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EPA Announces Extended Comment Period on Supplement to Science Transparency Proposed Rule

WASHINGTON (April 2, 2020) Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced an extension of the comment period on the supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking for the proposed rule, “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.”




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EPA Regional Administrator Wraps Up Successful Visit to Puerto Rico

SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO – Recently, U.S.




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EPA public meeting on October 24 to discuss cleanup at Vernay Laboratories site in Yellow Springs, Ohio

YELLOW SPRINGS, Ohio (October 17, 2019) – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will present the proposed cleanup options for the Vernay Laboratories Inc. site at a public meeting on Thursday, Oct. 24 in Yellow Springs. The information session will run from 5-7 p.m.




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Administrator Wheeler Wraps Up Mission to Brazil with Visit to the Amazon




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EPA Announces Record of Decision for Hastings Superfund Site, Operable Unit 1, in Hastings, Nebraska

Environmental News FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE




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EPA Awards More Than $1 Million to Clean Up School Buses in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas

DALLAS – (April 24, 2020) In conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) awarded $11.5 million to replace 580 older diesel school buses.




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Supporters hold vigil for teens still missing on Utah Lake




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A million thanks, ma: Today, support mothers working harder than ever

Every day should be Mother’s Day, because without mothers, none of us would exist. But today is the national holiday, designated 106 years ago by President Woodrow Wilson — a time when cards, flowers, chocolates and breakfast in bed typically accompany the kind words we send mom’s way.




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Video: Tahnée Seagrave Talks Over her Winning Run from the 2018 Val di Sole World Cup



Tahnée Seagrave provides some insight into her thought process during the 2018 Val di Sole World Cup.
( Comments: 4 )




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Community members step up to pay Washington County school lunch debt

Two residents of Washington County organize donations from community members to pay Washington County School District 15k+ lunch debt

       




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Updated: Unilever recalls Wall’s Mini Calippo multi-packs because they may contain small pieces of metal

Unilever is recalling Wall’s Mini Calippo (Orange and Lemon-Lime) multi-packs because they may contain small pieces of metal. The presence of metal makes this product unsafe to eat.




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Trajectory pointing up for Purdue athletics in 2018-19

Purdue's athletic department had its best finish in the Learfield Directors Cup standings in nearly a decade but more is expected in 2018-19

      




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Valparaiso coach disappointed but supportive of Brandon Newman's prep school decision

Valparaiso Vikings were set up for a tournament run before defection of star guard, who has offers from IU and Purdue.

      




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2018's best Indiana college football matchups

Games involving Notre Dame, Purdue and Indiana could have a lot at stake this season.

      




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Belkin Criticized For Its Upcoming Bricking of NetCams

A Forbes contributor notes that Belkin abruptly announced the end-of-life for its Wemo NetCams, which will discontinued on May 29 2020. But that's just the beginning... Unlike many other end-of-life announcements which simply render products ineligible for support or upgrades, Belkin is literally pulling the plug on its Cloud service, rendering its NetCam range of home security cameras as useless beige bricks... The question of how Belkin are deliberately bricking their products needs to be called out. When the NetCam was released, users had the option to use the Wemo software (which was lousy) or connect to the cameras using ffmpeg with their favourite NVS platform or even with VLC or equivalent. However, in a firmware update a few years back — Belkin disabled this capability. While workarounds do exist, such as the one published by Vladimir Sobolev in 2018, the whole premise of buying a Belkin product is for ease of use and simplicity. Belkin claim to design 'people inspired products'. All customers of Belkin need to look carefully at these words and see how they match up with their deeds? How many other Belkin products might be switched off on a whim? The criticism can be applied to cloud-enabled products as a whole, but in the main — vendors understand that to alienate customers by bricking their possessions is not a viable long term strategy to maintain trust... Forthcoming European legislation forcing technology companies to make their products easier to repair should go some way to address these concerns. The article points out that even Microsoft gave Windows 7 users five years of warnings about its 2020 end-of-life. And it also complains property owners now face two difficult choices: "Either leaving their property with no security system and zero surveillance capability, or breaking the quarantine orders in order to install new equipment."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.




