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10 of the best novels set in Italy – that will take you there

Elena Ferrante’s Naples, Umberto Eco’s medieval mysteries, EM Forster’s Tuscany … Italy comes alive through these great books
10 of the best novels about France

Long before Covid-19, there were always bad things in the press about Italy: corruption, mafia, bureaucracy. But, whenever I went, life seemed to work out even so. People may be poor but they still sit in the sun, drink and chat; music and culture are a birthright; the right seems in the ascendant but on the ground it feels blessed with far-seeing idealists – it has almost four times as much land under organic cultivation as the UK, for example. For now, my remedy to the withdrawal symptoms I feel is to visit via the written word. Many writers have set books in Italy – I was sorry to leave out Martin Amis’s The Pregnant Widow (Calabria), and Ali Smith’s How to be Both (Ferrara) – but here are my top 10 romanze italiane.

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Tsunami risk identified near future Indonesian capital

Scientists map ancient underwater landslides in the region chosen for Jakarta's replacement.





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UK scientists condemn 'Stalinist' attempt to censor Covid-19 advice

Exclusive: report criticising government lockdown proposals heavily redacted before release

Government scientific advisers are furious at what they see as an attempt to censor their advice on government proposals during the Covid-19 lockdown by heavily redacting an official report before it was released to the public, the Guardian can reveal.

The report was one of a series of documents published by the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (Sage) this week to mollify growing criticism about the lack of transparency over the advice given to ministers responding to the coronavirus.

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Toronto landlord forced to refinance condo as COVID-19 stalls eviction of lawyer owing $16K in rent

Danish Chagani was excited when the lawyer who lived down the hall from his Toronto condo wanted to rent his unit after he bought a house for his young family. But the first-time landlord says the feeling was short-lived.



  • News/Canada/Toronto

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I was totally prepared to quarantine for COVID-19 — and my family got it anyway

Living on a 10-acre plot of land 100 kilometres outside Toronto, David Stevens thought he and his family were well prepared to ride out the COVID-19 quarantine. But after a call from his mother, he learned that even the best laid plans can go wrong.




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Amid pandemic, Pompeo to visit Israel for annexation talks

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will travel to Israel next week for a brief visit amid the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, a trip that’s expected to focus on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to annex portions of the West Bank, the State Department said Friday. Pompeo will make the lightning trip to Jerusalem to see Netanyahu and his new coalition partner Benny Gantz on Wednesday as the Trump administration tries to return to business as normal by resuming governmental travel and reopening an economy devastated by the COVID-19 outbreak.





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Iran quake kills at least one, sparks panic in capital

An earthquake struck early Friday near Iran's highest peak and jolted Tehran, killing at least one person and injuring more than 20 as people ran for their lives. The shallow 4.6 magnitude quake hit at 00:48 am (2018 GMT) near the city of Damavand, about 55 kilometres (34 miles) east of Tehran, the US Geological Survey said. It saw scores of residents of Tehran flee buildings for the safety of the capital's streets and parks, AFP journalists reported.





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Hard Brexit more likely because of coronavirus and lack of progress in talks, says German foreign minister

A hard Brexit is more likely due to the coronavirus crisis because Britain and the European Union have made so little progress in talks, Germany's foreign minister has said. Heiko Maas said that negotiations between Britain and the EU so far on the future trade relationship had yielded few gains with the UK disregarding the political declaration, which he said was "simply not on". Britain left the EU in January, and talks with the bloc are now focused on setting new trading terms from 2021, when London's status-quo transition period ends. However, the talks quickly hit an impasse when negotiations resumed last month, according to diplomats and officials. "It's worrying that Britain is moving further away from our jointly agreed political declaration on key issues in the negotiations," Mr Maas told the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. "It's simply not on, because the negotiations are a complete package as it's laid out in the political declaration." Mr Maas said there was currently neither common ground on how to shape a comprehensive trade deal or on whether to extend the negotiation period beyond the end of the year. "The British government is still refusing to extend the deadline," Mr Maas said. "If it stays that way, we will have to deal with Brexit in addition to the coronavirus at the turn of the year." Simon Coveney, Ireland's foreign minister, said on Friday that the coronavirus pandemic had made an already difficult timeline for a British-European Union trade deal "virtually impossible" and that it would make sense to seek more time.





