Month: July 2021

Categories
Health

Why U.S. will not hit Fourth of July objectives

United States President Joe Biden speaks during an event in the South Court Auditorium of the White House on June 2, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Biden’s government says it will miss its July 4th vaccination target

All that free beer, donuts, and baseball tickets won’t be enough to keep up with the pace of vaccinations.

President Joe Biden’s goal of getting at least one shot in the arms of 70% of US adults before the July 4th holidays is missed.

According to a CNBC analysis of CDC data, by then about 67% of adults will be at least partially vaccinated at the current vaccination rate.

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The president said he hoped Independence Day would mark a turning point in the pandemic.

Yet vaccination efforts have come up against a wall in some states, despite the fact that the Delta variant of the disease is rapidly spreading across the country.

More from Personal Finance:
States hope free joints and other perks will generate interest
More and more universities are demanding Covid vaccines
More people plan to quit when return to work plans take hold

From Krispy Kreme to cold money, there is now no shortage of incentives to entice Americans into the Covid vaccine. But vaccination rates stay below 70% and are likely to stay there, according to Iwan Barrankay, professor of business and public policy at Wharton.

“These incentives are a great idea and they are very engaging, but there is simply no evidence that these incentives address the barriers,” Barankay said.

“We get into a population of people who are vehemently against it or who have a life situation that is too complicated,” he said. This group will not be swayed by vaccine sweeteners like cash gifts, sports tickets and free food, he added.

For some, socio-economic barriers remain, such as childcare or time off work to get vaccinated.

Barrankay has spent years researching what works to encourage patients to take their medication. Financial incentives are not compelling for patients with complicated lives, he said. Low income, inadequate housing, lack of transportation, and caring for others in the household are all factors that can get in the way.

In some cases, there is no incentive that you can offer people.

Ivan Barankay

Wharton professor

For others, there are also behavioral barriers, including skepticism about the vaccine, that can be even more difficult to overcome.

“In some cases, there is no incentive you can give people,” Barankay said.

Some Americans, especially those in black, Hispanic, and rural communities, are more reluctant to get Covid vaccinations.

“People are influenced by others around them,” said Barrankay. “If you can change someone’s behavior in a community, it has a multiplier effect, but it is much more difficult work.”

Still, as vaccination rates plateau, public and private groups continue to increase the stakes – from million dollar payouts and even marijuana or a lap around a NASCAR track – to encourage more vaccinations.

In May, Maryland hosted the first of its $ 40,000 lottery draws for people who were vaccinated. Forty consecutive days of the drawing for a prize of $ 40,000 will end on July 4th with a final drawing for a payout of $ 400,000.

Ohio also hosts a series of cash prize draws with its own “Vax-a-Million” contest.

In the private sector, Krispy Kreme was one of the first in March to introduce a nationwide Covid vaccine incentive, offering a free glazed donut to every adult with a vaccination card. The company said it has already given away more than 1.5 million donuts. (The offer is still valid for the rest of the year.)

And Anheuser-Busch recently said it would buy “a round of beer” to anyone over the age of 21 once Biden’s 70% target is reached on July 4th.

A handful of states have reported that vaccination incentive programs have increased local vaccination rates in some populations following recent declines.

For its part, Ohio said its vaccination rates doubled in some counties after the state vaccine lottery was announced.

Recent data shows that the Gambit could be effective with certain groups and have few overall drawbacks, according to a Morning Consult report.

The survey of 2,200 adults, including nearly 1,600 unvaccinated people, found that men are more likely than women to say that these offers would get them to sign up for a vaccination.

Democrats, more than Republicans, also said they were more likely to get vaccinated if they could get free goods or services, and when broken down by generations, millennials were the most likely to say that certain freebies would encourage them to get vaccinated.

A separate survey by Blackhawk Network found that money is the most popular motivator over a sweepstakes, paid time off, free food or drink, or other commodity.

About 66% of unvaccinated adults said they would accept a monetary incentive, and 44% said they would even get vaccinated for $ 100 or less. Blackhawk Network surveyed more than 3,000 adults in June.

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Categories
Entertainment

Lovecraft Nation Will Not Be Returning For a Second Season

Lovecraft Country Will Not Be Returning For a Second Season

Despite a terrifyingly good first season, Lovecraft Country has not been renewed at HBO. On Friday, the network announced its decision to end the series with season one. “We will not be moving forward with a second season of Lovecraft Country,” HBO confirmed in a statement. “We are grateful for the dedication and artistry of the gifted cast and crew, and to Misha Green, who crafted this groundbreaking series. And to the fans, thank you for joining us on this journey.”

Shortly after the news broke, Green, the showrunner, shared a glimpse of what she imagined season two would be about. “Wish we could have brought you #LovecraftCountry: Supremacy,” she tweeted, along with a screenshot of the next generation. “Thank you to everyone who watched and engaged.” According to the image, Lovecraft Country‘s “new world” is a reimagined “Sovereign States of America” divided by the Tribal Nations of the West, the Whitelands, the New Negro Republic, and the Jefferson Commonwealth.

