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Murder Suspect Whose Case Sparked Hong Kong Protests Is Free | Time - 0 views

time.com/...urder-suspect-extradition-chan politics culture
shared by anniina03 on 23 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • The suspect whose murder case was used as justification to introduce an extradition bill that triggered months of protest in Kong Kong was released from a Hong Kong prison on Wednesday morning, amid a diplomatic row with Taiwan over what to do with him next.
  • Speaking outside the prison, where he had been serving a sentence on money laundering charges, Chan Tong-kai, 20, bowed and apologized to the people of Hong Kong and the victim’s family.
  • His release has sparked a dispute between Hong Kong and Taiwan on how to handle his surrender.
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  • At stake is the hugely sensitive issue of Taiwan’s status. Beijing regards the island as a renegade province; self-governing Taiwan sees itself as a sovereign nation.
  • If Hong Kong were to allow Taiwanese law enforcement officials to land and take custody of Chan, it could be seen as a de facto extradition agreement with a foreign power, and thus a tacit recognition that Taiwan is not part of the ‘One China’ that Beijing insists it is.
  • A series of peaceful mass marches beginning in June morphed into frequent, violent protests, with protesters now calling for greater political freedom and repudiating Beijing’s sovereignty over the former British colony. The extradition bill is expected to be formally withdrawn by the city’s legislature on Wednesday.
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How Far Did Ancient Rome Spread? - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...re-map-julius-caesar-conquests history
shared by brookegoodman on 26 Oct 19 - No Cached
  • At its peak, Rome stretched over much of Europe and the Middle East.
  • The Roman Empire conquered these lands by attacking them with unmatched military strength, and it held onto them by letting them govern themselves.
  • So the idea of them expanding is always deep in the historical DNA of the republic, and even the monarchy before the republic.”
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  • The republic’s first significant expansion came in 396 B.C., when Rome defeated and captured the Etruscan city of Veii.
  • Over the next two-and-a-half centuries, Rome spread throughout the Italian Peninsula by conquering territories and either making them independent allies or extending Roman citizenship.
  • This strategy of absorption changed as Rome conquered its first overseas territories.
  • Taking this new territory wasn’t something Rome had initially intended to do.
  • After Rome pushed Carthage out of Sicily in the first war, the Italian island became Rome’s first foreign province.
  • his time, Rome destroyed the capital city of Carthage in modern-day Tunisia and enslaved the city’s inhabitants. It also conquered all of Carthage’s territory in North Africa and made it a Roman province.
  • In the 60s B.C.E., Rome extended into the Middle East and captured Jerusalem. These eastern territories had old and complex political systems that Rome largely left in place.
  • When Rome took over, it introduced some Roman systems, while still trying to keep power in the hands of local leaders to ensure a smooth transition.
  • The republic fell for good when his great-nephew, Augustus Caesar, declared himself emperor in 27 B.C. Now, the sprawling state of Rome was officially the Roman Empire.
  • The empire reached its peak in 117 A.C. when it fortified its borders and reached all the way into England. But after that, it stopped expanding, because leaders didn’t think it was worth the time and energy.
  • the extension of imperial bureaucracy made the empire much harder to manage; and this was one of the reasons that the empire began to divide itself
  • In the east, the Roman Empire—also known as the Byzantine Empire—continued on for over a millennium.
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Trump 'Stands With Xi' (and With Hong Kong's Protesters) - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ump-hong-kong-protests-xi.html politics us trump
shared by brickol on 22 Nov 19 - No Cached
  • WASHINGTON — President Trump would not commit Friday to signing legislation overwhelmingly passed by Congress to support pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong in an interview on Fox News.
  • he spoke warmly about China’s president, Xi Jinping, whom he is trying to coax into striking a trade deal that has become one of the central goals of his presidency.
  • But he added: “I stand with Hong Kong. I stand with freedom. I stand with all of the things we want to do. But we’re also in the process of making the largest trade deal in history.”
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  • The legislation approved by Congress this week would impose sanctions on Chinese officials who commit human rights abuses in the semiautonomous island territory and place Hong Kong’s special economic status under greater scrutiny.
  • Security forces in Hong Kong have escalated their crackdown on pro-democracy protesters this month, prompting Congress to approve a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act it had been considering for months.
  • Mr. Trump said that the protests were a complicating factor in his trade negotiations with Beijing, which have stalled ahead of an important Dec. 15 deadline, when Mr. Trump must decide whether to issue yet more tariffs on Chinese goods.
  • he also took credit for the fact that China had not extinguished the protests with a sweeping and violent crackdown.
