RCMP in Souris, P.E.I., say an incident that shut down the community from 6 p.m. Friday until close to midnight ended with one man in custody and no injuries.

The craft brewing industry in P.E.I. is suffering, with sales down from about 40 to 80 per cent.

Sheldon Lavers didn't leave his window for hours Friday night as police negotiated with a man next door who they believed had a gun and was smashing items inside.

The debt securities statistics provide quarterly data on borrowing in money and bond markets, distinguishing between international and domestic markets.

Hobbies during quarantine: How they can help us in a pandemic  Today.com

Inside Pic: Can You Identify Madhuri Dixit In This Throwback Picture with Her Sister?  సాక్షి

The federal government is looking to hire paramedics who can fly up to remote First Nations in case there’s a surge of COVID-19 cases, and officials say it’s evidence of a different approach to Indigenous health care than during the H1N1 outbreak.

One of the two grocery stores in La Loche, Sask., has shut temporarily after one of its employees tested positive for COVID-19, according to an executive at the North West Company. 

As part of the province's approach to curbing the COVID-19 pandemic, there are a number of rules in place that people have to follow. Kitchener and Waterloo bylaw officials offer some insight on what's allowed and what's not.

The COVID-19 pandemic might be wreaking havoc with Brian Jones' off-season conditioning but it's certainly enhancing his musical skills.

This collection of songs heard on Saskatoon Morning will be updated weekly.

Vancouver police are investigating an incident where a man attempted to lure a child to his car in the city’s West Point Grey neighbourhood on Wednesday.

In the middle of a pandemic, who wants to see politicians engage in traditional games of partisan finger pointing and over-the-top attacks?

Karla Bell was outside an Orangeville hospital waiting to start her nursing shift when she heard a cry for help from a car in the parking lot. She ran up to find a woman in labour in the passenger seat. Natalie Kalata tells us the incredible story of how this baby was born.

Approximately one out of every seven Ontarians who were working before the coronavirus pandemic hit the province have now lost their jobs, according to Statistics Canada's latest national labour survey.

Lindsay Forsyth Brochu thought by now she'd have the double-lung transplant she's been waiting for. But she had the misfortune being put on the waitlist the day after most surgeries were suspended in Ontario due to COVID-19.

The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation's top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press.

As truckers move vital supplies such as food, hand sanitizer and ventilators during the COVID-19 pandemic, they're pleading with governments to allow more truck stops to reopen so they can get meals, showers and rest. Social media groups and individual businesses are doing their part to thank truckers.

Justin Young and Justine Manuel in Kamloops, B.C., shaved off their eyebrows as extra incentive to stay home and avoid socializing.

A Toronto law firm has filed to launch a class action lawsuit against a Niagara Falls long-term care home where 18 residents have died from COVID-19, saying the home had a pub night in the midst of the pandemic.

Determining the concentration of protein samples generally is accomplished either by measuring the UV absorbance at 280 nm or by reacting the protein quantitatively with dyes and/or metal ions (Bradford, Lowry, or BCA assays). For purified proteins, UV absorbance remains the most popular method because it is fast, convenient, and reproducible; it does not consume the protein; and it requires no additional reagents, standards, or incubations. No method of protein concentration determination is perfect because each is subject to a different set of constraints such as interference of buffer components and contaminating proteins in direct UV determination (A₂₈₀) or reactivity of individual proteins and buffer components with the detecting reagents in colorimetric assays. In cases in which protein concentration is critical (e.g., determination of catalytic rate constants for an enzyme), it may be advisable to compare the results of several assays.

The post Firing Up a Futuristic Firetruck appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

The post Dousing Fires with Futuristic Helicopters appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Andrés Sagner

Penn State Mont Alto recognizes and honors winners during awards ceremony

The Penn State Mont Alto campus held its annual Academic and Leadership Awards Ceremony online on Sunday, April 19. Eighty-eight students were recognized for their academic achievements and campus leadership during the 2019-20 academic year. Three faculty members and one staff member were also recognized for their above-and-beyond contributions to the learning environment at Penn State Mont Alto.

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 7, 2020 / 10:48 am (CNA).- A Catholic nurse said the coronavirus pandemic has presented challenges she has never encountered before—and that a prayer life is critical to get her through her shift.

“If I don’t have my faith in me, I cannot give what I don’t have,” said Maria Arvonio, a registered nurse for almost 40 years and a board member of the National Association of Catholic Nurses. 

As the current night shift supervisor at Virtua Willingboro Medical Center in southern New Jersey—a COVID-19 “hot spot,” she says—Arvonio told CNA she and her colleagues were facing a new kind of disease.

