Texas billionaire Ed Bosarge is accused of hiding up to twelve billion dollars from the grasp of the Internal Revenue Service, but now we know one of Houston’s richest men just took taxpayer money from the government’s small business bailout.
Three businesses owned by controversial Houston billionaire Ed Bosarge were given up to 1.7 million dollars according to documents released by the Small Business Administration.
Houston Health Span, a life sciences company, received up to 350,000 dollars for five jobs. Sola, a sugar substitute venture, also received up to 350,000 dollars. The biggest chunk of the money went to Capitol Technologies, doing business as The Bosarge Family Office. That is the administrative arm of family investments and business. Capital Technologies received up to 1 million dollars.
Ed Bosarge is locked in a nasty divorce case playing out in courts in Houston and South Dakota. He is also facing fraud allegations in at least two other lawsuits.
In the divorce case, his longtime wife, Marie Bosarge, claims the Houston billionaire is trying to hide up to 12 billion dollars in assets in trusts spread around the world to evade taxes.
Court documents allege up to 2. 3 billion is being hid in South Dakota trusts. Publicity around the case is putting a spotlight on South Dakota’s reputation as a “little Switzerland” where as much as 3.2 trillion dollars are evading the tax man.
“Ed Bosarge has mansions and yachts spread around the world and he hides his riches from the IRS, yet he’s more than willing to ask taxpayers for help instead of selling one of his toys,” says Wayne Dolcefino, President of the Houston based investigative media consulting firm probing the growing fraud allegations around Bosarge.
Italian film composer Ennio Morricone has died in Rome at the age of 91.
He was renowned for composing film scores for popular Spaghetti Westerns that made Clint Eastwood a star.
According to this family, Ennio Morricone died in a clinic after complications from a fall. His femur was fractured in a fall some days ago, Italian news agency reported.
The prolific composer also wrote music for Once Upon a Time in America, The Untouchables and Cinema Paradiso.
Having received an honorary Oscar in 2007, Ennio Morricone went on to win one in 2016 for Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight.
Ennio Morricone, who was simply known as “Maestro” in his home town of Rome, scored more than 500 films over seven decades.
Yet he remains best known for the haunting melodies he wrote for the trilogy of 1960s westerns Sergio Leone made with the then little-known Clint Eastwood.
A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly centered around Clint Eastwood’s taciturn gunslinger, known as “The Man With No Name”.
Sergio Leone called Ennio Morricone’s contributions “indispensable” and would have him write the score before shooting so he could design his shots around Morricone’s contributions.
Clint Eastwood went on to direct Westerns himself, including the Oscar-winning Unforgiven, but Ennio Morricone did not write music for them out of loyalty to Sergio Leone.
Before his win for The Hateful Eight, Ennio Morricone received Oscar nominations for Days of Heaven, The Mission, The Untouchables, Bugsy and Malena.
Sleep deprivation is way more common than most people realize, yet it is easily avoidable. If you are one of the many people struggling to get a good night’s sleep, here are the 4 essential components you need to focus on.
A Sleep Schedule
The most important thing that you can do in order to ensure that you are always getting a good night’s sleep is to establish a regular sleep schedule. Going to sleep at the same time every night and getting up at the same time every morning will help to improve the quality of your sleep enormously. There is nothing wrong with having the occasional lie in if you have the day off, but if you are going to bed and getting up at random times every day, then your body doesn’t stand a chance of establishing a healthy sleep pattern.
Going from having no sleep schedule at all to maintaining a constant schedule is not easy. Most people will find it easier to make a gradual change in their sleeping habits instead of trying to implement a strict regime from the word go. However, once you have established a consistent sleeping routine, you will find it much easier to get to sleep every night, and you will find that the quality of your sleep improves as well.
A Suitable Sleeping Environment
Getting a good night’s sleep is very difficult if you don’t have a suitable sleeping environment. There are two things in particular that are the enemy of a good night’s sleep – light and sound. It doesn’t matter if you completely eliminate caffeine from your life and invest in the most comfortable bed imaginable; if your sleeping environment is polluted by excessive light and noise, then you are never going to be able to achieve deep and restful sleep.
It is also difficult to overstate the role of psychology in sleep. Keeping your room decluttered and free of any potential distractions such as tablets, smartphones, or laptops, will make it considerably easier for you to get to sleep, even if you don’t have those devices switched on.
In short, try to make your sleeping environment all about sleeping. Unless you absolutely have to use your bedroom for something other than sleeping, you should aim to turn it into a sleep sanctuary.
A Comfortable Bed
As well as ensuring that you have a suitable sleeping environment to sleep in, you also need to have a comfortable bed. You don’t have to go out and buy the most expensive mattress and sheets that you can find to get a good night’s sleep, but at the very least, you do need a mattress that is comfortable to lie on for several hours non-stop.
With Labor Day approaching, there are numerous sales taking place, and you have the ideal opportunity to find your dream mattress at a dream price. Buying a mattress during the Labor Day mattress sales enables you to get the best mattress available at the best possible price. Having the right mattress to sleep on could make all the difference to the quality of your sleep.
A Calm Mind
Let’s say that you have a well-established sleep schedule and the perfect sleep environment – what could possibly keep you from getting a good night’s sleep? The most common culprit is good old-fashioned stress. If your mind is racing and your heart rate is rising because you are anxious, then getting to sleep is going to be very difficult. Wherever possible, try not to calm your mind and resolve any pressing issues before you try to go to sleep.
Getting a good night’s sleep isn’t exactly rocket science, but it is something that lots of us struggle with. The 4 things we have outlined above are the essential components of a good night’s sleep. If you want to sleep better, these are what you should focus on.
A judge in the international kidnapping case making headlines for nearly a decade has finally acknowledged that the mother at the center of the Texas divorce may have had a good case.
So then why did former 308th District Court Judge James Lombardino find that there was “no credible evidence” that Houston based Dr. Christopher Brann abused his ex-wife, Marcelle Guimaraes, or committed family violence?
Image source: dolcefino.com
During his interview with Dolcefino Consulting, Judge Lombardino stated that “she may have had a good case, but she wouldn’t come and plead her case.” But Marcelle Guimaraes did plead her case. She plead her case before she ever fled for Brazil with her son Nico. Medical records documenting the abuse were reviewed by Lombardino, along with pictures of walls that were broken and cracked in a fight, as well as an affidavit from Marcelle Guimaraes herself, detailing the abuse that she was subjected to at the hands of Brann.
Judge Lombardino even issued a temporary restraining order in December of 2012, requiring Brann to stay 200 feet away from Marcelle and their child, Nico. But just four days later, Brann hired infamous Houston divorce lawyer, Bobby Newman. It was at this point that Marcelle says everything changed.
“Once Bobby Newman was hired, everything changed. There was nothing that I could do to convince the judge to accept, even to look at everything that I had to give to him. Things would just become more difficult for me,” says Guimaraes.
“It was about life saving really. There was no protection anymore. There was no justice anymore,” says Guimaraes about her decision to flee to Brazil with her son. On the same day that Newman became Dr. Brann’s lawyer, Judge Lombardino issued a ruling allowing Dr. Brann to see his son and removing the protections of the temporary restraining order.
In 2016, Judge Lombardino ruled that there was “no credible evidence” that Brann abused Marcelle Guimaraes or committed family violence. In 2020, Lombardino says that Marcelle Guimaraes “may have had a good case.” Which is it, Judge?