  • Mr. Trump and other administration officials have warned that an overwhelming Chinese response would have wider repercussions in the relationship between China and Beijing, including in the trade talks.But analysts say there are many reasons China’s government has refrained from an all-out violent crackdown like the one that snuffed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in 1989. They include the risk of an enormous international backlash and lasting damage to Hong Kong’s powerhouse economy.
  • Congress passed its Hong Kong bill with an overwhelming majority, meaning that it could probably override a presidential veto easily, the first override of his presidency. Mr. Trump could also choose not to sign the bill without vetoing it, in which case it would also become law.
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A tale of two metros: how the London tube beat the New York subway | Cities | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-tube-beat-the-new-york-subway london new york transport metro subway
shared by Javier E on 16 Dec 19 - No Cached
  • “These companies were not bringing the investment that was expected, particularly to infrastructure,” Badstuber says. “To me, this is all leading up to a realisation that, actually, you need a large amount of capital investment in the system. That’s what TfL got, and that’s what TfL needed – and to me that’s what any large system needs.
  • Crucially, central government also committed to new funding.
  • Nearly two-thirds of all trips in London are now made on foot, bicycle or public transit. The goal is to increase that “modal share” to 80% by 2040
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  • “Since TfL was formed in 2000, when just over half of all journeys were by sustainable modes, billions of pounds have been invested into London’s public transport
  • An excellent investigation by the New York Times in 2017 pointed to two key factors. First, in the 1990s, elected officials began a pattern of diverting maintenance funds to other political priorities. Second, too much has since been spent on vanity projects and consulting fees, leaving the system starved for cash. In 2019, only two of New York’s 27 lines have modern signal systems; in London, half of the system is online, with the rest expected by 2023.
  • it’s also an issue of governance. The two systems governing the respecting metros are very different. Unlike TfL, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is a holding entity for separate operating companies (including the Long Island Railroad and Metro-North); unlike TfL, it doesn’t control street operations; and unlike TfL, it doesn’t answer to the city but to the governor of New York state, which many critics say leaves it too vulnerable to politics
  • “Mass transit is not a priority for the federal government,” Moss says. “The federal government is very involved in airport construction and highway finance, but not mass transit. And that’s a key point.”
  • In the US context, New York’s transit problem is New York’s to fight alone.
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Australia's Wildlife Was Already in Danger - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...604837 history crisis
shared by anniina03 on 14 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • As temperatures rise, Australia becomes more monochrome. In the ocean, the reefs have been whitening. On land, the forests have been blackening. Successive heat waves have forced corals to expel their colorful, nutrient-providing algae; half of the Great Barrier Reef has died.
  • “Climate-change predictions suggested that catastrophic fires were going to happen and were going to become more frequent. But they’ve just never happened before at this scale.” The island last saw major bushfires in 2007, but the recent blazes have burned an area more than 12 times greater.
  • But when fires get big enough, birds get disoriented by the smoke and heat, while tree hollows transform from shelters into crematoria. That’s been the case in the recent season, as fires have been not only especially intense, but unprecedentedly thorough.
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  • The fires are especially devastating because they’re occurring against a long-running backdrop of biological annihilation. The clearing of land for agriculture and urban development has forced species into ever smaller and more fragmented pockets, which can be more easily snuffed out by a single bad event.
  • None of the researchers I spoke with could think of a historical example where fire literally burned a species out of existence. Yet “it’s hard to imagine that there won’t be a number of extinctions as a result of this fire, but what that number is we aren’t sure,” Legge says.
  • The recent bushfires, however, have been so severe that some researchers and fire chiefs aren’t convinced that preventive burning would have helped.
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China needs to show Taiwan respect, says president - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-51104246 China politics history Taiwan
shared by liamhudgings on 14 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • The Chinese Communist Party has long claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and the right to take it by force if necessary.
  • "We don't have a need to declare ourselves an independent state,"
  • "We are an independent country already and we call ourselves the Republic of China, Taiwan."
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  • China insists on its acceptance as a prerequisite for building economic ties with Taiwan, precisely because doing so is an explicit denial of its existence as a de facto island state.
  • "And also, the things happening in Hong Kong, people get a real sense that this threat is real and it's getting more and more serious."
  • Taiwan's interests, she believes, are not best served by semantics but by facing up to the reality, in particular the aspirations of the Taiwanese youth who flocked to her cause.
  • She has, for example, stopped short of the formal declaration of independence
  • hina has said it would regard such a move as a pretext for military action.
