Whenever Americans see videos of police brutality against black men and women, the first thing they do is assume they deserved their executionWhat skin color are the bad guys in America’s fantasies of vigilantism? When the proverbial “fellas” get together to drink beers and talk about their newest guns and who they’d take down, what race are the “criminals” in the theater of their minds?When Greg McMichael and his son, Travis, got the call from their neighbor that a “burglar” was running through their Brunswick, Georgia neighborhood that chilly February day, what color man do you think they imagined as they locked, loaded, and embarked on their “mission”?Ahmaud Arbery is dead today because when Americans dream of vigilante justice, black men are the villains of their imaginations.We as a nation are so comfortable with this baseline bigotry that our first assumption whenever we see videos of police brutality against or shootings of black men and women, the first thing we do is assume that the victims must have done something wrong to earn their own public execution.This assumption is both a function of white America having a completely different experience with police officers than black America as well as the hundreds of years of vilifying blackness in media and American culture.I will never forget the biggest and most uproarious applause during the theater debut of the lackluster 2007 vigilante film, Brave One, came when the protagonist Jodi Foster got her first vigilante kills of the movie – two threatening and scary black men. That theater filled with men the same age range as Greg and Travis McMichael erupted as if at that moment, all that they had ever imagined had been fulfilled on the big screen. Needless to say, I left that theater before the credits rolled.Across the country, our political leaders hold these same bigoted beliefs which inevitably lead to policies that directly assume criminality based on skin color.During his tenure as mayor of New York City, billionaire Michael Bloomberg made it explicitly clear why it was that he sent police officers into black and brown communities to “throw them” up against the wall. In his 2015 Aspen Institute speech he stated:“People say, ‘Oh my God, you are arresting kids for marijuana who are all minorities.’ Yes, that’s true. Why? Because we put all the cops in the minority neighborhoods. Yes, that’s true. Why’d we do it? Because that’s where all the crime is. And the way you should get the guns out of the kids’ hands is throw them against the wall and frisk them.”And it is for this reason that I do not distinguish between the violence committed by American citizens acting as vigilantes and the violence committed by so-called officers of the law when, in both cases, the working assumption and driving force behind that violence is the deeply bigoted and firmly American association between blackness and criminality.For Ahmaud, that association not only led to his brutal killing, but it also initially meant his killer not being arrested. It took more than two months for the father and son duo to be arrested. When explaining why they were not charged immediately the district attorney, George Barnhill, immediately stated that the victim, Ahmaud Arbery, was, in fact, the “criminal suspect”.“It appears that [Greg and Travis McMichael’s] intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. Under Georgia Law [sic] this is perfectly legal.”Even after viewing the video and with no evidence beyond Ahmaud’s skin color, the top cop in the institution designed to bring equal justice under the law concluded that Ahmaud was a criminal suspect when he was simply a black man taking a jog.What are black Americans to do when justice is delayed or outright denied because of the assignment of innocence to vigilantes and police officers?What are black Americans to do when the assumption of guilt because of our skin color is as American as the guns they use to kill us?What are we to do when in our neighbors’ dreams and fantasies of cop-and-robber, the skin color of the bad guy matches our own?The very first thing we are going to do is defend ourselves as if our lives depend on it because when Americans fantasize about killing, those fantasies become our living nightmares. * Benjamin Dixon is the host of the Benjamin Dixon show.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem sent letters to two Sioux tribes demanding they remove COVID-19 checkpoints because they interfere with traffic.

President Trump said Friday he had watched the video of Ahmaud Arbery being shot and found it “very disturbing” and “heartbreaking,” but said he was confident that the Georgia legal system would come down on the side of justice.

Travel blogger and photographer Andy Luten drove 4,200 miles across six states to see the grounded jets, detailing the shocking state of aviation.

