WTTC: Travel & Tourism Sector Key for Economic Recovery in the Americas – Hotel Business

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INTERNATIONAL REPORTThe World Travel & Tourism Council [WTTC], which represents the global travel and tourism private sector, shared a new report detailing the critical role that the industry will have in the Americas economic recovery, once the COVID-19 pandemic has been combatted.

In its latest annual Economic Impact Report (EIR), WTTC shared that in 2019, travel and tourism accounted for 8.8% of the total economy in the Americas and approximately 45 million jobs, or 9.8% of the total workforce. The report also reveals international visitor spend totaled $324 billion, representing 7.3% of all exports.

WTTCs 2020 Economic Impact Report (EIR) shows how the economic recovery in the Americas depends greatly on travel and tourism, said Gloria Guevara, president/CEO, WTTC. In 2019, travel and tourism was a total of 8.8% of the entire economy. Once this pandemic is at an end, producing new jobs and bringing business and leisure travelers back will encourage suppliers of all sizes to restore their efforts to meet the demand.

According to the report, the Americas had a higher percentage of leisure travel with 74% compared to 26% for business travel. In terms of spending, the region relies heavily on domestic, which will be critical to the regions recovery with 81% attributed to domestic spending vs. 19% international spending.

For two consecutive years, travel and tourism GDP growth outpaced the overall economy, growing at 2.2% in 2019, while the economy showed a 1.9% growth.

Over the coming months, it will be crucial to call upon governments all over the world to ensure the survival of travel and tourismwhich currently has up to 75 million jobs at immediate risk globally, with up to 5.9 million at risk in the U.S. alone, she said. The WTTCs ongoing partnerships with government organizations will be key as we look to pave the way to economic recovery.

On a global level, the travel and tourism sector outperformed the 2.5% rate of global GDP growth for the ninth consecutive year in a row, thanks to an annual GDP growth rate of 3.5%. This made it the global economys third-highest sector in terms of GDP growth.

The EIR shows the sector supporting one in 10 (330 million) jobs, making a 10.3% contribution to global GDP and generating one in four of all new jobs.

A breakdown by WTTC shows Asia-Pacific to be the top-performing region worldwide with a growth rate of 5.5%, followed very closely by the Middle East at 5.3%. The U.S. and EU both demonstrated a steady growth rate of 2.3%, while the fastest-growing country was Saudi Arabia.

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WTTC: Travel & Tourism Sector Key for Economic Recovery in the Americas - Hotel Business

We can all be inspired by thoughts of future travel – The Voice Online

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THE WORLD Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) is launching a new marketing campaign, #TogetherInTravel, aimed at galvanizing the global travel and tourism community and showing how the sector is a vital part of our zest for life.

Going live on April 20, the campaign encourages travellers from around the world to share the hashtag #TogetherInTravel along with a video simultaneously uniting everyone in solidarity at the same moment.

The marketing campaign comprises three key elements; a highly visual and emotive video; a hashtag, #TogetherInTravel, to stimulate the conversation across social platforms and a microsite,TogetherInTravel.com, to host the video and user generated content and stories.

Travel and tourism is a critical sector to the global economy, accounting for one in four of all new jobs worldwide.

WTTC has developed the campaign in conjunction with one of its members, marketing and communications firm MMGY Hills Balfour.

Gloria Guevara, President & CEO of WTTC, said: Dreaming is part of our zest for life and our new campaign encourages thoughts of the brighter days ahead.

Travel and tourism is a critical sector to the global economy, accounting for one in four of all new jobs worldwide and contributing 10.3% to GDP.

Our sector touches everyone. It builds communities, reduces poverty in the world and improves the social impact of everyday lives. Yet we are uniquely exposed at this time due to Covid-19.

The concept for the #TogetherInTravel campaign was borne out of a desire to rally everyone who is passionate about travel, to unify those who are working hard to rebuild the sector and to spread a message of solidarity that we are one global community, and one where travel brings us closer, at the right time.

Our message is that everyone can still stay inspired with future travel ideas and bookings and in the meantime be part of a virtual space for sharing, connecting, and collectively inspiring.

We want to thank Amanda Hills, President of MMGY Hills Balfour and her team for their efforts in building this campaign with donated time, and we hope that as many people as possible will share the video, as we look forward to a future time when we will be able to travel again.

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We can all be inspired by thoughts of future travel - The Voice Online

Inside the creepy abandoned US theme park used to film Jurassic World and Planet of the Apes – The Sun

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A THEME park in the US has been left abandoned for 15 years after it was badly damaged due to Hurricane Katrina.

Originally called Jazzland, Six Flags New Orleans is now a creepy shadow of its former self - and is popular with blockbuster film producers.

It is currently used as a filming location, for movies including Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Jurassic World.

The 140-acre park was only open to the public for five years - first opening in 2000 - before it was forced to close its doors when Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana in 2005.

With 80 per cent of New Orleans of flooded, the park too suffered from 20ft deep water.

While the water drained away a month later, the attractions were too damaged, and in 2006 the decision was made to close down for good.

Now, despite it being illegal to visit the grounds and you can be arrested for trespassing, creepy images have revealed the theme park which has now been taken over by wildlife and nature.

Creepy statues of clowns, mermaids and Mardi Gras figures now lay broken and dirty, having been left to rot over the years.

Grafitti can be found on most of the buildings, while rubbish and debris remains from the water.

Six Flags New Orleans originally had seven themed lands, which included DC Comics Super Hero Adventures and Looney Tunes Adventures.

With season tickets costing just $34.99 (28) in 2003, therewere also plans to open a water park expansion in 2005, although was never built due to the hurricane.

Some of the most popular rides included the Mega Zeph, a wooden roller coaster track built to withstand hurricane-force winds and the SpongeBob SquarePants The Ride motion simulator.

The only ride to survive the hurricane with the least damage was an inverted rollercoaster ride called Batman: The Ride, which was removed from the park in 2007 and re-opened at Six Flags Texas as Goliath.

Since its closure, what to do with the abandoned theme park has still to be decided.

Initial plans to reinvent it asa theme park, with names of Legend City Adventure Park or Dreamlanding Festival Park have bee suggested, along with a Nickelodeon attraction, although they have all been scrapped.

The concept of a Jazzland Outlet Mall was also suggested, although other competitors led to this also being cancelled.

Current plans include the park's demolishment, although this has stalled due to estimated costs of more than 1m.

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An abandoned Disney theme park in Florida that closed down after 9/11 and the deaths of three teenagers is to get 269million revamp.

Disney's River Country water park closed in 2001, although new plans for a 900-room lakeside lodge with a Princess and the Frog themed restaurant are thought to be for the area.

Camelot theme park in Lancashire and Nara Dreamland in Japan are just some of the other theme parks left to rot since they closed their doors.

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Inside the creepy abandoned US theme park used to film Jurassic World and Planet of the Apes - The Sun

Vaccination cards and seat spacing: Air travel in a post-coronavirus world could be vastly different, experts say – Stuff.co.nz

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The global coronavirus pandemic will change air travel as we know it, with more emphasis on passenger health and in turn, higher airfares, experts say.

For years airlines and travellers have been enjoyinga golden age of travel. Low oil prices and fierce competition meant affordableairfares for passengers while a strong global economy, increased collaboration and new fuel efficient aircraft allowed airlines to create new and exciting products and routes.

But the deadly Covid-19 virus which has spread throughout the worldbrought that golden age toa grinding halt as passenger demand fell off a cliff and countries around theworld closed their borders in an attempt to contain the spread of the disease.

The International Air Transport Association (Iata),which represents nearly 300 airlines, said some 25 million jobs wereat risk of disappearing as airlines grounded their fleets and began cost cutting measures in an attempt to survive the Covid-19 crisis.

READ MORE:* Will coronavirus spell the end of the golden age of long haul travel?* Coronavirus: Predicted drop in trade would be 'akin to the Great Depression', transport association says* Coronavirus: Airlines to see $514 billion drop in revenue, IATA says* Coronavirus: 128,000 job losses and $13 billion hit to GDP after three months of travel restrictions, Iata says* Airlines could be broke by May: Capa - Centre for Aviation

As of early April, the number of flights globally was down 80 per cent compared to the same time in 2019 and passenger revenue was expected to fall 55 per cent in 2020

Iata chief executive Alexandre de Juniac said the industry had never been shutteredon this scale before.

"Consequently, we have no experience in starting it up. It will be complicated,"deJuniacsaid.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF

Air travel as we know it will change, say industry experts.

"We will have to adapt operations and processes to avoid reinfections via imported cases."

A multi-stakeholder approach would be essential, he said.

"We are not expecting to re-start the same industry that we closed a few weeks ago."

He said the industry did not want to repeat mistakes made after the September 11 terror attacks when many new processes were imposed in an uncoordinated way.

"We ended up with a mess of measures that we are still sorting out today."

After September 11 global travel demand slumped and a range of new measures were introduced to the aviation sector to improve security and reduce the chance of future plane hijackings.

Greater airport screening and security was introduced, identification checks became more strict, cockpit doors were locked and made bulletproof and passengers were banned from bringing liquids of certain amounts on planes.

JOHN ANTHONY/STUFF

Aviation consultant Christoph Mueller says airfares would need to increase if social distancing is required on planes.

Aviation consultant Christoph Mueller, who has been chief executive of Malaysia Airlines and Aer Lingus, spoke with Capa - Centre for Aviation about what the future of aviation might look like.

Just like with 9/11, greater measures around passenger screening at airports would be born out of the Covid-19 pandemic.

He said an international regulator would need to step in so each country wasn't coming up with different types of screening and legislation.

"Someone who is backed really with the intelligence expertise has to draw up very very quickly the rules of the game," Mueller said.

"We have to get to grips very very soon to have consistent measures all over the world which are guarded really by medical professionals to tell us and the travelling public what is safe and unsafe."

AP

Strict screening measures were introduced to the aviation sector after 9/11. Covid-19 will have a similar impact, experts say.

It would probably have to start with "a very high yardstick" which could be lowered as the situation improved, he said.

"It needs to be an understandable and universal rule for each and everybody otherwise we will fail."

Increased screening measures would come at a huge cost to the aviation industry, he said.

If social distancing was required on planes that would also cost airlines because they would not be able to carry as many passengers. As a result airfares would need to go up, he said.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF

Passengers may need to queue at airports to be medically checked before flying in the future.

One of his main concerns, he said, was that the airline industry would be set back 10 to 15 years with regard to innovation, predominantly on the customer facing side.

