Yahoo MoviesRussell Westbrook's been inconsistent but play trending up
Ryan Knaus breaks down Russell Westbrook's inconsistent season thus far and why he's hopeful his play is trending upwards.
Ryan Knaus breaks down Russell Westbrook's inconsistent season thus far and why he's hopeful his play is trending upwards.
British actress Helen McCrory, whose notable TV credits included turns on Peaky Blinders and Penny Dreadful, has died of cancer. She was 52. McCrory’s husband, Billions star Damian Lewis, shared the news in a tweet on Friday, writing, “I’m heartbroken to announce that after an heroic battle with cancer, the beautiful and mighty woman that is Helen McCrory […]
Climate change is not taking a break from wreaking havoc in 2020, with the joint highest global temperatures on record, rampant bushfires, the faster rates of sea level rise and the extinction of some species.
The "2021 Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Market - Size, Share, COVID Impact Analysis and Forecast to 2027" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - April 16, 2021) - The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:To: All persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired securities of Canoo Inc. ("Canoo") (NASDAQ: GOEV) between August 18, 2020 and March 29, 2021. You are hereby notified that a securities class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. To get more information ...
New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - April 16, 2021) - The following statement is being issued by Levi & Korsinsky, LLP:To: All persons or entities who purchased or otherwise acquired securities of Ebang International Holdings Inc. ("Ebang International") (NASDAQ: EBON) between June 26, 2020 and April 5, 2021. You are hereby notified that a securities class action lawsuit has been commenced in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. ...
Follow live scorecard from fourth and final T20I played between South Africa and Pakistan
James Maddison, Ayoze Perez and Hamza Choudhury were axed for last weekend's 3-2 Premier League defeat to West Ham after they broke Covid-19 protocols
BETHEL, Alaska — A village in Alaska has mandated that only fully vaccinated people will be allowed into the community's stores and businesses. Kongiganak had 50% of its eligible residents vaccinated with at least one dose as of April 9, KYUK-AM reported Wednesday, citing the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. Kongiganak reported that it had a population of 439 people in the 2010 U.S. Census. Sheila Phillip, the Kongiganak Traditional Council secretary, said that people who are fully vaccinated can go inside the village's two stores if they wear masks and follow social distancing guidelines. People not fully vaccinated "can still make phone orders and their orders are delivered to their home," Phillip said. The general manager for Qemirtalek Coast Corporation, Harvey Paul, said his village store allows four people inside. Paul said his employees verify that a customer is vaccinated by checking that their name is on a list provided by the tribe, KYUK-AM reported. “Every couple of days, they’ll give us a new list,” Paul said. “The list keeps getting bigger and bigger. That’s a good sign, you know?” Paul said allowing only vaccinated people to shop in-person is helping increase vaccination rates in the village. “It gives them the incentive, ‘Hey look, I better get vaccinated too so I can go to the store,’” Paul said. “The best way to curb this virus is to get vaccinated.” Bethel and other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages are allowing people to enter stores without proving they have been vaccinated. Phillip said Kongiganak has taken stricter precautions because over a third of village's residents have contracted the virus and two people have died from COVID-19. “Our whole community was just devastated by the first death,” Phillip said. “And with that in mind, we tried to be as strict as we could for as long as we could." Common symptoms of COVID-19 include fever, cough, breathing trouble, sore throat, muscle pain and loss of taste or smell. Most people develop only mild symptoms. But some people, usually those with other medical complications, develop more severe symptoms, including pneumonia. Sometimes people with a coronavirus infection display no symptoms. The Associated Press
Aegis Life, Inc. announced the first participants dosed in a Phase 1/2 trial with Entos DNA vaccine Covigenix VAX-001, inducing immunity to SARS-CoV-2
RIO DE JANEIRO — More than a dozen Senate Democrats sent a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday complaining of a woeful environmental track record by his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, and urging him to condition any support for Amazon preservation on significant progress reducing deforestation. The letter was signed by senators including Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Bob Menendez, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. It comes just days before Biden is expected to meet with Bolsonaro and other foreign leaders at a U.S.-organized climate summit that was a major plank of his campaign pledge to more aggressively fight climate change. The letter seems aimed at curtailing a fledgling bid by Bolsonaro, a far-right climate skeptic who was a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, to refashion himself as a willing partner of Biden on the environment in the hopes of securing billions of dollars in foreign aid to promote sustainable development in the Amazon. The senators warn that failure to slow deforestation will also affect their willingness to support Brazil’s bid to join the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — a long-sought goal of Bolsonaro. The 15 senators, who also include former presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, said they support co-operation on the Amazon between the U.S. and Brazilian governments, but questioned Bolsonaro’s credibility. “President Bolsonaro’s rhetoric and policies have effectively given a green light to the dangerous criminals operating in the Amazon, allowing them to dramatically expand their activities, ” the senators wrote in the letter obtained by The Associated Press, citing recent reporting on abuses by Human Rights Watch. A U.S.