Judge Lombardino was ousted in the 2018 judicial elections but is now seeking to sit on a higher bench: The First Court of Appeals of Texas. Judge Lombardino faces a run-off with Houston area attorney Terry Adams. Early voting has already begun, and the election is on July 14, 2020. Over the years, when Harris County lawyers have been asked about Lombardino’s bias and impartiality, he has consistently received low ratings. If Judge Lombardino can’t protect a victim of domestic violence and won’t talk publicly about the broken family court system or his ethical problems, then why would voters reward him with a higher court?
President Donald Trump has used his Independence Day speech to tout America’s “progress” against Covid-19, despite a nationwide spike in cases.
Amid criticism of his handling of the pandemic, the president said China – where the new coronavirus originated – must be “held fully accountable”.
President Trump also berated protesters who toppled monuments of historical figures in recent anti-racism protests.
“Their goal is demolition,” he said.
In a combative tone that echoed his Friday night speech at Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, President Trump pledged to defeat the “radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters”.
He spoke from the White House lawn, flanked by First Lady Melania Trump, to a crowd that included soldiers and frontline medical staff.
Praising “our nation’s scientific brilliance,” President Trump said the US “will likely have a therapeutic and/or vaccine solution long before the end of the year”.
The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, warned in June that scientists may never be able to create an effective vaccine against the coronavirus, observing: “The estimate is we may have a vaccine within one year. If accelerated, it could be even less than that, but by a couple of months. That’s what scientists are saying.”
The US has the world’s highest number of Covid-19 deaths and infections, and confirmed more than 43,000 new cases in 24 hours on July 4, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. Florida, where the outbreak is especially acute, saw 11,458 new cases.
President Trump made no reference to the nearly 130,000 US deaths linked to the pandemic. He said the US had tested almost 40 million people, adding that 99% of coronavirus cases were “totally harmless” – a claim for which he gave no evidence.
His comments were followed by a military flyover involving various aircraft, including B-52 bombers and F-35 fighter jets.
A massive firework display was later held in Washington DC, watched by spectators who gathered on the National Mall.
Ahead of President Trump’s speech, Black Lives Matter protesters gathered outside the White House – the scene of many recent anti-racism demonstrations in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in police custody.
Addressing America’s coronavirus battle, President Trump said his administration had “made a lot of progress” and “our strategy is moving along well”, despite the nationwide surge in infections.
Donald Trump, who faces re-election this year and appears keen to fire up his conservative base with appeals to nationalism, accused China of trying to conceal the virus outbreak – a charge Beijing denies.
He alleged: “China’s secrecy, deceptions and cover-up allowed [the virus] to spread all over the world.”
Elaborating on his plan to create a “National Garden of American Heroes” featuring statues of renowned Americans, President Trump said the country’s rich heritage belongs to citizens of all races.
“The patriots who built our country were not villains,” he said.
“They were heroes.”
Many 4th of July events were canceled on public health grounds, with beaches in Florida and California closed, city parades canceled and firework displays curtailed.
Joe Biden tweeted that “this Fourth of July, one of the most patriotic things you can do is wear a mask”.
Firework displays are a traditional highlight of 4th of July, but an estimated 80% of cities and towns have canceled their shows.
New York City usually holds an hour-long extravaganza, but this year it was replaced by five-minute displays through the week, organized by Macy’s department store, with a final televised one on July 4 – all at undisclosed locations.
Major League Baseball canceled its 2020 All-Star Game for the first time since World War Two.
The Freedom Over Texas fireworks show will still take place on July 4th but there are fireworks today in the highly publicized divorce fight between Houston billionaire Ed Bosarge and his wife of more than 30 years, Marie.
Dolcefino Consulting has learned Marie Bosarge alerted the Internal Revenue Service to where they can look for Ed’s secret money stashes in a rather unique way.
We have now obtained a part of Marie’s solo tax return from 2017 — the year that Ed Bosarge filed for divorce. The numbers are not so important but at the end of her tax return Marie added “Exhibit A” — a document from financial services powerhouse BDO. The document lists all of the trusts and entities that BDO had discovered that were connected to Ed Bosarge.
Some of the trusts and entities have some pretty unique names. Spotted Leopard. New Ostrich. Big Bird Partners. Black Rhino. Mountain Song. Last Samurai. Dangerous Beauty. More than 150 trusts and entities listed over five pages.
Marie claims that after thirty years of marriage, Ed left her dead broke and that he is hiding billions of dollars in secretive trusts in South Dakota and around the world. The jury trial in the Bosarge divorce is delayed by the Coronavirus pandemic.
In recent documents filed in the divorce case, Marie’s lawyers claim that Ed is refusing to turn over necessary financial records that can help her prove the fraud and other key elements of her case.
The highly publicized Bosarge case may pit Texas courts against South Dakota courts. If a Texas jury finds that Ed committed fraud, will South Dakota allow Marie to get what is hers out of the South Dakota trusts or will South Dakota simply ignore the rulings and the will of courts in Texas? Stay tuned.
The trial of 20 Saudi nationals accused of killing Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has begun in absentia in Turkey.
Jamal Khashoggi, 59, was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
Those being tried include two former top aides to Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Jamal Khashoggi was a vocal critic of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Saudi Arabia carried out a separate trial over the killing that was heavily criticized as incomplete.
The trial in Istanbul follows an international outcry over the murder, which tarnished the prince’s reputation.
Turkish prosecutors accuse the former deputy head of Saudi intelligence, Ahmed al-Asiri, and the royal court’s media adviser Saud al-Qahtani of having led the operation and instructed a Saudi hit team.
The other 18 defendants are accused of having suffocated Jamal Khashoggi, whose remains have not been found. Turkish officials say his body was dismembered and removed to an unknown site.
Jamal Khashoggi, who was resident in the US, had entered the consulate seeking papers for his impending wedding.
The journalist’s fiancee Hatice Cengiz is attending the trial alongside the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Agnes Callamard, who has directly linked the crown prince to the killing, AFP news agency reports.
The Saudi authorities initially denied any involvement in the case, but later called it a “rogue operation”.
In December 2019, a court in Saudi Arabia sentenced five people to death and three to jail for Jamal Khashoggi’s killing, but the trial was secretive and the defendants were not named.
The CIA and some Western governments believe the murder was ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – something he denies. The crown prince is de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia.
UN special rapporteur Callamard says Jamal Khashoggi was “the victim of a deliberate, premeditated execution, an extrajudicial killing for which the state of Saudi Arabia is responsible”.
At the time of his death Jamal Khashoggi worked for the Washington Post.
The prosecutors have charged Ahmed al-Asiri and Saud al-Qahtani with “instigating the deliberate and monstrous killing, causing torment”.
Hatice Cengiz is hoping that the trial will reveal significant new evidence and finally reveal what happened to Jamal Khashoggi’s remains.
Most people picture models or fashion designers when they think of the fashion industry. While these are two of the most prominent career options in the fashion world, they are not the only ones. Just like any creative field, the word of fashion is highly competitive, with lots of different career paths fashion lovers can follow. Luckily for fashion lovers, getting into this industry does not have to be hard if you position yourself well. That said, getting to the very top will depend on your efforts. Below, we will look at some options you could consider if you love fashion and would like to work in the fashion industry.
