Migrant worker airlifted by Sonu Sood from Kerala names welding workshop after the actor – Times Now

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Migrant worker names welding shop after Sonu Sood  |  Photo Credit: Twitter

Sonu Sood has been hailed on social media as the best 'supporting' actor for his exemplary work of proving relief to hundreds of migrants amid the coronavirus crisis.

The 46-year-old has proved his benevolence through practical solutions time and again. His work has made him the 'Go-to' man at a time when migrants in many parts of the country were finding it difficult to reach home.

The actor has provided food and necessities for the needy and also arranged special buses and flights to send stranded migrants home.

His campaign for the needy started when he replied to a tweet from a worker who shared his plight and asked the actor if he could send him home. Since then, his social media accounts have been flooded with requests.

Now, his good work is being honoured by those he helped.

Prashant Kumar Pradhan is a 32-year-old plumber from Odisha. He was one of the 168 who was airlifted from Kerala during the nationwide lockdown with the help of Sonu Sood.

Now, the plumber has expressed his gratitude towards the actor with a hearty gesture. Hedecided to name his new welding shop after the actor. It's called 'Sonu Sood Welding Shop'.

"I was working as a plumber in a company near Kochi airport. I was earning around Rs 700 per day. After the lockdown, I lost my job and money and started drying up," Prashant told The Times of India.

He added that he tried returning home via Shramik Special train but failed. At that time, even district officials and local leaders couldn't offer much help.

Just when he thought he wouldn't be able to return home, help came from Sonu Sood.

"Sonu Sood appeared as an angel in our lives. He arranged for a special flight to take us home," said Prashant.

Soon after reaching home, Prashant started looking for a job to meet the expenses of his family. Recently, he opened a welding shop at Hatina, which is 140 km from Bhubaneswar. He used Soods name and picture in his workshop but did so by first taking the actors permission.

Responding to the gesture, Sood wished Prashant luck for his new endeavor and said he will visit the shop whenever he comes to Odisha.

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Migrant worker airlifted by Sonu Sood from Kerala names welding workshop after the actor - Times Now

The Lockdown Revealed the Extent of Poverty and Misery Faced by Migrant Workers – The Wire

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The COVID-19 pandemic has further worsened Indias hunger and malnutrition woes, more so for the millions of informal workers, on their way back home or struggling to meet two ends in their urban and rural homes. Their embedded informality over labour, land and housing tenure has uprooted and shaken them with loss of income, occupation and habitat, multiplying their already entrenched nutrition vulnerability.

Given the already acknowledged multidimensionality of the nutritional problem and its significant connection to immunity, further oversight or negligence, implicates a heavy toll on these de-facto nation builders, either through COVID-19 infestation, poised now for community spread or en-route the lockdown hunger and its chronic accompaniment, the hidden hunger, often used to denote micronutrient malnutrition.

India ranks low at 102 in the 2019 Global Hunger Index, below its neighbours, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with documented poorer malnutrition level among the rural poor, agriculture labourers and migrant workers, pregnant and lactating mothers and children.

Without urgent, timely and integrated nourishment through supplemental nutrition, special care and institutional rehabilitation, the infestation of this cohort will be rampant while their malnutrition will translate to a heavy toll on the future GDP. With the relevant loss to GDP, estimated between 4% to 8%, it may undo the impetus intended via post-COVID revival and reform packages.

The COVID-19 associated lockdown has suddenly made visible the poverty and vulnerability of the millions of migrant workers. Their informality is not limited to their urban workplaces; back in their rural homes, where they are headed now, they are also informal labourers and farmers.

The lockdown made visible the poverty and vulnerability of migrant workers in India. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Indrajit Das

These landless agriculture labourers, tenants and small farmers are the rural food producers, city-makers, urban manufacturers and service providers, who feed the nation, take care of the citizens in their homes and nurture its health and nutrition. Together constituting more than half of Indias population, this group, however, remains ultra-vulnerable to hunger and hidden hunger, thanks to their informal and insecure tenure. They are the hardest hit with their women and children during the pandemic.

The declaration of extra allocation of cereal and pulses for the next three months to about 810 million people under the Pradhan Mantri Gareeb Kalyan Yojana with ration cards reflects the appreciation of this hunger by the government. With studies indicating exclusion and inclusion errors as well as leakage in Public Distribution System (PDS) and estimating a low share of PDS grains reaching the intended, most of these vulnerable groups, however, run the risk of being excluded.

Also read: With No Clarity on Number of Migrant Workers, Food Grain Distribution in a Mess

To overcome the ration card limitation, the government has now announced two months of free food to an additional 80 million migrant workers, without a card. Though temporary and not well-balanced, it should at least improve the outreach of pandemic-response food ration better than the 86%, that is reported by a recent survey. Adequate caution and leakage-plugging, however, is called for, with the participation of local governance institutions and civil society members.

The exclusion challenge, unfortunately, also plague the acclaimed Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme, PM KISAN. The finance minister announced 91.3 million farmers to have received the instalment related to COVID-19.

An ongoing survey by Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University, shows the outreach to just 24%. Considering the number of farmers as per Agriculture Census, 2015-16, the PM KISAN net still excludes 4 out of every 10 farmers. Also not included are the 144 million agriculture labourers (Census, 2011) and about 25 million tenants (NITI Aayog, 2016) in the absence of land records, an eligibility criteria of the scheme.

The nature, outreach and performance of the food and cash transfer schemes and the persistent hunger and malnutrition of the vulnerable, call for a more holistic nutritional response. And the expanding COVID-crisis hitting harder on these informal workers, demands these measures to be expeditious and inclusive.

Also read: How Have the Centres Food Distribution Schemes Performed So Far?

The target population is converged in rural India, where the unfinished land reform agenda and changed farming imperatives and agrarian relations have increased informal tenancy along with fallowing of land. With about 25 million hectares fallow land available and efficiency of small farms well documented in terms of higher production and net income, formalisation of tenancy focusing on small farmers can be a big first leap forward.

This lockdown hunger is not the only worry. Post-COVID, access to safe and nutritious foods would be a question mark if adequate policy measures are not taken in ensuring satisfactory production, aggregation and marketing while also making the food available to the vulnerable population.

Land leasing reforms to promote smallholder farming

Evidence suggests that small farms, remain the most adaptive, demonstrating higher efficiency in terms of income and production than larger farms. However, the highly pervasive and increasing tenancy has weakened Indian agriculture, reducing total production, by depriving tenants access to credit and other entitlements.

Implementation of the Model Land leasing Act, 2016, developed by the NITI Aayog, can offer the security of tenure to existing rural tenants as well as to the returnee migrants willing to farm. This would potentially trigger productive utilisation of land and labour and augment farm and food production, by enhancing access to formal credit and farm-entitlements.

Gram Panchayats can be empowered to lead village-wise listing of potential tenants and enumeration fallow lands, as demonstrated in Kudumbashree in Kerala and AP. Legitimately, they can also facilitate the convergence of MGNREGS for land development and create opportunities of women groups around farm value chain through livelihoods missions, augmenting rural income and local availability of farm-inputs and processed nutritious food.

Strengthening small-farm diversification and local food value chains

Small family farms, globally and in India are known to absorb more labour while intensifying and diversifying production system in small areas. They can easily shoot up production of pulses, millets, tubers, vegetables, fruits, and livestock-products viz. egg, milk and meat. Availability of this food, rich in micronutrients locally is critical to boosting the nutritional status of women and children already suffering hidden hunger due to constrained production and the supply chain disruption of such foods during COVID-19.

Post-COVID agriculture package announced by the government can be made nutrition enabled, with such steps while also promoting local production and value chain development around nutritious foods, thereby generating more formal employments and income locally for farmers, women and their collectives: self-help groups and Farmer Producer Organisations.

Supporting non-timber forest produce collection, value addition and marketing through livelihood missions and ongoing forestry projects, by the tribal women collectives, is critical to increasing cash flow among the vulnerable tribal communities. Allowing forest-foraging visits by women can increase collection and consumption nutritious forest foods at free of cost, through sustainable biodiversity utilisation and conservation.

Also read: Prometheus Unbound: India Must Look to the Farmer for Way Forward

With a nutrition-orientation, micro, small and medium enterprises can boost up productions along local nutrition value chains in rural India and thereby improve access to safe and nutritious diets, while also creating local avenues for employment.

Leveraging ongoing pandemic management for a malnutrition-free India

Along with increasing production and availability, enhanced nutritious food absorption esp. by the women and children is critical to address hunger and malnutrition. In this direction, POSHAN Abhiyaan, with its mandate for reducing stunting, under-nutrition, low birth weight and anaemia by 2022, can help in addressing malnutrition management while also assisting in pandemic infection management.

Grassroots public health, nutrition and agriculture functionaries can be deployed with essential health supplies, behaviour change communication materials, home visit planners, advisories on nutritious food production, processing and consumptions with messages epidemics. Peoples movement, already envisaged in the Abhiyan, can be reoriented to focus on infant and young child and pregnant and lactating women feeding through a campaign engaging women volunteers. Engaged on wages, these women can also help in nutrition sensitisation and monitoring of informal-worker families at local quarantine centres and their rural homes.

Managing food waste and food loss

Approximately one-third of the food produced is lost or wasted in the value chain. During the ongoing crisis, such food loss or wastage across the value chain must be minimised.

The lockdown has drastically affected the marketing of the food produced by the smallholder farmers. Central and state governments can introduce local procurement and distribution using channels of mid-day meals (MDM) and integrated child development services (ICDS) supplementary nutrition programs, engaging the surplus workforce, women and men, now converged in the villages.

IT-enabled monitoring for evidence-based policy

Data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and the latest Comprehensive National Nutrition Survey (CNNS) reveal that malnutrition is the leading inhibiting factor for a healthier India. Morbidity and mortality arising from infectious diseases hamper the countrys GDP and economy and subsistence living of the poor. It is time to coordinate building a robust IT platform to collect and consolidate relevant data, with a focus on these vulnerable groups, for informed decision making and inert-sectoral synergy.

At a time when hunger and malnutrition are already sitting pretty on the ultra-vulnerable informal workers; the COVID pandemic has compounded their burden. Like the one-health approach, a holistic approach spanning land-agriculture-nutrition is what required to nourish these undernourished and accordingly the policy incentives must be repurposed.

Post-COVID, access to safe and nutritious foods for many of the migrant workers is important as part of the revival plan. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Indrajit Das

There is an urgent need to go beyond the cash and food transfers imperatives and invest in building nutrition-resilience pathways for coping with COVID19. Formalising land and labour relations in rural areas and localising production and value chain development of nutritious food through small farming and women-collectives can be a dignified way to add assets, incomes and food in the hand of informal workers. This would also help the nation builders now converging in rural India to trigger a rural revival, as Gandhi would have dreamt.