A taste of the Season 2 Bible. Wish we could have brought you #LovecraftCountry: Supremacy. Thank you to everyone who watched and engaged. 🖤✊🏾 #noconfederate pic.twitter.com/BONbSfbjWg

— Misha Green (@MishaGreen) July 3, 2021

Judging by Green’s response and the cast’s past interview, this cancelation news came as a surprise. Although HBO does house a few limited series like The Undoing and Mare of Easttown, fans anticipated a continuation of Lovecraft Country. Perhaps we’ll see this world return on another network and another time, but for now, we’ll just have to imagine what hair-raising storylines Green had in store for future episodes.

Categories
Politics

Bitcoin ETF ought to have been accredited some time in the past, SEC regulator Peirce says

Bitcoin ETF should have been approved a while ago, SEC regulator Peirce says

Hester Peirce, Commissioner for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Center, listens during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, the United States, on Tuesday, September 24, 2019.

Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hester Peirce is at a loss.

For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission, of which Peirce is a member, has rejected requests from national stock exchanges and financial companies to list securities that track the performance of the popular digital currency Bitcoin.

Back in the day – let’s say 10 years ago – concerns about possible market manipulation and liquidity might have made sense, but things have changed.

“This is probably the biggest and most frequently asked question I get: When will the SEC approve a Bitcoin publicly traded product?” Commissioner Peirce said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday.

“I thought if we had applied our standards as we applied them to other products, we would have already approved one or more of them,” she said. “With every day that goes by, the rationale we have used in the past for not being approved seems to be weakening.”

The SEC applies a “unique, elevated standard” to filings related to digital assets, it wrote in 2020. And it has argued that the agency is asking exchanges and potential ETF sponsors for assurances beyond what they do for traditional, stock-based demands products.

“People with a regulatory mindset say, ‘Oh wait, the market for Bitcoin looks a little different from the markets we’re used to,'” said Peirce on Thursday.

Now, she added, the Bitcoin market looks more like an established market with more institutional and established retail investors involved.

“So I think the markets have matured quite a bit,” said Peirce.

Renewed demands for a SEC-approved Bitcoin ETF come just weeks after the regulator announced its ruling on approving an application by VanEck to list shares of its Bitcoin Trust on the Chicago Board of Exchange’s BTZ Exchange move.

Regulators said in a letter dated June 16 that they would take additional time to seek comments from the public. In particular, the SEC asks investors and scientists for their opinion on whether Bitcoin ETFs could be susceptible to manipulation or whether Bitcoin itself is sufficiently distributed and therefore resistant to similar underhand manipulation.

But Peirce, a Republican named one of the SEC’s five commissioners by former President Donald Trump, has long denounced what she sees as double standards for Bitcoin products in her own agency.

Perhaps her sharpest objection came in a dissent in 2018, when she argued that the SEC should have approved an application by the Chicago Board of Exchange’s Bats BTZ Exchange to list and trade shares in the Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust.

“By excluding the approval of cryptocurrency-based ETPs for the foreseeable future, the Commission is operating a performance regulation,” she wrote at the time. “Bitcoin is a new phenomenon and its long-term viability is uncertain. It can be successful, it can fail. However, the commission is not well positioned to assess the likelihood of either outcome for Bitcoin or other assets. “

Three years later, VanEck’s current filing – much like pending Bitcoin ETF filings from Fidelity, Cathie Wood’s Ark Invest, and a few others – is viewed by the industry as an SEC litmus test now led by a cryptocurrency expert, Chairman Gary Gensler becomes.

Former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, testifies at a US Senate Banking Committee hearing on systemic risk and market oversight on Capitol Hill in Washington on May 22, 2012.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

His appointment as head of the SEC by President Joe Biden, and his subsequent Senate confirmation, met with optimism from many in the crypto community as he is seen as a skilled hand in creating novel financial rules.

Gensler, who taught crypto courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is perhaps best known for his influential tenure as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Obama administration. There Gensler helped develop and introduce a new supervisory system for the swap market, which was largely unregulated before the financial crisis.

Even if the Democrat Gensler does not necessarily agree with the Trump-appointed Peirce on all issues, they can join a more proactive SEC on Bitcoin regulation.

Rejecting Bitcoin ETF applications not only carries the risk of double standards, it can also provide few, more dangerous alternatives to thousands of investors.

“The Complications of Not Approval [an application] get stronger because people are looking for other ways to do the same things that they would do with an exchange traded product, “she said.” They are looking for other types of products that are not that easy to get in and out of maybe look at companies that are somehow related to bitcoin or crypto in a broader sense. “

Bitcoin itself has taken a violent start to summer and has fainted its price by more than 40% in the past three months. Although it remains one of the most actively traded digital assets, some market watchers say Bitcoin is at a critical juncture.

