Major police presence in Sealand as part of commercial drugs bust – Cheshire Live

Posted on by

A major police presence was spotted on a busy North Wales road this morning as a part of a series of drug raids.

Warrants were executed at rural premises on Deeside Lane in Sealand this morning (July 13) and equipment and chemicals were seized in connection with the commercial production of illegal drugs.

The raids, which were also conducted in Liverpool, are part of an international law enforcement operation including the National Crime Agency (NCA) and the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit (NWROCU) and North Wales Police.

Detective Inspector Lee Boycott of the North Wales Police Serious and Organised Crime Unit said: "This mornings events have seen a large number of officers, numerous partner agencies from the North Wales Region and Merseyside come together to investigate suspected illicit drugs production and trafficking activities.

"Enquiries are continuing at various locations, and I would urge anyone with information relating to drugs dealing in their community to contact us or alternatively speak to CrimeStoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111."

Under code name Op Venetic - officers from the NCA and other agencies across the UK have been assessing and interpreting intelligence gained when law enforcement partners in France and Holland took down a bespoke encrypted global communication service used exclusively by criminals to carry out their business.

With more than 60,000 users overseas and 10,000 in the UK, EncroChat is a secure mobile phone instant messaging service which is used by criminals to coordinate and plan the distribution of illicit commodities, money laundering and plots to kill rival criminals. keeping a close eye on the criminals involved.

Op Venetic has seen entire organised crime groups taken down as a result of the intelligence and nationally 746 arrests have been made and 54m criminal cash, 77 firearms and more than two tonnes of drugs seized.

More:

Major police presence in Sealand as part of commercial drugs bust - Cheshire Live

Military Simulation and Training Market Size, Analysis by Top Leading Player and Forecast Till 2026| Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L-3…

Posted on by

Los Angeles, United State: The global Military Simulation and Training market report offers fine intelligence that prepares market players to compete well against their toughest competitors on the basis of growth, sales, and other vital factors. The research study lays emphasis on key growth opportunities and market trends apart from critical market dynamics including market drivers and challenges. With the help of this report, interested parties can equip themselves to adapt according to the changes in the Military Simulation and Training industry and secure a strong market position for years to come. The report provides market development statistics, a list of select leading players, deep regional analysis, and a broad market segmentation study to give a complete understanding of the global Military Simulation and Training market.

Get Full PDF Sample Copy of Report: (Including Full TOC, List of Tables & Figures, Chart) https://www.qyresearch.com/sample-form/form/1968574/global-military-simulation-and-training-market

The report presents a detailed analysis of the competitive landscape along with company profiling of key players competing in the global Military Simulation and Training market. The authors of the report make it a point to provide readers with a complete evaluation of the vendor landscape and inform them about current and future changes therein. The competitive analysis offered in the report includes market share, gross margin, product portfolio, consumption, market status, and technologies of leading players operating in the global Military Simulation and Training market.

Key Players Mentioned in the Global Military Simulation and Training Market Research Report: Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L-3 Communications Holdings, Thales, Rockwell Collins, The Raytheon, Meggitt, Saab, Rheinmetall, Cubic

Global Military Simulation and Training Market by Type: Live Training, Virtual Training, Constructive Training, Gaming Simulation Training

Global Military Simulation and Training Market by Application: Air, Sea, Land

The global Military Simulation and Training market is segmented on the basis of type of product, application, and region. The analysts authoring the report provide a meticulous evaluation of all of the segments included in the report. The segments are studied keeping in view their market share, revenue, market growth rate, and other vital factors. The segmentation study equips interested parties to identify high-growth portions of the global Military Simulation and Training market and understand how the leading segments could grow during the forecast period.

The report gives a broad explanation about the presence of the Military Simulation and Training market in different regions and countries. With an extensive regional analysis of the Military Simulation and Training market, the research analysts make an attempt to unveil hidden growth prospects available for players in different parts of the world. They accurately estimate market share, CAGR, production, consumption, price, revenue, and other crucial factors that indicate the growth of regional markets studied in the report. They also shed light on the presence of prominent players in regional markets, and how it is making a difference in the growth of the regional markets.

How can the research study help your business?

(1) The information presented in the Military Simulation and Training report helps your decision makers to become prudent and make the best business choices.

(2) The report enables you to see the future of the global Military Simulation and Training market and accordingly take decisions that will be in the best interest of your business.

(3) It offers you a forward-looking perspective of the global Military Simulation and Training market drivers and how you can secure significant market gains in the near future.

(4) It provides SWOT analysis of the global Military Simulation and Training market along with useful graphics and detailed statistics providing quick information about the markets overall progress throughout the forecast period.

(5) It also assesses the changing competitive dynamics of the global Military Simulation and Training market using pin-point evaluation.

Request for customization in Report: https://www.qyresearch.com/customize-request/form/1968574/global-military-simulation-and-training-market

Table of Contents

About Us:

QY Research established in 2007, focus on custom research, management consulting, IPO consulting, industry chain research, data base and seminar services. The company owned a large basic data base (such as National Bureau of statistics database, Customs import and export database, Industry Association Database etc), experts resources (included energy automotive chemical medical ICT consumer goods etc.

More here:

Military Simulation and Training Market Size, Analysis by Top Leading Player and Forecast Till 2026| Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, L-3...

Statues vs. systemic change: How much of a difference does tearing down monuments really make? – The Boston Globe

Posted on by

Activists, scholars, and artists at the forefront of the anti-racist movement said that symbols can be an easy out for powerful institutions still resistant to undoing systemic inequalities. But taken as a whole, they said, the growing collection of fallen symbols is a sign of true progress, an early victory in what will be a long fight for fundamental change.

If we are going to dismantle structural racism, if we are going to address the atrocities of slavery and genocide, if we are going to engage in a process of decolonization, the statues have to come down, said artist and activist Bree Newsome Bass, who in 2015 scaled a flagpole on the South Carolina State House grounds and took down the Confederate flag. I think that sometimes symbolic change is the first step, but it shouldnt be the last step.

A remarkable array of powerful institutions once resistant to calls for change have taken these first steps in recent weeks. The Washington NFL team is changing its long-criticized mascot. Mississippi is redesigning its Confederate emblem-emblazoned state flag; Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, is removing statues of Confederate generals. Quaker Oats retired the Aunt Jemima brand. And in cities across the country and even the world statues and site names enshrining slavers and colonial settlers have been taken down, and public art declaring that Black lives matter has gone up.

The national phenomenon has not passed over Massachusetts. Bostons art commission voted to take down the Emancipation Memorial, which depicts Abraham Lincoln towering over a kneeling formerly enslaved man, and the city is weighing whether to permanently remove a statue of Christopher Columbus. The state Senate is considering replacing the Massachusetts seal and flag, which shows the disembodied arm of colonist Myles Standish wielding a sword over Wampanoag leader Massasoit, and prohibiting use of Native American images as mascots in public high schools. Community artists collaborated with the city of Boston to paint a Black Lives Matter street mural in Nubian Square. An activist group has renewed its calls for renaming Faneuil Hall.

Monica Cannon-Grant, the founder of Violence in Boston and the organizer behind some of the citys largest anti-racism protests, said she is concerned that momentum will stop there. My frustration is when white people use [symbolic change] against us. They say, We let you write Black Lives Matter in the street, and were like, Yeah, we asked for systemic change.

Still, Cannon-Grant and others voice support for the artists writing Black Lives Matter in the street and activists advocating for the removal of problematic statues. In a rapidly-changing public landscape, they said, symbols shape how we see the world and reflect who holds power in it.

I think that symbolic change is real change of sorts because of the importance of the stories we tell ourselves about personhood, nationhood, and citizenship, said Tomiko Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a professor of law and history at Harvard.

Some symbols are so noxious they perpetrate a type of violence: Confederate flags hearkening back to treason and chattel slavery still flying over state houses, for example.

While these kinds of questions might seem at once kind of cosmetic, theyre also telling us something about history and whos valued where, said poet Kevin Young, director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

That deeper cultural significance is what gives symbolic change its power. And, so does action backing it up.

Its not just saying Black lives matter but showing how they do. Supporting artists, supporting change, putting their money where their mouth is I think thats the thing that reveals commitment, Young added. And I think commitment is more important than sincerity.

The difference between cosmetic and authentic change may depend on where its coming from, said Christy Coleman, a public historian and executive director of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation.

A healthy skepticism may be in order, Coleman warned, when powerful institutions voluntarily dispense with a logo or historic site name, sometimes as a diversion. Traditional power sources will rarely give that up, or theyll give just enough to say were making progress without really doing the heavy-duty work, she said. In real movements, in real change, it is a ground-up swell.

Many of the cities that have made symbolic gestures in support of Black activists and communities in recent weeks have also declined to cut police budgets as drastically as activists had hoped Boston included. At the national level, little progress has been made so far on sweeping policy reforms that would bring criminal justice, economic, health, and educational systems in line with protesters demands.

Brown-Nagin said this is a sign that communities and institutions must be attentive to what comes next: What changes in everyday practices and policies will follow?

It is a question Raul Fernandez, a Brookline select board member and associate dean for equity, diversity, and inclusion at Boston Universitys Wheelock College, said he posed to his fellow elected officials when they decided to raise a Black Lives Matter banner. You have to understand that that is a commitment. Its also an invitation to the community to hold you accountable, he said.

In Boston, said City Councilwoman Julia Mejia, next steps should include reviewing who is given power in the city through appointments to boards and commissions, and making historic sites such as Faneuil Hall engines of economic empowerment for people of color.

Were at a point where we need to do what is hard, Mejia said. That is what these times require: to go beyond symbols and statues to repair the harm.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley agreed: If we are going to paint Black Lives Matter murals on the street, that declaration must also be reflected in our city budgets.

Pressley said immediate steps must include economic relief as well as educational and social services for those hit by COVID-19 within the context of structural racism; in the longer term, she is proposing sweeping criminal justice reform legislation endorsed by the Movement for Black Lives.

Seeing such changes through, activists and scholars agreed, will require constituents to hold their leaders feet to the fire.