Pranab R. Choudhury, the primary author of the commentary, is the founder and coordinator of NRMC Center for Land Governance. Basanta K. Kar is a recipient of the Global Nutrition Leadership Award 2019. Arabinda K Padhee is the country directorIndia of ICRISAT.

This article was originally published on Mongabay.

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The Lockdown Revealed the Extent of Poverty and Misery Faced by Migrant Workers - The Wire

Pandemic-time politicking: BJP consolidates base even as Opposition loses its sting – Economic Times

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Pradyut Bordoloi and Gaurav Gogoi, members of Parliament from Assam, failed to catch the last flight from Delhi to Guwahati on March 24. Until the previous day, both the Congress MPs were present in the Lok Sabha for the budget session. And neither of them had an inkling that a nationwide lockdown was in the offing, something that came at a four-hour notice.

Fast forward two months later to May 25. As domestic flights resumed operations, both the MPs rushed to their constituencies Nagaon and Kaliabor, respectively. But Covid-19 protocols, as devised by the government of Assam, mandated that they take swab tests and go from the airport to a hotel for institutional quarantine.

When we were all stuck in Delhi during peak lockdown, the chief minister of Assam (Sarbananda Sonowal) sent a chartered flight to bring back the BJP MPs. They all landed in Guwahati and reached their respective constituencies by road. None of them was quarantined. Covid rules are applicable only to the opposition, Bordoloi tells ET Magazine over the phone.

Opposition-only Covid rules, as alleged by Bordoloi, could be an exaggeration, but the pandemic has indeed opened a window of opportunity for the ruling party to consolidate its base even as opposition parties are struggling due to rampant Covid restrictions.

Political rallies and mass protests often considered a lifeline for the Opposition are now forbidden or impossible as the virus has forced everyone to either stay indoors or maintain social distancing in public places. In Kerala, the high court on Wednesday banned political protests in public places until July 31. Even as India has been unlocking in a phased manner, localised lockdowns, weekend stay-at-home orders and night curfews have disrupted the opposition parties political planning.

In contrast, government agencies have been operating from Day 1 of the lockdown. Though the inept handling of the migrant crisis dented the popularity of the ruling BJP at the Centre, the damage can be offset by its concerted pro-poor drive: the distribution of 24 crore food packets, monthly free ration to 80 crore individuals from the Centres coffers as well as a transfer of Rs. 500 a month to every woman who has a Jan Dhan account. Other parties can have advantages in states where they rule. In Kerala, the ruling Left Democratic Front, for instance, has showcased its administrative prowess in containing the pandemic. But even in states the numbers are skewed in favour of the BJP which, with its allies, rule 16 of them. The Congress rules only three and is a partner in the Maharashtra government.

Since March, the Congress has lost Madhya Pradesh after Jyotiraditya Scindia defected to the BJP with 22 loyal MLAs, and now in Rajasthan, the party is practically split after Sachin Pilot revolted and was subsequently sacked as deputy CM and state party president. The only reversal the BJP faced was in Manipur where a coalition government led by N Biren Singh was reduced to a minority one last month. But prompt politicking four recalcitrant MLAs of its ally NPP were brought to Delhi to have a meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah resolved the crisis.

The big question now is how will the ruling and opposition parties campaign once the Election Commission announces the polling dates for by-elections in 24 assembly segments in Madhya Pradesh and for the critical assembly election in Bihar, the nomination process for which will likely begin in September.

So far, South Korea has been a role model in conducting a large election during the pandemic. The campaign was largely conducted digitally. In the April 15 elections in the East Asian nation, voters had to mandatorily wear masks, maintain social distancing, and those having a body temperature of over 99.5 degree Fahrenheit were taken to separate booths for voting.

The result? The Left-leaning ruling party, Democratic Party, with a smaller ally, clinched a landslide victory with the biggest majority since 1987, the year the nation transitioned into a democracy.

Former Chief Election Commissioner of India, OP Rawat, says India can follow only a modified form of South Korean model to conduct elections. A digitalonly campaign wont work in India, he says. India needs to ensure a level-playing field for the ruling and opposition parties.

"According to an estimate, about 55 crore out of 90 crore voters in India still don't have mobile connectivity. Let's not go by the number of connections. In digital-only election campaigns, the majority of Indian voters will find it difficult to make an informed choice," he says, adding that the government should buy time slots in private television channels and FM radio stations and allot those to political parties on the basis of their performance in the last elections, so as to make the Covidtime election process fair.

Now, over to Bihar in autumn.

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Pandemic-time politicking: BJP consolidates base even as Opposition loses its sting - Economic Times

Italy has a responsibility, too – EUobserver

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No country in the EU has suffered more from the coronavirus than Italy.

Although Spain has surpassed it in total number of cases, Italy has had the highest death toll. Its economy is projected to shrink 11 percent this year compared to 8.3 percent for the EU as a whole.

The EU needs to help. And it has.

Italy has been the largest recipient of disinfectants, masks, medical gowns and ventilators donated by EU member states.

Germany, Poland and Slovenia have sent doctors. Austria and Germany took in coronavirus patients when Italian hospitals were overwhelmed.

Dutch researchers processed lung echos to quickly diagnose patients. The European Commission has suspended rules on state aid to allow the Italian government to underwrite up to 200bn in business loans.

The European Central Bank is pumping more than 1 trillion into the European economy in order to lower borrowing costs for businesses and governments.

This has provided immediate relief to Italy's banks, which are saddled with excessive levels of non-performing loans and government debt.

But when it comes to Italy's longer-term recovery, it's not unreasonable to ask it to make some changes to qualify for aid from a proposed 750bn EU fund.

Italy's economic problems didn't start with COVID-19.

The European Commission has advised it for years to invest more in education, improve the efficiency of its judicial system and simplify the tax code.

Year-after-year, Italy rejected that advice. It spends less on tertiary education than its neighbours. Only 27 percent of Italians in their thirties have a higher degree, the second-lowest rate in the eurozone, where the average is 40 percent. Tax evasion is between two and three times higher in Italy than in France, Germany and Spain.

Italy is one of the worst rich-countries to start and run a business in, and the time and effort it takes to enforce contracts and resolve bankruptcies in Italy's slow courts, where cases can drag on for years, is a major reason.

Poor availability of credit and excessive licensing requirements are two more.

For young Italians, it's almost impossible to start a career as a lawyer, notary, pharmacist or even a taxi driver unless they inherit a license from their parents or can buy one from a family friend.

These factors conspire to drive a lot of economic activity into the informal sector and deny young Italians job security. Just 45 percent of Italians under the age of 30 had a job before the pandemic, compared to a eurozone average of 63 percent. Nearly eight-out-of-ten of those could only find part-time work.

The current government, led by Giuseppe Conte, hasn't helped by passing a 20bn tax-evasion amnesty and overturning the labour reforms of the last centre-left government, which introduced a new type of permanent contract to close the gap between insecure part-time work without social benefits and impossible-to-break full-time contracts with generous benefits.

Even those reforms did not apply to anyone in work. At the insistence of the trade unions, they only applied to new contracts. Hence their short-term effect was limited, which Conte's government used as an excuse to cancel them.

Rather than tackle these problems, which would mean taking away some of the security and wealth of incumbents and the well-connected to give younger and entrepreneurial Italians a chance, Italy's politicians blame outsiders.

They accuse Europe of "abandoning" Italy in its hour of need and call on the EU to "take responsibility".

They said the same thing during the migrant crisis. And during the euro crisis. Italy is always the victim. Northern Europe, which would rather Italy took some responsibility for its problems before asking for help, is always at fault.

Conte insists he will not accept a "weak compromise" on the recovery fund. He argues conditions would "stigmatise" recipients and warns that, if Italy doesn't get what it wants, it would "destroy the common market."

But his government can't even tell what it would spend the money on.

One of the two ruling parties, the Democrats, wants to invest in infrastructure. The other, the Five Star Movement, argues for tax cuts.

Little wonder the leaders of Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden are unwilling to sign off: they're not going to give money so the Italians can fund a tax cut in the middle of an economic crisis.

Yet it's them Italians blame, not their own leaders.

Years of blaming Brussels have turned Italians into one of the most Eurosceptic people in Europe. Just 38 percent told Eurobarometer last year they had faith in the EU.

Only the British, French and Greeks trusted the EU less. Italians were more likely than most to cite unemployment as the reason, even though that is still largely the preserve of national governments. 28-percent supported leaving the euro, the highest rate among eurozone nations. Italy is the only country in the EU where the young are more Eurosceptic than the old.

Italy's politicians are failing the next generation of Italians. They need to stop demonising the only countries that can - and will - help Italy and resist the temptation to enact more stop-gap measures that only perpetuate the inequalities and inefficiencies that hold the country back.

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Italy has a responsibility, too - EUobserver

Stem cells: What they are and what they do – Mayo Clinic

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Stem cells: What they are and what they do

Stem cells and derived products offer great promise for new medical treatments. Learn about stem cell types, current and possible uses, ethical issues, and the state of research and practice.

You've heard about stem cells in the news, and perhaps you've wondered if they might help you or a loved one with a serious disease. You may wonder what stem cells are, how they're being used to treat disease and injury, and why they're the subject of such vigorous debate.

Here are some answers to frequently asked questions about stem cells.

Stem cells: The body's master cells

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Stem cells are the body's master cells. All other cells arise from stem cells, including blood cells, nerve cells and others.

Stem cells are the body's raw materials cells from which all other cells with specialized functions are generated. Under the right conditions in the body or a laboratory, stem cells divide to form more cells called daughter cells.

These daughter cells either become new stem cells (self-renewal) or become specialized cells (differentiation) with a more specific function, such as blood cells, brain cells, heart muscle cells or bone cells. No other cell in the body has the natural ability to generate new cell types.

Researchers and doctors hope stem cell studies can help to:

Generate healthy cells to replace diseased cells (regenerative medicine). Stem cells can be guided into becoming specific cells that can be used to regenerate and repair diseased or damaged tissues in people.

People who might benefit from stem cell therapies include those with spinal cord injuries, type 1 diabetes, Parkinson's disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke, burns, cancer and osteoarthritis.

Stem cells may have the potential to be grown to become new tissue for use in transplant and regenerative medicine. Researchers continue to advance the knowledge on stem cells and their applications in transplant and regenerative medicine.

Test new drugs for safety and effectiveness. Before using investigational drugs in people, researchers can use some types of stem cells to test the drugs for safety and quality. This type of testing will most likely first have a direct impact on drug development first for cardiac toxicity testing.