Over the decades she has had experience treating previous diseases including the AIDS epidemic, before which nurses didn’t wear gloves. “I’m still standing—that is God,” she said.

Yet the new coronavirus pandemic is something unprecedented, she admitted. “It’s different in that it appears that no matter what we’re doing, it seems to just multiply,” she said.

As she treats COVID-19 patients, Arvonio told CNA that she leans on her prayer life to lead the team of nurses at the hospital.

“I cannot help those other nurses stand strong, if they look at me and I look afraid. Why would they want us to continue to work? I cannot show fear,” she said.

“I start my job with prayer. Before I even go into the workplace, I’ve already been either doing the rosary with someone, praying ‘Jesus, come and seal me in your most Precious Blood, Blessed Mother help me,’” Arvonio said.

Arvonio was one of several nurses to appear at the White House on Wednesday for National Nurses Day, and told President Trump of her experience treating patients in a COVID-19 “hot zone.” New Jersey has been one of the hardest-hit states by the virus, with nearly 132,000 confirmed cases and more than 8,500 deaths.

Treating the person, and not just the sickness, is part of the mission of nurses, she said at the event. “It’s not just our science, it’s our compassion.”

In an interview with CNA after her White House appearance, Arvonio said she pressed an official close to the President on the need for the administration to push for more access to COVID patients by hospital chaplains.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reportedly been working on guidelines for restarting religious services as states begin to loosen stay-at-home restrictions. CNA reported that on April 28 and 29, officials from the White House domestic policy council and the CDC had discussed the matter with four Catholic bishops who are resuming public Masses.

New Jersey, Arvonio said, has allowed golf courses and liquor stores to be open, but Catholics do not have public Mass. “That’s a problem,” she said.

The spiritual needs of the COVID-19 patients are just as real as their physical needs, she said. As a board member of the National Association of Catholic Nurses, U.S.A., Arvonio says that organization’s mission is critical now more than ever, to emphasize caring for the spiritual needs of patients. 

In the case of one patient who was heading to hospice, a priest could only talk to her remotely, on Zoom.

“She was in tears, an elderly woman worried to leave on hospice because her priest wasn’t there to give her the last rites. This is wrong! This is our right as a Catholic!” Arvonio said.

For some hospitals, chaplains cannot administer the sacramental anointing because of a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) available for them. Yet, Arvonio said, she has seen staff wearing PPE in situations where it’s not necessary.

“Look at how we’re using our equipment and give it to the essential personnel, which is the priest,” she said. “We need him in the hospital more than ever.”

“We need to start thinking about getting the spiritual care back to these patients. They need their priests, they need their pastor.”

She has started making care packages for patients to provide something tangible in the absence of the sacraments; for one patient she assembled a care bag with holy water, blessed oil, and plastic rosaries. “I said ‘he’s not alone. God always has somebody for every person,” she said.

Purifying and culturing cells from the central nervous system (CNS) has proved to be an incredibly powerful tool for dissecting fundamental neuron and glial properties, and especially powerful in understanding neuronal–glial interactions. In a series of detailed protocols, we have provided step-by-step instructions for purifying and culturing specific types of neurons, glia, and vascular cells from the CNS by immunopanning. This article discusses common pitfalls and errors as well as important design considerations for the immunopanning procedure.

The post The Value of a “Body Double” During the Coronavirus Pandemic appeared first on The SOLIDWORKS Blog.

To preserve Southern Africa’s relative peace in the face of rising challenges and threats, Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states must collectively reinforce its peace and security architecture.

A zeal for the Jezreel Valley overcomes fear and insecurity.

When specific medicine is not available during a medical outreach, OM Guatemala sees God miraculously provide for one mother in need.

Rome Newsroom, Apr 30, 2020 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- In the central Italian countryside, at the edge of the Umbrian woods just outside Norcia, a group of Benedictine monks prays and works from well before the sun rises until it sets.

This much has not changed in the monks’ lives during Italy’s coronavirus lockdown; but what has is the visitors they receive at the monastery.

“Usually we have some guests coming from all over the world... visitors coming from Italy or the U.S., friends or retreatants,” Fr. Benedict Nivakoff, O.S.B., told CNA by phone.

“And so, the total absence of those people, of that presence, has just focused our prayer all the more and we try to do what we are called to do more seriously,” he said.

“The main thing is a greater intensity of prayer for all those who are suffering.”

Nivakoff is the prior of the monks living at the site of St. Benedict’s birth. After religious life was suppressed in the area in the 1800s, a group led by Fr. Cassian Folsom was given permission to re-establish the monastery and moved there in 2000.

