An aide to Vice President Mike Pence has the coronavirus, marking the second person in the White House complex known to test positive this week. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday confirmed the latest positive testing. She insisted the White House continues to operate safely despite two cases cropping up in two days.

President Donald Trump, who publicly identified the affected Pence aide, said he was "not worried" about the virus spreading in the White House. Nonetheless, officials said they were stepping up safety protocols for the complex.

"Even before the COVID-19 crisis we assessed a certain level of coordination between Russia and the PRC in the realm of propaganda," said Lea Gabrielle, coordinator of the State Department's Global Engagement Center, which tracks foreign propaganda.

Ivanka Trump's personal assistant has tested positive for the deadly coronavirus, making her the third White House staff member to be infected from Covid-19, a media report said on Saturday. The assistant, who works in a personal capacity for Ivanka, has not been around her in several weeks. She has been teleworking for nearly two months and was tested out of caution.

Sterlite has 1.4 crore route kilometer (rKm) optical fibre production in China and 3.6 crore km capacity in India.

The public cloud industry is set to get a boost as firms across sectors are forced to depend on remote working.

The Noida-based group is also helping to improve and expand the state's disaster management helpline (1070) through technological upgradation, manpower assistance and effective reporting mechanisms, a statement said.

The firms have reserves of more than $13 billion to buy rivals in niche segments.

Reliance Jio says its “just a few days away” from launching its conferencing app called Jio Meet.

The Ministry of Home Affairs, in its order on Friday which extended the lockdown till May 17, mandated that the local authority shall ensure 100% coverage of Aarogya Setu app of residents within the Containment Zone.

The Aarogya Setu app, which was developed by the government to track those with the disease and alert people about their proximity, has given rise to fears of surveillance by the state as well as the security of the personal data that a user needs to fill in after downloading it.

Durham : Duke University Press, 2020.

New York : Springer, [2005]

Darmstadt : Steinkopff, 2006

Basel ; Boston : Birkhäuser, [2007]

Milano : Springer, 2007

New York : Springer, [2008]

Several industry bodies have told the government that the existing framework in this regard is adequate and benchmarked with the best global practices.

Private labs, which had termed the Rs 4,500 cap as being on the ‘moderate side’, objected to the order as there was no clarity regarding reimbursement for the free tests.

Worries about job losses are the highest in the country as 86 per cent being worried about losing their jobs and livelihood post-COVID-19 lockdowns. In comparison, this is only 31 per cent in Britain, 33 per cent in Australia and 41 per cent in the US and a high 71 per cent Hongkongers fear job loses, says the survey.

The decline in hiring is led by industries like hotel/restaurant/travel/airlines (-91%), auto/ancillary (-82%), retail (-77%) and accounting/finance (-70%). The job market across cities registered a double-digit dip in hiring. The decline was led by metros wherein Delhi declined by 70% followed by Chennai (-62%), Kolkata (-60%) and Mumbai (-60%).

According to staffing company Genius Consultants '9th Hiring, Attrition and Compensation Trend 2020-21', around 81 per cent of the respondents have shown interest to carry on with existing manpower and retaining them.

After the lockdown was imposed, imports of rough stones dried up, and nearly 70% of workers left for their hometowns in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and interiors of Gujarat.

The John W. Kluge Center invites you to an event looking at the dynamics of presidential primaries.

The event will take place on Thursday, November 7, at 4pm in room LJ-119 of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building. Free tickets are available here.

Kluge Center Director John Haskell will moderate a discussion on the dynamics of presidential primaries, timed just months before primary season begins. Julia Azari, former Kluge Center Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Marquette University political science professor, and Amy Walter, national editor of the Cook Political Report, will be panelists.

They will discuss the role of debates and endorsements in primaries, as well as the question of electability and the major changes affecting political parties and primary processes.

A reception will follow the program.

Tickets are recommended, but not required, and are free.

Register for a ticket here.

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ada@loc.gov.

Questions? Please contact (202) 707-9219 or scholarly@loc.gov

The John W. Kluge Center invites you to an Author Salon with Danielle Allen

Get your free tickets here.

Please join us for an event in which Danielle Allen will discuss the meaning of the text of the Declaration of Independence. She is the author of Our Declaration (2015), which makes the case that the Declaration of Independence was intended to ensure equality as much as it was intended to secure freedom.

The event will be held at noon on November 12, in Room LJ-119 of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building.

Allen is the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University as well as the author of several books, including Education and Equality (2016) and Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. (2017).

Tickets are recommended, but not required, and are free.

Register for a ticket here.

Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Request ADA accommodations five days in advance at (202) 707-6362 or ada@loc.gov.

Questions? Please contact (202) 707-9219 or scholarly@loc.gov

Thursday, December 5, at 4pm in room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the John W. Kluge Center will hold a discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Get your free tickets here.

Hope M. Harrison and Constanze Stelzenmüller will take part in a discussion moderated by Kluge Center Director John Haskell.

