About 1,100 workers will be laid off indefinitely in January from the Jeep Gladiator plant in Toledo, Ohio, Stellantis officials announced Wednesday.

Representatives of all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have gathered here this week to agree on the actions needed to definitively eradicate hunger in the region before 2025. [...]

MANUEL PLANELLES, EL PAÍS, Paris- “Agriculture is seen as a threat in the fight against climate change,” Maria Helena Semedo warns. The Deputy Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization [...]

In the spring of 1961, black and white civil rights activists rode buses to protest the segregationist policies of the Deep South Script and narration: Marian Holmes Photos courtesy of Corbis, Getty Images and Library of Congress Audio clips courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways (https://folkways.si.edu/)

In the spring of 1961, black and white civil rights activists rode buses to protest the segregationist policies of the Deep South (Marian Holmes, Brian Wolly, Photos courtesy of Corbis, Getty Images and Library of Congress, Audio clips courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways. Read more at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-freedom-riders-then-and-now-45351758/

Designed in SOLIDWORKS software, this lowriding sport machine becomes nimble highrider on demand

Forty-seven women from all over the world are climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya this week to raise awareness of global injustices against women and children.

The Freedom Climbers have completed the first leg of their trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro. They climb to raise awareness and funds to combat slavery.

After five days of strenuous hiking and altitude sickness, the Freedom Climbers rejoice at the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro, fittingly called Uhuru (freedom) Peak.

150 gathered for the first Freedom Climb Conference in September to learn how to become advocates for oppressed women and children around the world.

The Freedom Climb team completes the first few days of the journey to Mt. Everest Base Came and Kala Patthar Peak. Please pray for them.

The Freedom Climbers remain encouraged through increasing altitudes and dropping temperatures as they continue upward to Mt. Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar Peak.

The Freedom Climb team has made it safely back to Kathmandu, and each climber is heading home.

The Freedom Climb becomes The Freedom Challenge to include more women in a movement to raise awareness, prayer and funds to combat slavery.

Balboa, Panama :: Crewmembers teach sewing skills to young mothers from a local tribe and donate sewing machines to the community.

On 1 December, 22 women hiked Tongariro Alpine Crossing to raise awareness and funds for women and children trafficked in France and India.

About 110 men, women and children climbed five volcanoes in Auckland in the Freedom Climb New Zealand on Saturday, 16 August.

A Bible study for the guardians of the pupils in Chiyembekezo School in Ntaja, Malawi, is bringing freedom to the women who attend.

Forty women climb Machu Picchu to raise awareness about human trafficking during a five-day Freedom Challenge trek in Peru.

With the vision to raise the next generation of national leaders, OM Cambodia runs a children’s home and youth live-in centre in Phnom Penh.

At the heart of missions lies a passion for justice. In every community in which OM is involved, working for justice for the oppressed and vulnerable is part of ministry.

Liria, whose name means freedom, accepts Christ and finds true freedom after learning about sin and forgiveness.

A French man met in the street prefered to live without God, thinking He would take away his freedom.

Montevideo, Uruguay :: A Logos Hope crewmember relies on God for strength and the words to say to disruptive inmates at a prison.

Gildelia Moromisato is starting a Freedom Climb initiative in Brazil after attending the annual conference of the OM ministry focused on oppressed women and children.

Brazil’s mission training programme provides practical experience and cross-cultural knowledge for participants heading overseas.

Antofagasta, Chile :: Logos Hope crewmembers tell men who've battled with addiction and crime about Jesus' love for them.

Whaley is joining St. Andrew’s School as Director of Development WILMINGTON, Del. – Governor John Carney on Tuesday announced that Dr. Bernice Whaley, the Director of the Delaware Economic Development Office, is leaving DEDO to become Director of Development at St. Andrew’s School in Middletown. Dr. Whaley has served as DEDO Director since June 2015. […]

Cadence is super excited to announce SPB 23.1 release —Your freedom to design boldly!  

These tools help engineers build better PCBs faster with the new 3D engine and optimized interface.  

We have been hard at work to bring you this release and believe that it will help you take control of the PCB design process with the powerful new features in Allegro X APD like: 

• Packaging Support in 3DX Canvas 

• 3DX Wire DRCs 

• Aligning Components by Offset 

• Text Wizard Enhancements 

• Device File Reuse for Existing Components for Netlist and Logic Import 

Watch this space to know all about What’s New in SPB 23.1.  