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Dennis Bergkamp scores wonder goal for Netherlands against Argentina at 1998 World Cup

BBC Sport marks Dennis Bergkamp's birthday by looking back at his brilliant winning goal for the Netherlands against Argentina at the 1998 World Cup.




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Prince Charles gives 'big thumbs up' to Royal Mail in a letter

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla have sent a "heartfelt thanks - and a big thumbs up" to Britain's postal workers in a letter.




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Sport24.co.za | US women's World Cup star Alex Morgan welcomes daughter

Two-time women's World Cup winner Alex Morgan and husband Servando Carrasco have welcomed a new player to their team.




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Sport24.co.za | Modiba: I stayed because SuperSport made me feel appreciated

SuperSport United winger Aubrey Modiba says a conversation with club CEO Stanley Matthews convinced him to stay despite interest from Mamelodi Sundowns.




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Last camper moves out of Oppenheimer Park as cleanup begins

Police and City of Vancouver park rangers escorted the last person living in Oppenheimer Park out of the tent city Saturday afternoon, moments before crews with excavators moved in to clean up the mountains of trash left behind.




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DAREarts stepping up to help at risk kids with mental health support

School, friends and normal day to day interactions have taken a virtual shift. However, for those with limited access to the internet, devices and other technology, isolation can be challenging.




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How to stamp out corruption in the mining sector

6 February 2014 , Volume 70, Number 1

Republic of Guinea

Population: 10,000,000 (2009 estimate CIA World Factbook), GDP per Capita: $588.00, Official language: French, Capital and largest city: Conakry, Area: 245,857 km2, Independence: From France, 2 October 1958

Bram Posthumus

Posthumus2.jpg

A bauxite treatment plant in Guinea but most of the value is added abroad. Photo: AFP/Getty Images




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India Under Modi: A Superpower in the Making?

Members Event

30 June 2016 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm

Chatham House London, UK

Event participants

Dr Mukulika Banerjee, Director, South Asia Centre, London School of Economics
Nandan Nilekani, Co-founder and Chairman, EkStep; Chairman, Unique Identification Authority of India (UIAI) (2009-14)
Dr Gareth Price, Senior Research Fellow, Asia Programme, Chatham House
Mihir Swarup Sharma, India Columnist, Bloomberg View; Senior Fellow, Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi
Chair: James Crabtree, Contributing Editor, Financial Times; Senior Visiting Fellow, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

On the surface, the Indian economy is performing well, and the popularity of Narendra Modi, the prime minister elected on the promise of liberalizing reform two years ago, is holding up. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), has referred to India as a ‘bright spot’ in the slowing global economy. According to them, growth equalled China’s last year at 7.3% and has now taken the lead as the world’s fastest growing economy. Yet some joke that India’s prospects look brighter the farther away you are.

The panel will reflect on Modi’s two years in power and discuss what they think the government got wrong and what they got right. They will question whether India’s resurgence can be sustained into the future, and discuss what this actually means for the prospects of India’s 1.3 billion people, as well as the balance of power in Asia and beyond.

This event is organized in association with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

Members Events Team




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Turkey’s Post-Coup Reverberations Are Just Beginning

21 July 2016

Fadi Hakura

Consulting Fellow, Europe Programme
President Erdogan’s harsh crackdown is causing severe damage to the country’s political and social fabric.

2016-07-21-Erdogan.jpg

People wave Turkish flags in front of a billboard displaying the face of Recep Tayyip Erdogan at a rally in Ankara on 17 July 2016 in Ankara. Photo by Getty Images.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has responded with an iron fist to last Friday’s failed military coup attempt in Turkey by detaining, dismissing or suspending, so far, 60,000 military officers, police and intelligence officials, judges, teachers, academics and civil servants, and imposing a widespread travel ban and a three-month state of emergency. He is vowing to reintroduce the death penalty, abolished in 2004 as part of reforms required for opening EU accession negotiations.

This uncompromising approach in the post-coup period will have profound negative implications on Turkey’s domestic politics, security and foreign policy in the foreseeable future to the detriment of its stability and prosperity.

