An estimated 18,000 children have been pushed into poverty since the first lockdown, with Māori and Pasifika bearing the brunt. That’s according to modelling in a report from Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), which argues…
Category Archives: headline
Herald morning quiz: July 27
Test your brains with the Herald’s morning quiz. Be sure to check back on nzherald.co.nz at 3pm for the afternoon quiz. To challenge yourself with more quizzes, CLICK HERE.
Priority vaccine access for hundreds of Sydney supermarket workers
Supermarket workers in the parts of Sydney hit worst by the coronavirus will get priority vaccine access, amid ongoing concerns over transmission in the essential shops.
In a simultaneous push to get more residents jabbed in the COVID-19 epicentre of south-west Sydney, walk-in vaccinations are now being offered in some suburbs, and several pharmacies are involved in a distribution pilot program.
The no-booking vaccines are available at hubs in Merrylands, Greystanes, Pemulwuy and Guildford, for anyone over 39 wanting the AstraZeneca jab. But the age limits appear set to be dropped shortly, with NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant expected to announce more detail on Tuesday.
READ MORE: Eleven-day COVID-19 alert after transmission hits Sydney shopping centre
Supermarket workers in the Blacktown, Canterbury-Bankstown, Cumberland, Fairfield and Liverpool local government areas can get the Pfizer vaccine, regardless of their age, starting on Wednesday in a program that's expected to include up to 500 jabs a day.
The relevant supermarkets — Woolworths, Aldi, Coles and Metcash, which runs IGA — announced the deal on Monday in a joint statement.
"A highly targeted COVID-19 vaccine rollout has been developed for workers at critical food distribution centres for NSW, and those who work in supermarkets within the five designated LGAs," the businesses told The Guardian.
The workers join a group of more than 10,000 teachers and school staff in Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool with priority jab access. It's unclear how many supermarket workers are targeted in the the priority rollout.
The union representing supermarket, online retail and warehouse workers welcomed the deal but called for governments across Australia to go further.
READ MORE: Crackdown on coronavirus misinformation
"This is a significant breakthrough in protecting the health of frontline retail workers ensuring the community retains access to the essentials of life during the protracted lockdown in Australia's biggest city," SDA NSW secretary Bernie Smith said in a statement.
"The Commonwealth and state governments must now recognise the essential work of ALL supermarket and warehouse workers.
"They have done an incredible job on the frontline of the pandemic, working day in and day out to keep up an essential service."
On Monday, Dr Chant said younger people would soon be able to walk into a hub and get the AstraZeneca vaccine.
"There is a massive strategy and can I acknowledge my colleagues who have been working so hard over the weekend with their local health districts and community partners to identify sites that may be appropriate for walk-in visits," Dr Chant said.
"What are the most vulnerable communities? Which groups in the communities don't have access to the vaccine? And how can we make it easier to get vaccinated?
"That work has been going on day and night over the weekend and there will be some announcements tomorrow."
Last week, the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (ATAGI) recommended that all adults in Greater Sydney should "strongly consider" getting any available vaccine.
The pilot program to administer shots in chemist includes dozens of pharmacies across Sydney and in regional towns such as Gulgong, Narromine, Dunedoo and Merriwa.
The trial is also limited to people aged 40 and over but under-39s can speak to their GP.
You can find out more details about how to book your vaccine through the Federal Government health site here.
Robert Moses, Prominent U.S. Civil Rights Activist, dies at 86
Moses championed Black voter registration, improving math education for children
Robert Parris Moses, a civil rights activist who endured beatings and jail while leading Black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, has died. He was 86.
Moses worked to dismantle segregation as the Mississippi field director of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement and was central to the 1964 “Freedom Summer,” in which hundreds of students went to the South to register voters.
He started his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding in 1982 the Algebra Project thanks to a MacArthur Fellowship. The project included a curriculum Moses developed to help poor students succeed in math.
Ben Moynihan, director of operations for the Algebra Project, said he had talked with Moses’s wife, Dr. Janet Moses, and she said her husband had died Sunday morning in Hollywood, Fla. Information was not given as to the cause of death.
Moses was born in Harlem, in New York City, on Jan. 23, 1935, two months after a race riot left three dead and injured 60 in the neighbourhood. His grandfather, William Henry Moses, was a prominent Southern Baptist preacher and a supporter of Marcus Garvey, a Black nationalist leader at the turn of the century.
But like many Black families, the Moses family moved north from the South during the Great Migration. Once in Harlem, his family sold milk from a Black-owned co-operative to help supplement the household income, according to Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots, by Laura Visser-Maessen.
