques appraisers visits different locations in Sweden to appraise antiques brought there by local people, cancelled their planned tour for the recording of the 2020 winter season. According to the producers, they were instead working on an 'alternative' show. The sing-along show "Lotta på Liseberg", which is televised live by TV4 from the amusement park Liseberg in Gothenburg, announced that the 2020 season wouldn't be cancelled, but would be recorded without an audience due to the ban of gatherings. SVT had previously announced similar plans for their live sing-along show Allsång på Skansen, which is broadcast live from the amusement park Skansen in Stockholm.
In athletics, all 2020 Diamond League events scheduled to be held in May were postponed, which included the meet in Stockholm. The world's largest half marathon in Gothenburg, Göteborgsvarvet, was postponed until later in 2020 and then cancelled completely on 27 March. The annual recreational bicycle race Vätternrundan, scheduled to be held in June, was also cancelled as a result of the pandemic. The organisers made the decision public on 2 April. The professional bicycle race Postnord UCI WWT Vårgårda West Sweden, part of the UCI Women's World Tour and scheduled for August, was also cancelled.
On 19 March, the governing body for association football in Sweden formally announced that the premiere of the 2020 season for the first and second division leagues, men's Allsvenskan and Superettan as well as women's Damallsvenskan and Elitettan, will be postponed to late May or early June. The decision will not affect the leagues below the second level. Two days later it was announced that the 2020 edition of the association football award ceremony Fotbollsgalan was cancelled. Many of the professional teams in the highest division warned that the loss of income following the postponement of the season would have a severe impact on their economy. After consultations with the Public Health Agency, the organisation behind youth football tournament Gothia Cup, in Gothenburg, decided to cancel the 2020 event. According to the organisers, the tournament will return in 2021. The youth handball tournament Partille Cup was also cancelled. Professional handball was affected as well, with the last rounds and the finals in the highest men's and women's leagues, Handbollsligan and Svensk handbollselit, being cancelled. Similarly, the Swedish Basketball Federation choose to stop all games until May, effectively stopping the highest divisions SBL and SBL Dam mid-season. In Speedway, the start of Elitserien, the highest league in the Swedish league system, was rescheduled to 2 June. To manage a tighter schedule, the sport's governing body Swedish Motorcycle and Snowmobile Federation also decided to cancel the quarterfinals.
Swedish Minister for Sports Amanda Lind announced on 29 May that some recommendations were to be lifted starting from 14 June, when sports events would be allowed under the condition that they're practised outdoors. And as the ban on crowds and the recommendations against travel were still in place, all games had to be played on virtually empty arenas and athletes would not be allowed to travel longer than two miles to participate in sports events. However, professional athletes would be exempt from the recommendations, and allowed to travel nationwide if needed for competitive events.
The Swedish response to the pandemic has been debated within Sweden, though surveys show a wide agreement for the response among the public. The debate has mostly involved academics, as the opposition in the Riksdag initially mostly avoided criticising the response from the government or the agencies. The parties without representation in the government, including the liberal conservative party, the Moderates, the Christian Democrats, the centre-right parties the Liberals and the Centre Party, and the socialist Left Party instead voiced their support for the government consisting of the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Green Party, in what often is referred to as a 'borgfred' (truce) where the opposition support the government in a time of crisis. The exception being the right-wing populist Sweden Democrats, whose party leader Jimmie Åkesson called for school closings. The leader of the Moderate Party, the biggest party in opposition, Ulf Kristersson, said that eventually it will be needed to evaluated by how the government and agencies handled the pandemic, "but not now". In May, several opposition politicians sharply criticised the government and Prime Minister Stefan Löfvén for the low number of tests being carried out, despite promises from the Government in April to increase testing to 100.000 individuals a week. Kristersson demanded for Löfvén to be much more clear about who has the responsibility for the testing, and Ebba Busch, leader of the Christian Democrats, accused Löfvén of "weak rulership" playing a "high risk game with the lives and health of Swedes". Left Party leader Jonas Sjöstedt said that the government needed to step in and take charge, and accused the government of having remained powerless when the regions failed to increase testing.
On 14 April, a debate article was sent to Swedish newspapers signed by 22 academics, saying that the strategy of the Swedish public health agency would lead to "chaos in the healthcare system". Moreover, they said that there was no transparency regarding the data used in the models made by the agency. Anders Tegnell from the public health agency responded to the criticism by saying that there was no lack in transparency in the agency's work and that all data is available to be downloaded by the public as an excel-file on their website. Additionally Tegnell stated that the numbers of deaths presented in the published article are wrong, especially regarding the specific number of deaths per day. Another claim in the article saying that Sweden's statistics were closing in to the ones of Italy was countered by Anders Tegnell saying that unlike Sweden, Italy and many other countries only report on deaths in hospitals, making it hard to compare the numbers of the different countries. He also said in an interview with the BBC that Sweden's strategy is largely working in slowing the spread of the disease; although the death toll in nursing homes was high, the country's healthcare system did not become overwhelmed, and that Sweden's approach had made it better-placed than other countries in dealing with a second wave of infections.
Sweden questioned the scientific basis for imposing mandatory lockdown seen in other European countries, relying instead on the civic responsibility of its citizens to keep large parts of its society open. Although senior high schools were closed and gatherings of more than 50 people were banned, shops, restaurants and junior schools remained open. Swedes were expected to follow the recommendations on social distancing, avoiding non-essential travel, working from home and staying indoors if they are elderly or feeling ill.
Sweden sometimes found itself used in as a battering ram in debates, both to defend and to criticise more "strict" measures, including anti-lockdown protesters and Politicians. Some foreign leaders have used Sweden as a warning example when defending their own strategy, including Alberto Fernández, President of Argentina, and US president Donald Trump who compared Sweden's higher death toll next to its neighbouring countries who had applied stricter measures, and said that "Sweden is paying heavily for its decision not to lockdown". Some of the harshest criticism from outside Sweden was found in the Chinese paper "Global Times", closely linked to the ruling Communist Party of China, accused Sweden of having capitulated to the virus, calling the country 'a black hole' and called for the international community to condemn Sweden's actions. Some, including Swedish Minister for Justice Morgan Johansson, speculated that the strong criticism may be partly linked to the poor relations between the two countries after China's imprisonment of the Swedish book publisher Gui Minhai.
Sweden has also been accused of giving active death help to senior citizens that can be compared to euthanasia. The country's treatment of its elderly was also questioned in a BBC article, " Coronavirus: What's going wrong in Sweden's care homes?”.
According to surveys carried out in late March and early April, three out of four Swedes (71–76%) trusted the Public Health Agency, and nearly half of the people surveyed (47%) said they had 'very high trust' in the agency. A majority said they trusted the government, and 85% said they trusted the Swedish health-care system. A March 2020 survey reported that more than half (53%) of the Swedish population had trust in the state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, a higher share than for any of the current leaders of the Swedish political parties. The share of respondents who said that they didn't trust Tegnell was 18%.
In an April survey, the share who said they trusted Tegnell had increased to 69%, while the number who said they didn't trust their state epidemiologist had decreased to 11%.
Many outside Sweden considered the measures taken by the authorities against the pandemic to be significantly different when compared to other countries. As a result, there was a big increase in international news coverage of Sweden. According to the Swedish Institute, the situation was unique as they had never seen such interest in Sweden from mainstream media in their intelligence studies. There was also an increase in interactions on the coverage, including a higher number of shares on social media. The Swedish strategy was sometimes described as "lax", "laissez-faire", "unorthodox" or "radical", in some cases even as "extreme" or as "Russian roulette". Much of the coverage was neutral, but it was sometimes described as curious, questioning or critical, and was in some cases accused of being "fake news". Over time, the reporting shifted to being more neutral or nuanced, or sometimes positive, with some speculating that the Swedish policy may be more durable in the long run.