The industry had reached a stage where money was available to digitalise the industry across the board ranging from customer experience to airline operations, he said.

"Literally each and every process in an airline could have been made more efficient.

"My biggest fear is that right now these funds will not be available for the forseeable future and the industry falls behind."

Corporate travel, traditionally a big revenue stream for airlines, would be heavily impacted in the future as a result of Covid-19, he said.

SUPPLIED

A need for social distancing in cabins would affect airline's margins and result in more expensive airfares.

Historically when the aviation sector was hit with a crisis, such as 9/11 and the Sars epidemic, corporations had introduced new travel regulations which meant fewer people were allowed to travel, he said.

There would also be a psychological impact on passengers who may be deterred from air travel due to the perceived risks, he said.

Those fears would dissipate faster in Asia where there was lower penetration of Covid-19 than in the United Statesand Europe, he said.

The recovery of air travel in Asian was more likely to be a "v shape", he said.

Capa chairman Peter Harbison said health had come to the forefront of the aviation sector and it would change the way the industry operated.

"This sort of event will recur,"Harbison said.

"We're looking at the same sort of impact that 9/11 had on security."

Passengers would need to be medically checked before passing through an airport and boarding an aircraft, he said.

There may perhaps be half as many people on an aircraft in future due to social distancing rules, which would need to be standardised across the industry, he said.

While domestic travel may recover in the near term, border controls were going to substantially restrict any short-term international travel, he said.

"International is going to stay very very difficult for probably quite a long time."

DAVID HALLET/STUFF

Airports are arguably higher risk environments than aircraft for transmission, Capa chairman Peter Harbison says.

Economist Benje Patterson said a vaccination would need to be available before 100 per cent free movement of people internationally could occur.

Passengers would need a certificate of vaccination to board international aircraft, he said.

Once Alert Level 4 restrictions in New Zealand were lifted it would be a while before border restrictions for international air travel were completely relaxed, he said.

However, there was a potential middle ground in the short term that could allow for an earlier reopening of borders, he said.

SUPPLIED

Economist Benje Patterson says rapid testing kits could allow for a middle ground in opening our borders.

That would involve rapid testing of all international passengers for coronavirus, both prior to boarding and on arrival in the country, he said.

"Anyone with a positive result would denied boarding, self-isolated or quarantined," Patterson said.

To get to such a middle ground would require widespread availability of rapid test kits, that could be performed with high accuracy, low cost and without encroaching on medical laboratory testing resources, he said.

"Already there are positive signals coming out that such rapid testing is around the corner."

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Vaccination cards and seat spacing: Air travel in a post-coronavirus world could be vastly different, experts say - Stuff.co.nz

Who should be included in the libertarian canon – UConn Daily Campus

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Many are familiar with the long intellectual tradition of progressivism within academia. While progressive ideas may hold true, it is important students are exposed to the full breadth of knowledge academia holds. Without ideological diversity, students lose the critical thinking skills to discern between important ideas. Who I think should be included in the libertarian canon is merely a sample, but sufficient enough for readers to get their feet wet in libertarianism. My methodology is multidisciplinary, ranging from literature, to economics and more. All of the figures in this article are a product of my own research and I have never been formally taught any of them in school, which is why it is doubly important this message is expressed. Besides, one of the main tenets of libertarianism is self-directed education.

Firstly, lets discuss literature. My favorite author, George Orwell was a libertarian socialist. Another author, Ayn Rand, was a libertarian capitalist. Ive read both 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell and enjoyed them, thoroughly. Both were a critique of the overreach of government and totalitarianism. Some readers believe Snowball and Napoleon from Animal Farm represent dictators, Stalin and Trotsky.

Orwell also coined such phrases as The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians, and If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In short this man stood up for and advocated what he believed in: libertarianism.

As for Ayn Rand: I listened to half of her audiobook, Anthem. The book is written in first-person, plural pronouns. Individuality in the book is deemphasized. In fact, individuality is an important theme in her books and her philosophy, which she called Objectivism. Though I disagree with major components of Objectivism it believes altruism is evil I appreciate that it stresses capitalism, individualism and limited government. Ive been learning a lot about Ayn Rands work through her think tanks and through Yaron Brook, businessman and president of the Ayn Rand institute.

Economics is where the vast majority of libertarian theories arises. It goes without saying that I believe students should study the works of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. As Hayek says, The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better. Despite these economists long accolades and contributions to society, my favorite economist is someone else, an obscure economist from Virginia.

I first became a fan of economist Bryan Caplan when I was googling libertarian quizzes, several years ago. From there, I became curious about his work, watching lectures, interviews and debates he participated in. I eventually bought two of his books, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Caplans statistics were educational and pointed to an idea he called signalling, the idea that educations mere purpose is to convey intelligence, conformity and conscientiousness. In Open Borders, he explained a philosophical thought experiment my favorite about a man named Marvin. I had emailed Dr. Caplan last summer, out of sheer curiosity, about his positions of abolishing the FDA and anti-discrimination laws, ideas hes defended in the past. He answered my emails, thanking me for emailing him, along with a link for senior economics students, using statistics to convey why the general public is not bigoted. Overall, it was an interesting read, but Im not sure if Im ready to repeal anti-discrimination laws just yet, but he definitely deserves to be in the canon.

Overall, this is a sampling of who should be in the libertarian canon. You are free to research, enjoy and discern between opinions. I hope this article helps someone in exploring libertarianism, even if they decide libertarianism is not for them.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual writers in the opinion section do not reflect the views and opinions of The Daily Campus or other staff members. Only articles labeled Editorial are the official opinions of The Daily Campus.

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Who should be included in the libertarian canon - UConn Daily Campus

The insipid libertarian memes of COVID-19 – Ryan Bohl – Elemental

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What a time to be alive. The libertarian right is suddenly rediscovering their balls after years of watching the GOPs steady entrenchment of presidential power under Trump. And their memes are here to tell you tyranny is upon us!

Perhaps youve seen some of these floating around your social media newsfeed, or at least seen a version of them. You may ask, how do I know these are specifically libertarian memes? Well, like all memes, ownership is fluid but I will say I did take them from popular posts in libertarian Facebook groups and Reddit. Even if the creators were not libertarian themselves (perhaps Russian?), the audiences sure ended up being so.

There are far too many memes to repudiate comprehensively, let alone in a Medium post, but I thought Id grab a few recurrent ones Ive seen. When given even a dash of scrutiny, the memes find themselves collapsing faster than Trumps poll numbers.

The I dont know what quarantine means meme

Americas school system has failed again! This meme doesnt know what quarantine means, and for some reason the creator didnt bother to Google the dictionary definition. Quarantine is not just about sick people its also about exposed people. Because COVID-19 is so virulent (with an r-nought of perhaps up to 5.7, meaning its super spreadable) and also often asymptomatic, we 1). have to assume its been spread a lot more than it has been and 2). a lot of people have it and we dont know it.

Hence the widespread measures that look like quarantines the public health strategy assumes that a lot of people have been exposed, and its so many that there is no viable neighborhood by neighborhood strategy, let alone an individual by individual one.

The meme also just totally ignores modern quarantine practices: immigrants and cargo crews coming into the United States are routinely quarantined if its believed they may have been exposed to some kind of infectious disease; often, the threshold is as simple as Been anywhere near Ebola lately? Many of them are healthy. Most of all, this has been standard practice since the word quarantine was invented in the 14th or 15th century.

At its core, quarantine is about individual rights the rights of millions of people not to get sick and die. The exchange is the temporary suspension of movement for others. And thats the real problem here: its not just that the meme doesnt understand quarantine, its that its arguing that the temporary interruption of daily life for some is pure tyranny. My God, what if I cant visit the Olive Garden for unlimited breadsticks for a few months?

The I want to bring back gilded age depressions meme

Woof here! This meme suggests that businesses affected by COVID-19 lockdowns should be slaughtered like the sickened wild hogs they are. There are a few libertarian fetishes tickled by this meme: hunting, blood, and disproportionate punishment for personal failure. In the 21st century, the only ones who survive should be the ones who trick their fellow citizens into purchasing artificially scarce goods and services.

Of course, this memes underlying principles are based on an often fatal combination of myth and fantasy. The myth is that businesses are entirely responsible for their own success and not part of an interconnected economic and political system in which even good ideas do not immediately achieve success. The fantasy is that adopting Darwinian capitalism would somehow be a better world, and not revert the U.S. back into the late 19th centurys murderous cycle of booms and depressions rather than Americas current cycle of booms and recessions.

The I dont understand how laws work meme

Ah yes, proof positive that we are but on the cusp of totalitarianism. Apparently, this really did happen but the meme is still stupid. According to reports, the man was part of a group told to disperse; everyone else did, but because this guy is probably a dick, he refused to. So he was arrested.

And yet this libertarian meme makes it out as if this is 1). widespread and 2). not reasonable. First of all, we dont have any evidence that police across the nation are arresting thousands of people for lockdown violations, and the arrests that are happening are resulting in fines, not concentration camps. Its like the memes creator thinks that Hitlers rise to power was paved with traffic tickets.

So to answer the memes question, yes, its about a virus, because law enforcement had a non-compliant individual violating a reasonable anti-pandemic order multiple times and had no choice but to end social distancing to ensure the order still had any meaning. Pretty sure tanks didnt roll out the next day in LA.

The Im really bad at history one

Heres the problem with historical comparisons: they most often tell you how things are not repeating themselves. You can do the broad strokes things (Rome got so corrupt it fell apart, so corruption is bad), but when you get into specific policies, let alone your news of the day, youre gonna end up looking dumb.

The idea behind this meme is that the tyranny of the British in 1776 is somehow the same as the tyranny of public health officials in 2020. But boy does that ignore a lot of history including all the times public health officials used to quarantine our asses before vaccines were invented for pandemics like measles, polio, and the Spanish flu. Somehow that all gets ignored, in addition to the very big fact that the American Revolution wasnt even remotely fought over Britains right to impose quarantines during pandemics.

Instead, this is just lazy libertarian ahistorical math: one tyranny is the same as all the others. It says something foolish and wrong, and contributes nothing to the public debate happening over how the U.S. should approach COVID-19.

That surely wont stop more from coming, though. The best we can do is lambast them.

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The insipid libertarian memes of COVID-19 - Ryan Bohl - Elemental

COVID-19 is killing minor parties’ ability to get candidates on the ballot in Minnesota – MinnPost

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The most fertile places for Minnesotas minor political parties to gather signatures to get their candidates on the ballot are lakes and festivals. But COVID-19 has made both off-limits for party petitioners and going door-to-door isnt a viable alternative.

