Jazz specialist Larry Appelbaum retired from the Library of Congress on March 31, 2020. Larry reflects on his career at the Library of Congress and provides links to interviews, panels, and blog posts he created and facilitated at the Library of Congress.

The NBA has pushed back plans that would allow teams to reopen their practice facilities for at least one week, and cautioned that the new target is far from set in stone.

The NBA gave its approval for teams to reopen their practice facilities on a limited basis on Friday, but only three teams have confirmed they will. And Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is in no hurry for his team to join the list.

1. Bharat Biotech to lead human monoclonal antibodies project  The Hindu
2. Bharat Biotech leads CSIR project to develop antibodies against Covid-19  Times of India
3. Bharat Biotech To Lead CSIR’s Project To Develop Human Monoclonal Antibodies For Covid-19 Therapy  Swarajya
4. Bharat Biotech to develop human antibodies for COVID-19 therapy  Telangana Today
5. Bharat Biotech vows human monoclonal antibodies to neutralise COVID-19 in 6 months  Mumbai Mirror
6. View Full coverage on Google News

Hobbies during quarantine: How they can help us in a pandemic  Today.com

Bayern Munich has secured Canadian soccer star Alphonso Davies for another two years through June 2025, with club officials and the teenager donning surgical masks to ink the deal during the global pandemic.

A showman and all-star with the Milwaukee Wave, Canadian Ian Bennett is a marquee goal-scorer in the Major Arena Soccer League. Still, the 36-year-old Hamilton native flies under the radar north of the border.

Teenaged Edmonton soccer star Alphonso Davies said he welcomes being a role model to young kids and wants to put his platform to good use.

The number of cases of COVID-19 in First Nations reserves continues to rise this week, with 161 confirmed positive cases reported as of May 5.

This week on CBC Kitchener-Waterloo's The Morning Edition, we heard about a bagpipe duo performing outside of long-term care homes, a retreat welcoming foreign workers and ducklings saved from a storm drain.

Former Hamilton Tiger-Cats running back and three time Grey Cup champion Dave Fleming has died. He was 76. The Tiger-Cats made the announcement on Thursday. A cause of death was not provided.

Officials with the Saskatchewan Health Authority have said people are still gathering and drinking together which has contributed to the spread of the virus.

Don Shula, who won the most games of any NFL coach and led the Miami Dolphins to the only perfect season in league history, died Monday at his home, the team said. He was 90.

When Antje Springman spotted something huddled outside her home, she thought it was one of her chickens. It turned out to be a Great Cormorant.

The string of pratfalls that was the comedic highlight of this year's New Waterford Coal Bowl Classic in Nova Scotia will be seen by millions of TV viewers.

Let’s concentrate on where the need has been shown to be greatest.

Business inventories are the dollar amount of inventories held by manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers. The level of inventories in relation to sales is an important indicator of the near-term direction of production activity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has meant a spike in demand for puppies and an opportunity for scammers who are charging inflated prices for dogs not ready to be adopted out or with missing or bogus papers.

CBC Toronto wants to introduce you to all the people making a difference during the COVID-19 pandemic through a series we're calling Front-line Heroes.

Every few days for the past two weeks, Windsor resident Joseph Antone has loaded up his red pick-up truck with food, water, fruit and other essential supplies for people who need it most.

OPP are investigating a fatal crash that took place in Lakeshore Thursday night.

Cardinal Robert Sarah, head of the Vatican's liturgy office, claims he never signed a petition claiming the coronavirus is an over-hyped "pretext" to deprive the faithful of Mass.

Mary Ellen Dalgleish, a poultry expert at Purity Feeds in Kamloops, B.C., believes the increased interest in backyard chickens follows concerns about food security when consumers saw grocery store shelves cleared out early in the COVID-19 pandemic in B.C.

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. 

Some residents of Canmore, Alta., are mourning the death of an unusual elk that went by the name of Marvin. He was known to frequent backyards and hang out with pets.

Flattening the curve has been so successful and two areas around Hamilton — Brant and Haldimand-Norfolk — haven't had a new case of COVID-19 in three days, and Burlington has only had two.

Government restrictions designed to limit the spread of COVID-19 have virtually crippled Ontario's wine-making industry, as retail and wholesale revenues dry up but the costs of producing wine remains constant.

Flurries or rain showers are in the forecast for Hamilton on Friday, Environment Canada says.

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Close to 300 series at various frequencies for 60 countries have been updated.