While attending Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., he became a Rhodes Scholar and was deeply influenced by the work of French philosopher Albert Camus and his ideas of rationality and moral purity for social change. Moses then took part in a Quaker-sponsored trip to Europe and solidified his beliefs that change came from the bottom up, before earning a master’s in philosophy at Harvard University.
Moses didn’t spend much time in the Deep South until he went on a recruiting trip in 1960 to “see the movement for myself.” He sought out Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta but found little activity in the office and soon turned his attention to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
“I was taught about the denial of the right to vote behind the Iron Curtain in Europe,” Moses later said. “I never knew that there was [the] denial of the right to vote behind a Cotton Curtain here in the United States.”
The young civil rights advocate tried to register Blacks to vote in Mississippi’s rural Amite County, where he was beaten and arrested. When he tried to file charges against a white assailant, an all-white jury acquitted the man and a judge provided protection to Moses to the county line so he could leave.
Moses later helped to organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which sought to challenge the all-white Democratic delegation from Mississippi. But then-president Lyndon Johnson prevented the group of rebel Democrats from voting at the convention and instead let Jim Crow southerners remain, drawing national attention.
Disillusioned with white liberal reaction to the civil rights movement, Moses soon began taking part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War, then cut off all relationships with whites, even former SNCC members.
Moses worked as a teacher in Tanzania, returned to Harvard University to earn a doctorate in philosophy and taught high school math in Cambridge, Mass.
Later in life, the press-shy Moses started his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding in 1982 the Algebra Project.
Historian Taylor Branch, whose Parting the Waters won the Pulitzer Prize, said Moses’s leadership embodied a paradox.
“Aside from having attracted the same sort of adoration among young people in the movement that Martin Luther King did in adults,” Branch said, “Moses represented a separate conception of leadership” as arising from and being carried on by “ordinary people.”
The post Robert Moses, Prominent U.S. Civil Rights Activist, dies at 86 appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.
Saving Mangrove Forests A Priority in the Dominican Republic
A new initiative to save mangrove forests in the Dominican Republic aims to protect coastal regions and sequester carbon.
Mangrove forests are hugely valuable ecosystems with an image problem. These small trees and shrubs, which grow in the brackish and saline water along tropical and subtropical shorelines, make a critical contribution to climate regulation and can sequester up to four times more carbon than most other tropical forests. They also provide a sheltered habitat for juvenile fish and endangered wildlife.
Get Geographical’s latest news delivered straight to your inbox every Friday!
Despite all this, mangrove forests everywhere are in decline. One of the reasons, says Grupo Jaragua, an environmental NGO based in the Dominican Republic, and Seacology, an island conservation organisation, is poor public perception. ‘Mangroves are usually seen as swampy, mosquito ridden areas,’ says Andrea Thomen, Grupo Jaragua projects manager.
On 26 July, for World Mangrove Day, in partnership with Seacology, Grupo Jaragua has launched a five-year nationwide mangrove conservation initiative focused on raising awareness of the importance of these ecosystems and promoting solutions for their sustainable future.
‘This is really about changing attitudes and allowing people to love mangroves and see them for the ecosystem services that they provide and for their biodiversity,’ says Thomen.
Oviedo Lagoon, a saltwater lake fringed with mangrove forests in Jaragua National Park, Dominican Republic [Ariel Contreras]
The Dominican Republic has lost more than a third of its mangroves over the last 50 years. It’s a critical issue on the island, where the forests act as a crucial barrier between hurricanes and rising sea levels, and the coastal communities that live alongside them.
Research by the United Nations Development Programme indicates that 70 per cent of the population of the Dominican Republic is at risk from floods and storms. Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company estimates it would cost about $10,000 to replace the benefits provided by each hectare of mangrove, including the funds needed to build new barriers to prevent coastal erosion.
Mangrove deforestation in Manglares de Bajo Yuna national park [Ariel Contreras]
Thomen says conservationists in the Dominican Republic have ‘actually seen a loss of shoreline, erosion and degradation of the coast in areas where mangroves have been removed, particularly in the province of Monte Cristi.’ Although most of the island’s mangroves are already legally protected, there is little enforcement against threats such as coastal development for tourism infrastructure, agriculture, over-extraction of wildlife such as fish, birds and crabs, and the impact of invasive species.