-Brazil partnership “can only be possible if the Bolsonaro administration begins to take Brazil’s climate commitments seriously — and only if it protects, supports, and engages meaningfully with the many Brazilians who can help the country fulfil them,” the lawmakers add. Bolsonaro has sided with powerful agrobusiness interests, cast aspersions on environmental activists and snarled at European leaders who decried deforestation in the Amazon as destruction of the world's largest rainforest has surged toward its worst level since 2008. On the campaign trail, Biden proposed countries provide Brazil with $20 billion to fight deforestation and said the country should face repercussions if it fails. At the time, Bolsonaro labeled Biden’s comments as “regrettable” and “disastrous.” Bilateral talks on the environment with Brazil began on Feb. 17, led by Biden’s special climate envoy, John Kerry, The two sides have held regular technical meetings in the run-up to the April 22-23 climate summit, which is taking place online due to the coronavirus pandemic. Brazil is striving to show its shift in rhetoric amounts to more than empty talk. In a seven-page letter addressed to Biden on April 14, Bolsonaro recognized that his government needs to boost its performance curtailing illegal logging. He also said he supports sustainable development with economic alternatives for the region’s impoverished residents and that he is committed to eliminating illegal deforestation by 2030. To accomplish those goals, he said Brazil will require outside resources, adding that aid from the U.S. government would be “very welcome.” Rubens Barbosa, a former Brazilian ambassador to the U.S., said it remains to be seen whether the tone of Bolsonaro's letter will match his speech at the summit. Brazil's Environment Minister Ricardo Salles recently told reporters he is seeking $1 billion in foreign assistance to support efforts to reduce deforestation by 30% to 40% in 12 months and that, without that sum, he would be unable to set a target. Brazilian spending to protect the environment has been sliding for years, and under Bolsonaro plunged another 25% this year, the lowest level in two decades. The ministry didn't respond to an AP request for comment about its proposals. The U.S. senators argue Biden must see success before writing a check. They argue Bolsonaro has derided the environmental regulator and sabotaged its enforcement capabilities, sought to weaken protections for Indigenous territories, exhibited contempt for environmentalists and been reluctant to curb lawlessness that fuels destruction and violence. “Any U.S. assistance to Brazil related to the Amazon should be conditioned on the Brazilian government making significant, sustainable progress in two critical areas: reducing deforestation and ending impunity for environmental crimes and violence against forest defenders,” the senators wrote. Climatologists have warned that continued deforestation will push the Amazon beyond a tipping point, and its subsequent decomposition would release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon dioxide, making the Paris Agreement’s climate goals even harder to achieve. However, Brazil has shown itself capable of driving down Amazon deforestation in the past, having reached all-time low in 2012. That started ticking upwards in the years thereafter, then exploded in the first year of Bolsonaro’s administration and rose again last year. Amid outcry from European governments and threats of divestment by institutional investors, Bolsonaro in 2019 placed the army in charge of tamping down deforestation, despite experts' criticism that soldiers are both costly and untrained for such missions. Preliminary data indicates deforestation has started declining from its record level, though it remains well above the average of the preceding decade. Vice-President Hamilton Mourão, a general who leads the program, announced earlier that the army-led program will end at the end of April, returning enforcement duties to environmental agencies. “Brazilian officials have been scrambling to present Bolsonaro as a committed ally of the Biden administration on climate issues,” said Daniel Wilkinson, who runs Human Rights Watch’s environmental program. “His new climate-friendly rhetoric simply cannot — and should not — be taken seriously in the absence of actual results.” The senators' rebuke comes amid a flurry of domestic efforts in Brazil to cast Bolsonaro’s administration as a bad-faith negotiator. More than 200 nongovernment organizations and networks signed a letter that said climate negotiations with the U.S. and other foreign governments are taking place out of the public view and that no Amazon solutions can be expected from closed-door meetings. They said talks shouldn’t advance until Brazil has cut deforestation rates. A video produced by the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples also warned Biden not to trust Bolsonaro to negotiate the Amazon’s future. Barbosa, who was Brazil’s ambassador to the U.S. for both centre-right and leftist governments from 1999 to 2004, said Bolsonaro will face difficulty overcoming the “credibility gap” created by his newfound discourse about fighting deforestation and the negative results of the last few years. “Those two things must be reconciled,” he said. “Until then, no one will enter into serious negotiations with Brazil to transfer resources.” ___Goodman reported from Miami. David Biller And Joshua Goodman, The Associated Press
The BJP opposed CM Banerjee’s suggestion to club all phases, urging the EC to hold elections as per schedule.