“It looks like it might be preparing for a $ 30,000 retest, and that could be critical,” Art Cashin, director of NYSE floor operations at UBS, said Thursday. “If you crack $ 30,000, traders will see if there is a trapdoor, a cascade sell-off, to follow.”

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Its dizzying ups and downs even come as a growing number of companies and banks, including payment companies Square and PayPal, began to facilitate Bitcoin transactions.

Meanwhile, the Bank of New York Mellon announced in February that it would start funding Bitcoin, a major development given that it is both the oldest bank in the country and a leader in custody banking.

Late on Friday morning, Bitcoin rose 1.6% to $ 33,550.

Despite the volatile fluctuations in the price of the currency, Peirce remains convinced that a Bitcoin ETF is overdue.

It is not the SEC’s job to approve or deny requests based on the merits of the investment itself, she said Thursday, especially if the exchanges meet legal requirements to protect investors from fraud.

“Bitcoin is so decentralized now. The number of nodes involved in Bitcoin is large and the number of people who have an interest in keeping this work decentralized is very large, ”she said. “People should make their own decisions: if people don’t want to buy bitcoin because they think it’s tampered with, they shouldn’t buy bitcoin.”

Categories
Health

CureVac to ‘plow ahead’ with Covid vaccine regardless of trial outcomes     

CureVac to 'plow forward' with Covid vaccine despite trial results     

An employee of the German biopharmaceutical company CureVac will demonstrate research on a vaccine against the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease in a laboratory in TĂźbingen on March 12, 2020.

Andreas Gebert | REUTERS

LONDON – CureVac plans to continue work on its Covid-19 vaccine despite disappointing results from clinical studies showing the vaccine is only 48% effective.

The German biotech company released its final analysis of the clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine – known as CVnCoV – on Wednesday, confirming that the vaccine was 48% effective against Covid of all degrees of severity in all ages and 15 variants.

Pierre Kemula, CFO of CureVac, however, defended the vaccine on CNBC Thursday, saying the clinical trials were conducted at a time when several new strains of the virus were spreading around the world.

“We have to speak to the EMA now [European Medicines Agency] and want to make sure we have an open dialogue and share any data we have to assess the way forward, “he told CNBC’s Squawk Box Europe on Thursday.

When asked if it is worth developing the vaccine further when other successful vaccines are already in use in Europe and elsewhere, Kemula said the company had contractual obligations to meet.

“We have a contract with the European Commission to supply 225 million doses of the drug, so I think we need to move forward on that,” he said.

“There are a lot of vaccinations, there are a lot of people under 60 who haven’t had access to the vaccine before. So if we can contribute to the fight – in the short term in the pandemic, but also in the medium term with these other ways of [multivalents] … we are continuing to work on that. “Multivalent or polyvalent vaccines should immunize against more than one virus strain.

The results of the CureVac study, which enrolled 40,000 participants in ten countries in Latin America and Europe, showed that the vaccine was more effective in younger participants. The effectiveness rate among 18 to 60 year olds was 53% for diseases of any severity and increased to 77% for moderate and severe diseases in the same age group.

However, given that Covid-19 carries a higher risk for the elderly, the study results are disappointing, not least because two other vaccines made with messenger RNA (mRNA) – those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna – have an efficacy greater than 90 % of have been shown to prevent Covid-19 infection. CureVac’s shares fell as much as 13% in Thursday’s pre-trading session.

Dr. Franz-Werner Haas, CEO of CureVac, defended the results in a statement on Wednesday, saying the vaccine “shows strong public health value” for those aged 18 to 60 and will be an “important contributor to tackling Covid.” -19 pandemic and the dynamic distribution of variants. “

He also cited “the current context of an increasingly diverse environment of Covid-19 variants”.

Several variants have emerged over the course of the pandemic, some of which are more virulent than others – like the alpha variant first discovered in the UK and the delta variant first identified in India – and Kemula said he believed mutations would continue to occur.

“As more and more people become infected with coronavirus, we are prepared for the disease to continue to develop as it progresses and has more and more variants,” said Kemula. The industry must think ahead, “how we can cope better with the current vaccines, but also possibly with various boosters (booster vaccinations),” he added.

Categories
Health

Dr. Barbara Murphy, Kidney Transplant Knowledgeable, Dies at 56

Dr. Barbara Murphy, Kidney Transplant Expert, Dies at 56

Dr. Barbara Murphy, a leading nephrologist who specialized in advanced research that focused on predicting and diagnosing the outcomes of kidney transplants, died on Wednesday at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, where she had worked since 1997. She was 56.

The cause was glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, her husband, Peter Fogarty, said.

Dr. Murphy blended a passion for research into kidney transplant immunology with her role, since 2012, as the chairwoman of the department of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai (and its broader health system). She was the first woman named to run a department of medicine at an academic medical center in New York City.