  • she is also well aware that as a result of her victory, Beijing may well increase its pressure on Taiwan.
  • In response, she is trying to diversify Taiwan's trading relationships and boost the domestic economy, in particular by encouraging Taiwanese investors who have built factories in China to consider relocating back home.
  • And she is planning for all eventualities.
  • "You cannot exclude the possibility of war at any time," she says.
  • "Invading Taiwan is something that is going to be very costly for China."
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The Personality Traits that Led to Napoleon Bonaparte's Epic Downfall - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...all-reasons-personality-traits history
shared by brookegoodman on 19 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • Napoleon Bonaparte’s rise and fall are one of the most spectacular in recorded history. The French general and statesman turned self-appointed emperor revolutionized the nation’s military, legal and educational institutions. But after some of his most audacious expansionist campaigns failed, he was forced to abdicate and was ultimately exiled in disgrace.
  • A close look behind the heroic portraits and beneath the gorgeous uniforms reveals some surprising things about the great little man. (He was small.) Perhaps most striking? The number of complexes he suffered from, including class inferiority, money insecurity, intellectual envy, sexual anxiety, social awkwardness and, not surprisingly, a persistent hypersensitivity to criticism. Taken in whole, these traits drove his stark ambition, undermined his grandiose endeavors—and ultimately crippled his historic legacy.
  • He became brutally aware of social barriers when, at the age of nine, he left home and entered the military academy at Brienne in northern France. His foreign origins, atrocious French (he had grown up speaking a Corsican Italian patois) and dubious noble status laid him open to the taunts of his schoolmates.
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  • He welcomed the outbreak of the French Revolution in July 1789, when he was a month short of his 20th birthday—not just because he was a republican, but also because by removing class barriers it opened up new prospects politically and personally. But when he found himself in revolutionary Paris five years later, 26-year-old general Napoleon faced an alarming world governed by two things he had never had much experience of: money and sex.
  • The lure of making money briefly eclipsed his military ambitions as he speculated on buying and selling the properties of émigré or guillotined nobles, and importing often-smuggled luxuries such as coffee, sugar and silk stockings. Although his dislike of what he called “men of business” never left him, neither did his determination never to be short of ready cash. When he came to power he always had with him a cassette of gold coins. He also saw money as the key to achieving the goals he set himself, creating new institutions and building public works.
  • His sexual insecurity and distrust of women only deepened his unwillingness or inability to engage with others, hampering his diplomatic relations, which he saw as showdowns in which he had to be seen to win. He could never see that a judicious concession might win him greater advantages; had he prolonged the peace of Amiens by allowing Britain to keep Malta in 1803, for example, he could have used the respite to reinforce his position, rebuild France’s economy and his navy.
  • As appalled as he was by Josephine’s promiscuity, Napoleon was entranced by her supposedly aristocratic background. He would be even more excited by that of his second wife, the Austrian archduchess Marie-Louise. As she was a great-niece of the late Marie-Antoinette, he would refer to his ‘uncle’ king Louis XVI and reveled in the fact that his father-in-law was the Emperor of Austria.
  • He continued to build on this image so successfully that he could turn a less-than-glorious episode in Egypt into the stuff of legend and persuade many in France that he was the predestined savior of the nation. This enabled him to seize power and begin rebuilding France from the ruins of the Revolution.
  • While he was destroying the might of Austria, Russia and Prussia by his spectacular victories at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland, he received reports from Paris that people were longing for an end to the fighting so they could get on with their lives. By then, his extraordinary luck, leading from triumph to triumph, had begun to make him believe his own propaganda, that he was the darling of destiny. Yet the aura of glory could not mask an underlying frailty.
  • While he was on the retreat from Moscow, a group of generals tried to seize power by announcing he had been killed in battle. The plot failed, but it revealed to Napoleon that his whole edifice of imperial glory had feet of clay. On hearing of his death, nobody reacted as they would have had he been a real monarch—by saying ‘the Emperor is dead, long live the Emperor’ and proclaiming his son’s accession to the throne.
  • He went on fighting a battle that was long lost, desperate for a resounding victory he believed might redeem what, for all the bluster, was his irredeemably low self-esteem. Ironically, it was only after he had lost his throne and was even denied the courtesy of being addressed as a monarch by his British jailers on the island of Saint Helena, that he managed to recover this and project an image of grandeur in defeat that still fascinates people today.
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Industrial Revolution: Definitions, Causes & Inventions - HISTORY - 0 views

www.history.com/...industrial-revolution history
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  • The Industrial Revolution marked a period of development in the latter half of the 18th century that transformed largely rural, agrarian societies in Europe and America into industrialized, urban ones. 