Drought conditions at the Ramsar site Laguna Cabral led to death of these slider turtles [Ariel Contreras]
To date, most of the mangrove conservation efforts on the island are focused on individual areas or forests, and are usually fragmented and small-scale. ‘This is why we started to develop this national awareness initiative,’ says Thomen, ‘to integrate a lot of these small projects and to create national pride in our mangrove forests. So that whenever a site is endangered, the conservation community can unite and it will have the public support to do so.’
Grupo Jaragua runs a mangrove nursery where young mangroves are grown ready for planting [Ariel Contreras]
In addition to raising awareness among the general public, the initiative aims to work with schools and rural communities to promote environmental education and to have a long term impact on the teaching curriculum, while using sport as a way to engage the island’s youth in conservation. Its secondary aim is to increase and diversify incomes of island communities that are under economic pressure to exploit the natural resources of the mangrove forests by promoting local ecotourism and working with fishermen to develop sustainable harvesting practices.
Frigate birds rest within red mangroves [Ariel Contreras]
‘Our final goal is to be able to say that, at a national level, we’ve increased the number of mangrove conservation projects, the number of actions implemented and of sites conserved because of advocacy efforts that were supported by an increase in awareness,’ says Thomen, who is optimistic about the impact the initiative will have on the future of mangrove conservation. ‘If you look at a mangrove forest, and you don’t know how to appreciate it, you might just see a bunch of trees with muddy water underneath. But once you get to know this magical ecosystem, you can actually see its value.’
The post Saving Mangrove Forests A Priority in the Dominican Republic appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.
Locals who complained about building noise 'sent $600 headphones'
Residents who live above underground construction for the WestConnex project say they were offered noise-cancelling headphones to keep quiet over the racket.
Work is underway underneath Waterloo Street in Rozelle in Sydney's Inner West and locals say the noise is non-stop.
"Roaring, rolling thunder day and night," David Anderson told 9News.
READ MORE: Two people in 80s die after positive COVID-19 test
When Mr Anderson complained to contractor John Holland CPB, he said he received a pair of $600 noise-cancelling headphones.
He claimed he was then sent a legal letter asking he not talk about them, and that the company be released from any claims that arise from the project.
"This community needs respite and they make it conditional," he said.
Another resident, Mark Wallis, said it was "an act of bullying".
"It's a complete act of bastardry really and I bet they're highly embarrassed by it because I'm sure they didn't think a confidentiality agreement like that would be made public," Mr Wallis said.
John Holland CPB did not respond to media requests today.
But Paul McCormick from Transport for NSW said: "Clearly we've not communicated to the best that we could.
"But our teams go and speak to the residents every day on these projects and all I ask is the residents speak to my community team and we will work with them to come up with solutions."
The underground tunnelling isn't the only headache for residents in the street.
Next week, workers are supposed to start digging up the road to lay cabling for the Metro West.
Mr Anderson said he'll keep the headphones – but he won't be signing the letter.
'I miss him': Father of four-year-old boy killed in fire returns to house
A distraught father has returned to the Melbourne home where his four-year-old son was killed in a house fire.
Rithish Kirushnaneethan, four, died in the Dandenong blaze last night despite his mother and a family friend desperately attempting to save him.
His distraught father returned to the scene later today.
"I miss him," he said.
READ MORE: Victoria records 11 local cases of COVID-19
https://twitter.com/Elisabeth_Moss9/status/1419504090069966849
Rithish's 29-year-old mother was cooking in the kitchen of her Leonard Street home when she walked into her lounge room to find it ablaze just before 10pm.
In a frantic scramble, the mother-of-three rushed to rescue her children from the burning blaze, alongside a family friend aged in his 30s, who was boarding at the home.
"Could you imagine it, it's your worst nightmare," Victoria Police's Dandenong Local Area Commander Peter Koger said.
"Unfortunately, they've had to try and get the three children out of the house.
"They've managed to get an eight-year-old male and a three-year-old female out of the house.
"They have gone to try and get the four-year-old out of the house and unfortunately, the flames were too great at that stage and they weren't able to get the four-year-old out."
Rithish had been asleep inside his bedroom at the time.
"Unfortunately, the four-year-old's perished in the fire."
The heroic family friend unsuccessfully raced back in to save the older boy, leaving him with serious burns.
He was taken to The Alfred hospital in a stable condition.
"He managed to save the first child, and then he's tried to go back in and he's suffered significant injuries as a result, so he's really tried really hard," Commander Koger said.
"As you can imagine the desperation, it's just tragic for the whole family and the community."