“In baseball, they talk about five-tool players,” Dr. Dennis S. Charney, dean of the Icahn School, said by phone. “I don’t know how many tools she had, but she was a very strong administrator, a great researcher and a great mentor to many people.”

Dr. Murphy, who was from Ireland, developed her interest in kidney transplantation while attending medical school at the Royal College of Surgeons in Dublin. She was drawn especially to how it transformed patients’ lives.

“I love seeing how well patients do afterward,” she told Irish America magazine in 2016. “For all the years that I’ve been in this profession, the interaction between a living donor and a recipient in the recovery room still makes me proud to be a physician and to play a part in such a life-affirming moment.”

After being recruited to Mount Sinai in 1997, she joined other researchers in examining the role of H.I.V. in kidney disease and helped establish the viability of kidney transplants for patients with H.I.V. In a speech at the Royal College in 2018, she recalled that there had been criticism of such transplants — as if there were a “moral hierarchy when it came to donor kidneys.”

She added, “Two weeks ago, we received an email from one of our patients, thanking us on his 15th renal transplant birthday.”

More recently, Dr. Murphy’s research at her laboratory at Mount Sinai focused on the genetics and genomics of predicting the results of transplants, and on why some kidneys are rejected.

In findings reported in The Lancet in 2016, she and her collaborators said they had identified a set of 13 genes that predicted which patients would subsequently develop fibrosis, a hallmark of chronic kidney disease, and, ultimately, irreversible damage to the transplanted organ. Being able to predict which patients were at risk, they wrote, would allow for treatment to prevent fibrosis.

Her research has been licensed to two companies. One, Verici DX, which is still in validation trials in advance of commercial sales, is developing RNA signature tests to determine how a patient is responding to, and will respond to, a transplant. The other company, Renalytix, uses an algorithm guided by artificial intelligence to identify a kidney disease risk score for patients. Dr. Murphy served on the boards of both companies.

“Barbara was foundational to Verici,” Sara Barrington, the company’s chief executive, said by phone. She added, “Her lab will continue to file new discoveries out of her base research.”

Barbara Therese Murphy was born on Oct. 15, 1964, in South Dublin. Her father, John, owned an airfreight company, and her mother, Anne (Duffy) Murphy, worked with him and also designed bridal wear.

At age 4, Dr. Murphy recalled in a speech at a health care awards dinner sponsored by Irish America in 2016, she had to overcome a harsh judgment by a teacher.

“My elementary school teacher told my mother I was a dunce and I would never be anything, and what’s more she shouldn’t even try,” she said. “Fortunately, my parents persevered.”

After earning her medical degree at the Royal College in 1989, Dr. Murphy completed her residency and a nephrology fellowship at Beaumont Hospital, also in Dublin. She was also a nephrology fellow in the renal division of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, where she trained in transplant immunology.

In 1997, she was recruited to Mount Sinai as director of transplant nephrology by Dr. Paul Klotman, then the chief of the division of nephrology, who promoted her to his former position in 2003 after he had become chairman of Icahn’s department of medicine.

“She showed a lot of promise in transplant nephrology, which was emerging at the time,” Dr. Klotman, now the president of the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said by phone. “Over the years, she developed good leadership skills: She was very organized and task oriented.”

In the spring of 2020, Dr. Murphy, like other physicians, noticed with alarm that Covid-19 was much more than a respiratory disease. It was causing a surge in kidney failure that led to shortages of machines, supplies and personnel needed for emergency dialysis.

The number of patients needing dialysis “is orders of magnitude greater than the number of patients we normally dialyze,” she told The New York Times.

One of Mount Sinai’s responses to the pandemic that May was to open the Center for Post-Covid Care for patients recovering from the virus. At the time, Mount Sinai had treated more than 8,000 patients who had been diagnosed with Covid-19.

“Barbara was instrumental in forming the center,” Dr. Charney said, “and she was involved in the follow-up as it related to kidney disease caused by Covid.”

Dr. Murphy was given the Young Investigator Award in Basic Science from the American Society of Transplantation in 2003 and was named nephrologist of the year by the American Kidney Fund in 2011. At her death, she was president-elect of the American Society of Nephrology.

In addition to her husband, Dr. Murphy is survived by their son, Gavin; her sister, Dr. Celine Murphy, a cardiologist who works in occupational health; her brother, Dr. Kieran Murphy, an interventional neuroradiologist; and her parents.

Dr. Murphy said she had learned an indelible lesson about the need for a strong patient-doctor relationship while still in medical school.

“Scholarship alone was not enough,” she said at the Irish America award ceremony. “An example: If we had a patient with rheumatoid arthritis and we shook their hands and they winced, it didn’t matter how much we knew about the disease or how to treat it, we’d failed our exam because we hadn’t taken the patient’s overall well-being into consideration.”