Equities are likely to keep trading in volatile ranges until the many conflicting narratives in the market give way to a singular message for investors.

Equities have rallied since 2017 and yet the expected growth in dividends has declined since then. Is the fall in long-term interest rates to be blamed?

Information technology, health care, and consumer discretionary stocks that outperformed in the last decade have done well in the first four months of 2020.

Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers by Eleonora Granziera and Markus Sihvonen

Central Bank of Chile Working Papers by Tomás Gómez, Alejandro Jara and David Moreno

Penn State’s PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience (PROSPER) project is continuing to connect and engage Pennsylvania families and keep schools informed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 2020 "Expanding Empathy" lecture series has moved online and added a lecture on "The Altruistic Brain," as well as a panel discussion on empathy in the time of COVID-19, both to be held on April 29 via Zoom.

David Dowdy, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, will deliver the presentation “Simple Principles for Interpreting Complex Models: How to Make Sense of COVID-19 Projections,” at 4 p.m. via Zoom webinar on Thursday, April 30, as the next presentation in its Dean’s Lecture Series: Perspectives on the Pandemic.

Several European countries, including Switzerland and Germany, are demanding all user data generated by coronavirus contact tracing apps be stored on-device, rather than aggregated on a centralized server.

Amazon has reissued its popular Apple Watch deal, dropping the Series 5 Watches with Cellular to $399 after a $100 price cut. Multiple styles are on sale and in stock.

Mother's Day may be tomorrow, but you can still grab a great deal on Apple hardware with prices starting at just $95. Take advantage of the return of the popular $100 discount on Apple Watch Series 5 styles, plus a new $375 markdown on 16-inch MacBook Pros and flash deals on iPod touch models.

Do you enjoy making home improvements? Do you have a flare for design and have some SOLIDWORKS skills? Perhaps, you just want to install a fence? Depending on when and where you purchased your home it may have a fence

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CNA Staff, Apr 22, 2020 / 05:02 pm (CNA).- A Sri Lankan priest criticized the government’s response to last year’s Easter bombings, saying the failure to thoroughly investigate has amounted to a betrayal of the people.

Father Nishantha Cooray spoke to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on the first anniversary of the bombings that targeted numerous sites across the country, including three churches, on April 21, 2019. The Easter attacks claimed over 259 lives and injured at least 500 more.

Police made 135 arrests following the attacks. Former president of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena created a presidential commission to look into the perpetrators behind the bombings. Current President Gotabaya Rajapaksa appointed a similar committee.

But Cooray, who ministered at victims’ funerals, argued that the actions undertaken so far are inadequate. He warned that if the government does not take the investigation more seriously, it could lead to more attacks in the future.

“Although we have completed one year [since the bombings], no acceptable step has been taken in arresting the persons involved in the crime,” he said.

The priest argued that politicians made promises of a thorough investigation, and gained votes by doing so, but have not followed through on these promises.

“The newly elected government started the second chapter of the same book with the same writing style… They did not want to hurt the Muslim politicians,” he said.

“Now, we feel as if we are betrayed. Just to arouse the emotions of the people, the representatives of the government say something about the investigations [into the bombings]. It is only a good slogan for the next election.”

The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Sri Lanka has appealed to the government to appoint an independent commission to conduct an impartial inquiry.

Commemorating the attacks on their one-year anniversary, parishes in Sri Lanka rang church bells, encouraged people to observe a two-minute period of silence, and lit lamps in memory of the dead victims.

While public Masses have been canceled in Sri Lanka because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith of Colombo live-streamed Easter Mass on April 12. During the live stream, Ranjith voiced forgiveness for the attackers.

“[W]e meditated on Christ's teachings and loved them, forgave them and had pity on them,” he said, according to Vatican News.

“We did not hate them and return them the violence. Resurrection is the complete rejection of selfishness,” the cardinal said.

 

CNA Staff, May 9, 2020 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Pakistan’s government has declined to include the Ahmadi religious group in its National Commission for Minorities, drawing attention to the group whose Muslim self-identification is rejected by many Muslims.

In a note seen by Reuters, Pakistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs said Ahmadis should not be included in the commission “given the religious and historical sensitivity of the issue.” Pakistan’s constitution does not recognize the Ahmadis as Muslim.

However, Ahmadis consider themselves part of Islam. The movement was founded in 1889 in British-ruled India. They consider their founder Mirza Ghulam Ahmad a “subordinate prophet.” Other Muslims see this as a violation of the tenet that Muhammad was the last prophet.