Newsome Bass noted that it took five years for the effort to remove Confederate and colonialist symbols to gain real traction. She also warned activists to be vigilant against institutions that co-opt the language of the movement without making real change.

You just have to keep pushing, she said. These mayors are patting themselves on the back for Black Lives Matter murals, but their police officers are still brutalizing people.

For Dart Adams, 44, who was born and raised in Roxbury, questions of statuary and progress quite literally hit close to home. Adams now lives just minutes away from Park Square, where the Emancipation Memorial stands awaiting removal on an avenue named for Christopher Columbus.

He sees a parallel for the current moment in the story of another generation of Black Bostonians, the enslaved and free people who fought for and won emancipation eight decades before Lincolns national proclamation.

For 10 straight years, they fought through the legal system and petitioned and protested until they got more and more wins, he said. Until they achieved what was once unthinkable, and in 1783 slavery in Massachusetts was abolished.

Dasia Moore can be reached at dasia.moore@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @daijmoore

See the article here:

Statues vs. systemic change: How much of a difference does tearing down monuments really make? - The Boston Globe

Start-Up Nation Central teams up with Inter-American Development Bank to promote Latin American partnerships – CTech

Posted on by

Start-Up Nation Central (SNC) announced on Thursday a new partnership with ConnectAmericas, a social network created by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to boost tech relations between Israel, Latin America and the Caribbean.

ConnectAmericas, which was developed with the support of Google, DHL, Sealand, Facebook, and Mastercard, is an online business platform that helps small and medium-sized enterprises from Latin America and the Caribbean internationalize their business by providing them with access to communities of clients, suppliers and investors in the region and around the world.

"The Israeli tech and innovation sector is receiving substantial attention from around the world in general, and especially during the global pandemic. Our partnership with IDB plays a major role in connecting the ecosystems, allowing us to identify Israeli partners to jointly develop and adapt solutions to the challenges faced by Latin America and the Caribbean," said Eugene Kandel, CEO of Start-Up Nation Central, a Tel Aviv-based non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the Israeli tech sector. "We are honored to collaborate with the IDB Group, one of the leading development banks in the world, which helps its constituent countries overcome todays most pressing challenges.

SNC and IDB have created profiles for more than 5,000 Israeli companies on the ConnectAmericas platform. The accounts are verified by Start-Up Nation Central and 200 of them are managed directly by startup representatives. As part of the collaboration, SNC provides support services and manages the introductions and interactions between the companies signed through the partnership.

The IDB Lab, the groups innovation lab, will provide the sandbox to pilot selected solutions addressing the challenges of Covid-19, in order to scale the successful ones through the groups operations. The partnerships will be announced during the Outsource2LAC Virtual Week 2020, which is being held through July 22.

"Covid-19 will accelerate the shift to digital, and reshape the business landscape. Latin America and the Caribbean must be part of the digital future," said Ana Mara Rodrguez, Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge at IDB. "The alignment of public and private strategies is, without doubt, a necessary condition for success. For this reason, we will continue to forge high-value partnerships at both regional and multilateral levels. Our sustained and fruitful work with Start-Up Nation Central is one great example of this."

Originally posted here:

Start-Up Nation Central teams up with Inter-American Development Bank to promote Latin American partnerships - CTech

AG Rosenblum: Feds operating with no transparency – KOIN.com

Posted on by

A breakdown of the lawsuit against federal agencies over their protest response

by: Sheridan Kowta, KOIN 6 News Staff

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed a lawsuit Friday against federal law enforcement agencies over the tactics they have used at protests while deployed in Portland, which includes allegedly seizing and detaining protesters without probable cause. On Sunday, she spoke with KOIN 6 News about the demands of the lawsuit and how she believes federal officers are escalating the violence.

I think every American needs to be concerned about whats happening here in Portland. These federal agencies are operating with no transparency and against the will of just about every leader in our state, Rosenblum said. We took a look at this because things seemed, by Friday morning, not to be improving.

Part of the lawsuit includes a request for declarations that the tactics used by federal agents are in violation of both the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment.

We are asking that there be a declaration that their conduct, that their tactics are in violation of the First Amendment: peoples rights to protest, peoples rights to be on the streets, to be declaring their opposition to police brutality, to racial injustices, said Rosenblum. And so, that is what is known as a prior restraint on a persons right to conduct themselves publicly in this manner under the First Amendment.

Rosenblum referenced unreasonable seizures in instances where people were allegedly grabbed off the street and put in unmarked rental carsa story first published by Oregon Public Broadcasting.

These are not people who are being found to be engaging in illegal conduct at the time that they are grabbed. In fact, one young man was just simply walking home after the protestMr. Pettibone, whose affidavit is included in our complaint that we filed, said Rosenblum.

She said the lawsuit specifically asks for a ruling from the court that permanently restrains federal officers from engaging in these tactics and requires them to do three things:

Not to arrest individuals without probable cause or a warrant; identifying themselves and their agency before detaining or arresting anyone; explaining to any person detained or arrested that the person is being detained or arrested and the basis for the action, Rosenblum said.

This is a very straight-forward lawsuit, she said.

It was filed Friday night, and her office also plans to file a motion for a temporary restraining order in the coming days.

We believe strongly that the deployment of federal law enforcement in Portland has nothing to do with public safety and in fact, is actually escalating the dangerous situation here in our town and we wanted to do something to try to help, said Rosenblum.

Follow KOIN 6 for the latest news and weather

Originally posted here:

AG Rosenblum: Feds operating with no transparency - KOIN.com

Letter to the editor: What next for Black Lives Matter? – The Topeka Capital-Journal

Posted on by

FridayJul17,2020at1:00PM

Tactical maneuvers such as Defunding the Police (which primarily means moving some money that goes toward law enforcement to investing in social programs to help disadvantaged and marginalized communities that are most heavily policed, thus removing the need for such heavy policing) is a good first step.

Removing statues and other symbols of oppression is also an important step, when done in ways that dont result in backlash.

But what about the criminal justice system? What about Supreme Court decisions that have effectively gutted Fourth Amendment protections or Fourteenth Amendment guarantees for young men of color? What about the devils bargain between the war on drugs and the private prison industry that imprisons young men, burdens them with debt once they are released, makes it difficult for them to find jobs, and disenfranchises them?

What is needed is a comprehensive strategy that addresses all of these concerns. I am sure there are national experts and leaders who are working on such a comprehensive approach and who could be brought to Topeka to help educate us on what we can do locally.

The extent to which young people have recently been galvanized to address racism is one of the most positive things Ive seen in years. It would be nice if student groups at Washburn University and more established community organizations, such as Topeka Center for Peace and Justice, could be brought together.

Our younger generations have the energy, and other established organizations in Topeka and Shawnee County have the experience that if combined could have a positive and lasting impact on our community.

Duane Johnson, Topeka

See the rest here:

Letter to the editor: What next for Black Lives Matter? - The Topeka Capital-Journal

Why Are Columbus Officers Rarely Indicted? Grand Jury Instructions Raise The Bar – WOSU

Posted on by

A grand jury last year indicted former Columbus Police Vice officer Andrew Mitchell on charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter for killing Donna Castleberry. It was first time in two decades that a Franklin County grand jury voted to indict an officer for fatally shooting a civilian.

Mitchell's case was also the first successful police-shooting indictment during the 24-year tenure of Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O'Brien, who's tasked with considering all cases of Columbus officers using lethal force against a civilian.

Whenever a grand jury decides whether to press charges, OBrien says the bar is high.

You cant look back with 20/20 hindsight about what the officer should have done, when they had a split second to make that decision, he says. And certainly thats broader than the normal self-defense.

That bar is raised even higher by the instructions given to a grand jury immediately before they decide whether to indict an officerinstructions not provided when the accused is a civilian.

According to a three-page document read by the administrative judge, The Fourth Amendment does not require police officers to wait until a suspect shoots to confirm that a serious threat of harm exists.

Benefit Of The Doubt

Those grand jury instructions come from two U.S. Supreme Court cases and one local Ohio case.

InTennessee vs. Garner(1985), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an officer may use deadly force to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect. InGraham vs. Connor(1989), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an "objective reasonableness" standard must apply to any civilian claim of excessive force by police.

And inState vs. White(2015), the Ohio Supreme Court ruled thatfirearm specificationis not applicable to an on-duty police officer acting within the course and scope of law enforcement.

According to the last portion of the grand jury instructions, officers need not be absolutely sure [of] the suspect's intent to cause them harmthe Constitution does not require that certitude precede the act of self-protection. Rather, it is the perceived threat of attack by a suspect, apart from the actual attack, to which the officer may respond preemptively.

During recent police cases, the person charged with reading those words to grand juries is Administrative Judge Stephen McIntosh.

Fortunately or unfortunately, generally if someone in law enforcement is indicating that they were somehow placed in fear based on the circumstances that were presented, that jurors be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, McIntosh says.

Grand juries deliberating shooting cases that do not involve officers do not receive similar instructions.

In an email from the Franklin County Prosecutors office, a spokesperson explained, According to Ohio Revised Code Chapter 2939, both the testimony of witnesses and legal instructions in a grand jury proceeding are secret.

"They Are Protected At Every Step"

Tammy Fournier Alsaada, a longtime activist with the Peoples Justice Project, argues that benefit of the doubt goes too far. During recent cases, she says the process protected officers from facing consequences for killing civilians.

Ive been in the process," Alsaada says. "You dont think I went with Henry Green and Tyree King and Jaron Thomas family? I know that process inside and out. And I know they are protected at every step and every decision point.

Henry Green, 23, was fatally shot by Columbus Police officers Zachary Rosen and Jason Bare, both of whom were wearing plainclothes, in June 2016. In September of the same year, Columbus officer Bryan Mason fatally shot 13-year-oldTyre King, who was carrying a BB gun, while investigating a robbery.

In 2017,Jaron Thomas, a 36-year-old with schizophrenia, died in Columbus Police custody after a cocaine-induced hallucination prompted him to call police for help.

Alsadda says the nature of these hearings tilt toward officers, and the families and attorneys of victims don't get a fair shot.

Sean Walton represented all three of those families, Alsaada says. Did they get an opportunity for Sean to go in that room? Did they get an opportunity for full representation? No. I watched a whole FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] walk in the room and defend Rosen and Officer Bare on Henry Green.