A common news story in international media was things being "business as usual" in Sweden, with its citizens ignoring the recommendations to practice social distancing and avoiding unnecessary travel, often accompanied by footage of crowded streets and restaurants. One notable example was an article in the British newspaper "The Guardian", claiming that everything in Sweden went on as normal, with Swedes "going about their daily routines". The article attracted particularly widespread notice, and was quoted by many European newspapers. "The Guardian" was also accused of misleading their readers in another article, by selectively choosing quotes and putting them in a different context, and by disproportionately giving room to critical voices from Sweden in their reporting. Some reported that Sweden chose not to lock down to protect the economy. Foreign news outlets often described Sweden as pursuing a herd immunity strategy. This was echoed by US president Donald Trump, who in a press briefing told the assembled media that Sweden was "suffering very greatly" due to what he referred to as "the herd", and that the US, if it had not taken much stricter social distancing measures, "would have lost hundreds of thousands more people". Responding partly to Trump's remarks, which she described by using the word "misinformation", Swedish foreign minister Ann Linde said that the "so-called Swedish strategy" was one of many myths about Sweden, and described it as "absolutely false". Linde said that the Swedish goal was no different from most other countries: to save lives, hinder the spread of the virus and make the situation manageable for the health system, while Sweden's state epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, when asked about Trump's remarks, said that in his opinion Sweden was doing relatively well, and was no worse off than New York. Remarks similar to Linde's have also been made by Lena Hallengren, Minister for Health and Social Affairs, who disagreed with the belief that Sweden had a radically different approach to the virus compared to other countries, saying she believed that there were only differences in two major regards: not shutting down schools, and not having regulations forcing people to remain in their homes. Linde has also spoken out against reports of Swedes not practising social distancing, calling it another "myth" in the reporting about Sweden, and she said Sweden's combination of recommendations and legally binding measures had so far proven effective. Swedish experts critical of the Swedish strategy were often quoted in international media, among them immunologist Cecilia Söderberg-Nauclér, one of the most vocal critics, who was quoted accusing the government of "leading us to catastrophe" and having "decided to let people die".
As of 26 April, 18,670 people had tested positive for COVID-19 in Sweden. As of mid-April, Södermanland County was the region most affected by the pandemic (in cases per capita), followed by Stockholm County and Östergötland County.
Swedish hospitals saw a sharp rise in the number of COVID-19 patients receiving intensive care during March. The number of new patients somewhat stabilised during the first two weeks of April, with between 30–45 patients per day, averaging 39. The number of new patients admitted to ICU decreased slightly during the third week of April, averaging 35. The mean age of the patients who underwent intensive care was 59 years old, three out of four (74%) were men, and the average time between diagnosis and admission to an intensive care unit was 10 days. The majority (68%) of those who received intensive care had one or more underlying condition considered as one of the risk groups, with the most prevalent being hypertension (37%), diabetes (25%), chronic pulmonary heart disease (24%), chronic respiratory disease (14%) and chronic cardiovascular disease (11%). The share of patients not belonging to a risk group was significantly higher among younger patients. Among those younger than 60 years, 39% didn't have any of those underlying conditions. As of 26 April, 1,315 with a confirmed COVID-19 infection had received intensive care in Sweden.
A large majority (93%) of the deaths belonged to at least one risk group, with chronic cardiovascular disease being the most prevalent (53%), followed by diabetes (26%), chronic respiratory disease (18%) and chronic renal failure (16%). More than half of the deaths have been in Stockholm County. As of early May, the mean age among those who had died with confirmed COVID-19 disease was 82, and the majority (54%) of those who had died with the disease were men.
Out of the people who died of the disease in Sweden, many were residents in nursing homes. In early May, more than 500 nursing homes had reported cases of COVID-19.
Among people aged 70 or older, half (50%) of those who died had been living at a nursing home, while another 26% had received home care. A 30% excess mortality was observed at Swedish nursing homes during the pandemic. The figure differed between regions, with the figures being highest in Stockholm County where the excess mortality at nursing homes reached approximately 100%, according to research by SVT.
During the pandemic, an excess mortality was observed in Sweden from late March and onwards. As the number of deaths with a laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 diagnosis only amounted to 75% of this number, the actual number of deaths related to COVID-19 was believed to be higher. The excess mortality reached a peak during the first half of April, but the mortality rate was still considered to be above normal levels in mid-May. As of 17 May, there had been approximately 4000 excess deaths in Sweden since late March.
As of 31 May, there had been approximately 4,800 excess deaths in Sweden.
According to SCB preliminary statistics in week 15, the number of deaths registered was 2 564 (on average 366 per day). This is 200 deaths more than the second highest number of deaths in a week, which was 2 364 deaths in the first week of 2000.
A total of 10 458 people died in April 2020, which almost reaches the level of December 1993 - then 11 057 people died. In total, 97 008 people died in 1993 which was the highest number of deaths in one year since 1918 during the peak of the Spanish flu.
Total all-cause deaths from 1 Jan to 3 Jun excluding 29 Feb, calculated from SCB:
All-cause weekly deaths in Sweden in 2016–2020, from FOHM:
Compared to other Scandinavian nations, Sweden has experienced a much higher number of COVID-19 deaths; eight times that of Denmark and 19 times higher than Norway, despite being only twice those nations' populations.
At a point, it was reported that a disproportionate number of those that had died by then were Somali (6) out of 89 deaths being members of the Somali community in the Stockholm Region.
Local governments, such as the municipal government in Gävle, have applied measures to businesses delaying the payment of invoices until 1 September 2020 at the earliest and deferring rent payments.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239190
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Andy McQueen
Andy McQueen is a Canadian actor. He is most noted for his performance in the 2019 film "Disappearance at Clifton Hill", for which he received a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the 8th Canadian Screen Awards in 2020.
He also appeared in the films "Brown Girl Begins" and "Fahrenheit 451", in the television series "Warehouse 13", "The Listener", "Private Eyes", "Coroner" and "Jack Ryan", and on stage in the Toronto production of "Jesus Hopped the 'A' Train".
He is an alumnus of the Actors Conservatory at the Canadian Film Centre.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239191
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Protected polymorphism
In population genetics, a protected polymorphism is a mechanism that maintains multiple alleles at a certain locus. In detail, any of the several alleles will follow certain dynamics; When a certain allele is high in frequency (p formula_1 1), it will decrease in frequency in the future and by that avoid from being fixated in the population. On the contrary, when a given allele is low in frequency (p formula_1 0) it will increase in frequency in the future, avoiding its extinction and maintaining polymorphism at the locus.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239261
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Cigdem Eskicioglu
Cigdem Eskicioglu is a Turkish-Canadian engineer, and a professor at the University of British Columbia. She holds a Senior Industrial Research Chair in the School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia.
Eskicioglu was born in Turkey, and spent her first ten years in Istanbul. She cites her experiences in Turkey, including traffic jams and a lack of clean water and air, as what prompted her interest in environmental issues. She completed a Bachelor of Science degree in environmental engineering at the Istanbul Tech University, followed by a PhD and post-doctoral fellowship in environmental engineering at the University of Ottawa.
Eskicioglu leads the UBC Bioreactor Technology Group at the University of British Columbia's Okanagan campus, where her lab develops wastewater treatment technologies, including waste processing and biological treatment. In 2020, She was appointed as the Senior Industrial Research Chair (IRC), awarded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and Metro Vancouver, to conduct research into recovering resources from wastewater sludge, at the School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia. Eskicioglu has been collaborating with Metro Vancouver since 2013, which has yielded a provisional patent on a bioreactor which can create renewable natural gas from wastewater treatment.
Conventional fermentation methods can take several weeks, or months, to generate methane. In collaboration with international groups, Eskicioglu has developed a new waste pre-treatment technique, where common materials in agricultural waste, including Douglas fir bark, can generate methane faster. In addition, Eskicioglu's research has demonstrated that including combinations of metal salts during fermentation can make wastewater treatment safer and less smelly.