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LockBit, the new ransomware for hire: A sad and cautionary tale

You've probably never heard of LockBit, but that's likely to change.




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China's new experimental spacecraft returns to Earth – after experiencing mysterious malfunction

Chinese space agency hopes capsule can one day carry six astronauts into space




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Epic Game Store: Totally Reliable Delivery Service FREE + Spring Sale

Totally Reliable Delivery Service FREE (download before 4/8)
 

The Spring Sale is now here with fresh offers across a range of top content! Don't forget, Epic Coupons acquired in our Holiday Sale are expiring May 1, 2020 2:59am EST and able to be used on any eligible purchase $14.99 or above!

Spring Sale - ends 4/16

 

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    Free $15 Target GiftCard with $100 iTunes Digital Gift Card purchase at Target

    Different digital styles to choose from!

    Online only.

     

    http://goto.target.com/itunesgiftcards

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    ‘There is a whole catalogue of errors when it comes to government procurement and PPE’ – Labour’s Rachel Reeves

    Labour Shadow Minister for the cabinet office Rachel Reeves has lead for the party on PPE procurement.









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    Fitch withdraws Reliance Capital ratings

    Fitch on Friday said it has withdrawn the ratings on Reliance Capital as the company has decided to stop participating.




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    YES Bank in talks with Microsoft for stake sale; stock climbs 9%

    A Reuters report quoting Mint suggested that Yes Bank is in talks with Microsoft and two other tech firms for a possible stake sale.




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    Vedanta plunges 5.59% on LSE amid talks to buy Cairn stake

    In the late afternoon session, the scrip was being traded at 20.61 pounds, down by 5.50 per cent on the LSE. Vedanta opened on a positive note, but soon swung into the red.




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    Cairn India hits record high on BSE amid stake sale talks

    The scrip, which was flat for most of the session, shot up in the final hour of trade on the Bombay Stock Exchange to settle with a net gain of 4.36 per cent at Rs 355.45.




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    Adele's birthday Instagram post has fans, celebrities talking

    Adele used an Instagram post to mark her 32nd birthday while sharing her latest look including thanking essential workers, calling them "our angels."

          




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    Review: Sagrada, a top dice-drafting board game, goes digital

    Get yer glass on with this great version of the board game hit.




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    Neve Campbell in talks to return for 'Scream 5'

    Campbell played Sidney Prescott in the first four movies.




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    Sandra Bullock makes emotional appearance on Red Table Talk

    It was a special episode to mark Mother's Day in the US.





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    The incredible comeback you probably didn't hear about: Phil Galfond talks overcoming €900,000 deficit

    Professional poker player Phil Galfond overcame a €900,000 deficit in a 25,000-hand head-to-head challenge against a pot-limit Omaha regular known as "VeniVidi1993" online.




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    Digital-friendly recession: How Big Tech got even bigger in the midst of a market meltdown

    Many analysts expected the stocks to fall back to earth when the next downturn came




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    Coronavirus: NHS hospitals using Amazon Wish Lists to ask for donations of basic items

    NHS hospitals are asking for basic items such as toothbrushes and sanitary products




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    'We don't do apart': Elderly couple who fought coronavirus together in hospital heap praise on NHS staff

    'We've never been apart for sixty plus years, we don't do apart,' says Sidney Moore




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    One in three nurses say mental health has become 'very bad' during pandemic

    A lack of PPE is concern among nurses




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    Samantha Fox on fame at 16, stalkers and David Cassidy: ‘I kneed him and told him where to go’

    One of the most photographed British women of the 1980s talks about feminism, her abusive father and how she battled her fears to come out as gay

    In a small, unloved hotel, the receptionist greets me and Samantha Fox with pursed lips: “There will be no interview here,” she says. I feel as if I’ve wandered into the pages of Fox’s new autobiography, Forever, which is littered with bizarre anecdotes of best-laid plans going awry. From her ill-fated presenting partnership with a spaced-out Mick Fleetwood at the 1989 Brit awards, to a secret naked horseback photo shoot in Antigua – during which her steed galloped off with her to a busy tourist beach – not much has gone as expected in Fox’s life. Not least the day she worked with her childhood idol David Cassidy, who died earlier this month, which she says culminated in being sexually assaulted by him. Despite these, and many other setbacks, she says she is a “lucky girl”.