Categories
World News

A whole bunch of Companies, From Sweden to U.S., Affected by Cyberattack

Hundreds of Businesses, From Sweden to U.S., Affected by Cyberattack

Hundreds of businesses around the world, including one of Sweden’s largest grocery chains, grappled on Saturday with potential cybersecurity vulnerabilities after a software provider that provides services to more than 40,000 organizations, Kaseya, said it had been the victim of a “sophisticated cyberattack.”

Security researchers said the attack may have been carried out by REvil, a Russian cybercriminal group that the F.B.I. has said was behind the hacking of the world’s largest meat processor, JBS, in May.

In Sweden, the grocery retailer Coop was forced to close at least 800 stores on Saturday, according to Sebastian Elfors, a cybersecurity researcher for the security company Yubico. Outside Coop stores, signs turned customers away: “We have been hit by a large IT disturbance and our systems do not work.”

Mr. Elfors said a Swedish railway and a major pharmacy chain had also been affected by the Kaseya attack. “It’s totally devastating,” he said.

Asked about the cyberattack after he landed in Michigan on Saturday on a trip to celebrate Covid-19’s retreat in the United States, President Biden said he had been delayed in getting off the plane because he was being briefed about the attack. He said he had directed the “full resources of the federal government” to investigate. “The initial thinking was it was not the Russian government, but we’re not sure yet,” he said.

Victims of the breach were hit through a Kaseya software update, Kevin Beaumont, a threat researcher, said. Instead of getting Kaseya’s latest update, they received REvil’s ransomware. Kaseya was initially breached through a previously unknown vulnerability in its systems — known as a “zero day” because when such vulnerabilities are discovered, software makers have zero days to fix it. In the meantime, cybercriminals and spies can use the vulnerability to wreak havoc.

Mr. Beaumont said the attack marked a serious escalation in the tactics of ransomware gangs. In previous attacks, REvil was known to break in through a combination of phishing, stolen passwords or a lack of multifactor authentication.

Dutch researchers said they had reported the vulnerability to Kaseya, but the company was still working on a patch when it was breached and its software updates were compromised, according to people briefed on the timeline.

The attack became public on Friday, when Kaseya said that it was investigating the possibility that it had been the victim of a cyberattack. The company urged customers that use its systems management platform, called VSA, to immediately shut down their servers to avoid the possibility of being compromised by attackers.

“We are experiencing a potential attack against the VSA that has been limited to a small number of on-premise customers only,” Kaseya posted on its website, referring to organizations that keep their software at their own sites rather than housing it with a cloud provider. “We are in the process of investigating the root cause of the incident with the utmost vigilance.”

Fred Voccola, Kaseya’s chief executive, said in a statement on Saturday that less than 40 customers had been affected by the attack, but those customers include so-called managed service providers, which can each provide security and tech tools to dozens or even hundreds of companies.

That has magnified the attack’s severity, said John Hammond, a researcher at the cybersecurity company Huntress Labs.

“What makes this attack stand out is the trickle-down effect, from the managed service provider to the small business,” Mr. Hammond said. “Kaseya handles large enterprise all the way to small businesses globally, so ultimately, it has the potential to spread to any size or scale business.”

Some of the affected companies were being asked for $5 million in ransom, Mr. Hammond said. Thousands of companies were at risk, he said.

The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency described the incident in a statement on its website on Friday as a “supply-chain ransomware attack.” It urged Kaseya’s customers to shut down their servers and said it was investigating.

Hackers have carried out a slate of prominent cyberattacks against U.S. companies in recent months, including JBS and Colonial Pipeline, which moves fuel along the East Coast. Both were ransomware attacks, in which hackers try to shut down systems until a ransom is paid. The video game company Electronic Arts was also recently hacked, but its data was not held for ransom.

Nicole Perlroth and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.

Categories
Politics

11 Arrested in Armed Roadside Standoff in Massachusetts

11 Arrested in Armed Roadside Standoff in Massachusetts

Eleven men were arrested Saturday after a long roadside altercation between Massachusetts police officers and a group of heavily armed men in tactical gear who claimed to be part of a group called Rise of the Moors.

Dozens of police officers from Massachusetts and New Hampshire responded to the standoff that closed part of a freeway for several hours and prompted authorities to order people in the surrounding communities to take protection on the spot.

The men who appeared to be broadcasting the stalemate on YouTube eventually surrendered to police without any shots being fired, authorities said. There were no injuries, although three of the men in the group were hospitalized with pre-existing conditions unrelated to the stalemate.

“I attribute patience, professionalism, and partnership to the successful resolution of this matter,” said Col. Christopher Mason of the Massachusetts State Police. “At the end of the day, we have the desired result, which is a safe solution.”