Image source Pexels
Design Assistant
The fashion industry more or less runs on design assistants’ efforts. Design assistants work with fashion designers, and even though fashion designers come up with the creative vision of a show or brand, it is the design assistants who bring it all together. Design assistants are responsible for checking garments before fitting models. They also attend trade shows, coordinate schedules, track clothing samples, and manage studios.
Fashion Designers
Fashion designers are the creative engine of the fashion world. They come up with the designs for new clothing styles or brands. Depending on the companies that hire them, these designers can work in any specialization, including childrenswear, adult fashion, or sportswear. If this is a career option you long for, you can start by being a freelance fashion designer. Here, you can come up with designs and tailor them so that fashion houses and retailers can see them. A pro tip here is to always check any designs using a dress form. These are available for personal or business use. These dress forms let you see the garments on a body and allow you to make the necessary alterations before showcasing your creations in front of other people.
Image source Pixabay
Buyers
Buyers are the people responsible for bringing the greatest and latest designs to retail shelves and racks. Their job is to ensure the stores are always stocked with products that people want to buy. In some cases, they might have to dig deep to get clothes that people would love but do not know they want yet.
To become a fashion buyer, you need to have a solid understanding of how retail works. You also need to be able to take pressure and stress well because the success of a store will often be up to you. This career path is for people who can predict what customers will want in the future, which makes it very challenging.
Fashion Journalist or Writer
Fashion journalists and writers are responsible for covering the fashion industry. For you to be successful here, you must love fashion and have a hunger to learn everything you can about fashion. You must also have great writing and oratory skills if you want to be hired by a fashion powerhouse. Lastly, you should have a likable personality because you will meet a lot of people, and if you do not have this type of personality, they might never want to work with you again.
Fashion Publicist
Fashion publicists are responsible for maintaining a positive image of a brand or business. Their primary job is to build relationships with people who can help them help their clients stay in people’s minds and be viewed positively. Because of that last point, fashion publicists can sometimes take on public relations or crisis management roles.
Publicists are also responsible for ensuring their clients, companies or businesses get a lot of publicity for as little as possible. For this, they might have to convince a celebrity to wear a certain dress or carry a certain handbag.
If you are a fashion lover and want to get into the fashion industry, there are lots of career options available to you. You have an added advantage if you have an eye for design, a likable personality, and can work with different types of people.
The majority of Russian voters backed constitutional reforms that could keep President Vladimir Putin in power until 2036, election officials say.
According to electoral commission, with all the ballots counted, 77.9% voted for the reform package and 21.3% against.
The reforms will reset Vladimir Putin’s term limits to zero in 2024, allowing him to serve two more six-year terms.
Opposition figures denounced the vote, saying Vladimir Putin was aiming to be “president for life”, a claim the Russian president denies.
Vladimir Putin is already the longest-serving leader in modern Russian history since Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
There was no independent scrutiny of the seven-day vote, and copies of the new constitution appeared in bookshops during the week.
By spreading out the vote, because of the coronavirus infection risk, the authorities made any monitoring of it more difficult.
Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny described the results as a “big lie” which did not reflect real public opinion in the country.
Golos, an independent Russian election monitoring group, has castigated the vote, alleging there were many violations of democracy.
Its criticisms include: opponents were barred from campaigning in the media; remote electronic voting was organized on an illegal basis; election monitors were appointed by the Civic Chamber – a government body.
Golos describes it as “just a PR exercise from the very start” and says “there was no legal need for it”. The vote “will go down in history as an attack on the sovereignty of the people”.
The reforms include a ban on same-sex marriage – by defining marriage as between a man and a woman – and introducing a reference to Russia’s ancestral “faith in God”.
According to election officials, turnout was 65%. The highest levels of support – above 90% – were in Crimea, annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, in Chechnya in the North Caucasus, and Tuva, in Siberia.
Vladimir Putin, aged 67, has not said he will run again for the presidency when his latest term runs out in 2024 – but has said it is vital he has the option to do so.
He has been in power in Russia, either as president or prime minister, for 20 years.
Vladimir Putin and his supporters say the reforms – more than 200 changes – are needed to ensure national stability.
In New York, 816 voted at the Russian consulate and 505 rejected the reforms, while 310 voted for. The other voting district where a majority were against was Nenets, in Russia’s remote Arctic.
Preliminary results were released hours before the last polling stations closed at 18:00 GMT in the western enclave of Kaliningrad, in the vast country spanning 11 time zones.
Before the vote had ended, the internal affairs ministry said there had been no violations that could affect the result, Interfax reported. However, Golos said it had received some 2,100 reports of possible violations.
Several hundred opponents of the constitutional changes staged protests in Moscow and St Petersburg.
The final results show 65% voted yes to the reforms in Moscow, and 77.6% in St Petersburg.
Both Russia’s houses of parliament have already adopted the changes, but President Putin ordered a public vote in a bid to legitimize the reforms. The vote was delayed from April due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Former French PM François Fillon and his Welsh wife, Penelope Fillon, have received jail sentences in a fake jobs case.
Francois Fillon, 66, was found guilty of paying his wife €1.156 million ($1.3 million) for work she never did as a parliamentary aide.
The conservative politician was sentenced to five years in prison, three of them suspended. Penelope Fillon was given a three-year suspended term.
The scandal ruined Francois Fillon’s presidential bid in 2017. Both have appealed, blocking an immediate detention.
Francois Fillon is the most senior French political figure to receive a custodial sentence since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.
Delivering the decision in a Paris courthouse, the presiding judge said: “The payment was disproportionate to the work done. Mrs. Fillon was hired for a position that was without use.”
Penelope Fillon was found guilty of complicity to embezzle and conceal public funds.
Both were given fines of €375,000 ($423,000). In addition, the Fillons were ordered to return more than €1 million to the National Assembly, which employed Penelope Fillon from 1998 to 2013.
Francois Fillon was also banned from public office for 10 years.
The terms matched the prosecutors’ sentence requests.
Francois Fillon has been in politics for decades. After serving as a lawmaker, senator, and in a number of ministerial roles, he became France’s prime minister between 2007 and 2012 under then-President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Ahead of the 2017 presidential election, Francois Fillon won the center-right Republican party’s presidential primary, and in January 2017 was the clear front-runner in the polls.
However, his bid for the top job fell apart later that month.
Le Canard Enchaîné, a satirical magazine, alleged that Penelope Fillon – formally employed as the politician’s parliamentary assistant for about six years in the 1990s and 2000s – never actually did her job. What is more, she was paid €831,400 in the role.
Francois Fillon denied the allegations. He said his opponents were trying to sabotage his campaign, and vowed to press on with the election.
As the scandal grew he apologized “profusely” for employing family members, saying that though legal the practice had caused “mistrust”.
His poll ratings dropped sharply, Francois Fillon coming third in the first round of voting, missing out on the second-round run-off.
Le Canard Enchaîné published numerous allegations against the couple.
The magazine revealed that Penelope Fillon had made €100,000 writing just a handful of articles for a literary publication, La Revue des Deux Mondes.
La Revue des Deux Mondes is owned by a billionaire friend of the family, Marc Ladreit de Lacharrière. In her ruling, the judge described that payment as an illegal gift.
From 2002 to 2007, Penelope Fillon worked for her husband’s successor as lawmaker, Marc Joulaud. He too was convicted of paying her for little or no work and has been given a three-year suspended sentence.