    Fox was just 16 when her mother entered her for the Sunday People’s Face and Shape of 1983 competition – her wholesome, girl-next-door image made her the most popular Page 3 girl ever, and one of the most photographed women of the 1980s, alongside Princess Diana and Margaret Thatcher. By 21, she had made her first pop record and retired from modelling, going on to break the US and sell 30m records worldwide.

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    Sudan to outlaw female genital mutilation

    Campaigners welcome move to criminalise those carrying out FGM, but warn it will take time to eradicate practice entirely

    Sudan looks set to outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM), in a significant move welcomed by campaigners.

    Anyone found carrying out FGM will face up to three years in prison, according to a document seen by the Guardian.

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    NFL Star Tracy Walker Remembers Cousin Ahmaud Arbery as "Full of Laughter and Joy" After Fatal Shooting

    This Friday, May 8 would've marked Ahmaud Arbery's 26th birthday. And though he's no longer with them, the Arbery family is finding comfort in the fact that Georgia state...




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    Tracy Brabin 'forced to change her number' after it was accidentally shown on screen on ITV's This Morning

    Tracy Brabin has said she will have to change her phone number after it was inadvertently shown on screen while she was being interviewd on ITV's This Morning.




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    Boris Johnson discharged from hospital as fiancee Carrie Symonds hails 'magnificent' NHS and reveals 'dark times' during PM's treatment

    Follow our live coronavirus updates HERE Fiancee Carrie Symonds said: "There were times last week that were very dark indeed"




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    Michel Barnier laments 'disappointing' post-Brexit talks and says 'the clock is ticking' on securing deal

    The EU's chief negotiator has branded progress in post-Brexit talks disappointing and warned the "clock was ticking".




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    Post-Brexit trade talks to begin with US this week

    The UK will begin the first round of post-Brexit trade deal talks with the US this week.




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    UK-US talks to commence on 'ambitious' post-Brexit trade deal

    Britain and the US are set to begin negotiations on an "ambitious" post-Brexit free trade agreement.




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    Straight Talk About a COVID-19 Vaccine - Facts So Romantic


    There are many challenges to developing a vaccine that will be successful against COVID-19.eamesBot / Shutterstock

    Wayne Koff is one of the world’s experts on vaccine development, the president and CEO of the Human Vaccines Project. He possesses a deep understanding of the opportunities and challenges along the road to a safe and effective vaccine against COVID-19. He has won prestigious awards, published dozens of scientific papers, held major positions in academia, government, industry, and nonprofit organizations. But Koff, 67, has never produced a successful vaccine.

    “I have been an abject failure,” he says. He smiles with a charming, self-deprecating sense of humor. “That’s what the message is.”

    The real reason for Koff’s lack of success is that he spent most of his career searching for a vaccine against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. It remains, as he and many others put it, “the perfect storm” of a viral infection resistant to a vaccine development. Almost 40 years after doctors first recognized the disease in five men in Los Angeles—and 70 million people have been infected worldwide—there are no adequate animal models. Neutralizing antibodies, the backbone of many vaccines, do not stop it, and most importantly, HIV begins its assault on the body by attacking CD4 T cells, which serve as the command center of much of the immune system.

    As for COVID-19, “We’re all hoping this one is going to be easier,” says Koff, a slight, bearded man with thick, curly salt-and-pepper hair. “There are research issues that still have to be addressed on a COVID vaccine. But they are a lot more straightforward than what we were dealing with in HIV.”

    Let’s say we have a vaccine in 18 months. How do you make 1 billion doses or 4 billion doses or whatever it’s going to take to immunize everybody?

    Koff and others started the Human Vaccines Project in 2016, modeled on the Human Genome Project. The project works with industry and academia to study the human immune system and develop vaccines, incorporating every modern-day tool, including artificial intelligence, computational biology, and big data sets. Today it is partnered with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

    With COVID-19, Koff says, scientists “know the target is the spike protein binding site.” This is where the proteins sticking out from the virus attach to the cells in the human respiratory system. “If you can elicit antibodies against those proteins, they should be neutralizing.” He puts a strong emphasis on should. To prove antibodies will prevent infection, scientists must watch a population of people who’ve been infected for months or longer. It’s a good bet, based on similar viruses, that antibodies will appear and protect—although no one right now can predict how long and how well.