The stalemate began around 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, according to the State Police, when a state trooper stopped to look for two vehicles that had stopped in the breakdown lane of Interstate 95 in Wakefield, about 15 miles north of Boston. The men filled their gas tanks with their own fuel, and they appeared to be carrying military tactical equipment and rifles and other weapons. Colonel Mason said the men said they were going to Maine from Rhode Island for “training”.

When the men did not produce the required IDs and gun licenses, the soldier asked for reinforcements, Colonel Mason said.

“You can imagine that eleven armed people standing on a freeway at 2am with long guns are sure to raise concerns and are inconsistent with the firearms laws we have here in Massachusetts,” said Colonel Mason. “I understand that you have a different perspective. I appreciate this perspective. I do not agree with this perspective. “

First, two armed men were arrested, Colonel Mason said, and the negotiators spent hours talking to other members of the group, some of whom were in the woods by the highway and others in their vehicles.

An on-site protection order has been placed for residents of Wakefield and Reading and part of Interstate 95 has been closed to traffic.

By 10.15 a.m., the police had arrested the nine remaining members of the group. All surrendered without incident, Colonel Mason said, and “a number” of firearms were confiscated.

The police lifted the detention order and the motorway was released after the men were arrested.

Middlesex County’s district attorney Marian Ryan said she believed the men would face “firearms and other charges” Tuesday. State police said several of the men refused to provide any information about their identity, which delayed the booking process.

The Massachusetts state website states, “The laws governing the transportation of firearms can be confusing. Basically: If you keep the weapon unloaded and locked in a suitcase in the trunk or rear storage compartment of a truck or SUV, you must comply with the applicable laws. “

Colonel Mason said the men involved in the standoff said they were part of a group called Rise of the Moors. On the group’s website, Rise of the Moors says it seeks “equal justice under our own right and not under the United States government because we are not citizens of the United States.”

“Since we are not US citizens, we owe the United States government no tax obligations,” it says on the website.

They describe themselves as “Moorish Americans devoted to educating new Moors and influencing our elders,” according to the website.

Colonel Mason said the group’s “professed leader wanted to know that their ideology is not anti-government”.

“Our research will give us more insight into their motivations and ideology,” he said.

“We are not anti-government,” said one man early Saturday morning in a livestream on the group’s YouTube channel.

The man, who was wearing military clothing, said the group stopped to refuel with petrol cans to avoid “unnecessary stops” while carrying firearms. The man also said the group was traveling to their “private country”.

“We have no intention of being hostile, we have no intention of being aggressive,” he later added. “We are not against the government, we are not against the police, we are not sovereign citizens and we are not extremists with a black identity.”

“We are foreigners,” called another member of the group from the background.

Recognition…YouTube channel “Uprising of the Moors”

Rise of the Moors appears to be based in Pawtucket, RI, according to the group’s website. The group did not immediately respond to an email requesting a comment.

Pawtucket police “know” the group and have had “various interactions” with them, said Emily Rizzo, a Pawtucket Mayor spokeswoman, who said they could not immediately provide further details.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Moorish sovereign civil movement is an extremist ideology that emerged in the early 1990s. It is an offshoot of the anti-government movement for sovereign citizens, which believes that individual citizens have sovereignty over the authority of federal and state governments and are independent of them. According to the centre’s website, the groups are typically small and consist of a few dozen followers.

It is unclear what connection Rise of the Moors could have with this movement.

According to a 2016 report by the Anti-Defamation League, the Moorish sovereign citizen movement began when people fused the beliefs of sovereign citizens with some of the beliefs of the Moorish Temple of Science, a 1913 religious sect.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the movement grew and absorbed other black sovereign groups, according to the ADL. had started independently

The report states that Moorish sovereign citizens committed the same criminal activities as “traditional” sovereign civic groups, including violent crimes, fraud, defrauding and intimidating public officials.

Categories
Health

New Covid wave has arrived in Europe, WHO says

New Covid wave has arrived in Europe, WHO says

Scotland fans arrive at King’s Cross Station on June 17, 2021 in London, England. Soccer games, taking place during the Euros, have been blamed for a rise in Covid cases numbers.

Rob Pinney | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images

A new wave of coronavirus cases could soon arrive in Europe, the World Health Organization warned Thursday, highlighting that a decline in the number of infections in the region has now come to an end.

“A 10-week decline in the number of Covid-19 cases in the 53 countries in the WHO European region has come to an end,” Hans Kluge, the WHO’s regional director for Europe, warned in a press briefing.

“Last week the number of cases rose by 10% driven by increased mixing, travel, gatherings and an easing of social restrictions,” he said.

The rise in cases comes against a backdrop of a “rapidly evolving situation,” Kluge said, given the new delta strain, which was dubbed a variant of concern by the WHO in May.

Millions remain unvaccinated in Europe, Kluge warned, with protection against the delta variant provided, for the most part, by having two doses of the Covid vaccines on offer. Kluge reiterated what the data has already shown, that the delta variant is far more transmissible than the alpha variant (which itself was more transmissible than previous strains).