Fractured politics

Erdogan’s indifference to the unprecedented political unity against the coup is, regretfully, a missed opportunity to dilute the deepening polarization and divisiveness bedeviling Turkish politics. His determination to use the putsch to consolidate political power in the presidency and to erode or eliminate the secular character of the Turkish state by means of a new constitution will widen the ideological and ethnic divide between, respectively, secular and conservative Turks and Turks and Kurds. Just a few months ago, Ismail Kahramam, speaker of the Turkish parliament and Erdogan ally, exhorted that ‘secularism cannot feature in the new [religious] constitution’.

His policies and rhetoric, in other words, will undermine even more the almost imperceptible presence of ‘interpersonal trust’ in Turkish society - the willingness of one party to rely on the actions of another party – seen as incongruent with a robust polity and cohesive society. According to a 2010 OECD survey Turkey’s levels of interpersonal trust are considerably lower than OECD averages and it stands out among the 20 surveyed countries as the only one where higher educational attainment correlates with lower feelings of trust. That posture can only breed even more discord and mistrust between the different segments of the Turkish electorate and entrench personality-based and top-down politics, the root cause of political turmoil in Turkey.

Diminished state capacity

Turkey’s NATO partners fear that the purges of experienced military and security personnel have the potential to diminish its capability to thwart the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other militant groups and to better manage its long and porous borders with Syria and Iraq. Thus far, Turkish authorities have incarcerated nearly one-third of Turkey’s senior military commanders and more than 7,000 police and intelligence officials. This constitutes a major loss of expertise and institutional memory at a time of heightening security challenges. After all, Turkey witnessed 14 bomb attacks over the last year, many of them carried out by ISIS or the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Similarly, the removal of tens of thousands of school teachers, both in private and state schools, university academics and education ministry officials will severely disrupt the provision of adequate educational services to enable future generations to succeed in an increasingly complex global economic environment. This ‘cleansing’ operation did not spare even the elite and renowned state and private universities considered bastions of liberalism and cosmopolitan values in Turkey.

In all probability, the government’s replacements of key staff with less qualified loyalists will rupture the institutional integrity and professionalism of the military establishment and the state institutions. Such a hollowing out process was already underway prior to the coup but post-coup decision-making has greatly accelerated the speed. Sadly, under the best case scenario, it will take Turkey years, if not decades, to restore a modicum of rule of law and public services’ delivery at pre-coup standards to which the Turkish citizenry have been accustomed.

Foreign policy challenges

Erdogan’s endorsement of the death penalty might signal the end of Turkey’s (already nearly non-existent) EU accession prospects and a more troubled relationship with Europe and the US. He was, before the coup, a prickly and challenging partner for the US and NATO to handle, a recalcitrant member of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and vociferously against the US cooperation with PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish fighters targeting ISIS in northern Syria. After the coup, he will probably become more disagreeable to US and European foreign policy and security objectives.

His disagreeability will probably extend to Turkey’s deal with the EU to stem the flow of Syrian migrants across the Aegean Sea and Greece into mainland Europe, which looks increasingly unsustainable. A pugnacious Erdogan may utilize the forthcoming EU refusal to abolish visas for Turkish travellers to the Schengen borderless zone by end-October to wring out more concessions from an Erdogan-sceptical Europe. Despite their exasperation, they should decipher from his rapprochement with Israel and Russia that he tends to compromise with muscular diplomacy as opposed to diplomatic niceties.    

Turkey will be so convulsed and self-absorbed by internal political machinations and its security and military capabilities so compromised that it cannot afford to deploy sizeable assets to promote regime change in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers are, naturally, the prime beneficiaries while the armed largely Sunni opposition are the biggest losers. Arguably, Assad must now feel very secure in power and confident that he will enlarge his territorial acquisitions at the expense of the Sunni groups. Equally, the Syrian Kurds will seek to strengthen and, perhaps, extend the quasi-autonomous zone along the Turkey−Syria border commensurate with Turkey’s declining influence in the Syrian quagmire.