    Depending on which count you use, more than 70 companies, universities, and other institutions are offering candidate vaccines. Koff says the real number of companies is lower. During the AIDS crisis, he says, “a lot of people claimed they had an experimental HIV vaccine in development. Some of those were a one-person lab who had created a paper company to attract investors.”

    But even with a lower number, almost everyone involved in the search for a vaccine agrees that several different approaches from different research organizations need to proceed in parallel. The world does not have the time to bet on one horse. The race will be neither simple nor cheap.

    “The probability of success, depending on whose metric is used in vaccines, is somewhere between 6 and 10 percent of candidate vaccines that make it from the animal model through licensure,” Koff says. “That process costs $1 billion or more. So you can do the math.”

    Koff sees big potential problems at the outset. “In the best of all worlds, let’s say we have a vaccine in 18 months. Who knows where the epidemic is going to be then and what its impact is going to be? How do you make 1 billion doses or 4 billion doses or whatever it’s going to take to immunize everybody? Will we need one dose or two or three? These are issues people just haven’t faced before.”

    COVID-19 also presents some unique dangers for vaccine safety. Based on how the virus behaves when it infects some people, there’s a chance a vaccine could dangerously overstimulate the immune system, a reaction called immune enhancement. “I’m hoping it’s more theoretical than real,” Koff says. “But that has to be addressed and it may slow down the entire process.” To ensure safety, he says, “It may mean we have to test the vaccine in a larger number of people. It’s one thing to do a 50-person trial in healthy adults as a safety signal. It’s another thing to run a trial of 4,000 or 5000 or more individuals.”

    The world does not have the time to bet on one horse. The race will be neither simple nor cheap.

    A virus also sometimes causes mysterious, potentially deadly blood clots. This means an experimental vaccine could hypothetically induce the same damage. “This is a bad bug,” Koff says. “We’re just starting to understand that pathogenesis.”

    A big question is who should be the first volunteers for widespread vaccine testing. “Who are the high-risk groups?” asks Koff. “Is it nursing-home residents and staff, health-care workers and people on the front lines, or people someplace else like grocery stores? We must also make sure a vaccine is effective for the elderly and people in the developing world.”

    Many vaccines work well in young and healthy people but not in older adults because immunity declines with age. Influenza vaccine is a prime example. Rotavirus vaccine, which protects against the deadliest killer—diarrheal disease in children—works better in the developed world. In the developing world, the virus often circulates year-round. Infants get antibodies from breast milk but not enough to prevent disease. Worse, those antibodies can make the vaccine less effective.

    Another hypothetical obstacle is that a mutation in the COVID-19 virus could render a vaccine designed today less effective in the future. While the virus mutates frequently, so far there has been little change in the critical part of the spike that binds to human cells.

    Of course, neither Koff nor all the others working for a COVID-19 vaccine focus solely on the potential obstacles. At one time, all vaccines against viruses either killed viruses, such as the Salk polio vaccine, or rendered them harmless, such as the Sabin polio vaccine. Now there is a multiplicity of ways to stimulate an immune response to prevent infection or reduce the consequences. These include genetically engineered protein subunits (peptides) or virus-like particles. Such approaches have led to successful vaccines against hepatitis B and human papilloma virus, which causes cervical cancer. Researchers now use “vectors”—harmless viruses attached to the protein subunits and virus particles to transmit them into the body. There are also many new adjuvants, chemicals that boost immune response to a vaccine.

    Newer platforms include direct injection of messenger-RNA. M-RNA is the chemical used to translate the information in DNA into proteins in all cells. The Moderna Company, which received a $483 million grant from the U.S. government, and has begun early clinical trials, uses m-RNA to try to make the body produce proteins to protect against the COVID-19 virus. INOVIO Pharmaceuticals uses pieces of DNA called plasmids to achieve the same objective. It has also begun phase 1 studies.

    “There are about eight platforms, and it would be good to see a couple vaccines in each of those advance,” Koff says. Predicting which of these most likely to succeed or fail he says would be “simply foolish.”