Read more: The fast-spreading delta Covid variant could have different symptoms, experts say

“Delta overtakes alpha very quickly … and is already translating into increased hospitalizations and deaths,” Kluge said. He said the delta variant would be dominant in the WHO European region by August, while vaccinations would still not have caught up.

“By August, the WHO European Region will be ‘delta dominant,'” he noted, adding that 63% of people are still waiting for their first shot, while restrictions on public life are likely to be lifted by next month. The U.K., for example, which has a high vaccination rate but also a large number of cases caused by the delta variant, plans to end restrictions on July 19.

Read more: The Covid delta variant has ‘exploded’ in the UK — and it could be a blueprint for the U.S.

Kluge said that three conditions were now in place for “a new wave of excess hospitalizations and deaths” before the fall: new variants, a deficit in vaccine uptake and increased social mixing.

“There will be a new wave in the WHO European region unless we remain disciplined, and even more so when there is much less rules in place to follow,” he warned.

Medical staff member Mantra Nguyen installs a new oxygen mask for a patient in the Covid-19 intensive care unit (ICU) at the United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, Texas.

Go Nakamura | Getty Images News | Getty Images.

Rise in infections

Kluge’s comments come amid a worrying rise in Covid infections across Europe despite efforts to curtail travel from high-risk regions.

Others are now following the U.K., with France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Russia among a group of countries seeing an increasing number of Covid cases being caused by the delta variant, particularly among younger, unvaccinated or not yet fully vaccinated people.

Read more: Europe wants to stop the Covid delta variant. But experts say it may already be too late

Increased mixing, particularly given the delayed UEFA Euro 2020 soccer tournament that’s currently being held across the Continent, has not helped prevent the spread of the variant with gatherings and crowds as matches are being played.

Categories
Entertainment

Retooling ‘La Bohème’ for Pandemic Performances

Retooling ‘La Bohème’ for Pandemic Performances

LONDON – It’s an evening of drinking and partying at Cafe Momus. A group of young men chats when a femme fatale tries to get their attention by jumping on tables and throwing underwear. But the nightclub isn’t as crowded as usual. There are only a few waiters and three guests are dining alone by the windows in the background.

It is the second act of a reduced production of Puccini’s “La Bohème” at the Royal Opera House. Given the pandemic restrictions, the orchestra has 47 players, up from the usual 74. The act starts with only 18 out of 60 choir members on stage, the rest singing from the grand piano and 10 (not 20) children on stage. There are four, not ten, waiters in the cafe.

“The cafĂŠ scene at the moment feels less like a ‘busy Belle Epoque cafĂŠ’ and more like a ‘lonely heart establishment’, simply because we can only have a limited number of people at Cafe Momus,” Oliver Mears, the opera director of the house said a few days before the premiere on June 19th. “It just adapts to the circumstances we faced.”

Mr Mears said opera is an art form that breaks any social distancing rule and focuses on “overcrowded pits,” large and dense crowds on stage, moments of intimacy between performers, singing (which can spread viral particles) and a sold-out audience leaves. “All of these things really work against us,” he said.

“If you were someone who hated opera and wanted to invent a disease that hits opera particularly hard, you would probably have something like Covid,” he added.

The global coronavirus outbreak has had a drastic impact on the performing arts and expensive opera has suffered badly. Many of the big houses in Europe have – in addition to the annual subsidies from taxpayers’ money – received government aid to avoid bankruptcy.

Closed for 14 months, the Royal Opera House received a government loan of ÂŁ 21.7 million (about $ 29 million) in December as part of a rehabilitation package for arts organizations. The house attracts an average of 650,000 people annually and has films and screenings in the UK and 42 countries around the world.

Last October, it sold a 1971 portrait by David Hockney of its former general manager David Webster for ÂŁ 12.8 million (about $ 18 million). But even that was not enough to avoid cuts, 218 employees were laid off.

Since the house reopened May 17, it’s been operating at roughly a third of capacity to provide socially detached seating – just over 800 spectators versus 2,225, Mr Mears said. He described the atmosphere in the house as “enthusiasm that was carefully subdued”. (Pandemic restrictions apply until at least July 19)

The Paris Opera, which also includes a world-famous ballet company, faced similar threats during the pandemic. In an interview, the director Alexander Neef said the opera house had received 41 million euros (about 47 million US dollars) in aid for 2020, leaving a deficit of 4 million euros.

This year, the Paris Opera is to receive a further 15 million euros in state aid to offset the projected annual loss of 45 million euros.

Updated

July 3, 2021, 2:56 p.m. ET

“Everyone is exhausted from more than a year of crisis,” said Neef. The Paris Opera reopened on May 19 and since the beginning of June has required all viewers to show a “Pass sanitaire” (health passport) confirming vaccination, a negative test or an immunity test according to Covid.

