A response from Fang Wengen, the lawyer of Mrs Yang Huiyan

Nearly 15% of the city of Aurora's employees will be forced to take furloughs because of the economic costs of the coronavirus pandemic, city officials announced Wednesday.

As the economy is ravaged during the nation-wide lockdown, its impact on higher education is beginning to be reported.  Earlier this week the University of Arizona announced dramatic pay cuts and furloughs, which are detailed below.  Expect this to the be first of many such announcements as this economic crisis continues. Pay cuts and furloughs … Continue reading Furloughs and Pay Cuts in Higher Education Have Begun →

Four players on his team tested positive for COVID-19.

Woot is ending the week with a refurbished sale on the 15-inch MacBook Pro, available in multiple storage sizes and colors. The sale starts with the 256GB SSD model (16GB RAM, Intel Core i7) for $1,579.99.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Woot. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

For more storage, the 512GB SSD model (16GB RAM, Intel Core i9) is on sale for $1,849.99. Woot's refurbished sales are offering more than $800 in savings when compared to the original prices of these notebooks, which began at $2,399.00 when they launched in May 2019.

Similar to previous Woot sales, each MacBook Pro comes with a One Year Limited Woot Warranty. Each device has been refurbished and is ensured to be in full working condition. When shipped, they are packaged in a generic white box.

You can find even more discounts on new MacBooks by visiting our Best Deals guide for MacBook Pro and MacBook Air. In this guide we track the steepest discounts for the newest MacBook models every week, so be sure to bookmark it and check back often if you're shopping for a new Apple notebook.

Video from Thabo Meerkat, transcribed

Welcome to another edition of Digging Up Positivity! This episode is dedicated to the many volunteers that make all those amazing conventions and charities possible. But besides them, we are covering some animation news and other (maybe otter?) tidbits!

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The Ursa Majors are ready for votes and the nominees have been revealed. Voting can be found at their website and is open throughout the month of March. Two categories, however, received no nominees due to being an insufficient number of nominations and will not be put up to vote for a winner. Those two categories being Fursuits and Non-Fiction.

If you enjoy film, fiction, art, or any other of the many items that are up for selection as the best of the best for the year of 2019 be sure to vote this month. If you like non-fiction or fursuits, well, you can always be sure to nominate next year.

The nominees are:

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The internet was seen as a major catalyst for the furry fandom finding one another during the times before we held conventions. During that earlier period in the 1990s, conventions and meets were rare, and finding one another was done mostly through the chat rooms and message boards of the past. There was no bandwidth for video or sharing major animation projects, therefore most of our intimate conversations were textual.

For many younger furries, it was a time that was lost in the annals of a distant history. Instead they found themselves joining in amongst a wave of growing conventions being held in various places around the world on any given weekend. Ones where those in custom fursuits march out in the streets openly rather than feeling a stifling isolation of being cooped up in hotel spaces, with a handful of home made creations, being wary of a hostile media looking for a freak show.

Coming out of 2019, it seemed that the time where furry was just an internet thing was fully behind it. However a series of unfortunate events were in line for 2020, a year that has led humanity to be forced into their rooms by an irate Mother Nature as an easily spread virus has forced governments around the globe to take drastic measures to slow its spread and put strict limits on social gatherings. A situation which has forced both the furry fandom, and the internet that brought it together, back to their roots.

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Fortnite Battle Royale (or just Fortnite) is a “battle royale” shooter that has been around since 2017, and while its getting a bit long in the tooth, it’s still hanging around and still free to play. Last year, the game finally implemented skill-based matchmaking, which means for casual and new players, it’s never been easier to get into. In many ways, it is comparable to Nintendo properties such as Super Smash Bros. or Mario Kart, taking a more traditionally “hardcore” video game genre and making it more accessible with gimmicky gameplay, goofy items, cartoony visuals and massive amounts of RNG.

Of course, the game isn’t exactly furry in and of itself, but the game makes its money selling cosmetic upgrades to player’s in game characters, and quite a few of them feature either characters in animal costumes, or, more recently, straight up anthropomorphic animals. In the time-honored tradition of clickbait listicals, here is my ranking of those skins.

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While the pandemic has been chipping away at the furry convention scene, other furs have stepped forward to try and give those in the community events to look forward to over the now dormant weekends. This had started with a group of Furnal Equinox members creating a digital replacement for their late March convention called Keep Calm and Carry Con - Furnal Isolation. More have started to spring up this spring.

They can have internet dealers dens, streaming dance competitions, and other staples that conventions are known for. Accessible from the safety of your own home.

Below is a comprehensive list of conventions. Last updated May 2nd, 2020 12:18 ET.

Please feel free to place any not listed here in the comments below and we will look into adding it if it appears legitimate.

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Video from Thabo Meerkat, transcribed

Hey there, and welcome to the April 2020 edition of Digging Up Positivity from a rapidly changing world. But even in these weird times, there are still a lot of positive things to be found!