READ MORE: Anti-lockdown protesters gather in Melbourne CBD
The mother also desperately tried to save her son, breaking the bedroom window from outside, which left her with cuts.
"The mother has also tried hard by breaking the glass once she was outside so she's got lacerations on her hands but unfortunately by that stage, the house was engulfed," Commander Koger said.
Neighbour Mamoud Elkersh, 68, also tried to get inside.
"The smoke came towards my face … I couldn't see nothing," he said.
Another neighbour, Rosida Guavarra, said she could hear panic from the house.
"(I heard) a lady screaming, 'quick, quick, quick, quick,'" she said.
Heartbroken family members returned to the house today as they tried to make sense of the loss.
The young boy's cousin Cham Saminthadarshan recalled a happy child.
"He's always cheeky and always playing around and his oldest brother is missing him a lot."
The father of the children was out running errands at the time and came home to find police and fire crews outside his gutted home.
Commander Koger said a gas heater in the loungeroom likely sparked the blaze, which had been deemed non-suspicious.
"I just ask the community to be really diligent about their heaters, especially in the colder months of winter," he said.
"We're a bit worried about the number of fires, particularly these non-suspicious type fires that have been started by gas heaters and articles of clothing that have been close to the heater or close to the flames."
The mother and her two children were taken to Dandenong Public Hospital after suffering smoke inhalation.
The family had only been living in the property for two weeks.
As investigators combed through the blackened wreckage, a floral tribute was laid in remembrance of the little boy.
"It's very hard for us at the moment," Mr Saminthadarshan said.
Woman killed in second blaze
In a separate incident, a woman's body was also found in a house fire in Laverton, in the city's south-west.
Firefighters found the woman, aged in her 50s, inside the "extremely damaged" home that had been gutted by fire just after midnight.
"FRV's Triple 000 call centre received a number of panicked phone calls for a house fire in Badge Court, Laverton," a Fire Rescue Victoria statement read.
"Firefighters arrived on scene in just over four minutes to find a single-storey brick home totally involved in fire.
"Wearing breathing apparatus, fire crews entered the home to conduct a search and commenced an aggressive attack on the fire."
Three men, aged in their 20s, 50s and 60s, were taken to Melbourne hospitals in stable conditions.
The fire was declared under control just after 1.30am and protocols were put in place due to the presence of asbestos.
The cause of the blaze is yet to be determined.
World View: COVID Leaves Indians Broke, Fauci Says US Going Backwards, Mexico Drug Cartel Violence, More
*****@
*****@July 26, 2021
- Without health insurance, many Indians drown in debt as COVID-19 treatment costs pile up.
- Anthony Fauci says the U.S. is heading in the “wrong direction” as a COVID-19 surge is fueled by unvaccinated people and the delta variant.
- The U.S. wins gold in the men’s 4X100-meter freestyle swimming relay at the Tokyo Olympics,
- While a Canadian women’s soccer team player becomes the first openly transgender athlete to compete in Tokyo.
- Some French health care workers resist mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations.
- Homeschooling surges in the U.S. amid the pandemic.
- AP offers an inside look into a sophisticated ransomware attack in Texas.
- China blames the U.S. of trying to “contain and suppress” its development.
- Drug cartel violence pushes a Mexican state’s murder rate to the country’s top spot
- And a trial opens into the Vatican’s financial scandal that’s rocking the Papacy itself.
Menelaos Hadjicostis
The Associated Press
|
|
The Rundown
NEW DELHI (AP) — As coronavirus cases ravaged India this spring, Anil Sharma visited his 24-year-old son Saurav at a private hospital in northwest New Delhi every day for more than two months. In May, as India’s new COVID-19 cases broke global…Read More
*****@
*****@
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — The United States is in an “unnecessary predicament” of soaring COVID-19 cases fueled by unvaccinated Americans and the virulent delta variant, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert said Sunday. …Read More
*****@
*****@
TOKYO (AP) — Caeleb Dressel got started on his quest for six gold medals in swimming, while Katie Ledecky found herself in a very unusual position. Second place. Dressel led off a U.S. …Read More
*****@
*****@
PARIS (AP) — While most French health care workers are vaccinated against the virus, a small but vocal minority is holding out. With infections exploding, a new law requiring them to get the shots is exposing the divide. …Read More
*****@
*****@DALLAS (AP) — It was the start of a steamy Friday two Augusts ago when Jason Whisler settled in for a working breakfast at the Coffee Ranch restaurant in the Texas Panhandle city of Borger. The most pressing agenda item for city officials that…Read More
|
|
OTHER TOP STORIES
Although the pandemic disrupted family life across the U.S. since taking hold in spring 2020, some parents are grateful for one consequence: They’re now opting to homeschool t…Read More
TIANJIN, China (AP) — America’s No. 2 diplomat has arrived in China to discuss the fraught relationship between the countries on Monday with two top Foreign Ministry officials…Read More
VALPARAÍSO, Mexico (AP) — When they heard gunfire in the valley, residents locked their doors and cowered inside their homes. Some 200 armed men had just looted a gas station,…Read More
VATICAN CITY (AP) — A cardinal who allegedly induced an underling to lie to prosecutors. Brokers and lawyers who pulled a fast one over the Vatican No. 2 to get him to approve…Read More
The post World View: COVID Leaves Indians Broke, Fauci Says US Going Backwards, Mexico Drug Cartel Violence, More appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.