During grand jury proceedings, Walton says the prosecutor and their witnesses the only people allowed in the room, other than the jury members. Meanwhile, Walton stands in the hallways with families while the case is being decided.

We have no information about the grand jury process, Walton says. Were pretty much there for moral support.

In the cases of King and Green, Franklin County grand juries declined to indict the officers involved, saying the use of deadly forces were reasonable. O'Brien's office did not present Thomas' case to a grand jury after the county coroner ruled the death wasaccidental.

Considering Other Charges

OBrien contends that officers killing civilians is not the same as a civilian killing someone in self-defense.

They do provide the officer a broad authority to use force, up until and including deadly force, and do provide protection, if thats the right word, for the officer in the use of force, OBrien says.

McIntosh adds that murder is not the only option for grand juries in police cases. He says it's crucial that grand juries are aware of all possible charges in a particular case.

One of the things I always instruct the grand jurors at their orientation as well as these, that theyre to ask the prosecutor for every possible charge that can be filed, because sometimes it does not fit neatly into a murder charge, McIntosh says.

In 2016, McIntosh chaired a task force that sought to bring about grand jury reforms in Ohio.

One critique of the traditional grand jury does, however, expose a potential downside of secrecy: losing public confidence in the process, states the report overview. Not knowing what information is presented to a grand jury can lead to speculation which may or may not be well-founded.

For years, the Peoples Justice Project and other activists havecalledfor police shooting cases to be taken away from OBrien and given to anindependent investigator. This June, Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther issued anexecutive orderthat requires all cases of police fatal use-of-force and deaths in police custody to be referred to the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

WOSU reached out to the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 9 for comment but did not hear back.

Continue reading here:

Why Are Columbus Officers Rarely Indicted? Grand Jury Instructions Raise The Bar - WOSU

Coronavirus Live News and Updates – The New York Times

Posted on by

As the science on masks effectiveness mounts, so does the U.S. debate on mandates.

As caseloads surge in many states, especially in the West and South, the debate over mask mandates continues, though evidence of their benefits has mounted substantially in recent months.

President Trump, who first wore a mask in public on July 11, said in a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace broadcast on Sunday that he was a believer in masks, but that he would not support a nationwide mask mandate: I leave it up to the governors.

The consistent message from the White House that virus restrictions be made at the local level has led to a patchwork of policies. More than half the states have issued mask requirements, but with many Americans feeling that mask orders impinge on individual freedom, some governors are holding out.

The issue dominated talk shows on Sunday.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes for Health, called the politicization of face coverings bizarre in an interview on the NBC program Meet the Press. Our best chance is for all of us to get together and do the right thing, and stop fighting so much about the divide between different political perspectives, which is just getting in the way, Dr. Collins said.

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado defended his decision to issue a statewide mask mandate that took effect Friday. New cases have been rising for a month, nearing the tallies during the peak of Colorados crisis in April, though deaths remain far lower. Mr. Polis, a Democrat, said on the ABC program This Week that it was a really easy decision after he saw data suggesting that local mask orders in his state were tied to lower case numbers.

Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi said that he would not issue a statewide mask order, even though cases and hospitalizations were soaring. If I believed that was the best way to save lives in my state, I would have done it a long time ago, Mr. Reeves, a Republican, said on the CNN program State of the Union. He said he preferred a surgical approach, with precautions varying county by county.

In Georgia, the Republican governor, Brian Kemp, has sued the Democratic mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, over virus policies in Atlanta that include a mask order. On the CBS program Face the Nation, she called the lawsuit a blame game.

On the ABC program This Week, Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican, said he would not support a national mandate, though he issued a state ordinance on Thursday. He said he had waited because a mask mandate was not popular in his state. Arkansas has been averaging more than 660 cases daily, which is near the states peak level, according to a New York Times database.

Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio, a Republican, said on Meet the Press that his state was heading in the wrong direction and that he would not rule out a mask order. While single-day tallies for new cases in Ohio averaged around 400 a month ago, they peaked on Friday, with 1,679 cases.

Representative Donna E. Shalala of Florida, a Democrat who was formerly the nations longest-serving Secretary of Health and Human Services, called on her states Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, to issue mask and stay-at-home orders. State health officials on Sunday reported more than 10,000 new cases for the fifth consecutive day. We need to close down in Florida, Ms. Shalala said on This Week. Weve asked the governor to do that. Weve even asked him to do the simplest thing: That is to require masks for everyone.

Despairing over President Trumps failure to contain the pandemic and his refusal to promote clear public-health guidelines, prominent figures in the Republican Party have broken with the White House in recent days on how to respond to the virus.

Some, concluding that the president may never play a constructive role in addressing the crisis, have decided that they must work around him, ignoring or even contradicting his pronouncements.

Republican leaders have split with Mr. Trump over issues like the value of wearing a mask in public and of heeding the advice of health experts like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, whom the president and some aides have subjected to caustic personal criticism.

They appear to be spurred by several overlapping forces, including deteriorating conditions in their states, the presidents seeming indifference to the problem, and the approach of a presidential election in which Mr. Trump is badly lagging his presumed Democratic challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr., in the polls.

Republican governors are now issuing orders that run counter to Mr. Trumps demands. Some have been holding late-night phone calls among themselves to trade ideas and grievances; they have sought out partners in the administration, including Vice President Mike Pence, who, despite echoing Mr. Trump in public, is seen by governors as being far more attentive to the disaster.

The president got bored with it, David Carney, an adviser to the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, a Republican, said of the pandemic. His boss instead directs his requests to Mr. Pence, with whom he speaks two to three times a week, Mr. Carney said.

Government health workers sent out to care for Indigenous people in Brazil appear to have been spreading the virus among them instead.

More than 1,000 nurses and doctors with a health service known as Sesai, have tested positive for the virus as of early July. In at least six field offices, The New York Times found, the share of infected workers was above the Amazon regions average of 8 percent.

The health workers were dispatched with neither adequate protective equipment nor access to enough tests. Their high infection rates suggests that there were failures in the protection of health care workers at a critical moment, affecting teams that care for a highly vulnerable population, said Felipe Tavares of the Federal Fluminense University.

More than 15,500 Indigenous Brazilians have been confirmed infected, including at least 10,889 living in protected territories, according to Instituto Socioambiental, a Brazilian nonprofit.

It is not possible to determine with certainty how many cases were introduced by health care workers. Some Indigenous people may have brought the virus into their communities after traveling to cities for supplies and emergency government aid. Illegal miners and loggers may also have exposed some communities.

In a statement, Sesai said reports that health workers had exposed Indigenous people to the virus were inconclusive. It said its employees were outfitted with protective equipment. All this planning and early research led to timely and efficient care that was delivered in villages, the statement said.

Several Sesai workers who spoke to The Times on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation, described an exceptionally challenging mission marked by poor guidance, mistrust from many Indigenous communities and a scarcity of tests.

Enoque Taurepang, the coordinator of the Indigenous Council of Roraima, said doctors and nurses had been set up for failure. You cant blame health professionals, because they didnt have the tools necessary to act, he said.

The leader of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam, said Sunday that the city had recorded more than 100 new cases in the past 24 hours, the most since the pandemic took hold in late January. The situation is very serious and there is no sign of it coming under control, Ms. Lam said. Hong Kong suspended nonessential government services and told most civil servants to work from home from this week.

Turkey has suspended flights to Iran and Afghanistan in response to infections in those countries, its Transport Ministry said. President Hassan Rouhani of Iran said on Saturday that some 25 million Iranians may have been infected, and Iran reimposed restrictions in the capital and elsewhere. The figure, from a report Mr. Rouhani cited in a televised speech, was far higher than Saturdays official figure for infections of 271,606.

Face coverings will be required in Melbourne, Australias second-largest city, whenever people leave home, officials there said on Sunday, citing a recent increase in cases. The requirement will take effect on Wednesday. Violations could result in a fine of 200 Australian dollars, or roughly $140.

Chinese officials are battling a growing outbreak in the far western Xinjiang region, the center of the countrys broad crackdown on predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities. Thirty confirmed infections have been reported in its capital, Urumqi, since Thursday, 13 of them on Sunday; there are an additional 41 asymptomatic infections.

European Union leaders held a third day of acrimonious negotiations on Sunday, but there was no sign that a deal was imminent on a stimulus package involving more than 750 billion euros, or $840 billion. Most E.U. countries are keen to see the plan move ahead, but some, mostly from the wealthier northern part of Europe, are loathe to allow the money to make up for what they see as southern Europeans failure to adequately protect their economies.

With English hospitals operating at pandemic-reduced capacity, nearly four million people are on the National Health Service waiting list for routine hospital treatments that have been disrupted as hospitals have been forced to suspend services in favor of treating coronavirus cases. The waiting list could soar to 10 million people by the end of the year, according to the N.H.S. Confederation, which represents hospitals and other health care providers, though the service rejects that estimate.

The Bahamas, one of the places where Americans could still travel, will now bar commercial flights or vessels from the United States, the countrys prime minister announced on Sunday. The government-owned airline, Bahamasair, will also cease flights to the U.S. effective immediately, said the prime minister, Hubert Minnis. The ban does not include commercial flights to Canada, the United Kingdom, the European Union, or private international flights, he said.

As demand for coronavirus testing surges around the nation, laboratories that process samples have backlogs that have left anxious patients waiting days and sometimes a week or more for their results.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, acknowledged the dangers associated with such delays in an interview on the NBC program Meet the Press.

The average test delay is too long, Dr. Collins said. That really undercuts the value of the testing, because you do the testing to find out whos carrying the virus, and then quickly get them isolated so they dont spread it around. And its very hard to make that work when theres a long delay built in.

On the CBS program Face the Nation, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said that once testing is delayed more than 48 hours, it becomes not very useful.

The longer it takes for people to determine whether theyve been infected, Dr. Gottlieb said, the more difficult it will be to curb the spread of disease and drive new-case numbers down.

To speed turnaround times, Dr. Collins said, health officials are pushing for more point-of-care testing on the spot assays designed to be done rapidly and easily without the need for specialized laboratory equipment or highly trained personnel.

