Address by Mr Philip Lowe, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, at the Reserve Bank of Australia, Sydney, 21 April 2020.

Vincent Novara, Head of the Music Division's Acquisitions & Processing Section, describes his section's new teleworking practices during a global pandemic.

Manitoba health officials have an agreement with First Nations leaders to track and share COVID-19 data, but the public may never know specifics of what the unique agreement yields.

Jamal Campbell was never quite sure how the box of food ended up at his home while growing up in the community of Jane and Finch in Toronto, but he understood what it meant to his family.

The new reality of life under COVID-19 means Montreal Alouettes GM Danny Maciocia will be physically alone in his basement while he and his staff participate in the CFL draft.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is in discussions with the CFL, which is seeking financial support to help with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tennis courts in Vancouver, along with several other Metro Vancouver municipalities, will be open this weekend as municipalities across Metro Vancouver lift restrictions put in place in March due to the COVID-19 crisis. There are rules for getting out to play, however.

Pre-existing health conditions leave one group particularly vulnerable.

The idea that this virus is an equal-opportunity killer must itself be killed.

Some provinces are moving to allow people to double their so-called COVID-19 social bubbles. Chris Glover looks at why that's not yet happening in Ontario.

Toronto officials reported 180 new cases of COVID-19 on Thursday, a figure that represents a dip when compared to the more than 200 cases announced daily this week. 

Located on Huron Church Road, the lab was one of 12 such facilities run by the Ontario government, and processed tests for diseases like tuberculosis and West Nile virus. But it was demolished to make way for the Herb Gray Parkway.

Lambton County resident Joeleen DeGurse-MacDonald still has memories of the fatal vehicle collisions she's witnessed at the intersection of Kimball Road and Petrolia Line. Now in her 50s, DeGurse-MacDonald said she vividly remembers an accident that took place when she was only five-years-old, eating a pear picked from an orchard on her family's farm at the northest intersection of Kimball and Petrolia. 

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.

Municipalities across the province are re-evaluating their financial situations as COVID-19 continues to keep municipal facilities closed and has put other revenue streams on hold. 

Just in time for Easter, the story of a blind state leader who is giving up his office to join the Jesuits.

The post SOLIDWORKS Electrical Formula SAE Tutorial: How to open a SOLIDWORKS Electrical project and associate electrical components appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

The post Building Careers and Appreciating Teachers with SOLIDWORKS Certification appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Education Blog.

Advanced preliminary release for Q4 2019 quarterly data on total credit to the non-financial sectors; comprising private non-financial sector and general government for 44 economies and regional aggregates have been updated. Data are available for the following borrowing subsectors: general government, private non-financial sector (series on credit from domestic banks as lending sector are also available), non-financial corporations and households. Data are presented in three versions: in billions of local currency and US dollars, and as a percentage of GDP.

Monthly and annual data have been updated for 60 countries. The average length of the monthly series is more than to 55 years. Some annual series go back to the middle of the 19th century - or even earlier for several countries.

Advanced preliminary release for Q4 2019 quarterly data on debt service ratios (DSRs) for the private non-financial sector (PNFS) for 32 countries have been updated. DSRs for PNFS breakdown sectors, ie for households and for non-financial corporations are also available for 17 countries.

BCBS Press release "Basel Committee publishes stocktake report on climate-related financial risk initiatives'", 30 April 2020

This report summarises the main results of a stocktake conducted by the Basel Committee of its members' initiatives on climate-related financial risks.

Are financial intermediaries inherently unstable and, if so, why? To address this, we analyse whether model economies with financial intermediation are particularly prone to multiple, cyclic or stochastic equilibria.

Bank for International Settlements BIS Working Papers by Claudio Borio, Marc Farag and Nikola Tarashev

European Systemic Risk Board Occasional Papers by Greg Ros

The 2020 Special Olympics Summer Games, slated for June 11 to 13, are being canceled due to concerns related to coronavirus. The games will shift to virtual events, with details to be announced in the near future.

OM uses a team car to transport teenagers with autism to Montenegro's only special needs school. But a better car is needed to continue.

All, As we’ve written before, Dassault Systèmes SOLIDWORKS is committed to helping our customers be the most productive while working from home during this time of social distancing. Right now, it’s not possible to grab a drawing from the plotter or

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The post Marking Up and Red Lining with Social Distancing While Working From Home appeared first on SOLIDWORKS Tech Blog.

Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala :: Guatemala's First Lady visits Logos Hope and thanks the crewmembers for sharing knowledge, help and hope to the nations.

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.”

CNA Staff, May 7, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- The sainthood causes of St. John Paul II’s parents were formally opened in Poland Thursday.

A ceremony launching the causes of Karol and Emilia Wojtyła took place at the Basilica of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wadowice, John Paul II’s birthplace, May 7. 

At the ceremony, the Archdiocese of Kraków officially formed the tribunals that will seek evidence that the Polish pope’s parents lived lives of heroic virtue, enjoy a reputation for holiness and are regarded as intercessors. 

After the tribunals’ first session, Kraków Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski presided at a Mass, which was broadcast via livestream amid Poland’s coronavirus lockdown. 

Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, who served as Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary, attended the ceremony.

He said: “I want to testify here, at this point, in the presence of the archbishop and the assembled priests, that as a long-standing secretary of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła and Pope John Paul II, I heard from him many times that he had holy parents.”

Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik, spokesman for the Polish bishops’ conference, told CNA: “The processes of beatification of Karol and Emilia Wojtyła ... testify above all to the appreciation of the family and its great role in shaping the holy and great man -- the Polish Pope.” 

“The Wojtyłas were able to create such an atmosphere at home and form children in such a way that they became outstanding people.” 

“Therefore, there is great joy of starting the beatification processes and great gratitude to God for the life of Emilia and Karol Wojtyła and for the fact that we will be able to get to know them more and more. They will become a model and example for many families who want to be holy.”

Postulator Fr. Sławomir Oder, who also oversaw the cause of John Paul II, told Vatican News that the ceremony was an occasion for rejoicing in Poland. 

He said: “In fact, looking at this event, I am reminded of the words that John Paul II pronounced during the Mass of canonization of St. Kinga, known as Cunegonda, celebrated in Poland in Stary Sącz, when he said that saints are born of saints, are nurtured by the saints, draw life from the saints and their call to holiness.” 

“And in that context he spoke precisely of the family as the privileged place where holiness finds its roots, the first sources where it can mature throughout life.”

The Basilica of the Presentation, where the Wojtyłas' cause was opened, is where St. John Paul II was baptised on June 20, 1920. The church is located across the street from the Wojtyła family home, which is now a museum, in Wadowice.

Karol Wojtyła, an army officer, and Emilia, a school teacher, were married in Kraków in 1906. They had three children. The first, Edmund, was born that year. He became a doctor but caught scarlet fever from a patient and died in 1932. Their second child, Olga, died shortly after birth in 1916. Their youngest, Karol junior, was born in 1920, after Emilia refused a doctor’s advice to have an abortion because of her frail health. 

Emilia worked as a part-time seamstress after her third child’s birth. She died on April 13, 1929, shortly before Karol junior’s ninth birthday, of myocarditis and renal failure, according to her death certificate.

Karol senior, who was born on July 18, 1879, was a non-commissioned officer of the Austro-Hungarian army and a captain of the Polish army. He died on Feb. 18, 1941, in Kraków amid the Nazi occupation of Poland.

The future pope, who was 20 at the time and working at a stone quarry, returned from work to find his father’s body. He spent the night praying beside the body and afterwards began to pursue his vocation to the priesthood. 

Veracruz, Mexico :: Logos Hope's bookfair receives its seven millionth visitor and celebrates the important milestone.

OM Ships International celebrates five years of God’s faithfulness through the ministry of Logos Hope around the world.

At the end of July, OM Peru helped build a church, share God's love with the surrounding community and speak in a missions conference.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES:

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have a higher prevalence of epilepsy compared with general populations. In this pilot study, we prospectively identified baseline risk factors for the development of seizures in individuals with ASD and also identified characteristics sensitive to seizure onset up to 6 years after enrollment in the Autism Speaks Autism Treatment Network.

Idiopathic acute eosinophilic pneumonia is a rare and potentially life-threatening condition that is defined by bilateral pulmonary infiltrates and fever in the presence of pulmonary eosinophilia. It often presents acutely in previously healthy individuals and can be difficult to distinguish from infectious pneumonia. Although the exact etiology of idiopathic acute eosinophilic pneumonia remains unknown, an acute hypersensitivity reaction to an inhaled antigen is suggested, which is further supported by recent public health risks of vaping (electronic cigarette) use and the development of lung disease. In this case, a patient with a year-long history of vaping in conjunction with tetrahydrocannabinol cartridge use who was diagnosed with idiopathic acute eosinophilic pneumonia with associated bilateral hilar lymphadenopathy is described.

Founded by Wendy H Gilmour in 2011, Thankfifi began as a fashion blog and has since grown to cover lifestyle, travel and interiors.

RIGHT now, Shahbaz Majeed should be heading to Glencoe. Or flying over central Scotland. Or making his way to Harris which he has been trying to get back to since his first visit in 2018. Or maybe visiting some other part of Scotland so he can capture it in a photograph. Instead, he is at home in Dundee (where he is web development manager at the University of Dundee), “climbing the walls,” and looking forward to life after lockdown.

We look at how the Slovenian FA is tackling disability football.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not undergo surgery or any other medical procedure, a South Korean official has said amid continued speculation about his health.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It's been over a decade since reggae king Buju Banton and R&B star John Legend collaborated on a song, and the Grammy winners have reunited for a new track.Banton and Legend released the easy-going love song Memories on yesterday. It is the first single from Banton's upcoming album Upside Down, his first studio project since 2010's Before the Dawn.

Dear Editor,In response to the 1980s drug crisis there was a meeting of the minds of people knowledgeable about substance abuse. Richmond Fellowship Jamaica-Patricia House emerged as one of the possible answers where a multiplicity of answers were needed.

NICOLA Sturgeon said she does not expect police to be “routinely patrolling office blocks” as sweeping new enforcement powers come into force to include workplaces flouting social distancing rules.

TEMPORARY walking and cycling routes are set to pop-up across Scotland in a bid to improve social distancing while Scots are now being advised to wear face coverings in “enclosed spaces”.

Celtic Connections

Chief executive of the Scotch Whisky Association Karen Betts explains why she thinks the Scottish 'water of life' is so special.