New areas of study include the effectiveness of using human stem cells that have been programmed into tissue-specific cells to test new drugs. For the testing of new drugs to be accurate, the cells must be programmed to acquire properties of the type of cells targeted by the drug. Techniques to program cells into specific cells continue to be studied.

For instance, nerve cells could be generated to test a new drug for a nerve disease. Tests could show whether the new drug had any effect on the cells and whether the cells were harmed.

Researchers have discovered several sources of stem cells:

Embryonic stem cells. These stem cells come from embryos that are three to five days old. At this stage, an embryo is called a blastocyst and has about 150 cells.

These are pluripotent (ploo-RIP-uh-tunt) stem cells, meaning they can divide into more stem cells or can become any type of cell in the body. This versatility allows embryonic stem cells to be used to regenerate or repair diseased tissue and organs.

Adult stem cells. These stem cells are found in small numbers in most adult tissues, such as bone marrow or fat. Compared with embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells have a more limited ability to give rise to various cells of the body.

Until recently, researchers thought adult stem cells could create only similar types of cells. For instance, researchers thought that stem cells residing in the bone marrow could give rise only to blood cells.

However, emerging evidence suggests that adult stem cells may be able to create various types of cells. For instance, bone marrow stem cells may be able to create bone or heart muscle cells.

This research has led to early-stage clinical trials to test usefulness and safety in people. For example, adult stem cells are currently being tested in people with neurological or heart disease.

Adult cells altered to have properties of embryonic stem cells (induced pluripotent stem cells). Scientists have successfully transformed regular adult cells into stem cells using genetic reprogramming. By altering the genes in the adult cells, researchers can reprogram the cells to act similarly to embryonic stem cells.

This new technique may allow researchers to use reprogrammed cells instead of embryonic stem cells and prevent immune system rejection of the new stem cells. However, scientists don't yet know whether using altered adult cells will cause adverse effects in humans.

Researchers have been able to take regular connective tissue cells and reprogram them to become functional heart cells. In studies, animals with heart failure that were injected with new heart cells experienced improved heart function and survival time.

Perinatal stem cells. Researchers have discovered stem cells in amniotic fluid as well as umbilical cord blood. These stem cells also have the ability to change into specialized cells.

Amniotic fluid fills the sac that surrounds and protects a developing fetus in the uterus. Researchers have identified stem cells in samples of amniotic fluid drawn from pregnant women to test for abnormalities a procedure called amniocentesis.

More study of amniotic fluid stem cells is needed to understand their potential.

Embryonic stem cells are obtained from early-stage embryos a group of cells that forms when a woman's egg is fertilized with a man's sperm in an in vitro fertilization clinic. Because human embryonic stem cells are extracted from human embryos, several questions and issues have been raised about the ethics of embryonic stem cell research.

The National Institutes of Health created guidelines for human stem cell research in 2009. The guidelines define embryonic stem cells and how they may be used in research, and include recommendations for the donation of embryonic stem cells. Also, the guidelines state embryonic stem cells from embryos created by in vitro fertilization can be used only when the embryo is no longer needed.

The embryos being used in embryonic stem cell research come from eggs that were fertilized at in vitro fertilization clinics but never implanted in a woman's uterus. The stem cells are donated with informed consent from donors. The stem cells can live and grow in special solutions in test tubes or petri dishes in laboratories.

Although research into adult stem cells is promising, adult stem cells may not be as versatile and durable as are embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells may not be able to be manipulated to produce all cell types, which limits how adult stem cells can be used to treat diseases.

Adult stem cells also are more likely to contain abnormalities due to environmental hazards, such as toxins, or from errors acquired by the cells during replication. However, researchers have found that adult stem cells are more adaptable than was first thought.

A stem cell line is a group of cells that all descend from a single original stem cell and are grown in a lab. Cells in a stem cell line keep growing but don't differentiate into specialized cells. Ideally, they remain free of genetic defects and continue to create more stem cells. Clusters of cells can be taken from a stem cell line and frozen for storage or shared with other researchers.

Stem cell therapy, also known as regenerative medicine, promotes the repair response of diseased, dysfunctional or injured tissue using stem cells or their derivatives. It is the next chapter in organ transplantation and uses cells instead of donor organs, which are limited in supply.

Researchers grow stem cells in a lab. These stem cells are manipulated to specialize into specific types of cells, such as heart muscle cells, blood cells or nerve cells.

The specialized cells can then be implanted into a person. For example, if the person has heart disease, the cells could be injected into the heart muscle. The healthy transplanted heart muscle cells could then contribute to repairing defective heart muscle.

Researchers have already shown that adult bone marrow cells guided to become heart-like cells can repair heart tissue in people, and more research is ongoing.

Yes. Doctors have performed stem cell transplants, also known as bone marrow transplants. In stem cell transplants, stem cells replace cells damaged by chemotherapy or disease or serve as a way for the donor's immune system to fight some types of cancer and blood-related diseases, such as leukemia, lymphoma, neuroblastoma and multiple myeloma. These transplants use adult stem cells or umbilical cord blood.

Researchers are testing adult stem cells to treat other conditions, including a number of degenerative diseases such as heart failure.

For embryonic stem cells to be useful in people, researchers must be certain that the stem cells will differentiate into the specific cell types desired.

Researchers have discovered ways to direct stem cells to become specific types of cells, such as directing embryonic stem cells to become heart cells. Research is ongoing in this area.

Embryonic stem cells can also grow irregularly or specialize in different cell types spontaneously. Researchers are studying how to control the growth and differentiation of embryonic stem cells.

Embryonic stem cells might also trigger an immune response in which the recipient's body attacks the stem cells as foreign invaders, or the stem cells might simply fail to function normally, with unknown consequences. Researchers continue to study how to avoid these possible complications.

Therapeutic cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer, is a technique to create versatile stem cells independent of fertilized eggs. In this technique, the nucleus, which contains the genetic material, is removed from an unfertilized egg. The nucleus is also removed from the cell of a donor.

This donor nucleus is then injected into the egg, replacing the nucleus that was removed, in a process called nuclear transfer. The egg is allowed to divide and soon forms a blastocyst. This process creates a line of stem cells that is genetically identical to the donor's cells in essence, a clone.

Some researchers believe that stem cells derived from therapeutic cloning may offer benefits over those from fertilized eggs because cloned cells are less likely to be rejected once transplanted back into the donor and may allow researchers to see exactly how a disease develops.

No. Researchers haven't been able to successfully perform therapeutic cloning with humans despite success in a number of other species.

However, in recent studies, researchers have created human pluripotent stem cells by modifying the therapeutic cloning process. Researchers continue to study the potential of therapeutic cloning in people.

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Stem cells: What they are and what they do - Mayo Clinic

Stem Cells Market Analysis Growth Opportunities and Demand Drives by 2016 to 2028 – Jewish Life News

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The report provides insights on opportunities, restraints, drivers, trends, and forecasts up to 2028. As per the over view of the globalStem cells marketthe market was at US$ xx mn in 2019 and is expected grow at a CAGR of xx% over the forecast period 2016 2028. The detailed study of the business of the Stem cells market covers the estimation size of the market in terms of volume and value.

In an attempt to identify the opportunities for growth in the Stem cells market, the industry analysis was geographically divided into significant regions that are progressing faster than the overall market.

Each market player included in the study of Stem cells market is evaluated according to its production footprint, market share, existing and new launches, current R&D projects, and business strategies. Also, the Stem cells market study evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. The report evaluates and explores the progress outlook for the global Stem cells market environment, including sales, production & usage and historical data & forecasting.

For more information, download sample of the premium report:https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/request-sample-60762?utm_source=campaign=Pooja/JN

ThisPress Release will help you to understand the size, growth opportunities with Trends that control the market.

What insights will readers obtain from the report on the Stem cells market?

This report is customized by segment, by sub-segment, by region/country, along with a product specific competitive analysis to meet your specific requirements.

Important objectives of this report are:To estimate the market size for Stem cells market on a regional and global basis, to identify major segments in Stem cells market and evaluate their market shares and demand, to provide a competitive scenario for the Stem cells market with major developments observed by key companies in the historic years, and to evaluate key factors governing the dynamics of the Stem cells market with their potential gravity during the forecast period.

The Key Players mentioned in our report are: BioTime Inc., Cytori Therapeutics, Inc., STEMCELL Technologies Inc., Astellas Pharma Inc., U.S. Stem Cell, Inc., Osiris Therapeutics, Inc., Takara Bio Inc., Caladrius Biosciences, Inc., Cellular Engineering Technologies Inc., BrainStorm Cell Therapeutics Inc.

Get ToC for the overview of the premium report:https://www.quincemarketinsights.com/request-toc-60762?utm_source=campaign=Pooja/JN

Market Segmentation:

By Product:

Adult Stem Cell

Human Embryonic Stem Cell

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell

By Sources:

Autologous

Allogeneic

By Application:

Regenerative Medicine

Drug Discovery & Development

By End-Users:

Therapeutic Companies

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Stem Cells Market Analysis Growth Opportunities and Demand Drives by 2016 to 2028 - Jewish Life News

Blackjack or Pontoon? See Which You Prefer – European Gaming Industry News

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As a standard ingredient in your average casino recipe, blackjack is so popular that it has even spawned copycat games, pontoon being one of them. True fans of the original may not ever feel the need to defect, but theres no harm in being across the variations should you ever feel like branching out you might even find greater success with the alternative. Here are some of the main differences between classic blackjack and its British relative.

Its all in a nameOn a basic level, the lingo is a big part of what sets blackjack and pontoon apart, especially as much of the detail lies in terminology. Although the classic terms of blackjack arent exactly self-explanatory, they have infiltrated popular culture to the point that even novices may be familiar with hitting, standing and doubling down. The language used in pontoon is arguably simpler; for example, to stay with your bet and end your turn is to stick, while adding to your bet and your hand at once is simply called buying a card. In any case, the pursuit of proficiency in either game will likely require a familiarity with the names within the game.

Buying cardsPlacing a bet in blackjack is always a high-stakes move, and while the same is true in pontoon, the difference lies in the option to buy cards. This move essentially involves doubling your bet for the opportunity to take a hit, or twist, and add a card to your hand. Unlike blackjack, pontoon also allows players with hands of more than two cards to buy. Of course, such a move can be quite risky, but it can also pay off well if you begin with a hand of low-value cards and manage to avoid going bust, in which case the extra buy-in can lead to a significantly higher payout.

The five-card trickThe simplicity of blackjack lies in its single-minded goal of reaching 21, a factor which no doubt contributes to it being one of the most popular card games. While this makes pontoon a similar game at its core, the introduction of a five-card trick option, similar to the ultimate poker hand, gives players another possible winning strategy. Failing these options, you can also win the round with a hand of three or four cards totalling 21, or less, if you are the closest. Essentially, if you like the idea of extra opportunities to win, pontoon makes a great alternative to the comparatively risky 21 or bust mentality.

