Permitted and prohibited activities during lockdown after May 4

Do's and don'ts of Lockdown 3.0

In the second extension for two weeks announced on May 1, starting May 4, some district-wise relaxations were given depending upon the colour of zone. Let us take a look at some of the images from Lockdow 3.0, day 1:

Could wastewater spread the novel coronavirus?

The leak released huge amounts of Styrene - a benzoic compound - into the surrounding areas, leading to many people falling sick and leaving at least 10 dead.

As most of us have spent the past two months in quarantine to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 pandemic, we recognize this unexpected crisis has dramatically changed our lives, country, economy and even our freedoms.

Just as the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the twin towers reframed and reshaped our national approach to security, this pandemic will have long-reaching effects on the way we interact with others at work, play and even how we worship from here on.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 is not finished with us. Even as it subsides in many states, we are being warned that it will resurge in the fall and winter months. Many lives and our economic stability will depend on elected officials’ ability to set aside the politics-as-usual, I-win-you-lose attitude.

These new times call not only for a Congress with a no-nonsense, solution-driven mind-set but members with the right experience and expertise. Among all of the candidates running to succeed Rep. David Loebsack, my life has uniquely prepared me for the challenges ahead to effectively protect us while minimizing the inevitable financial burden and social disruption.

I understand what it means to grow up in a working-class family and to work hard to achieve goals. I grew up as one of eight children of a father who was a U.S. Air Force enlisted man and a mother who had a general education degree. After being badly burned in an accident, I decided I would become a doctor.

I left home at 16 to attend community college, enlisted in the Army, eventually completing nursing school and then medical school. In all, I served 24 years on active duty and in the reserves. That experience taught me a great deal about discipline, organization and service to country.

Peers and former Gov. Terry Branstad have entrusted me in key leadership roles, electing me as president of the Iowa Medical Society and appointing me as director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, respectively.

In 2018, voters in southeast Iowa elected me in a Senate district that tilts Democratic. I believe it was because they see in me what they know to be true of themselves: the tenacity and perseverance to never quit fighting to better themselves and their communities and create a better future for their children and grandchildren.

The next session of Congress will require leaders with the knowledge and toughness to make difficult but necessary decisions based on facts, not emotion or partisanship. That’s why I’m running for Congress.

Mariannette Miller-Meeks is a candidate in the Republican primary for Iowa’s 2nd Congressional District.

The Inlander is a community newspaper covering news, politics, events, happy hour, everything that's happening today, things to do on the weekend, in Spokane, Coeur d'Alene, the greater Inland Northwest and beyond.

Unlike postcard mountain resort towns, or the booming, high-tech corridor centered around Denver, Pueblo is Colorado's faded industrial relic. A city struggling to redefine its economy, and its politics following decades as a solidly blue-collar Democratic stronghold. Pueblo is a two-hour drive south from Denver, through prosperous Colorado Springs with its military bases, defense contractors and megachurches. Wide open plains stretch for miles, mountains off in the distance. And then, popping up out of the horizon, stark vertical lines: Smokestacks from the mill that gave this place its nickname, Steel City. Today only about 6% of Pueblo's jobs are in manufacturing after a decades-long decline. Loading... Old timers like Rod Slyhoff remember the day everything changed, back in 1984. "It's in my mind all the time," said Slyhoff, president and CEO of the Pueblo Chamber of Commerce. "I believe it was in March, 6,500 pink slips were issued to the [steel mill company] employees," Slyhoff

Around the world, the number of measles cases is on the rise. Public health officials in the United States have put some of the blame on "anti-vaxxers," who believe that vaccines have destructive side effects and choose not to vaccinate their children. In some communities, school systems have made vaccinations mandatory, touching off political battles over personal and religious liberty. Nick Paumgarten joins Dorothy Wickenden to discuss the political lessons of the movement for the wider "war on science."

Friday on Political Rewind , the primary has been postponed to June 9 so officials can protect poll workers and voters during the coronavirus pandemic. But political campaigns for state and congressional positions on the ballot have not stopped. So how are candidates campaigning under these challenging circumstances?

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

"The black feminist Combahee River Collective manifesto and E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie share the diagnosis that the wealthy and powerful will take every opportunity to hijack activist energies for their own ends."

On the origins of identity politics with black feminist activists:

The term "identity politics" was first popularized by the 1977 manifesto of the Combahee River Collective, an organization of black feminist activists. In a recent interview with the Root and in an op-ed at the Guardian, Barbara Smith, a founding member of the collective, addresses common misconceptions about the term. The manifesto, she explains, was written by black women claiming the right to set their own political agendas. They weren't establishing themselves as a moral aristocracy—they were building a political viewpoint out of common experience to work toward "common problems." As such, they were strongly in favor of diverse people working in coalition, an approach that for Smith was exemplified by the Bernie Sanders campaign's grassroots approach and its focus on social issues that people of many identities face, especially "basic needs of food, housing and healthcare." According to Smith, today's uses of the concept are often "very different than what we intended." "We absolutely did not mean that we would work with people who were only identical to ourselves," she insists. "We strongly believed in coalitions and working with people across various identities on common problems."