The prior said when the coronavirus was at its height in Italy, the monks did a traditional procession around the property with relics of the true cross.

“And that’s a way of praying for people, invoking the saints and calling down God’s help and his mercy on the country and on the world,” he said.

St. Benedict himself “experienced plagues, famines, sickness, death, not to mention relentless attacks of the devil on him and on his monks. He saw all of those as occasions for the monks themselves and for him to renew his trust and his faith in God,” Nivakoff said.

There is a “sad and persistent temptation,” he explained, to think “the world can solve these problems, but in fact, this world is passing away and God is the only answer to the suffering that we see.”

“So St. Benedict’s message, if you will, would be that all these things that happen can work for the good, and that is for the good of … each man and woman, each monk, in drawing closer to God.”

The monks in Norcia experienced tragedy first-hand four and a half years ago when several earthquakes, including one of 6.6-magnitude, struck central Italy and Norcia in August and October 2016.

The earthquakes destroyed hundreds of homes and the monk’s own buildings, including the Basilica of St. Benedict.

They have been rebuilding, but construction has been on hold during Italy’s lockdown, Nivakoff said, noting that it may, God willing, be able to start back up in a few weeks.

“The earthquake taught us many things and maybe one of the more relevant lessons for today is to resist the temptation that everything should go back exactly as it was,” he said.

“We thought after the earthquake, ‘well the answer is [to rebuild] everything as good if not better than before.’”

“But at the root of that is a fallacy, that this is a world, and we are men touched by original sin, who will only really have happiness and completion and real restoration in heaven,” the prior said.

He noted, “we can and do and need to work to improve things and to bring order where there is chaos and disorder but not at the risk of making this world into the destination and the goal,” because “it isn’t; it’s our temporary place so that we might get to heaven.”

“The earthquake really helped us to see that in a visible form, because the ground was literally shaking beneath our feet,” he said, “and the buildings we had called home to us and to our neighbors, our families, our friends, all the people here in Italy that we know, in central Italy, as all that fell apart.”

He said this “has called for trust and faith that is hard to muster in these days when the faith is so minimal.”

According to Nivakoff, “there are so many” lessons from monastic life that could help people quarantined in their homes right now, but he emphasized “two principle challenges to solitude.”

The first is for those who are in quarantine with others. As for monks who live with other monks, charity is very important when living in the midst of many people, he said.

“This really calls for lots and lots of patience, [and] to remember that patience with others always begins with patience with ourselves,” he explained. “Accepting our sins, accepting our faults, accepting that God is patient with us, and being patient with ourselves, helps us to be more patient with others.”

He added that silence can be a really useful tool in these circumstances: “Not speaking, not responding to the irritating or difficult or perhaps provocative things … people we live with say.”

“Especially under quarantine, the people we live with are probably going to still be with us in a few hours and maybe our passions will have calmed down by then” to respond in a better way, he said.

The second principle he drew on is for those who are living alone, such as the elderly or the young.

“For them, the quarantine really means an eremitical lifestyle. And for them the hardest temptations are sadness, acedia,” Nivakoff said.

“Sadness, which can be good because it can help us to lament our sins, lament not being with God, but at the same time can be a very inward looking and very self-pitying emotion, that stems from expectations not fulfilled.”

He recommended lots of humility and accepting that you are not in charge, not placing hope in things one does not have any control over.

“We have a lot more control over whether we say our prayers at noon than whether the government stops the lockdown in one week,” he pointed out. “The ways to combat sadness are this: to make goals that depend on me, and to put our trust and hope in God.”

Nivakoff also noted that there is a lot of talk right now about the importance of regaining the liberties men and women have had and avoiding “overreach of the government.”

“And that might be true, but from a Christian perspective, it is that we men and women need to accept the limitations that this disease brings on us,” he said.

“So even this terrible virus we need to see as permitted by [God] for some good purpose and the most traditional understanding of that is for some kind of purification.”

“So, we ask for God’s mercy because we need it.”

So during the coronavirus pandemic, the monks continue their prayer and their work taking care of the animals, gardening, cooking, cleaning, and managing the nearby forest.

To support themselves the monks also brew beer, and because it is sold through the internet, the coronavirus has not negatively impacted sales.

“And thank God, that model has really been blessed at this time because with so many people not being able to leave their home, many have taken it as an occasion to sample some monastic beer,” Nivakoff said.

“We continue to export from Italy to the United States and beer is available and it seems to delight many hearts there and we are very happy.”