Some of these tests could be completed in a doctors office, or perhaps even at home, in less than an hour. Simple, speedy tests could be a boon for institutions and communities that care for large numbers of vulnerable people, like nursing homes. A handful of point-of-care tests have been approved for emergency use by the F.D.A.

We need to invest a lot of money, and the government is willing to do so, in scaling those up, Dr. Collins said. Thats the kind of thing that I personally, along with many others in other parts of the government, are working on night and day to try to do a better job of.

As companies across China rush to produce personal protective equipment amid the pandemic, a New York Times visual investigation has found that some of them are using Uighur labor through a contentious government-sponsored program that experts say often puts people to work against their will.

Uighurs are a largely Muslim ethnic minority primarily from the Xinjiang region of northwest China. The government promotes the labor transfer program, which sends Uighurs and other ethnic minorities into factory and service jobs, as a way to reduce poverty, but quotas on the number of workers put into the labor program and the penalties faced by those who refuse to cooperate mean that participation is often coerced.

Now, that labor is part of the P.P.E. supply chain.

According to Chinas National Medical Products Administration, only four companies in Xinjiang produced medical grade protective equipment before the pandemic. As of June 30, that number was 51. After reviewing state media reports and public records, The Times found that at least 17 of those companies participate in the labor transfer program.

The companies produce equipment primarily for domestic use, but The Times identified several other companies outside Xinjiang that use Uighur labor and export globally. We traced a shipment of face masks to a medical supply company in the U.S. state of Georgia from a factory in Chinas Hubei Province, where more than 100 Uighur workers had been sent. The workers are required to learn Mandarin and pledge their loyalty to China at weekly flag-raising ceremonies.

Watch the full visual investigation in the video above.

Mayor Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles said that the coronavirus was spreading in the city to the point where a new stay-at-home order would have to be issued.

Were on the brink of that, he said on the CNN program State of the Union on Sunday.

He declined to be more specific about the timing or scope of a new order, except to say, We have to be surgical, rather than a cleaver that would just shut everything down.

He said he agreed that earlier restrictions had been relaxed too quickly. Mayors often have no control over what reopens up and doesnt, he said. Thats either at a state or county level.

But he added, Its not just about whats open and closed, but its also about what we do individually.

Los Angeles County has recorded more than 153,000 cases so far, and the spread of the virus has been quickening across Southern California. Cases have gone up, but we also have the most aggressive testing, the mayor. We were the first city to offer tests to people without symptoms.

In other news around the country:

Congressional leaders are puzzling over how to safely and appropriately honor Representative John Lewis of Georgia, an icon of the civil rights movement who died on Friday. Congress has honored more than 40 people by allowing their remains to lie in state under the Capitol dome, and many believe that such an honor would be fitting for Mr. Lewis. But the Capitol is closed to tourists and those allowed inside are encouraged to stay six feet apart.

The Defense Department sent Navy teams to help support four medical centers in South and Southwest Texas as the virus surges there, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas announced on Sunday. The teams were dispatched to Harlingen, Del Rio, Eagle Pass and Rio Grande City. The state has recorded 71,779 new cases in the last week, bringing its total case load to over 330,000, with nearly 4,000 deaths.

Officials in Louisiana reported 3,116 new cases today, exceeding the previous single-day record of 2,728 new cases, which were reported on April 2. The state did not provide any update yesterday, which is a likely explanation for todays spike.

Despite the N.F.L. having outlined return dates for in-person training in a memo sent to teams last Friday, the N.F.L. Players Association still has not agreed with the league on key safety issues, prompting some of footballs biggest names to voice their concerns on social media. If the NFL doesnt do their part to keep players healthy there is no football in 2020, Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback, wrote on Twitter on Sunday. Its that simple. Get it done.

The Canadian government said it would not allow the Toronto Blue Jays to stage home games. The team had hoped to play at Rogers Centre beginning on July 29, as part of Major League Baseballs plan to use all 30 of its teams ballparks for a shortened 60-game season, with a number of precautions including having no fans in the stands. But on Saturday, Canadas immigration minister said repeated cross-border travel by players and staff members posed a health risk. The team will play its regular-season home games in the United States instead, most likely at its AAA minor-league affiliates stadium in Buffalo.

Coronavirus cases in Tennessee have been rising sharply since late June, especially in and around Memphis and Nashville, where county officials are reporting hundreds of new cases a day. Both cities have been trying to tamp down outbreaks by reintroducing some restrictions, but they have run into resistance from restaurant and bar owners in the bustling nightlife districts.

Across the country, crowded night spots have been cited as especially problematic settings in a pandemic, where masks just get in the way and social distancing is the opposite of what the patrons are there for. But owners have bridled at being singled out for shutdowns.

In Davidson County, which includes Nashville, four bars sued the city after bars were ordered to close through the end of July, while restaurants were allowed to stay open at 50 percent capacity.

Nashvilles mayor, John Cooper, acknowledged that the citys restrictions would be difficult to enforce in a population that probably does include disease deniers. And he said there was only so much Nashville could do when surrounding counties had much laxer restrictions.

In Shelby County, which includes Memphis, bars and limited service restaurants were ordered to close earlier this month while others were allowed to stay open. That sparked a fight with owners who say the limited service distinction applied to establishments that get less than 50 percent of their revenue from food is arbitrary and pointless. A hearing in the case is set for Monday.

The plaintiffs say the closure rule simply pushes patrons from some restaurants to others without any appreciable public health benefit.

The lead plaintiff, Jeannette Comans, who owns the Blind Bear cocktail bar, said she had just rehired and trained enough employees to be almost fully staffed including adding people at the door to check patrons temperatures and remind them about mask rules when the new closure order was issued.

They left me with no choice but to sue, she said of health officials. I still have to pay rent, I still have to pay business insurance. My poor employees daily are like, What do we do? And Im like, I dont know.

President Trump called Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, an alarmist who provided faulty information in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

His remarks, in an interview with Fox News that aired Sunday, were the latest public criticism from a White House that appears to be mounting a coordinated effort to discredit Dr. Fauci, on the record and off, and in presidential tweets. Administration officials deny doing so.

I dont know that hes a leaker, Mr. Trump said during the interview with Chris Wallace Hes a little bit of an alarmist. Thats OK. A little bit of an alarmist.

Mr. Trump said that Dr. Fauci had been against his decision to close the borders to travelers from China in January. That is not true: While Dr. Fauci was initially opposed to the idea on the grounds that a ban would prevent medical professionals from traveling to hard-hit areas, he supported the decision by the time it was made.

Mr. Trump also said that Dr. Fauci had been against Americans wearing masks. Dr. Fauci has said that he does not regret urging Americans not to wear masks in the early days of the pandemic, referencing a severe shortage of protective gear for medical professionals.

Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, was asked on the NBC program Meet the Press whether anyone at the White House had asked him to demote or fire Dr. Fauci, whose agency is under Dr. Collinss supervision. Nobody has asked me to do that and I find that concept unimaginable, Dr. Collins said.

In the hourlong interview on Fox, Mr. Trump, whose administration made crucial missteps in handling the virus earlier this year, made several false claims on the governments response to the pandemic.

Mr. Trump falsely claimed that the coronavirus rate in other countries was lower than in the United States because those nations did not engage in testing. When Mr. Wallace pointed out the lower case rate across the European Union, the president replied, its possible that they dont test. When Mr. Wallace pointed out the increasing death rate in the United States, Mr. Trump replied, Its all too much. It shouldnt be one case. It came from China. They should have never let it escape.

Mr. Trump said that he doubted whether Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the director of the C.D.C., was correct in predicting that the pandemic would be worse this fall. I dont know, Mr. Trump said. And I dont think he knows.

He said that public health experts and the World Health Organization got a lot wrong in the early days of the pandemic, including a theory that the virus would abate as the weather warmed, and then reiterated his earlier claim, unsupported by science, that the virus would suddenly cease one day. Its going to disappear and Ill be right, Mr. Trump said. Because Ive been right probably more than anybody else.

Mr. Trump threatened to pull federal funding from schools if they did not open soon. When Mr. Wallace pointed out that only a small portion of funding from the federal government goes to schools and is mostly used to support disadvantaged and disabled children the president replied, Let the schools open.

Mr. Biden, who has been critical of Mr. Trumps handling of the outbreak, said in a statement on Sunday: In the middle of a pandemic that continues to worsen on his watch, President Trump is trying to keep money away from the public health measures that we know will keep us and our families safe. He even went on to attack the value of testing again in the same interview, perpetuating a terrible monthslong streak.

Mr. President, your ignorance isnt a virtue or a sign of your strength, Mr. Biden said. Its undercutting our response to this unprecedented crisis at every turn and its costing Americans their jobs and their lives.

Were all spending more time outdoors. Heres a few tips to take your tired backyard, stoop or balcony into a true escape.

Reporting was contributed by Sarah Almukhtar, Manuela Andreoni, Ken Belson, Luke Broadwater, Alexander Burns, Letcia Casado, Emily Cochrane, Melina Delkic, Maggie Haberman, Rebecca Halleck, Drew Jordan, Christoph Koettl, Ernesto Londoo, Jonathan Martin, Tiffany May, Raphael Minder, Elizabeth Preston, Roni Caryn Rabin, Natalie Reneau, Katie Rogers, Mitch Smith, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, Lucy Tompkins, Pranshu Verma, Haley Willis, Katherine Wu, Muyi Xiao, Ceylan Yeginsu and Karen Zraick.

Read the original here:

Coronavirus Live News and Updates - The New York Times

Can You Get Covid-19 Coronavirus Twice? Here Is An Update On Reinfection – Forbes

Posted on by

Sweden's controversial "herd immunity" strategy depends heavily on the hope that infection with the ... [+] Covid-19 coronavirus will confer long lasting immunity. Here people stand in line and interact without social distancing outside a restaurant on July 17, 2020 in Gotland, Sweden. Sweden largely avoided imposing strict lockdown rules on its citizens as the coronavirus (COVID-19) arrived earlier this year. Consequently, it has recorded thousands more deaths than other Scandinavian countries, putting its per capita death rate higher than that of the United States. (Photo by Martin von Krogh/Getty Images)

Can you or cant you? That is the big, big question.

