Wales vs All Blacks Rugby Live Stream Free

Thursday, August 4, 2022

kachikata Ukraine says is carrying stolen grain Kustiya salma khan Covid Update 2022

This frame grab from a video provided on Friday, July 29, 2022, shows A Syrian cargo ship Laodicea docked at a seaport, in Tripoli, north Lebanon. Lebanon appeared Friday to reject claims by the Ukrainian Embassy in Beirut that a Syrian ship docked i

This frame grab from a video provided on Friday, July 29, 2022, shows A Syrian cargo ship Laodicea docked at a seaport, in Tripoli, north Lebanon. Lebanon appeared Friday to reject claims by the

When Susan Mujawa Ananda heard a deaf man had been shot and wounded in Uganda for breaking a curfew during the pandemic his family said he knew nothing about, she resolved to set up an online television channel for deaf people.

plant sustained a barrage of shelling amid Russian attacks in several regions, Ukraine's presidential office said.

At least four civilians were killed and 10 more wounded over the past 24 hours, with nine Ukrainian regions coming under fire, the office said in its daily update.

Two districts of Mykolaiv, which has been targeted frequently in recent weeks, were shelled.

Russian forces reportedly fired 60 rockets at Nikopol, in the central Dnipropetrovsk region. Some 50 residential buildings were damaged in the city of 107,000 and some projectiles hit power lines, leaving city residents without electricity, according to Ukrainian authorities.

Nikopol is located across the Dnieper river from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which was taken over by Russian troops early in the war.

"The reason why he was shot ... is because he didn't know what was happening in the country. He didn't know that there was a curfew," Ananda, a sign language interpreter, told Reuters.

Late last year, she teamed up with a deaf friend, Simon Eroku, and after winning a grant they founded SignsTV, which runs news bulletins for deaf people, delivered by deaf people.

Slightly over a million people in Uganda, out of a total population of about 45 million, have a hearing disability and most of them have limited access to TV news due to a lack of sign language services on established channels.

But Beltway strategists in both parties questioned the degree to which it would have a real electoral impact.

The popular view was that people for whom abortion is a pivotal issue already vote in every election — and that the economy would dominate November’s midterms.

Now, that idea looks far more questionable.

On Tuesday, voters in Kansas delivered a seismic shock, handing the pro-choice side a victory in one of the most deep-red states in the nation.

The proposal before the electorate would have stated explicitly that the Kansas constitution confers no right to abortion. It was rejected by about 18 points amid a massive turnout.

An abundance of national polling also shows Democrats’ chances improving in the midterms.

The Democratic rise in the polls seems to have commenced in or around late June — at exactly the same time the Supreme Court handed down its decision.

There could be other factors at play, including gas prices having declined from their highest levels. But it seems clear abortion is playing a big part.

On the day of the Supreme Court decision, data and polling site FiveThirtyEight gave Republicans a 53 percent chance of controlling the Senate after the midterms. Now, that has declined to 43 percent.

A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday gave Democrats a seven-point advantage among all adults when respondents were asked which party they would prefer to see control Congress. The last time Monmouth polled that question, in June, the result was a tie.

The RealClearPolitics polling average showed Republicans with a 3.4-point lead over Democrats on the day the Supreme Court ruled. The margin has now dwindled to three-tenths of a point.

Democrats, though they are horrified by the loss of Roe, believe the Supreme Court has sparked a huge backlash — and that their party leaders need to press the political advantage.

“We are at such a tipping point now,” Democratic operative Abigail Collazo told this column. “We have the right message. Our message is aligned with the will of the voters. But where this could go off the rails is if the Democratic Party decides not to put the money behind the groundwork in states where this message can really make the difference.”

Other advocates of abortion rights assert that the Supreme Court decision has made the issue far more politically salient — and to a wider group of voters than ever before.

“A lot of people assumed, I think, that Roe v. Wade would always be the law of the land,” said Sam Lau, a spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Votes. “What has changed is the direct threat now, and how it is making headlines every day. I think that is going to be a motivating force to bring people to the polls like never before.”

Those hopes clearly extend to the White House and congressional leaders.

President Biden asserted on Wednesday that Republicans and others pressing an anti-abortion agenda “don’t have a clue about the power of American women.” He added, “In Kansas, they found out.”

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the Senate floor that Kansas voters had “sent an unmistakable message to MAGA Republican extremists: back off women’s fundamental rights.”

And White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that the previous 24 hours had seen “a lot of momentum…in our fight to restore Roe.”

In addition to the Kansas vote, Jean-Pierre pointed to the Department of Justice’s decision to sue Idaho over especially onerous restrictions on abortion set to take effect later this month.

She also noted the president’s signing of an executive order Wednesday designed to make it easier for women to travel out of state to obtain abortions.

To be sure, none of this makes it certain either that abortion restrictions can be rolled back or that Democrats can avoid electoral defeat in November.

Anti-abortion activists insist that the issue energizes their side as much as their opponents. They are casting the Kansas defeat as a minor setback in a longer, victorious march.

Meanwhile, Republicans and some independent analysts question whether abortion really has the power to reshape a political landscape otherwise dominated by economic issues.

Reacting to Biden’s comments Wednesday, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel released a statement insisting, “Our country is in a recession, Americans can’t afford gas or groceries, and yet all Joe Biden cares about is pushing his radical and unpopular late-term abortion agenda.”

But Democrats like Collazo argue that the supposed division between “social issues” and “kitchen-table issues” is a false dichotomy when abortion access is in such self-evident peril.

“It is a kitchen table issue,” she argued. “People are talking about this in the grocery store, with their loved ones, in their faith communities.”

