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Rising Covid Instances Drive Organizers to Cancel New Orleans Jazz Fest

Rising Covid Cases Force Organizers to Cancel New Orleans Jazz Fest

The New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival has been canceled, officials said Sunday, citing the “exponential growth of new Covid cases in New Orleans and the region.”

The festival, which usually takes place in the spring, has been postponed to October 8-17 in the hopes that vaccinations would make the event possible. Ticket holders will receive emails shortly describing the refund options.

Coronavirus infections hit a record high in Louisiana this month, with the state reporting an average of 4,600 new cases per day over the past week, according to a New York Times database. Hospital stays rose 140 percent to an average of 2,037 per day, and deaths rose 193 percent to an average of 30 per day.

Louisiana reintroduced indoor masking requirements this month in an attempt to contain infections fueled by the state’s low vaccination rate and the highly contagious Delta variant of the virus. Only 37 percent of the state’s population, including children under 12 who are not yet eligible for vaccination, have been fully vaccinated, according to the New York Times.

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Politics

Treasury slaps sanctions on Cuban police power and its leaders over crackdown on protests

Treasury slaps sanctions on Cuban police force and its leaders over crackdown on protests

A woman holds a sign reading “America Open Your Eyes” as people wave Cuban and US flags during a Freedom Rally showing support for Cubans demonstrating against their government, at Freedom Tower in Miami, on July 17, 2021. – Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel on July 17, denounced what he said was a false narrative over unrest on the Caribbean island, as the Communist regime vigorously pushed back against suggestions of historically widespread discontent. (Photo by Eva Marie UZCATEGUI / AFP) (Photo by EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI/AFP via Getty Images)

EVA MARIE UZCATEGUI | AFP | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – The Biden administration imposed another round of sanctions on Cuba’s police force and its leaders for the violent suppression of peaceful protests that broke out on the island more than two weeks ago.

The Treasury sanctions designate Cuban police director Oscar Callejas Valcarce and his deputy, Eddy Sierra Arias, as well as the island’s police force.

“The Treasury Department will continue to designate and call out by name those who facilitate the Cuban regime’s involvement in serious human rights abuse,” wrote Andrea Gacki, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, in a statement announcing the sanctions.

“Today’s action serves to further hold accountable those responsible for suppressing the Cuban people’s calls for freedom and respect for human rights,” the statement added.

Last week, Washington slapped sanctions on Cuba’s defense minister and the communist nation’s special forces brigade for the suppression of peaceful protests that broke out on the island.

The U.S. sanctions were coupled with a warning that there would be more to come if the Cuban government did not rectify the situation.

“This is just the beginning – the United States will continue to sanction individuals responsible for oppression of the Cuban people,” President Joe Biden said in a July 22 statement.

Earlier this month, thousands of protestors filled the streets over frustrations with a crippled economy hit by food and power shortages.

The rare protests, the largest the communist country has seen since the 1990s, come as the government struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic, pushing the island’s fragile health-care system to the brink.

Protesters gather in front of the Versailles restaurant to show support for the people in Cuba who have taken to the streets there to protest on July 11, 2021 in Miami, Florida.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

Cuban President Diaz-Canel Bermudez said his regime was “prepared to do anything” to quell the protests, according to a report from The Washington Post.

“We will be battling in the streets,” he said, adding that the United States is in part to blame for the widespread discontent in Cuba.

A day later, he appeared alongside members of his government and blamed U.S. trade sanctions for hampering Cuba’s growth.

Reacting to the Cuban president’s comments, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters last week that the United States was not to blame for the laundry list of issues plaguing Havana.

Blinken said Cubans were “tired of the mismanagement of the Cuban economy, tired of the lack of adequate food and, of course, an adequate response to the Covid-19 pandemic.”

“That is what we are hearing and seeing in Cuba, and that is a reflection of the Cuban people, not of the United States or any other outside actor,” Blinken said.