Researchers have been trying to figure out whether you can get infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus more than once. After all, who wants a sequel to a bad experience, like watching Grown Ups 2 after the movie Grown Ups? Plus, the answer to this question can help address so many other things such as whether its safe to return to regular activities, how effective a vaccine may be, and how long this stinking pandemic may last.

So whats the answer now? Well, as with Kanye Wests run for the Presidency, things are not yet completely clear. In fact, they can seem downright confusing. However, some recently published scientific studies have offered some more pieces of evidence.

For example, there are the Rhesus pieces from a study published in the journalScience. This study involved deliberately infecting a set of Rhesus macaques with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) and then seeing if they could get deliberately infected again. Macaque rhymes with hacky sack, Monterrey Jack, and Nordic Track and is a species of monkey. This species has a lot of similarities with humans, except for perhaps the whole eating-termites-and-beetles thing and the expose-your-genitals-when-threatened thing. Well, the latter two at least arent similarities with most humans.

Rhesus macaque monkeys have many similarities to humans physiologically. (Photo by Frank ... [+] Bienewald/LightRocket via Getty Images)

For the study, a research team from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, led by Chuan Qin, intratracheally challengedsix macaques with the SARS-CoV-2. Now if anyone tells you that they want to intratracheally challengeyou with a virus (or anything else like doughnuts for that matter), keep in mind what this would mean. This basically entails sticking a tube down your throat into your trachea and then placing the virus there. Its a way of making sure that you get infected.

The research team then confirmed that the macaques got sick from the virus. This included testing them up the wazoo, literally. They regularly checked the macaques rectal temperatures and their rectums, throats, and nasal cavities for the virus. Additionally, the research team followed the macaques symptoms and took chest X-rays that revealed signs of pneumonia.

Testing of the macaques blood showed that during the course of the infection the macaques developed antibodies against the protein spikes on the surface of the SARS-CoV2. If you recall, the Covid-19 coronavirus looks like a little spiky massage ball and uses the spikes to attach to and enter your cells. This was evidence that the macaques immune systems were responding against the virus.

Eventually, the six macaques survived the infections and recovered from their symptoms. However, the challenges didnt end there for four of the macaques. Twenty-eight days after their first intratracheal challenge, they got, guess what, another such challenge. The other two macaques were spared this second infection and remained as controls to be used for comparison.

After being re-challenged, the four macaques did develop fevers for short periods of time but otherwise showed no other signs of re-infection in the ensuing two weeks, based on chest X-rays and testing, again up the wazoo. In fact, the four re-exposed macaques mustered even higher levels of antibodies against the spike proteins than they had during the first infection.

So it looked like 28 days after the initial infection, the macaques still had some type of immunity against the virus. Good news if you happen to be a macaque and reading this. But what if you arent a macaque? What if you are human? Are you similar enough to macaques whether or not you raise your tail when intimidated? Do these results apply to you?

View of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing, China (Photo: MARK RALSTON/AFP via ... [+] Getty Images)

Alas, there havent been similar challenge studies in humans yet. A World Health Organization (WHO) document from May 6 laid out a bunch of the risks and ethical challenges about doing human challenge studies in which volunteers would be deliberately exposed to the SARS-CoV2. As you can imagine, being exposed to a potentially deadly virus is not the same as being exposed to something like doughnuts. There are real immediate risks involved. Plus, if you havent figured it out yet, humans have a long history of doing very bad things to each other. This includes discriminating against different races and taking advantage of those perceived to be of lower status. For example, who exactly will be the volunteers for such challenge studies? Will it be wealthy people who can jump on to private yachts when it is time to social distance? Or will it be people more in disadvantaged situations?

A group of scientists did start a petition to Frances Collins, MD, the Director of the National Institute of Health (NIH), to undertake immediate preparations for human challenge trials, arguing that this will help develop and test a Covid-19 vaccine. From a scientific standpoint, human challenge studies would certainly help answer many questions about immunity a lot more directly and quickly. But as alluded to earlier, conducting such human challenge studies in a safe and ethical manner is not that easy. Like the title of a 2009 film, its complicated.

In the meantime, everyone will have to rely on more indirect human studies, such as the study published on June 18 inNature Medicine. For this study,a research team from Chongqing Medical University in Chongqing, China, led by Ai-Long Huang, followed what happened to 74 people who were infected with the SARS-CoV2, half of whom never developed any symptoms. Thus, 37 were considered asymptomatic infections and 37 were symptomatic infections.

When you first get infected with a virus, it takes time for your immune system to develop an antibody response, thats assuming that your immune system can even generate such a response. Not all viruses may elicit an immune response. The first type of antibody that your immune system may produce in your blood is immunoglobulin M, or IgM if you dont have time to say immunoglobulin. This antibody doesnt hang around for long, with production increasing momentarily and then decreasing. To remember this, use the mnemonic M for momentary.

Before IgM disappears, production of a second type of antibody, immunoglobulin G or IgG, ramps up and stays up for an extended period of time. IgG is the antibody that can help with persistent immunity. Just think, gee, is IgG still around?

Heres a Beckman Coulter Diagnostics video on IgM and IgG with very dramatic piano music in the background:

For the Nature Medicine study, the research team measured the levels of these types of antibodies three to four weeks after the patients had been first exposed to the virus. For IgM, 81.1% of those who had asymptomatic infections and 83.8% of those who had symptomatic infection ended up testing positive. Similarly, for IgG, a greater percentage of the symptomatic patients (78.4% versus 62.2%) tested positive. In fact, those who had had symptoms tended to have significantly higher levels of IgG (medians of 20.5 versus 3.4) than those who didnt.

About eight weeks after they had recovered from their infections, most patients already had declines in IgG levels, 93.3% of the asymptomatic patients and 96.8% of the symptomatic patients. These werent just itty-bitty declines but fairly large ones, medians of a 71.1% decline among the asymptomatic patients and a 76.2% decline among the symptomatic patients. Of note, 81.1% of the asymptomatic group and 62.2% of the symptomatic group had declines in the levels of neutralizing serum antibodies. In fact, 40.0% of asymptomatic patients and 12.9% of the symptomatic patients no longer had any measurable IgG.

Certainly, antibodies are only one component of your immune response to a virus, albeit an important one. They are like pants. Just because you no longer have them doesnt necessarily mean that you are left completely exposed, especially if your happen to have been wearing Spanx underneath. Some kind of immunity against a virus may remain even if you dont have detectable antibodies in your blood. But checking for antibodies in your blood serum is currently the easiest way to measure the level of protection that you may have.

So how does all of this fit in with the case reports of people getting re-infected with the virus? For example, the following NBC 9 news segment covered the case of a woman who apparently got infected again:

Is this case and similar cases actually cases of re-infection? Or do they represent situations in which false negative test results occurred between positive test results? In such cases, what seems like two separate infections could have instead simply been one really long infection. Also, there is the chance that a person could have a positive test and no longer be infected. The test for viral genetic material (i.e., RNA) could be detecting fragments of the virus rather than whole live version.

Either way, case reports are case reports and not scientific studies. There are exceptions to every rule, except for the rule that macaroni and cheese is always yummy and always appropriate. If such case reports do in fact represent real re-infections, then a major question is how common are such occurrences? Are they rare or common enough to be very worried about them?

It could be that your immune response and your subsequent immunity depend heavily on the type and severity of infection that you had in the first place. Not having symptoms may be great for the present time but could potentially elicit a weaker immune response. As youve seen, rather than being a single type of illness, Covid-19 can come in many different flavors.

Then theres the question of how long immunity may last. As I covered previously for Forbes, a study of those who got the original SARS during the 2002-2003 outbreak suggested that immunity may last about two years. But as a recently released book about a family whose last name rhymes with speed bump or suction pump suggested, just because you are from the same family doesnt mean that you will behave in exactly the same way. Its still not clear all the ways that the SARS-CoV2 may differ from the SARS virus.

So there is some evidence that your immune response to the SARS-CoV2 may differ depending on factors such as how severe your infection was and how strong your immune system may be. Random chance may play a role too because nothing in life is 100%. If your immune response was not very strong in the first place, then perhaps the door is left wide open for re-infection. Would a subsequent infection then be more or less severe? The other issue is duration of immunity and protection. Is it only a few weeks? A couple months? A year? Longer?

So many questions.

Ultimately, immunity to the SARS-CoV2 may be much more complex than yes you are immune because you had the infection situation. Immunity is not like a toupee. Its not either on or off. Different types of infection could lead to different degrees of immunity that could last for different lengths of time. Different can be really good when it comes to leadership, creativity, clothing, and a salad bar but not necessarily with immune responses to a virus. Such complexity could further complicate the heck out of the pandemic and its response. It would make simplistic approaches such as oh, lets get everyone exposed to the virus and sacrifice a bunch of lives so that the pandemic can end, less likely to work.

Thus, the answer to the question of whether you can get infected by the Covid-19 coronavirus more than once may be it depends. Stay tuned for more.

More:

Can You Get Covid-19 Coronavirus Twice? Here Is An Update On Reinfection - Forbes

Coronavirus data has already disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC – CNBC

Posted on by

Previously public data has alreadydisappeared from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's website after the Trump administration quietly shifted control of the information to the Department of Health and Human Services.

Since the pandemic began, the CDC regularly published data on availability of hospital beds and intensive care units across the country. But Ryan Panchadsaram, who helps run a data-tracking site called Covid Exit Strategy, said that when he tried to collect the data from the CDC on Tuesday, it had disappeared.

"We were surprised because the modules that we normally go to were empty. The data wasn't available and not there," he said. "There was no warning."

CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield told reporters on a conference call Wednesday that stateswere told to stop sending hospital information to the National Healthcare Safety Network site, the CDC's system for gathering data, beginning Wednesday. Instead, all data will now be reported through HHS' reporting portal, officials said, adding that the decision was made to streamline data reporting and to provide HHS officials with real-time data.

Public health specialists and former health officials acknowledged that the CDC's data reporting infrastructure was limited, and said it needs to be overhauled to meet the demands of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, they expressed concern in interviews with CNBC that the change could lead to less transparent data.