By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer

My youngest son Patrick turns four this week. He is a delight to watch at this age, particularly when one of his older brothers carries him around the house. Facing the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve longed for the joy and confidence that Patrick exudes when he’s in their strong arms. The other day, I was reminded of a group that Saint John Paul II once called the “Strong Right Arm” of the Catholic Church – The Knights of Columbus.

The two-million-member Catholic fraternal organization is flexing that “strong right arm” in the response to the COVID-19. The order’s new “Leave No Neighbor Behind” initiative is helping local members address the pandemic’s unique challenges in tangible and intangible ways. “[O]ur duty is to lead our families, protect our parishes, and serve our communities, remembering always that where there’s a need, there’s a Knight.”

In addition to encouraging members to donate to, and volunteer at, local food banks, the Knights of Columbus are also encouraging members to donate blood. The latter is a longstanding tradition of the order. In fact, the Knights of Columbus pioneered nationwide blood drives in the United States in the 1930s. But the “Leave No Neighbor Behind” initiative doesn’t end there, because the Knights understand that the challenges will remain long after the medical crisis abates.

Whether it’s a matter of weeks or months, the stay-at-home orders will eventually be lifted and school, work, social and worship routines will resume. But the economic toll of the public closure of parishes will likely be felt long after parish churches reopen for Sunday mass. Fortunately, the Knights are offering financial support to struggling Catholic dioceses across the United States. The order just announced it has available $100 million in low-interest financing to help dioceses weather the economic impact of COVID-19 crisis. The Knight’s financial assistance program isn’t new; the order has been a key lender to parishes and dioceses for more than a century through its ChurchLoan program. The magnitude of the available assistance is. This financial safety net will allow Catholic parishes to continue to serve bodies and souls during and in the aftermath of this epidemic.

In fact, none of this is new for the Knights of Columbus. They’ve been responding to crises, individual and societal, since their founding in the late 1800s. Started by an Irish-American Catholic priest (Father Michael J. McGivney) and named in honor of the great Italian explorer (Christopher Columbus), the Knights began as an organization to care for widows and orphans from St. Mary’s parish in New Haven, Connecticut. Today the Order is organized into more than 15,000 local councils based in cities and towns across the country and abroad. Dedicated to the principles of charity, unity, fraternity and patriotism, the Knights participate in educational, charitable, religious, social welfare, war relief and public relief works.

The Knights have a long history of community outreach through innovative charitable programs. “During times of need from the 19th century to the present, the Knights of Columbus has been there in communities around the country to support one another, the Church and the evolving needs of their communities,” says Supreme Knight Carl Anderson. “From world wars, to influenza pandemics more than a century ago, to hurricanes and earthquakes, the Knights of Columbus has helped make the difference for many individuals and communities, and we will do so again during the present situation.”

Today’s Knights of Columbus constitute a vast volunteer network of members ready and willing to ensure that essential needs are met in communities from coast to coast. Members are assisting one another, especially the elderly and those living alone. At a time when many churches are closed, the Knights are reaching out to their fellow parishioners and pastors to identify and meet local needs as they arise.

Finally, the Knights of Columbus as an organization has kept its focus on the importance of placing our trust in God. It is providing spiritual resources to its members and urging them to offer prayers composed by Pope Francis and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops during this time.

Once again, in a time of crisis, the Knights of Columbus has risen to the occasion to serve both neighbor and Church with the strong arms of a loving big brother.

By Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie

Coronavirus is only the latest iteration of an age-old human affliction. Even now, with the benefit of advanced medical science, our reaction – our confusion, our fear – is not so different from how our ancestors experienced recurrent and terrifying onslaughts of plague, cholera, and yellow fever across the ages. We can learn from the courage and ingenuity of those who travelled this road before us.
 
Consider the work of Dr. Carlos Finlay in Cuba. In 1880 he hypothesized, and then worked to prove his hypothesis, that yellow fever, a disease that regularly decimated coastal populations up and down the Americas, was spread by infected mosquitos. Those mosquitos came to our shores in the 17th century on African slave ships and attacked portal communities in the tropics as well as cities like New Orleans and Philadelphia. The resulting epidemics occurred with oppressive regularity in the summer months, to the people’s great dread, with mortality rates as high as 50 percent. The impact was tremendous – not only in the milllions of lives lost and the wretchedness this caused, but in economic gains and opportunities wiped out or delayed (the Panama Canal).
 