Other French politicians who have been convicted include late President Jacques Chirac, who in 2011 received a suspended sentence over malpractice when he was mayor of Paris.
Chirac’s one-time Prime Minister, Alain Juppé, also got a suspended sentence in a related case in 2004.
In the mid-1990s, businessman and former Socialist minister Bernard Tapie served an eight-month jail term over a football match-fixing scandal.
Jacques Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, is currently facing two trials, for alleged corruption and illicit campaign funding.
Life in the age of COVID-19 means that each day is more difficult to predict than the next. Whether students and educators will return to the classroom this fall still remains uncertain. Those already planning to return should expect a different classroom setting than they left behind. Many schools are even considering staggered learning schedules, all while navigating each student’s anticipated social and emotional adjustments to a classroom environment.
Michael Horn is the founder of the Christensen Institute, a non-profit partisan think tank that promotes “disruptive innovation” for understanding society’s most pressing issues, including education. Horn recently sat down with Joel Rose, co-founder of Teach to One: Math. Rose advocates for educational reform and presents Teach to One as a logical, data-driven approach to individualized math education. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on what K-12 schools might look like this fall, Rose argues that now is the time to transition away from the factory model classroom and toward the techniques implemented by Teach to One.
What does a Teach to One: Math classroom look like?
Horn opened the interview with a question about what Teach to One: Math looks like in action. Rose describes a TTO classroom as a large open space with several stations. Each station will tackle an instructional modality. Some modalities facilitate group learning, while some facilitate one-on-one lessons. Each student is placed, according to Rose, based on “where they are and where they need to be.”
Teach to One: Math is administered by a nonprofit called New Classrooms, which is located in New York City. Every day, each student exits the classroom after completing a daily assessment. These assessments are then sent to the organization to inform the design of the next day’s personalized lessons. Since each student’s curriculum is designed on the basis of their individual strengths and weaknesses, TTO’s tactics pivot students toward mastery.
What are Teach to One: Math’s policy limitations?
Since Teach to One disrupts the norms of traditional classroom learning, its implementation faces large policy barriers. Rose discusses these policy barriers in an essay titled “The Iceberg Problem.” The essay includes a case study of a seventh grader who enters their first day of math class without remembering any skills from both fourth- and fifth-grade math. How did these skill gaps go unnoticed by previous math educators? Rose argues that state testing requires schools to prioritize assessment preparation. Test preparation means that teachers do not have time to go back and review more than a year’s worth of material. The resulting “maximum exposure to grade-level content,” Rose finds, perpetuates gaps in math education.
Rose also points out that educators tend to interpret student growth in a restrictive manner. Educators typically assess a student’s growth by comparing how said student performs on the seventh-grade standardized test compared to the eighth-grade standardized test. This, Rose believes, is “too granular.” As a result, teachers continue to teach skills that their students either do not truly know, are not ready to learn, or already know. By failing to evaluate mathematical growth adequately, students continue to fall behind.
Where does Teach to One: Math fit into an educator’s post-quarantine concerns?
It is common sense for teachers to expect wider educational gaps heading into the 2020-2021 school year than in ordinary years. Rose is hopeful that this will catalyze thinking “about learning loss much more holistically.” For schools that were already using TTO prior to stay-at-home orders, teaching math at a distance was not a difficult concept to grasp. “Their delivery model was already evolved,” Rose concludes, which created space to promote the personalization that students required to stay on track.
A student’s mathematical mastery will be harder to assess this year. “We’re not gonna know how kids did after this year,” says Rose, pointing out that many schools were not able to carry out their math curriculum as planned. In response, Rose says that timing is everything. Diagnostics will not be effective if they are implemented before students feel safe and connected at school. This might mean waiting for one, two, three, or even more weeks before beginning the math curriculum. However, waiting is necessary if students are not yet adjusted.
How did Teach to One: Math come about?
In 2011, Rose founded New Classrooms Innovation Partners, a New York-based nonprofit. New Classrooms: Innovation Partners administers Teach to One: Math (TTO) as a school-based approach that integrates multiple learning modalities. The organization assists with the implementation of algorithms and classroom-specific information to organize a daily math curriculum for 10,000 students per day. The outcome is teacher-led mathematical learning experiences catered to each student’s individualized progress.
Gaps in math education pose serious threats to college preparedness and long-term educational success. Fortunately, Teach to One was designed with these gaps in mind. At the end of every lesson, a student completes an exit slip. The student’s performance on that exit slip determines whether the student will proceed to the next lesson. This approach demonstrates the flexibility to go back and spend time filling gaps without sacrificing state-level assessment preparation.
The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, which has provided health insurance to millions of Americans.
According to government lawyers, Obamacare became invalid when the previous Republican-led Congress axed parts of it.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden attacked the move, saying President Donald Trump had put millions of lives at risk during the coronavirus pandemic.
Health care will be a key battleground in this year’s presidential election.
Some 20 million Americans could lose their health coverage if the court overturns the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which was introduced by President Barack Obama.
Obamacare’s popular provisions include banning insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health plans until age 26. Millions of low-income Americans were able to obtain insurance due to the act.
President Trump says the scheme costs too much and has promised a different plan to replace it, preserving some popular elements of the existing law but covering fewer people.
Under Obamacare, millions of people in the US must purchase health insurance or face a tax penalty.
In 2017, Congress removed a key plank of the policy, eliminating the federal fine for those who did not sign up, known as the “individual mandate”.
In its filing to the Supreme Court on June 25, the justice department argued “the individual mandate is not severable from the rest of the act”.
As a result, it said: “The mandate is now unconstitutional as a result of Congress’s elimination… of the penalty for non-compliance.”
President Trump cannot rely on Congress to complete the dismantling of Obamacare because the Democrats took control of the lower house in 2019.
Joe Biden, who wants to rally the public behind an expanded Affordable Care Act, said some coronavirus survivors could lose their comprehensive healthcare coverage if the act was overturned.
He said: “They would live their lives caught in a vice between Donald Trump’s twin legacies: his failure to protect the American people from the coronavirus, and his heartless crusade to take healthcare protections away from American families.”
In a statement on June 26, White House spokesman Judd Deere said Obamacare was “an unlawful failure”.
The statement said: “It limits choice, forces Americans to purchase unaffordable plans, and restricts patients with high-risk preexisting conditions from accessing the doctors and hospitals they need.”
The US has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, recording 2.4 million confirmed Covid-19 cases and 122,370 deaths – more than any other country.
However, the true number of infections is likely to be 10 times higher than the reported figure, according to the latest estimate by health officials.
The Supreme Court is unlikely to hear the case before voters go to the polls in November, media report.
NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has announced on June 24 that the agency’s headquarters buildings in Washington DC will be named after its first African American female engineer, Mary W. Jackson.
He said Hidden Figure Mary Jackson had helped to break down barriers for African Americans and women in engineering and technology.
The story of Mary W. Jackson was told in the 2016 film Hidden Figures. Born in Hampton, Virginia, she died in 2005.
In 2019, NASA renamed the street outside its headquarters as Hidden Figures Way.
“Hidden no more, we will continue to recognize the contributions of women, African Americans, and people of all backgrounds who have made NASA’s successful history of exploration possible,” Jim Bridestine said in a statement.
“Mary W. Jackson was part of a group of very important women who helped NASA succeed in getting American astronauts into space,” he added.