Extracellular matrix-evoked angiostasis and autophagy within the tumor microenvironment represent two critical, but unconnected, functions of the small leucine-rich proteoglycan, decorin. Acting as a partial agonist of vascular endothelial growth factor 2 (VEGFR2), soluble decorin signals via the energy sensing protein, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), in the autophagic degradation of intracellular vascular endothelial growth factor A (VEGFA). Here, we discovered that soluble decorin evokes intracellular catabolism of endothelial VEGFA that is mechanistically independent of mTOR, but requires an autophagic regulator, paternally expressed gene 3 (PEG3). We found that administration of autophagic inhibitors such as chloroquine or bafilomycin A1, or depletion of autophagy-related 5 (ATG5), results in accumulation of intracellular VEGFA, indicating that VEGFA is a basal autophagic substrate. Mechanistically, decorin increased the VEGFA clearance rate by augmenting autophagic flux, a process that required RAB24 member RAS oncogene family (RAB24), a small GTPase that facilitates the disposal of autophagic compartments. We validated these findings by demonstrating the physiological relevance of this process in vivo. Mice starved for 48 h exhibited a sharp decrease in overall cardiac and aortic VEGFA that could be blocked by systemic chloroquine treatment. Thus, our findings reveal a unified mechanism for the metabolic control of endothelial VEGFA for autophagic clearance in response to decorin and canonical pro-autophagic stimuli. We posit that the VEGFR2/AMPK/PEG3 axis integrates the anti-angiogenic and pro-autophagic bioactivities of decorin as the molecular basis for tumorigenic suppression. These results support future therapeutic use of decorin as a next-generation protein therapy to combat cancer.

Illegal immigration is possible in large part because of illegal employment. This report shows the underlying drivers of illegal hiring vary based on the type of employer, the nature of the industry, state of the economy, and a country’s labor market institutions, employment legislation, immigration systems, and even culture.

Ce manuel pratique et simple d’utilisation à l’usage des décideurs et des praticiens fait le point des mesures les plus récentes prises par les pouvoirs publics en direction des diasporas. La question qui se pose aux responsables politiques n’est pas tant de savoir si les diasporas peuvent être utiles à leur pays d’origine, mais comment elles le sont et quels types de politiques et de programmes publics sont à même de favoriser ces relations.

A webinar showcasing MPI's profiles of unauthorized immigrants in the 94 U.S. counties with the largest populations potentially eligible for DACA or DAPA, and the implications of the data for implementation of the DACA and DAPA programs.

In this webinar, experts discuss barriers immigrant and LEP individuals face in accessing the WIA system, how a revitalized WIA could address these barriers, and the extent to which the current Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee's WIA reauthorization proposal addresses these barriers.

New research provides the first direct evidence that Zika virus causes severe birth defects, and explains exactly how it does so

“I lifted up my T-shirt to check on what I thought had just been a small heat rash,” writes BuzzFeed correspondent Ali Watkins. “It had shown up along the right of my back, extending out from a handful of mosquito bites I had picked up… it had seemed relatively tame [but] now, it was inching across the front of my stomach and down my legs... Meanwhile, my right eye was inflamed and bright red, almost akin to a busted blood vessel.”

Watkins is describing the symptoms of a Zika virus infection that she contracted on a recent trip to Mexico. For many people, infection with this mosquito-borne virus causes an illness with symptoms just like those experienced by Watkins: fever, skin rash, joint pain and conjunctivitis. For others, these symptoms are so mild that they go completely unnoticed.

Related: Zika virus spreads across Americas - in pictures

Related: Zika forest: birthplace of virus that has spread fear across the world

British airlines said they have been told the government is planning a 14-day quarantine for anyone arriving there from any country other Ireland.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued the first emergency use authorization for a new kind of coronavirus test this week.

George Mason University professor Elise Miller-Hooks and her team have been studying and modeling the flow of patients through American hospitals in times of crisis since 2014.

(May 6, 2020) On April 16, 2020, the Norwegian government launched a smartphone app to track the spread of the coronavirus in Norway. By downloading the app, users voluntarily allow the app to track their physical location and notify them if they have been in close proximity to a person who later becomes infected with […]

Taulia Tagovailoa (date: 5/10/2020 - Rank: 7)

Vorbild für die Beatles, Elton John und Prince: Little Richard schuf mit seiner flamboyanten, sexuell ambivalenten Bühnen-Performance und seinem Hit "Tutti Frutti" die Grundlagen für den Rock'n'Roll.

With more and more Bollywood celebs taking to social media to interact with their fans amidst the lockdown phase, Kangana Ranaut to Instagram to pour her heart out with a special message which she dedicated to her mother.