Meanwhile the diminishing band of pro-choice Republicans lament the direction the party has taken.

“At present, the Republican Party seems to be in the thrall of the far-right faction,” said Susan Bevan, a former national co-chairwoman of the now-defunct Republican Majority for Choice, a group that advocated for pro-choice policies within the GOP.

“A Republican Party that was affiliated with limited government and fiscal responsibility has changed to be the party that I see now.”

The new station, which made its first broadcast in April and employs eight staff including four deaf anchors, operates from a studio in a Kampala suburb.

In a typical broadcast on SignsTV Uganda, the news is read by two deaf anchors and simultaneously signed by a sign language interpreter, going slowly to match the anchor's pace, while the screen also carries subtitles.

The deaf man whose story moved Ananda to act, was shot in the leg in a village in northern Uganda in April 2020, by a member of the Local Defence Unit (LDU), a para military force that sometimes operates alongside regular police and the military. His leg later had to be amputated. Police at the time told local media they would investigate. They were not available for new comment on the case.

BEIRUT -- A Syrian ship that Ukraine says is carrying stolen Ukrainian grain has left a Lebanese port after officials in Lebanon allowed it to sail following an investigation, Lebanon’s transport minister tweeted on Thursday.

The Syrian-flagged Laodicea had been anchored at the port of Tripoli since it arrived last Thursday, carrying 10,000 tons of wheat flour and barley. Ukraine says the grain was stolen by Russia, a claim it denies.

On Wednesday, Ukrainian Ambassador to Lebanon Ihor Ostash urged Lebanon not to allow the vessel to leave the port.

A judge on Wednesday said the Laodicea can sail, a day after Lebanon’s prosecutor general decided the ship could leave after an investigation showed it was not carrying stolen Ukrainian grain.

Transport Minister Ali Hamie tweeted that “Syrian-flagged Laodicea is now outside Lebanon's territorial waters.”

It was not immediately clear where the ship is heading but Marine Traffic, a website that monitors vessel traffic and location of ships on seas, showed it moving toward the Syrian coast.

Laodicea's departure is likely to anger Ukraine. Russia’s diplomatic mission in Lebanon praised the move, accusing Ukraine of lying about the cargo and trying to damage relations between Moscow and Beirut.

The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the Syrian ship in 2015 for its affiliation with the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad, a close political and military ally to Moscow.

The spat over the Laodicea came as the first grain ship left Ukraine since Russia's invasion in late February. The Sierra Leone-flagged Razoni, carrying 26,000 tons of Ukrainian corn, was passing through Turkey on route to Lebanon.

A Lebanese official told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the ship is expected to take about four days to arrive to Lebanon from Istanbul after it was searched.

Kumar Gara Online Covid Update Dangerous Heat and Humidity Set to Smother Help Need

The wave of blistering temperatures is expected to peak Thursday as the National Weather Service issued heat advisories for nearly the entire tri-state area from 11 a.m. until 8 p.m. Friday
Friday is forecast to be the final day of at least 90-degree heat and an approaching front will linger, kicking off a stormy stretch for the New York City area
Storm chances increase late Friday night, and again Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Severe weather is unlikely, although a handful of heavy downpours are possible

Buckle up for a rollercoaster stretch of weather in the tri-state area.

Out of nowhere people were like ‘yeah this guy punched me in the face,’ ‘yeah this guy hit me,’ ‘this guy hit an old guy,’ ” Malabanan said.

Some of the irate victims then began trying to attack the neutralized suspect, but Malabanan asked them to stop and call the cops instead, according to his narrative.

An initial police investigation revealed that Frazier delivered an “unprovoked” attack to the heads of a 50-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy, according to the NYPD.

He was charged with two counts of assault, according to police, who noted that Frazier did not have a home address.

An investigation found that the attacked were unprovoked. — Samuel Frazier allegedly attacked the heads of a 50-year-old man and a 17-year-old boy, according to the NYPD.

Malabanan, who said he was not interviewed by police because he was late for work, said he believed at least six people were attacked by the unapologetic suspect, who was “playing the victim,” the fighter explained over the phone.

On Sunday, May 22, Daniel Enriquez, 48, a Goldman Sachs researcher, was riding the Q train across the Manhattan Bridge when a man randomly shot and killed him. A suspect, Andrew Abdullah, is now in custody charged with his murder. Griselda Vile, Daniel’s sister, says politicians refuse to admit that their policies are making the city less safe.

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed his country's efforts to strengthen ties with Southeast Asian nations at a meeting Thursday with their foreign ministers, which came as Beijing seeks to expand its influence in the region.

The Attorneys General of all 50 states have joined forces in hopes of giving teeth to the seemingly never-ending fight against robocalls. North Carolina AG Josh Stein, Indiana AG Todd Rokita and Ohio AG Dave Yost are leading the formation of the new Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force. In Stein's announcement, he said the group will focus on taking legal action against telecoms, particularly gateway providers, allowing or turning a blind eye to foreign robocalls made to US numbers.

He explained that gateway providers routing foreign phone calls into the US telephone network have the responsibility under the law to ensure the traffic they're bringing in is legal. Stein said that they mostly aren't taking any action to keep robocalls out of the US phone network, though, and they're even intentionally allowing robocall traffic through in return for steady revenue in many cases.

Wang's talks with top diplomats from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were held amid high tensions in the region, following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taiwan, which has infuriated Beijing.

The group issued a strong statement earlier in the day, urging both the U.S. and China to show “maximum restraint” in the wake of the visit and “refrain from provocative action.”