“Mary never accepted the status quo, she helped break barriers and open opportunities for African Americans and women in the field of engineering and technology.”
The move comes at a time of introspection across the US about historical injustices suffered by African Americans.
The recent death in police custody of George Floyd triggered protests around the world and renewed demands for an end to institutional racism.
NASA began recruiting some college-educated African American women in the 1940s as “human computers”, but they experienced both racial and gender discrimination at work.
Mary W. Jackson was recruited in 1951 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics which was succeeded by NASA in 1958. She worked under Dorothy Vaughan – whose story was also told in Hidden Figures – in the segregated West Area Computing Unit at Langley, Virginia.
Mary Jackson died in 2005 and in 2019 she was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.
Her daughter, Carolyn Lewis, said the family was honored that NASA was continuing to celebrate Mary Jackson’s legacy.
Carolyn Lewis said: “She was a scientist, humanitarian, wife, mother, and trailblazer who paved the way for thousands of others to succeed, not only at NASA, but throughout this nation.”
Ben & Jerry’s has joined a growing list of companies pulling advertising from Facebook platforms throughout July.
The move is part of the Stop Hate For Profit campaign, which calls on Facebook to have stricter measures against racist and hateful content.
Ben and Jerry’s tweeted: “We will pause all paid advertising on Facebook and Instagram in the US in support of the #StopHateForProfit campaign. Facebook, Inc. must take the clear and unequivocal actions to stop its platform from being used to spread and amplify racism and hate. >>>https://benjerrys.co/2CtB2WE”
Earlier this week outdoor brands The North Face, Patagonia and REI joined the campaign.
Ben & Jerry’s said it is standing with the campaign and “all those calling for Facebook to take stronger action to stop its platforms from being used to divide our nation, suppress voters, foment and fan the flames of racism and violence, and undermine our democracy.”
After the death of African-American George Floyd in police custody, Ben & Jerry’s chief executive Matthew McCarthy said “business should be held accountable” as he set out plans to increase diversity.
Earlier this week the freelance job listing platform Upwork and the open-source software developer Mozilla also joined the campaign.
Facebook has said it was committed to “advancing equity and racial justice”.
The social network said in a statement on June 21: “We’re taking steps to review our policies, ensure diversity and transparency when making decisions on how we apply our policies, and advance racial justice and voter engagement on our platform.”
Ben & Jerry’s statement also pointed to the company’s Community Standards, which include the recognition of the platform’s importance as a “place where people feel empowered to communicate, and we take seriously our role in keeping abuse off our service”.
The Stop Hate for Profit campaign was launched last week by advocacy groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Color Of Change.
The movement has said it is a “response to Facebook’s long history of allowing racist, violent and verifiably false content to run rampant on its platform”.
Stop Hate for Profit has called on advertisers to pressure Facebook to adopt stricter measures against racist and hateful content on its platforms by stopping all spending on advertising with it throughout July.
In 2019, Facebook attracted advertising revenue of almost $70 billion.
The company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have often been criticized for the handling of controversial subjects.
This month Facebook’s staff spoke out against the tech giant’s decision not to remove or flag a post by President Donald Trump.
The same message was shared on Twitter, where it was hidden behind a warning label on the grounds that it “glorified violence”.
Former South Korean comfort woman Lee Yong-soo has taken on a new role in the campaign for the rights of her peers. For so many years, Lee Yong-soo has been the face of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance for the Issues of Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, literally walking the streets to seek recompense for comfort women who suffered during World War II. In spite of her age, the 92-year-old woman had been very much involved in the activities of the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance.
It thus came as a shock to the South Koreans as a nation when Lee Yong-soo announced in a press conference in early May that she was going to put a stop to her campaigning and that she would no longer be joining the weekly rallies held by the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance.
In the press conference, Lee Yong-soo shared her observation that, instead of promoting goodwill, the rallies have only been serving to incite animosity between the involved parties, especially with the youth. She continued to say that, moving forward, healing and reconciliation is what is necessary, and that the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance’s activities are not contributing to this.
“Students spend their own precious money and time to attend these rallies, but the rallies only teach hatred and suffering. Korean and Japanese youths with historically accurate education must befriend each other and communicate with each other to solve problems,” Lee said.
The former comfort woman and strong advocate for the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance had more to say, particularly with regard to how the organization has been operating. The Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance was founded in 1990 and since its inception, it has been working on two levels – internationally and transnationally. It receives funding from private donors as well as in the form of government subsidies.
According to Lee Yong-soo, the Korean Council for Justice and Remembrance has been remiss in carrying out its mission. She specifically hit out at Yoon Mee-hyang, the former head of the Council who is now an elected official under the party of incumbent president Moon Jae-in.
Lee Yong-soo
Lee Yong-soo accused Yoon Mee-hyang of misappropriation of funds, using them for private purposes such as buying property and paying for her daughter’s American education. Lee Yong-soo further accused the Council of disregard for the former comfort women. She asserted that the Council happily took the funds but also took advantage of the very people they were supposed to take care of by putting them on public display akin to “bears doing tricks”.
With Yoon Mee-hyang being a government official and having close ties to the ruling party, the nation is seeing this as a betrayal from the government itself.
The victims of the War have placed their trust in their leaders and yet once again they find themselves with the short end of the stick.
It is upon this premise that Lee Yong-soo is building her new role.
In her charge to expose this deeply-rooted deception, Lee Yong-soo also said that while donations did come in, only a small portion was actually distributed to the comfort women. In fact, it was only after the 2015 Japan-South Korea agreement that the comfort women actually received a considerable sum. Each one received 100 million KRW (almost USD 83,000).
So far, she has been effective in that Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol ordered the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office to conduct an investigation speedily on the Council and its activities. She has stated her belief that the prosecutors would find the truth and reveal it. However, it has been about a month since then, and no concrete results have been shared.
Even more concerning is the President’s reaction to the issue. During a meeting held with his advisors on the 8th of June, President Moon Jae-in reportedly said that he was bewildered by the controversy in which Yoon Mee-hyang and the Council is embroiled. He emphasized the role Yoon Mee-hyang played in raising awareness for the South Korean former comfort women on the international state, citing her testimony in front of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Lee Yong-soo is not to be deterred, inspiring her peers and their families to make their voices heard. Hwang Sun-hee, son of former comfort woman Gil Won-ok, says “The families of [former comfort women] will take this matter into our own hands, such that we are no longer pushed around by other organizations.” That is, they are forming their own committee in order to ensure that the victims get what they deserve and are not taken advantage of.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has suspended plans for “military action” against South Korea, state news agency KCNA reported.
Recent weeks saw a rising tide of angry rhetoric from North Korea over activist plans to send leaflets with anti-North Korean messages over the border.
Last week, North Korea blew up the joint liaison office with South Korea and also threatened to send troops to the border area.
At a meeting chaired by leader Kim Jong-un, state media said the decision was taken to suspend military action.
The Central Military Commission made its decision after taking what it called the “prevailing situation” into consideration.
North Korea also began to dismantle loudspeakers it had erected only last week, traditionally used to blast anti-South Korean messages over the border, Yonhap reported.
The move represents a notable de-escalation in rhetoric after Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong’s orders to the army to “decisively carry out the next action” – in part because of what Pyongyang said was Seoul’s failure to stop activists floating balloons with anti-regime leaflets over the border.