When reached for comment Thursday by CNBC, HHS spokesman Michael Caputo said in a statement that the CDC was directed to make the data available again. In the future, he said, HHS will provide "more powerful insights."

"Yes, HHS is committed to being transparent with the American public about the information it is collecting on the coronavirus," he said. "Therefore, HHS has directed CDC to re-establish the coronavirus dashboards it withdrew from the public on Wednesday."

Representatives of the CDC did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.Later in the day, the CDC restored the site's previousdashboards with data through Tuesday, saying: "This file will not be updated after July 14, 2020 and includes data from April 1 to July 14."

TheCDC's web pagefor data on available hospital and ICU beds has added a note that reads: "Data displayed on this page was submitted directly to CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) and does not include data submitted to other entities contracted by or within the federal government."

"We don't have this critical indicator anymore,"Panchadsaram said. "The intent of just switching the data streams towards HHS, that's fine. But you got to keep the data that you're sharing publicly still available and up to date."

Panchadsaram said he and his team, which includes researchers from theDuke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and from Resolve to Save Lives, a public health initiative led by former CDC director Dr. Tom Frieden, have been tracking the data since April.

Panchadsaram thinks of the project as something of a "progress bar" as they grade different states on the overall progress they've made in fighting Covid-19. Available hospital beds and ICU capacity is a key indicator they use to assess state performance, he added.

"It's disappointing. It happened a lot quicker than expected," he said. "The picture that we're presenting to the world is incomplete."

Other coronavirus researchers and public health specialists expressed concern because the policy change was announced so suddenly in the midst of a public health crisis that appears to be worsening.

Dr.Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University, which runs one of the most popular third-party coronavirus data dashboards, said the policy change won't impact the Hopkins site because they've managed to source their data directly from states.She added, however, that the policy change raises questions about the transparency of the data and the role of the CDC in the ongoing U.S. response.

"What worries me is that we seem to be pushing rather suddenly in the midst of what feels like a very urgent time in terms of surging cases that we're seeing across the country," she told CNBC. "The question is, what are we going to lose in this transition, and in particular at a moment where we really don't want to lose any ability to understand what's happening in hospitals."

Nuzzo expressed concern that the administration didn't appear to fully plan out how the transition in data reporting would work and didn't give hospitals or researchers a warning about the change or how it might affect them.

"I think it's reasonable to worry that it could lead to erosion of capacities at a moment where we very much can't afford to lose any abilities at this point," she added. "I don't fully understand how it's going to work. That in and of itself is problematic."

Dr. Jen Kates, senior vice president and director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, echoed Nuzzo's concerns about the speed with which the decision has become policy. She added that the Trump administration has politicized the public health crisis for months, so the policy change raises concerns about the integrity of the data as well.

"It's been such a critical source of information for everyone, for states, for researchers, for reporters, for the public to try to understand what's happening," she said. "The last thing you want is for data to be politicized. It just raises that concern. Will data being at HHS create a more politicized use of it, or maybe not. But again, it's a concern that's been raised."

PresidentDonald Trumpand his administration have come under fire during the pandemic from critics who say the White House is undermining the country's public health professionals. Last week, Trump criticized the CDC's guidelines on reopening schools as too tough and expensive, and Vice President Mike Pence said the agency would issue additional recommendations.

"There's been concerns raised about when CDC has the leeway to offer its advice as a public health agency, really based on the evidence and the data, and there's been several examples where we're not clear that that's been the case," Kates said. "I think that is a concern that many have; is there any political significance to this change?"

More here:

Coronavirus data has already disappeared after Trump administration shifted control from CDC - CNBC

LETTERS: Public health measures send readers into the red zone – Waco Tribune-Herald

Posted on by

The wearing of masks is to protect the wearer and those around the wearer. New studies released only last week bolster this conclusion. And contrary to this presidential administrations conflicting views on COVID-19, this virus is highly contagious, deadly and not a Democratic hoax. Yet every time this president opens his mouth about the virus, he lies. The wearing of masks is all about trying to save humanity.

I am a patriot. I believe that without rules this nation will gradually slide into anarchy. Ms. Peterson, your First Amendment rights are not being trampled because a health expert with vast knowledge of virology and epidemiology tells us that the wearing of masks can reduce COVID sickness, death and infection. From your letter, it sounds as if you disbelieve the experts.

Your comparison of officials pressing us to wear masks to Nazis guilty of horrific crimes demonstrates ignorance, plain and simple.

NAACP misfire

I am at a loss trying to understand what the president of the local NAACP expects the governor or any other official to do when everyday, ordinary people make bad choices. [Waco-area officials: Federal, state government failed black people in COVID-19 response, Trib, July 10] I dont remember Texas Gov. Greg Abbott saying in his statement to go out and mingle with people you do not know. I think his statements all along have stressed such precautions as wearing masks or face coverings. Everyone received the same information, not just a select few.

View original post here:

LETTERS: Public health measures send readers into the red zone - Waco Tribune-Herald

After Storms, Red Cliff Band Declares State Of Emergency On Reservation – FOX 21 Online

Posted on by

BAYFIELD CO., Wis. The Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa has declared a state of emergency for its reservation after severe storms moved through the area over the weekend, according to a press release from the tribe.

Richard Peterson, chairman of the tribe, wrote in the press release that Saturdays storms tore down trees and power lines all over the area, adding that some roads are not passable because of all the damage. Power has been out for some residents as well.

Peterson said crews are working to clean up the damage and restore power, and said the Tribal Council is asking visitors to stay away from the reservation while residents there should limit travel as much as possible.

Residents should call emergency services if a situation is urgent.

The declaration will end once the area is safe again.

See original here:

After Storms, Red Cliff Band Declares State Of Emergency On Reservation - FOX 21 Online

Bird Droppings: Michael Bidwill released from hospital, defensive line improvements, Peterson and Fitz at the – Revenge of the Birds

Posted on by

Happy Tuesday one and all. We are well on our way to another long week of Arizona heat to try and get to the NFL training camp season.

However, there is still plenty of news from around the web to help us get ready for the Arizona Cardinals season.

Lets get to it.

Michael Bidwill Released From Hospital After Coronavirus StayCardinals owner released.

Cardinals Position Overview 2020: Defensive LineMarquee addition of Jordan Phillips brings needed boost to interior

Cardinals Position Group: Defensive LineImages of the defensive linemen on the 53-man roster heading into training camp

Cardinals Cover 2 - DeAndre Hopkins Highlights OffseasonIt was the team's first move of the new league year, and it surprised just about everyone in the NFL. The acquisition of DeAndre Hopkins is a game-changer. Craig Grialou and Mike Jurecki discuss what Hopkins' presence means within the offense and more spe

Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill released from hospital after COVID-19 treatmentCardinals owner Michael Bidwill issued a statement Sunday after his release from a Rhode Island hospital where he was treated for COVID-19. Bidwill said he learned first-hand how serious the virus is.

Cardinals' Michael Bidwill out of hospital after contracting coronavirusArizona Cardinals owner Michael Bidwill has been released from the hospital after contracting the coronavirus, the team announced Sunday.

NFL's Washington team officially drops 'Redskins' name, logoThe Washington NFL franchise announced Monday it is dropping the Redskins name and Indian head logo, bowing to recent pressure.

Barnwell: Cardinals dramatically upgraded weaponry since 2019ESPN's Bill Barnwell, like many of us, doesn't really know who qualifies as the Arizona Cardinals' fifth-best offensive weapon.

Oakley, NFL reveal face shield concept to prevent coronavirus spreadThe NFL believes it is closer to one answer when it comes to player safety amid the coronavirus pandemic: face shields for the players' helmets.

Cardinals' Kyler Murray probably doesn't like his Madden NFL 21 ratingsKyler Murray must climb the ladder to be confirmed as an elite NFL quarterback, but the Madden NFL 21 ratings that have leaked appear questionable.

Navajo leaders take back idea of 'Code Talkers' as Washington NFL name"For generations, this team name and logo has misrepresented the true history and events that define the term 'redskins,'" Navajo Nation leaders wrote.

Rankings the receiving corps in the NFC West | Cards Wire

Arizona Cardinal owner Michael Bidwill released from hospitalHe had been in the hospital after testing positive for COVID-19.

David Carr turned down visit with Cardinals in 2010 and now regrets itHe was on vacation. He wanted to be a starter again and would have, but never got to start another game in the NFL.

Patrick Peterson beats Larry Fitzgerald in celebrity golf tournamentPeterson finished in 20th place, while Fitzgerald was 25th. Carson Palmer came in 11th.

Budda Baker, rest of NFC West left out of list of leagues top safetiesHe doesn't even get honorable mention despite his Pro Bowl 2019.

The rest is here:

Bird Droppings: Michael Bidwill released from hospital, defensive line improvements, Peterson and Fitz at the - Revenge of the Birds

Peterson: Former Cyclone QB great Seneca Wallace has a stake in a healthy and successful 2020 football season – Des Moines Register

Posted on by

AMES, Ia. Recall when Iowa States offense had its back near the goal line in the 2002 Cy-Hawk game in Iowa City? Remember Seneca Wallaces magic that included two third-down conversion passes to Jack Whitver? Remember the 6-minute drive that started at ISUs 25 and ended with a 38-yard field goal with 5 minutes to play? And Wallace turning a 17-point halftime deficit into a 36-31 Cyclones victory?

How about the 2002 back-and-forth touchdown against Texas Tech that many fans view as the most exciting play in Cyclones history? During The Run, a passing play that broke down, Wallace eluded one tackler after another during what officially went down as a 12-yard play, but on closer examination actually equaled 112.

"I decided to just try to make a play," Wallace said.

Now you see him, now you dont.

Familiar with the new Courtyard Marriott that just opened near Jack Trice Stadium in Ames the one that was expected to have a waiting list during football weekends?

The Houdini-like quarterback is trying to make another successful play.

Seneca Wallace celebrates his team's 36-31 win over Iowa on Sept. 14 2002.(Photo: Associated Press)

A pandemic is not exactly what Wallace and his ownership partners had in mind during the hotels planning stages, but if theres someone who knows about escaping perceived adversity its one of the greatest ever to play Iowa State football.