China claims the self-governing island of Taiwan as its territory and opposes any engagement by Taiwanese officials with foreign governments.

In his opening remarks, Wang did not mention the situation but instead stressed how China and the ASEAN countries had strengthened cooperation in recent years.

I always wonder, at what point will people begin to care about crime and gun violence with urgency? Will it only be if they are a victim of a crime? Or will they care because others had to face it? What has to happen to get the nation moving? Who has to die in order for change to occur?

Our nation’s virtues of life, liberty and property, as well as morality, have been sacrificed to give way to pandering from elected leaders and virtue signaling instead of solutions.

We as a nation cannot be seen occupying any moral high ground if we leave the most vulnerable members of society perpetually unsafe to avoid hurting the sensitivities of depraved hardened recidivists, marauding our streets at all hours and lashing out with impunity.

My worst fears were realized on May 22, when my brother was executed going to brunch in Manhattan from his wealthy and formerly safe neighborhood, Park Slope.

Growing up Mexican, Sundays were always associated with spending time with the family and going to church. For him to die, for no reason, in the middle of a Sunday morning, was a devastating gut punch and the realization that we are on our own.

“They were walking into me,” Frazier was filmed explaining to Malabanan as he pleaded for mercy on the ground.

“Nah that’s bulls–t bro, you still don’t punch people in the face for no f—ing reason,” the fighter retorted as tourists standing outside the Museum of Ice Cream looked on.

Summer heat and humidity returned to the tri-state with a vengeance mid-week, with temperatures near or above 90 degrees in Central Park to kick off the stretch of sweltering summer weather in New York City this summer.

After a slight dip in humidity briefly alleviated the misery, muggy weather returns Thursday — which may be the worst day the dangerous heat clamps down. Afternoon temperatures will be in the low to mid 90s, though heat index level will make it feel like it's at or above 100 for NYC and New Jersey; other places will still feel like they're in the mid to upper 90s, with the coastline faring the best (though it will still be uncomfortably hot).

With the wave of blistering temperatures expected to peak Thursday, the National Weather Service issued heat advisories for nearly the entire tri-state area, with the exception of the Jersey Shore and pockets of the Hudson Valley. The heat advisory lasts from 11 a.m. Thursday through 8 p.m. Friday.

Additionally, in anticipation of the high temperatures and humidity that awaits the tri-state area, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation issued Wednesday an air quality health advisory for the Big Apple from 11 a.m. through 11 p.m. on Thursday. Check the latest severe weather alerts in your neighborhood.

As the humidity spikes, pushing heat index levels to reach up to 104 for some during the afternoon hours, those levels only compound heat-related risks, so check on vulnerable neighbors and pets if you can.

A mixed martial arts fighter sprang into action to subdue a homeless man that was allegedly attacking people in the heart of Manhattan’s Soho shopping district.

Ro Malabanan, who has a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and a yellow belt in judo, was walking to his boxing instructor job last Wednesday morning when he saw Samuel Frazier sucker punch a construction worker, the fighter told The Post.

Malabanan, 44, checked in with the victim before running after the suspect and taking him down from behind, the good Samaritan explained to his Instagram followers.

“My jiu-jitsu instincts just kicked in. I jumped on his back,” Malabanan said. “He tried to swing me off then — but for those of you in the know — a seatbelt position dragged him down to the floor, and I immediately took his back and pinned him to the ground.”

Other alleged victims of Frazier, 28, gathered as Malabanan pinned the accused perp to the sidewalk in front of the Converse flagship store on Broadway, according to third-party footage shared by the fighter.

Monday, August 1, 2022

Haripur carrying Ukrainian grain leaves the port ALI Hossain Hamid Master Bangladesh

President Biden has still to grasp that Taiwan is far more important than Ukraine to the future of American power in the world. Yet the likelihood is growing that, on Biden’s watch, Chinese President Xi Jinping will move on Taiwan, just as Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

In a forewarning of that, China has recently started claiming that it owns the critical international waterway, the Taiwan Strait. Just as it did earlier in the South China Sea – the strategic corridor between the Pacific and Indian Oceans, through which one-third of global maritime trade passes – Xi’s regime is seeking to advance its expansionism by laying an expansive claim to the Taiwan Strait, which, by connecting the South and East China Seas, serves as an important passage for commercial shipping as well as foreign naval vessels.

The defense of Taiwan has assumed greater significance for international security because three successive U.S. administrations have failed to credibly push back against China’s expansionism in the South China Sea, relying instead on rhetoric or symbolic actions.

Take It To The Limit— DeSantis’ name is showing up in television ads, and mailers and name-checked at every opportunity. Former Secretary of State Laurel Lee, who resigned from her post and then mounted a campaign for Florida’s 15th Congressional District, had pictures of her with the governor in her first television ad. The ad starts out by saying “for Congress, there’s just one candidate trusted by Gov. DeSantis to secure our elections: Laurel Lee.”

Peaceful Easy Feeling— When asked about it, Lee said “it’s part of everyone’s pitch to voters, but in my case it isn’t fiction.”

Take It Easy — Here’s your reminder, however, that DeSantis — who has endorsed 29 school board candidates across the state and made his opinion clear in many key legislative races — has not yet endorsed any Republicans running in several newly created and open congressional seats. He obviously has a keen interest in the outcome since it was DeSantis who pushed for the party to hold congressional debates and even helped with the questions in a couple of them.