The concept of elite capture originated in the study of developing countries to describe the way socially advantaged people tend to gain control over financial benefits meant for everyone, especially foreign aid. But the concept has also been applied more generally to describe how political projects can be hijacked—in principle or in effect—by the well positioned and resourced, as Yang's "step up" demand exemplifies. The idea also helps to explain how public resources such as knowledge, attention, and values get distorted and distributed by our power structures. And it is precisely what stands between us and Smith's urgent vision of coalitional politics.

To better understand the broader dynamic, we can look to philosopher C. Thi Nguyen's work on games. As he explains in his new book Games: Agency as Art (2020), confusing the real world with the carefully incentivized structure of game worlds can lead to a phenomenon he calls "value capture," a process by which we begin with rich and subtle values, encounter simplified versions of them in social life, and then revise our values in the direction of simplicity. Nguyen is careful to point out that value capture doesn't require anyone's deliberate or calculated intervention, only an environment or incentive structure that encourages excess value clarity.

Nguyen stops short of noting that another risk of gamifying values is the unequal distribution of power across participants. But outside of the world of games, power differentials do shape outcomes. Value capture is managed by elites, on purpose or not. In other words, elites don't simply participate in our community; their decisions help to structure it, much in the way that game designers structure the world of games. After all, elites face a simpler version of oppression than non-elites do: whereas working-class black folk are pressed by racial slights and degradation alongside economic problems that might require "socialized medicine" to solve, elites's economic position makes them comfortable enough to focus on their own status and cultural power—often at the expense of non-elites.

The Congressional Black Caucus's cosponsorship of Ronald Reagan's 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act helped supercharge mass incarceration by establishing mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines and adding $1.7 billion toward the drug war while welfare programs were cut. This legislation solved the problem for the black elites of the CBC of how to seem involved with respect to the crack cocaine epidemic. But with the law's passage, working-class African Americans went from dealing with one very complex problem to weathering two interlocking ones: the drug epidemic itself—unsolved by this draconian measure—and the surge of discriminatory law enforcement the legislation unleashed.

Elite capture is not unique to black politics; it is a general feature of politics, anywhere and everywhere. I could just as easily have focused on the world of elite universities. In Philosophy of African American Studies (2015), for example, Stephen Ferguson II makes a similar argument about the elite capture of black studies, which owes its existence to the radical student movements of the 1960s and '70s but has since been "turned into a bureaucratic cog in the academic wheel controlled by administrators, with virtually no democratic input from students or the black working-class community." I could also have kept the general perspective but reversed the role of race and class. In socialist organizations, for example, we might find that white people likewise tend to capture the group's politics.

Or we could look away from race to a different set of identity characteristics altogether. In the Buzzfeed article "You Wanted Same-Sex Marriage? Now You Have Pete Buttigieg," Shannon Keating laments the trajectory of mainstream queer politics away from the more radical elements dramatically on display in the Stonewall riot of 1969 and ACT UP. Or take how The Wing, a coworking space touting itself as a "women's utopia," exploits the women who work for it.

And, of course, elite abuse of identity politics isn't limited to the United States. It is also a particularly salient problem in Global South politics, where national, ethnic, and caste identities are shaped by an unstable mix of indigenous and colonial history. Peace studies scholar Camilla Orjuela argues that, from Sri Lanka to Kenya, politics in multiethnic Global South societies easily fall into cycles of expecting elites to allocate resources along blatantly ethnic and regional lines. After all, the thinking going, the elites of every other ethnic group will do the same when they're in power. Journalist John Githongo describes such ethnic elites as "creatures of patronage and . . . influence peddling" who treat the state as a ladder to their own goals rather than an institution of collective responsibility. These conceptual strands are vividly illustrated by the history of the U.S.-backed Haitian dictators "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Duvaliers cynically used tropes drawn from the Vodou religion, popular with the country's poor, to intimidate the citizenry while enriching themselves. At the same time, they unleashed unspeakable violence upon actual Vodou practitioners, fearing the revolutionary potential of the religion, which was instrumental in ending slavery on the island.

As the Combahee River Collective acknowledged, simply participating in activism is no guarantee that we will develop the right kind of political culture; its founding members were veterans of important radical political movements that nevertheless made crucial oversights along the way. Elites have to get involved—actually involved—but that involvement needs to resist elite capture of values and the gamification of political life.