Ottawa is reporting 345 new COVID-19 cases and one more death. Hospitalizations have topped 100 for the first time. The Outaouais has 151 more COVID-19 cases. Today's Ottawa update Ottawa Public Health (OPH) is reporting 345 new COVID-19 cases and one more death Friday, as hospitalizations top 100 for the first time since the pandemic began. Another 181 cases are now considered resolved for a total of 3,116 known active cases in the city. The city's numbers have been steadily rising during this third wave, due largely to coronavirus variants that are highly contagious and, in many cases, more dangerous. Ontario is under a provincewide stay-at-home order until at least early May. Schools are closed indefinitely, and the province is reportedly considering further restrictions. Numbers to watch 218.8: The record-high weekly incidence rate, the rolling seven-day total of new COVID-19 cases expressed per 100,000 residents. 10.5%: The percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back positive. 104: The record-high number of Ottawa residents in hospital with COVID-19. Of those, a record 33 are in intensive care. 1.21: The number of people infected by a single COVID-19 case, or R(t). The spread of the coronavirus is considered under control if that figure is kept below one. 211,425: The number of Ottawa residents who have received their first vaccine dose, an increase of more than 16,000 since Wednesday. 26,411: The number of Ottawa residents who have received both vaccine doses. The area with blue represents a period of unreliable data because of the spring melt.(613covid.ca) Across the region Public health officials in the Outaouais reported 151 new cases Friday. That region is under Quebec's strictest measures until at least April 25. The Leeds, Grenville and Lanark District Health Unit reported 13 more cases Thursday.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration says the U.S. is setting up a $1.7 billion national network to identify and track coronavirus variants and analyze disease threats. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says the U.S. is averaging nearly 70,000 new daily coronavirus cases, up from about 53,000 just four weeks ago. Hospitalizations have been trending higher, and deaths were up for the third day in a row. Along with relaxed restrictions on gatherings and indoor dining, the emergence of variants that spread more easily is part of the reason for the worsening trend. White House officials unveiled a national network strategy featuring three components: a major funding boost for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and state health departments to ramp up gene-mapping of coronavirus samples; the creation of six “centres of excellence” partnerships with universities to conduct research and develop technologies for gene-based surveillance of pathogens; and building a data system to better share and analyze information on emerging disease threats. The effort relies on money approved by Congress as part of President Joe Biden’s coronavirus relief package. Typically, the government scrambles to counter a potential threat, but funding dries up when it recedes. The new genomic surveillance initiative aims to create a permanent infrastructure. “It’s a transformative amount of money,” says Mary Lee Watts, federal affairs director at the American Society for Microbiology. ___ THE VIRUS OUTBREAK: — China’s success at controlling the coronavirus outbreak leaves its public reluctant to get vaccinated — Shortage of intubation drugs is the latest problem the pandemic has brought in Brazil — Louisiana is making a full-court press to get shots in arms, with creative outreach to make it easy to get vaccinated — Tokyo Olympic organizers again say postponed games will open in just 100 days despite Japan's virus surge — Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine ___ HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING: ROME — Italian Premier Mario Draghi announced Italy will take a “reasoned risk” in reopening restaurants with outdoor seating and school at all grade levels in some regions starting April 26. The openings will apply to regions that have the lowest tiers of restrictions. Mask-wearing and social distancing will be “scrupulously observed.” Italy’s 10 p.m. curfew will remain in place. It’s the first sign of a gradual re-opening since the fall virus surge. Draghi says the “reasoned risks was based on data, which is improving but not dramatically.” He calls the first phase in the opening “is an extraordinary opportunity not just for the economy but for our social lives.” ___ JOHANNESBURG — South Africa took the first step in its mass vaccination campaign on Friday by starting online registrations for the elderly to receive shots beginning next month. People age 60 years and older will be vaccinated first as they are regarded as having the highest risk of being hospitalized or dying from COVID-19. South Africa’s inoculation drive is dependent upon millions of doses of the Pfizer vaccine arriving in the country within weeks. So far South Africa has vaccinated only 290,000 of its 1.2 million health care workers, using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. This week, the government announced it would pause vaccinating its health workers with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine following a report by the U.S FDA. ___ INDIANAPOLIS — Drugmaker Eli Lilly says its COVID-19 antibody drug should no longer be given to patients alone because treatment combinations work better fighting some variants of the coronavirus. The company is asking U.S. regulators to revoke their emergency authorization for the use of bamlanivimab alone. Lilly announced Friday there are no new safety concerns with the drug, but the combination with another drug etesevimab fights more of the emerging COVID-19 variants in the U.S. Last