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Politics

Air Drive Tries Digital Actuality to Stem Suicide and Sexual Assault

Air Force Tries Virtual Reality to Stem Suicide and Sexual Assault

MCGUIRE AIR FORCE BASE, N.J. — The three airmen sat quietly adjusting their headsets, murmuring to their colleague, who was in distinct trouble. “Everyone goes through rough patches sometimes,” each said, a few moments apart, to the same despondent and mildly intoxicated man, whose wife recently left him and who seemed immersed in suicidal thoughts.

The airman on the other end of the headsets was virtual, but the conversation was all encompassing, a 30-minute, occasionally harrowing journey among three actual airmen and a virtual actor, whom they each tried to coax into getting help.

The three were trying out a new virtual reality program this month that the Air Force is using to target two problems that continue to vex military leaders: suicide and sexual assault within the ranks. Years of prevention training — often in the form of somnolence-inducing PowerPoint presentations — have done little to stem the rates of either problem.

Whether the virtual reality model can ultimately do better remains an open question. But military officials are encouraged by the early self-reported responses to the training.

Over 1,000 Air Force personnel have participated in the training so far; 97 percent of those who tried it would recommend it, and trainees reported an increase in the likelihood to intervene with a person in crisis, Air Force officials said. And among those ages 18 to 25 — a generation more used to interactive virtual experiences that makes up the bulk of new recruits — the impact increased sevenfold. Officials intend to train at least 10,000 airmen with the program this year.

The training is meant to take on problems that, if anything, have worsened in the military in recent years. Between 2014 and 2019, the suicide rate for all active-duty troops increased from 20.4 to 25.9 suicides per 100,000 according to Pentagon data; in the last three months of 2020, suicides among National Guard troops nearly tripled to 39 from 14 over the same period the prior year.

In 2019, the Defense Department found that there were 7,825 reports of sexual assault involving service members as victims, a 3 percent increase from 2018.

The Army recently reprimanded 12 soldiers in an Illinois-based Army Reserve unit and took disciplinary actions against two senior leaders for mishandling sexual assault complaints, with investigators noting that leaders lacked “basic knowledge and understanding regarding core tenets” of the Army’s sexual assault prevention program.

One of the few effective tactics for both problems, experts say, is intervention by bystanders. They may witness harassment in a bar, for instance, or increasingly alarming messages on social media representing a suicide threat.

In the military, intervening, especially against someone of a higher rank, can be culturally difficult, especially for younger recruits. “Barriers sometimes get in the way from people intervening,” said Carmen Schott, the sexual assault prevention and response program manager for the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command. “If someone is higher rank, you might be more timid to say something. The Air Force has put a lot of effort into making clear nothing negative will happen if you intervene.”

The aim of the virtual reality program is to act out scenarios with airmen in simulated environments. The technology allows the airmen to select from cues at the bottom of the screen to have an interactive “conversation” with a photo-realistic virtual actor, one whose facial expressions and reactions are meant to make the training more effective.

In this behavioral rehearsal, airmen learn what may be useful to say, such as asking their buddy if he has a gun in his house, and why some other responses — like “man up” — are not helpful. Participants get feedback on their “empathy” score and tips on how to improve in future encounters.

“Virtual reality training puts the user in a scenario, not in a classroom where you are zoning out and on your cellphone,” Ms. Schott explained. “You are an active participant. You have to be ready. I think that it is going to help airmen retain and remember knowledge. We don’t want people to feel judged. They may not make perfect decisions, but they will learn skills.”

Kevin Cornish, the chief executive of Moth+Flame, a virtual reality learning firm in Brooklyn, looked a little like an interloper on the Air Force base here, a casually dressed artist among uniforms. Mr. Cornish, who was working on Taylor Swift music videos when he became entranced by the immersive experience of a 360-degree camera used in one of them, said that there was “something so invigorating about somebody making eye contact and talking to you.”

He said he was increasingly seeing companies turn to virtual reality to simulate difficult work conversations and game out scenarios, especially around diversity and inclusion.

As the airmen took turns interacting with their suicidal virtual colleague via their headsets, some spoke quietly and a bit awkwardly, while others sounded like stage actors as they tried to persuade their fellow airman to hand over his gun and go with them to see a supervisor. Sometimes they would nod as they listened, or lower their voices or wipe a tear.