Regards 

Team PCBTech 

Cadence Design System 

For individuals, small businesses, or teams, START YOUR FREE TRIAL. 

This is the 23rd installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

I had a strange dream last night. I dreamt that the government had passed a law that made using laptops illegal. I would have to write this column by hand. I would also have to leave my home in Mumbai to deliver it in person to my editor in Delhi. I woke up trembling and angry – and realised how Indian farmers feel every single day of their lives.

My column today is a tale of two satyagrahas. Both involve farmers, technology and the freedom of choice. One of them began this month – but first, let us go back to the turn of the millennium.

As the 1990s came to an end, cotton farmers across India were in distress. Pests known as bollworms were ravaging crops across the country. Farmers had to use increasing amounts of pesticide to keep them at bay. The costs of the pesticide and the amount of labour involved made it unviable – and often, the crops would fail anyway.

Then, technology came to the rescue. The farmers heard of Bt Cotton, a genetically modified type of cotton that kept these pests away, and was being used around the world. But they were illegal in India, even though no bad effects had ever been recorded. Well, who cares about ‘illegal’ when it is a matter of life and death?

Farmers in Gujarat got hold of Bt Cotton seeds from the black market and planted them. You’ll never guess what happened next. As 2002 began, all cotton crops in Gujarat failed – except the 10,000 hectares that had Bt Cotton. The government did not care about the failed crops. They cared about the ‘illegal’ ones. They ordered all the Bt Cotton crops to be destroyed.

It was time for a satyagraha – and not just in Gujarat. The late Sharad Joshi, leader of the Shetkari Sanghatana in Maharashtra, took around 10,000 farmers to Gujarat to stand with their fellows there. They sat in the fields of Bt Cotton and basically said, ‘Over our dead bodies.’ ¬Joshi’s point was simple: all other citizens of India have access to the latest technology from all over. They are all empowered with choice. Why should farmers be held back?

The satyagraha was successful. The ban on Bt Cotton was lifted.

There are three things I would like to point out here. One, the lifting of the ban transformed cotton farming in India. Over 90% of Indian farmers now use Bt Cotton. India has become the world’s largest producer of cotton, moving ahead of China. According to agriculture expert Ashok Gulati, India has gained US$ 67 billion in the years since from higher exports and import savings because of Bt Cotton. Most importantly, cotton farmers’ incomes have doubled.

Two, GMO crops have become standard across the world. Around 190 million hectares of GMO crops have been planted worldwide, and GMO foods are accepted in 67 countries. The humanitarian benefits have been massive: Golden Rice, a variety of rice packed with minerals and vitamins, has prevented blindness in countless new-born kids since it was introduced in the Philippines.

Three, despite the fear-mongering of some NGOs, whose existence depends on alarmism, the science behind GMO is settled. No harmful side effects have been noted in all these years, and millions of lives impacted positively. A couple of years ago, over 100 Nobel Laureates signed a petition asserting that GMO foods were safe, and blasting anti-science NGOs that stood in the way of progress. There is scientific consensus on this.

The science may be settled, but the politics is not. The government still bans some types of GMO seeds, such as Bt Brinjal, which was developed by an Indian company called Mahyco, and used successfully in Bangladesh. More crucially, a variety called HT Bt Cotton, which fights weeds, is also banned. Weeding takes up to 15% of a farmer’s time, and often makes farming unviable. Farmers across the world use this variant – 60% of global cotton crops are HT Bt. Indian farmers are so desperate for it that they choose to break the law and buy expensive seeds from the black market – but the government is cracking down. A farmer in Haryana had his crop destroyed by the government in May.

On June 10 this year, a farmer named Lalit Bahale in the Akola District of Maharashtra kicked off a satyagraha by planting banned seeds of HT Bt Cotton and Bt Brinjal. He was soon joined by thousands of farmers. Far from our urban eyes, a heroic fight has begun. Our farmers, already victimised and oppressed by a predatory government in countless ways, are fighting for their right to take charge of their lives.

As this brave struggle unfolds, I am left with a troubling question: All those satyagrahas of the past by our great freedom fighters, what were they for, if all they got us was independence and not freedom?

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
Follow me on Twitter.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Edo Queens head coach Moses Aduku is exuding confidence and expects his charges to go all out against FC Masar in the CAF Women’s Champions League Group B clash starting at 18:00 at Larbi Zaouli Stadium, Casablanca on Wednesday (today), PUNCH Sports Extra reports. The Nigerian and West African champions made a flying start to

The newly sworn-in governor of Edo State, Monday Okpebholo,  is set to probe the administration of his predecessor, Godwin Obaseki. Okpebholo announced he will set up a panel of inquiry to investigate the past administration’s refusal to inaugurate 14 elected lawmakers of the State House of Assembly in 2019. The 14 lawmakers elected on the […]

The post Edo: Okpebholo to probe Obaseki’s govt first appeared on Business Hallmark.