On Mother’s Day, be inspired by these mother-daughter duos who are going places  YourStory

This month, OM Italy is pleased to host the launch of the OM Arts School of Mission at their base, Forterocca.

The coordinator of OM Italy’s anti-trafficking ministry describes the birth of the ministry through meeting a Nigerian woman forced into prostitution in Rome.

To counter negative effects caused by lack of jobs and activities in the local area, OM Italy now offers free football games.

OM Philippines send staff to assess the earthquake damages in Surigao City and provide needed disaster relief training.

Antonio Nipueda (Mozambique) recollects his journey to ministry with OM in Mozambique and the ways their prayers have impacted one village there.

Saudi Arabia has been burning through its currency reserves amid the fall in oil prices. Is the economy heading toward peril or will reforms save the day?

An interview with the leaders of MDT UK, an exciting new training programme in Birmingham and London.

HE has created elegant fine-dining dishes in some of the most reputable restaurants in Scotland, but chef Paul Tamburrini he is now facing his harshest critics – his family.

Travel and tourism have become casualties of coronavirus lockdown, but one travel writer has found a new way to highlight Scotland's beauty, writes Deborah Anderson

Source: www.aol.com - Saturday, May 09, 2020
Dr. Anthony Fauci , the nation’s top infectious disease expert and member of the White House coronavirus task force, says he’s going into a “modified quarantine” after coming into contact with an administration staff member who contracted COVID-19, CNN reported Saturday . Read more...

In the Olympic city of Sarajevo, OM connects with the local people through spaghetti nights, sports, 'smoke breaks' and coffee.

OM Europe hosts its third annual Youth Factors Conference in Pälkäne, Finland, in April, which offers participants an opportunity for reflection and self-discovery.

THERE was a popular fad in the 1990s for presenting music in its rawest form. Rather than the traditional bombast of turning everything up to 11, MTV Unplugged stripped it back to the basics. Often it was simply one singer, one guitar and a stool. And it was hugely popular.

Gerechtigkeit zu den Unterdrückten zu bringen ist ein Auftrag für jeden Christen, sagt Natasha Shoultz, die unter Frauen in Prostitution in Prag arbeitet.

Something unintentionally funny keeps happening on the politically feverish fringes of Scottish social media.

IT could have been a warm welcome home for a conquering comedy hero when Billy Connolly appeared before an audience of Scottish school children at the BBC in Glasgow.

CDC head Robert Redfield and FDA chief Stephen Hahn are also quarantining.

The North Central PA LaunchBox is driving collaborative relationships with and between local, regional and state organizations, as well as government, to drive economic development in the region.

Professionals at the North Central PA LaunchBox have made it their top priority to help business and industry navigate the challenges of the COVID-19 outbreak. Furthermore, LaunchBox staff members are already looking ahead to the end of quarantine, when they’ll help businesses in the region return to normal. To help meet that end, business owners and industry leaders are being asked to participate in a short survey to help identify their needs and concerns during this trying time, and into the future.

With the digital business landscape ever-changing due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, the North Central PA LaunchBox is teaming up with the Altoona LaunchBox to offer the webinar “Cyber Security for Business” from 9:30 to 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, August Pasquale will represent ROTC in the College of the Liberal Arts as its student marshal. Pasquale will graduate with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and a bachelor of science degree in finance.

"Happy Mother's Day to me and to all those amazing mothers out there," wrote Shilpa Shetty

Gautam Gambhir said that apart from the use of saliva to shine the cricket balls, he does not see too many rules changing due to the coronavirus pandemic.

No potato needed

A French surfer has survived a shark attack in Australia with only minor leg injuries by punching it twice, local media reported.

"Happy Mother's Day to me and to all those amazing mothers out there," wrote Shilpa Shetty

Senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Sunday said the Maharashtra government should give permission to private vehicles for ferrying migrant labourers to their native places during the lockdown.

Senior Biju Janata Dal (BJD) leader and Chairman of the Western Odisha Development Council (WODC), Subash Chauhan died at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar on Sunday following a prolonged illness. He...

Top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci is among three members of the White House's coronavirus task force who will self-isolate after potential exposure to the pathogen, US media reported...

Realme Narzo 10 and Realme Narzo 10A are finally going to be launched on Monday in the country. Owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, the two upcoming Realme phones that were originally supposed to be...