“I loved that it was hands-on,” said Annette Hartman, 23, a senior airman. “It was better than sitting through a briefing and waiting to sign off on a roster. Some of the responses I wouldn’t have thought to say, like, ‘Have you thought about suicide? Do you have a gun?’”

That type of experience is set to expand: Another bystander program, which will roll out in July, will place the users in a bar, watching a scene of sexual harassment unfold.

“In an immersive experience, you get much closer to the feelings of a real story than you do with a computer screen,” said Nonny de la Peña, the chief executive of Emblematic Group and an early creator of virtual reality experiences. “We are starting to see that our world is not flat, and learning and experiencing and connecting is not going to be flat much longer.”

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Politics

Swiss Billionaire Quietly Turns into Influential Pressure Amongst Democrats

Swiss Billionaire Quietly Becomes Influential Force Among Democrats

These types of spending – which are usually handled through nonprofit groups that don’t need to disclose much information about their finances, including their donors – have been welcomed by conservatives after regulatory changes and court rulings, particularly those of the Supreme Court, eased campaign spending restrictions were made in 2010 in the Citizens United case.

While progressives and election guards denounced the developments as too powerful for wealthy interests, democratic donors and activists increasingly used dark money. During the 2020 election cycle, Democratic-affiliated groups spent more than $ 514 million on such funds, compared to approximately $ 200 million spent by Republican-affiliated groups, according to an analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Some of the groups funded by the Mr. Wyss Foundations played a key role in this shift, although the relatively limited disclosure requirements for these types of groups make it impossible to definitively determine how they spent funds from the Wyss Foundations.

Mr. Wyss and his advisors have developed a “strategic, evidence-based, metric-driven and results-oriented approach to building a political infrastructure,” said Rob Stein, a democratic strategist.

Mr. Stein, who founded the influential Democracy Alliance Club of Big Liberal Donors in 2005 and recruited Mr. Wyss to join, added that “unlike most affluent political donors right and left,” Mr. Wyss and his team “know how is going to achieve measurable, sustainable effects. “

85-year-old Wyss was born in Bern, visited the USA for the first time in 1958 as an exchange student and was enthusiastic about the American national parks and public areas. After getting rich and running the Swiss-based medical device manufacturer Synthes, he began donating his fortune through a network of foundations to promote nature conservation, environmental protection and other issues.

The foundations gradually increased their donations for other Democrat-backed causes, including abortion rights and minimum wage increases, and eventually for groups more directly involved in partisan debates, especially after the election of Mr Trump.

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Politics

Biden Types Job Power to Discover Methods to Assist Labor

Biden Forms Task Force to Explore Ways to Help Labor

President Biden signed an executive order on Monday creating a White House Task Force to Promote Work Organization to harness the power of the federal government to reverse a decade-long decline in union membership.

The task force, led by Vice President Kamala Harris and populated by cabinet officials and senior White House advisers, will make recommendations on how the government can use the powers it has to help workers join and bargain collectively. New guidelines for achieving these goals are also recommended.

The administration noted that the National Labor Relations Act, the federal labor rights law of 1935, was specifically designed to encourage collective bargaining, but that the law had never been fully implemented in that regard. “No previous administration has taken a comprehensive approach to determining how the executive can advance the organization and collective bargaining of workers,” a White House statement said.

Unions have campaigned for the right to organize or PRO Act to be passed, prohibiting employers from holding compulsory anti-union meetings and fines for violating workers’ rights. (Workers can currently only receive so-called make-whole funds, such as back payments.) The House passed the measure in March and Mr Biden supports the legislation but faces great opportunities in the Senate.

The task force will focus, among other things, on helping the federal government encourage its own workers to join unions and bargain collectively, and find ways to make it easier for workers, especially women and people of color, to organize themselves in part and negotiate the country and in anti-union industries.

President Donald J. Trump signed a handful of executive orders designed to restrict union protection and bargaining rights for federal employees. The unions challenged the orders in court and Mr Biden revoked them shortly after he took office.