Huge crowds of antigovernment protesters Saturday encircled the Serbian state television building in downtown Belgrade to press their demand for autocratic President Aleksandar Vucic to ease his tight grip on the mainstream media and allow alternative voices. Tens of thousands of opposition supporters, some chanting slogans urging Vucic's resignation, streamed into the rain-drenched streets a day after the president's followers staged an equally big rally in the capital. Most of his supporters were bused into the capital from all over Serbia and some neighboring states. Outside the RTS TV headquarters, the crowds blew whistles and booed loudly. They say that according to the laws, state TV should be unbiased as a public broadcaster, but that it has been openly pro-government. Held for the fourth time since the early May shootings, the opposition-led protests appear to be shaping up into the biggest revolt against Vucic's autocratic rule during his over 10 years in power. The rallies initially erupted in response to two back-to-back mass shootings earlier this month that left 18 people dead and 20 wounded, many of them children from an elementary school. Other protest demands include the resignations of top officials and the revoking of licenses for pro-government media that air violent content and host crime figures and war criminals. Vucic has accused the opposition of abusing the shooting tragedy for political ends. Earlier Saturday, he stepped down from the helm of his populist party amid plans to form a wider political movement. Vucic named his close ally, Milos Vucevic, the current defense minister, as his successor. Holding umbrellas amid heavy rain Saturday, the protesters walked slowly around the RTS television building in central Belgrade, completely covering the streets in the entire area. Many held flowers in memory of the slain children and wore badges reading "vulture" or "hyena," mocking the expressions that officials used to describe the protesters. Vucic has said the new, national movement will be formed in June to include other parties, experts and prominent individuals and promote unity. Analysts say it is a bid to regroup amid mounting public pressure. Critics say the movement could lead to single-party rule, more or less as the case in Vladimir Putin's Russia, which Vucic supports. During the rally Friday, Vucic offered dialogue as he seeks ways to ease mounting public pressure. Opposition parties have pledged to press on with the demonstrations until their demands are fulfilled. They include the ouster of the interior minister and the intelligence chief; the revocation of nationwide broadcast licenses for two pro-government TV stations; and the dismissal of a media-monitoring body. "If they don't fulfill (the demands) we are not leaving from here," said Milica Tomic, a Belgrade resident. "We will be here, if it need be, every day, every week, whenever."

[Addis Standard] Addis Abeba -- The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) presented to the UN's Human Rights Council a five-year review of press freedom in Ethiopia ahead of the United Nations Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of Ethiopia at the 47th Session taking place today by the UN's Human Rights Council.

Anyone interested in unsolved murders and disappearances will find much to study in Sri Lanka. Fifteen to twenty years ago, the country made global headlines, not only for the government’s military offensive against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) guerrillas but also for the numerous murders of journalists. The newly elected president, Anura Kumara […]

Everything that God does He chooses to do, and His choices are free from any influence outside Himself. Therefore, the doctrine of election fits into this fuller comprehension of a sovereign God. That is election in its broadest sense, and it is evident on nearly every page of Scripture.

When I joined CIVICUS in 2019, I came in with two decades of work on influencing and monitoring public policies through grassroots and global activism. Joining CIVICUS as Secretary-General felt familiar, like returning home after a period of separation. My first international role in 2006 – as Campaign Director of the Global Call to Action […]

"If Cumpio and Domequil who have voices to speak for being a journalist and a church worker respectfully are already being persecuted by weaponized laws, how can an ordinary Filipino seek justice for himself?"

Redox reactions control fundamental biochemical processes, including energy production, metabolism, respiration, detoxification, and signal transduction. Cancer cells, due to their generally active metabolism for sustained proliferation, produce high levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) compared to normal cells and are equipped with antioxidant defense systems to counteract the detrimental effects of ROS to maintain redox homeostasis. The KEAP1-NRF2 system plays a major role in sensing and regulating endogenous antioxidant defenses in both normal and cancer cells, creating a bivalent contribution of NRF2 to cancer prevention and therapy. Cancer cells hijack the NRF2-dependent antioxidant program and exploit a very unique metabolism as a trade-off for enhanced antioxidant capacity. This work provides an overview of redox metabolism in cancer cells, highlighting the role of the KEAP1-NRF2 system, selenoproteins, sulfur metabolism, heme/iron metabolism, and antioxidants. Finally, we describe therapeutic approaches that can be leveraged to target redox metabolism in cancer.