November, bamlanivimab became the first antibody authorized for emergency use in the U.S. as a COVID-19 treatment. Antibodies are proteins that attach to a virus and block it from infecting cells. The combination of drugs also has received an emergency use authorization from federal regulators. The government has been supplying treatments to hospitals, and last month it stopped delivering bamlanivimab alone in favour of treatment combinations. ___ BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she has received a first dose of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine. In a tweet sent by her spokesman, Merkel says she had received the vaccine Friday. “I thank everyone involved in the vaccination campaign - and everyone who has let themselves be vaccinated.” The long-time German leader added “vaccination is the key to overcoming the pandemic.” Authorities in Germany recently restricted use of the AstraZeneca vaccine to people age 60 and over, due to concerns about the risk of rare blood clots detected in some people who received the shots. ___ BANGKOK — Thailand announced new restrictions to slow its spread but didn’t institute any curfews or lockdowns. Thai health officials on Friday confirmed 1,582 new cases, raising the total number of confirmed cases to 39,038 and 97 confirmed deaths. Infections have been surging to record highs almost daily since early April. Most of the new cases involve the virus variant first found in Britain. New nationwide protective measures take effect nationwide Sunday for at least two weeks. They include restrictions on school, no gatherings of more than 50 people and closing of bars. Inter-provincial travel is not banned, though some provincial authorities have ordered testing of arrivals. Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha suggested harsher measures could cause economic hardships. ___ MADRID — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez says he is “very hopeful” the country can come up with its own COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year. Sánchez visited Spanish pharmaceutical company HIPRA, in northeastern Spain, which is developing a coronavirus vaccine candidate in partnership with the government. Sánchez says a new shot would still need to go through clinical trials, but he says for Spain it is “fundamental” to have its own response to the pandemic. Spain has ordered 87 million doses of other vaccines, which are to arrive by the end of September. ___ KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine received its first 117,000 doses of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX global vaccine sharing program on Friday. Under a contract between Kyiv and Pfizer, the country expects a shipment of 10 more million doses in May-June. Ukraine reported 17,479 new coronavirus cases on Friday. Ukraine’s chief health doctor, Victor Liashko, says immunization with the Pfizer shot will begin on Sunday in the Kyiv region and offered across the country on Monday. Residents and staff of Ukraine’s retirement homes will be the first in line to get the shot, then it will be offered to emergency officials and border guards. Ukraine started vaccinations in February after receiving 500,000 doses of the AstraZeneca shot from India. The immunization campaign has been hampered by widespread reluctance to take the vaccine, with only 432,817 people getting at least one shot so far. Kyiv has ordered 1.9 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine developed by the Chinese drug maker Sinovac Biotech. Struggling to contain the soaring infections, the Ukrainian authorities introduced lockdown restrictions in many of the country’s regions. Ukraine’s Health Minister Maksym Stepanov says the measures helped stabilize the situation. The former Soviet nation of 41 million has registered 1.9 million cases and more than 39,000 confirmed deaths. ___ DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh recorded 101 new deaths, the highest in a day, raising the nation’s confirmed death toll to 10,181. The country registered another 4,417 positive cases in the last 24 hours, raising the total cases to 711,779, according to the Ministry of Health Affairs, The new figures came amid reports that may hospitals in the capital, Dhaka, were overwhelmed with patients despite a nationwide lockdown. Officials say the number of deaths has increased in recent weeks as new strains of the virus were spreading quickly. They say the number of daily cases has increased seven-fold in a month while the number of deaths has doubled in recent weeks. Using the AstraZeneca vaccine from India’s Serum Institute, some 5.7 million people have been inoculated with the first dose while another 900,000 people have received the second dose. ___ GENEVA — The head of the World Health Organization said coronavirus cases are continuing to rise globally at “worrying” rates and noted that the number of new cases confirmed per week has nearly doubled during the past two months. At a press briefing on Friday, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the number of new cases “is approaching the highest rate of infection that we have seen so far in the pandemic.” Tedros said some countries that had been able to avoid widespread COVID-19 outbreaks are now seeing steep increases, citing Papua New Guinea as an example. “Until the beginning of this year, Papua New Guinea had reported less than 900 cases and nine deaths,” Tedros said. The noted. The country has now identified more than 9,000 cases and 83 deaths, half of which were reported in the last month. “Papua New Guinea is a perfect example of why vaccine equity is so important,” Tedros said, adding that the Pacific island nation has relied on vaccine donations from Australia and the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative. To date, COVAX has shipped about 40 million vaccines to more