Eskicioglu has published over 80 academic papers which have been cited over 2900 times, resulting in an h-index and i10-index of 23 and 43 respectively. She has previously received an Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Postgraduate Scholarship, the British Columbia Confederation of University Faculty Associations (CUFA) Early in Career Award (2012) and the City of Kelowna’s Mayor’s Environmental Award (2011).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239333
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Byron-Bethany Irrigation District
The Byron-Bethany Irrigation District (BBID) is a special district serving the water needs of regions of Alameda, Contra Costa, and San Joaquin Counties in California. This area is about 30,000 acres and serves 160 agricultural customers. Residents of the all-inclusive Mountain House village community are served as well. Notable recipients of BBID's services in the area are The Patterson Pass Business Park, Prologis International Park of Commerce, and Cordes Ranch. The water comes from the Delta and the Delta–Mendota Canal.
In December of 2016, under BBID general manager, Rick Gilmore, BBID operations were consolidated with West Side Irrigation District (WSID) and the two have been working as a joint district under the name Byron-Bethany Irrigation District. Before the merge, WSID primarily dealt with agricultural irrigation services, but since has retrofitted some of their ditches for drainage in the city of Tracy. This merge added 6,000 acres to the 30,000 BBID already managed.
The Byron-Bethany Irrigation District played an important role in backing AB 747. BBID rose to action when, during the 2015 California drought, they were accused of an unauthorized diversion of two thousand sixty-seven (2,067) acre-feet from the intake channel of the Banks Pumping Plant (formerly Italian Slough) in Contra Costa County. According to the State Water Resources Control Board (SWRCB), BBID was in violation of California Water Code, Section 1052, and the district received an Administrative Civil Liability Complaint (ENF01951). However, before this complaint was issued, BBID had consulted the Contra Costa Superior Court about a Curtailment Notice received from the SWRCB, with hopes of addressing the water deficit predicament it put them in. More than a year later in June 2016, after multiple hearings and extensive correspondence, SWRCB dropped the Civil Liability Complaint due to insufficient evidence.
This experience pushed BBID to spearhead a new bill. BBID and other local irrigation districts reached out to the Brown Administration after a similar proposition, AB 313, was rejected in 2017. They urged a need to implement some type of checks and balances system on the SWRCB. AB 747 was passed in late September, 2018 and established an Administrative Hearings Office within the SWRCB. Its purpose is to act as a third party to oversee water rights issues; before the Board served as both the prosecutor and judge in enforcement cases. Attorney Alan Lilly, who has a background in law and water rights, was appointed the first Presiding Hearing Officer of the Administrative Hearings Office by the SWRCB.
The BBIG received the 2017 Excellence in Water Leadership Award from the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA). The award was granted in observation of legal action the district took against the SWRCB during the 2015 California drought to ensure water rights for local residence and agricultural businesses. This legal action came after the SWRCB imposed a fine of up to $5 million on BBID for diverting water when its priority of right could not deliver. In 2016 the SWRCB dropped their charges due to insufficient evidence.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239344
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Clifford Surko
Clifford Michael Surko (born October 11, 1941 in Sacramento, California) is an American physicist, whose works involve plasma physics, atomic physics, nonlinear dynamics and solid state physics. Together with his colleagues, he developed techniques for laser scattering at small angles to study waves and turbulence in tokamak plasmas and invented a positron trap (buffer gas positron trap) that was used in experiments worldwide to study antimatter. Surko also developed other techniques for studying positron plasmas and examined atomic and plasma physics with positrons.
Surko studied mathematics and physics at the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor's degree in 1964 and a doctorate in physics in 1968. He was then at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, where he became department head for research in semiconductor and chemical physics in 1982. Since 1988, he has been a professor at the University of California, San Diego.
He was a visiting researcher at MIT (Plasma Fusion Center, 1977 to 1984), at École Polytechnique (1978/79) and at University College London.
Surko is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 2014, he received the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics for ""the invention of and development of techniques to accumulate, confine, and utilize positron plasmas, and for seminal experimental studies of waves and turbulence in tokamak plasmas"".
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239353
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Melissa L. Williams
Melissa L. Williams is an American actress and model, known for playing Denise and Ruth Truesdale in the BET prime time soap opera "The Oval" and its spinoff "Ruthless".
Williams was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She is the oldest of six children. Williams moved to Atlanta and attended Clark Atlanta University. She began her career appearing in several musicals at the local theater before moving to Los Angeles. On television, she guest starred on "The Game", "If Loving You Is Wrong" and "Rosewood". She received Indie Series Awards nomination for her performance in "Poz Roz".
In 2019, Tyler Perry cast Williams as a twin sisters in his BET prime time soap opera "The Oval". She later went to star in its spinoff "Ruthless" for streaming service BET+.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239462
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Josh Fife
Joshua Fife (born 1 July 2000) is an Australian racing driver from Canberra, Australia. He is currently competing in the Dunlop Super2 Series with Brad Jones Racing, driving the No. 14 Holden VF Commodore.
Fife began karting at the age of 10, competing in national events around the world. After karting full-time in Italy, he returned to Australia in 2019 and joined the Super3 Series with Brad Jones Racing. In his debut season, he scored to race wins and five podium finishes to finish fifth in the driver's standings. In December 2019 after a test day with Brad Jones Racing at Winton Raceway, Fife was announced to be joining the team in their Super2 program for 2020.
* Season still in progress
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239624
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Graham Budgett
Graham Budgett is a British-American conceptual artist and educator whose socio-politically engaged work includes photography, sculpture, installation, spatial practices and new media art. Budgett explores systems of image production and display, the discourse of media and capitalism, human subjectivity, and the interaction between theory and practice. His work has been exhibited at Tate Gallery, Victoria and Albert Museum, Beaconsfield, Centre for Contemporary Arts (Glasgow), Alvar Aalto Museum (Finland), Ars Electronica, and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. It has been reviewed in "The Times (London)", "The Guardian", "The Observer", "The Face", and "Time Out".
Critics such as Adrian Searle describe Budgett's earlier photographic images as "tragic dystopias" recalling the social criticism of Walter Benjamin, George Grosz, Jorge Luis Borges, and Wim Wenders; his later work explores the construction of identity, public space and artwork through transitory installations, public projects and digital and code-born new-media that largely function outside the art market.
Budgett has been based in Berlin, London and the United States and has taught at University of Westminster and the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is married to artist Jane Mulfinger and lives and works in Santa Barbara.
Budgett was born in Manchester, United Kingdom in 1954 and studied sculpture at Trent Polytechnic (BA, Fine Arts, 1977) and St. Martin's School of Art (advanced diploma, 1978). He continued his studies at Stanford University in California (MFA, 1981), where his work became more politicized during the era of Reaganism and Thatcherism. After concluding at Stanford, he taught sculpture at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and produced humorous, politically charged assemblages, whose recontextualized manufactured products played associative games and punctured cultural pretensions.
In the mid-1980s, Budgett moved with Jane Mulfinger to Berlin, where both became friends with Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz and Budgett received a residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (1986–7); while there he gained attention for the photomontage work "Berlin bei Nacht" (Berlin by Night). From 1988–94, he lived in London, exhibiting at venues such as The Photographers' Gallery, Watershed Media Centre and Camerawork, and teaching at the University of Westminster and Middlesex University.
After moving back to the United States in 1994, Budgett served in several capacities in the Department of Art at UCSB over two decades, including lecturer in New Media and Acting Head of Digital Media Media, before retiring in 2015. He has largely sought to publish and exhibit his later work in public spaces, including the Web, in addition to exhibition venues such as the Trondheim Art Museum, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and Beaconsfield.
Budgett has worked in a wide range of media, producing work united by concerns with image production and display, sociopolitical critique, human subjectivity and identity, public space, and the melding of theory and practice. He began his career as a sculptor, initially producing large, minimalist constructions, installations and architectural interventions, before turning to readymade assemblages. He shifted to image and text works in the mid-1980s, influenced by the critical photomontages of Dada and John Heartfield's anti-Nazi works while seeking a more accessible medium with reach beyond galleries to public space. In the latter half of his career, he has divided his efforts between new media, installations and public artworks.