It is not entirely clear what kind of support the federal government could provide to workers who want to organize without changing the law, although some labor experts have argued that Mr Biden and his appointees could take administrative measures to allow workers to do so to negotiate industry base, known as sector negotiations. That would make it less necessary to win union elections from site to job, as is often the case today.

The Biden Task Force could also look at ways the government can use its procurement powers to promote union membership.

As a rule, the federal government is unlikely to refuse contracts to companies just because they are anti-union, said Anastasia Christman, an expert on government contracts with the National Employment Law Project, an employee advocacy group. However, in certain narrow cases, the government can use its leverage as a contractor to encourage companies to take a neutral stance on the organization.

For example, if a federal agency purchases medical gloves from an aggressively anti-union company, it could tell the company that “your vehement anti-labor practices have shown a higher risk of work disruption,” Ms. Christman said. She added that the agency may conclude, “We can’t have $ 15 million worth of purple gloves in a warehouse somewhere. We need to find a more reliable way to get this stuff. “

In business today

Updated

April 26, 2021, 2:10 p.m. ET

Even before the task force was announced, many union leaders viewed Mr Biden as the most union-friendly president in generations. They cited his quick overthrow of Trump officials, whom they viewed as anti-labor, the tens of billions of dollars in support of union pension plans included in his pandemic relief law, and a video message during a recent union campaign at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama , warning employers not to coerce or threaten workers who choose to trade unions.

Many union officials have compared him positively to his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, who complained that he refused to loudly support the unions.

The task force comes at a particularly frustrating time for organized work. According to a 2020 Gallup poll, around two-thirds of Americans are in favor of unions, but a little over 6 percent of private sector workers belong to them.

Union leaders say the current labor law, which allows employers to satiate workers with anti-union messages and little punishment for employers who threaten or fire workers who want to join, makes union formation very difficult.

Many union officials have cited Amazon’s loss of the election, the results of which were announced earlier this month, as an example of the need to reform labor law and develop new organizational strategies.

Amazon said its employees chose not to join a union, and management lawyers say many employers have been more responsive to workers’ concerns over the years, making unions less necessary.

Mr. Biden’s task force will seek the views of union leaders, academics and workers and make their recommendations within 180 days.

Secretary of Labor Martin J. Walsh will serve as vice-chair of the group, which includes Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, White House Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse and Brian Deese, and White House Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy.

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Politics

After Backing Army Pressure in Previous, U.S.A.I.D. Nominee Focuses on Deploying Gentle Energy

After Backing Military Force in Past, U.S.A.I.D. Nominee Focuses on Deploying Soft Power

WASHINGTON – Samantha Power becomes more emotional towards the end of the 2014 documentary, Watchers of the Sky, which traces the origins of the legal definition of genocide. At the time, Ms. Power was President Barack Obama’s Ambassador to the United Nations and, she said, had “great insight into much of the pains” in the world.

To prevent mass atrocities abroad, one had to “consider what we can do about it in order to exhaust the tools at your disposal,” Ms. Power said in the film. “And I always think of the privilege of being able to try – just to try.”

Little doubt about Ms. Power’s zeal – given her career as a war correspondent, human rights activist, academic expert, and foreign affairs advisor – even if it meant advocating military violence to stop widespread murders.

Now, as President Biden’s candidate to lead the US Agency for International Development, she is preparing to re-enter government as administrator of soft power and oppose the use of weapons as a deterrent and punishment against the urged her in the past.

A Senate committee is expected to vote on her nomination as head of one of the world’s largest distributors of humanitarian aid on Thursday.

If confirmed, Mr Biden will also put her on the National Security Council, where during the Obama administration she pushed for military inventions to protect civilians from government-sponsored attacks in Libya in 2011 and Syria in 2013 which declined 2003 invasion of Iraq.)

The fact that she will sit at the table again on the council – and will almost certainly again debate whether American forces should be drawn into ongoing conflict – has worried some officials, analysts and think-tank experts, the military reluctance of the Biden administration demand. Mr Biden seems to be leaning like this: He has embraced economic sanctions as an instrument of hard power and is expected to announce a full withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan by September 11 to end the longest war in the United States.