There are about 500,000 Ahmadis in Pakistan and up to 20 million adherents worldwide. Some observers estimate the Ahmadi population in Pakistan is higher, but persecution encourages Ahmadis to hide their identity.

Pakistan’s religious freedom record has been a matter of international concern.

The 2020 report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has said Ahmadis continue to face “severe persecution from authorities as well as societal harassment due to their beliefs.”

Both government authorities and mobs target their places of worship. In October 2019, the report said, police in Punjab partially demolished a 70-year-old Ahmadiyya mosque.

Pakistan’s National Commission for Minorities gives some status, voice, and protections to minorities in a country where over 90% of people identify as Muslim.

A Hindu has been nominated to chair the minorities commission, whose members include representatives of Christian, Kalash, Sikh, and Zoroastrian communities. Government officials and the head of Pakistan’s Council of Islamic Ideology also have commission seats.

State Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan, a vocal opponent of including the Ahmadis on the commission, has referred to them as agents of chaos.

“If they want to avail constitutional rights they must accept the constitution first,” he told Reuters. “The Pakistani constitution considers them non-Muslims.”

Usman Ahmad, an Ahmadi representative, told Reuters it is a “complete myth” that they did not accept the constitution. He added that many people disagree with parts of the constitution but still have rights under it.   

He said his community is used to exclusion and has never accepted classification as non-Muslim.

“We’ve never joined such commissions that require us to accept our non-Muslim status,” he said.

Minister of Information Shibli Faraz has said the rights of all people were fully respected in the handling of the commission.

“Every country has the sovereign right to make judgments according to its ground realities,” he told Reuters.

Khan, the Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, had posted to Twitter, then deleted, a comment “There is only one punishment for insulting the Prophet - chopping off the head.” He said he believed in “legal procedures and court proceedings” for those accused of blasphemy. Twitter told him to delete the post, Reuters reports.

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws impose strict punishment on those who desecrate the Quran or who defame or insult Muhammad. Although the government has never executed a person under the blasphemy laws, accusations alone have inspired mob and vigilante violence.

The laws, introduced in the 1980s, are reportedly used to settle scores or to persecute religious minorities. While non-Muslims constitute only 3 percent of the Pakistani population, 14 percent of blasphemy cases have been levied against them.

Many of those accused of blasphemy are murdered, and advocates of changing the law are also targeted by violence.

The Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer was one such critic of the law who was assassinated in January 2011.

Just months later, in March 2011, Shahbaz Bhatti, the first Federal Minister For Minorities Affairs and the only Christian in Pakistan’s cabinet, was assassinated by extremists who characterized him as a blasphemer. Bhatti had criticized the law and defended Asia Bibi, a Catholic woman sentenced to death by hanging in 2010 for blasphemy.

Bibi spent nine years on death row, but left Pakistan for Canada in 2019 at the age of 53 after her death sentence was overturned in October 2018.

The verdict and her subsequent release from prison sparked protests from Islamic hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws.

In Punjab last year, a mob attacked a Christian community after a mosque broadcast over loudspeaker a claim that the Christians had insulted Islam. In another incident in Karachi, false blasphemy accusations against four Christian women prompted mob violence that forced nearly 200 Christian families to flee their homes, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said.

The situation in Pakistan has attention from some prominent Catholics.

In a Jan. 21, 2020 letter written on behalf of Philadelphia’s Pakistani Catholic community, then-Archbishop of Philadelphia Charles J. Chaput encouraged Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan to shape a culture of religious freedom

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s latest annual report said religious freedom conditions in Pakistan continued to deteriorate last year, citing “The systematic enforcement of blasphemy and anti-Ahmadiyya laws, and authorities’ failure to address forced conversions of religious minorities—including Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs—to Islam.”

The bipartisan federal commission advises the U.S. government on policy. Its report recommended that the U.S. government name Pakistan a country of particular concern for “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”

In December 2018, for the first time, the U.S. State Department designated Pakistan a “Country of Particular Concern.” The designation, which can trigger sanctions under U.S. law, had been recommended by the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom in 2017 and 2018.

The latest commission report recommended that Pakistan be re-designated a “Country of Particular Concern,” given “systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.”

Despite knowing very little about the Androy region, OMers Fara and Herimanina went willingly and have seen God at work.

The impact of baseball as an outreach tool is growing far beyond the first teams that began nine years ago in Érd.

OM Hungary encourages local Hungarian pastors and their congregations through the Bus4Life during the Easter season.