Budgett's early pre-digital photomontages have been described as "amalgamations of image and performance in front of the camera." They draw on appropriated sources—which he altered and blended in-camera with live models, props and sculpture, text and his own photographs—and the bright colors, gloss and fantasy of advertising aesthetics; the juxtaposition of recognizable, inviting visuals, darker stories and critiques of political myths and consumer capitalism create an intentional shock or defamiliarization effect to provoke viewers. Budgett ultimately judged as too alienating early work such as "A Brief US History" (1985), a series featuring iconoclastic, caustic montages and text that unequivocally counter official narratives on topics such as foreign interference by the CIA, atomic testing in the South Pacific, abortion and the Ku Klux Klan.
For "Berlin by Night" (1987), he took a more open-ended approach, creating text, glossy Cibachrome prints, and a boxed set of "tourist" postcards depicting scenarios at famed sites that critically engaged Berlin's 750th anniversary. Individual works such as "[Zoo]Logical Garden" and "The Void" featured fig-leafed, fleeing Adam and Eve figures and a diving man frozen above the liminal space of the Berlin wall; in "The Angel of History" (a play on Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"), an angel is propelled backwards by the force of a catastrophic atomic-like blast. Writers describe the urban-scapes as confrontations with "the unholy communion of entertainment and self-destruction" that recall the haunted visions of Bosch, George Grosz and Walter Benjamin.
In his "Lost Charms" series (1992), Budgett combines words ("Prescience," "Sensibility") and large diptychs pairing found/recovered objects (a crumpled engagement ring, an extracted tooth) with common advertising motifs to trigger a dialogue lamenting irrevocably changed values or, in critic Sarah Kent's words, "the loss of innocence in a media-saturated society" focused on stimulating appetites. He created the blue-toned silver prints of "Visible Cities" (1992) in the wake of Berlin's reunification, blending images of the city with three-dimensional constructions of plastic consumer goods and text that merge space and commodity; reviewers such as "Time Out"'s Adrian Searle call the series an unreal, fragmented "city of the mind" alluding to "the terror and ironies of our social aspirations" and recalling the dystopic meditations of Wim Wenders, Borges, and Atget.
The show "Them That Trespass" (1996) heralded Budgett's shift toward exploring the paradoxes and opportunities of digital imagemaking. He appropriated small, Sunday-paper color ads for show homes, then digitally enlarged and bubble-jet printed them to achieve what Sarah Kent calls "the hazy, chocolate-box beauty of impressionist paintings." Superimposed, hand-lettered text that overran the images onto gallery walls—and suggest aggressive fantasies, vandalism, and rebellion against dispossession, bourgeois conformity and property—undercut the picturesque visuals and speak to a recession's destabilization of home ownership at the time.
Much of Budgett's post-1995 output is focused on online, often transitory, digital and code-born work. Several projects focus on the human face, as a representation of the psyche and identity or site of human engineering. "Surfacing the Soul: a Visiognomy of Ignominy" (1996) digitally hybridized actual and mediated portraits to examine the media-influenced nature of expressions and critique the notion of portraiture as a "window to the soul"; "AURORA" (2003) and "Imaging the Metahuman" (2012) explore applications to iterate composite representations of diversity.
In several series, Budgett used probabilistic (as opposed to deterministic) algorithms, which reinterpret object, form and color inputs to create iterative, transitory digital "paintings" and audiovisual works. His "Ideas for Painting" project (2008–13) features series engines based on art-historical abstract-painting influences; they include: "Sketches toward a fresh NEO-GEO canvas every 5 seconds for the duration of Western culture" (2008); "AROTHKOBOT" (2013), which generates works reminiscent of Rothko color-field paintings; and "way2go" (2010), which produces an evolving Op art-like work.
Three visualization engines created in 2012 offer diverse bodies of work: "Prosaic Memories of the Space Age" produces fractal-like, gray monochrome liminal spatializations; "Tossing the Drachma" uses mythological pictograms and icons to form unique typographical constellations; and "6turnsout2B9" recodes 3D renderings of well-known architectural structures and cathedrals into idiosyncratic, warped spaces. The interactive audiovisual works "an occult dimension" (2013) and "God, the Devil in the Detail" (2014) combine music, psychedelic imagery and commercial animation that viewers can alter with a cursor.
In addition to his image-based work, Budgett has frequently created time and space works that explore public versus private realms and human subjectivity, beginning with large-scale minimal constructions and installations in the late 1970s and continuing four decades into the present. His commissioned temporary public work "A Social Outing" (1991) reflected on the ordering of public space as "nature" intended for consumption by arranging ninety-one red cedar picnic tables into a 36-foot square by 18-foot pyramid. The inIVA-commissioned installation "Grey Area" (1995, with Jane Mulfinger) consisted of a boxing ring-sized, memorial-like, grey Plasticine square listing boxing champions; the names were gradually obliterated by the footsteps of visitors, echoing their erosion in public memory over time and offering a stark reminder of the fleeting nature of fame.
Three site-specific installations reflected on the passing of time, changing architecture and urban-scapes, light, and surveillance by using video projection, sculptural elements and architectural interventions. "Weltanschauung" (Trondheim Art Museum, 1990) projected panoramic, rotating views of a displaced exterior—not its Norwegian surroundings, but the distant Potsdamer Platz in Berlin—around a space centered by a circular bench and column. "Hanbury Terrain" (2005, with Mulfinger) explored a single intersection in London's East End, combining projected images of present-day street activity, etchings on glass of historical maps, and a sculptural object representing plans for future displacement. "Windauge" (Anglo-Saxon for "wind-eye" or "window"; 2016, with Mulfinger) used a small circular window high on a back wall of Beaconsfield Gallery as a "camera obscura" whose long-neglected view of the surrounding neighborhood was projected onto the floor.
In 2005, Budgett and Mulfinger received funding from Microsoft Research Cambridge for the action-research project "REGRETS" (2005–8), which comprised a public conceptual artwork, interactive archive and study of human regret as a positive entity and tool of self-correction. The street project featured a private kiosk/"confessional" and five roaming custom backpack input/display units with computers that suggested the metaphor of offloading one's burdens (regrets) onto the back of another; they connected to a central database that reciprocated participants with five algorithm-determined, similar regrets in a show of solidarity. "REGRETS" was staged in Cambridge, Linz, Santa Barbara, and Paris; "Circa" magazine called it "an intriguing exercise in social psychology" while "The Guardian" described it as "surprisingly poetic."
Budgett has been awarded a Microsoft Research Grant (Cambridge, 2005); commissions from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (2009), Contemporary Arts Forum (2000), Iniva (1995), Artangel Trust, Projects UK, and the National Garden Festival (all 1990); and artist-in-residencies from Beaconsfield (2016) and Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (1986–7). His work belongs to the public art collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum, Alvar Aalto Museum (Finland) and Deutsche Bank London, and has appeared in the books "Art contemporain nouveaux médias" (2011), "The Wireless Spectrum" (2010), "Hiding in the Light" by Dick Hebdige (1988), and "Ghost Photography" (1989), among others.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239642
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Vestbirk
Vestbirk is a village in Horsens Municipality, Denmark.
Vestbirk was originally formed as a farming community, and its population has been in decline.
The area is characterized by its the Gudenå river and its lakes which are popular destinations for local fishermen and tourists.
Vestbirk is located 8 km southwest of one of Denmark's highest points, Yding Skovhøj which has an elevation of 172.54 meters.
The landscape bears clear signs of the ice age with large meadows formed by glacial meltwater. At the bottom of the glacier valleys lies the Gudenå river.
Three lakes have been artificially created in Vestbirk as a result of damming up the Gudenå river: Bredvad Lake, Naldal Lake and Vestbirk Lake. They were formed between 1922 and 1924 when Vestbirk Vandkraftværk, a hydroelectric power plant, was built. The facilities and surrounding lakes have been public property since 1979. Today, the power plant operates as a working museum and generates 2 GWh annually.
In 1682, Vestbirk and its surrounding area was mostly grassland used as pasture by a total of 13 farms. The total area cultivated was 451.9 barrels of land which was valued at 52.92 .
The Horsens-Bryrup-Silkeborg Railway (HBS) opened in 1899 with a railway stop near Vestbirk. The railway was eventually purchased by the state and converted from a narrow-gauge private railway into a public narrow-gauge private railway. The stop originally had an enclosure for pigs, but reopened as a fully fledged station in 1913.