“When you are talking about humanity, famine and war, natural causes aside, war is the leading cause of famine around the world,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul told Ms. Power last month at her Senate confirmation hearing. “Are you ready to admit that the Libyan and Syrian interventions you advocated were a mistake?”

Mrs. Power didn’t. “When these situations arise, it’s almost about less evils – that the decisions are very challenging,” she said.

The US aid agency naturally has a long-term view of the world compared to the immediacy of military action. In addition to the humanitarian aid amounting to around 6 billion US dollars, which it is making available this year for disaster-stricken countries, the agency is trying to prevent conflict at its roots, largely strengthen the economy, counteract state corruption and democracy and promote human rights.

This mission is central to Mr Biden’s foreign policy and may nowhere prove more important than in his global competition with China.

Last month, Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken reassured allies that they would not return to a “us-or-you” decision with China as the two superpowers vie for economic, diplomatic and military advantage.

Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey and former Deputy Secretary of State for Democracy and Human Rights of Obama, described in his loan and development projects the “perception that China exports corruption”.

For example, a February study by the International Republican Institute, a private not-for-profit group that receives government funding and promotes democracy, concluded that Panama’s decision in 2017 to sever diplomatic relations with Taiwan “appeared to be due to disbursements” from China was driven. It was also noted that Nepal regularly revoked the legal status of Tibetan refugees after becoming economically dependent on Beijing.

The American aid organization alone cannot keep up with the resources that China has deployed in developing countries. But Mr. Malinowski said his support for journalists, legal advisors and legitimate opposition groups could “expose and combat” caustic foreign leaders who had benefited from Beijing’s financial aid and playbook to stay in power.

“There is a problem that has come to the fore in this government and that it is very focused on, which is fighting corruption,” Malinowski said of Ms. Power. “And USAID may play a very important role there.”

At her confirmation hearing in March, Ms. Power told the senators that she had been moved to pursue a career in foreign affairs following the 1989 massacre of Tiananmen protesters in Beijing. She described China’s “coercive and predatory approach that is so transactional” in dealing with developing countries that ultimately become dependent on Beijing through what she called “debt-trap diplomacy”.

“I think it’s not going so well, and that opens up the United States,” Ms. Power told Indiana Republican Senator Todd Young.

The mostly harmless nudge of Democrats and Republicans during the hearing showed how fighting China has become a rare, if reliable, non-partisan issue in Congress. “I think it is absolutely essential that our development funds are used to advance our geostrategic priorities,” said Young.

The aid agency and the State Department have budgeted around $ 2 billion for programs to promote democracy, human rights and open governance abroad in fiscal 2021 – a third as much as funding humanitarian aid.

It’s an area that Ms. Power is expected to expand into. The Biden government’s first budget released on Friday alleged it was committing an unspecified but “substantial increase in resources” to advance human rights and democracy while thwarting corruption and authoritarianism.

The spending plan will also support another of Ms. Power’s priorities: fighting corruption, violence and poverty in Central America to curb the influx of thousands of migrants who travel to the southwestern border each year. The Biden government is betting on a $ 4 billion strategy through 2025 – including an initial tranche of $ 861 million proposed this year – to help stabilize the region.

In El Salvador, for example, killings fell 61 percent after a USAID attempt to reduce violence from 2015 to 2017, Ms. Power told senators, and the agency’s programs in Honduras have produced similar results. In addition to assisting local prosecutors, the programs brought together government officials, businesses, and church and community leaders to distract young people from gangs through professional training, tutoring, and artistic activities.

She met with some skepticism.

Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman noted that the number of Central American children on the border has increased steadily since January, despite the fact that the United States has spent $ 3.6 billion on similar efforts over the past five years.

“The results are not impressive,” said Portman. “It’s primarily an economic problem” and “people will still try to get to the US.”

Explaining foreign policy decisions to the American people and making them relevant to their lives is a driving theme for the State Department under Mr. Biden. Ms. Power can draw on her own experience as an immigrant from Ireland and as a storyteller to help alleviate the border crisis by attacking its root causes.