  • Fueled by the game-changing use of steam power, the Industrial Revolution began in Britain and spread to the rest of the world, including the United States, by the 1830s and ‘40s. Modern historians often refer to this period as the First Industrial Revolution, to set it apart from a second period of industrialization that took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries and saw rapid advances in the steel, electric and automobile industries. 
  • Starting in the mid-18th century, innovations like the flying shuttle, the spinning jenny, the water frame and the power loom made weaving cloth and spinning yarn and thread much easier. Producing cloth became faster and required less time and far less human labor.
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  • An icon of the Industrial Revolution broke onto the scene in the early 1700s, when Thomas Newcomen designed the prototype for the first modern steam engine. Called the “atmospheric steam engine,” Newcomen’s invention was originally applied to power the machines used to pump water out of mine shafts. 
  • Just as steam engines needed coal, steam power allowed miners to go deeper and extract more of this relatively cheap energy source. The demand for coal skyrocketed throughout the Industrial Revolution and beyond, as it would be needed to run not only the factories used to produce manufactured goods, but also the railroads and steamships used for transporting them.
  • In the early 1800s, Richard Trevithick debuted a steam-powered locomotive, and in 1830 similar locomotives started transporting freight (and passengers) between the industrial hubs of Manchester and Liverpool. By that time, steam-powered boats and ships were already in wide use, carrying goods along Britain’s rivers and canals as well as across the Atlantic.
  • The latter part of the Industrial Revolution also saw key advances in communication methods, as people increasingly saw the need to communicate efficiently over long distances. In 1837, British inventors William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented the first commercial telegraphy system, even as Samuel Morse and other inventors worked on their own versions in the United States. Cooke and Wheatstone’s system would be used for railroad signalling, as the speed of the new trains had created a need for more sophisticated means of communication.
  • Though many people in Britain had begun moving to the cities from rural areas before the Industrial Revolution, this process accelerated dramatically with industrialization, as the rise of large factories turned smaller towns into major cities over the span of decades. This rapid urbanization brought significant challenges, as overcrowded cities suffered from pollution, inadequate sanitation and a lack of clean drinking water.
  • The beginning of industrialization in the United States is usually pegged to the opening of a textile mill in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1793 by the recent English immigrant Samuel Slater. Slater had worked at one of the mills opened by Richard Arkwright (inventor of the water frame) mills, and despite laws prohibiting the emigration of textile workers, he brought Arkwright’s designs across the Atlantic. He later built several other cotton mills in New England, and became known as the “Father of the American Industrial Revolution.”
  • By the end of the 19th century, with the so-called Second Industrial Revolution underway, the United States would also transition from a largely agrarian society to an increasingly urbanized one, with all the attendant problems. By the mid-19th century, industrialization was well-established throughout the western part of Europe and America’s northeastern region. By the early 20th century, the U.S. had become the world’s leading industrial nation.
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Newfoundland snow: Residents digging their way out of record-breaking snowfall - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html culture history Crisis
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  • A record-breaking snowfall in Newfoundland, Canada, has left residents with the enormous task of digging themselves out of piles and piles of snow.St. John's International Airport recorded 76.2 cm (30 inches) of snow Friday, according to Environment Canada, breaking the previous daily snowfall record set on April 5, 1999, of 68.4 cm (26.93 inches).
  • Of course it's not a laughing matter for everyone. A state of emergency remained in effect for parts of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador on Sunday morning, including St. John's and Paradise. St. John's officials still wanted people to stay off the roads, but lifted some restrictions Sunday morning, allowing gas stations to open and pharmacies to open from noon until 7 pm.
  • More snow is on the way, CNN meteorologist Allison Chinchar said. It was snowing in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick on Sunday morning, but that system was expected to move east into Newfoundland and Labrador Sunday evening and into the overnight hours.
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Single-use plastic: China to ban bags and other items - BBC News - 0 views

www.bbc.com/...world-asia-china-51171491 politics culture history economics
shared by anniina03 on 20 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • China, one of the world's biggest users of plastic, has unveiled a major plan to reduce single-use plastics across the country. Non-degradable bags will be banned in major cities by the end of 2020 and in all cities and towns by 2022.
  • In 2017 alone, China collected 215 million tonnes of urban household waste. But national figures for recycling are not available.
  • The National Development and Reform Commission on Sunday issued the new policy, which will be implemented over the next five years.