So the leaders of Minnesotas Libertarian, Green and Independence-Alliance parties have asked state lawmakers for emergency relief to let them gather those signatures electronically.

Secretary of State Steve Simon has included that provision among several others related to the peacetime emergency caused by the coronavirus. But that request has been caught up in the fight over expanded vote by mail in Minnesota.

Under state election law, minor parties must gather signatures of 2,000 registered voters to place a U.S. Senate candidate before fall voters; 1,000 signatures for a U.S. House candidate; and 500 for state House and Senate candidates. They must collect those signatures from May 19 to June 2 (though they have more time for a presidential nominee).

Minnesotas requirements are already a heavy lift, the parties complain, which is why they are part of a federal lawsuit that is set to be heard on May 19.

We can only get so many signatures every day, and we only have 14 days to do it, maybe it limits the number of candidates for us, said Chris Holbrook, the chair of the Minnesota Libertarian party. The coronavirus only underscores the structural problems that we started suing on last year in the first place.

He said the Libertarians get 80 percent of the signatures needed by petitioning around the lakes in Minneapolis and at festivals like Grand Old Day in St. Paul. The parks will likely remain closed and Grand Old Day has been cancelled this year.

MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan

Libertarian Party Chair Chris Holbrook

The Libertarians are working with the Green Party and the Independence-Alliance Party to win the changes at the capitol.

Were all in the same boat, Holbrook said of the other parties. They have their different political philosophies and ideologies, and were not merging our political efforts with the exception of all minor parties are going to get screwed if they dont give us some option to participate.

The lawsuit is asking the U.S. District Court for injunctive relief to extend the petition window to the August 11 state primary date. At the same time, the minor parties have also asked Gov. Tim Walz to use an executive order to change the dates or lower the signature requirements. Finally, the parties are also asking the legislature to allow electronic signatures so we dont endanger the public or ourselves in getting our candidates on the ballots.

But Holbrook said the changes minor parties have asked for have previously been blocked by legislative Republicans, and that he expects a similar reaction this year.

The bill before the House State Government Finance subcommittee addressing some of the minor parties concerns tries to do a lot of things. Initially, the purpose of the bill was to appropriate money sent to the states by Congress for cybersecurity projects. While some of that money was eventually cleared for use by Secretary of State Steve Simon, an argument between DFLer Simon and the GOP-controlled Senate over voter ID and provisional balloting has left the rest, some $7.39 million, unappropriated. (In the meantime, Congress has sent even more money to the states, this time for COVID-19 related expenses related to elections; Minnesotas share is $6.9 million.)

Amendments to the bill, House File 3499, would give Simon the authority to make other election changes if the COVID-19 crisis continues through the primary and general elections. Those changes could include ordering the closure of high-risk polling places such as those in long-term care facilities. It would also authorize remote filing for office as well as extend the period before and after elections for absentee ballots to be processed and counted. Finally, it would respond to the request of the minor parties to be allowed to gather petition signatures electronically.

It is not really right and fair to make supporters of those parties go door-to-door or to public places to gather physical human signatures, Simon told the House committee Thursday. We might have our differences with people from non-major parties, but to ask them to go out and hustle signatures in public places doesnt seem very safe.

MinnPost photo by Greta Kaul

Secretary of State Steve Simon

Vote-by-mail has drawn opposition for national and state Republicans, making it unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled Senate. But Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia, said he was leery of giving Simon any of the emergency powers the bill envisions. Instead, the Legislature could return to pass changes related to COVID-19 should they be needed as the election dates draw nearer.

Im hesitant to say were gonna wrap this up in a bow and let the secretary figure it out, Nash said. The Legislature has to continue operating as the Legislature. We have the election certificates, we have the ability to make these changes, committees are still meeting, we have a commitment to address election issues.

Rep. Michael Nelson, a DFLer from Brooklyn Park and chair of the committee, said the committee will keep working on the bill. I dont see this as us handing huge powers to the Secretary of State, Nelson said.

Current law does not allow any changes to polling places after December, 2019, for example, so moving or combining them because of concerns over COVID exposure must be authorized by the Legislature. There are things that have got to get done in here, he said.

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COVID-19 is killing minor parties' ability to get candidates on the ballot in Minnesota - MinnPost

We need to be the Rosa Parks: Trump ally plans Wisconsin protest of coronavirus restrictions – POLITICO

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Moore said in the video he had spoken to an unnamed donor in the state who promised to pay the bail and legal fees for anyone who gets arrested during the rally.

Were going to see a lot more of [the protests], Moore predicted. So, this is a great time, gentleman and ladies, for civil disobedience."

"I think actually think we should have started this a week or two ago, Moore said in Friday's interview with CBSs Major Garrett. "I don't think we can wait two or three or four more weeks for testing The rate of infection to the economy is very similar to the rate of infection of this disease."

Business leaders on Wednesday called on Trump during his councils first conference call to increase the scale and scope of coronavirus testing before people felt safe to leave their homes.

Moore, who has argued the Federal Reserve should be responsive to the president, was picked by Trump for a seat on the central banks board in March 2019. The former Trump campaign adviser withdrew from consideration in May 2019 after his selection spurred public and private criticism, including from many GOP lawmakers who expressed wariness over disparaging comments he made about women and fellow Republicans.

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We need to be the Rosa Parks: Trump ally plans Wisconsin protest of coronavirus restrictions - POLITICO

Berkeley institution Top Dog is on the ropes. But they still wont take federal aid. – SFGate

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Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Photo: Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Berkeley institution Top Dog is on the ropes. But they still wont take federal aid.

For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.

You never forget your first trip to Top Dog.

The tiny, Berkeley-born grab-and-go grill is a rite of passage for Cal students, slinging superlative sausages late night til 3 a.m. along with a side of libertarian literature.

Top Dog opened in 1966, during the heart of the Free Speech Movement, and 54 years later, it still features walls plastered with everything from yellow-ish newspaper clippings pushing for the privatization of the postal service to "Freedom Works Better Than Government" bumper stickers.

All of which has made the coronavirus pandemic uniquely difficult for its owners, Richard and Renie Riemann.

"We dont want to take money from the government," Renie says. "Our political background is for smaller government regulations how can we turn around and do the opposite? This will challenge what we believe in."

Will it ever.

Top Dog has closed two of its three locations since the coronavirus pandemic forced a shelter-in-place order for six Bay Area counties including Alameda County and was forced to lay off one-third of its 19-person staff.

Renie, who graduated from Cal in 1967 and married Richard in 1968, said shes hopeful Top Dog can last through April.

"Its a pretty scary time," she admits from inside of a tiny office behind Top Dogs Durant Avenue location the only one still open. "Were trying to stay afloat, but the hardest part is bringing in enough money for rent for all three places and utilities."

The city of Berkeley launched a $3 million relief fund on March 22, offering $10,000 grants to struggling small businesses with 50 or fewer employees to help cover operational expenses (payroll, rent, working capital).

The federal government approved the CARES Act on March 27, which includes the Paycheck Protection Program. The government assistance program offers loans to brick-and-mortars like Top Dog that they promise to fully forgive provided at least 75% of the borrowed dollars are going to payroll costs, and the other 25% are to interest on mortgages, rent, and/or utilities.

Riemann has zero interest in both.

"Theres always something of a catch," she said of borrowing money from the government. "We need a lot more transparency in general. Ive talked to other businesses and customers, and theyre all disgusted by the way money is taken in and we dont know whats happening to it.

"Were fixing our own potholes it just doesnt make sense."

Renie, 76, spends her days in the office and still eats a sausage almost every day (for "quality control"). Like everyone else, she shouts her order from Top Dogs doorway to keep the recommended 6 feet of social distance, and marvels at a grill thats slightly less full of sizzling dogs than usual.

She wears a mask and remembers to wash her hands, but generally feels a bit helpless.

"With the '89 earthquake, my first thought was I need to help somehow. I need to work in a cafeteria, or help at a hospital. But now, Ive realized Im not 30 anymore. I feel 30, but Im 76, and I cant expose myself that would put my husband at risk."

And Renie is at risk, but that seems beside the point for her.

Instead, her full attention is on keeping the business alive not only for her and her husbands legacy, but for the Top Dog employees in their wills. Thats right: Four Top Dog employees will be bequeathed the Top Dog empire when the owners pass.

"A lot of our staff has been around for a long time our main manager, Jeremy (Bower), hes gonna be 60. I think he came on board when he was 18. Theyre all in the will," she says. "My husband and I said, 'You know, we have to keep this going, because when we depart we want to leave this to you guys.'"

To that end, Top Dog has asked for some forgiveness from local suppliers that have deferred bills, plus it haspartnered with Uber Eats to expand its reach locally ("thats been helpful," she says), and, less locally, theres been a slight uptick in mail orders from Old Blues.

"Cal has had so many people come through it; theres still a nostalgia for us," she says. "We just got an order back East, somebodys father who was a Cal grad, probably my age, and they remembered he liked Top Dog. It was costly to them, but I can appreciate it. Id do something like that. And every little bit helps.

"Most businesses like us have a thin profit margin, thats the scary part. You dont have a big buildup of back money to ride this out. Were staying afloat as long as we can."

Its just not entirely clear how long that will be.

"Were struggling along, weve got a skeleton crew, were just hoping the pandemic wont last too much longer for peoples health first of all, but also so we can all go back to business."

The one still-open Top Dog is located at 2534 Durant Ave. in Berkeley and open 10 a.m. to midnight. You can mail order sausages and buns at topdoghotdogs.com.

Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek

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Berkeley institution Top Dog is on the ropes. But they still wont take federal aid. - SFGate

Why You Should Be a Socialist and a Marxist – Jacobin magazine

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Review of Nathan RobinsonsWhy You Should Be a Socialist(Macmillan, 2019).

Like Moses and the ancient Israelites, for forty or so years, socialists were lost in the wilderness. From 1975 to 2015, socialists were a fast-greying lot with no power and influence and very little hope. A small few cornered appointments at universities, stuck by their politics, but remained politically isolated. The rest congregated on the margins of political life; or hid their full convictions from their coworkers, friends, and family; or threw themselves into union and community activism but never dared to use the s word. Or they gave up altogether.

That has changed, thank God. Socialismis back. And were now in a moment that is calling out for new books, magazines, documentaries, podcasts, and commentary making the case for democratic-socialist politics to millions of readers.