“That’s part of the job – you have to be a salesperson, you have to go out and tell people, ‘So we need more resources to do this job, and this is where USAID can be an incredibly important partner,” said John Prendergast, a longtime veteran Human rights and anti-corruption activist and close friend of Ms. Power.

“There is so much that can be done between bombing and nothing,” said Prendergast, paraphrasing Luis Moreno Ocampo, the former prosecutor of the International Criminal Court featured in the same genocide documentary as Ms. Power. “And all of Samantha’s work and life was between those two extremes.”

Gayle Smith, who ran the aid agency for Mr Obama and is now the State Department’s coronavirus vaccine envoy, put it more clearly.

“It’s not that USAID is going to break into anyone,” she said.

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Girls, 86 P.c Absent From Jordan’s Work Pressure, Are Left Behind

Women, 86 Percent Absent From Jordan’s Work Force, Are Left Behind

AMMAN, Jordan – Marwa Alomari’s compassionate and patient style made her a popular English teacher who filled her classes in Irbid, Jordan with eager students and her free hours of private tuition.

As a college graduate, she received up to $ 3,000 a month, far more than most other Jordanians.

But after she married an army officer and moved in with his family, he began to get annoyed that she was paid more than he was. Although she contributed to the household with both money and housework, he and his family discouraged her from work and the marriage almost collapsed, she said.

“I was absolutely convinced that I would not stop, but at some point I found no support and just got tired and gave up,” said Ms. Alomari, 35. “I cooked, cleaned and gossiped with women again. And that wasn’t my ambition. “

Her story mirrors what is happening across Jordan – a small Arab monarchy that has been an unwavering ally of Western countries – where women’s status in terms of labor force participation, health and politics has declined for years, and even behind more conservative countries in the US remains region.

For the past 10 years, the country has been at the bottom of the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, which highlights gaps between women and men in employment, education, health and politics.

After large increases over the past three decades, more women than men have graduated in the country, and women also have higher literacy rates.

Nevertheless, according to government data and the latest Global Gender Gap Report, 86 percent of women in the country are inactive. According to the World Bank, this is the highest rate in the world for a country not at war.

In contrast, Western Europe has moved and continues in the direction of gender equality the most, followed by North America.

And the effects can be felt far beyond the economy.

“As long as women are absent from the labor market, they are not represented in public,” said Asma Khader, president of the non-profit group Sisterhood is Global Institute in Jordan. “Top officials are afraid to make decisions in favor of women because society is conservative. But I believe if there are real economic reforms, women will be empowered and challenged. “

With its close ties to the West, an outspoken queen, female MPs and police officers, Jordan has long had the image of a relatively progressive kingdom in a conservative neighborhood. Recently, however, some golf neighbors have seen an increasing number of women-run startups and changes in labor legislation that have resulted in growing opportunities for women.

In Jordan, the head of household is usually defined as a husband unless he is dead, missing, or has lost his citizenship. This gives him sole guardianship over children, with authority over matters such as travel, citizenship, and opening bank accounts. In Saudi Arabia, due to the recent changes, at least in theory, women could also be viewed as “householders”.

Traditional attitudes, discriminatory laws, lack of access to public transport and wage differentials are hindering the advancement of women in Jordan.

The November elections to the country’s 130-seat parliament were testament to the declining role of women. Turnout was low and female candidates lost heavily. Women did not occupy a single seat beyond the quota of 15 female legislators, compared to 20 in the previous parliament.

Sara Ababneh, assistant professor of politics and international relations at the University of Jordan, said the problem extends beyond the elections.

“Sometimes we talk about women’s representation – we say there should be more women ministers,” she said. “But we never talk about universal rights and real political empowerment.”

Recent research by the World Bank has shown that men in Jordan are paid up to 40 percent more than women for the same job in the private sector. In the public sector, the gap is 28 percent.

The employment gaps – 53 percent of men are employed compared to 14 percent of women – are almost twice as high as in neighboring countries such as Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

The traditional roles in Jordan are enshrined in laws that distinguish between the rights and duties of women and men. There is no law that prohibits gender discrimination in the workplace. And while the constitution provides that “every worker must receive a wage commensurate with the quantity and quality of their work”, there is no right to equal pay for women and men.