We have our work cut out for us, but fortunately we aren't starting from scratch: there's a rich history to draw from. In the 1960s, feminists held regular group meetings, in houses and apartments, to discuss gender injustice in ways that would have been taboo in mixed company. A set of such "consciousness raising" guidelines by Barbara Smith and fellow activists Tia Cross, Freada Klein, and Beverly Smith provides an example of identity politics work as the Combahee River Collective envisioned it. The exercise starts by asking participants to examine their own shortcomings ("When did you first notice yourself treating people of color in a different way?"), but ends by asking how they can use an element of shared oppression as a bridge to unite people across difference ("In what ways can shared lesbian oppression be used to build connections between white women and women of color?"). Because, in the end, we're in it together—and, from the point of view of identity politics, that is the whole point.

Compared to the lockdowns and shuttered businesses in countries across the world, Sweden is an outlier. Swedish officials have advised citizens to work from home and avoid travel, but most schools and businesses have remained open. This relaxed approach aims to minimize impact on the economy, and slow the spread of the virus through what is known as “herd immunity.” Now, as the U.S. weighs further spreading the disease against the impact of a tanked economy, some Americans — particularly conservatives — are looking toward Sweden’s model as an option. On Second Thought unpacks the merits, risks and strategy behind Sweden’s approach, and what has become a political talking point here in the U.S.

Compared to the lockdowns and shuttered businesses in countries across the world, Sweden is an outlier. Swedish officials have advised citizens to work from home and avoid travel, but most schools and businesses have remained open. This relaxed approach aims to minimize impact on the economy and slow the spread of the virus through what is known as “herd immunity.” But striving for herd immunity without a controlled vaccine in place can also prove risky.

Compared to the lockdowns and shuttered businesses in countries across the world, Sweden is an outlier. Swedish officials have advised citizens to work from home and avoid travel, but most schools and businesses have remained open. This relaxed approach aims to minimize impact on the economy, and slow the spread of the virus through what is known as “herd immunity.” Now, as the U.S. weighs further spreading the disease against the impact of a tanked economy, some Americans — particularly conservatives — are looking toward Sweden’s model as an option. On Second Thought unpacks the merits, risks and strategy behind Sweden’s approach, and what has become a political talking point here in the U.S.

Compared to the lockdowns and shuttered businesses in countries across the world, Sweden is an outlier. Swedish officials have advised citizens to work from home and avoid travel, but most schools and businesses have remained open. This relaxed approach aims to minimize impact on the economy and slow the spread of the virus through what is known as “herd immunity.” But striving for herd immunity without a controlled vaccine in place can also prove risky.

“The climate crisis is an emergency, it is a crisis and so we need to make major, major changes in our agriculture system.” Ben Lilliston is the Director of Climate Change and Rural strategies at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. He spoke with The Secret Ingredient team–Raj Patel, Tom Philpott, and Rebecca McInroy,...

2020 is here as a new decade, ready or not. But decades as clear political, cultural, social and historical eras are as elusive as centuries.

NEW YORK (AP) — A year ago, marijuana legalization looked like it was on a roll in the Northeast — it had already passed in three of the region’s states and was a priority for governors in three more, including the populous New York. Now, after legislative efforts stalled and a vaping sickness stirred new […]

Re: “How we got here: One country, several nations” [May 3, Opinion]: Thank you to David Horsey for an excellent column that summarized the book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard (and also provided a colorful map). It is a book I have shared over […]

Re: “How we got here: One country, several nations” [May 3, Opinion]: Thank you to David Horsey for an excellent column that summarized the book “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America” by Colin Woodard (and also provided a colorful map). It is a book I have shared over […]

Joe Biden easily defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders in three major primaries on Tuesday, all but extinguishing Sanders’ chances for a comeback, as anxious Americans turned out to vote amid a series of cascading disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic. Biden, the former vice president, won by wide margins in Florida and Illinois and also carried Arizona, […]

Presidential hopeful Joe Biden is speaking out about the sexual assault allegation against him. He's doing the difficult balancing act of respecting the accuser but denying the charges.

Extreme leaders, inequality, and unhappy citizens: what happened to the promise of a new day in Eastern and Central Europe? From the fall of the Wall to this pandemic era, looking at the legacy of an ill-fitting “politics of imitation,” with 2020 Gelber Prize-winners Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes.

Some pundits say capitalism can never recover from Covid-19, and there will need to be bigger government. Others say the future economic recovery rests with the business sector. Guests: Adam Tooze Historian of economic crises Professor of History and Director of the European Institute at Columbia University Rana Foroohar Global economic analyst with CNN, and global business columnist with The Financial Times Percy Allan Economist, and former Secretary of NSW Treasury Public sector advisor Professor at the Institute of Public Policy and Management, UTS and The global pandemic has been revealing in many ways in how people, countries and governments manage the situation. But what is it saying about the two major superpowers, the US and China? And where does that leave Australia, a question which has been on the minds of foreign policy experts for some time; now many of them feel its time has come. Guests: John Prideux, US editor The Economist and host of the podcast, Checks and Balance. Richard McGregor, senior fellow at the Lowy Institute, author of numerous books on East Asia, his latest is Xi Jinping; The Backlash Allan Gyngell, National president of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and host of podcast Australia in the World.