Vision is initiated by capturing photons in highly specialized sensory cilia known as the photoreceptor outer segment. Because of its lipid and protein composition, the outer segments are prone to photo-oxidation, requiring photoreceptors to have robust antioxidant defenses and high metabolic synthesis rates to regenerate the outer segments every 10 days. Both processes required high levels of glucose uptake and utilization. Retinitis pigmentosa is a prevalent form of inherited retinal degeneration characterized by initial loss of low-light vision caused by the death of rod photoreceptors. In this disease, rods die as a direct effect of an inherited mutation. Following the loss of rods, cones eventually degenerate, resulting in complete blindness. The progression of vision loss in retinitis pigmentosa suggested that rod photoreceptors were necessary to maintain healthy cones. We identified a protein secreted by rods that functions to promote cone survival, and we named it rod-derived cone viability factor (RdCVF). RdCVF is encoded by an alternative splice product of the nucleoredoxin-like 1 (NXNL1) gene, and RdCVF was found to accelerate the uptake of glucose by cones. Without RdCVF, cones eventually die because of compromised glucose uptake and utilization. The NXNL1 gene also encodes for the thioredoxin RdCVFL, which reduces cysteines in photoreceptor proteins that are oxidized, providing a defense against radical oxygen species. We will review here the main steps of discovering this novel intercellular signaling currently under translation as a broad-spectrum treatment for retinitis pigmentosa.

In America, there’s a significant kind of public insistence that one’s “freedom” is fundamentally tied to one’s wealth.

Much of the country views America through an aspirational and transformative lens, a colorblind and bias-free utopia, wherein wealth conveys equality and acts as a panacea for social and racial ills. Once an individual achieves massive financial success, or so the message goes, he or she will “transcend” the scourge of economic and racial inequality, truly becoming “free.”

Working in parallel with this reverence for this colorblind version of the “American Dream” is the belief that economic privilege mandates patriotic gratitude. Across industries and disciplines, Americans are told to love their nation uncritically, be thankful that they are exceptional enough to live in a country that allows citizens the opportunity to reach astronomical heights of economic prosperity.

For the nation’s black citizens, there’s often an additional racialized presumption lurking under the surface of these concepts: the notion that black success and wealth demands public silence on systemic issues of inequality and oppression.

These are durable and fragile ideologies that prop up the concept of the American Dream – durable because they are encoded in the very fabric of American culture (most Americans, including African Americans, have readily embraced these ideologies as assumed facts); yet fragile because it’s all too easy to see that one’s economic privilege is a lousy barrier against both individual and systemic discrimination and oppression.

Consequently, black people have also been among the most vocal challengers of these ideologies, as we’ve seen most recently with the Colin Kaepernick and the NFL #TakeAKnee demonstrations. In a show of solidary with the free agent quarterback, professional football players – the vast majority of whom are black – have been kneeling during the National Anthem as a means of protesting racial injustice and police brutality.

WATCH: NFL players team up in defiance and solidarity

Over the past few weeks, the president of the United States has brought renewed attention to the inherent tensions that define the ideologies of the “American Dream” through his repeated public criticisms of these kneeling NFL players.

“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues,” Trump recently tweeted, he or she should not be allowed to kneel. Labeling the protestors actions “disrespectful” to the country, flag and anthem, President Donald Trump has called for players to be fired, encouraged a boycott of the NFL, insisted that the league pass a rule mandating that players stand for the anthem and derided the protestors as “sons of bitches.”

In a dramatic ploy more befitting of a scripted reality television show, the president gloated that he had instructed Vice President Mike Pence to walk out of an Indianapolis Colts game the moment any player kneeled. This was an orchestrated show of power and outrage, designed to send a flamboyant political message given that Trump and Pence knew in advance that on that particular day, the Colts were playing the San Francisco 49ers – the team that currently has the most protestors. The NFL’s announcement this week that the league has no plans to penalize protesting players is the most recent event to provoke the president’s fury; taking to social media during the early morning, he once again equated kneeling with “total disrespect” for our country.

As many have pointed out, the president’s moralizing outrage toward the NFL players is selective and deeply flawed – his apparent patriotic loyalty hasn’t stopped the billionaire politician from criticizing the removal of Confederate statues, or attacking a Gold Star family, or mocking Sen. John McCain’s military service.