For Muslims, who make up the majority of Jordan’s nearly 11 million population, marriage, divorce, custody and inheritance issues are governed by Sharia or Islamic law and are decided by Sharia courts rather than civil or military courts. For example, under Sharia law, women can inherit property, but daughters receive half as much as sons.

And during the Arab Spring a decade ago, many women and human rights defenders attacked a parliamentary committee for breaking its promise to include the word gender in Article 6 of the Constitution, which aims to ensure equality for all Jordanians. It states: “There must be no discrimination between Jordanians with regard to their rights and obligations on the basis of race, language or religion.”

Despite the obstacles, some women have managed to be successful in their careers.

Jamileh Shetewi is an exception among Jordanian women in every way. She grew up with her eight siblings and parents in a mud-walled one-room house and spent her childhood picking tomatoes, eggplants and bananas with her four sisters on hot and shadowless farms.

The odds were against them.

She dropped out of school at the age of 17 and married at the age of 18. As a young farmer, she was paid $ 3 less a day than the men she worked with from 1997 to 2002 and had to cook for them on top of her job.

She decided to go back to school and did her PhD. in archeology. Today she heads the antiques department in the Jordan Valley region.

“Yes, I defied all expectations,” said Ms. Shetewi, 50. “I fought and destroyed the culture of shame.” But without changing laws and perceptions, most women will not be able to move forward.

“I didn’t care what people had to say and I said to my husband, ‘I need your support to make our lives better,” she said. “We are not the enemy. Believe that a country without half of its population can reform and prosper? “

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Business

SpaceX prepares for Air Pressure check of Starlink satellite tv for pc web

SpaceX prepares for Air Force test of Starlink satellite internet

Edwards Air Force Base can be seen in California’s Mojave Desert in this photo taken by an astronaut on the International Space Station.

NASA

Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing to further test its Starlink satellite internet in a demonstration for the US Air Force, the company said in a recent inquiry to the Federal Communications Commission.

“SpaceX is trying to make minor changes to its experimental approval for additional testing activities with the federal government,” the company wrote on Thursday in a message to the FCC.

“The tests are designed to demonstrate the ability to send and receive information about (1) two stationary ground locations and (2) an aircraft in one location, and would include these (3) limited tests from a moving vehicle on the ground” said SpaceX.

Starlink is the company’s capital-intensive project to build an interconnected internet network of thousands of satellites, known in the aerospace industry as a Constellation, designed to deliver high-speed internet to consumers around the world.

SpaceX announced that it is partnering with Ball Aerospace, a defense and space company that will provide the antennas needed to connect Starlink satellites to an aircraft, for this test.

SpaceX found that Ball specifically manufactures “compliant antennas for tactical aircraft” – that is, military jets.

Musk’s company also found the Starlink test is being conducted as part of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program, a $ 9.7 million contract for the Ball in August received. SpaceX highlighted that the FCC previously approved Starlink experimental tests, including previous Air Force tests dating back to early 2018.

“The commission previously granted SpaceX experimental clearance for activities conducted with the federal government to demonstrate SpaceX’s capability [non-geostationary orbit] System for sending and receiving information between fixed locations on the ground and airborne ground stations on board moving aircraft, “the company said in its filing with the FCC.

SpaceX, Ball Aerospace, and the Air Force Research Laboratory did not respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

Upcoming tests

The Air Force experiment begins with ground tests near SpaceX’s Starlink manufacturing facilities in Redmond, Washington. The test for a “surface-to-air scenario” will then be relocated to Edwards Air Force Base in California.

“An antenna terminal is being built into an aircraft. SpaceX is designing a special installation kit that consists of mechanical plates for the low-profile antennas and a windproof fairing to reduce the impact on the aircraft for this installation,” SpaceX said in the FCC filing.

While SpaceX has not identified a target schedule for the tests, the company anticipates “testing will take four to six months”.

SpaceX deploys 60 Starlink satellites in orbit.