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As governments restrict gatherings of people, furry conventions are being postponed or canceled. Here's a quick run down of events in April, May, and June and their status as of May 5 17:28 EDT (UTC-4) in response to the COVID-19 pandemic - updates to come.

A new section has been added for past events impacted for historical purposes.

Links go to statements if available, or to their Twitter feed or site. See also: Furry Fandom and the Internet forced back to roots by viral outbreak

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BNZ, one of the country’s leading banks announces it has selected IBM to deliver cross-channel fraud prevention to its customers. The multi-million dollar deal will support BNZ’s aim to provide its customers the ability to bank securely while delivering a positive customer experience.

Just a short post to note that this year’s Abel prize has been awarded jointly to Hillel Furstenberg and Grigory Margulis for “for pioneering the use of methods from probability and dynamics in group theory, number theory and combinatorics”.  I was not involved in the decision making process of the Abel committee this year, but […]

České aerolinie obnoví v pondělí 18. května provoz na čtyřech svých linkách. A to do Amsterdamu, Frankfurtu, Paříže a Stockholmu. O týden později začnou letadla létat do dalších tří destinací.

Dear Idea Seeker or Ally of the Idea Seekers, I have great news!  Greedy Cloud has been chased away and Spec and Tra discovered some new spring time house and garden items that he was hiding from everyone. Check them out in my house and garden, or go see Spec, Tra and Skeeter’s houses. Here […]

The new ‘national living wage’ has seen the sector’s pay bill rise by 6.9%, and further promised increases will add a total £2.3bn to wage costs

  Product Info: Developer: Awesome Games Studio Publisher: Awesome Games Studio Website: Fury Unleashed Twitter: @AwesomeGamesStd

In an industry notorious for food waste, award-winning chef Douglas McMaster has achieved the seemingly unattainable — Silo, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant. For Silo’s second outpost in London, local interior design studio Nina+Co teamed up with McMaster to craft an interior that reinforces the restaurant’s sustainable ethos with locally sourced natural materials and innovative design aimed at minimizing environmental impact.[...]

Creating furniture is an age-old art form that has incorporated standard materials such as aluminum, wood and rattan. However, one artist has perfected a way to use another prolific material, cardboard, into furniture designs, and he'll show you how to use it too. [...]

We made it a lot further into the yard in our second try. https://ift.tt/2GldjH7

Staff are 'being threatened' for not giving refunds

Asia and Middle East cruises axed

Workers were organizing with Teamsters Local 814 in the hopes of starting a union to address simmering concerns over pay and inconsistent hours.

Union officials say school bus workers will be hit hard by the cuts.

The Department of Health has announced that a further 18 people who had been diagnosed with Covid-19 here have died, and has also announced an additional 219 confirmed cases of the virus.

Angels have fired longtime visiting clubhouse attendant Brian "Bubba" Harkins for allegedly providing illegal substances to put on baseballs

The Pac-12 men's basketball tournament, and all other conference sporting events, have been canceled amid the growing coronavirus outbreak.

The $2.2 trillion CARES Act was designed for small businesses like MOCA. Using relief funds would help to keep the staff at full employment.

'Attention must be paid': A nation of Willy Lomans can find truth in the "Death of a Salesman" character play by Dustin Hoffman and Brian Dennehy.

L.A. Opera officially cancels its last production of the 2019-20 season, but the effect on employees won't be as catastrophic as you might think.

A Government announcement on further steps to reform the building safety system has been welcomed by London Fire Brigade, but senior firefighters also have concerns it has not gone far enough

A SoCal woman found an "adverse report" on her credit file. Then she discovered the entire department that can help fix the problem is furloughed.

Chelsea Bieker's 'Godshot,' a surreal debut novel set in the parched Central Valley, depicts a fundamentalist rain cult and sex worker resisters.

On "Good Souls Better Angels," singer-songwriter Lucinda Williams is unsparing, whether she's excoriating the president or detailing her own domestic abuse and depression.

GOOGLE MAPS is a useful tool that is great for navigating around the world. But sometimes, the huge Street View lens spots some very bizarre scenes which is definitely the case for one street in New Orleans.

POLICE in Essex have admitted the decision was made to "take no further action" on many low level traffic offences last month as road crimes hit record levels.

A SWAN was shot in the head four times while trying to protect her nest in a shocking case of animal cruelty at a park in Merseyside.

Sunderland have announced plans to furlough their first-team squad and non-playing staff amid the indefinite suspension of EFL action.

Frank Warren says there is no chance Tyson Fury vs Deontay Wilder 3 will happen behind closed doors.

Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury are within touching distance of fighting one another.

A heavyweight title unification between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury is closer than ever.

POSH still doesn't get it. Two weeks ago, when she announced she was furloughing 30 staff at her ailing fashion label, there was a public outcry.