Dealer rulesA majority of casino games are skewed in favour of the house in some way, and pontoon is no exception, piling on several layers of disadvantage. The ultimate disparity comes through in the ruling that if a tie should occur, the dealer will automatically be declared the winner, and this is amplified by the fact that the dealers cards remain hidden until players have made standing bets. This makes it far more difficult to guess at your standing in comparison with the dealer, who is already in a position of fortune.

PayoutThe discussion of financial gains is where things start to get interesting for most players, and it also represents one of the most significant differences between pontoon and blackjack. In the latter case, a natural comprising an ace and a card valued at ten (including all picture cards) is the best you can hope for, and will earn a payout of 3:2, or 150% of your original bet. By comparison, pontoon offers an appealing payout rate of 2:1, or 200%, for a natural hand, with healthy payouts on offer for other winning hands. This is to say that from a financial perspective, pontoon puts players in a relatively strong position, but when you consider that all of that extra opportunity is also afforded to others at the table, it makes for a competitive game.

There will always be some who vehemently believe that theres no beating a classic, and if youre in this camp, the game of pontoon might not be for you. On the other hand, much of the logical understanding and experience you stand to gain through a few tense rounds of blackjack is transferable, and you may even find the new game an easier route to success.

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Blackjack or Pontoon? See Which You Prefer - European Gaming Industry News

Don’t overestimate chances of dealer busting in blackjack – Atlantic City Weekly

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Q: Im a stubborn old coot and I refuse to bust with 16, and I dont really like to hit 15, either. Ive just seen too many busts with 16. I just dont see that Im any worse off waiting to see if the dealer will bust.

A: I think youre overestimating the likelihood of the dealer busting.

With any hard total of 12 or higher, you can bust with a one-card hit. The dealer shows only one card, and you dont know until the second card is turned up whether a one-card hit can bust the dealer. When you make your decision, youre flying partially blind.

When you start with hard 16, you can be busted with a 6, 7, 8, 9 or any of the four 10-value cards. Thats eight of the 13 card denominations, or 61.5%. Its a little better with hard 15. Any card from 7 through the 10 values busts you. Thats seven of 13 denominations, or 53.8%.

Compare those to the dealer bust percentages with anything from 7 through an Ace face up situations in which basic strategy calls for you to hit with hard 12 or higher.

In a six-deck game in which the dealer hits soft 17, dealers starting with a 7 up bust only 26.2% of the time. If youre counting on the dealer busting, youre looking for something that happens barely more than a quarter of the time. It doesnt get any better from there. Starting with 8, dealers bust only 24.4 percent of hands, with 22.9% on 9s. 23.0 percent on 10 values and 20.1% on Aces. Dealers just dont bust often enough make a waiting game worth your while. Stand, and youll lose every time the dealer makes 17 or better, from 73.8% of hands starting with 7s to 79.9% of hands starting with Aces.

You can see that in the average outcomes. Lets just use 10-5 vs. 7 as an example. If you stand, you average 47.6 cents in losses per dollar wagered. If you hit, that drops to 36.9 cents per dollar. Youre not in a great situation when you have a hand that can be busted in one hit vs. a dealer high card. No matter what you do, youll lose more than you win. But accepting the risk of busting and hitting instead of counting on the dealer to bust puts you in a better position to cut losses.

Q: I miss the days when coins dropped into the slot machine trays after you won. I once had a 1,000-quarter jackpot, and I remember how excited I got when the coins were dropping.

A: One of challenges slot manufacturers have faced is finding a way to replace that celebration feel. Part of the reason modern slots are loaded with music, sound effects and special celebration graphics is to provide some of that feel.

As video slots replaced reel slots, operators worried their casinos were getting too quiet. That said, there were downsides to the coin-dropping machines.

Dirty hands from scooping coins was part of the deal. So were empty coin hoppers and waiting for fills.

But yes, coin drops after big wins were a thrill.

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Don't overestimate chances of dealer busting in blackjack - Atlantic City Weekly

US Legal Gambling Ages – How Old Do You Have to Be to Gamble? – BestUSCasinos.org

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To gamble responsibly, a gambler must bear in mind the law.

After all, this isnt the Wild West.

Most jurisdictions mandate that gambling age is a minimum age that a player can legally gamble. This age varies contingent on the specific states laws.

Of course, some areas dont have casinos for you to sit down for a game of blackjack or roulette. Yet, almost every state offers residents some way to play the lottery.

Legal gambling ages also vary around the world. As you may have guessed, there are some countries where gambling is a big no-no regardless of how many trips youve made around the sun.

Usually, the minimum legal gambling age starts at 18 years old. Dont rush out the door just yet, though, youngsters.

Depending on circumstances and state requirements by a gambling commission or applicable laws, these can vary.

What category of gambling a game falls under can also play a determining role in what constitutes a legal age. When you make such distinctions of ages and types of markets, you sometimes see a range of legal gambling ages for each.

As far as casinos go, theres typically a clear distinction between the rules regarding real money online casinos and traditional brick and mortar casinos. Regardless of your gambling endeavor, its imperative that you adhere to any guidelines put down for legal gambling ages.

Failing to follow the laws about gambling ages is a double-edged sword.

First, youll lose whatever money you are wagering.

Secondly, youre going to have some legal troubles.

Neither of which is pleasant. In fact, they both sound horrible.

The above holds true for any form of gambling, but its particularly applicable in casino gambling.

For the world of online casinos, the legal gambling ages can be, at the least, a bit confusing to follow. Online bingo halls, sportsbooks, poker rooms and casinos all have a seemingly endless train of legalities. Several gambling sites seem to set their own minimum age requirements. So, its in their best interest and yours to approach with caution if you think it may pose a problem.

Usually, online casinos will warn you upon entering whether a site is restricted in your area.

Luckily, the rules for land-based casinos are much more transparent. In the United States. The legal gambling age is set state by state. You should keep in mind that different laws apply to tribal casinos and they may have different requirements.

Even types of games like slots and video game machines may have totally different legal gambling ages associated with them.

Besides the numerous rule differences between Indian casinos and those under state or federal jurisdiction, theres another category of different laws.

Casinos on cruise ships and gambling boats have a whole other set of laws to abide to. Most of the time on a cruise ship, the legal gambling age is 18 years old. Thats a full 3 years younger than most United States land-based casinos.

So, essentially youre going to have to be at least 18 years old to legally gamble in the United States. Most casinos in the country are going to require that youre 21 to enter. Of course, theyd prefer to have you in as early as possible.

Our cousin to the great north is pretty similar to us when it comes to legal gambling age. Just like the United States, they have their own grey areas.

Online gambling in Canada is regulated on a federal level. There are many online casinos you can sign up for, too.

Any of the casinos in Canada, brick and mortar or online, are required to obtain a government license before opening the doors.

If youre headed to Manitoba, Alberta, or Quebec you can get in the doors of any casino at 18 years old. Oddly, anywhere else in the country you must be 19 years old.

This follows the same guidelines for drinking. Where the legal age in Manitoba, Alberta and Quebec is 18 and the rest of the country imposes a legal drinking age of 19.

Most European nations have a uniform legal gambling age. Yet, there can be slight variations country to country.

In terms of betting many countries set the legal gambling age at 18 years old. This mirrors the legal gambling ages for lotteries.

Two exceptions being Estonia and Denmark where the gambling age is a mere 16 years old.

Casinos in Europe vary the legal age of customers. Countries like Belgium, Greece, Germany, and Estonia all have a legal casino gambling age of 21. Sweden is a standout at 20 years of age for casino patrons. The other countries have the minimum casino age set at 18 years old.

Countries like Spain and France have recently lowered the legal gambling ages to fall in line with neighboring countries.

Strangely, a few countries have different restrictions. For example, Portugal allows visitors to the country to gamble at 18, while citizens of Portugal must be 21 to gamble.

Malta has a unique situation of their own. Let me be clear, Malta has one of the most outstanding gambling licenses on the planet, provided by the Malta Gaming Authority. In fact, Malta is a hub for many online casinos.

But the legal gambling age in Malta is 18 for tourists. The Maltese residents must be over the age of 25.

The Gambling Commission handles and regulates all gambling in the UK. Everything from the licenses to the vast gambling forms is handled by the GC. The UK has a uniform legal gambling age of 18. This age requirement applies to all bingo halls, casinos, betting shops, racetracks and online gambling. This includes online UK casinos.

The minimum age for lotteries including football (soccer) pools and the National Lottery is only 16 years old. The 16 year old requirement also applies to games like coin pushers, claw grabbers and some low stakes gambling machines.

Australia and New Zealand have a multitude of differences between them. Australia has strict gambling laws.

18 years old is technically the legal gambling age, but not all forms of gambling are legal. The only gambling youre going to enjoy down under is sports betting or lotteries. There are no online casinos or live betting here.

Of course, many of our Aussie mates have found a loophole. You see, there arent any laws prohibiting Aussie citizens from taking advantage of overseas online gambling casinos. So, many Australians simply login to their favorite casino and pass the hours playing real money blackjack with their European friends.

What a time to be alive.

New Zealand has a minimum gambling age of 20 years old. They also have more direct rules about online gambling. Residents of New Zealand are allowed under the current laws to access online casinos from overseas. Yet, if you own one of these companies you are strictly prohibited from advertising your services in New Zealand.

So, its similar to the tobacco companies in the United States. Sure, you can buy their product. They can definitely sell their product. However, you wont see any tobacco commercials on tv or hear them on the radio.

Indias gambling laws are similar to those in the United States. The different Indian states have their own laws and regulations concerning gambling and gambling ages.

Basically, if youre over 21 years old, gambling is legal.

Online gambling has been legalized in 2 states in India one is Sikkim, and the other is Nagaland. This really doesnt matter though, because residents of India dont have any laws expressly banning their play on online casinos that are offshore.

So, again with the savvy gamblers finding loopholes to get in their gaming fix.

Lets face it.

Thats a lot of information, and it can be overwhelming if you try to process it all.

The important aspect is to look at the gambling ages in all of the casinos of the world.

If you are itching to get in the casinos or cant wait to introduce your son or daughter to the wondrous world of casinos, its in your best interest to just check the local laws before you go.

These days, laws are constantly being changed to fit the times, and what is the case today, may well be different in 6 months.

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US Legal Gambling Ages - How Old Do You Have to Be to Gamble? - BestUSCasinos.org

J-turns at Blackjack Road and 31W are operational today – Elizabethtown News Enterprise

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The next phase of the intersection project along U.S. 31W in northern Hardin County takes effect today with a traffic pattern switch at the Blackjack Road intersection.