Thats what makes Nathan Robinsons new book Why You Should Be a Socialist a welcome and useful addition to the bumper crop in cases for left-wing politics. In a little over 250 pages, Robinson persuasively lays out the moral case against capitalism, a system of brutal exploitation, oppression, and waste that Robinson dissects and disposes of in short order.

Robinson launches the book by engaging a hypothetical reader who is extremely dubious about socialist ideas and promises to win them over. Its a fruitful strategy. Even though most of his readers will probably be at the very least already curious about democratic-socialist politics, theyll find many of their doubts assuaged and questions answered.

Robinson does so by directing his attention first to awakening in his readers a socialist instinct. He invokes basic moral principles that many of us share, a hatred of cruelty and a passionate desire to alleviate suffering being prominent among them.

His own process of radicalization provides the starting point for this part of the argument. I saw people buying new phones every year and keeping the old ones in a drawer, while a few miles away, day laborers picked tomatoes, earning 45 cents for every 30-pound bucket. I saw reports of Americans being charged $5,000 by hospitals for an icepack and a bandage, or paying $1,200 a month in rent for a bunk bed.

No doubt every reader has had similar experiences. And while the depravities of the capitalist system are onerous enough for those of us not on the top, the life of luxury for the lucky few makes it all the worse. Robinson appeals to those readers who want to see what being super-wealthy means, but [who] dont have the door codes to get inside their lairs sorry, homes to buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal and turn to its real estate section, which is literally called Mansion.

Robinsons point is a basic one, but one that deserves constant repetition: these shared moral inclinations ought to lead us to want to make dramatic changes to society in a socialist direction.

He then pivots to show how those moral instincts can be hardened into more concrete political commitments, particularly towards policies that help build a more solidaristic and egalitarian society. Such a society, Robinson points out, would actually be far freer than the world of capitalist freedom we live in today. Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, a real plan to end mass incarceration all would expand the freedoms and quality of life of the vast majority, and are part of walking the fine line Robinson draws between both dream[ing] of a very different world and look[ing] closely at the world you actually live in and be[ing] realistic in setting short-term political goals.

Finally, Robinson dispatches with alternative political orientations. He shows how a conservative worldview is at its core an ugly one, and how liberalism is wholly inadequate to the challenges of the moment. In Robinsons apt phrasing, conservatives today are mean, false, and hopeless while liberals are engaged in the unenviable task of polishing turds.

Robinson carries out the core tasks he sets for himself with admirable skill. The socialist movement is lucky to have him, and he has made a valuable contribution to the debate about capitalism and socialism now underway in the United States.

But Robinson runs into trouble when he approaches strategic debates within the socialist left. Though a relatively small part of the book, its worth focusing in on two points where he is on much shakier ground: his unsubstantiated attacks on the most important political tradition in the history of the Left, Marxism, and his self-proclaimed identity with the politics of libertarian socialism.

The problems begin when Robinson turns his attention to Karl Marx, who he introduces as a thinker who cant be ignored. After recognizing the force of Marxs writings on capitalism and economics, Robinson disappointingly drudges up accusations against Marx from Marxs nineteenth-century anarchist contemporaries.

The accusations include claims that Marx had authoritarian tendencies. Where? When? Robinson doesnt say. Marxists have had too little regard for the importance of individual liberty. This is certainly true for Stalinism, but its hardly a fair picture of the rich democratic-socialist tradition inspired by Marx.

And the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Robinson writes, was right to worry that Marx and other socialists had become fanatics of state power. This is a bizarre claim, considering Marx spent his life running from state authorities in Germany and never lived to see a socialist state for which he could be fanatical.

Robinsons accusations against Marx go beyond establishing some critical distance from an important thinker. They play into destructive anti-socialist tropes that are as common as they are unwarranted.

Contrary to the claims of Robinson, Proudhon, and others, Marx was a committed small-d democrat. Marx was so committed to democracy that in The Communist Manifesto, he and Friedrich Engels argued that the struggle and realization of a democratic society were the key to the achievement of socialism: [T]he first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

Marxs successors in the socialist parties of Europe in the late nineteenth century were no less democratic in their politics. In fact, they were the main organizers for movements to extend suffrage to all, to defend and expand civil liberties, and to build unions and organs of democratic control in the workplace.

Robinsons attempted takedown of Marx therefore does an injustice to a committed democratic socialist, to many who identify as Marxists, and most troubling to young socialists looking for political direction. New socialists political development will benefit enormously from taking Marx and the Marxist tradition seriously and incorporating it into their newfound democratic socialism.

Robinson also throws his hat in with the tradition of libertarian socialism. Libertarian socialists hate government and capitalism alike, according to Robinson. It is a tradition that commits itself unwaveringly to a set of respectable principles and compromises neither its radical socialism nor its radical libertarianism.

What this really amounts to for Robinson personally, however, beyond an understandable desire to reject the authoritarian socialist experiments of the twentieth century, is unclear. If what Robinson wants is a credible alternative to authoritarian socialism, he does not need to reject Marxism. Marxists from Rosa Luxemburg to Ralph Miliband and Michael Harrington have maintained a clear-eyed criticism of Stalinism and its ideological brethren without embracing a hazy notion of libertarian socialism.

These confusing twists limit the effectiveness of Robinsons overall argument. While his moral indictment of capitalism is compelling, his moral defense of the positive program of democratic socialism is lacking.

This is not because Robinson fails to make the case for why democratic-socialist ends would be morally desirable. The democratic-socialist future that Robinson trumpets a world where people do not go to war; there are no class, racial, and gender hierarchies; there are no significant imbalances of power; there is no poverty coexisting alongside wealth; and everyone leads a pleasant and fulfilled life is clearly a desirable one, and he makes that point effectively.

But Robinsons peculiar commitment to the politics of libertarian socialism makes presenting a defense of the democratic-socialist means to get there difficult, if not impossible. After all of Robinsons celebration of the desirability of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and other policies paid for by new taxes on the wealthy, he fails to make a moral defense of the necessity of using state power to win them precisely the kind of question the socialist-dubious reader, fed on a steady diet of libertarian capitalist talking points for most of their life, is likely most uneasy about.

Surely Robinson knows that if Bernie Sanders had won the 2020 presidential election and was able to enact these policies, it would have required a massive redistribution of power in society power that he would say he supports. But that redistribution would only have been possible because Sanders and the democratic-socialist movement he now leads would have had access to a portion of state power.

To take just one example, under the very best-case scenario, Sanders would have signed a bill enacting Medicare for All at some point in his administration. The millionaires and billionaires and the CEOs of major health insurance companies would inevitably object. But officials from the IRS and the power of the US judicial system would be used to ensure that new taxes are collected and the doors to every health insurance company in the country shuttered by force if necessary. (The collective shout for joy on that day, when it finally does come, will be overwhelming. I predict fireworks and mass parades.)

Robinson is free to have misgivings about all this as a libertarian socialist. But he must recognize that the kind of political revolution Sanders put forward, that millions of working-class Americans rallied to, and that Robinson himself supported, is a process that would be carried out through the use of state power.

The strategy of the political revolution is therefore at odds with the intellectual tradition that Robinson professes. Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and generations of anarchists would read Why You Should Be a Socialist and be baffled to find one of their ideological progeny advocating such a strategy. Theyd likely apply the same accusations of authoritarianism and state-power worship they once lobbed at Karl Marx at one Nathan J. Robinson.

All this matters because were sure to see a new and forceful moral indictment of redistribution made by libertarian capitalists as part of an ideological offensive against democratic socialism in the years to come. If as a movement we cant compellingly defend the moral desirability and necessity of using state power to redistribute resources, we open ourselves up to defeat in the battle of ideas.

The defense of the use of state power as a means to achieve democratic-socialist ends is readily supplied. Democratic majorities have a right in any society to make decisions for the whole as long as basic minority rights to dissent, dignity, and personal freedom are respected. And massive majorities exist for all the key points of Bernies program. The real activists undermining democracy are precisely todays libertarian capitalists who defend a system that has so far blocked these majorities.

But making that case depends on jettisoning the debilitating anarchist misgivings about majority rule and state power that are still too common even among socialists.

Robinsons views on Marxism and libertarian socialism are inconsistent with the politics he so effectively puts forward elsewhere in the book. But they make up only a small selection from an otherwise admirable work. And I imagine Robinson himself has embraced a kind of cognitive dissonance on this front, enjoying the entertaining prose of Bakunin and friends while advocating for a democratic-socialist strategy for using state power to rebuild the United States.

But if Why You Should Be a Socialist is intended as an introduction to socialist politics, Robinsons false starts on the question of strategy deserve a critical look. After all, as Robinson rightly notes, the battle of ideas is an essential part of the struggle, and getting our ideas right about strategy and history matters. And Robinson himself would be more than welcome in the Marxist-influenced democratic-socialist movement. On every other question, his ideas line up precisely with our tradition.

Still, none of this is to diminish an otherwise rich book that deserves to be read. We need more talented writers and thinkers like Nathan Robinson in the fight for socialism, and his work is a much-needed contribution to our shared project.

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Why You Should Be a Socialist and a Marxist - Jacobin magazine

Mark Cuban To Run For President? Billionaire Dallas Mavericks Owner Does Not Rule Out 2020 White House Bid – International Business Times

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Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said Sunday that he would not rule out running for president this year. Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team and is one of the shark investors on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank.

I would've never considered it prior to a month ago. Now things are changing rapidly and dramatically, Cuban said on the Fox News Sunday program. Im not saying no, but it's not something Im actively pursuing. Im just keeping the door open.

Cuban, who is worth an estimated $4.1billion according to Forbes, has previously described himself as somewhat of a libertarian.

"Not so much libertarian as much as I'd like to be libertarian, he told ABC Dallas-based affiliate WFAA in 2015. "When I think libertarian, it's 'as small of a government as we can get, right now you just cut right through it and you make it [smaller] right now.' That's not real. There's got to be a process. There's got to be a transition. As a country, we make decisions. We make decisions that we're going to provide healthcare, right? We don't just let people die on the street. You can go into any hospital and they have to treat you."

Cuban has also said that while he would be interested in joining the Republican party, he feels the party is too rigid.

"I'm a Republican in the respect that I like smaller government and I like less intrusion in some areas. But there's sometimes where I think we have to intrude. I think there's sometimes when you have to do things," he continued.