The Long Run— So far, only one campaign has gotten called out. The governor’s reelection campaign sent a letter to the head of a political committee supporting a Miami-Dade School Board member and complained that a “false representation” had been created in a mailer that DeSantis had endorsed Marta Perez. The governor had already endorsed Perez’s opponent. The DeSantis campaign, in response to several questions from POLITICO, said that “voters shouldn’t be subjected to deceitful tactics that create a faux appearance of an endorsement.” Meanwhile, GOP voters may need to read the fine print ahead of the primary.

Biden, rather than working to deter and thwart a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan, is seeking to shield his tentative rapprochement with China, which has been forged through a series of virtual meetings with Xi and by offering Beijing important concessions. This explains why Biden publicly pushed back against a Taiwan visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

It is important to remember that, much before Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden had begun to ease pressure on China. He effectively let Xi’s regime off the hook for both covering up COVID-19’s origins and failing to meet its commitments under the 2020 “phase one” trade deal with Washington. Biden also dropped fraud charges against the daughter of the founder of the military-linked Chinese tech giant Huawei. U.S. sanctions over China’s Muslim gulag remain essentially symbolic.

And now Biden is planning to roll back tariffs on Chinese goods, which will further fuel China’s spiraling trade surplus with America. After swelling by more than 25 percent last year to $396.6 billion, the trade surplus with the U.S. now makes up almost three-quarters of China’s total global surplus.

The McKinney Fire, which started in the northern Siskiyou county on Friday, has already burnt 21,000 hectares (52,500 acres), the state's fire service said.

At least 2,000 residents as well as trekkers on the Pacific Crest hiking trail have left the area. An unknown number of homes have been destroyed.

It was still 0% contained on Monday morning, the fire service reported.

McKinney Fire is burning in the Klamath National Forest, near the border with Oregon. Some 650 firefighters are battling the flames in punishing heat, the Los Angeles Times reports.

A red flag warning indicating the threat of dangerous fire conditions is in place, as California suffers from persistent drought conditions.

A state of emergency was declared in Siskiyou county on Saturday, after homes were destroyed and infrastructure was threatened, state governor Gavin Newsom said.

The fire was "intensified and spread by dry fuels, extreme drought conditions, high temperatures, winds and lightning storms", he added.

Several communities are being threatened, including Yreka and Fort Jones, the US Forest Service said.

'I just saw it explode'

Artist, Harlene Althea Schwander had only moved into her new home near the fire's starting point a month ago, and had not yet unpacked everything. It's now all gone, she told Reuters news agency.

"Three generations of beautiful things, all of my paintings... they're all gone, and I'm very sad," she said.

"When I saw it coming over from the community centre, and I just saw it explode in the dark. I knew the house was gone because I knew right where it was. And the fire department came and told me, 'just leave now,'" she said.

Nikola, a maker of battery- and hydrogen-powered trucks, is acquiring battery supplier Romeo Power in an all-stock deal worth $144 million that it says will ensure stable access to lithium-ion packs as it ramps up electric semi production.

There was one piece of good news however - Ms Schwander's daughter-in-law had grabbed her jewellery before they fled.

when, in a bold challenge to industry orthodoxy, one of the world’s biggest food delivery apps announced it didn’t need to rely on gig workers—people who are paid per job and typically receive no benefits like pensions or sick pay—to make its business work. European executives at Grubhub parent company Just Eat Takeaway reveled in being the first major delivery platforms to use employees as couriers. “This is our key point of differentiation,” said Méleyne Rabot, the managing director of Just Eat France. "We are just focused on doing what we believe is right as an organization,” said her UK counterpart, Andrew Kenny. “For us, that is providing couriers with as many benefits and protections as we can.” When Just Eat CEO Jitse Groen got into a Twitter spat with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, he delivered the retort: Pay your workers minimum wage.

Last week, the second quarter earnings season had its busiest week, with 173 S&P 500 companies reporting. The S&P 500 rose almost 4.3% for the week, with earnings supporting stocks. The rapid pace of the second-quarter earnings reports continues this week, with 155 S&P 500 scheduled to release earnings. 56% of S&P 500 companies have reported results so far, with the percentage of companies exceeding consensus earnings and sales estimates improving to 73% and 66%, respectively.

Despite that, Just Eat is now attempting to U-turn on previous promises. Just Eat couriers based across France received an email on July 18 outlining a coming company restructure, which would mean that riders’ status as employees would change. “Just Eat Takeaway has been a major advocate of the salaried delivery model in continental Europe and France. However, we cannot continue to do it alone,” the email read, blaming regulators for not forcing its competitors to stop using gig workers. Riders in Paris can still expect to be paid per hour, but local unions say around 350 couriers working in 26 other French cities, from Lyon to Nantes and Marseille, risk losing their jobs.

The self-propelled feeding systems are advanced and flexible solutions for the automatic feeding of livestock animals. The growing popularity of self-propelled feeding systems in Asia Pacific, mainly in countries such as Japan, China, Australia, and India, is expected to propel the growth of these systems during the forecast period.

For almost two decades, Bout became the world’s most notorious arms dealer, selling weaponry to rogue states, rebel groups and murderous warlords in Africa, Asia and South America.

His notoriety was such that his life helped inspire a Hollywood film, 2005’s Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage as Yuri Orlov, an arms dealer loosely based on Bout.

Even so, Bout’s origins remained shrouded in mystery. Biographies generally agree that he was born in 1967 in Dushanbe, then the capital of Soviet Tajikistan, close to the border with Afghanistan.