After cars made the track obsolete, the station was closed on March 30th, 1968. A nature trail between Horsens and Silkeborg was built over the old railbed with over 60 kilometers of walking, cycling, and riding paths. A bridge along the trail, "Den Genfundne Bro", is popular with turists.
The Vestbirk Yarn and Knitwear Factory ("Vestbirk Garn- og Trikotagefabrik") was built alongside the Gudenå river in 1852 by Christian Fischer. The factory was the first to utilize hydropower along the Gudenå river. The factory burnt down in 1920 and Vestbirk Vandkraftværk built on the former site. The new hydroelectric power plant formed the Vestbirk lakes.
The population of Vestbirk has been in decline. In 1911, 344 people lived in Vestbirk; by 1916 the population had dropped to 248. In 1965, Vestbirk had a population of 212.
Vestbirk has several schools in the Grundtvigian tradition: Vestbirk Folk high school (1884-2006), Vestbirk Friskole (est. 1892), and Vestbirk Music and Sports Efterskole (est. 1907).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239654
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Franciscus Lucas Brugensis
Franciscus Lucas Brugensis or François Luc de Bruges (1548/9–1619) was a Roman Catholic biblical exegete and textual critic from the Habsburg Netherlands.
Franciscus Lucas was born in Bruges late in 1548 or early in 1549, the son of Josse Lucas and Ghislaine Vande Walle. He studied at Castle College, Leuven, for his B.A., graduating on 6 March 1568, placing fifth of the 155 students in his year. He went on the graduate Licentiate of Sacred Theology in 1575 or 1576. Alongside his academic studies, he applied himself to acquiring a knowledge of Middle Eastern languages under the guidance of the Jesuit scholar Johannes Harlemius. He also became a friend of William Damasus Lindanus and Robert Bellarmine, and of the family of Christopher Plantin.
In 1570 Christopher Plantin obtained permission to print a new edition of the Leuven Vulgate, first edited by Hentenius, revised under the authority of the Leuven Faculty of Theology. A committee consisting of Joannes Molanus, Augustinus Hunnaeus and Cornelis Reineri appointed Franciscus Lucas to gather any variant readings that Hentenius had missed and to add explanatory marginal notes. Lucas spent three years on this task. Plantin published this second edition of the Leuven Vulgate in Antwerp in 1574 under the title "Biblia sacra. Quid in hac editione a theologie Lovaniensibus praestitum sit, paulo post indicatur".
While working on a companion volume of notes providing fuller explanations of his choice of readings than had been possible in the biblical edition itself, Lucas twice travelled to his native Bruges, where Remi Drieux ordained him to the diaconate in June 1574 and to the priesthood in April 1577. His scholarly work was further delayed by the Dutch Revolt. On 2 February 1578 Scottish mercenaries in the service of William the Silent took control of Leuven and the university effectively ceased to function. Lucas returned to his parental home in Bruges, but on 20 March this town too fell to the rebels. In 1580, Plantin published Lucas's "Notationes in sacra Biblia quibus variantia discrepantibus exemplaribus loca summo studio discutiuntur", with a dedication to Cardinal Sirleto, and in 1583 he republished the 1574 Bible and the 1580 annotations together in a single folio volume. This edition bore the title: "Biblia Sacra, quid in hac editione a theologis Lovaniensibus praestitum sit, eorum praefatio indicat."
Lucas had been appointed to a canonry of the collegiate church of St Salvator, Bruges, on 6 May 1579, but in July 1581, Jean Six, newly consecrated as bishop of Saint-Omer, took him into service as his private chaplain and secretary. Lucas held this position until Six's death on 11 October 1586, but from 2 October 1581 he also held an appointment from the cathedral chapter in Saint-Omer to provide lectures on Sacred Scripture, and from 2 April 1584 he held a prebend in the chapter reserved to theology graduates.
In September 1586, while travelling to a provincial synod in Mons, Bishop Six fell ill at Lille. Lucas took down his last requests, acted as one of his executors, and personally transported his heart back to Saint-Omer for burial there. His eulogy of the bishop was printed at the Plantin Press in 1587 as "In obitum D. Joannis Six, episcopi audomaropoliiani, oratio funebris Francisci Lucae, S.T.L. canonici audomaropolitani".
On 5 March 1593, Lucas was appointed canon penitentiary, and on 31 July 1602 he was elected dean of the chapter (taking possession of the office on 6 August). His name was put forward to succeed Petrus Simons as bishop of Ypres, but Charles Maes was appointed to the see.
In 1603 Plantin's successor, Jan Moretus, published Lucas's overview of the corrections of the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate as "Romanae correctionis in latinis Bibliis editionis vulgata, jussu Sixti V pont. max. recognitis, loca insigniora", with a dedication to Jacques Blaseus, bishop fo Saint-Omer and laudatory approbations by Professor Estius, Cardinal Baronius and Cardinal Bellarmine.
In 1606 a two-volume exegetical commentary on the Gospels on which he had long been engaged was finally published, again by Moretus, as "In sacrosancta quatuor Jesu Christi Evangelia commentarii", with a dedication to the Sovereign Archdukes Albert and Isabella.
After the death of Bishop Blaseus on 22 March 1618, Lucas was appointed capitular vicar during the ensuing vacancy, but he himself died on 19 February 1619. Among other bequests, he left instructions to his executors to present forty parishes each with one copy of the folio Plantin edition of the Roman Missal with copper plate engravings. He was buried next to his sister, Denise, in the nave of Saint-Omer Cathedral, opposite the chapel of St Denis where he had frequently said mass.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239727
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Lord Wellington (1811 Quebec ship)
Lord Wellington was launched in 1811 in Quebec and in 1812 changed her registry to London. She spent most of her career sailing between Great Britain and North America, though she spent her last few years as a coastal collier. In 1832 she was the site of an outbreak of cholera that killed several passengers and crew. She was last listed in 1844.
"Lord Wellington" was launched at Quebec. A letter dated 9 March 1812 stated that she had been re-registered at London.
"Lord Wellington" first appeared in "Lloyd's Register" ("LR") in 1812. Her master was Mitchell, her owner J.R. Cato, and her trade London–Quebec. The entry gave her burthen as 388 tons, a number that was eventually revised down by 100 or more tons.
On 18 February 1824 "Lord Wellington", Maxwell, master, was sailing into Newry with a cargo of coal from Liverpool. "Lord Wellington" ran on shore at Cranfield Point. It was expected that she would be gotten off. A report from Liverpool dated 8 March stated that "Lord Wellington", Maxwell, master, which had gone on shore at Carlingford Bay, had been gotten off without damage, and without suffering from leaks.
Cholera outbreak (1832): There were already reports of cholera in the Waterford area when "Lord Wellington" stopped at Passage East on 15 June 1832, a few days after she had embarked passengers at New Ross. A number of passengers alighted, stating that there was cholera aboard the ship. By the 17th several of the passengers who had left the ship were dead or ill, and several passengers or crew were also dead or ill. That day "Lord Wellington" sailed for Milford Haven, one of three ports designated for vessels requiring quarantine due to illness aboard. She left Milford Haven on 29 June to resume her voyage to Quebec. On 13 August "Lord Wellington", Collaton, master, landed 167 immigrants at Quebec.
"Lord Wellington" was last listed in 1844.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239825
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Skip Cleaver
Skip Cleaver is a New Hampshire politician.
Cleaver was born on September 26, 1944 in Clearfield, Pennsylvania.
Cleaver earned a B.S. in political science and history and am M.B.A. international business from Rivier University.
Cleaver served from 1965 to 1971 in the United States Marine Corps.
On November 8, 2016, Cleaver was elected to the New Hampshire House of Representatives where he represents the Hillsborough 35 district. Cleaver assumed office in 2016. Cleaver is a Democrat. Cleaver endorses Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries.