The November election will likely be a race between Republicanincumbent Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term, and Democratic rival former Vice President Joe Biden. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders exited the race last week, leaving Biden as the almost certain Democratic nominee.

Cuban and Trump have feuded since 2016. Cuba, who endorsed Hillary Clinton,had harsh words for Trump at a Clinton campaign stop in Pittsburgh.

"You know what we call a person like that in Pittsburgh? A jagoff," Cuban said. "Is there any bigger jagoff in the world than Donald Trump?"

Trump would later callCubandopey" andnot smart.

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has canceled in-person campaign rallies, forcing candidates to resort to digital events. As of Monday at 2:15 p.m. ET, there have been560,891 cases and 22,681-coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S.

More here:

Mark Cuban To Run For President? Billionaire Dallas Mavericks Owner Does Not Rule Out 2020 White House Bid - International Business Times

The Hill’s Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 | TheHill – The Hill

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Welcome to The Hills Campaign Report, your daily rundown on all the latest news in the 2020 presidential, Senate and House races. Did someone forward this to you? Click here to subscribe.

Were Julia Manchester, Max Greenwood and Jonathan Easley. Heres what were watching today on the campaign trail.

LEADING THE DAY:

200 DAYS OUT: Were officially 200 days away from Election Day in November, and while Americas attention is on the coronavirus pandemic, campaigns are gearing up.

Former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenBiden campaign seeks to let Sanders keep his delegates in unusual move GOP online donor platform expanded to state level Overnight Energy: US oil prices hit 18-year-low | Green groups, coal companies attack EPA power plant rollback from both sides | EPA weighs lifting ethanol requirements for oil refiners MORE scored three major back-to-back endorsements this week from Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersBiden campaign seeks to let Sanders keep his delegates in unusual move The Hill's Campaign Report: Trump inflames red state-blue state coronavirus divide Joe Biden's record on Social Security isn't perfect, but Donald Trump's is far worse MORE (I-Vt.), former President Barack ObamaBarack Hussein ObamaCOVID-19: The leadership failure The Memo: Public may be more cautious than Trump on reopening Biden assembling White House transition team MORE and Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth WarrenBiden campaign seeks to let Sanders keep his delegates in unusual move McConnell rolls out GOP oversight efforts for coronavirus relief package Joe Biden's record on Social Security isn't perfect, but Donald Trump's is far worse MORE (D-Mass).

The show of unity from the partys leadership demonstrates Democrats urgency to unify ahead of November. It also puts Biden in a better position than 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonBiden campaign seeks to let Sanders keep his delegates in unusual move The Hill's Campaign Report: Trump inflames red state-blue state coronavirus divide Sanders sends fundraising email for DNC MORE was in four years ago. Sanders did not endorse Clinton until the summer of 2016, leading to questions about how deep the partys divisions were. Additionally, Biden racked up larger wins over Sanders than Clinton did in 2016.

In terms of a head-to-head matchup against President TrumpDonald John TrumpBiden campaign seeks to let Sanders keep his delegates in unusual move Lady Gaga calls WHO chief a 'superstar' McCarthy says he supports incorporating hospital funding into small business aid package MORE, Biden leads the president in a number of key swing states according to recent polls. Biden currently leads Trump in Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.

However, Trump has the advantage of having a massivefinancialwar chest, thanks to his campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC). Trump has also gotten massive media exposure due to his daily White House coronavirus task force briefings.

Meanwhile, in the Senate, Democrats need to win the White House and a net three seats to get a majority in the upper chamber. However, they will have to win four Republican seats to flip the Senate. Sen. Doug Jones (D-Ala.) is facing an uphill reelection battle in Alabama, which Trump is likely to sweep in November.

Democrats will have to unseat Sens. Martha McSallyMartha Elizabeth McSallyThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day The Hill's Campaign Report: Warren throws her support behind Biden MORE, Cory GardnerCory Scott GardnerThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Hickenlooper outraises Gardner in Q1 in Colorado Senate race Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day MORE and Susan CollinsSusan Margaret CollinsThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Democratic challenger outraises Collins in Maine Senate race Trump taps members of Congress to advise on reopening MORE in Arizona, Colorado, and Maine, respectively, in addition to winning a fourth seat. The party appears to have a decent shot in all three of the contests.

The House, on the other hand, is the least likely chamber to flip in the general election.The GOPneeds a net gain of 20 seats to take back the majority. Republicans also have to take into account the redistricting in North Carolina, which will endanger two GOP-held seats, as well as retiring Rep. Will HurdWilliam Ballard HurdThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day Garth Brooks accepts Library of Congress's Gershwin Prize for Popular Song MOREs (R-Texas) district, which Democrats are favored to take.

The focus for Republicans will be on districts Trump won in 2016, but that are currently held by Democrats. The Cook Political Report rates Rep. Angie Craigs (D-Minn.) district, which Trump won by 1.2 percentage points, as lean Democratic.

Meanwhile, Cook rates Reps. Mikie SherrillRebecca (Mikie) Michelle SherrillThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day NY, NJ lawmakers call for more aid to help fight coronavirus MORE (D-N.J.) and Ron KindRonald (Ron) James KindThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day Bottom line MOREs (D-Wis.) races as likely Democratic. Trump won Sherrills district by 1 point and Kinds district by 4 points.

However, Republicans do have an advantage in a number of key districts. For example, Rep. Abigail SpanbergerAbigail Davis SpanbergerThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day Juan Williams: Biden's promises on women are a big deal MOREs (D-Va.) race in Virginias 7th District, which was also won by Trump in 2016, is considered a toss-up by Cook's report. The website also rates Rep. Lucy McBathLucia (Lucy) Kay McBathThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Ava DuVernay-produced documentary highlighting rising female politicians of color to air in June Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day MOREs (D-Ga.) seat in Georgias 6th District as a toss-up. That district was won by Trump in 2016 and was formerly held by former Rep. Karen HandelKaren Christine HandelThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day Conservative women's group rolls out new GOP endorsements for 2020 MORE (R-Ga.), who is running again for the seat.

READ MORE:

Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day, by Julia Manchester and Max Greenwood

FROM THE TRAIL:

Bidens campaign is planning a rollout for Michelle ObamaMichelle LeVaughn Robinson ObamaHouse Democrats push hard for mail-in voting funds The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Will Trump's plan to reopen the economy work? The Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 MOREs endorsement, although there are questions about just how public a role the enormously popular former first lady will play in his campaign. Sources tell The Hill that the Biden campaigns early plans include a focus on remote fundraising and voter registration efforts. The trick for Michelle Obama and the Biden campaign is finding the right balance for the pop culture icon, who could be a massive asset for the campaign but has never shown much enthusiasm for campaign politics. Amie Parnes and Jonathan Easley report.

Sen. Warren said she would agree to be Bidens running mate if shes offered the job, The Hills Rebecca Klar reports. Asked by MSNBCs Rachel MaddowRachel Anne MaddowWhitmer says protesters' 'irresponsible actions' can lead to extension of stay-at-home orders The Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Harris on if she'd serve as Biden's VP: 'I'd be honored to serve with Joe' MORE on Wednesday night what she would say if the former vice president offered her the No. 2 slot on the Democratic ticket, Warren answered bluntly: Yes.

The Democratic National Convention (DNC) host committee is laying off and reassigning employees in the latest sign of trouble for the party ahead of the scheduled convention in August, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. Former DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe told the paper its very unlikely there will be a convention in Milwaukee this year, and he urged the party to get creative in considering a workaround.

PERSPECTIVES:

Zachary Wamp and Meredith McGehee:How Congress must aid states to ensure safe and secure elections

David Brady and Brett Parker: The Trump Bumps likely demise

David Siders: Why Democratic unity is a problem for Trump

FROM CONGRESS & THE STATES:

Rep. Justin AmashJustin AmashThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 The Hill's Morning Report - Presented by Facebook - Trump may exert unprecedented power on nominees Libertarians view Amash as potential 2020 game changer for party MORE (I-Mich.), who left the Republican Party and registered as an Independent last year, has reignited speculation that hell run for president on a third party ticket in the fall. That speculation has led to excitement among Libertarians, who view him as their best shot at breaking through on the national stage in 2020. Amash has described himself as a libertarian in the past. There has never been a sitting member of Congress from the Libertarian Party. Jonathan Easley takes a look at what an Amash candidacy could mean for the presidential race, particularly in the battleground state of Michigan.

Mail-in voting doesnt lend an advantage to either major political party. Thats according to a new study from Stanford Universitys Democracy and Polarization Lab, which looks at election results in three states that phased in vote-by-mail programs county by county. More from The Hills Zack Budryk: Comparing county-level election results and public party registration data for California and Utah voters ranging from 1996 to 2018, researchers found 'a truly negligible effect' on partisan turnout rates with the addition of a vote-by-mail option, with turnout slightly up across the entire voting-age population.

MONEY WATCH:

Democrats in some of the most competitive Senate races out-raised their Republican opponents in the first quarter of 2019, recent filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) show. Heres a quick rundown:

Arizona

-Mark Kelly (D):

-Receipts: $11,008,599.35

-Disbursements: $4,910,934.63

-Cash on hand: $19,706,843.19

-Martha McSally (R):

-Receipts: $6,372,756.09

-Disbursements: $3,780,574.23

-Cash on hand: $10,252,063.35

Colorado

-John HickenlooperJohn HickenlooperThe Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Hickenlooper outraises Gardner in Q1 in Colorado Senate race Here's where things stand 200 days before Election Day MORE (D)

-Receipts: $4,077,784.93

-Disbursements: $2,413,321.07

-Cash on hand: $4,880,041.96

-Sen. Cory Gardner (R):

-Receipts: $2,469,739.20

-Disbursements: $656,715.07

-Cash on hand: $9,565,416.45

Maine

-Sara Gideon (D):

-Receipts: $7,100,800.94

-Disbursements: $5,229,219.02

-Cash on hand: $4,649,432.36

-Susan Collins (R):

-Receipts: $2,405,597.36

-Disbursements: $3,989,003.52

-Cash on hand: $5,611,935.58

North Carolina

-Cal Cunningham (D):

-Receipts: $2,983,423.54

-Disbursements: $1,451,578.91

-Cash on hand: $3,000,479.06

-Thom TillisThomas (Thom) Roland TillisSenate misses deadline, but talks on loans go on The Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 Democratic challenger outraises Tillis in North Carolina Senate race MORE (R):

-Receipts: $1,376,774.26

-Disbursements: $298,583.77

-Cash on hand: $6,483,413.82

POLL WATCH:

Gallup: Trumps job approval rating dips by 6 points.