Work on the traffic switch will begin at 8 a.m. and should be complete by the end of the day.

Motorists crossing 31W from one side of Blackjack Road to the other will have to use the newly installed J-turn.

Traffic moving west on Blackjack Road will turn north on U.S 31W, then take the J-turn in order to move south.

Traffic moving east on Blackjack will turn south on U.S. 31W, then use the J-turn in the median to head north on 31W.

Northbound 31W traffic will use the J-turn north of Blackjack intersection and move south on 31W to access Blackjack Road on the west side. Traffic moving south on 31W will use the J-Turn south of the intersection to access Blackjack Road on the east side.

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J-turns at Blackjack Road and 31W are operational today - Elizabethtown News Enterprise

Promising PA Sports Betting Report Still Not Quite On Par With Neighbor – Legal Sports Report

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PA sports betting handle grew for the second consecutive month despite the third straight full month without major sports,

Handle hit $89 million in June, up 14.8% from May and 93.4% from April. Revenue hit $8 million, good for an 8.9% hold, according to the state report.

June marked one year since the first full month of online sports betting in Pennsylvania. Mobile accounted for just 41.7% of the $46.3 million in total handle from last June. While operators clearly hoped for a higher mobile share a year later, no one could have predicted the 99.2% share last month as casinos started to reopen from the coronavirus pandemic.

And while any growth is good without major sports, Pennsylvanias figures arent growing quite as strongly as one of its neighbors.

New Jersey sports betting has started to turn around much quicker than its western neighbor in Pennsylvania.

NJ handle hit $165 million in June, up 40% from May. And that $117.8 million handle in May is 32.4% more than PA sports betting recorded for June.

Theres likely one big reason why New Jersey is ramping back up quicker than Pennsylvania. And its not just the nearly year-long jump New Jersey had on mobile sports betting.

Its likely the betting that comes from New York City. New Yorkers wagered an estimated $837 million at New Jerseys sportsbooks in 2019, according to Eilers & Krejcik Gaming.

An interesting trend that came out of the coronavirus pandemic was a bump in all iGaming, but especially online poker. Sports bettors tend to gravitate toward table games over slots with favorites including poker and blackjack.

Online poker revenue started to grow in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey in March.But that revenue declined month-over-month for both states in June along with total iGaming revenue for both states.

Total bets for online banked table games, like blackjack and roulette, also took a big hit in Pennsylvania last month. Mays drop hit an all-time high of $778.5 million only to fall 18.3% to $635.7 million in June.

While this likely reflects the reopening of casinos and many other activities, part of those declines can likely be attributed to sports bettors getting back to what they know best.

That trend will be better tracked over the next few months as major sports like the MLB, NBA, NHL, and eventually the NFL in September return.

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Promising PA Sports Betting Report Still Not Quite On Par With Neighbor - Legal Sports Report

Bank of Thailand Enters Third Phase of CBDC Development; Now "Using CBDC with Big Businesses" | News – Bitcoin News

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The Bank of Thailand (BOT) announced Wednesday that is has entered third-phase development of its central bank digital currency (CBDC).

BOT is planning to expand the use of the CBDC among large businesses.

The report by The Nation of Thailand quotes Vachira Arromdee, BOT assistant governor saying the central bank is already using the CBDC for financial transactions with a number of big businesses.

Thailands cement and building material provider, Siam Cement Group (SCG), and fintech firm Digital Ventures Company Limited were selected by BOT to pilot test the payment prototype system.

In June, BOT announced plans to develop a prototype to test real-life business use cases of its CBDC. The prototype builds on the knowledge gained Project Inthanon, a collaborative project between BOT and eight financial institutions.

Next, the BOT will begin using the digital currency for transactions with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority starting in September.

Arromdee explains that BOT is also thinking about expanding use of the cryptocurrency to the general public.

She cautions, however, that any further action can only be pursued after completion of a comprehensive study currently underway. The study seeks to assess the potential impact of digital currencies on the financial system.

Arromdee suggests that the cryptocurrency may have a negative impact on commercial banks by removing the need for a middleman in financial transactions.

On the other hand, it would reduce the cost of financial transactions.

Still, Arromdee expresses optimism as she points to China where public use of digital currency in the form of tokens had not affected the financial system there.

Meanwhile, the Nation Thailand also quotes Thakorn Piyapan, head of the Krungsri Consumer Group, supporting a public rollout of the BOT digital currency.

Piyapan insists the CBDC would promote mobile banking and e-wallets while reducing the cost of printing and using banknotes.

In 2019, BOT announced the completion of the second phase of Project Inthanon. The findings showed that Distributed Ledger Technology or DLT can help enhance the efficiency of bond trading and repurchasing activities.

Do you think the Bank of Thailands CBDC project will achieve its minimum objectives? Tell us what you think in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

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Bank of Thailand Enters Third Phase of CBDC Development; Now "Using CBDC with Big Businesses" | News - Bitcoin News

Why bitcoin fraud is nearly impossible to recover – Fox Business

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FOX Business' Kristina Partsinevelos reports on the 4,000 bitcoin -- about $39 million worth -- being auctioned off that were seized from people who were convicted of a crime.

Funds lost to bitcoinfraud are nearly impossible to recover because of the decentralized, untraceable nature of cryptocurrency exchange.

Cryptocurrency scams are verycommon, and users should be aware that fraudsters will pose as trustworthy investors, charities and other useful resources online totrick people into giving away their crypto funds.

HOW MUCH MONEY WAS STOLEN IN TWITTER HACKS?

The more-than $110,000 that hackers collected on Wednesday after posing as prominent politicians and tech company CEOs, for example, will be "next-to-impossible to recover,"MuneebAli, founder of decentralized computing platform Blockstack, told FOX Business.

Row of physical bitcoin / iStock

"While the movement of bitcoin funds can be traced on the public ledger, it will be next to impossible to recover the funds," Ali said. "The bitcoin blockchain is permissionless, meaning that money can be sent to anyone in a way that cannot be clawed back. It's the digital version of physically reaching into your pocket, taking out cash, and handing it to another person."

TWITTER BITCOIN HACKS: LIST OF AFFECTED ACCOUNTS INCLUDES ELON MUSK, BILL GATES

He added, however, that hackers have limited options when it comes to cashing out because exchanges that trade crypto forcurrencies like dollars or euros are monitoring the situation and will likely freeze the funds if they are moved to the top exchanges.

Additionally, victims of bitcoin fraud can hire support from companies or law firmsthat help people retrieve crypto funds lost to scams, but the sum should be worth the funds needed to hire such experts.

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HEREAli said Wednesday's hacking incident highlights how 'centralized websites and apps are incredibly risky."

"A low-level bitcoin scam is nothing compared to the damage that could have been done by leaking private messages or even tweeting out information to manipulate the stock market or an election etc. This issue highlights a dire need to start transitioning towards a more decentralized version of the web," he said.

READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS BY CLICKING HERE

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Why bitcoin fraud is nearly impossible to recover - Fox Business

Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Technology Market size Reap Excessive Revenues size COVID-19 2022 – Kentucky Journal 24

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Overview:

Cryptocurrencyis a digital currency that utilizes cryptography techniques to make the transactions secure and to limit the creation of additional units of currency. Cryptocurrency is decentralized and there is no third-party/central body/governing body involved in producing new currency, verifying transactions, and protecting the currency supply. The blockchain acts as a ledger that shows the transaction activities between the peers. Cryptocurrency opts as a future revenue stream in the digital finance world. Furthermore, cryptocurrency is not bound by any rules or regulations of any specific government or exchange rates, interest rates, and country to country transaction fee, which makes international transactions faster. The prime drivers of the cryptocurrency market include proper security, authentication and ease of transactions. The Cryptocurrency and Blockchain technology allows the users to send exactly what they want without involvement of third party.Globally, more than 70% of the mobile phone users prefer transactions over their phones, which is one of the major drivers for the cryptocurrency market growth.

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Market Analysis:

The Worldwide Crypto-currency and Blockchain Technology Market is estimated to witness a CAGR of 35.2% during the forecast period 20162022. The crypto-currency market is analyzed based on two segments verticals and regions. The increasing online transaction, less transaction fees, easy and faster transaction, changing consumer and business landscape have led the demand for the market growth.

Regional Analysis:

The regions covered in the report are Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa; along with the analysis of major countries in each region. The Americas is set to be the leading region for the cryptocurrency market growth followed by Europe. The Asia Pacific and MEA are set to be the emerging regions. India is set to be the most attractive destination and in Africa, the popularity and the usage of various cryptocurrencies are expected to increase in the coming years. The MEA market revenue is expected to reach $3.02 billion by 2022. The major countries covered in this report are the US, Canada, Argentina, the UK, Germany, Italy, France, Poland, China, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, GCC Countries, Africa and Others.

Vertical Analysis:

Day-to-day, the consumers demands are changing and they are looking for the best and less time-consuming services to make their life easier. With these changes, the industry players have started moving towards the online business services and are adopting mobile based technology in their business units to reach their customer demands. In the current market scenario, the rise of online transactions has led the demand for the cryptocurrency and blockchain technology market. The major verticals covered are BFSI, retail, media & entertainment, gaming industry, healthcare, travel & tourism, transportation & logistics and education. Globally, the industry players are showing interest towards the blockchain and crypto-currency acceptance and making a partnership and discussing with value chain players in order to understand the benefits of blockchain technology. Additionally, few of the verticals have already started the acceptance of crypto-currencies (e.g. Bitcoin) as a payment option. Especially, the retail industry is set to be the leading vertical after BFSI for the crypto-currencies acceptance and the retail market revenue is expected to reach $10,447.2 million by 2022.

Key Players:

Zebpay, Coinsecure, Coinbase, Bitstamp Ltd., Litecoin, Poloniex Inc., Bitfury Group Limited, Unocoin, Ripple, Bitfinex, Global Area Holding Inc., BTL Group Ltd., Digital Limited, IBM Corp., Microsoft Corp. and other predominate and niche players.

Competitive Analysis:

In the current market scenario, the crypto-currency and blockchain technology market is at a nascent stage. But, a lot of new players are entering the market as it holds huge business opportunities. Especially, new start-ups are coming with new products/services in the market and they are expecting to see a double-digit growth in the upcoming years. In this space, venture funding in this market is expected to grow and collaborations, merger & acquisition activities are expected to continue.