than 100 countries, or enough to protect about 0.25% of the world’s population. ___ NEW DELHI — The chief executive of India's Serum Institute, the world’s largest maker of vaccines and a critical supplier of the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative, asked U.S. President Joe Biden to lift an embargo on exporting the raw materials needed to makeCOVID-19 vaccines. Adar Poonawalla wrote to Biden on Twitter: “If we are to truly unite in beating this virus, on behalf of the vaccine industry outside the U.S., I humbly request you to lift the embargo of raw material exports out of the U.S. so that vaccine production can ramp up.” Poonawalla told the The Associated Press earlier that the unavailability of certain raw materials, such as the specific medium needed to grow microorganisms, was going to affect the Serum Institute’s production of a vaccine developed by American pharmaceutical company Novavax. The Serum Institute and Novavax have inked a deal to supply 1.1 billion doses of vaccine to COVAX. India on Friday confirmed over 200,000 new virus cases in 24 hours. Amid a surge that has overwhelmed hospitals and left unprepared authorities scrambling, the country has been trying to vaccinate enough people to slow the spread of the virus. To do so, India has paused vaccine exports to other nations. ___ MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte said it’s uncertain when the Philippines can get adequate COVID-19 vaccines while warning more people will die and “the worst of times” is yet to come. Duterte said his administration has done its best despite criticism and he could use emergency power, for example, to take over hotels if hospital room shortages worsen. But he said wealthy nations control the vaccine supply and other countries could hardly do anything but wait. “When will we have that stocks sufficient to vaccinate the people? I really do not know. Nobody knows,” Duterte said in a televised meeting Thursday night with key Cabinet members. “I think before it gets better, we’ll have to go to the worst of times.” “There’s no sufficient supply to inoculate the world. This will take a long time. I’m telling you many more will die here.” The Philippines has received more than 3 million doses of Sinovac and AstraZeneca vaccines, most of it donated by China and through the COVAX arrangement by the World Health Organization. At least 1.2 million people have been given initial doses. The government aims to purchase at least 148 million doses to inoculate about 70 million adult Filipinos but the plan has faced supply problems and delays. The vaccination delays have coincided with an alarming surge in coronavirus infections that the government has been scrambling to ease in the hard-hit capital and four outlying provinces. The Philippines has long been a coronavirus hotspot in Southeast Asia with more than 904,000 infections and 15,594 deaths. ___ COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark is opening up faster than planned and allowing restaurants to serve patrons indoors starting Wednesday, providing they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus or can show negative test results. The limit on outdoor public gatherings will be raised to 50 from 10 on April 21. Soccer fans will be allowed to return to stadiums. A majority of Danish lawmakers agreed Friday on the reopening plan for next week. Health Minister Magnus Heunicke say, “It will shape our daily lives in a positive direction.” Denmark's coronavirus outbreak is largely under control. Hair salons and smaller shopping malls already have reopened. On Wednesday, people can go to larger shopping malls and department stores. ___ SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom says nearly half of Californians eligible for vaccination have received at least one shot against the coronavirus. He is urging more residents to sign up for appointments and not let apprehension get in the way of getting protected against the illness. The nation’s most populous state on Thursday began vaccinating anyone age 16 and over regardless of occupation or health condition. The move comes as California and other states have seen vaccine supplies rise in recent weeks. But officials are working to address hesitancy, particularly in some of the communities hit hardest by the pandemic. ___ NEW YORK — New U.S. government data show the country had approximately 600,000 more deaths than usual during a 13-month span. The coronavirus was blamed for most of those deaths. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the estimate Thursday. It covers Jan. 26, 2020, to Feb. 27. The coronavirus was first detected in the U.S. in late January of last year. CDC researchers say the biggest spikes in the deaths occurred in early April, late July, and the very end of December. At least 75% of the deaths were directly tied to COVID-19, but the estimate includes deaths from all causes. This week, the CDC released provisional data through the end of September 2020 that suggested drug overdose deaths for the year were far exceeding tallies seen in any previous year. The CDC says more than 87,000 deaths were reported over a 12-month period. ___ The Associated Press
When LSU's football team emerges from the north end zone tunnel in 102,000-seat Tiger Stadium for its traditional spring scrimmage on Saturday, players will take a field emblazoned with a logo recognizing Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The logo symbolizes an effort to promote healing on campus, but also is a reminder of the inescapable challenges that LSU faces for the foreseeable future. It is unclear what impact investigations by the U.S. Department of Education and a state senate select committee into how the university has handled sexual misconduct allegations, as well as a $50 million civil lawsuit in federal court, will have on LSU’s athletics programs.