The NFL players and their defenders have repeatedly stated that the protests are intended to highlight racial inequality and oppression. They’ve also explained that their decision to kneel emerged from a desire to protest peacefully and respectfully after a sustained conversation with military veterans.

Trump has chosen to ignore these rationales and the structural issues of inequality that motivate the protests and instead, advance a narrative exclusively concerned with overt displays of American patriotism and the “privilege” of the NFL players. As one of president’s advisors explained, by aggressively targeting the NFL players, Trump believes that he is “winning the cultural war,” having made black “millionaire sport athletes his new [Hillary Clinton].”

READ MORE: As ‘America’s sport,’ the NFL cannot escape politics

It’s a cynical statement, revealing the president’s perception of the jingoism of his base of supporters who envision him as a crusader for American values and symbols.

In casting the black protestors as the antithesis of all of this, Trump has marked the players as unpatriotic elites and enemies of the nation. For a president who has consistently fumbled his way through domestic and foreign policy since he was elected, a culture war between “hard-working” and “virtuous” working-class and middle-class white Americans and rich, ungrateful black football players is a welcome public distraction.

Trump’s attacks on the NFL protestors are rooted in those competing tensions inherent to the American Dream: that wealth equals freedom; that economic privilege demands patriotic gratitude; and most importantly, that black people’s individual economic prosperity invalidates their concerns about systemic injustice and requires their silence on racial oppression.

Among the protestors’ detractors, this has become a common line of attack, a means of disparaging the black NFL players’ activism by pointing to their apparent wealth. The fact that systemic racism is demonstrably real and that individual prosperity does not make one immune to racial discrimination appears to be lost on the protestors’ critics.

Theirs is a grievance that suggests that black athletes should be grateful to live in this country; that racism can’t exist in America since black professional athletes are allowed to play and sign contracts for considerable sums of money; that black players owe the nation their silence since America “gave” them opportunity and access; that black athletes have no moral authority on issues of race and inequality because of their individual success; and that black athletes’ success was never theirs to earn, but instead, was given to them and can just as easily be taken away.

This culture war being waged over black athletes is not new. Black athletes – and entertainers – have long been hyper-aware of their peculiar place in American society as individuals beloved for their athletic and artistic talents, yet reviled the moment they use their public platform to protest systemic racial inequality. The parallels between the #TakeAKnee protests and the protests of Muhammad Ali or John Carlos and Tommie Smith are readily apparent; so too are there important similarities to the case of Paul Robeson.

An outspoken civil rights activist, collegiate and professional football player, lawyer, opera singer and actor, Robeson had his passport revoked in 1950 because of his political activism and speech – actions that all but destroyed his career. The star athlete and entertainer, “who had exemplified American upward mobility” quickly “became public enemy number one” as institutions cancelled his concerts, the public called for his death and anti-Robeson mobs burned effigies of him.

During a 1956 congressional hearing, the chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities beat a familiar refrain with Robeson, challenging the entertainer’s accusations of American racism and racial oppression. He saw no sign of prejudice, he argued, since Robeson was privileged, having gone to elite universities and playing collegiate and professional football.

READ MORE: Poll: Americans divided on NFL protests

Black athletes, even the silent ones, largely understand that their economic privilege doesn’t insulate them from the realities of racial discrimination. They also understand that their wealth and success is precarious and is often dependent not only upon their athletic performance, but also upon them remaining silent on issues of racial injustice, especially those that appear to question the “American Dream” or implicate the American public by association.

It should come as no surprise then that Colin Kaepernick, whose protests turned him into a national pariah despite his on-the-field talents, has filed a grievance against the NFL, accusing the league and its teams of blackballing him because of his political beliefs. “Principled and peaceful political protest,” Kaepernick’s lawyers argued in a statement, “should not be punished and athletes should not be denied employment based on partisan political provocation by the Executive Branch of our government.” Whether the ostracized Kaepernick will win his grievance is unknown, but it is certainly telling that he and his lawyers have rooted their claims in contested definitions of freedom and the precarious economic privilege of outspoken NFL players.

For the loudest and most vocal critics of black protestors, in particular, outspokenness is tantamount to treason, grounds for the harshest of punishments. Perhaps they would benefit from a close reading of James Baldwin, who once argued: “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

The post Column: For black athletes, wealth doesn’t equal freedom appeared first on PBS NewsHour.