Poultry to witness a greater demand for feeding systems in the coming years

The poultry industry witnesses the largest and the fastest growth in terms of animal production. According to an article by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 2021, globally, poultry meat is expected to represent 41% of all the protein from meat sources in 2030, which is expected to drive the global consumption of poultry products. Poultry meat production is one of the primary drivers of the feeding systems market. Manufacturers are increasingly directing their investments toward the development of innovative feeding system technologies for the production of various forms of high-quality poultry feed. The various types of systems that are now being used for poultry farms include automatic pan feeders, chain feeders, and round & hanging tube feeders.

French unions say this is an existential moment for the global gig economy, and for the future of platform workers everywhere. If Just Eat is able to backtrack on its commitments in France, they say, it would send a message to other delivery platforms that employing people and giving them benefits doesn’t make financial sense. “That’s one of the reasons we can’t just let Just Eat fire us like this,” says Ludo Rioux, a Just Eat courier in Lyon and a representative for the French union the General Confederation of Labor (CGT).

oards of Phoenix-based Nikola and Romeo agreed to an offer of $0.74 per share, a 34% premium to Romeo’s July 29 closing price, Nikola CEO Mark Russell tells Forbes. Nikola will also provide Romeo with $35 million of funding to stabilize its operations until the deal closes —$15 million in senior secured notes and a battery pack delivery bonus worth up to $20 million. The deal still needs approval from shareholders and is expected to close later this year.

Nikola is Romeo’s main customer so “part of this is defensive, to make sure nothing disruptive happens here,” Russell said. “But the real motivation is strategic: we're taking control of our battery destiny and bringing this in-house.”

Battery supplies are a priority for truck- and automakers pivoting from environmentally unfriendly fuels to electric propulsion amid a worsening climate crisis. The Biden Administration has already announced loan and grant programs intended to spur domestic battery production. Meanwhile, new energy legislation making its way through the Senate could provide significantly more federal funds to aid production of electric and hydrogen vehicles and incentives for consumers and commercial fleet operators to buy them.

“This will have a big impact, and we think that other delivery platforms [such as Gorillas and Getir] will follow Just Eat and turn to self-employed workers,” says Jérémy Graça, a Just Eat courier in Paris and representative of the union Workers’ Force. As the economy slides towards a recession, these unions are fighting to prevent a gig workers’ rights rollback.

Kosovo's government on Monday began issuing extra documents to Serbian citizens crossing into its territory, as Serbs living in the north of the country who oppose the decision blockaded roads leading to two border crossings.

Fourteen years after Kosovo declared independence from Serbia, some 50,000 Serbs in the north still use license plates and documents issued by Serbian authorities, refusing to recognize the Pristina government and its institutions.

Following tensions on Sunday and consultations with US and EU ambassadors, the government said it would postpone until September 1 a decision giving local Serbs 60 days to switch to Kosovo license plates and requiring extra documents to be issued at the border to Serbian citizens, including those living in Kosovo without local documents.

Sunday, July 31, 2022

Habil Nancy Pelosi begins Asia Nature Online Access Polish Get then More heath Update

There has been intense speculation that she may visit the self-ruled island.

Taiwan is claimed by China - which has warned of "serious consequences" if she goes there.

No high-ranking US elected official has visited Taiwan in 25 years.

Arnold Donald, CEO and president of Carnival Corp., the parent company to several cruise lines, is scheduled to step down Monday, after helming the cruise giant for nearly a decade.

Donald told USA TODAY the decision came as part of an ongoing planning and leadership development process that's been going on at the company internally.

"I've been in the role for nine years. And I'm also, you know, getting to an age where it makes sense to have the next generation step in, and so that's how we got there," he said.

Carnival Corp. announced in April that Donald would transition to vice chair and a member of the company's board of directors after his tenure as CEO and president was completed.

Donald, who started in the role in 2013 and led Carnival through the COVID-19 pandemic, will be succeeded by Josh Weinstein, who previously served the company as its chief operations officer.

Arnold Donald has served as president and CEO of Carnival Corp. since 2013.

The CDC ended its COVID-19 program for cruise ships:What does that mean for travelers?

Cruises are a cheaper way to travel right now:Here's what to know, when to book

In a statement shared with USA TODAY, Weinstein said that he feels privileged to have been given the opportunity to take on the role, adding that succeeding Donald is "quite an honor."

Ms Pelosi, a California Democrat, tweeted that the six-person Congressional delegation tour would seek to "reaffirm America's unshakeable commitment to our allies and friends in the region".

Her office said the tour was to the "Indo-Pacific region" - "including" visits to Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan.

China sees Taiwan as a breakaway province that must become a part of the country. Beijing has not ruled out the possible use of force to achieve this in the future.