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  • The production and sale of plastic bags that are less than 0.025mm thick will also be banned. The restaurant industry must reduce the use of single-use plastic items by 30%. Hotels have been told that they must not offer free single-use plastic items by 2025.
  • Thailand announced earlier this year that single-use plastic bags would be banned in major stores, with a complete ban across the entire country in 2021.
  • Indonesia's capital Jakarta also is banning single-use plastic bags in department stores, supermarkets and traditional markets by June 2020.
  • The Indonesian island of Bali has also banned single-use plastic.
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China says tailed U.S. warship in Taiwan Strait | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...in-taiwan-strait-idUSKBN28T0GX china taiwan usmilitary
shared by anonymous on 19 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • China’s military tailed a U.S. warship as it passed through the sensitive Taiwan Strait on Saturday
  • China
  • claims democratically-run Taiwan as its own territory,
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  • The U.S. Navy said the guided missile destroyer USS Mustin had conducted “a routine Taiwan Strait transit (on) Dec. 19 in accordance with international law”.
  • its air and naval forces “tailed and monitored” the vessel throughout.
  • deliberately raise the temperature of the Taiwan issue, as they fear calm in the Taiwan Strait, and send flirtatious glances to Taiwan independence forces, seriously jeopardising peace and stability in the strait
  • Beijing believes Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen is bent on a formal declaration of independence for the island
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Asian-American Voters Can Help Decide Elections. But for Which Party? - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...asian-american-voters.html voters new york times Politics
shared by leilamulveny on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • They turned out in record numbers. In Georgia, the increase in Asian-American voters was so significant in the general election that they could play a decisive role in the two Senate runoff races this week.
  • Demographics alone are not destiny. Asian-American voters and Latino voters made clear that while they generally support Democrats, they do not do so at the same rate as Black voters, and remain very much up for grabs by either party.
  • but with Asian-Americans making up less than 6 percent of the U.S. population, concentrated mostly in traditionally safe blue and red states like California, New York and Texas, they were seldom part of a presidential campaign’s calculus.
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  • With the Senate runoffs approaching on Tuesday, Asian-American political operatives from across the country have joined local groups in Georgia to try to ensure that the tens of thousands of Asian-Americans who voted for the first time in the general election will vote again this week.
  • Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on the virus, among other things, made progressive organizers and Democratic candidates optimistic that Asian-American voters would flock to them. In some cases, it did motivate people.
  • Over the last two decades, as their numbers grew, Asian-Americans as a whole moved left politically and slowly amassed enough power to help decide some tightly contested House races in districts where they had clustered
  • Now, as Mr. Biden forms his administration, Asian-American congressional leaders and many of their colleagues are already chafing at what could be a cabinet without a single Asian-American secretary for the first time in decades.
  • At the presidential level, Asian-Americans cast a record number of ballots in battleground states where Joseph R. Biden Jr. notched narrow victories. But a New York Times analysis showed that in immigrant neighborhoods across the country, Asian-American and Latino voters shifted to the right
  • For the first time, three Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders sought a major party’s nomination for president. One, Ms. Harris, is set to be vice president; another, the entrepreneur Andrew Yang, has been privately telling New York City leaders that he intends to run for mayor this year.
  • When analysts get a complete picture of the 2020 electorate, he said, the data will probably show that the total number of ballots cast by Asian-Americans nearly doubled.
  • Despite the modest increase in support for Mr. Trump, roughly two-thirds of Asian-American voters backed Mr. Biden — a fact often cited by the Asian-American officials who have urged the president-elect to pick a cabinet secretary from their community.
  • Roughly 30 percent of Asian-American voters do not identify as either Democrats or Republicans, and many are settling in the suburban swing districts that are the focus of both parties.It is a demographic and political reality that has been playing out in parts of Southern California for years. Randall Avila, the executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County, said he had found that many Asian-American voters — and potential candidates he had worked to recruit — approached Republican ideas with an open mind.
  • The real victory, experts on the Latino and Asian-American vote agreed, would be for voters of color to be pursued with the same vigor as white voters, who are routinely grouped into subcategories based on where they live, or their income or education level.“Democrats need to stop obsessing about white rural voters and white suburban moms,” said Janelle Wong, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland.
  • One place they may demonstrate their growing political power is in Georgia this week. Neil Makhija leads an Indian-American political organization that is running a $2.5 million campaign to turn out A.A.P.I. voters in the state’s Senate runoffs. He sees the significant increase in Asian-American voter participation in November as a success — and a lesson.“What we’re going to try to do is take some of what we’ve learned,” he said, “and really go all in.”