Cleaver resides in Nashua, New Hampshire and has since 1975. Cleaver is married, has three children, and four grandchildren.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239831
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Arrhenodes minutus
Arrhenodes minutus, commonly known as the oak timberworm, is a species of primitive weevil in the family Brentidae (Order: Coleoptera). These beetles are pests of hardwoods in North America. Adult oak timberworms are shiny, elongate, and range 7 to 25 mm in length (Solomon, 1995). They are reddish-brown to brownish-black in coloration, with yellow spots on their elytra. Adults display strong sexual dimorphism; females have long, slender, straight mouthparts, while males possess flattened, broadened mouthparts with large mandibles. Males are known to be aggressive and use these large mandibles for combat (Sanborne, 1983). These mandibles are also used in courtship (Garcia-C., 1989). Larvae are elongate, cylindrical, white, and curved. They have 3 pairs of jointed legs on the thorax and 1 pair of prolegs near the end of the abdomen (Bragard et al., 2019).
Oak timberworms primarily attack oak ("Quercus" spp.), elm ("Ulmus" spp.), beech ("Fagus" spp.), and "Populus" species such as aspen and poplar (Bragard et al., 2019). They have also been documented on boxelder ("Acer negundo") and honeylocust ("Gleditsia triacanthos") (Solomon, 1995). Upland oak species such as black oak ("Q. velutina") and scarlet oak ("Q. coccinea") appear to be especially susceptible to attack by this insect (Solomon, 1995).
The oak timberworm ranges from southern Ontario and Quebec through most of the eastern US to the Gulf of Mexico (Majka et al., 2008; Solomon, 1995). Isolated populations have also been reported in Montana and in Central America. This beetle has also been reported outside of its native range (Bragard et al., 2019; Majka et al., 2008). Oak timberworms were discovered in a shipment of wooden furniture from the US in Nova Scotia and are now established in the Maritime Provinces of Canada (Majka et al., 2008). An individual was also intercepted in France in 2005 in a shipment of oak wood products imported from the US; however, this species has not established in Europe (Bragard et al., 2019).
The larvae of this species bore into the xylem of wounded trees, creating galleries throughout the wood (Majka et al., 2008; Solomon, 1995). Galleries made by this species are typically straight and horizontal and become progressively larger in diameter as the larvae develop and grow in size (Solomon, 1995). These larvae will often bore from the oviposition site nearly to the other side of the tree, then make a sharp “U-turn” and bore back in the direction of the entrance hole (Bragard et al., 2019; Solomon, 1995). Oak timberworms are secondary pests that attack recently felled logs and wounded, dying trees and therefore pose little threat to healthy, living trees (Solomon, 1995; Wisconsin Forest Health Protection Program, 2008).
Signs of infestation by oak timberworms include straight or U-shaped galleries ranging from 0.2 to 4.0 mm in diameter in the xylem of the host tree (Solomon, 1995). Powdery, white frass and minute boring holes may also be seen on wounds with exposed sapwood (Bragard et al., 2019; Solomon, 1995). Boring dust and frass are pushed out of galleries by larvae and may be visible around entrance holes (Bragard et al., 2019). Adults can sometimes be found congregating under loose bark around wounds on host trees (Majka et al., 2008).
Oak timberworm adults usually emerge sometime in May and are active until August (Solomon, 1995). Adults are attracted to fresh wounds on host trees, where they feed on sap oozing from these injured tree (Bragard et al., 2019; Solomon, 1995). Several adult beetles will often congregate under loose bark near the wound (Solomon, 1995).
Once mating has occurred, females will bore a minute, hair-sized hole in the exposed sapwood and deposit a single egg in this cavity (Bragard et al., 2019). The female then covers this hole with frass and other bodily secretions (Solomon, 1995). During this process, the female’s mate will guard her and her egg from other males and predators (Majka et al., 2008; Sanborne, 1983; Thomas, 1996). These eggs are less than 1 mm in dimeter and may take anywhere from a few days to 3 weeks to fully develop (Solomon, 1995).
After hatching, larvae bore directly into xylem and tunnel through the trunk until they nearly reach the other side of the tree (Bragard et al., 2019; Solomon, 1995). The larvae then make a “U-turn” and bore through the xylem in the direction of their original entry point (Solomon, 1995). This life stage is the most destructive to commercial forestry operations. Pupation occurs in the gallery and adults then emerge, typically through their respective entrance holes (Bragard et al., 2019). This life cycle takes 2 to 4 years (Solomon, 1995).
The oak timberworm is a known vector of the destructive fungus "Bretziella fagacearum", which causes oak wilt (Bragard et al., 2019). Oak wilt is major cause of oak mortality in some regions and has been detected in 24 US states (Juzwik et al., 2008). Oak wilt can cause rather sudden mortality in host trees due to the disruption of sap and water flow in the xylem (Dimond, 1970).
The oak timberworm is an economic pest of oaks and other hardwoods in the eastern US (Thomas, 1996). The primary economic losses come from larval boring damage to live standing trees; however, this insect has been known to attack unseasoned lumber, stave bolts, and squared timber (Solomon, 1995). These larval galleries cause structural damage to lumber (Bragard et al., 2019). Lumber from heavily infested trees is often unfit for special uses, like flooring and barrel making. (Solomon, 1995). Larval feeding damage can also seriously reduce the value of factory grade lumber (Solomon, 1995). The oak timberworm is listed on the European Food Safety Authority’s Annex IAI, meaning that it has potential to become an introduced pest and its importation is banned (Bragard et al., 2019). There are concerns that it could become established in Europe and spread the destructive oak wilt fungus due to similar climatic conditions and an abundance of potential hosts (Bragard et al., 2019). The European Food Safety Administration, a division of the European Union, imposes strict regulations on oak and poplar products such as lumber, barrels, logs, solid wood packing materials, and wood chips imported from the US (Bragard et al., 2019).
Direct control efforts like chemical or biological control are seldomly used to manage oak timberworms (Solomon, 1995). However, basic forest management practices can often prevent economic losses from this insect. Proper forest sanitation and quick removal of felled trees can help prevent infestations oak timberworms and many other destructive forest pests (Solomon, 1995). Because this insect attacks wounds on hosts, trees should be protected against injuries, especially when harvesting (Solomon, 1995). Treating felled logs or processed wood through fumigation, autoclaving, steaming, or kiln drying or applying process additives, protective compounds, surface disinfectants, or pesticides can control this pest in harvested timber (Bragard et al., 2019). The European Food Safety has regulatory phytosanitary methods to detect and monitor the oak timberworm in imported oak and poplar lumber to detect this species (Bragard et al., 2019).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239836
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Omer Blodgett
Omer Blodgett (1917 – January 11, 2017) was a structural welder, educator, and the author of "Design of Welded Structures" and "Design of Weldments". He was seen as an expert in his field, known for making complex issues simple and easy to understand and coining many phrases in use by structural welders. His two books are still considered foundational in structural welding.
Blodgett grew up welding. After college he worked for Globe Shipbuilding Company, learning how to troubleshoot and resolve welding issues. During World War II he supervised 400 welders who fabricated 29 all-welded oceangoing ships for the Federal Maritime Commission. He met James F. Lincoln there who invited him work for Lincoln Electric. Blodgett worked at Lincoln Electric from 1945, as a design consultant and also as a mechanical engineer, through 2009.
Blodgett received the A. F. Davis Silver Medal for his work in structural design in In 1962, 1973, 1980 and 1983. He was recognized as one of the top 125 engineers of the past 125 years by Engineering News-Record in 1999. He won all three AISC awards: the T.R. Higgins Lectureship Award (1983), the first Engineering Luminary Award (1997) and the Lifetime Achievement Award (1999).
Blodgett was born in Duluth, Minnesota to Myron Omer Blodgett and Minnie Long (Foster) Blodgett, a family with a fleet of lake vessels, some of which they would occasionally live aboard. He worked as a welder in the family business during high school. He attended the University of Minnesota, earning a Bachelor of Science degree in metallurgical engineering and a master's degree in mechanical engineering. He married Dorothy Bernice Sjostrom in 1949, and they had one son and three grandchildren.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239907
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Oregon Senate Bill 577
Oregon Senate Bill 577 was a change to Oregon's Hate Crimes Law. Bias is defined as "disproportionate weight "in favor of" or "against" an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief". A bias crime or a bias-motivated crime is a more official label for a hate crime . These changes “made it a class A misdemeanor to damage someone’s property, intentionally subject them to offensive physical contact or intentionally cause serious injury on a person based on race, color, religion, sexual orientation, disability or national origin. It also removes the prior requirement that a hate crime had to involve more than one suspect”. Oregon Senate Bill 577 was put into effect on July 15th, 2019. This was the first time this law had been updated in almost 40 years.