Europe’s lesson

Turkey is a bitter testimony to the ill-effects of sacrificing progressive values to political expediency, fear and interests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated a lack of strategic foresight by stymying Turkey’s desire to join the EU in 2005. Had the EU engaged Turkey in a credible accession process, however arduous it may have been, the coup would probably have never occurred. Turkish political leaders would have been forced to implement deeper and wider reforms to strengthen democracy, secularism, human rights and a functioning market economy. Instead, Europe is reaping what it sowed: a coup-rattled and more unstable Turkey on its doorstep.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback




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Kruppel-like factor 3 (KLF3) suppresses NF-{kappa}B-driven inflammation in mice [Immunology]

Bacterial products such as lipopolysaccharides (or endotoxin) cause systemic inflammation, resulting in a substantial global health burden. The onset, progression, and resolution of the inflammatory response to endotoxin are usually tightly controlled to avoid chronic inflammation. Members of the NF-κB family of transcription factors are key drivers of inflammation that activate sets of genes in response to inflammatory signals. Such responses are typically short-lived and can be suppressed by proteins that act post-translationally, such as the SOCS (suppressor of cytokine signaling) family. Less is known about direct transcriptional regulation of these responses, however. Here, using a combination of in vitro approaches and in vivo animal models, we show that endotoxin treatment induced expression of the well-characterized transcriptional repressor Krüppel-like factor 3 (KLF3), which, in turn, directly repressed the expression of the NF-κB family member RELA/p65. We also observed that KLF3-deficient mice were hypersensitive to endotoxin and exhibited elevated levels of circulating Ly6C+ monocytes and macrophage-derived inflammatory cytokines. These findings reveal that KLF3 is a fundamental suppressor that operates as a feedback inhibitor of RELA/p65 and may be important in facilitating the resolution of inflammation.




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Re: Covid-19: Brazil’s president rallies supporters against social distancing




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Queen of foster care - Supermom Mama Sweetie opens big heart to more than 40 children

To say Judith-Miranda Townsend has a special love for children would not even begin to capture the essence of the Westmoreland supermom. Affectionately called ‘Mama Sweetie’ by foster children and members of the Holly Hill community in Darliston,...




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Cedric Stephens | Business interruption insurance debate unsettled

RISKS...




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Water disruptions in Linstead, Constant Spring and Denham Town

The National Water Commission (NWC) says a loss in power supply forced the shutdown of the Dinthill facility today, leaving some northern St Catherine communities without water.  The affected communities are: Linstead,...




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Teachers will need psycho-social support post COVID-19

Education officials across the Caribbean and Latin America have asserted that teachers will be in need of psycho-social support for their return to the classroom, following the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 91,710 teachers and seven million...




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Diabetes Core Update: COVID-19 – The Role of Community Health Workers as First Responders, May 2019

This special issue focuses on The Role of Community Health Workers as First Responders in the COVID-19 Outbreak. 

Recorded May 5, 2020.

This is a part of the American Diabetes Associations ongoing project providing resources for practicing clinicians on the care of Diabetes during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Today’s discussion is an audio version of a webinar recorded on May 5, 2020.

Presented by:

Betsy Rodriguez, BSN, MSN, DCES
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Colleen Barbero, PhD
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Denise Octavia Smith, MBA, CHW, PN, SFC
National Association of Community Health Workers




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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How to become a super memorizer – and what it does to your brain

New research shows that we can train our brains to become memory champions

To many of us, having to memorize a long list of items feels like a chore. But for others, it is more like a sport. Every year, hundreds of these ‘memory athletes’ compete with one another in the World Memory Championships, memorising hundreds of words, numbers, or other pieces of information within minutes. The current world champion is Alex Mullen, who beat his competitors by memorizing a string of more than 550 digits in under 5 minutes.

You may think that such prodigious mental feats are linked to having an unusual brain, or to being extraordinarily clever. But they are not. New research published in the journal Neuron shows that you, too, can be a super memorizer with just six weeks of intensive mnemonic training, and also reveals the long-lasting changes to brain structure and function that occur as a result of such training.

Related: The Homer Simpson effect: forgetting to remember

Related: A neural pathway that erases memories

Continue reading...