Harrison is an expert on the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, and contemporary Germany, and is Associate Professor of History and International Affairs in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is the author of the new book, After the Berlin Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present (2019).

Stelzenmüller is an expert on German, European, and transatlantic foreign and security policy and strategy. She is the inaugural Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution and the Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Kluge Center.

The event is free, but due to expected demand, tickets are recommended. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Visit the event ticketing site for more information and to secure your ticket. Entry is not guaranteed. Register for a ticket here.

Questions? Please contact (202) 707-9219 or scholarly@loc.gov

Whistleblowing in Historical Context: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Get your free tickets here.

On Tuesday, January 14, at 4pm, in room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the John W. Kluge Center will hold a discussion on whistleblowing, featuring perspectives from the realms of medical research, national security, and congressional committees.

The panel will feature Carl Elliott, professor in the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota and current Cary and Ann Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History, Allison Stanger, professor of International Politics and Economics at Middlebury College, and Emilia DiSanto, former Deputy Inspector General to the U.S. Department of State and Chief Investigative Counsel and Special Counsel to the Senate Committee on Finance. Kluge Center Director John Haskell will moderate.

A reception will follow the discussion.

The event is free, but tickets are recommended. Visit the event ticketing site for more information and to secure your ticket. Entry is not guaranteed.

Register for a ticket here.

Questions? Please contact (202) 707-9219 or scholarly@loc.gov

Join Us for a Kluge Center Author Salon with Susan Schneider on Artificial Intelligence

Get your free tickets here.

On Thursday January 30, at 4pm in the Montpelier Room of the Madison Building, the John W. Kluge Center will hold a discussion with Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation Susan Schneider.

Schneider will discuss her new book, Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, which is an exploration of what artificial intelligence can, and cannot, achieve.

Humans may not be Earth’s most intelligent beings for much longer: the world champions of chess, Go, and Jeopardy! are now all AIs. Given the rapid pace of progress in AI, many predict that it could advance to human-level intelligence within the next several decades. From there, it could quickly outpace human intelligence. What do these developments mean for the future of the mind?

In Artificial You, Susan Schneider says that it is inevitable that AI will take intelligence in new directions, but urges that it is up to us to carve out a sensible path forward. As AI technology turns inward, reshaping the brain, as well as outward, potentially creating machine minds, it is crucial to beware. Homo sapiens, as mind designers, will be playing with “tools” they do not understand how to use: the self, the mind, and consciousness. Schneider argues that an insufficient grasp of the nature of these entities could undermine the use of AI and brain enhancement technology, bringing about the demise or suffering of conscious beings. To flourish, we must grasp the philosophical issues lying beneath the algorithms.

Schneider will discuss these topics and more, with a reception to follow.

The event is free, but tickets are recommended. Visit the event ticketing site for more information and to secure your ticket. Entry is not guaranteed.

Register for a ticket here.

Questions? Please contact (202) 707-9219 or scholarly@loc.gov

Join Us for a Kluge Center Author Salon with Ivan Krastev on The Light That Failed: Why the West Is Losing the Fight for Democracy.

Get your free tickets here.

On Wednesday, February 19, at 4pm in room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, former Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations Ivan Krastev will speak about his new book on Europe’s past, present, and future.

In this insightful work of political history (shortlisted for the prestigious Lionel Gelber Prize), Krastev and co-author Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of Communism turned out to be only the beginning of the age of the autocrat. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized.

A reception will follow the discussion.

Get your free tickets here.

The event is free, but tickets are recommended. Visit the event ticketing site for more information and to secure your ticket. Entry is not guaranteed.

Questions? Please contact (202) 707-9219 or scholarly@loc.gov

On May 13, join the John W. Kluge Center for the first in our Conversations on the Future of Democracy series featuring Yuval Levin, who will be discussing his new book, A Time to Build, a look at the critical importance of formative institutions in society, their deterioration in recent decades, and practical steps to begin addressing the problem.

Find the event on May 13 at the Library’s showcase for everything you can access while the doors are closed: Library of Congress: Engage!

And sign up for a free ticket to get a reminder when the event happens.

Yuval Levin is a distinguished scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where he is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies. Levin is also the editor-in-chief of National Affairs.

Also, we’ve got a packed schedule of virtual events lined up, so stay tuned for more.

Art of Living teacher Swami Sadyojathah talks about the trauma relief programme he conducted for Sri Lanka's terror-hit cricket team and the secret to healthy living.

With Gujarat reporting a large number of coronavirus COVID-19 cases and fatalities, medical experts from AIIMS, including its director Dr Randeep Guleria, have rushed to Ahmedabad to provide expert guidance to doctors there on COVID-19 management.

As many as 98,774 cases were registered and 19,082 persons were arrested for violating prohibitory orders during the COVID-19 lockdown in the state. 

The incident took place in Mora village near the industrial town of Hazira.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Saturday (May 9) stressed on the need to understand the "chemistry of corona while administering its treatment".