    Many groups, including the Human Vaccines Initiative, are plotting routes to test any possible vaccine more quickly than tradition dictates with an “adaptive trial design.” Usually trials begin with a phase 1 study of some 50 healthy people to search for any immediate signs of toxicity, then moves onto about 200 people in a phase 2, still looking for hazards and a signal of immunity, and then to phase 3 in thousands of people. But the plan here is to start phases 2 and 3 even before its predecessors are finished, and keep recruiting additional volunteers so long as no danger signals arise.

    Good animal models are appearing almost daily. Macaque monkeys, hamsters, and genetically engineered mice have all been infected in the laboratory and could determine whether potential vaccines exhibit various types of immunity. Members of Congress from both sides of the aisle have suggested that healthy human volunteers should be allowed to agree to be test subjects, allowing themselves to be infected. Stanley Plotkin, a vaccine researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, was among the first to suggest the idea.

    Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University, says that “deliberately causing disease in humans is normally abhorrent.” But COVID-19 is anything but a normal circumstance. In this case, Caplan says, “asking volunteers to take risks without pressure or coercion is not exploitation but benefitting from altruism.” At least 1,500 people have already volunteered to be such human guinea pigs, although none of the experimental vaccines is far enough along to try such challenging experiments.

    Koff says the key to a successful vaccine is a cooperative effort. “It’s going to take a whole different way of thinking to move this onto the expedited train,” he says. “The old dog-eat-dog, ‘I’m going to beat you to the end of the game,’ isn’t going to help us with this.” Seth Berkley, who worked with Koff at the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, and now heads GAVI, an international vaccine organization, agrees that a COVID-19 vaccine needs a Manhattan Project approach. “An initiative of this scale won’t be easy,” Berkley says. “Extraordinary sharing of information and resources will be critical, including data on the virus, the various vaccine candidates, vaccine adjuvants, cell lines, and manufacturing advances.”

    Koff has no regrets about spending so many years on an AIDS vaccine without results. He learned a great deal, he says, which he’s putting to work in the COVID-19 crisis. “The reason COVID-19 vaccines should be a lot easier is because most of the platforms, the novel approaches, and the clinical infrastructure for the testing of vaccines, came out of HIV.” He pauses. “We’re far better prepared.”

    Robert Bazell is an adjunct professor of molecular, cellular, and developmental biology at Yale. For 38 years, he was chief science correspondent for NBC News.


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    Three Russian Frontline Health Workers Mysteriously Fell Out Of Hospital Windows

    Three doctors in Russia have fallen out of hospital windows during the coronavirus pandemic. Two of them died, and the third one is in serious condition.




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    A tale of two parks: Enjoying the sun in wealthy Manhattan, social distancing under police scrutiny in the Bronx

    Blogger Ed García Conde, who runs the Instagram page Welcome2TheBronx, captured contrasting park photos on May 2 that show differences in how the NYPD is enforcing social distancing.





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    Can the Postal Service be saved?

    After years of financial struggles, the United States Postal Service has been brought to the brink of collapse by the coronavirus outbreak. Can it be saved?





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    Coronavirus live updates: Global case total approaches 4 million

    The latest news and information on the pandemic from Yahoo News reporters in the United States and around the world.





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    Capitals forward Brendan Leipsic apologizes after 'inappropriate and offensive' comments go public

    Washington Capitals forward Brendan Leipsic suddenly finds himself in hot water. A private group chat featuring Leipsic was leaked on Wednesday, including misogynistic comments made by the NHLer.



    • Sports/Hockey/NHL

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    CFL resumes talks on potential contingency plans with season in jeopardy

    CFL, CFLPA were scheduled to meet Friday to continue talks on potential contingency plans due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was first gathering after CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie's admission Thursday night the most likely scenario for the league is a cancelled 2020 season.



    • Sports/Football/CFL

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    Capitals waive Brendan Leipsic after misogynistic comments made public

    The Washington Capitals placed Brendan Leipsic on unconditional waivers on Friday, two days after it was revealed the forward made misogynistic comments in a private group chat. The team said the move was made with the intention of terminating Leipsic's contract.



    • Sports/Hockey/NHL

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    Winnipeg-born NHL player Brendan Leipsic’s contract terminated by Washington Capitals

    The Washington Capitals announced in a statement Friday morning that Brendan Leipsic has been placed on unconditional waivers for the purposes of terminating his contract.