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Are the people who are complaining about this "LOCKDOWN" and want things opened up, the MAIN REASON the US WILL DIE OF COVID-19 ?

I say - Lock everything down, as we are, and keep everything locked down for years  This way, what every these people are complaining about will be long gone 




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[ Polls & Surveys ] Open Question : What happens if you go to a concert just to stand in the corner and stink the place up with your farts?




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[ Singles & Dating ] Open Question : Should I break up with my boyfriend?

I’ve liked him for a year and I told him, but he told me to date someone else. I started to forget about him, but then he told me that he liked me too. We’re dating now but I don’t think that I feel the same was as when I first started liking him. What should I do?




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Catching Up: The Labor Market Outcomes of New Immigrants in Sweden

Many of Sweden's immigrants are refugees who lack the skills and education to gain employment soon after they arrive. Over time, however, newcomers to Sweden have improved their employment rates, displayed income growth similar to natives, and moved from low- to middle-skilled positions. This report assesses how new immigrants—refugees, labor migrants, and others—fare in Sweden's labor market.




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Moving Up the Ladder? Labor Market Outcomes in the United Kingdom amid Rising Immigration

This report analyzes the labor market integration of recent immigrants to the United Kingdom. During the 2000s, a large influx of labor from Eastern European countries transformed the United Kingdom's immigrant population and labor market. The report finds that over time, these new arrivals showed some progress in moving out of the lowest-skilled jobs.




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A Work in Progress: Prospects for Upward Mobility Among New Immigrants in Germany

This report analyzes the labor market integration of newcomers to Germany, who tend to have different national origins and higher levels of education than earlier waves of migrants. These new immigrants have had varying levels of success in finding employment and transitioning into higher-skilled jobs.




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Moving Up or Standing Still? Access to Middle-Skilled Work for Newly Arrived Migrants in the European Union

The global economic crisis and changing migration patterns in Europe bring up questions about how well immigrants are able to find employment and progress into better jobs over time. This overview report caps a series of six country case studies evaluating the employment outcomes for foreign-born workers during their first decade in the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.




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No Quick Fix: Policies to Support the Labor Market Integration of New Arrivals in Sweden

Sweden’s strong economic record continues to be marred by its struggles to integrate immigrants, especially those who come through humanitarian or family channels. This report describes how Sweden is trying to overcome these labor market integration challenges and analyzes how successful its workforce development and integration policies have been in helping immigrants progress from low-skilled work to middle-skilled jobs.




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Building an Integration System: Policies to Support Immigrants’ Progression in the Czech Labor Market

This report presents an overview of Czech integration policies, with a special focus on economic integration. It focuses on policies designed to support migrants’ incorporation in the Czech labor market, and assesses the extent to which these policies facilitate migrants’ upward mobility into more skilled work.




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Benign Neglect? Policies to Support Upward Mobility for Immigrants in the United Kingdom

Immigrants in the United Kingdom find work easily thanks to a flexible labor market, but often have trouble moving up the ladder into middle-skilled work. This report examines how workforce and integration policies affect immigrant workers in the United Kingdom.




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Shifting Focus: Policies to Support the Labor Market Integration of New Immigrants in France

Despite a robust mainstream workforce development system offering job-search and other employment assistance to newcomers, immigrants in France are more likely to be unemployed or in low-skilled work than their native-born peers. This report examines how well recent changes to integration policy, in combination with mainstream employment policies, are supporting migrants' integration and advancement in the labor market.




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Transnational Organized Crime Groups, Immigration, and Border Security: Connections, Distinctions, and Proposals for Effective Policy

Testimony of Andrew Selee, President of MPI, before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Border Security and Immigration on December 12, 2018 regarding the intersections of transnational crime, immigration, and border security.




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Anti-lockdown supporters rally against COVID-19-related restrictions outside Manitoba legislature

A group that says pandemic-related restrictions are more harmful than COVID-19 itself held a rally at the Manitoba Legislative Building on Saturday.



  • News/Canada/Manitoba

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Winnipeg group gives free bikes to Indigenous students in need of transportation

A new program is giving bicycles to Indigenous youth who move to Winnipeg for school to help them get around the city as they pursue their studies.