Benefits:

The report provides complete details about the usage and adoption rate of crypto-currency and blockchain technology in various industry verticals and regions. With that, key stakeholders can know about the major trends, drivers, investments, vertical players initiatives, government initiatives towards the crypto-currency market adoption in the upcoming years. In other end, the report provides details about the major challenges that are going to impact on the market growth. Furthermore, the report gives the complete details about the key business opportunities to key stakeholders to expand their business and capture the revenue in the specific verticals. In addition, each vertical provides the key reason for the crypto-currency adoption, key opportunities, and government bodies information. This will help the key stakeholders to analyze before investing or expanding the business in this market.

More Info of ImpactCovid19@https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/9796

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Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Technology Market size Reap Excessive Revenues size COVID-19 2022 - Kentucky Journal 24

Latest Twitter hackers received more than 87000 worth of cryptocurrency – Buzz.ie

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In the latest statement released by Twitter officials in relation to the recent hacking scam, which saw major public profiles requesting Bitcoin donations from their followers, it has been confirmed that around 130 accounts were compromised by the hackers.

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Kanye West were among many other official accounts that requested donations in cryptocurrency.

"Everyone is asking me to give back," a tweet from Mr. Gates' account read, "You send $1,000, I send you back $2,000."

Twitter issued a statement saying it detected "a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.

"We know they used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweets on their behalf.

"Were looking into what other malicious activity they may have conducted or information they may have accessed and will share more here as we have it."

The FBI's San Francisco division is reportedly leading an investigation into the breach of security, with many officials asking for a detailed report on how it happened.

According to RTE, the hackers managed to get their hands on 87,000 worth of cryptocurrency from Twitter users who believed the Tweets to be real.

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Latest Twitter hackers received more than 87000 worth of cryptocurrency - Buzz.ie

Military issues new orders in effort to crackdown on ‘hateful conduct’ – Kamloops This Week

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OTTAWA The Canadian Armed Forces has issued new orders to military personnel as senior commanders seek to address allegations of having been soft on hate in the ranks.

The orders, which aim to take a harder line on "hateful conduct," follow a rash of high-profile incidents in which the military was caught flatfooted as service members were publicly linked to hateful actions or groups.

"The year before, it was more like a reaction kind of approach," acknowledged Maj.-Gen. Marc Gagne, who oversees strategy, plans and policy within the chief of military personnel's office. "We were reacting to cases."

The new direction also comes as the military is actively working to recruit more women, visible minorities and Indigenous people to ensure it reflects Canadian society and is better able to operate in diverse theatres.

The new order aims to leave no doubt about what constitutes "hateful conduct" by banning anything words, images or symbols that encourages, justifies or promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups.

That includes discrimination based on nationality or ethnic background, race, colour, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status or disability.

"We were talking about different forms of misconduct: sexual misconduct, harassment, discrimination," Gagne said. "But 'hateful conduct' was never clearly articulated. ... We broke new ground by developing this definition."

Troops are required to report any and all incidents while military commanders are expected to take action when incidents are brought to their attention. All have been warned that they will be held to account if they do not.

A database has also been created to track such incidents, based on the system created to monitor sexual misconduct in the ranks. New training for troops and screening for recruits is being developed.

"The idea is basically as soon as you join, it's crystal-clear and we're going to keep reinforcing through education and training as you move through the ranks and as you assume more responsibility," Gagne said.

Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, described the new orders and definition as a positive and long overdue step. But he said only time will tell whether the military follows through in addressing hate in the ranks.

"Right now, these are just words," he said. "They are good words ... But too often in the past, when they investigated, it has really only resulted to the best of our knowledge in a slap on the wrist. What we need to see from the Canadian Armed Forces is they take meaningful actions."

The new approach follows a number of incidents in recent years in which the military has been accused of not doing enough to root out hate from the ranks.

Those incidents have ranged from sailors associated with the Proud Boys group disrupting a Mi'kmaq ceremony in Halifax in 2017 to the case of a Manitoba army reservist who was accused of being a recruiter for a neo-Nazi group.

Patrik Mathews is currently in custody in the U.S. with two other men after disappearing from his home in Beausejour. The FBI have accused them of plotting to start a race war on behalf of The Base, a white-supremacist group.

Senior commanders also faced months of questions and criticism after a military intelligence report in 2018 identified 30 service members as belonging to hate groups or having otherwise made discriminatory or racist statements.

The Armed Forces eventually reported in November that 16 of those members had been warned, disciplined or ordered to take counselling but allowed to stay in uniform. A number of other cases were described as "ongoing."

It also comes amid concerns about systemic racism within the military, RCMP and other government institutions.

Chief of defence staff Gen. Jonathan Vance and Defence Department deputy minister Jody Thomas last month apologized for their slow response to questions about systemic racism.

Service members have been told that more detailed policies and orders on systemic racism are coming soon.

Gagne said the new orders are just the first step in a much longer effort to change attitudes within the Armed Forces and ensure the military is leading by example when it comes to hate.

"To change culture, to change group dynamics, to change or modify perceptions and beliefs will take time," he said "But we had to take action. Somebody may think this is a one-off. But those little one-offs could erode the institution."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2020.

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Military issues new orders in effort to crackdown on 'hateful conduct' - Kamloops This Week

Get Ready for the 2020 Election Recount – The Bulwark

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If you thought the 36-day national agony over hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election was bad, imagine what President Trump might do if the 2020 election is too close to call on Election Night. Hes already preparing the script for a remake of the 2000 election with his own authoritarian twist.

By now, its easy to ignore Trumps angry, conspiracy-laced tweets about a rigged election. We shouldnt, though, because it very well could be a preview of whats to come. For example, heres a tweet from last Friday:

Hes right about one thing. Election results are likely to be delayed this year. Coronavirus concerns have prompted states to expand mail-in voting options, and millions of Americans have taken up the offer. Those ballots take much longer to count than in-person votes. When the 2000 election became too close to call, everything came down to a trio of Florida counties where lawyers wrangled over butterfly ballots, miscounts, undervotes, overvotes, hanging chad, swinging chad, tri chad, dimpled chad, and pregnant chad, too. This time, President Trump is already questioning ballots three months before a single vote is cast.

So, go on and get your anti-anxiety meds ready because the stage is set for a democratic crisis far worse than what we lived through in 2000. This time around, Trump has every lever of the federal government at his disposal. Smear merchants and bots will drive social media discussion, not James Baker and Warren Christopher in the courtrooms. Forget the so-called Brooks Brothers riot by a bunch of GOP staffers on a floor of a drab bureaucratic building in Miami. This time around, the Proud Boys and Antifa will be warring in the streets. Do you feel the walls closing in yet?

Good. All the better to prepare.

The 2020 stage is a tinderbox compared to 2000. As of today, over 138,000 Americans have died from COVID-19. The commander-in-chief Republican candidate is egging on his base in speeches and tweets depicting his opponents as radical left mobsters hell-bent on destroying the country. Pro-gun activists have swarmed state capitols to protest pandemic lockdowns. Mass protests and violence have broken out in cities across America in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. To top it all off, President Trump deployed soldiers to gas peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. And for what? A freaking photo op.

Even if one took Trumps thuggery out of the question, the 2020 election would look different from normal elections, given the widespread use of mail-in ballots. In 2016, nearly a quarter of Americas votes were cast by mail. This year, some observers have estimated that as much as half of the electorate will vote by mail in November. Certainly the rate of voting by mail shot up during the primaries.

Despite Trumps criticisms of vote-by-mail efforts, Democrats are pushing them to great success.

In Florida, a state where Trump only beat Clinton by just 112,911 votes49 to 48 percentto notch 29 electoral votes, Democrats currently have a 400,000-voter advantage over Republicans when it comes to vote-by-mail enrollment ahead of the states August primary.

Dont look now, but the president is already questioning the results from Pennsylvania, another state where the number of mail-in ballots skyrocketed and Trump won by a slim 44,292 vote margin (48 to 47 percent) in 2016.

During the Keystone States primary, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf expanded vote-by-mail options to allow no-excuse absentee voting. As a result, 1.5 million people voted by mail last month. Thats 17 times the number of voters (about 84,000) who voted absentee in 2016.

The Trump campaign, along with the Republican National Committee and four Republican members of Congress representing western Pennsylvania districts, filed a lawsuit arguing that ballots dropped off at collection sites, rather than sent through the post office or delivered by hand to county elections offices, should be disqualified. The lawsuit stated that the Pennsylvania system gives fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.

The primary lesson of the 2000 presidential contest is that campaigns dont necessarily end on Election Night.

Say what you want about Al Gores pathetic scattershot search for more votes after the news networks blew their calls on Election Night. Bush could have rested on his laurels as the declared winner. He secured his victory because his team didnt stop their campaign after the ballots were cast. The Bush campaigns three-pronged efforts to mount a full-fledged political, legal, and persuasion offensive is why he became president. The final Supreme Court decision was only the climax.

If put in a similar position to fight for the presidency, its safe to predict that Trump would act far more aggressively than either Bush or Gore ever dreamed.

One of the more memorable aspects of the 2000 recount was the Brooks Brothers riot where the Bush campaign flew GOP staffers to protest the recount proceedings in Miami-Dade County, Florida. At issue was whether there would be a new standard for counting undervotes, and local officials sought to take discussions to an upper floor of the building, where the protesters would not be able to observe. At that point, the Republicans erupted and followed them up. Crammed into the smaller space, unable to see what was happening, they got angry. They yelled that Democrats were stealing the election. They banged doors. They roughed up a Democratic staffer in possession of a sample ballot.

And it worked. Hours later, the officials surrendered. Canvassing board chairman Lawrence King Jr., a circuit court judge, said that when the board agreed to count votes, It became evidently clear that we were in a different situation . . . than we were this morning when we made that decision. . . . A radically different situation.

Whether one agrees with the recount or not, its stunning to consider that a mild protest was all it took for protesters to shut it down in Miami.

Rory Cooper, a GOP staffer who participated in the so-called riot, said to watch out for flashpoints where lawyers and protesters can descend, as they did in Miami-Dade. There are going to be performative acts on each side to show who is winning and losing, he told me. Like everything with Trump, though, it would be far more jarring. He predicted mini earthquakes every day, rather than the ongoing rumble of a recount.

But could things actually turn violent this time?

For answers on that, I spoke to Rachel Brown, the founder and director of Over Zero, a non-profit dedicated to preventing identity-based violence and other forms of group-based harm, who studies how communication can increase or decrease the chances of violence. She said that with the type of rhetoric we see around this election, we need to be proactive about preventing violenceboth pre-election and post-election. When it comes to post-election violence, she said, there will be a results waiting period and it will be important to see how politicians handle themselves and how this period is discussed in the media.

Do they question the results in broad, big terms or specific complaints that can be remedied? Brown said. There will be real grievances if there are procedural challenges, and its important that those issues are addressed through proper legal channels quickly. For this to work, there has to be lots of communicationabout what has happened and how it gets resolved.