Chinese officials have expressed anger over what they view as growing diplomatic engagement between Taipei and Washington. There was a surprise visit to the island by six US lawmakers in April.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged residents of the country’s eastern-most Donetsk region to leave the province as Russia continues its offensive to conquer the area. In a regular nightly video address to the nation, Zelenskyy said hundreds of thousands of people were still living in the industrial heartland where “the fiercest fighting” was taking place. He told Ukrainians that an evacuation of Donetsk “needs to be done . . . now” so that “the Russian army” will kill fewer people. Moscow is trying to take over the whole of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, made up of the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russian forces now occupy all of Luhansk. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented more than 5,200 civilian deaths in Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion began and believes more have been killed amid Russia’s bombardment of civilian areas. Moscow has since late March refocused its war efforts on eastern Ukraine, having failed to capture the capital Kyiv in the weeks after its February 24 invasion, concentrating on taking the remaining Donbas territory, the region Russian covertly invaded in 2014. Ukraine, now using advanced weaponry supplied by the west, has been able to disrupt Russian supply lines and logistics. Kyiv has been slowly regaining territory in the south, and the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in June Ukrainian forces have liberated more territory than they have lost since the start of the invasion. In the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, also forcibly seized in 2014, the Russian governor of Sevastopol said on Sunday that a drone had struck the headquarters of the Black Sea fleet, wounding five people. The unmanned aerial strike took place on Russia’s revered Navy Day and festivities in Sevastopol were subsequently cancelled. On his Telegram channel, governor Mikhail Razvozhayev said the Federal Security Service was investigating the incident. The Black Sea fleet’s press service said “a low-yield explosive device mounted on a makeshift drone” had struck the area. The reported Sevastopol strike comes after an agreement between Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the UN was signed last week to clear maritime waterways for the export of Ukrainian grain to bordering countries. A regional Ukrainian official denied involvement in the drone strike. Serhiy Bratchuk, spokesperson for the Odesa Military Administration, described the incident as a “false-flag” operation and said “Ukraine would liberate the Crimea by other means”. In April Russia’s Moskva missile cruiser, its flagship in the Black Sea, was sunk by Ukrainian missiles. Neither of the warring sides has disclosed its casualty figures in the bloodiest war on the European continent since the second world war. Zelenskyy has urged the west to designate Russia a “terrorist state” in response to civilian atrocities including sexual violence, indiscriminate killing of civilians and looting.

The US has formal diplomatic ties with China, and not Taiwan.

Ms Pelosi has long been a vocal critic of the Chinese leadership, denouncing its human rights record. She has met pro-democracy dissidents and visited Tiananmen Square to commemorate victims of the 1989 massacre.

Nancy Pelosi's long history of opposing Beijing

Her original plan was to visit Taiwan in April, but she postponed the trip after she tested positive for Covid-19.

Earlier this month she said it was "important for us to show support for Taiwan".

President Joe Biden has said the US military believes a Pelosi visit to Taiwan is "not a good idea right now".

The statement from her office on Sunday said the tour would "focus on mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance in the Indo-Pacific region".

Their talks will also cover trade, the climate crisis and human rights.

The delegates accompanying Ms Pelosi are leading members of the House of Representatives: Gregory Meeks, Mark Takano, Suzan DelBene, Raja Krishnamoorthi and Andy Kim.

The last House Speaker to visit Taiwan was Republican Newt Gingrich, in 1997.

The war between Russia and Ukraine recently surpassed the five month mark. What initially started out as a fast-paced, dynamic war has turned into a slow-moving, crushing war of attrition that neither side desired. Indeed, Russia’s initial strategy was to overwhelm Ukrainian defense forces, seize Kiev, and force the government to capitulate. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian strategy projected that international pressure, coupled with crushing the initial invasion, would force the Russians to pull out of their country.

At the strategic level, the military leadership and governments of both countries have remained committed to their initial objectives. The Russian military seeks to “demilitarize” Ukraine, a euphemism for destroying their military and taking control of the country. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian military wants to expel the Russian invaders from their country. While many are skeptical of either country achieving their objectives, both countries have adopted strategies that could eventually allow them to achieve their goals.

Next month marks one year since Kabul fell. On Aug. 15, 2021, after 20 years of occupation, the United States was withdrawing from Afghanistan as the Taliban encroached upon the capital.

Memories of past civil wars still haunted Kabul. Many of my relatives rushed to the Kabul airport hoping to make it out. Some waited days at checkpoints, amid massive crowds, but after a suicide bombing rocked the airport — at least 169 Afghans and 13 U.S. military personnel were killed in the chaos — the last planes flew out of Kabul without them. In West Sacramento, Calif., my family and I watched the news and called our relatives for updates, feeling helpless.

A few weeks later, I began to hear of a U.S. government program called “humanitarian parole.” Essentially, it was a special program that could grant temporary entry into the U.S. for “urgent humanitarian reasons.” Online, I read that Afghans qualified for humanitarian parole because of Kabul’s fall and a majority of Afghans had no other pathway out. The applications were expensive, $575 per person, but it seemed like a legitimate route into the U.S. My father, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1983, was less optimistic. “It’s a scam,” he said. “Only those with connections will get out.”

Much of the Russian strategy is focused on the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. In this region, the Russian military has adopted a traditional “fire-and-maneuver” tactic, where they barrage a region with artillery and then move their infantry into the region to secure it. This process is fairly effective for taking territory, albeit slow, expensive, and resulting in extensive collateral damage. The Russian military can achieve this type of maneuver given the large amount of artillery allocated to each Battalion Tactical Group. This slow-moving process allows the Russian ground forces to have cover from their artillery and air-defense assets, limiting the ability of Ukrainian artillery and drones.

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

US proposes releasing Russian Covid And cancer Update Today Zafur Ali India Online 2023

In a sharp reversal, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday that he will hold a call with Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov "in the coming days," which will mark the first time the two have spoken since the war in Ukraine began and will be a meaningful step toward reopening high-level diplomatic channels between the two countries.

Blinken told reporters during a press briefing that a critical topic of discussion will be securing the freedom of WNBA superstar Brittney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan, both of whom are held in Russia.

The secretary revealed that the U.S. has already put forward a plan to accomplish that and is hopeful for a breakthrough on their cases.

Alabama is set to execute a man Thursday evening who was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend nearly three decades ago, despite a request from the victim’s family to spare his life.

Joe Nathan James Jr. is scheduled to receive a lethal injection at 6 p.m. CDT at a south Alabama prison. James was convicted and sentenced to death in the 1994 shooting death of Faith Hall, 26, in Birmingham. Hall's daughters have said they would rather James serve life in prison. But Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey said Wednesday she planned to let the execution proceed.