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Early Vaccine Doubters Now Show a Willingness to Roll Up Their Sleeves - The New York T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...covid-vaccine-hesitancy.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 27 Dec 20 - No Cached
  • No matter how encouraging the news, growing numbers of people said they would refuse to get the shot.
  • But over the past few weeks, as the vaccine went from a hypothetical to a reality, something happened. Fresh surveys show attitudes shifting and a clear majority of Americans now eager to get vaccinated.
  • In polls by Gallup, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Pew Research Center, the portion of people saying they are now likely or certain to take the vaccine has grown from about 50 percent this summer to more than 60 percent, and in one poll 73 percent — a figure that approaches what some public health experts say would be sufficient for herd immunity.
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  • It found that nearly 75 percent of Americans are now wearing masks when they leave their homes.
  • What changed her mind?“The Biden administration, returning to listening to science and the fantastic stats associated with the vaccines,” she replied.
  • But the grim reality of the pandemic — with more than 200,000 new cases and some 3,000 deaths daily — and the wanness of this holiday season are perhaps among the biggest factors
  • A barrage of feel-good media coverage, including rapt attention given to leading scientists and politicians when they get jabbed and joyous scrums surrounding local health care workers who become the first to be vaccinated, has amplified the excitement, public opinion experts say.
  • The divide between women and men has become pronounced, with women being more hesitant. Black people remain the most skeptical racial group, although their acceptance is inching up: In September, a Pew Research poll said that only 32 percent of Black people were willing to get the vaccine, while the latest poll shows a rise to 42 percent. And though people of all political persuasions are warming to the vaccine, more Republicans than Democrats view the shot suspiciously.
  • A brighter indication, he said, is that two-thirds of the public say they are at least somewhat confident that a coronavirus vaccine will be distributed in a way that is fair, up from 52 percent in September.
  • The most pronounced pockets of resistance include rural residents and people between the ages of 30 and 4
  • Timothy H. Callaghan, a scholar at the Southwest Rural Health Research Center at Texas A&M School of Public Health, said that rural residents tend to be conservative and Republican, characteristics that also show up among the vaccine hesitant
  • . They also include immigrants and day laborers, many of whom do not have college degrees or even high school diplomas and so may be more dismissive of vaccine science.
  • The resistance also springs from their hampered access to health care in remote areas. In addition, the need to take off several hours of work from the inflexible demands of farming for travel and recovery from vaccine side effects makes the shots seem even less compelling, he added.
  • About 35 percent of adults between 30 and 49 over all expressed skepticism about the vaccine, according to the Kaiser poll. Dr. Scott C. Ratzan, whose vaccine surveys in New York with the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health echo findings similar to the national polls, noted that this group doesn’t keep up on flu shots either. They are well out of the age range for routine vaccines.
  • Another group that has been uncertain about taking the vaccine is health care workers, who typically have high rates of acceptance for established vaccines.
  • But other hospitals say that staff time slots for the vaccine are becoming a hot commodity.
  • For months, Tina Kleinfeldt, a surgical recovery nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center, a hospital in the Northwell Health network, had absolutely no intention of getting the vaccine until long after the science and side effects had been established.
  • Then she realized that doses were still so scarce that she might not get another opportunity soon. So she said yes. She became the first nurse on her unit to get the shot.
  • Afterwards , she felt some muscle soreness at the site of injection. But she also felt elated, excited and relieved.
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Pompeo Weighs Plan to Place Cuba on U.S. Terrorism Sponsor List - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...ba-terrorism-sponsor-list.html Politics trump
shared by anonymous on 04 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • The move would complicate any effort by the incoming Biden administration to resume President Barack Obama’s thaw in relations with Havana.
  • A finding that a country has “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism,” in the State Department’s official description of a state sponsor of terrorism, automatically triggers U.S. sanctions against its government. If added to the list, Cuba would join just three other nations: Iran, North Korea and Syria.
  • The State Department removed Cuba from its list of terrorism sponsors in 2015, after President Barack Obama announced the normalization of relations between Washington and Havana for the first time since the country’s 1959 communist revolution, which he called a relic of the Cold War. In return for pledges of political and social reform, Mr. Obama dropped economic sanctions, relaxed restrictions on travel and trade, and reopened an embassy in Havana for the first time in decades. In 2016, he became the first American president to visit the island since Calvin Coolidge.
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  • They were also willing to accept that the Cuban government has harbored some fugitives wanted in the United States, including Joanne D. Chesimard, 73, a former member of the Black Liberation Army. Ms. Chesimard, who now goes by the name Assata Shakur, remains on the F.B.I.’s list of most wanted terrorists for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973.