The meeting also discussed documents outlining measures for “further bolstering the war deterrent of the country,” KCNA reported.
Tensions between North and South Korea appeared to be on the mend when in 2018, leaders of both countries met for the first time at the border.
The historic summit saw both sides pledge to rid the Korean peninsula of nuclear weapons – and in the months that followed, there were efforts to improve ties and maintain dialogue.
However, the relationship has been on a downward spiral after a failed summit between Kim Jong-un and President Donald Trump.
And the past few weeks saw relations deteriorate especially rapidly – prompted by defector groups in South Korea sending propaganda across the border,
South Korean activists typically send balloons that carry objects like leaflets, USB sticks or DVDs with criticism of the Pyongyang regime, as well as South Korean news reports or even Korean dramas.
All of this is aimed at breaking North Korea’s control on domestic information with the hope that people might eventually topple the regime from within.
The South Korean government has already tried to stop groups sending leaflets across the border, arguing their actions put residents near the border at risk. The move prompted North Korea to renew threats of military action – and shortly afterwards it blew up a joint liaison office that it had established with South Korea in 2018.
Novak Djokovic has become the latest tennis player to test positive for the new coronavirus.
Grigor Dimitrov, Borna Coric and Viktor Troicki all revealed they have tested positive for Covid-19 after playing at Djokovic’s Adria Tour competition.
The 33-year-old world’s No 1 played fellow Serb Troicki in the first event in Belgrade.
In a post on Twitter, Novak Djokovic said it had been “too soon” to stage the tournament.
“I am so deeply sorry our tournament has caused harm,” he said.
He said the tournament had been organized with “a pure heart”, “good intentions” and a belief that they had “met all health protocols”.
“We were wrong and it was too soon,” he said.
The remaining Adria Tour events in Banja Luka and Sarajevo have now been canceled Novak Djokovic’s brother Djordje, who is a director of the tournament, has confirmed.
“Unfortunately, due to all the events that happened in the last few days, we have decided that the most important thing right now is to stabilize the epidemiological situation, as well as for everyone to recover,” he said.
A statement on Novak Djokovic’s website said: “Immediately upon his arrival in Belgrade [after the second event] Novak was tested along with all members of the family and the team with whom he was in Belgrade and Zadar. He is not showing any symptoms.”
There have been no ATP Tour events since February because of the global pandemic and the Adria Tour, which is not an ATP Tour event, was one of the first competitions to be staged since then.
The first leg in Serbia attracted 4,000 fans, and players were later pictured dancing close together in a Belgrade nightclub.
Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov played Croatia’s Borna Coric on June 20 in the second leg in Zadar, Croatia.
With Croatia easing lockdown measures, players were not obliged to observe social distancing rules and were seen embracing at the net at the end of their matches.
Pictures on the tournament’s social media site from June 19 showed Grigor Dimitrov playing basketball with Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev and Marin Cilic, while he also put his arm around Borna Coric before their match.
Alexander Zverev, Marin Cilic and Andrey Rublev, who also played in the Adria Tour, have tested negative, but suggested they will all now self-isolate for up to 14 days.
The ATP Tour season is set to restart on August 14 and the US Open will be held without fans from August 31 to September 13, despite some players voicing concerns about travelling to New York.
Fat reduction is something we’ve had to deal with at some point in our lives. Whether it’s through natural means, such as exercising or properly dieting, or cosmetic fat reduction treatments, we’ve all been there at some point. Excess fat can cause a lot of problems, both physically and mentally, so it’s natural for everyone to have to deal with it at some point.
All kinds of fat reduction treatments exist, but one of the most unique ones is Coolsculpting, which, as the name implies, utilizes the power of the cold to tone or “sculpt” specific areas of the body to the absolute satisfaction of the client. MiracleFace MedSpa and Coolsculpting LA are two of the major cities’ new favorite treatment plans and are a perfect procedure for a hot summer when we simply want to do everything to get away from the heat.
With Coolsculpting becoming so popular in modern clinics, it’s important to know the most crucial aspects of the procedure and understand what happens and why.
Before the Treatment
Not much preparation is needed for Coolsculpting. Unlike other fat reduction procedures, this form of treatment has many fewer factors to consider. For example, more traditional forms of fat reduction, such as chemical-based compounds, need many more factors to be taken into account to determine the safety and effectiveness of the procedure.
With Coolsculpting, there are only a few factors that need to be taken into consideration: the area you’re treating and the sensitivity of your skin. Different parts of the body build up fat in their special ways, not to mention the fact that everyone’s body is built differently. So treating specific areas requires the kind of precision that only well trained and qualified specialists can handle. The sensitivity of the skin is also something very important for the procedure, as there are types of skin that simply don’t have the ability to handle the cold as long as others.
But both of these will very rarely keep someone from getting treated since Coolsculpting is a very casual procedure. The cold temperatures that you’ll be experiencing are around 4 degrees Celsius (39 to 41 degrees Fahrenheit), which is around the same temperature as a typical fridge. And we’ve all spent enough time staring at food deciding what to eat to know that it’s not particularly cold. But cold is still cold, so you can expect that uneasy sensation of the skin going numb as your body is being administered a constant stream of cool air.
If you’re not a fan of this sensation, then I’m sure you’ve been through enough cold winters to know that after some time, the skin goes numb and you don’t feel the cold anymore. The skin just feels stiff, which is great, since it makes the procedure that much more pleasant as you don’t have to worry about any uncomfortable sensations from the cold air.
Image source: Wikimedia Commons
Time Is Very Important
Coolsculpting is one of those treatments that rewards patience and dedication. While the procedure itself lasts around 40 minutes, the full results don’t become fully visible for some time. This can put a lot of people off, but for many people, this is a much better option.
When it comes to natural means of losing fat, much like dieting or exercising, it takes time for Coolsculpting to take full effect, as it is a more natural fat reduction treatment than most others on the market. It takes time for your body to properly get rid of the extra fat, but your patience is rewarded with the fact that Coolsculpting doesn’t come with the harsh side effects and recovery time that other treatments tend to have.
There are also no threats of allergic reaction since no chemicals are involved in the treatment. Most people, with only a small margin of exception, will go through the procedure without any complications. So while you must understand the amount of time it takes for the treatment to take effect, you need to know that this is all in favor of safety and the convenience of not having to wait weeks for your body to fully recover after treatment.
But as with any other treatment, you need to keep in touch with your clinic specialists to make sure that everything is as it should be. And while Coolsculpting is a very safe treatment, clinics like MiracleFace MedSpa, for example, keep in contact with all their clients who’ve gone through their Coolsculpting NYC treatment package, to ensure that everything is going smoothly, without any unwanted results, even if they barely ever happen.
While there isn’t much to keep track of, it’s still important to keep in contact with your clinics and make sure that they are as much aware of what you’re feeling as you are.
The Recovery
If you’re wondering what you’ll need to do after the treatment, then there’s not much I can tell you, since, much like the procedure itself, the recovery time is very short and you barely have to do anything. All you need to do is avoid putting unnecessary strain and pressure on your skin for a couple of days after the procedure, especially the treated area.
While the cold that’s used during the Coolsculpting treatment doesn’t cause any damage to the skin and barely even weakens it, you should still give it ample time to restore its strength and get back to normal before going in for any other treatment, cosmetic or otherwise.