Prosecutors said James briefly dated Hall and that he became obsessed. after she rejected him, stalking and harassing her for months before killing her. On Aug. 15, 1994, after Hall had been out shopping with a friend, James forced his way inside the friend's apartment, pulled a gun from his waistband and shot Hall three times, according to court documents.

A Jefferson County jury first convicted James of capital murder in 1996 and voted to recommend the death penalty, which a judge imposed. The conviction was overturned when a state appeals court ruled a judge had wrongly admitted some police reports into evidence. James was retried and again sentenced to death in 1999, when jurors rejected defense claims that he was under emotional duress at the time of the shooting.

Hall’s two daughters, who were 3 and 6 when their mother. was killed, had said recently they would rather James serve life in prison.

“I just feel like we can’t play God. We can’t take a life. And it’s not going to bring my mom back,” one of the daughters, Terryln Hall, told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview.

“We thought about it and prayed about it, and we found it in ourselves to forgive him for what he did. We really wish there was something that we could do to stop it,” Hall had said, adding the road to forgiveness was long.

“I did hate him. I did. And I know hate is such a strong feeling word, but I really did have hate in my heart. As I got older and realized, you can’t walk around with hate in your heart. You still got to live. And once I had kids of my own, you know, I can’t pass it down to my kids and have them walk around with hate in their hearts,” she said.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall had urged Ivey to let the execution go forward, writing that “it is our obligation to ensure that justice is done for the people of Alabama.”

“The jury in James’s case unanimously decided that his brutal murder of Faith Hall warranted a sentence of death,” Marshall said.

In response to a reporter's question, Ivey said Wednesday she would not intervene.

“My staff and I have researched all the records and all the facts and there’s no reason to change the procedure or modify the outcome. The execution will go forward," she said.

James has acted as his own attorney in his bid to stop his execution, mailing handwritten lawsuits and appeal notices to the courts from death row. A lawyer on Wednesday filed the latest appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court on his behalf.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS), Conservative councillors have heavily criticised the plans barely a week after they voted for the revised draft strategy for the Forest of Dean District local plan to go out for consultation.

Their main concerns centre around the proposed growth for Lydney and Beachley, which they fear could lead to grid-lock on the A48.

Tory group leader Harry Ives said: "After the cabinet's failed plan to create a new village near Churcham, they are now hoping to build 2,460 houses in Lydney.

"These plans will put immense pressure on local healthcare, education, employment and leisure facilities. It's complete madness and residents deserve better".

'Moral compass'

Conservative councillor Alan Preest said infrastructure and engagement with the public had to be the defining factors before any further large scale development was permitted.

He said: "Fundamentally, the moral compass in the authority, pertaining to localism, empowering communities, respecting and listening to local residents/existing communities, should be minutely examined and changed. Then, with a bit of common-sense, you may have a fit for purpose plan."

Council leader Tim Gwilliam, of the Progressive Independents, told councillors last week the council wanted to examine the economic, social and environmental priorities and opportunities the new plan could bring.

He said Lydney had been let down by previous local plans and he viewed the latest one as an opportunity to build on the town's position and turn it into a "gateway to the Forest".

He responded to the Conservative group's concerns, saying: "I have great faith in both Lydney and the Forest of Dean in attracting business investment to deliver what's needed to make the plan work.

"If we can't, we will have to look again in the same way that the previous consultation told us to look at an alternative strategy."

James asked justices for a stay, noting the opposition of Hall's family and arguing that Alabama did not give inmates adequate notice of their right to select an alternate execution method.

He argued that Alabama officials, after lawmakers approved nitrogen hypoxia as a new execution method, gave inmates only a brief window of time to select the new method and inmates did not know what was at stake when they were handed a selection form without any explanation. Alabama is not scheduling executions for inmates who selected nitrogen. The state has not developed a system for using nitrogen to carry out death sentences.

From news to politics, travel to sport, culture to climate – The Independent has a host of free newsletters to suit your interests. To find the stories you want to read, and more, in your inbox, click here.

Three sources familiar with the offer confirmed to ABC News that the U.S. had proposed exchanging convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout in order to secure Griner and Whelan's release from Russia. (CNN was first to report this plan.)

Russia has not yet responded to the offer.

Neither Blinken nor White House spokesman John Kirby would confirm details -- only reiterating that such cases were delicate, requiring the balance of national security interests with the importance of protecting Americans abroad.

"[They] have been wrongly detained and must be allowed to come home," Blinken said. "We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I'll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution."

Asked repeatedly about the specifics of the proposal, Blinken declined to shed much more light.

You'll understand that I can't and won't get into any of the details of what we've proposed to the Russians over the course of some many weeks now," Blinken said. "Here's what I can say: First, as I mentioned, we've conveyed this on a number of occasions and directly to Russian officials. And my hope would be that in speaking to Foreign Minister Lavrov, I can advance the efforts to bring them home."

"My interest and my focus is making sure that, to the best of our ability, we get to yes," he said.

A potentially key figure in this is Bout -- the former Russian arms dealer serving a 25-year prison sentence, dubbed the "Merchant of Death" by the media, whom the U.S. offered to swap for both Griner and Whelan. Before Wednesday's proposal was announced, officials had indicated to ABC News that a Bout trade was one potential option.

Bout's attorney Albert Dayan told ABC News that he welcomed a deal: "I encourage both of the governments, United Sates and Russia, in these particular cases to agree to the exchange. Especially since Mr. Bout has already served more than the majority of his sentence." Dayan said his client had spend "much time in solitary confinement."

Blinken on Wednesday acknowledged there was precedent for prisoner trades.