Wallace played professionally. Hes possibly your answer to the question, Who was Iowa States best quarterback?

He led Dan McCarney-coached teams to two bowls during his wonderful two seasons as a Cyclone, including the Independence Bowl against Alabama during a 2001 season disrupted by the 9-11 tragedy.

And now, hes trying to successfully open a hotel amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Weve got (guest) reservations, Wallace said. When you have a hotel like a Courtyard Marriott its in high demand.

The hotel, on South 17th Street, has been openless than a week. The grand opening is 11 a.m. Friday.

On Monday, the shiny lobby was crowded with guests checking out. Most of them were leaving after attending a weekend wedding.

Were just excited to get it going, after 4 years, Wallace said. Ames should be proud of what weve accomplished, bringing a hotel like this to the community.

Iowa State quarterback Seneca Wallace sprints in the open field as Chris Kelsay's tackle attempt fails for Nebraska in a 2002 game.(Photo: Rodney White/THe Register)

Wallaces Ames Wingstop restaurant is less than a mile away. Jack Trice Stadium is walkable from the new 120-room hotel. Hes so optimisticthat hes expecting a good number of bookings, even if the football stadium crowd is limited to 30,000 or so fans.

Theres still going to be some tailgating, Wallace said, emphasis on the word some. Fans are still going to want to gather safely. People will be coming into town. Theyre going to be social-distancing with friends. Some of them will need someplace to stay.

Assuming,of course, there is football. He knows thats the great unknown. Some conferences have scaled back schedules. Theres talk about the fall season being delayed until spring. No football?

I think were going to have a season, Wallace said. Our country needs safe sports, especially football.

What would he have done, if a pandemic struck during his college days? Would he have been enthusiastic about playing?

Heck yes, Id want to play, he said. You have to minimize contact with anyone outside of your bubble, and its going to have to happen for five months,but it can be done.

You can minimize what the players do as far as getting around in the general public, but you cant control 30,000 students. Thatll be the problem, if youre not totally dedicated to football.

If you want to play football bad enough, youll sacrifice for your own good and for the good of your teammates and coaches. You can never take your eyes off the prize especially when students come back to campus.

A lot of these kids live to play football. To take that away is hard.

Iowa State columnist Randy Peterson has been writingfor the Des Moines Register for parts of sixdecades. Reach him at rpeterson@dmreg.com, 515-284-8132, and on Twitter at @RandyPete. No one covers the Cyclones like the Register. Subscribe today at DesMoinesRegister.com/Deal to make sure you never miss a moment.

Read the original here:

Peterson: Former Cyclone QB great Seneca Wallace has a stake in a healthy and successful 2020 football season - Des Moines Register

Library News: Week of July 19, 2020 | The Globe – The Globe

Posted on by

The Nobles County Library, 407 12th St., Worthington, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. The Adrian Branch Library, 214 Maine Ave., Adrian, is open from noon to 6 p.m. Monday through Thursday and noon to 5 p.m. Friday.

Summer Book Sale

The Nobles County Library in Worthington is hosting a Summer Book Sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. this week on the main level of the library in Worthington.

Mobile Internet Hotspots

The library now offers Mobile Internet Hotspots. A hotspot uses cellular access to create a WiFi connection, allowing people to connect to the Internet where there is not typically strong, or any, WiFi access. Hotspots can be checked out by any adult library card holder in good standing. They may not be placed on hold, are checked out just one week, and cannot be renewed. This program is partially funded with a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education using federal funding, CFDA 45.310, Library Services and Technology Act (LS-00-19-0024-19) Grants to States.

Childrens Programming

Pre-k and kindergarten Story Time is from 10 to 11 a.m. Wednesdays; first through Ttird grade from 1 to 2 p.m. and 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. Wednesdays; fourth and fifth grades is from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Thursdays; and teens from 1 to 3 p.m. Tuesdays. Space is limited, so please call the library to sign up. Additional program times will be added if there is interest.

July 20-31, window I Spy is offered as an outdoor activity for all grades. Stop by the Youth Room for your I Spy list and let the search begin.

Bingo Scavenger Hunt, a weekly outdoor activity for all grades, begins each week on Mondays. Stop by the Youth Room for a Bingo sheet and try to get a Bingo or work for a Blackout. Spend the week finding the items in your backyard, neighborhood or around town. You must turn in your Bingo sheet to receive a prize.

Story Stroll, Have You Got My Purr?, is planned from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this week on the lawn beside the Nobles County Library in Worthington.

COVID-19 precautions still in place

Please limit yourself to one visit per day and maintain a distance of six feet from non-family members when in the library.

Children under 16 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian (except during organized programming activities).

Temporary masks and hand sanitizer are available near the front door. Spot cleaning is done throughout the day and after hours.

Please bring exact change or the nearest dollar amount for copies, scans, faxes, etc..

View all library events and updates at nclibrary.org.

New Books: The Order by Daniel Silva, A Walk Along The Beach by Debbie Macomber, Cajun Justice by James Patterson and Tucker Axum, Half Moon Bay by Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman, The Revelators by Ace Atkins, Dragon Fire by Ted Bell and Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell.

New Audios: Muzzled by David Rosenfelt and The Warning by James Patterson with Robison Wells.

New DVDs: Modern Family (Season 11/final season) and Trauma Center."

Fun Fact: Patrons have saved a lot of money by using our libraries. For the first six months of 2020, Adrian patrons saved $39,142.65 and Worthington patrons $368,180.40.

See the rest here:

Library News: Week of July 19, 2020 | The Globe - The Globe

A Brand New ‘Phineas and Ferb’ Movie All About Candace Is Coming To Disney+; Will Their Mom Find Out? – Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Posted on by

There are 104 days of summer vacation, and the new Phineas and Ferb movie will surely make it a lot better. Disney announced a brand new movie starring the two imaginative brothers and their sister, Candace. Phineas and Ferb was always one of the more creative and beloved shows on Disney Channel, and the last time an episode aired was in 2015. There was a special crossover in 2019, but this is the first time the series is coming back all on its own.

RELATED:I Know What Were Gonna Do Today Watch Phineas and Ferb to Prep for the New Movie Coming to Disney+ This Summer

The Disney+ original movie was announced on July 2, and Variety reported that it will premiere on the streaming platform on Aug. 28. A statement from Disney said everyones favorite characters are coming back for this special event.

Stepbrothers Phineas and Ferb, their older sister Candace, Perry the Platypus and the Danville gang are back together again in Phineas and Ferb The Movie: Candace Against the Universe, it read. They also called it an an out-of-this-world animated adventure from Disney Television Animation.

According to Variety, Candace (Ashley Tisdale) is feeling a little underappreciated in her household and is then abducted by aliens. Things get tricky when the aliens start treating her as their leader.

The movie centers on Phineas and Ferb as they set out across the galaxy to rescue Candace, who after being abducted by aliens, finds utopia in a far-off planet, free of pesky little brothers, the press release further explained, pointing out another reason why Candace might want to stay there indefinitely.

The other cast members returning are Vincent Martella as Phineas, Caroline Rhea as their mom, Linda, Dee Bradley Baker as Perry the Platypus and Alyson Stoner as Isabella.

Baljeet is returning too, voiced again by Maulik Pancholy, along with Bobby Gaylor as Buford. Vanessa Doofenshmirtz will also come back to join her dad, voiced by Olivia Olson, with her dad, Dr. Doofenshmirtz, voiced again by Dan Povenmire. He also does Major Monogram. David Errigo Jr. will join in the role of Ferb.

Itll also have the same creative team as before, with executive-producers Povenmire and Jeff Swampy Marsh.

If you know anything about Phineas and Ferb you know that not only are these two stepbrothers painting continents and locating Frankensteins brain, but Candace is constantly trying to get the boys busted.

Its truly a staple theme of the show, with Candace constantly being strung into whatever the boys are doing. Sometimes shell enjoy their invention or scheme for the day, but other times shes just all for the bust.

Candace has never actually succeeded in tattling on her brothers. There is one episode called Phineas and Ferb Get Busted! where Candace thinks she succeeded. Linda freaks out and sends the boys to a militant reformatory school where all thoughts of creativity are beaten out of them until theyre nearly lifeless robots.

Candace ends up being the one to try and bust them out, but it all ends up being a dream. Or rather, a dream within a dream because Perry is also dreaming. Its a bit confusing but Phineas and Ferb both stay innocent in the eyes of their mom.

With this movie coming up, will this be the moment Linda finds out what her kids do in their spare time? Theyve been to space before, but now theyre on a rescue to save Candace. Could Linda get roped in? Its possible. But only Aug. 28 will reveal all.

Summer 2020 has been a weird time for everyone. All of 2020, in fact, has been full of gloom and no good news. Summer seems like it was canceled in a way because of all the things you cant do. But Tik Tok user @iancrumley made a song that showed how this summer is a little like Phineas and Ferb.

Quarantine day 13 ##fyp

Sure, you cant go out and associate with friends as they do, nor can you really build a rollercoaster in your backyard (most likely). But finding creative activities to do in one of the longest summers ever is super similar. Maybe the question, What would Phineas and Ferb do? can liven quarantine up a little bit more.

RELATED: From The Simpsons to Sonny With a Chance Here Are Shows on Disney+ Bringing Families Closer During Social Distancing

The rest is here:

A Brand New 'Phineas and Ferb' Movie All About Candace Is Coming To Disney+; Will Their Mom Find Out? - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Gavin Rossdale: Bush’s new album is about believing in something better – The Weekly Journal

Posted on by

Gavin Rossdale says Bush's upcoming album is about "believing in a better place to be".

The 54-year-old frontman and his band are set to release their eighth studio album 'The Kingdom' on Friday (17.07.20), and Gavin has said he wrote the record after being left "sick and tired of self righteous, judging people", and wanted to imagine a "utopia" where people could "be free to express themselves".

Asked how it feels to be releasing the album - which was originally scheduled for release in May - amid the coronavirus pandemic, Gavin said: "It's weird because the record is called 'The Kingdom'. I was so sick and tired of self righteous, judging people. They're just annoying. I imagined this utopia of like-minded people where they can just be free to express themselves, be cool, be funny, be interesting. It's a refuge.