There was “a big appetite when we reopened,” he said on June 22, but “it’s a bit flat now,” be it because of the mandatory health passport or the good weather and the reopening of cafĂŠ terraces.

“There is still no perspective on how this can actually end,” he said. The hope was that “by autumn we will return to whatever this new normal will be. But there is currently no guarantee of that. We have no visibility. “

Opera houses in the United States, whose survival depends largely on private philanthropy and ticket sales, suffer even more. The Metropolitan Opera in New York, slated to reopen in September, announced on its website that it has lost $ 150 million in revenue as a result of the pandemic.

For the cast of “La Bohème,” which will end live on Tuesday but can be streamed online until July 25, the pandemic has only made the art form’s challenges worse.

Danielle de Niese, who plays Musetta, the femme fatale, said in an interview during rehearsals that without a pandemic it would be hard enough to do “the drunken table top” – hopping from one table top to another in a long, heavy dress to have to sing at the top of my throat. The coronavirus also means that we “have to do all of our samples with a mask, and that is a killer”.

“It’s incredibly challenging to sing in a material mask,” she said. “It basically kills your sound and it feels like you’re singing into a pillow.”

Ms. de Niese, a soprano, pulled out her special opera singer’s mask: a protruding face covering with an additional wire that made sure that she didn’t “go up my nose” with every breath. Masks were worn during the entire rehearsal period, and instead of the “natural camaraderie between colleagues” and between the acts, the performers had to sit on strictly distant chairs.

Ms. de Niese said she was concerned about “singers who are just starting out, who are not yet making the big bucks” and those who struggled financially during the pandemic had to take “a box packing job at Amazon.”

“We have to make sure that the next generation is still bringing their skin into play,” she said.

The next big show of the Royal Opera will be staged by Mr. Mears himself: a new production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto”, which will open this autumn. In his favor during a pandemic? It doesn’t have a choir, he emphasized.

Despite the prolonged downtime and logistical and financial problems, Mears said there was a silver lining: a regained appreciation for opera.

“We always thought this was something that would always exist, and now I think there is tremendous gratitude for the work we can do,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll ever take opera for granted again, and that can only be good.”

Categories
Politics

Biden hosts 21 new U.S. residents at White Home naturalization ceremony

Biden hosts 21 new U.S. citizens at White House naturalization ceremony

US President Joe Biden watches as people take the Oath of allegiance during a naturalization ceremony for new citizens ahead of Independence Day in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on July 2, 2021.

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

President Joe Biden hosted a naturalization ceremony on Friday to swear in and welcome 21 new U.S. citizens ahead of Independence Day. 

“It’s the dreams of immigrants like you that build America and continue to inject new energy, new vitality and new strength,” Biden said at the ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

The president was joined at the event by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who shared the story of his immigrant parents’ journey to the United States as refugees.

“Our country is also better today because its identity and its fabric as a nation of immigrants is stronger because of you,” Mayorkas said after the new citizens were sworn in.

Tracy Renaud, the acting director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, performed the swearing-in. The USCIS announced Thursday that it would hold 170 naturalization ceremonies in the first week of July.

The jubilant ceremony at the White House belied the challenge the Biden administration is facing as it works to stem the ongoing migrant crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The president came into office pledging to pursue an immigration policy that was both more humane and more orderly than that of his predecessor, former President Donald Trump.

At Friday’s ceremony, Biden commended immigrants for their contributions to the country, noting that many serve in the military or have been working as health-care and front-line workers during the pandemic. 

The president also presented an award to Sandra Lindsay, a nurse from Long Island who immigrated to the U.S. from Jamaica when she was 18 years old.

Lindsay was the first person in America to get fully vaccinated outside of clinical trials, Biden said. Her scrubs will form part of a future exhibit about Covid at the Smithsonian Institution, he added.

“Since our nation’s founding, the quintessential idea in America has been nurtured and advanced by the contributions and sacrifices of so many people, almost all of whom were immigrants,” Biden said. 

The president also took the opportunity to tout his administration’s efforts to reform the immigration system. 

He highlighted his support for the immigration reform bill introduced by Democrats in February, which includes improved border management and security, and a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people in America.

He also praised Vice President Kamala Harris’ efforts to identify the “root causes” of the recent surge in Central American migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border. 

Harris visited the southern border earlier this month but faced criticism from Republicans for not having gone there sooner.

The heart of the migrant surge has been an unprecedented jump in the number of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border and remanded to U.S. government custody while suitable guardians are located.

But that number has been falling steadily since it reached a high in March of this year. As of Tuesday, there were 14,400 unaccompanied minors in U.S. government care, a 35% drop from two months ago, when the Health and Human Services Department was housing more than 22,000 minors.

Democrats and pro-immigrant activists are urging Biden to further scale back border enforcement and to do more to ensure the humane treatment of migrant children and families at the southern border.