Media needs to be educated on state-by-state procedures and have the knowledge about how to manage expectations and help people be patient through such a new process, Brown cautioned. Be aware of any preemptive declarations the election is illegitimate, preemptive declarations of victory, and any excessive use of state forcefor example, if peaceful protesters are met with force. And the propensity for violence can rise, she added, when voters feel like the stakes are zero sum.

Uh-oh. That sounds exactly like President Trump and his supporters.

If you are feeling masochistic, imagine how Trump will act if hes in a position to question the results on Election Night, whether he be trying to close a tight gap or disqualify votes and maintain a lead. Governor George Bush would have never tweeted: The lyin fake news tried to steal the election from me and then Democrats invented a HOAX about uncounted ballots. I WON. SHUT DOWN THE FRAUD. But, President Trump sure would.

And just think of what else he could do.

If he was ahead would he find a way, through mass revolt and state intervention to stop counting the mailed-in ballots he told us were rigged all along? Might an allied Republican governor confiscate them and plunge them into circular files never to be seen? If Trump is down, could he convince Republican state legislators to preemptively certify him the winner, even in defiance of a Democratic governor, to notch Electoral College votes? Would President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy active duty military to help them do it?

Given the possible scenarios, a contentious Supreme Court ruling may be the least of our worries.

The 2020 election is our countrys last, best hope to stop President Trump. Still, there are no guarantees if he contests the outcome. Those who wish to defeat Trump need to make it a blowout. This election cant be too close to call.

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Get Ready for the 2020 Election Recount - The Bulwark

CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pantheism

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(From Greek pan, all; theos, god).

The view according to which God and the world are one. The name pantheist was introduced by John Toland (1670-1722) in his "Socinianism truly Stated" (1705), while pantheism was first used by his opponent Fay in "Defensio Religionis" (1709). Toland published his "Pantheisticon" in 1732. The doctrine itself goes back to the early Indian philosophy; it appears during the course of history in a great variety of forms, and it enters into or draws support from so many other systems that, as Professor Flint says ("Antitheistic Theories", 334), "there is probably no pure pantheism". Taken in the strictest sense, i.e. as identifying God and the world, Pantheism is simply Atheism. In any of its forms it involves Monism, but the latter is not necessarily pantheistic. Emanationism may easily take on a pantheistic meaning and as pointed out in the Encyclical "Pascendi dominici gregis", the same is true of the modern doctrine of immanence.

These agree in the fundamental doctrine that beneath the apparent diversity and multiplicity of things in the universe there is one only being absolutely necessary, eternal, and infinite. Two questions then arise: What is the nature of this being? How are the manifold appearances to be explained? The principal answers are incorporated in such different earlier systems as Brahminism, Stoicism, Neo-Platonism, and Gnosticism, and in the later systems of Scotus Eriugena and Giordano Bruno.

Spinoza's pantheism was realistic: the one being of the world had an objective character. But the systems that developed during the nineteenth century went to the extreme of idealism. They are properly grouped under the designation of "transcendental pantheism", as their starting-point is found in Kant's critical philosophy. Kant had distinguished in knowledge the matter which comes through sensation from the outer world, and the forms, which are purely subjective and yet are the more important factors. Furthermore, he had declared that we know the appearances (phenomena) of things but not the things-in-themselves (noumena). And he had made the ideas of the soul, the world, and God merely immanent, so that any attempt to demonstrate their objective value must end in contradiction. This subjectivism paved the way for the pantheistic theories of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.

Fichte set back into the mind all the elements of knowledge, i.e. matter as well as form; phenomena and indeed the whole of reality are products of the thinking Ego-not the individual mind but the absolute or universal self-consciousness. Through the three-fold process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, the Ego posits the non-Ego not only theoretically but also for practical purposes, i.e. for effort and struggle which are necessary in order to attain the highest good. In the same way the Ego, free in itself, posits other free agents by whose existence its own freedom is limited. Hence the law of right and all morality; but hence also the Divine being. The living, active moral order of the world, says Fichte, is itself God, we need no other God, and can conceive of no other. The idea of God as a distinct substance is impossible and contradictory. Such, at any rate, is the earlier form of his doctrine, though in his later theorizing he emphasizes more and more the concepts of the Absolute as embracing all individuals within itself.

According to Schelling, the Absolute is the "identity of all differences"-object and subject, nature and mind, the real order and the ideal; and the knowledge of this identity is obtained by an intellectual intuition which, abstracting from every individual thinker and every possible object of thought, contemplates the absolute reason. Out of this original unity all things evolve in opposite directions: nature as the negative pole, mind or spirit as the positive pole of a vast magnet, the universe. Within this totality each thing, like the particle of a magnet, has its nature or form determined according as it manifests subjectivity or objectivity in greater degree. History is but the gradual self-revelation of the Absolute; when its final period will come to pass we know not; but when it does come, then God will be.

The system of Hegel has been called "logical pantheism", as it is constructed on the "dialectical" method; and "panlogismus", since it describes the entire world-process as the evolution of the Idea. Starting from the most abstract of notions, i.e. pure being, the Absolute develops first the various categories; then it externalizes itself, and Nature is the result; finally it returns upon itself, regains unity and self-consciousness, becomes the individual spirit of man. The Absolute, therefore, is Mind; but it attains its fulness only by a process of evolution or "becoming", the stages of which form the history of the universe.

These idealistic constructions were followed by a reaction due largely to the development of the natural sciences. But these in turn offer, apparently, new support to the central positions of pantheism, or at any rate they point, it is claimed, to that very unity and that gradual unfolding which pantheism has all along asserted. The principle of the conservation of energy through ceaseless transformations, and the doctrine of evolution applied to all things and all phenomena, are readily interpreted by the pantheist in favour of his own system. Even where the ultimate reality is said to be unknowable as in Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic Philosophy", it is still one and the same being that manifests itself alike in evolving matter and in the consciousness that evolves out of lower material forms. Nor is it surprising that some writers should see in pantheism the final outcome of all speculation and the definitive expression which the human mind has found for the totality of things.

This statement, in fact, may well serve as a summary of the pantheistic doctrine:

The Church has repeatedly condemned the errors of pantheism. Among the propositions censured in the Syllabus of Pius IX is that which declares: "There is no supreme, all-wise and all-provident Divine Being distinct from the universe; God is one with nature and therefore subject to change; He becomes God in man and the world; all things are God and have His substance; God is identical with the world, spirit with matter, necessity with freedom, truth with falsity, good with evil, justice with injustice" (Denzinger-Bannwart, "Ench.", 1701). And the Vatican Council anathematizes those who assert that the substance or essence of God and of all things is one and the same, or that all things evolve from God's essence (ibid., 1803 sqq.).

To our perception the world presents a multitude of beings each of which has qualities activities, and existence of its own, each is an individual thing. Radical differences mark off living things from those that are lifeless; the conscious from the unconscious human thought and volition from the activities of lower animals. And among human beings each personality appears as a self, which cannot by any effort become completely one with other selves. On the other hand, any adequate account of the world other than downright materialism includes the concept of some original Being which, whether it be called First Cause, or Absolute, or God, is in its nature and existence really distinct from the world. Only such a Being can satisfy the demands of human thought, either as the source of the moral order or as the object of religious worship. If, then, pantheism not only merges the separate existences of the world in one existence, but also identifies this one with the Divine Being, some cogent reason or motive must be alleged in justification of such a procedure. Pantheists indeed bring forward various arguments in support of their several positions, and in reply to criticism aimed at the details of their system; but what lies back of their reasoning and what has prompted the construction of all pantheistic theories, both old and new, is the craving for unity. The mind, they insist, cannot accept dualism or pluralism as the final account of reality. By an irresistible tendency, it seeks to substitute for the apparent multiplicity and diversity of things a unitary ground or source, and, once this is determined, to explain all things as somehow derived though not really separated from it.

That such is in fact the ideal of many philosophers cannot be denied; nor is it needful to challenge the statement that reason does aim at unification on some basis or other. But this very aim and all endeavours in view of it must likewise be kept within reasonable bounds: a theoretical unity obtained at too great a sacrifice is no unity at all, but merely an abstraction that quickly falls to pieces. Hence for an estimate of pantheism two questions must be considered:

It has often been claimed that pantheism by teaching us to see God in everything gives us an exalted idea of His wisdom, goodness, and power, while it imparts to the visible world a deeper meaning. In point of fact, however, it makes void the attributes which belong essentially to the Divine nature For the pantheist God is not a personal Being. He is not an intelligent Cause of the world, designing, creating and governing it in accordance with the free determination of His wisdom. If consciousness is ascribed to Him as the one Substance, extension is also said to be His attribute (Spinoza), or He attains to self-consciousness only through a process of evolution (Hegel). But this very process implies that God is not from eternity perfect: He is forever changing, advancing from one degree of perfection to another, and helpless to determine in what direction the advance shall take place. Indeed, there is no warrant for saying that He "advances" or becomes more "perfect"; at most we can say that He, or rather It, is constantly passing into other forms. Thus God is not only impersonal, but also changeable and finite-which is equivalent to saying that He is not God.

It is true that some pantheists, such as Paulsen, while frankly denying the personality of God, pretend to exalt His being by asserting that He is "supra-personal." If this means that God in Himself is infinitely beyond any idea that we can form of Him, the statement is correct; but if it means that our idea of Him is radically false and not merely inadequate, that consequently we have no right to speak of infinite intelligence and will, the statement is simply a makeshift which pantheism borrows from agnosticism Even then the term "supra-personal" is not consistently applied to what Paulsen calls the All-One; for this, if at all related to personality, should be described as infra-personal.

Once the Divine personality is removed, it is evidently a misnomer to speak of God as just or holy, or in any sense a moral Being. Since God, in the pantheistic view, acts out of sheer necessity--that is, cannot act otherwise--His action is no more good than it is evil. To say, with Fichte, that God is the moral order, is an open contradiction; no such order exists where nothing is free, nor could God, a non-moral Being, have established a moral order either for Himself or for other beings. If, on the other hand, it be maintained that the moral order does exist, that it is postulated by our human judgments, the plight of pantheism is no better; for in that case all the actions of men, their crimes as well as their good deeds, must be imputed to God. Thus the Divine Being not only loses the attribute of absolute holiness, but even falls below the level of those men in whom moral goodness triumphs over evil.