Colombia Boosts Budding Cannabis Industry by Loosening Restrictions
BOGOTA, July 23 (Reuters) – Colombia on Friday gave the green light for exports of dried cannabis for medical and other industries, as the Andean country took another step to develop its marijuana industry, where progress has been slow despite high potential.
President Ivan Duque signed a decree lifting a prohibition on exporting dried cannabis flower, a move seen as crucial by investors.
The directive also allows for the expansion of sales of cannabis-based medicines and streamlines regulatory procedures.
While Colombia has been hailed as a pioneer in regulating the possession, production, distribution, commercialization and export of seeds, plants and substances derived from cannabis – like oils, creams and extracts for medicinal purposes – investors have long complained about what they say is a tortuous export-approval process.
“This means Colombia can enter to play a big role in the international market,” Duque said after signing the decree, adding the new rules would allow Colombia’s cannabis industry to expand into food and drinks, cosmetics and other sectors.
Latin American cannabis exports could be worth $6 billion, Duque said.
“Lifting the prohibition on exporting the dry flower will start a regulatory process which we hope will be performed in great detail, to the highest international standards,” Juan Diego Alvarez, vice president of regulatory issues for cannabis producer Khiron, told Reuters.
Colombian cannabis industry association Asocolcanna urged the country to seize the opportunity to make the most of its competitive advantages.
“It’s crucial for Colombia to achieve its potential at a time when the global cannabis industry is being refined,” Asocolcanna said in a letter published on its website.
In countries where the medicinal cannabis industry has more mature regulation, like the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Israel, dried cannabis is the most developed sector of the market, accounting for more than 50% of all sales.
Reporting by Nelson Bocanegra in Bogota Writing by Oliver Griffin Editing by Matthew Lewis
The post Colombia Boosts Budding Cannabis Industry by Loosening Restrictions appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.
Russia Sends COVID-19 Aid to Cuba – Defence Ministry
MOSCOW, July 24 (Reuters) – Russia has sent a shipment of coronavirus-related humanitarian assistance to Cuba, including 1 million medical masks, the defence ministry said on Saturday, adding President Vladimir Putin had given instructions for the aid.
Cuba, which kept coronavirus infections low last year, earlier this week reported the highest rate of contagion per capita in Latin America. That has strained its healthcare sector and helped stoke rare anti-government protests earlier this month on the Communist-run island.
Two military planes carrying 88 tonnes of aid – including food and personal protective equipment, including over 1 million medical masks, departed from an airfield near Moscow on Saturday, the defence ministry said in a statement.
“On the instructions of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, military transport aircraft are delivering humanitarian aid to the Republic of Cuba,” the ministry said.
The ministry did not mention the United States, but with its aid to longstanding ally Havana, Russia could also be looking to make a point against Washington.
The Cuban government has blamed the protests mostly on what it calls U.S.-financed “counter-revolutionaries” exploiting economic hardship caused by decades-old U.S. embargo. Government critics say the island’s economic woes are caused largely by the inefficiencies of the state-run system.
Mexico said on Thursday it would send to Cuba two navy ships loaded with medical and food supplies, including syringes, oxygen tanks and masks, along with powered milk, cans of tuna, beans, flour, cooking oil and gasoline.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has blamed the U.S. embargo for fomenting the unrest in Cuba.
With a population of 11 million, Cuba reported nearly 4,000 confirmed coronavirus cases per million residents over the last week, nine times more than the world average, in an outbreak fuelled by the arrival of the more contagious Delta variant on the island.
Reporting by Polina Ivanova Editing by Frances Kerry
The post Russia Sends COVID-19 Aid to Cuba – Defence Ministry appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.