  • Cuba’s repressive government has largely disappointed hopes that it might liberalize after the death of its revolutionary leader, Fidel Castro, in November 2016. Havana continues to arrest and detain dissidents and cracked down on a recent hunger strike by artists and other activists in the capital, evidence to many Republicans that its government does not deserve cordial relations from Washington.
  • A recent report commissioned by the State Department found that U.S. embassy personnel in Havana were sickened in 2016 by what was most likely a microwave weapon of unknown origins. Cuba’s government has denied any knowledge of such attacks.
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Black Lives Protesters See Disparity In Handling Of U.S. Capitol Mob : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...otesters-on-the-capitol-attack capitol trump protests BLM
shared by martinelligi on 10 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • a mob of largely white extremists stage an insurrection in Washington, D.C., set up a noose on a wooden beam outside the U.S. Capitol and walk a symbol of violence and slavery — the Confederate flag — through the building as they stormed and raided it.
  • There were white extremists who felt at ease giving their names to media outlets and taking selfies with a white police officer.
  • "Now the world gets to see the difference between these two situations, where one is us protesting to be seen, to be heard, to not be killed, right?" she said. "And then you have these other people who are just mad because they lost."
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  • The president took a different tone on Wednesday than this summer, when he called overwhelmingly peaceful protesters for racial justice "thugs," "agitators" and "looters." He tweeted "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." He threatened protesters outside the White House with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons."
  • But when the Capitol was stormed Wednesday, Trump told the extremists threatening to execute Democrats and target journalists and BLM activists "we love you, you're very special ... but you have to go home." Prior to the mob storming the Capitol, he'd told the rally of his supporters to "fight like hell."
  • "It just exaggerated the contradictions to me around how the state and how police respond to Black and Indigenous and Latinx and Asian and Pacific Islander folks when we protest," she said. "Versus how they responded to gun-toting white supremacists that were coming into the Capitol."
  • Black and brown people protesting for social justice are seen as criminals; a mostly white mob attacking the Capitol are seen as demonstrators.
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Puerto Rico's New Governor Pedro Pierluisi Faces Multiple Crises : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...rnor-who-faces-multiple-crises
shared by mattrenz16 on 03 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • Pedro Pierluisi was sworn in as Puerto Rico's 12th elected governor on Saturday, promising to turn the page on years of social and political turbulence in the U.S. territory and to restore trust in a government whose credibility has been badly damaged by its response to a string of recent crises.
  • His swearing-in on Saturday was the culmination of two prior attempts to claim the governorship, first in 2016, when he lost his party's gubernatorial primary, and again in 2019, after the resignation of Gov. Ricardo Rosselló.
  • At the heart of Pierluisi's address on Saturday was an acknowledgement of the pain that many Puerto Ricans have endured in recent years — from twin hurricanes, earthquakes, the island's debt crisis, corruption scandals and the ongoing pandemic — and a pledge to usher in better days.
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  • Despite his election in November, Pierluisi claimed victory with less than one-third of the vote total, a smaller percentage than any elected governor in Puerto Rico's history. Pierluisi hails from the island's traditional pro-statehood party, which has long dominated electoral politics along with the other main party that favors Puerto Rico's existing territorial status.
  • His address also touched, in general terms, on other issues of deep concern on the island: public education, crime, mental health, the environment and corruption.
  • Pierluisi replaces Gov. Wanda Vázquez, who took office in August of 2019 after weeks of protests forced then-Gov. Rosselló to resign.
  • But days after Pierluisi took the governor's oath, the territory's Supreme Court ruled him ineligible for the office because his cabinet appointment had not been confirmed by the island's Senate. Vázquez, who was attorney general, ascended to the governorship instead.
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Trump Faces 'Incitement Of Insurrection' Impeachment Charge | HuffPost - 0 views

www.huffpost.com/...rge_n_5ffc7630c5b691806c4b1a38 policy gop trump crisis US
shared by clairemann on 11 Jan 21 - No Cached
  • As the House prepares for impeachment, President Donald Trump faces a single charge — “incitement of insurrection” — over the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol, according to a draft of the articles obtained by The Associated Press.
  • The four-page impeachment bill draws from Trump’s own false statements about his election defeat to Democrat Joe Biden; his pressure on state officials in Georgia to “find” him more votes; and his White House rally ahead of the Capitol siege, in which he encouraged thousands of supporters to “fight like hell” before they stormed the building on Wednesday.