No such claim, however, can be made in behalf of the moral order by a consistent pantheist. For him, human personality is a mere illusion: what we call the individual man is only one of the countless fragments that make up the Divine Being; and since the All is impersonal no single part of it can validly claim personality. Futhermore, since each human action is inevitably determined, the consciousness of freedom is simply another illusion, due, as Spinoza says, to our ignorance of the causes that compel us to act. Hence our ideas of what "ought to be" are purely subjective, and our concept of a moral order, with its distinctions of right and wrong, has no foundation in reality. The so-called "dictates of conscience" are doubtless interesting phenomena of mind which the psychologist may investigate and explain, but they have no binding force whatever; they are just as illusory as the ideas of virtue and duty, of injustice to the fellow-man and of sin against God. But again, since these dictates, like all our ideas, are produced in us by God, it follows that He is the source of our illusions regarding morality a consequence which certainly does not enhance His holiness or His knowledge.

It is not, however, clear that the term illusion is justified; for this supposes a distinction between truth and error-a distinction which has no meaning for the genuine pantheist; all our judgments being the utterance of the One that thinks in us, it is impossible to discriminate the true from the false. He who rejects pantheism is no further from the truth than he who defends it; each but expresses a thought of the Absolute whose large tolerance harbours all contradictions. Logically, too, it would follow that no heed should be taken as to veracity of statement, since all statements are equally warranted. The pantheist who is careful to speak in accordance with his thought simply refrains from putting his philosophy into practice. But it is none the less significant that Spinoza's chief work was his "Ethics", and that, according to one modern view, ethics has only to describe what men do, not to prescribe what they ought to do.

In forming its conception of God, pantheism eliminates every characteristic that religion presupposes. An impersonal being, whatever attributes it may have, cannot be an object of worship. An infinite substance or a self-evolving energy may excite fear but it repels faith and love. Even the beneficent forms of its manifestation call forth no gratitude, since these result from it by a rigorous necessity. For the same reason, prayer of any sort is useless, atonement is vain and merit impossible. The supernatural of course disappears entirely when God and the world are identified.

Recent advocates of pantheism have sought to obviate these difficulties and to show that, apart from particular dogmas, the religious life and spirit are safeguarded in their theory. But in this attempt they divest religion of its essentials, reducing it to mere feeling. Not action, they allege, but humility and trustfulness constitute religion. This, however is an arbitrary procedure; by the same method it could be shown that religion is nothing more than existing or breathing. The pantheist quite overlooks the fact that religion means obedience to Divine law; and of this obedience there can be no question in a system which denies the freedom of man's will. According to pantheism there is just as little "rational service" in the so-called religious life as there is in the behaviour of any physical agent. And if men still distinguish between actions that are religious and those that are not, the distinction is but another illusion.

Belief in a future life is not only an incentive to effort and a source of encouragement; for the Christian at least it implies a sanction of Divine law, a prospect of retribution. But this sanction is of no meaning or efficacy unless the soul survive as an individual. If, as pantheism teaches, immortality is absorption into the being of God, it can matter little what sort of life one leads here. There is no ground for discriminating between the lot of the righteous and that of the wicked, when all alike are merged in the Absolute. And if by some further process of evolution such a discrimination should come to pass, it can signify nothing, either as reward or as punishment, once personal consciousness has ceased. That perfect union with God which pantheism seems to promise, is no powerful inspiration to right living when one considers how far from holy must be a God who continually takes up into Himself the worst of humanity along with the best--if indeed one may continue to think in terms that involve a distinction between evil and good.

It is therefore quite plain that in endeavouring to unify all things, pantheism sacrifices too much. If God, freedom, morality and religion must all be reduced to the One and its inevitable processes, there arises the question whether the craving for unity may not be the source of illusions more fatal than any of those which pantheism claims to dispel. But in fact no such unification is attained. The pantheist uses his power of abstraction to set aside all differences, and then declares that the differences are not really there. Yet even for him they seem to be there, and so from the very outset he is dealing with appearance and reality; and these two he never fuses into one. He simply hurries on to assert that the reality is Divine and that all the apparent things are manifestations of the infinite, but he does not explain why each manifestation should be finite or why the various manifestations should be interpreted in so many different and conflicting ways by human minds, each of which is a part of one and the same God. He makes the Absolute pass onward from unconsciousness to consciousness but does not show why there should be these two stages in evolution, or why evolution, which certainly means becoming "other", should take place at all.

It might be noted, too, that pantheism fails to unify subject and object, and that in spite of its efforts the world of existence remains distinct from the world of thought. But such objections have little weight with the thorough-going pantheist who follows Hegel, and is willing for the sake of "unity" to declare that Being and Nothing are identical.

There is nevertheless a fundamental unity which Christian philosophy has always recognized, and which has God for its centre. Not as the universal being, nor as the formal constituent principle of things, but as their efficient cause operating in and through each, and as the final cause for which things exist, God in a very true sense is the source of all thought and reality (see St. Thomas, "Contra Gentes", I). His omnipresence and action, far from eliminating secondary causes, preserve each in the natural order of its efficiency-physical agents under the determination of physical law and human personality in the exercise of intelligence and freedom. the foundation of the moral order. The straining after unity in the pantheistic sense is without warrant, the only intelligible unity is that which God himself has established, a unity of purpose which is manifest alike in the processes of the material universe and in the free volition of man, and which moves on to its fulfilment in the union of the created spirit with the infinite Person, the author of the moral order and the object of religious worship.

APA citation. Pace, E. (1911). Pantheism. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447b.htm

MLA citation. Pace, Edward. "Pantheism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. <http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11447b.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Tomas Hancil.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. February 1, 1911. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., Censor. Imprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York.

Contact information. The editor of New Advent is Kevin Knight. My email address is webmaster at newadvent.org. Regrettably, I can't reply to every letter, but I greatly appreciate your feedback especially notifications about typographical errors and inappropriate ads.

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Pantheism

Fordham sanctions student over posts about David Dorn, Second Amendment, and Tiananmen Square – Washington Examiner

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A student at Fordham University has been sanctioned by the school for a series of social media posts supporting conservative causes that university officials say violated its code of conduct.

Austin Tong, a senior, received a letter on Tuesday relaying the result of a student conduct hearing regarding two Instagram posts he made in recent weeks.

One of the posts shows Tong holding a rifle with a caption that read, "Don't tread on me." The other is a photo of retired St. Louis Police Capt. David Dorn, a veteran of the force killed during rioting in the city following the death of George Floyd. The caption on the post about Dorn read, "Ya'll are hypocrites."

In the post with the rifle, Tong included the hashtag: #198965, a reference to the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

In its judgment, Fordham said Tong violated two areas of the student conduct policy that he agreed to when he enrolled at the school, which prohibit threats, intimidation, and "bias and/or hate crimes."

Dean of Students Keith Eldredge admonished Tong for his posts, writing: It is reported that on June 3 and 4 and in the recent past you made several posts on social media related to the current racial issues in the country and political issues in China.

Tong was informed that as part of the sanctions leveled against him, he would not be permitted to represent the university in an official extracurricular capacity, and his access to on-campus facilities will be restricted, meaning he will need to take classes online. He will also be required to have meetings with university administration and pen a letter of apology.

For too long, students have simply accepted being silenced by their schools and leftist mobs, Tong told Young America's Foundation. I think this says that students of all backgrounds and beliefs need to rally together to protect everyones right to speak, because it will only get worse if we remain indifferent.

Tong told the organization he will consider taking legal action against the school if it doesn't rescind the sanctions.

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Fordham sanctions student over posts about David Dorn, Second Amendment, and Tiananmen Square - Washington Examiner

Page A2 | E-Edition – The Times and Democrat

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PATRICK SEMANSKY, ASSOCIATED PRESS

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaksduring a discussion on the 100th anniversary of the ratification ofthe 19th Amendment on Feb. 10 at Georgetown University Law Centerin Washington.

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have tried to make it clear: Given the chance, they would push through a Supreme Court nominee should a vacancy occur before Election Day.

The issue has taken on new immediacy with the disclosure Friday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is receiving chemotherapy for a recurrence of cancer after four earlier bouts with the disease. The 87-year-old liberal, who apologized in 2016 for her pointed public criticism of Trump during his first campaign, says she has no plans to retire.

The development has focused even more on what's at stake this election, with the winner in position to help shape the trajectory of the court for years to come.

Trump administration officials have underscored that Trump would not hesitate to fill an opening before voters have their say Nov. 3, less than four months away, on whether to give him a second term.

Four years ago, also in a presidential election year, the GOP-controlled Senate refused to vote when President Barack Obama, a Democrat, nominated Merrick Garland, a federal judge, to succeed Justice Antonin Scalia after his death in February. Nine months before that year's election, McConnell said voters should determine who would nominate the person to fill that seat.

Fast forward to this past week. Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, told reporters: I cant imagine that if he had a vacancy on the Supreme Court that he would not very quickly make the appointment and look for the Senate to take quick action."

Meadows spoke shortly after the court said Ginsburg was briefly hospitalized, but before the justice announced she had a recurrence of cancer and has been treated with chemotherapy since May 19.

Ginsburg is the oldest justice, followed by Stephen Breyer, 81, Clarence Thomas, 72, and Samuel Alito, 70.

Trump sees his efforts at reshaping the judiciary as a signature achievement of his presidency. Last month he marked his 200th judicial appointment. Earlier in his term, he won confirmation of Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the high court.

The president has sought to remind fellow Republicans that should he win a second term, he would have the chance to push the Supreme Court and lower courts further to the right.

Last month, after the court rejected his administrations attempt to end an Obama-era program that provided legal protections to roughly 650,000 immigrants illegally brought to the United States as children, Trump said more needed to be done to push the court to the right.

He said he would release a "new list of Conservative Supreme Court Justice nominees" by Sept. 1. "Based on decisions being rendered now, this list is more important than ever before (Second Amendment, Right to Life, Religous Liberty, etc.) VOTE 2020!" he tweeted.

Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law school professor, said Republicans have shown no consistency between their refusal to give Garland a hearing and their insistence it would be proper to move forward on a vacancy during the waning days of a potentially lame-duck presidency.

Tobias said Trump and Republicans are calculating that playing up their commitment to adding another conservative justice is such an attractive pitch to base voters that its worth risking being labeled hypocrites by their opponents.

Leading Republicans, including the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, now say its OK to consider an election-year appointment when the Senate and the White House are held by the same party.

McConnell was even more blunt. Yeah, wed fill it, he said in a February interview.

At least one key Republican has expressed reservations.

In 2018, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley said that if he were still the committee chairman in 2020 and there were a Supreme Court vacancy, he would not take up the nomination. But Grassley, who now heads the Senate Finance Committee, said if there were a different chairman that person would have to make the call.

Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who is facing reelection, told Iowas PBS station on Friday that she would support taking up a Trump nominee in November or December after the 2020 election and before the start of the next Senate session.

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