Other than just the additions of what is defined as a crime, “The bill would also require all police agencies to document reports of alleged hate crimes – whether or not they result in arrest – and share information with the state criminal justice division. District attorneys will also be required to track their hate crime case loads and report on outcomes, sentences and recidivism”. With police and attorneys registering the crimes that they deal with, it will give a more accurate representation of how many bias crimes are reported and dealt with. Even with this editing of the bill "National data collection can be complicated by inconsistent reporting requirements on the state level. For example, as of 2019, 37 states still do not have anti-bias statutes for crimes based on gender identity". with the requirement of police and attorneys registering these crimes, more data will give us an accurate representation, and possibly make more states implement bias crime laws.
There are a multitude of supporters behind the bill such as “Unite Oregon, American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, Basic Rights Oregon, and CAIR-Oregon; Oregon State Police; Salem Police Chief Jerry Moore; and the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office”. No one has officially submitted any testimony against the bill.
On January 14, 2019 in the Senate:
On January 17, 2019 in the Senate:
On March 12, 2019 in the Senate:
On April 4, 2019 in the Senate:
On April 23, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 3, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 5, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 7, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 11, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 12, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 13, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 17, 2019 in the House:
On June 18, 2019 in the House:
On June 19, 2019 in the House:
On June 24, 2019 in the Senate:
On June 25, 2019 in the House:
On July 15, 2019 in the Senate:
On July 23, 2019 in the Senate:
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63239956
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The Killing Floor (1984 film)
The Killing Floor is a 1984 American award-winning made-for-television drama film directed by Bill Duke which highlights the plights of workers fighting to build an interracial labor union in the meatpacking industry in the years leading up to the Chicago race riot of 1919. The film debuted on PBS via the "American Playhouse" series on April 10, 1984 and was produced by Public Forum Productions, an independent company founded by the film's writer Elsa Rassbach. The teleplay was later adapted by Leslie Lee.
Based on real individuals and actual events, the film focuses on two poor black sharecroppers who leave Mississippi for the Chicago stockyards to seek out employment opportunities vacated by soldiers who had departed for World War I. Frank Custer (played by Damien Leake) and Thomas Joshua (Ernest Rayford) eventually secure jobs working in the infamous meatpacking industry, where they are forced to confront racism, labor disputes, layoffs, and union organizing.
Custer, the film’s main protagonist, is eventually persuaded by his fellow workers to join the Amalgamated Meat Cutters & Butcher Workmen of North America Union, pitting him against a variety of forces, including his non-union black co-workers, as well as the Polish, Irish, Lithuanian, and Germans also living and working in the area.
The film focuses on many individuals who were responsible for leading the charge to build strong, interracial labor unions in the 1930s.
Aside from Leake & Rayford, the film also stars Alfre Woodard (playing the role of Custer's wife), Moses Gunn (as an anit-union antagonist), and Clarence Felder (as a union leader). Well-known Chicago actors Dennis Farina (as a killing floor supervisor) and John Mahoney (as a meatpacking company representative) have minor roles in the film.
Rassbach did extensive research on Chicago's history while writing the story, and hired Lee to draft a manuscript. The total budget for the film was $1.2 million, and funding was culled from a variety of unorthodox sources. Given the film's focus on Chicago's labor history, Rassbach approached more than three dozen unions for support, eliciting donations ranging from $1,000 to $300,000. The film's end credits include a long list of guilds and locals who contributed.
Filmed in Chicago, the production was made at a challenging time for unions, after Ronald Regan had fired over 11,000 striking members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization in 1981. Conversely, Chicago had recently elected their first African American mayor, Harold Washington, whose campaign helped recruit numerous black extras to appear in the film. In addition, the local Teamsters were said to believe in the film's objective, and worked for half-pay during production.
The film was an official selection for the Cannes Film Festival in 1985, and winner of the Sundance Film Festival's Special Jury Prize in that same year.
Originally, the film was set to be the initial production for a PBS series of ten historical docu-dramas exploring the little-known history of American workers. Rassbach developed the project together with a cohort of historians and screenwriters, though "The Killing Floor" was the only film ever made in the series. To recognize the 100th anniversary of the Chicago race riots in 2019, the film underwent 4K DCP digital restoration by the University of California-Los Angeles Film & Television Archive.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240057
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Safaera
"Safaera" (a Puerto Rican expression for "promiscuity, debauchery or substance abuse") is a song by Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny featuring Jowell & Randy and Ñengo Flow. It was released on February 29, 2020, as track 14 of Bad Bunny's second studio album "YHLQMDLG".
The song reached number one in Spain in its fifth week, becoming Bad Bunny's seventh song, as well as Jowell & Randy's and Ñengo Flow's first song to peak atop the charts.
Bad Bunny and Jowell had previously talked about a collaboration in the past, in a time when Bad Bunny was recording mostly trap songs, a genre that Jowell dislikes. They said to each other that they would work together if one of them was willing to make either a trap or a reggaeton track. A year later, after listening to Bad Bunny's "Mía" featuring Drake, Jowell liked the single's style and called Rimas Music to arrange a recording session with him, but he was very busy at the time. Three days before the release of "YHLQMDLG", Bad Bunny called Jowell & Randy, who were in Puerto Rico, in order to work together for the album. "Safaera" was produced by Latin Grammy Award-winner Tainy and Bad Bunny's disc jockey DJ Orma.
In March 2020, the song inspired the "SafaeraChallenge" and the "#AbuelaChallenge", both of which went viral on the app TikTok. The latter saw especially elderly people dancing to the song while being placed in quarantine due to COVID-19.
Due to its structural complexity, the song was described as a "reggaetón symphony and perreo megamix". During its course, the song "ventures through at least eight beat changes, five different rap flows, and 10+ years of references". The track makes use of numerous samples throughout its runtime, which include a guitar riff from "Get Ur Freak On" by Missy Elliott, a bassline from "Could You Be Loved" by Bob Marley, synths from DJ Nelson's and DJ Goldy's "Xtassy Reggae", an opening line from Cosculluela's "Pa' La Pared" and a sample from Alexis & Fido's "El Tiburón", among others.
The song received widespread acclaim from music critics. In a review for bad bunny
"Pitchfork", Isabelia Herrera awarded the song the accolade "Best New Track" and went on to describe the track as "a technical masterpiece" in which the artist "harnesses this musical nostalgia and transforms it into an antidote for the most formulaic tendencies of the pop-reggaetón panorama". Griselda Flores of "Billboard" picked the song as one of the album's essential tracks, saying that the rapper "takes it way back with this old-school reggaetón song" and praised it for "its contagious beats", as well as "Missy Elliott's famous riff from "Get Your Freak On"". "Rolling Stone"'s Suzy Exposito referred to the song as "five-minutes of unadulterated chaos" and opined that Bad Bunny "gets to ride a wave of reggaeton he was much too young to participate in the first time around".
On May 14, 2020, "Safaera" was removed from Spotify. Bad Bunny claimed on a live video with Residente that he knew the reason behind the removal but preferred not to talk about it to avoid controversy. It was added back to the platform on May 15, the following day. Spotify then stated that it was due to a sample clearance.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240230
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Yahya Elnawasany
Yahya Elnawasany (born 9 January 2002 in Tanta) is an Egyptian professional squash player. As of February 2020, he was ranked number 108 in the world. He won his first professional title in the 2020 Egyptian Squash Tour.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240266
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1968–69 Leeds United A.F.C. season
The 1968–69 season was Leeds United's 5th consecutive season in the First Division. Along with the First Division, they competed in the FA Cup, Football League Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. The season covers the period from 1 July 1968 to 30 June 1969.