PUBLIC POLICY POLLING NORTH CAROLINA PRESIDENTIAL

Biden: 48 percent

Trump: 47 percent

PUBLIC POLICY POLLING NORTH CAROLINA SENATE

Cunningham: 47 percent

Tillis: 40 percent

MARK YOUR CALENDARS:

(Keep in mind these dates could change because of the outbreak)

April 17:

Wyoming

April 28:

Ohio

May 2:

Continued here:

The Hill's Campaign Report: 200 days to Election Day 2020 | TheHill - The Hill

Singularitarianism | Prometheism Transhumanism Post Humanism

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I have a four-foot-tall robot in my house that plays with my kids. Its name is Jethro.

Both my daughters, aged 5 and 9, are so enamored with Jethro that they have each asked to marry it. For fun, my wife and I put on mock weddings. Despite the robot being mainly for entertainment, its very basic artificial intelligence can perform thousands of functions, including dance and teach karate, which my kids love.

The most important thing Jethro has taught my kids is that its totally normal to have a walking, talking machine around the house that you can hang out with whenever you want to.

Given my daughters semi-regular use of smartphones and tablets, I have to wonder how this will affect them in the future. Will they have any fear of technologies like driverless cars? Will they take it for granted that machine intelligences and avatars on computers can be their best friends, or even their bosses?

Will marrying a super-intelligent robot in 20 years be a natural decision? Even though I love technology, Im not sure how I would feel about having a robot-in-law. But my kids might think nothing of it.

This is my story of transhumanism.

Courtesy of Zoltan Istvan

My transhumanism journey began in 2003 when I was reporting a story for National Geographic in Vietnams demilitarized zone and I almost stepped on a landmine.

I remember my guide roughly shoving me aside and pointing to the metal object half sticking out of the ground in front of me.

I stared at the device that would have completely blown my legs off had my boot tripped the mine. I had just turned 30. The experience left me shaken. And it kept haunting me.

That night as I lay tense and awake in my hotel room, I had the epiphany that has helped define the rest of my life: I decided that the most important thing in my existence was to fight for survival. To put it another way: My goal was to never die.

Because I was not religious, I immediately turned to the thing that gave meaning to my world: science and technology. I took a leap of faith and made a wager that day. I later called this (and even later, dedicated a book to it) the transhumanist wager.

The life extension business of transhumanism will be a $600 billion industry by 2025.

My idea for an immortality wager came from Pascals Wager, the famous bet that caught on in the 17th century that loosely argued it was better to believe in God than not to, because you would be granted an afterlife if there was indeed a God. My transhumanist wager was based in my belief that its better to dedicate our resources to science and technology to overcome death while were still aliveso we dont ever have to find out whether there is an afterlife or not. It turns out I wasnt alone in my passion to live indefinitely through science. A small social movement, mostly of academics and researchers, were tackling similar issues, starting organizations, and funding research.

Some of them called themselves transhumanists.

Fast-forward 16 years from my landmine incident, and transhumanism has grown way beyond its main mission of just overcoming death with science.

Now the movement is the de facto philosophy (maybe even the religion) of Silicon Valley. It encapsulates numerous futurist fields: singularitarianism, cyborgism, cryonics, genetic editing, robotics, AI, biohacking, and others.

Biohacking in particular has taken offthe practice of physically hacking ones body with science, changing and augmenting our physiology the same way computer hackers would infiltrate a mainframe.

Its pretty obvious why it has emerged as such a big trend: It attracts the youth.

Not surprisingly, worrying about death is something that older people usually do (and, apparently, those younger people who almost step on landmines). Most young people feel invincible. But tell young people they can take brain drugs called nootropics that make them super smart, or give them special eye drops that let them see in the dark, or give them a chip implant that enhances human ability (like the one I have), and a lot of young people will go for it.

In 2016, I ran for the US presidency as the Transhumanist Party nominee. To get support from younger biohackers, my team and I journeyed on the Immortality Busmy 38-foot coffin-shaped campaign busto Grindfest, the major annual biohacking meet-up in Tehachapi, California. In an old dentists chair in a garage, biohackers injected me with a horse syringe containing a small radio-frequency-identification implant that uses near-field communication technologythe same wireless frequency used in most smartphones. The tiny deviceits about the size of a grain of ricewas placed just under the skin in my hand. With my chip, I could start a car, pay with bitcoin, and open my front door with a lock reader.

Four years later, I still have the implant and use it almost every day. For surfers or joggers like myself, for example, its great because I dont have to carry keys around.

One thing I do have to navigate is how some religious people view me once they understand I have one. Evangelical Christians have told me that an implant is the mark of the beast, as in from the Bibles Book of Revelations.

Even though Im tagged by conspiracy theorists as a potential contender for the Antichrist, I cant think of any negatives in my own experiences to having a chip implant. But as my work in transhumanism has reached from the US Military to the World Bank to many of the worlds most well-known universities, my chip implant only exasperates this conspiracy.

While people often want to know what other things Ive done to my body, in reality becoming a cyborg is a lot less futuristic and drastic than people think.

For me and for the thousands of people around the world who have implants, its all about functionality. An implant simply makes our lives easier and more efficient. Mine also sends out pre-written text messages when peoples phones come within a few feet of me, which is a fun party trick.

But frankly, a lot of the most transformative technology is still being developed, and if youre healthy like me, theres really not much benefit in doing a lot of biohacking today.

I take nootropics for better brain memory, but theres no conclusive research I know of that it actually works yet. Ive done some brainwave therapy, sometimes called direct neurofeedback, or biofeedback, but I didnt see any lasting changes. I fly drones for fun, and of course I also have Jethro, our family robot.

For the most part, members of the disabled community are the ones who are truly benefiting from transhumanist technologies today. If you have an arm shot off in a war, its cyborg science that gives you a robot arm controlled by your neural system that allows you to grab a beer, play the piano, or shake someones hand again.

But much more dramatic technology is soon to come. And the hope is that it will be availableand accessibleto everyone.

I asked to be added to a volunteer list for an experiment that will place implants in peoples brains that would allow us to communicate telepathically, using AI. (Biohacking trials like this are secretive because they are coming under more intense legal scrutiny.)Im also looking into getting a facial recognition security system for my home. I might even get a pet dog robot; these have become incredibly sophisticated, have fur softer than the real thing (that doesnt shed all over your couch or trigger allergies) and can even act as security systems.

Beyond that, people are using stem cells to grow new teeth, genetic editing to create designer babies, and exoskeleton technology that will likely allow a human to run on water in the near future.

Most people generally focus on one aspect of transhumanism, like just biohacking, or just AI, or just brainwave-tech devices. But I like to try it all, embrace it all, and support it all. Whatever new transhumanist direction technology takes, I try to take it all in and embrace the innovation.

This multi-faceted approach has worked well in helping me build a bridge connecting the various industries and factions of the transhumanist movement. Its what inspired me to launch presidential and California gubernatorial campaigns on a transhumanist platform. Now Im embarking on a new campaign in 2020 for US president as a Republican, hoping to get conservatives to become more open-minded about the future.

The amount of money flowing into transhumanist projects is growing into many billions of dollars. The life extension business of transhumanism will be a $600 billion industry by 2025, according to Bank of America. This is no time for transhumanism to break apart into many different divisions, and its no time to butt heads. We need to unite in our aim to truly change the human being forever.

Transhumanistsit doesnt matter what kind you arebelieve they can be more than just human. The word natural is not in our vocabulary. Theres only what transhumanists can do with the tools of science and technology they create. That is our great calling: to evolve the human being into something better than it is.

Because transhumanism has grown so broadly by now, not all transhumanists agree with me on substantially changing the human being. Some believe we should only use technology to eliminate suffering in our lives. Religious transhumanists believe we should use brain implants and virtual reality to improves our morality and religious behavior. Others tell me politics and transhumanism should never mix, and we must always keep science out of the hands of the government.

We need unity of some significant sort because as we grow at such a fast rate there are a lot of challenges ahead. For example, the conservative Christian Right wants to enact moratoriums against transhumanism. The anarcho-primativists, led by people like the primitivist philosopher and author John Zerzan (who I debated once at Stanford University), want to eliminate much technology and go back to a hunting-gathering lifestyle which they believe is more in tune with Earths original ecology. And finally, we must be careful that the so-called one percent doesnt take transhumanist technology and leave us all in the dust, by becoming gods themselves with radical tech and not sharing the benefits with humanity.

I personally believe the largest danger of the transhumanist era is the fact that within a few decades, we will have created super-intelligent AI. What if this new entity simply decides it doesnt like humans? If something is more sophisticated, powerful, intelligent, and resilient than humans, we will have a hard time stopping it if it wants to harm or eliminate us.

Whatever happens in the future, we must take greater care than we ever have before as our species enters the transhumanist age. For the first time, we are on the verge of transforming the physical structure of our bodies and our brains. And we are inventing machines that could end up being more intelligent and powerful than we are. This type of change requires that not only governments act together, but also cultures, religions, and humanity as a whole.

In the end, I believe that a lot more people will be on board with transhumanism than admit it. Nearly all of us want to eliminate disease, protect our families from death, and create a better path and purpose for science and technology.

But I also realize that this must be done ever so delicately, so as not to prematurely push our species into crisis with our unbridled arrogance. One day, we humans may look back and revel in how far our species has evolvedinto undying mammals, cyborgs, robots, and even pure living data. And the most important part will be to be able to look back and know we didnt destroy ourselves to get there.

Excerpt from:

What it means to be a cyborg in 2019 - Quartz

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Singularitarianism | Prometheism Transhumanism Post Humanism

The ethics of virtual immortality and an after-life online – Business Day

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Tbilisi Have you ever wanted to talk to a loved one after they died? It used to be that only those calling themselves necromancers and mediums could claim to contact the dead, but soon digital versions of the deceased could be living just a few clicks away.

From South Korea to the US, tech start-ups are looking at ways to keep the dead alive in a digital afterlife that data experts say poses myriad legal and ethical questions the world is yet to properly address.

Technically, we can recreate anyone online given enough data, said Faheem Hussain, a clinical assistant professor at Arizona State Universitys School for the Future of Innovation in Society. That opens up a Pandoras box of ethical implications.

Most services only allow people to sign up to their own digital afterlife while they are still alive.But the lack of regulation on the issue leaves the door open for others with access to the data of the deceased to bring them back to life in virtual form raising concerns about privacy and consent, data experts say.