West Point finalized discipline against cadets caught cheating in largest scandal since 1970s.
U.S. drugmaker Moderna expects a shortfall in COVID-19 vaccine doses from its European supply chain hitting second-quarter delivery quantities for Britain and Canada, though European Union- and Swiss-bound shipments are on track, a spokesperson said. The delays, first announced on Friday when Canada said Moderna would be delivering only about half the planned 1.2 million doses by the end of April, come as Switzerland's Lonza ramps up three new production lines to make active ingredients for Moderna vaccine supplies outside of the United States.
EXCLUSIVE: Here’s another indication that the town is going back to some form of normalcy after more than year of lockdown from Covid: UTA CEO Jeremy Zimmer sent a note to staffers today that employees can begin to work in agency’s offices again starting mid-June. UTA’s Nashville offices will open their doors on June 1, […]
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday signed an emergency determination that officials said would speed refugee admissions to the U.S., but he did not immediately lift his predecessor's historically low cap of 15,000 refugees for this year. Biden, instead, is adjusting the allocation limits set by former President Donald Trump, which officials said have been the driving factor in limiting refugee admissions. The new allocations provide more slots for refugees from Africa, the Middle East and Central America, and lift Trump's restrictions on resettlements from Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Since the fiscal year began on Oct. 1, just over 2,000 refugees have been resettled in the U.S. A senior administration official said Biden's new allocations could result in speedier admissions of already screened and vetted refugees in a manner of days. More than two months ago, Biden pledged to raise the refugee cap for the next fiscal year to 125,000 and signalled he would try to make a “down payment” on that this year, but acknowledged it wouldn't be easy. “It’s going to take time to rebuild what has been so badly damaged, but that’s precisely what we’re going to do,” Biden said in February at the State Department. The senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter, said Biden would raise the current year cap if needed, but that the priority was moving to adjust from which areas refugees would be admitted. Under Biden's new allocation, about 7,000 slots are reserved for refugees from Africa, 1,000 from East Asia, 1,500 from Europe and Central Asia, 3,000 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 1,600 from the Near East and South Asia, and a reserve of about 1,000 slots to be used as needed. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that the delay in Biden acting was because “It took us some time to see and evaluate how ineffective, or how trashed in some ways the refugee processing system had become, and so we had to rebuild some of those muscles and put it back in place.” Another concern has been the record pace of unaccompanied migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, which has drawn in many of the resources that would go to vetting, processing and resettling refugees in the U.S. “It is a factor," said Psaki, noting that the Office of Refugee Resettlement "does management and has personnel working on both issues and so we have to ensure that there is capacity and ability to manage both.” Zeke Miller And Aamer Madhani, The Associated Press
The pound rose against the euro on Friday reversing early losses, and was set for weekly gains against the common currency as traders weighed how the re-opening of Britain's economy would affect its recovery. After a strong first quarter, helped by a speedy roll-out of COVID-19 vaccinations across Britain and by dwindling expectations of negative interest rates, sterling had a weaker start to April, hurt by profit-taking. In early London trading, the pound fell versus the euro to 87.18 pence, its lowest level since Feb. 26, but it recovered some ground and was up 0.2% at 86.65 pence at 1600 GMT.
Leicester and Southampton will go head-to-head in front of 4,000 spectators in the weekend’s second semi-final.