"We're moving from limbo into this next shape. We're truly seeing the most heroic people we know. It's not the douchebags on billionaire boats - it's cashiers and people going to work. Everything is upside down. It's bizarre that the world has fallen into this paradigm. We're living in something more surreal than any movie you've ever seen."

The singer also insisted that whilst all Bush albums have "elements of struggle" in their songs, this latest record "aligns with the zeitgeist".

He added: "Of all the records we've made, they all have elements of struggle, challenges and surmounting things. You go through different sounds and inspiration, but it's said that songwriters write the same song over and over again - they're different variations on one theme. I wonder if that's my thing; believing in a better place to be. It's weird how much it aligns with the zeitgeist."

And Gavin says he finds guitar music "liberating".

Speaking to NME magazine, he said: "On the one hand, rock music is dead. On the other hand, rock bands still play to a lot of people. Sonically, I wanted to do something really wide and deep. If you play guitar music, it's so liberating to just play out riffs on big wide stages with very personal themes attached to them. Tuneless music is hard for me, so the alchemy of a melody with words that matter and the strength of each song what makes up the sound of the record."

Here is the original post:

Gavin Rossdale: Bush's new album is about believing in something better - The Weekly Journal

BWW Review: WORLD LINE at TC Squared Theatre Company – Broadway World

Posted on by

TC Squared's Volume Up series of virtual one act plays is posed to convince audiences they are up for the task of taking their programs to the digital realm for the time being. After logging in to their YouTube stream, one is met with a smooth, animated countdown set to a quiescent techno beat by Kadahj Bennett. After a clement opening speech by Ros Thomas-Clark, the program begins. World Line, a new one act play by Erin Lerch, is the latest installment in the series and, as Lerch admits in a brief interview themself, makes a great contender for a virtual reading due to its 40 minute run time and unconventional set requirements. In a narrative that includes palpably autobiographical elements, discernible even before Lerch explains their influences, Lerch explores tensions in a "multi-generational queer family". Eddie, a college-hopeful amputee, serves as our guide through a buffet of suburban, queer, coming-of-age tropes complicated and illuminated by the recent loss of their mother, the foreboding presence of an archetypically well-intentioned stepmother figure, and the desire to be the first astronaut to set foot on Mars.

Lerch has cultivated, to my eye, a little-explored but dishearteningly realistic commentary on intergenerational queerness, in which Eddie's mother, Sarah, a trans lesbian woman, can commiserate with Eddie's frustrations with regressive grandparents, but can't seem to get the language around their pronouns right. This rift, though not the main focus of the piece, reminds one of the ways in which the gender binary is still adhered to and upheld by huge portions of the queer and trans communities. Outside of this, the plot is pretty standard and plaintively suburban, exploring frustrations of children of single parents, a need for acceptance by a queer youth in Wyoming, and, of course, the theme of space as a metaphor for utopia.

As the final frontier, outer space has served as a tool to signify escapism and the desire to "get out" since protagonists' dreams of New York City became too clich. Movies like Radio Flyer and October Sky posit the places beyond Earth's atmosphere as remedy to abusive home lives, Hidden Figures uses work at NASA as an antidote to systemic racism, and the recent Troop Zero turns to dreams of space travel as poultice against poverty, queerness, anger management issues, and repeated bed-wetting. The main difference between these four movies and World Line is that each of them takes place in a period which aligns with a global space-mania while, ostensibly, World Line is set in the present. The late 1950s to late 1970s provide a setting in which children of all ages were presumably occupied by fascinations, aspirations, and questions about outer space. Even after the Space Race, the expanses of the universe left a significant imprint on popular culture. The 1977 release of Star Wars and 1982 release of E.T. may well have launched a sustained captivity of collective generational imaginations had not schoolchildren across the country watched the Space Shuttle Challenger burst into flames in 1986. Though not a hard pivot, the following decades saw a shift in the common imagination of space. Movies like Apollo 13 (1995), Armageddon (1998), and The Astronaut's Wife (1999) do not paint the corners of our galaxy as a haven to which either a young Jake Gyllenhaal or an animatronic creature with a penchant for Reese's Pieces should long to go.

Without the sepia veneer of a period piece, Eddie's dreams of being an astronaut seem underdeveloped, childish, and insufficient as a driving force. Mostly, these aspirations are communicated by well-placed interludes- soliloquies delivered by Eddie set against a virtual galaxy background which breaks up the sea of solid white in which the rest of the piece exists. This staunch contrast in backgrounds reflects the way the dialogue of the rest of the play- mostly straight-forward arguments or debates over college acceptances- is broken up by Eddie's dreams of life as an astronaut. In a contemporary setting, Eddie is correct. A quick Google search shows that there is talk of an astronaut going to Mars. But unlike the reality for the young people in October Sky or Troop Zero, NASA no longer sits in the zeitgeist as the infallible team of geniuses who will continue sending fleets of astronauts further and further until The Jetsons becomes a reality show. Eddie, as a soon-to-be college student with an interest in space, needs to catch up to the conversations of space travel in 2020. Relying on Mars as a manifestation for the acceptance they lack in suburban Wyoming seems almost cruel in its futility as they receive a letter from NASA explaining why they will not send an amputee into space. (Which seems uncharacteristically final considering they almost sent Big Bird into space and did much of the logistical work to make that a reality.) To make matters worse, a halfhearted comment from their suspected stepmother-to-be affirms that they may some day be able to leave Earth's atmosphere as a civilian. Again, in a period piece, this dream may seem uplifting, but as Elon Musk has hinted at failed schemes for space tourism and our president has pitched the need for a Space Force, a 2020 audience must look at the bleak realities of the exorbitant costs of recreational space travel and the colonial tendencies which inform the U.S. obsession with "frontiers". In the end, a substitution of Massachusetts as a haven for acceptance seems equivalently lackluster and unable to give Eddie a firm resolution. This trajectory feels all too much like if Dorothy, hellbent on returning to Kansas, in the end settles for a plot of land in Ohio. Perhaps, realistically, Kansas is not the Eden she has etched in her memory, but we are not rooting for her to come away with a gimcrack consolation prize.

Maybe I looked at this piece from the unrelenting eyes of a realist, but I did not detect heightened language or flights of wraith-ish fantasy which could elevate the play to an exercise in science-fiction. Neither did I feel that the piece fully succumbed to the specificity of niche research which makes David Auburn's Proof, Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, or Duncan MacMillan's Lungs the heralded, if incomprehensible, works of poetry as which they are regarded. As this was a reading of a work still presumably in progress, I feel it is important to note that the piece is entirely salvageable. There is much that can be explored along the intersection of queerness and an affinity for space or other realms of the unknown. I wonder how a change in era might affect my perceptions of Eddie's framing of space. Certainly they might have different language around their queerness if this piece took place in 1957, but might that not be ultimately more interesting? Alternately, I question if Eddie was written as a younger protagonist if I might be more accepting of their irresponsible, ill-informed idealism. With this solution, I can also see more opportunity to showcase the repartee between Eddie and their little brother, Ricky. Actors Jackie Chylinski and Cristobal Pauline unearth the most rapturous chemistry as they debate clothes for an upcoming memorial and ice cream sandwiches.

Ultimately, the piece romanticizes a science that it does not explore deeply enough to satisfy, but is commendable for its intricate excavation of queerness.

Check out more in TC Squared's Volume Up series here.

Originally posted here:

BWW Review: WORLD LINE at TC Squared Theatre Company - Broadway World

Could You Survive Driving Without Modern Technology? – The Drive

Posted on by

Remember life before smartphones? What did you ever do while waiting in line without a scrolling feed of content in your hand? The same can be said of driving without traction control, navigation, and voice commands. It sounds crazy, but so many of us rely on these features that we have to ask: could you survive driving without modern safety tech?

Blind-spot detection, back-up cameras, parking assist, lane assist, adaptive cruise control and collision warnings are all designed to add safety and convenience to the driving experience. However, more often than not, these are used as crutches while folks only pay partial attention to the road ahead. They're all relatively new, yet they've become the normunless you drive a car from the previous Millenium.

Some like Nissan's rear seat alert system now warn you to check and make sure you don't leave anything like groceries, or a child, locked in a hot car. An older vehicle won't tell you thatthe full weight of responsibility falls on you without a computer-assisted safety net. And many will argue that's how it should be.

The fear can be quite real when you look around at modern cars sharing the road and see nothing but foreheads facing down at a screen instead of the roadway. It makes you wonder how many modern drivers would immediately wreck if they suddenly didn't have all this active safety technology looking over their shoulders.

I'm already accustomed to life without these features in my '97 GMC Sierra pickup, but I see how it affects other drivers every day. Maybe I should just be glad their cars are better drivers than they are.

The rest is here:

Could You Survive Driving Without Modern Technology? - The Drive

ProScan Moves to New Crestview Hills Office, Adds New Technology – The River City News

Posted on by

ProScan Radiology recently completed a move from 350 Thomas More Parkway to 568 Centre View Blvd. in Crestview Hills.

The office added new technology, as well.

We are excited to lead with cutting edge technology and expand our services to patients of Northern Kentucky to produce a higher quality and lower cost, independent imaging option in their neighborhood. The support that the Northern Kentucky community has shown us over the past two years has been overwhelming and this has inspired us to expand our services, said Dr. Stephen J. Pomeranz, CEO and medical director of ProScan Imaging.

ProScan is headquartered in Cincinnati and operated twenty-eight independent imaging centers throughout the U.S., twelve of which are located in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area.

The addition of a technologically advanced Northern Kentucky ProScan location is significant for the local community as patients now have another independent, low cost and easily accessible imaging option when choosing their MRI or CT provider in the Greater Cincinnati region, the firm said in a news release.

Being part of the fabric of the Northern Kentucky community has been a great experience for our organization. We are excited to continue to raise the bar of imaging care by offering additional modalities and another option for referring physicians and their patients, said Pomeranz.

-Staff report

Read more:

ProScan Moves to New Crestview Hills Office, Adds New Technology - The River City News