Connecting the transmission of the deadly virus to its source or vector was a decisive step forward in the long struggle against yellow fever. It preceded the development of a vaccine by more than 60 years. Here's how it happened: A young doctor, Carlos Finlay, returned to his home in Havana one night, exhausted, after caring for a Carmelite priest dying of yellow fever. Realizing he had forgotten to say his daily rosary, he sat in his armchair, sweating in the oppressive heat, fingering his beads and swatting at a bothersome mosquito. Suddenly, inspiration pierced his depression and weariness: Could the mosquito, like the one annoying him that moment, be transmitting the infection from person to person? If so, this was marvelous. One could not fight the brutal steamy summer air – the miasma – but one could fight mosquitos.
 
Inspiration, however, was not enough to proceed. Courage and even heroism would be needed to prove Finlay’s hypothesis. These were at hand, thanks to 57 young Jesuit priests and brothers who volunteered as experimental subjects. As each arrived from Spain to staff the Colegio de Belen, newly founded by Queen Isabel II of Spain, he was met by Finlay, carrying a test tube filled with mosquitos that had just fed on a patient sick with yellow fever. Taking their lives in their hands, these Jesuits allowed themselves to be bitten for the sake of their fellow human beings. Three died of the bite, but all 57 were willing to do the same.
 
Subsequent experiments supported Finlay’s hypothesis. Although a vaccine to definitively eradicate the disease would not come for decades, Finlay’s insight helped man to co-exist safely with yellow fever until that time. The incidence of yellow fever in Cuba dropped precipitously through mosquito control. Standing water, a breeding ground for the noxious pests, was eliminated where possible or treated aggressively with insecticides where not. Panama, where tens of thousands of workers had already died of the disease while building the canal followed Cuba’s lead. The last Panama Canal worker to die of yellow fever came in 1906.
 
There are important lessons for us here -- first and foremost, lessons in resourcefulness and valor. 
 
Already, thousands of human minds are, today, tenaciously working to find a solution to Covid-19. They’re persisting without respite, persisting through depression and fatigue, to find a way forward. Just as Dr. Finlay did.
 
And, you can depend on it, inspiration is sure to strike again.
 
You can also see today the same kind of valor that animated the Jesuit volunteers who let the infected mosquitos bite them. You see it in the countless men and women who keep showing up for work at nursing homes or crowded food production lines. Their examples help us all to keep up and increase our courage so we can join them as we ease back into our normal daily lives.
 
As we face the moment when we too realize that we have no choice but to go back out into the world of work and personal interactions, we can take hope from contemplating our predecessors’ success in confronting yellow fever. Like us, they dreamed of a vaccine. But they didn’t lock themselves away until it was developed. They found a way to steel themselves and then to steal the deadly efficiency away from the virus that plagued them. A century later, we can do the same.

From an island of 1.3 million, Lisette Williams was called to go abroad on OM’s ships and share the love of Jesus with the world.

A team of volunteers and doctors attended to over 300 people in a town almost destroyed by an earthquake in 2007.

OBJECTIVES:

To determine if a multicomponent intervention was associated with increased use of first-line antibiotics (cephalexin or sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim) among children with uncomplicated urinary tract infections (UTIs) in outpatient settings.

As war continues in the east of Ukraine, refugees flood Odessa. OM cannot turn a blind eye to its new neighbours.

IF ever we needed to indulge in a bout of collective escapism, if only for 60 minutes on a Sunday night, then that time is now. Thankfully ITV has just the thing – Belgravia, the latest big budget costume drama from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes and a series that positively ripples with dimples, quiffs, honey-coloured chiffon frocks, eye-popping millinery and glamorous uniforms.

The Reserve Bank bought R11.4 billion worth of government bonds from the secondary market during April, as part of its measures to introduce liquidity to the market.

Once the coronavirus pandemic is over, the tourism industry will probably find that older, more affluent travellers are more hesitant to do so.

The Black Business Council stood by Minister of Tourism Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane and South Africa's Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment policy.

More than 800 children were impacted by the Festival of Smiles 2011 that took place in the indigenous community of Talamanca, Costa Rica.

Farmfoods, a Scottish family business, has served the nation for over 60 years - and has never faltered in selling the finest farm  produce the country has to offer.

“Enough is enough,” said one Edinburgh resident, about the scene of desolation in Princes Street Gardens. Following this year’s bigger-than-ever Christmas Market and Hogmanay celebrations, the mudbath left after the festive village was dismantled is disgraceful. I’m tempted to say it looks as if a herd of belted galloways has run amok, but that would be unfair. Cattle don’t make half as much midden as the city’s annual cash-cow.

Someone is mortally wounded, shot to bits by a stormtrooper, hacked to pieces by a zombie, legs crushed by a Sergio Ramos tackle, or crippled when their go-kart careered into a cartoon tree.