  • The bill from Reps. David Cicilline of Rhode Island, Ted Lieu of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Jerrold Nadler of New York, said Trump threatened “the integrity of the democratic system, interfered with the peaceful transition of power” and “betrayed” trust. “He will remain a threat to national security, democracy, and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office,” they wrote.
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  • A violent and largely white mob of Trump supporters overpowered police, broke through security lines and windows and rampaged through the Capitol, forcing lawmakers to scatter as they were finalizing Biden’s victory over Trump in the Electoral College.
  • “We will act with urgency, because this President represents an imminent threat,” Pelosi said in a letter late Sunday to colleagues emphasizing the need for quick action.
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will proceed with legislation to impeach Trump as she pushes the vice president and the Cabinet to invoke constitutional authority to force him out, warning that Trump is a threat to democracy after the deadly assault on the Capitol.
  • “The horror of the ongoing assault on our democracy perpetrated by this President is intensified and so is the immediate need for action.”
  • Pence has given no indication he would act on the 25th Amendment. If he does not, the House would move toward impeachment.
  • “I think the president has disqualified himself from ever, certainly, serving in office again,” Toomey said. “I don’t think he is electable in any way.”
  • Potentially complicating Pelosi’s decision about impeachment was what it meant for Biden and the beginning of his presidency. While reiterating that he had long viewed Trump as unfit for office, Biden on Friday sidestepped a question about impeachment, saying what Congress did “is for them to decide.”
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Rescuers Race Against Time to Find Survivors After Quake in Turkey - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...turkey-earthquake-rescue.html Turkey Disaster crisis
shared by tsainten on 02 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • The death toll from a major earthquake off the coast of Turkey reached at least 62 on Sunday, with more than 900 others injured, as rescuers continued to dig through tons of rubble in the city of Izmir in the diminishing hope of finding more survivors.
  • As well as at least 58 deaths in Turkey, at least two more people were killed on the Greek island of Samos, the authorities there said.
  • the quake created a small tsunami about 30 miles to the southwest in the area of Sigacik, a coastal town around 10 miles from the epicenter.
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  • Although shaken often by tremors, Izmir has many older buildings that are not quake-resistant. Earthquakes often show up the poor construction quality in Turkey,
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Sri Lanka rescues 120 whales after biggest mass stranding | Sri Lanka | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...s-after-biggest-mass-stranding environment culture world wildlife
shared by aleija on 03 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Sri Lanka’s navy and volunteers have rescued 120 pilot whales stranded in the country’s worst mass beaching, but at least two injured animals were found dead, officials said.
  • The school of short-finned pilot whales had washed ashore at Panadura, 15 miles (25km) south of Colombo, since Monday afternoon in the biggest mass stranding of whales on the island.
  • Local authorities were braced for mass deaths as seen in Tasmania in September when about 470 pilot whales were stranded and only about 110 could be saved after days of rescue efforts.
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  • Lahandapura, told AFP, adding that the cause of the stranding was not known.“We think this is similar to the mass stranding in Tasmania in September.”
  • The causes of mass strandings remain unknown despite scientists studying the phenomenon for decades.
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Live Trump-Biden Election Highlights: Florida and Georgia Voters Wait for Results - The... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...trump-biden-election election Biden Trump swingstates
shared by xaviermcelderry on 04 Nov 20 - No Cached
  • Mr. Trump was holding off Joseph R. Biden Jr. in three states across the South that Mr. Biden had hoped to snatch back from Republican column: Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. The president had a strong lead in Florida. These were not must-win states for Mr. Biden by any means, but he spent heavily in all three places. A Biden victory in Florida would have particularly left Mr. Trump very few roads back to the White House.
  • Mr. Biden was racking up expected wins in Democratic-leaning states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
  • Mr. Trump was posting similar expected victories in Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming, Indiana and South Carolina.Among the biggest states to close that was too early to call was Texas, a 38-vote Electoral College prize that has not gone Democratic since 1976
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  • The most intense attention was on the swing state of Florida and its 29 Electoral College votes. There, Mr. Trump was overperforming his 2016 vote totals in the populous Miami-Dade County, with 526,000-plus votes so far counted in 2020 compared with about 334,000 total four years ago — an enormous improvement.
  • Florida is a critical part of almost any Electoral College pathway for Mr. Trump to hit the 270 votes needed to secure re-election. Mr. Biden is seen to have multiple paths without the state.
  • In populous Miami-Dade, Mr. Trump was overperforming his 2016 vote totals, with 512,000-plus votes so far counted in 2020 compared with about 334,000 total four years ago — an enormous improvement.
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