In most countries, the data of the deceased is not protected, said Edina Harbinja, a senior lecturer in media and privacy law at Birminghams Aston University.So, nothing in law would prevent the creation of an avatar or android that would resemble the dead.

That could happen without the consent of the deceased, and the data used could infringe on other peoples privacy if it includes, for example, conversations the person had with friends and others.

Virtual alter egos

From virtual reality (VR) to artificial intelligence (AI), advances in technology have spurred a series of initiatives offering different shades of virtual immortality in recent years.

In February, a South Korean broadcaster aired a tearful reunion between a mother and her deceased 7-year-old daughter who was recreated through VR as a digital avatar modeled on a child actor using photos and memories from her mother.

Other companies have been looking at social media as a source of information to create chatbots that could impersonate us after we are gone.

ETER9, a social network set up by Portuguese developer Henrique Jorge, pairs each user with an AI counterpart that learns to copy their online behaviour and can post comments and content on their behalf even after they are dead.

When a user decides to keep [their] counterpart active for eternity, [they] will have the extension of [them] alive forever, Jorge told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in e-mailed comments.Some years from now, your great-grandchildren will be able to talk with you even if they didnt have the chance to know you in person.

US-based Eternime offers a similar service, while Replika, a company in California, creates digital alter egos that users can talk to when in need of a confidant or companion.

Other start-ups such as SafeBeyond and GoneNotGone allow people to record videos and messages that will be dispatched to their loved ones after death, like letters from the grave marking birthdays or other life events.

Many questions, few answers

While some people might find comfort in the idea of living on digitally after they die, data experts warn that holes in data protection laws make it possible to virtually resurrect someone without their permission.

Wills can provide some guidelines if they contain directions on how to dispose of the deceaseds digital assets, but in some countries there is no guarantee these will be honoured, said Harbinja.

In Britain, for example, decisions around what to do with data is seen as personal wishes akin to preferring cremation rather than burial that can be overridden by executors and heirs and are not enforceable in court, she noted.

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The ethics of virtual immortality and an after-life online - Business Day

Denman’s racing immortality leaves mere passing firmly in the shade – Racing Post

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Published in the Racing Post on June 7, 2018

Death shall have no dominion. How could it, when Denman had gained racing immortality long ago? Death takes a moment and is gone, but a life so well lived is everlasting.

The final kindness of the needle, gently and mournfully wielded, ushered Denman from his quiet field into the Elysian Field where all the horses go, the great and the good and the only ordinary.

Now, just out of our earshot, a strong, steady voice is announcing his arrival, and from the depths of the long, sweet grass Kauto Star has pricked up his ears and is walking quickly towards his old neighbour, old rival, old friend.

Denman's gone. No more will he lift his head as pheasants rise from the hedgerows with a clatter of wings, no more will he carefully present his backside to those seeking an audience, his silent, eloquent method of deterring conversation.

But what a treasury he leaves us. Death takes life but it cannot subtract from it, can't diminish that which came before. Denman's legacy is inviolable.

We know about the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the two Hennessys, the RSA Chase, the Lexus, the Racing Post Rating of 184, all the enduring excelsior of a career that never failed to excite.

What the bare statistics cannot convey, though, and what will form the main strand of a million reminiscences, is the way Denman went about his work. Some horses glide across the turf, others plod sturdily over it, but Denman hammered it into submission. At his great and glorious peak, he was an elemental force like no other.

He was a big horse, a throwback to a half-forgotten age of steeplechasing when giants strode the earth. We called him The Tank, in tribute to his size, but also to his relentlessness. He was the irresistible force, and woe betide any immovable object that lay in his way. Sometimes it was a rival, sometimes a long-established record, sometimes it was simply the bulwarks of belief that were turned to matchwood by his might.

Denman relaxes during retirement after a career that saw him scale remarkable heights

Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

His victory in the Gold Cup was a good example. Not only did he steal the crown from Kauto Star, he wrenched it away with barely credible brute force, alloyed with a rough-edged elegance and economy of effort.

To watch him come barrelling down the Cheltenham hill, turning for home full of running, is to witness the perfect exposition of equine power. He would have run through a brick wall that day and not turned a hair.

Together with his stablemate he helped change the aspect of his sport. Denman and Kauto Star were like United and City, like Federer and Nadal, like Coe and Ovett, opposing styles, opposite poles of brilliance.

Between them they transcended the mere technicalities of their sport, seemingly spurred each other to greater heights, victory for one more sweet and more meaningful when gained at the expense of the other.

Cheltenham Gold Cup hero and jumps legend Denman dies aged 18

Ostensibly, you were implacably either for Denman or for Kauto Star, but that did not preclude a warm and genuine appreciation of the other's talents, nor the unavailing arguments about who was the better.

Perhaps it was in his two Hennessy wins that we truly saw the greatest of Denman, though. They were similar in execution he mercilessly crushed the opposition but very different in context.

His first victory, in 2007, was peak Denman, the mighty athlete in his pomp. He was still unbeaten over fences, his limits unknown, and he carried his 11st 12lb burden as a weightlifter might carry a small child on his shoulders. We thrilled to him, struck by all sorts of awe.

Two years later, it was a different Denman. He had been made to seem mortal, a shell of his former self, laid low by his heart problems, his proud record in tatters, his crown lost for good. On his previous start, he had fallen for the first time. Now his 11st 12lb looked like a millstone around the neck of a war-wearied veteran.

'The Tank' is back: Denman and Ruby Walsh storm to success in the 2009 Hennessy Gold Cup, carrying 22lb more than runner-up What A Friend (left)

Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

Yet his spirit remained intact. He summoned up 'old Denman' for the final time, put his shoulder to the wheel, wore his battered old heart on his sleeve, and although it looked like very hard work he didn't shrink from the task until it was done.

It would be his last victory, his last hurrah, and as he returned to his adoring public there were not a few of them with tears rolling down their cheeks.

Now those tears are falling again, now that great heart is stilled. Denman is no more. One more long, luxurious summer at grass would have been a blessing, but it was time to go.

But as long as horses race, whenever the dust is blown in clouds from ancient record books, wherever men and women come together to talk about their champions, Denman will be brought bewitchingly to life.

Years hence, when younger faces light up at the exploits of the next great star (for there is always a next great star), old heads will nod and then these words will follow: "Ah, but you never saw Denman, did you."

And the stories will be told again.Denman will never die, you see; in this way he will live forever.

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Denman's racing immortality leaves mere passing firmly in the shade - Racing Post

Letter to the editor: A living soul – News – The Columbus Dispatch

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SundayApr19,2020at12:01AM

To the editor:

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7

The spirit of God has made me; the breath of the almighty gives me life. Job 33:4

For everyone belongs to me, the parent as well as the child both alike belongs to me. The one who sins is the one who will die. Ezekiel 18:4

He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His might on the day He comes to be glorified in His holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed. 2 Thessalonians 1:8-10

Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. Matthew 25:46

What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? Mark 8:36-37

But if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in Him: whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did. 1 John 2:5-6

For my fathers will is that everyone who looks to the son and believes in Him, shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. John 6:40

For the imperishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 1 Corinthians 15:53

In the way of righteousness there is life; along that path is immortality. Proverbs 12:28

To those who by persistence in doing good seek glory, honor and immortality, he will give eternal life. But for those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil, there will be wrath and anger. Romans 2:7-8

The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. 1 John 2:17

Gregory Graham

Senecaville

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Letter to the editor: A living soul - News - The Columbus Dispatch

In plants found the gene of immortality – The KXAN 36 News

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Scientists at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands have discovered a new gene that allows annual plants continue to grow after flowering, and not to die. The discovery may improve the yield of agricultural crops, not visiva them again every year. Article researchers published in the journal Nature Plants.

Researchers have identified the Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) gene AHL15, which determines whether the plant is capable of growing season after flowering. Vegetation growth and development, provide points of growth group of stem cells that form new stems with leaves or flowers. In perennial plants, some growth areas remain active, however, at the annual this is not happening. The suppression of gene AHL15 life of perennial plants gets shorter, and if sverkhekspressiya plants bloom several times.

According to scientists, the discovery will help to answer the question, why in the course of evolution, some plants become annuals and others perennial. In addition, the preservation of activity of some groups of stem cells such annual crops as rice or wheat, would the plants continue to grow after harvest.

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In plants found the gene of immortality - The KXAN 36 News

Westworld series refresher, what you need to know before season 3 – News Lagoon

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Westworld is undoubtedly one of the most complex shows of our time.With the show being on hiatus for almost two years, people are likely to need a refresher as to where we last left off. So, here we are, trying to do our best to recap the sophomore season of Westworld.

While the show is getting a soft reboot in the new season and will be branching out to the real world (or is it just another simulation?), we spent almost all of our time last season in the park. We saw an uprising of hosts which resulted in a brutal slaughter of both the hosts and humans. Some of the hosts made it to the Valley Beyond, aka The Sublime, a digital sanctuary for hosts where they can lead a peaceful life, free from human predators.

And while the season 2 finale saw Thandie Newtons Maeve who is probably the only host who can pose a threat to Dolores getting decommissioned in the end (we cant wait to see where the queen will find herself next), it was not before she made sure that her beloved daughter made it to the Valley.

Doloress dearly beloved, Teddy (James Marsden) and Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) also made it to the valley in the finale.

The end of Season 2 also saw Evan Rachel Woods Dolores escaping the park, as she entered the human world (or maybe just another simulation?) to endhuman dominance once and for all.

To escape, she disguised herself as a synthetic double of Tessa Thompsons Charlotte Hale, who was in charge of the park following Anthony Hopkins Fords death.

The real Charlotte Hale was already killed by Dolores herself a while ago. We also see Luke Hemsworths Ashley Stubbs, who was the head of the park security, helping her in her escape. The creators later revealed that Stubbs is a host created by Ford himself.

Dolores also managed to take five digitized balls with her, which contains the essence and psyches of some other hosts and could be used in different host bodies.

Dolores is using the android version of Hale as her insider within Delos, as she continues her role as an executive of the company. Although we still dont know who is inside her and we cannot wait to find out.

Jeffrey Wrights Bernard has always been conflicted between hosts and humans; after all, for so long, he thought that he was a human. During the season finale, we found out that Charlores killed Bernard, but later, he was brought back into the real world by Dolores. She explains that his presence is vital to her plan even though they will have to be enemies (seriously though??? What is up with that? We cant wait to find out.)