And within a couple of weeks, you should already start to see some difference in how toned certain parts of your body are. Within months, the effects will be more apparent than ever before and you’ll slowly see your body sculpting itself as the fat is evicted from your body, leaving behind the beautiful contours and angles you’ve been striving for.
Don’t hesitate to try Coolsculpting for yourself to see why so many people are fascinated with this amazing unique fat reduction treatment.
President Donald Trump’s request to stop the publication of a memoir by his former National Security Adviser John Bolton has been rejected by Washington DC District Court Judge Royce Lamberth.
The justice department argued that the book had not been properly vetted.
The judge said the government had “failed to establish that an injunction would prevent irreparable harm”.
John Bolton had “gambled” with US national security and already “exposed his country to harm”, the judge said.
Hundreds of thousands of copies of the book – The Room Where It Happened – have been printed and distributed, and are due to go on sale on June 23.
In the memoir, John Bolton paints an unflattering picture of a president whose decision-making was dominated by a desire to be re-elected in November.
President Trump has said the book is “made up of lies and fake stories”.
The justice department’s lawyers argued that John Bolton had breached an obligation to complete a pre-publication review of his manuscript to ensure that it contained no classified information.
John Bolton’s lawyers dismissed the claim. They insisted that the manuscript was thoroughly examined and that President Trump simply did not like the contents.
In his 10-page ruling, Judge Lamberth wrote that John Bolton had opted out of the pre-publication review process before its conclusion and that he “likely jeopardized national security by disclosing classified information in violation of his non-disclosure agreement obligations”.
John Bolton nevertheless denied the government’s injunction request.
He wrote: “In taking it upon himself to publish his book without securing final approval from national intelligence authorities, Bolton may indeed have caused the country irreparable harm.
“But in the internet age, even a handful of copies in circulation could irrevocably destroy confidentiality. A single dedicated individual with a book in hand could publish its contents far and wide from his local coffee shop. With hundreds of thousands of copies around the globe – many in newsrooms – the damage is done. There is no restoring the status quo.”
Shortly after the decision, President Trump alleged on Twitter that John Bolton “broke the law by releasing Classified Information (in massive amounts)”.
“He must pay a very big price for this, as others have before him. This should never to happen again!!!” the president added.
Later, President Trump tweeted: “BIG COURT WIN against Bolton. Obviously, with the book already given out and leaked to many people and the media, nothing the highly respected Judge could have done about stopping it…BUT, strong & powerful statements & rulings on MONEY & on BREAKING CLASSIFICATION were made….”
A lawyer for John Bolton, Charles Cooper, welcomed the judge’s decision to deny the injunction request.
However, he took issue with the conclusion that his client did not comply fully with his contractual pre-publication obligation to the government.
“The full story of these events has yet to be told – but it will be,” John Bolton added.
His publisher, Simon & Schuster, said: “We are grateful that the Court has vindicated the strong First Amendment protections against censorship and prior restraint of publication.”
John Bolton became President Trump’s national security adviser in April 2018.
He left his post in September 2019, after disagreeing strongly with the president over how to handle major challenges like Iran, North Korea and Afghanistan.
In The Room Where It Happened, John Bolton portrays President Trump as an “erratic”, “impulsive” and “stunningly uninformed” leader.
Among the allegations, which are based on private conversations and are impossible to verify, are:
President Trump sought help from Chinese President Xi Jinping to win the 2020 vote, stressing the “importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome”;
John Bolton also said China’s construction of internment camps in the Xinjiang region was the “right thing to do”;
President Trump was willing to intervene in criminal investigations “to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked”. John Bolton said President Trump was willing to assist Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over a case involving a Turkish company;
President Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool” and that the South American nation was “really part of the United States”;
President Trump was unaware the UK was a nuclear power and once asked a senior aide if Finland was part of Russia.
Juneteenth – the June 19th date which marks the end of US slavery – will become an official holiday in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced.
The move comes as millions of Americans plan to commemorate, with marches and personal observances, the 1865 date when the last US slaves were freed.
Several states already observe Juneteenth as an official holiday and there is a push to declare it a national holiday.
The date’s significance has grown this year amid Black Lives Matter protests.
Mayor de Blasio said in a press conference on June 19 that the date would be marked as an official city holiday beginning in 2021, and will also be a public school holiday.
He said: “We’ll work with all the unions to work through the plan, give this day the importance and recognition it deserves.
“Every city worker, every student will have the opportunity to reflect the meaning of our history and the truth.”
Earlier this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an order making Juneteenth – also known as Emancipation Day and Freedom Day – a paid holiday for state workers.
Andrew Cuomo said he would introduce legislation to make the day a holiday for all New Yorkers by 2021.
Virginia Governor Ralph Northam also promised to make Juneteenth a holiday by 2021 in the former capitol of the Confederacy which rebelled against the US during the Civil War for the legal right to enslave black people.
In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf has also signed an order making Juneteenth a holiday for state workers.
He said in the statement: “In recent weeks, people around the nation have joined together to demand an end to systemic racism and oppression of African Americans.”
“Freedom for all is not fully realized until every person is truly free. This Juneteenth we have an opportunity to unite against injustice and create lasting change,” he continued.
Texas was the first state to declare Juneteenth a holiday in 1980. Now all but four US states observe or recognize the date in some form.
This year, the date has become particularly prominent in the public consciousness amid a wave of protests over racial inequality following the deaths of several unarmed African Americans. Juneteenth rallies are planned in Washington DC and across the US.
On June 19, 1865 enslaved people in Galveston, Texas received the news that slavery had been abolished by President Abraham Lincoln two years earlier.
According to historians, the news took so long to reach slaves in Texas in part due to fighting that continued even after the surrender of the Confederacy that ended the Civil War.
Corporate America is also treating Juneteenth with more reverence than in previous years, with employees from Nike, Uber, and Twitter being given a paid day off.
Google has asked employees to cancel non-urgent meetings and instead “create space for learning and reflection”.
Amazon told employees to “take some time to reflect, learn and support each other”.
In Washington, the most senior Republican in the Senate said on June 18 that he would introduce a bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday.
Four Democrats have also announced a similar proposal.
In the House of Representatives, the Texas congresswoman who has been pushing for a national holiday for two decades, told CBS that the chances of a holiday becoming a reality are growing.
HOUSTON, TEXAS. A $100 million racial discrimination lawsuit has been filed in a Houston, Texas state district court on behalf of hundreds of Black present and former employees of the Houston Community College (“HCC”). The suit was intentionally filed Friday, June 19, 2020– “Juneteenth—the anniversary date that Black slaves in Texas learned they had been freed from slavery two years earlier by President Abraham Lincoln. The lawsuit details a damning list of allegations about what has happened at Houston Community College under the leadership of Chancellor Cesar Maldonado and the Human Resources Director, Ms. Janet May. According to the lawsuit, Maldonado accepted his position in 2014 with a Hispanic “preferential treatment” agenda. The suit contains an actual email chain created shortly after Maldonado’s appointment, which states “Now we [Hispanics] are going to receive preferential treatment.” The suit alleges that since Maldonado’s arrival 90% of the long-time Black professionals at HCC have either been terminated or demoted, while there has been a 50% increase in Hispanic hires and promotions. Shockingly, the suit claims, while 90% of tenured and experienced Black employees have been displaced only 10% of similarly tenured White employees have been displaced.