Is the pandemic having a chastening effect on our politics, bringing voters back to the real-world consequences of political decisions, or is the pandemic in fact playing right into the hands of populist politicians, creating ideal conditions in which to fan the flames or fear, resentment and mutual suspicion?

Widely respected Labor MP Mike Kelly is retiring, which means a by-election in his marginal seat of Eden-Monaro is on the cards.

The re-election of the Berejiklian Government for a third term has provided a morale boost for the federal Liberals, but any relief being felt will be tempered by a much bigger problem: what to do about voter discontent in the bush.

PM Morrison says post pandemic it won't be "business as usual " but what should a reform agenda entail? Meanwhile restrictions in some states ease and the population downloads the COVID 19 tracing app. Laura Tingle assesses another viral week in national politics.

Politics loves the stage and it seems the stage loves politics.

The National Party is again embroiled in bitter infighting after Andrew Constance abandoned his bid for Liberal pre-selection for the seat.

Many Australians are dissatisfied with the narrow economic focus of politics, research by the University of Melbourne’s ANDI Project confirms. They want the progress of their society to be measured by a much broader range of factors, like health, environmental standards and youth wellbeing. They’re not alone. Across the globe there’s a growing movement to move “beyond GDP”, to start planning for the future based on wider models of societal progress.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison says Tony Abbott's comments were not his words and Bill Shorten says Bob Hawke would've dismissed Abbott's comments about having both a 'Labor heart and head'. May 17, 2019.

A dumped Liberal party mayor has opened up on the faction bosses he believes are wrecking the Liberals. Steve Russell was Mayor of Hornsby Council in northern Sydney for four and a half years and was expecting to stay on as Mayor after elections next month. But he'd fallen out with powerbrokers in the party who engineered the recently announced decision to abandon merging smaller councils into bigger, more cost-efficient operations. It appears his successor, the former Federal MP Philip Ruddock, knew Mr Russell's fate before the party wielded the knife.

Territorians will not benefit from a government dominated by independent candidates, insists CLP hopeful Tracey Hayes as she starts her challenge against Chief Minister Michael Gunner.

ABC Rural asks a group of industry leaders at this year's NT Cattlemen's Association conference to share their views on challenges and opportunities in 2019.

(United States Ninth Circuit) - In an action brought under 45 U.S.C. section 1983, seeking to enjoin the California Attorney General from requiring plaintiff to disclose the names and contributions of the it's "significant donors" on Internal Revenue Form 990 Schedule B, which plaintiff must file with the state in order to maintain its registered status with the Registry of Charitable Trusts, the district court's denial of a preliminary injunction is affirmed where: 1) the disclosure requirement did not injure plaintiff's exercise of the First Amendment rights to freedom of association; and 2) the disclosure requirement is not preempted by Congress for privacy purposes under 26 U.S.C. section 6104, part of the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

President Donald Trump maintained over the weekend that it’s safe for states to reopen during the pandemic and voiced support for anti-lockdown protesters that have rallied at statehouses in Ohio and Michigan. Former Vice President Joe Biden breaks weeks of silence and flatly denied the sexual assault allegation brought against him by former Senate aide Tara Reade, telling MSNBC “it never, never happened.”

Michael McEwan speaks to Ethan Young, Civic Participation Officer at Inclusion Scotland about Access to Politics, a project which aims to support disabled people into politics.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes

Support this Podcast by visiting Jim’s Patreon Page   David Collum is the Betty R. Miller Professor of Chemistry at Cornell University. He is the intellectual utility infielder of internet commentary, covering all the bases: culture, politics, finance, science, and technology, with often surprising views on the the predicaments of our time. Here we attempt to more »

The post KunstlerCast 326 — Confab with David Collum of Cornell U about Corona Virus, Markets Gone Wild, and Politics appeared first on Kunstler.

The court's slapdash intervention didn't serve the Constitution, just the GOP's chances in one election. Sound familiar?

The Justice Department weighed in on a social distancing case in Mississippi to strike a blow for Trump's side in the coronavirus culture wars.

Allison Wisk (@allisonwisk), an experienced political editor with an eye for accountability journalism and innovation, is joining The Times as California politics editor.

"Riverdale" captures the aesthetic of John Cameron Mitchell's "Hedwig and the Angry Inch." Whether the musical's queer politics are intact is another matter.

The Sundance Film Festival is where luminaries from the worlds of art, commerce, and politics meet over collagen-infused cocktails to talk about movies.