SpaceX

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Business

2.5 Million Girls Left the Work Power Through the Pandemic. Harris Sees a ‘Nationwide Emergency.’

2.5 Million Women Left the Work Force During the Pandemic. Harris Sees a ‘National Emergency.’

Childcare remains an issue for working mothers, and it was a main topic of Thursday’s round table. Nearly 400,000 childcare jobs have been lost since the pandemic began, Ms. Harris said. The shutdowns of small businesses and the loss of millions of jobs have created the “perfect storm” for women, especially black entrepreneurs, she added. “The longer we wait to act,” she said, “the harder it will be to get these millions of women back into work.”

Updated

Apr. 18, 2021, 5:19 p.m. ET

The government’s aid proposal would provide around $ 130 billion to help reopen K-12 schools, a key element of childcare. But how and when to do this – and how to explain decision-making to Americans – has proven to be a stumbling block for the president and his advisors.

President Biden has promised to reopen as many schools as possible in the first 100 days of his term in office. This promise has been challenged by teachers’ unions seeking security measures before schools reopen. On Thursday, Ms. Harris kept her comments on the schools limited, saying the plan would “provide funding to help schools reopen safely”. Ms. Harris said in an appearance on the “Today” show Wednesday that “teachers should be a priority” to get vaccinations.

Several representatives of women’s advocacy groups took part in the call with Ms. Harris, including Fatima Goss Graves, President of the National Center for Women’s Rights. She said that the vice president did not “go into” detail “about reopening schools, but that the group emphasized other issues, including the importance of direct payments to families in difficulty.

“People barely hold it together right now,” said Ms. Goss Graves. “I was pleased to hear that she understood this investment and spoke with urgency.”

As the pandemic drags on, the statistics for women are indeed grim.

A report released last year by researchers at the University of Arkansas and the University of Southern California’s Center for Economic and Social Research found that women’s employment began to decline almost immediately after the onset of the coronavirus last spring. Since then, researchers have found that women took on a heavier burden than men in looking after children.

Women without a university degree and women with skin color are disproportionately affected. Another report released by the Brookings Institution in the fall showed that nearly half of all working women have low-paying jobs. These jobs are more likely to be filled by black or Latin American women, and they are in sectors like food and travel that are the least likely to return to normal soon.

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E.V.s Power Carmakers to Reinvent the Wheel, and Brakes, and Mirrors …

E.V.s Force Carmakers to Reinvent the Wheel, and Brakes, and Mirrors …

There are other problems too. “They have a parallel goal: On the one hand, you have to cope with and withstand the weight of a battery-powered car with stronger brakes, stronger axles and strong suspension,” Dahncke added. “At the same time, you have to optimize everything for aerodynamics.”

These “basic practices” involve collaboration between suppliers and manufacturers, Coke said. You need to consider the brakes, the wheels, the side mirrors, wind noise, chassis noise, and tire noise. The problems do not only affect one manufacturer. In his case, Pirelli, whose home base is in Milan, worked closely with Rivian in Michigan to assemble tires for its products.

Tires are, of course, Mr. Coke’s only concern. One of his priorities in developing electric vehicles is reducing a tire’s rolling resistance, a key factor in extending battery life. Longer battery life means less range anxiety and a larger potential market for electric cars.

“Our compounds are engineered with high silica content for very low durability,” said Coke. Silica reduces the energy consumption of the tire. “And our challenge is to reconcile this with handling, braking in wet and dry conditions and the service life of the tires. And in an electric vehicle, we try to adapt the tires to the application: When the vehicle has front, rear or all-wheel drive; when it is used for summer, winter or all season. “

Then there is torque. “There’s an immense amount of torque in electric vehicles,” said Mr. Coke. “The tendency to set foot and deliver that power is obviously a tendency that tires wear out very quickly. So you have to have a grip, but you don’t want too much resistance. “And around and around.

Recognition…Pirelli

While weight reduction is important for all cars and trucks, it is especially important for electric vehicles, mainly because of the battery charge. And because the batteries in the vehicle are often low, the focus of the electrics differs from that of a conventionally powered car. Is this change in sensation worrying for some drivers?