Ed Harriss The Man in Black, aka William, accidentally killed his daughter, who he thought was just another host and was a part of the mind game that Ford designed for him.

He also faced off against Dolores in the finale, which resulted in him injuring his hand severely and seriously hurting himself. As of now, he is the primary owner of the theme parks and is obsessed with the immortality project and the secrets that the company holds.

But intriguingly enough, in the post-credits scene, we saw him in a psychological prison just like the one where the younger William (Jimmi Simpson) used to interview Delos, being interviewed by a version of his daughter.

Meanwhile, we also found out that Delos real objective was to monitor the guests and collect their psyche data that is part of their larger and vital project, immortality itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDJbFA32_QY

Next: Horizon Zero Dawn deserves a TV adaptation

Westworld Season 3 airs Sundays on HBO, Aaron Paul is the latest addition to the already star-studded cast of this superhit series.

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Westworld series refresher, what you need to know before season 3 - News Lagoon

We can’t reopen the country without answering these 3 questions – The Daily Briefing

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As much of the United States braces for its Covid-19 peak in coming weeks, state and public health officials are looking ahead to prepare the country to incrementally phase out stay-at-home orders. While some experts have projected timelines for when it's safe to reopen parts of the country, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb' recently released a report that outlines explicit criteria states should meet before they flip the switch:

Covid-19 weekly webinar: What health care leaders need to know

Gottlieb's conditions emphasize the critical roles testing and surveillance play in slowing the spread of the virusthe first step to relaxing social restrictions.

Ultimately, we think a community's ability to monitor the spread of Covid-19 boils down to their ability to answer three key questions about their population: Who is immune? Who is contagious? Where is the virus still spreading?

The narrative around a community's readiness to reopen businesses largely hinges on measuring potential immunity through the availability and efficacy of antibody testing. These tests, also known as serological tests, measure the amount of antibodies (IgG and IgM) in a person's bloodeven those considered asymptomatic. Understanding the amount of antibodies in a population clarifies the full scope of community spread and reveals the virus' true transmission and fatality rates.

However, antibody testing is no a silver bullet. Stories of "reactivated" cases are reminders of how little is known about a patient's immunity after recovering from the virus. Dawn Bowdish, a professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster University in Ontario told Scientific American, "We simply don't know yet what it takes to be effectively protected from this infection."

Where is it happening already?

After a small county in Colorado failed to launch a county-wide serology testing program, large-panel studies using serological tests by the National Institutes of Health and Beaumont Health Research Institute are center stage for mass Covid-19 immunity research. Findings from Beaumont's study will be particularly valuable as it is open to all 38,000 Beaumont Health employees, making it the largest study focused on the susceptibility of health care workers and their antibody responses to Covid-19. Should results prove fruitful, communities could use a variety of tactics to open up economic activity and jobs to immune individuals, such as immunity passports being considered in other countries.

What is in the way of doing more?

The short answer here is a lack of FDA-approved antibody tests. Compared to PCR tests, developing an accurate antibody test is particularly difficult because the threat of false positive is high. If the test lacks specificity, previous exposure to other viruses within the coronavirus family, like any of the four that cause the common cold, can lead to a false positive. So far, three antibody tests have EUA approval from the FDA: Cellex and Chembio's rapid tests and Ortho Clinical Diagnostics high-throughput test. At least 70 other antibody test makers have validated and are planning to market their tests in the United States under the FDA's "Policy D" for serology tests, though these tests are not FDA-approved.

While Cellex's 15-minute, rapid test has speed on its side, it is limited to processing one specimen at a time. This won't be sufficient for widespread testing until specimens can be processed on automated, high-throughput instruments.

Another underlying challenge that requires stay-at-home orders stay in effect is the lack of visibility into infectiousness. Health officials are vying for tools that will predict where outbreaks will recur and who will need care.

To complement testing, experts argue an augmented disease surveillance system is needed to give officials a national view of where patients seek care and for what symptoms. Tracking demand for Covid-19-related care can help leaders assess the infectiousness of their regions and make informed decisions about reopening while enabling public health officials to distribute resources based on near real-time data.

Where is it happening already?

The private sector is playing a big role here. Advisory Board's Andrew Rebhan spoke with Kinsa the public health company collecting up to 162,000 daily temperature readings from their internet-connected thermometers to create the U.S. Health Weather Map, which allows consumers to understand where and when an illness is spreading. Scripps and UCSF are researching whether biometric data from wearable fitness devices could predict where health care workers are about to fall ill regionally. Genomics company, DxTerity Diagnostics, launched a subscription Covid-19 testing service for employers to safely screen for, and intercept, their pre-symptomatic employees as they return to the office.

What is in the way of doing more?

Scaling and syncing disparate surveillance methods into one system will be a technical (and unlikely) feat. Feasibility aside, the prospect of sharing personal health information with any organization will always prompt a discussion about privacy. Privacy laws are likely to preclude the U.S. from considering South Korea's surveillance strategies, regardless of their efficacy. For now, public-private partnerships are the keystone to monitoring the infectiousness of the virus and proactively managing the response.

The CDC cites "very aggressive" contact tracing of those testing positive for Covid-19, and a major scale-up of personnel to take on that work, as key competencies the country must invest in to safely reopen. Former CDC Director Tom Frieden estimates upwards of 300,000 dedicated contact tracers are needed just to match the scale of contact tracing in Wuhan, China. National contact tracing efforts require laborious interviewing and investigative work from trained public health experts, but they won't be acting alone as the technology sector joins the fight.

Where is it happening already?

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) formed the nation's first Contact Tracing Collaboration with global non-profit, Partners In Health, to train and deploy 1,000 public health students across the state as contact tracers.

Tech giants, Apple and Google are teaming up to create a contact-tracing tool for their billions of iPhone and Android users. The ability to wirelessly exchange anonymous information via apps run by public health authorities is expected by mid-May. Covid-19 positive users can opt to upload their test results to a public health app, which will notify other users who came into close proximity over the previous several days and encourage them to isolate themselves.

What is in the way of doing more?

The U.S. has thousands of newly idled workers who could be activated for contact tracing. Nearly 7,000 PeaceCorps volunteers returned home in mid-March and there are thousands more "furloughed public employees, phone bank staff (most tracing work is done by phone), workers from health organizations, social service and nonprofit agencies, and recent graduates," Frieden wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. Expediting training for furloughed employees could reactivate part of the unemployed workforce and supplement technology-based contact tracing efforts. However, the cost and scope of such a national recruiting effort coming together in coming weeks appears unrealistic.

Advisory Board's Jackie Kimmell and Jordan Angers also note that Apple and Google's technology solution is not without limits. The bluetooth connection that contact tracing tech relies on is notoriously inconsistent and can lead to false positives. More challenging is that the technology's use is voluntary so it is only as effective as the number of people who decide to share their testing information.

Many officials are already pointing to the next phase of the new coronavirus epidemic, but without an understanding from local government about how the virus is spreading in their communitiesand how their communities are respondingthe country could be hamstrung on figuring out that "opening date" and therefore see continued micro-surges.

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We can't reopen the country without answering these 3 questions - The Daily Briefing

Scientists find doing this simple activity every day can help fend off dying of COVID-19 – Ladders

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COVID-19s mortality rate has less to do with the pathology of the disease itself and more to do with common autoimmune conditions that leave patients particularly susceptible to infection.

The vast majority of deaths caused by SARS-Cov-2 have been linked to underlying illnesses like hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Positive cases with any one of these diseases tend to endure critical COVID-19 symptoms compared to otherwise healthy individuals.

To lighten the burden placed upon overwhelmed medical faculties experts are urging the uninfected to maintain a healthy lifestyle until COVID-19s growth curve is successfully subdued.

According to two researchers at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, those who regularly exercise decrease their odds of developing fatal reactions to SARS-Cov-2.

We cannot live in isolation forever. Regular exercise has far more health benefits than we know. The protection against this severe respiratory disease condition is just one of the many examples.

Extracellular superoxide dismutase, a molecular transducer of health benefits of exercise

In their new paper, Dr. Zhen Yan and Hannah R.Spaulding identified an antioxidant called extracellular superoxide dismutase (EcSOD) thats naturally produced by our muscles when we commit to cardiovascular exercise.

In previously conducted studies, EcSOD seemed to improve viral clearance and enable patients to endure prolonged infection.

The longer SARS-Cov-2 replicates its genetic material inside host cells the more likely sufferers will develop acute respiratory syndrome (ARS).

The condition suppresses agents that eliminate debris inside of our lungs.

Forty percent of those that develop ARS do not survive.

EcSOD targets free radicals and protects the bodys tissue from disease and decreases oxidative stress. The antioxidant can be administered to patients who occasion aggressive manifestations of the SARS-Cov-2 pathogen, which could shorten the duration that patients are held in intensive care units as well as the number of confirmed cases that end up there in the first place.

Independent research has shown that gene therapy is a viable way to protect those with metabolic disorders and immune deficiencies.

The protective effect of endurance exercise is likely mediated by EcSOD in the cartilage tissues. In another study in mice, long-term forced treadmill running improved cartilage histology in the joint in wild type mice, the authors wrote in the new paper. The facts that EcSOD expression is promoted by endurance exercise in skeletal muscle and can be redistributed to other vital tissues to protect the target tissues against oxidative damage in various pathological processes (Fig. 2) strongly support exercise-induced EcSOD as an effective therapeutic intervention for prevention and treatment of numerous oxidative stress-related diseases.

Additionally, after administering EcSOD, mice suffering from renal failure began to endure less kidney damage over time.

We often say that exercise is medicine. EcSOD set a perfect example that we can learn from the biological process of exercise to advance medicine, Yan concluded.

Although COVID-19 seldomly results in medical intervention, fatal manifestations of the disease are almost always avoidable.

Poor diet and sedentary lifestyles are responsible for the majority of the fatal outcomes documented in the US, Italy and Wuhan, China.

Given the prevalence of diseases caused by poor lifestyle choices, The CDC reports that 20% to 40% of hospitalized COVID-19 cases will lead to ARS.

All you hear now is either social distancing or ventilator as if all we can do is either avoiding exposure or relying on a ventilator to survive if we get infected, Yan said in a press statement. The flip side of the story is that approximately 80% of confirmed COVID-19 patients have mild symptoms with no need of respiratory support.

Be sure to read the full paper published in the journal Redox Biology.

Excerpt from:

Scientists find doing this simple activity every day can help fend off dying of COVID-19 - Ladders