Following the resignation of Jack Taylor, Don Revie was appointed as player-manager.
Revie immediately made radical changes to the club; adopting the all white colours of Real Madrid, and concentrating the club policy on scouting and developing youth talent, rather than just trying to buy players. He appointed experienced coaches like Les Cocker, Maurice Lindley and Syd Owen, and implemented radical techniques like forming a family atmosphere around the club. Revie took on more revolutionary techniques, his pre-match preparation was meticulous for its day, his staff prepared highly detailed dossiers on the opposition before every match and pioneered a highly detailed approach to the way opposing teams could be analysed. Coaches like Les Cocker were also responsible for developing high fitness levels in the Leeds players, using diets and rigorous, military style training programs. Revie forged a completely new team around a crop of outstanding youth talents, including Norman Hunter, Paul Reaney, Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray, Billy Bremner, Paul Madeley, Albert Johanneson and these were backed up by more experienced heads Jack Charlton, and veteran Scottish international central midfielder Bobby Collins. Revie also made a shrewd purchase in acquiring former Busby Babe winger John Giles from Manchester United, who Leeds' coaching staff would mould into one of the most influential central midfielders of the game. In 1964 this new team won promotion once more to the First Division.
Leeds made an immediate impact; they began the season with a scintillating 4–2 victory over defending league champions Liverpool, which would set the tone for the rest of the season. Revie's young side chased an improbable league and cup double finishing the 1964–65 season as runners up only to Busby's Manchester United, losing the title on goal average. They turned the tables on Manchester United in the FA cup semi-final replay, reaching the FA Cup Final where they were beaten 2–1 by Liverpool in a dour game, best remembered for the appearance of Albert Johanneson, the first black player to play in an FA Cup final.
The 1965–66 season saw Leeds consolidate their place in the First Division, finishing as runners up in the league again, and progressing through to the semi-finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup with victories over sides such as Valencia and Torino.
The 1966–67 season saw Leeds finish 4th in the league, as well as reaching the FA Cup Semi-finals and making an early exit from the League Cup. In addition, their European campaign ended as beaten finalists in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, losing 2–0 to Dinamo Zagreb.
Leeds spent the 1967–68 season chasing four trophies; leading the title race for much of the season, although eventually losing out to Manchester City and finishing fourth. Revie's men were also beaten semi-finalists in the FA Cup, although they did find their first domestic and European successes, completing a League Cup and Fairs Cup double. Terry Cooper's goal securing a tense League Cup final victory against Arsenal, and a Mick Jones goal secured the Fairs cup victory over the veteran Hungarian side Ferencvaros. Leeds were the first British team to win the trophy.
Having found success in both domestic and European cup competitions, manager Revie chose to focus on the league for the 1968–69 campaign. Leeds secured the title in April 1969 with a 0–0 draw with challengers Liverpool at Anfield, whose supporters congratulated the Leeds team. Leeds set a number of records including most points (67), most wins (27), fewest defeats (2), and most home points (39); a still-unbroken club record is their 34 match unbeaten run that extended into the following season. Leeds strengthened their front line, breaking the British transfer record by signing Allan Clarke from Leicester City for £165,000. They targeted the treble in 1969–70 and came close to achieving this, only to fail on all three fronts in a congested close season, finishing second in the league to Everton, losing the 1970 FA Cup Final to Chelsea (after a replay), and exiting the European Cup with a semi-final defeat to Celtic.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240268
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Sana Ibrahim
Sana Ibrahim (born 15 January 2003 in Cairo) is an Egyptian professional squash player. As of February 2020, she was ranked number 84 in the world. She won her first professional title in the 2020 Egyptian Squash Tour.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240271
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Cain International
Cain International, (formerly Cain Hoy Enterprises), is an international real estate investment firm. Headquartered in London, the company operates across Europe and the United States, with offices in New York and Los Angeles, and is led by CEO Jonathan Goldstein.
Cain International was launched on 11 September 2014, as Cain Hoy Enterprises, by three former Guggenheim Partners executives, Todd Boehly, Henry Silverman and Jonathan Goldstein. The company later became a partnership between Eldridge Industries, of which Boehly is chair and CEO, and co-founder Goldstein, the company’s current CEO.
Cain Hoy was named Property Entrepreneur of the Year by "Property Week", in 2017.
Cain International operates offices in London, New York and Los Angeles. Its asset management division, Cain International Advisers Limited, is a SEC-registered investment adviser. The
company’s real estate assets include loans or equity investments in an array of properties, including The Stage mixed-use development, which incorporates the Curtain Theater in London, a former venue of William Shakespeare's own company of players, Lord Chamberlain's Men.
In December 2016, Cain International acquired a stake in sbe Entertainment Group, which subsequently acquired Morgans Hotel Group. In October 2018, the company sold its sbe stake to AccorHotels.
In 2017, Cain International provided development funding of £450m to Canary Wharf Group, for its office complex at One and Five Bank Street, London. The transaction is referenced as the largest development financing subsequent to the British invocation of Article 50 in 2017.
In August 2018, Cain International acquired a USD $345 million stake in the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills and The Beverly Hilton. The Hilton hosts the Milken Institute Global Conference and the Golden Globe Awards. With Alagem Capital, Cain International also acquired 9900 Wilshire Boulevard from the Dalian Wanda Group for USD $420 million. In 2019, architect Norman Foster began designing a mixed-use project on the combined eight-acre site.
In September 2019, Cain International announced its investment in the first Raffles marquee hotel and residential property in the United States. Replacing the Boston Common Hotel and Conference Center, adjacent to the Hancock Tower, at 40 Trinity Place, Boston, The Raffles Boston Back Bay Hotel & Residences is permitted as a 33-story, 431,273 square foot mixed-use building being built according to the Gold sustainability standard, with 147 hotel rooms and 146 residential units. The same month, an investment in a new 56-story office tower at 830 SE First Avenue, in the Brickell district of Miami, Florida, was announced as a joint venture between Cain International and OKO Group. The firm also partnered with OKO Group and Aman New York, in a $750 million construction facility loan to fund re-development of the$1.25B Crown building at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street, in Manhattan.
Cain International has also invested in The AllBright’s private women's social clubs in London and West Los Angeles; Competitive Socialising's Swingers mini-golf clubs in London; and The St. James sports, wellness and entertainment complex, in Springfield, Virginia.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240272
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Mads Rørvig
Mads Rørvig Nielsen is a former danish politician who was a member of the Danish Parliament from 2010 to 2015. He represented the district Silkeborg Sydkredsen as a member of the Venstre party. As of June 2020, Rørvig is the CEO of De Danske Bilimportører.
Rørvig was born on July 11th, 1988 in Viborg to Ole B. Nielsen and Marianne Rørvig Nielsen. As a child, Rørvig attended Kjellerup Skole, a folkeskole in Silkeborg Municipality. He graduated from the HHX program at Viborg Handelsskole in 2004.
Rørvig graduated as a civil economist in 2008, and later received a masters degree (cand.merc.) from the Copenhagen Business School in 2010. In 2009, while at the Copenhagen Business School, he studied abroad at Harvard University.
From 2005 to 2007, Rørvig was a political assistant for Venstre in Christiansborg. He was employed by Nykredit and from 2007 until 2010.
Rørvig was elected as first deputy to Kristian Pihl Lorentzen in at the 2007 general elections. He served as deputy from October 28th to November 18th 2009. Following Søren Gade's resignation, he became a member of parliament. At the 2011 general elections Rørvig was re-elected. In 2010 he became a member of The Women's Council. On May 4th, 2010, Mads Rørvig voted, along with only four other members of his party, to give homosexual couples with registered partnerships the right to adopt on equal footing with heterosexuals. On August 22nd, 2013, Rørvig was appointed chairman of the Danish Parliament's Tax Committee. At the 2015 general election, he was not re-elected by his constituents.
In October of 2015 he began as the public relations manager of Finance Danmark. In 2020, Rørvig was appointed the CEO of De Danske Bilimportører.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=63240319
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