"We demonstrated with Trevor Reed, who came home some months ago, that the president is prepared to make tough decisions if it means the safe return of Americans," Blinken told reporters, referring to the former Marine jailed in Russia before he was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, who was serving a 20-year sentence in the U.S. for drug smuggling.

Blinken said that President Joe Biden played an active role in crafting the proposal for Griner and Whelan.

Sections of a renowned peatland tropical forest in the Congo Basin that plays a crucial role in Africa’s climate system go up for oil and gas auction in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday.

The DRC government will auction 30 oil and gas blocks in the Cuvette-Centrale Peatlands in the Congo Basin forest — the world’s largest tropical peatland. Peatland soils are known as ‘carbon sinks’ because packed into them are immense stores of carbon that get released into the atmosphere when the ecosystem is disturbed.

Some of the areas, or blocs, marked for oil leasing lie within Africa’s iconic first conservation area, the Virunga National Park, created in 1925 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, home to the last bastion of mountain gorillas.

The Congo basin covers 530 million hectares (1.3 billion acres) in central Africa and represents 70% of the continent’s forested land. It hosts over a thousand bird species and more primates than any other place in the world, including the great apes: gorillas, chimpanzees and Bonobos.

The move by the Congo-Kinshasa Ministry of Hydrocarbons has angered environmentalists and climate activists who say that oil drilling will pose significant risks to a continent already inundated by harsh climate effects. The Centre for International Forest Research puts the massive Cuvette-Centrale carbon sink at 145,000 square kilometers (56,000 square miles) and said it stores up to 20 years’ equivalent of the carbon emissions emitted by the United States.

Other blocs the DRC plans to auction include some located on Lake Kivu, Lake Tanganyika, and one in a coastal region alongside the Albertine-Grabben region, the western side of the Eastern African Rift Valley system.

“These are the last refuges of nature biodiversity,” and our last carbon sinks, said Ken Mwathe, of BirdLife International in Africa. “We must not sacrifice these valuable natural assets for damaging development.”

The auction of part of the Congo Basin rainforest, which represents 5% of the global tropical forests, comes barely a week after the International Union for the Conservation of Nature hosted the inaugural Africa Protected Areas Congress in Kigali, Rwanda. There, attendees resolved to strengthen protection of Africa’s key biodiversity hotspots.

The DRC is one of 17 nations in the world classified as “megadiverse.” In September last year, at the World Conservation Congress meeting in France, 137 resolutions dubbed the “Marseille Manifesto” highlighted the significant role the Congo Basin is expected to play in the global commitment to protect 30% of the Earth by 2030.

Last year at the U.N. climate conference COP26, a dozen donors dubbed the Glasgow Leaders Declaration on Forests and Land Use, pledged some $1.5 billion “to working collectively to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030.”

The Democratic Republic’s carbon sponge is also at risk from large-scale logging, expansion of agriculture and the planned diversion of the Congo River’s waters into the shrinking Lake Chad.

ADVER

A former KGB comrade of Vladimir Putin's could be next in line to take the Russian president's place in power, the former head of British intelligence predicted.

Speculation over a possible Putin replacement has surged in recent months amid conflicting reports that the Russian leader's health could be in decline. Kremlin insiders have even quietly begun discussing potential successors in case Putin is forced out over the Ukrainian invasion or succumbs to a hypothetical illness, according to reports.

Sir Richard Dearlove, who served as head of the UK's Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004, asserted this week that the most likely heir candidate is Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia's Security Council and a longtime Putin ally known to be one of exceedingly few officials to have the president's trust.

"I'm almost certain it would Patrushev," Dearlove said on a Thursday episode of the podcast "One Decision," which he co-hosts, during a discussion about the ongoing impacts of Putin's war in Ukraine, more than five months after Russian forces invaded.

The former MI6 chief has previously theorized about Putin's likely longevity. In May, Dearlove on his podcast predicted that Putin will be out of power by 2023 and forced into a medical facility for long-term illness in an effort to remove the president without a coup.

The Kremlin has denied that Putin is suffering from any health issues, and Putin himself said in June that such claims were "greatly exaggerated." CIA Director William Burns this month also dispelled rumors about the state of Putin's health, saying "as far as we can tell, he's entirely too healthy."

But questions remain, and Patrushev's emergence as a dependable frontman and frequent, public promoter of Russia's war in recent months has prompted questions about his personal aims and whether or not he may be seeking Putin's power for himself.

A Kremlin spokesperson told The Washington Post earlier this month that Patrushev's role had not significantly changed and brushed off suggestions that the security secretary had amassed new powers. Similarly, a spokesperson for the Security Council denied to the outlet that Patrushev is seeking any advancement.

GenSight Biologics (Euronext: SIGHT, ISIN: FR0013183985, PEA-PME eligible), a biopharma company focused on developing and commercializing innovative gene therapies for retinal neurodegenerative diseases and central nervous system disorders, today reported its interim financial results for the first half of 2022. The full interim financial report is available on the Company’s website in the Investors section. The 2022 half-year financial statements were subject to a limited review by the Company’s statutory auditors and approved by the Board of Directors on July 27, 2022.

"We continue to focus our efforts and resources in 2022 on addressing our manufacturing challenges while getting ready for the successful commercial launch of LUMEVOQ in 2023," commented Thomas Gidoin, Chief Financial Officer of GenSight Biologics. "With a current cash runway to early Q1 2023, we have been assessing several financing options, non or as little dilutive as possible, over the past few months, and are now wrapping up discussions aiming at closing a transaction in favorable terms in the Fall."