The lawsuit continues with a disturbing list of tactics used by Cesar Maldonado and Janet May to get rid of Black employees. These tactics include, among many others:
Telling a Black male that a White woman’s word was more truthful than his word;
When a White person complains, believing them, but if a Black person complains doubting them unless corroborated;
“Padding” Black employee personnel files with false complaints to be used later as pretexts for firing them;
When Black employees are accused of harassment, believing the complainant – but if the complaint is made by a Black person, doubting them until HHC can corroborate;
Using the term “transformation” as a cover for getting rid of Black employees; and
Forcing Black employees to take leaves of absence without cause to later use as grounds to terminate the Black employee.
If these allegations are proven in court, HCC is in for a bad day at the courthouse.
Image source: Dolcefino
The named plaintiff in the lawsuit is a 55-year-old Black female, Zelia Brown, who was forced to take a leave of absence when she complained about missing grant money at HCC. She reported that the grant funds had been misused or taken to the federal government, according to the lawsuit. After federal investigators notified HCC officials they were going to investigate Ms. Brown’s allegations, she was immediately told not to return to work and to take a leave of absence. Her locked grant office is said to have been rummaged through while she was on this leave of absence. Although HCC is said to have later asked her to return to work, the return was conditioned on her accepting a false complaint that she had created a hostile work environment and presumably remain silent about the missing grant dollars. Ms. Brown refused to remain silent and filed suit. Tonight, she will speak to the media for the first time.
Zelia Brown is asking the court to approve a class action lawsuit against HCC on behalf of all Black employees who have been terminated or demoted since Maldonado became Chancellor in 2014. It is estimated that the number of class members will be in the hundreds with each member seeking individual damages in the case. Zelia Brown is represented in the lawsuit by Benjamin L. Hall, III, the former Houston City Attorney under Mayor Bob Lanier and former mayoral candidate. Hall stated, “Ms. Brown is one of the more recent casualties of what appears to be a modern-day Jim Crow environment at Houston Community College for Black executives. She is a brave lady to stand up to power and speak the truth. We feel confident there are more victims of HCC’s discriminatory policies who will come forward to tell their stories as well.”
The lawsuit has been filed in the 164th District Court and a copy of the lawsuit as well as the listed exhibits accompanies this press release.
The delivery time from China and Hong Kong to the US depends on several factors. However, the maximum estimated time is between 10 to 20 days from the date of dispatching the parcel.
The delivery time depends on the destination of the packet when it comes to other countries. You have to consider the location, holidays, custom protocols, and other economic events.
Unlike in the US, other countries may take longer. Most of the time is spent on the journey, while the additional time is spent on reaching the different facilities. Upon entering the facility, they are sorted, traced, and registered before making to their destination.
Even though 10 to 20 days seem pretty long, it is much faster than other commercial delivery services to ship goods from China and Hongkong.
You should also consider the fact that there are thousands of other packages being shipped in bulks every day. It takes time to process all these items and the number of stops they make to reach a destination.
Average ePacket Shipping time
China to Ukraine, Russia, and Saudi Arabia: 7 to 15 business days
China to Mexico: 20 business days
China to all other eligible countries: 7 to 10 business days
It may be confusing and hard to comprehend the small but vital networking process involved in ePacket delivery. However, E-tracking has made this task more straightforward and convenient for both the sellers and the customers.
When using epacket shipping, there are several ways to track your parcel, which is why it is so convenient and reliable.
One of the first steps is to make sure you have the right parcel tracking number. Once you have this number, which is unique for each parcel, you can use an official website. The seller will account for all your shipping details on the site before it is sent out.
Before the parcel leaves China, you can use EMS, and once it reaches, you can access the USPS website to track your package.
There are also other middle party tracking services as an alternative to the official websites. These include websites such as
You can view your order details when you purchase from sites like AliExpress. They automatically show the location of your parcel when you enter your order details in the search portal.
All packages sent by epacket has a tracking number with the letter “L.” That way, you can quickly tell if your parcel is shipped by ePacket or other services.
List of Countries with ePacket Shipping Services
ePacket Shipping does not work for all the countries due to international trade regulations. But currently, 44 countries are legible for epacket shipping.
Former police officer Garrett Rolfe, who fatally shot fleeing Afro-American Rayshard Brooks in the back last week in Atlanta, Georgia, will be charged with murder and assault, officials say.
Garrett Rolfe, who has already been fired, faces 11 charges related to Rayshard Brooks’ death. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
The other officer at the scene, Devin Brosnan, will testify as a prosecution witness in the case, officials said.
The Rayshard Brooks case comes amid protests over police killings of black Americans.
Lawmakers in Washington are currently debating new police reform laws.
According to officials, this was the ninth time that an Atlanta police officer had been prosecuted for homicide.
They added that it is believed to be the first time a police officer would testify against a member of his own unit, though Devin Brosnan’s lawyer denied his client would be a witness in the case.
Image source: Wikipedia
President Donald Trump has said he is concerned about the way the case against Garrett Rolfe is being handled.
“I hope he gets a fair shake because police have not been treated fairly in our country,” the president told Fox News.
“You can’t resist a police officer like that,” he added, referring to Rayshard Brooks’ actions during the incident.
Rayshard Brooks, 27, failed a sobriety test on June 12 after he was found asleep inside his car that was blocking a drive-through lane at a Wendy’s restaurant.
After pulling over his vehicle, the father-of-four appeared “slightly impaired, but his behavior during this incident was almost jovial”, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard said on June 17.
For over 40 minutes, video shows Rayshard Brooks complying with officers as he consented to a weapons search and provided them with his identification details.
However, as officers tried to handcuff him, Rayshard Brooks began struggling. The footage appears to show Rayshard Brooks punched Garrett Rolfe, grabbed Devin Brosnan’s stun gun and turned back while fleeing to fire it at Garrett Rolfe.
Rayshard Brooks suffered two gunshots to the back that caused organ injuries and blood loss. One police bullet also hit a witness’ vehicle, nearly killing the driver, investigators say.
Prosecutors said Garrett Rolfe said: “I got him.”
For over two minutes after Rayshard Brooks was shot, neither officer provided medical attention as police are required to do, prosecutors said.
Instead, Garrett Rolfe kicked Rayshard Brooks while he was on the ground.
Officer Devin Brosnan – who has already been placed on administrative leave – will be charged with assault for allegedly standing on Rayshard Brooks’ shoulder as he lay dying.
Dexamethasone could be of huge benefit in poorer countries with high numbers of Covid-19 patients.
PM Boris Johnson said there was a genuine case to celebrate “a remarkable British scientific achievement”, adding: “We have taken steps to ensure we have enough supplies, even in the event of a second peak.”
About 19 out of 20 patients with coronavirus recover without being admitted to hospital.
Of those who are admitted, most also recover but some may need oxygen or mechanical ventilation.
These are the high-risk patients dexamethasone appears to help.
Dexamethasone is already used to reduce inflammation in a range of other conditions, including arthritis, asthma and skin some conditions.
It appears to help stop some of the damage that can happen when the body’s immune system goes into overdrive as it tries to fight off coronavirus.
This over-reaction, a cytokine storm, can be deadly.
In the trial, led by a team from Oxford University, about 2,000 hospital patients were given dexamethasone and compared with more than 4,000 who were not.
For patients on ventilators, the drug cut the risk of death from 40% to 28%.
For patients needing oxygen, dexamethasone cut the risk of death from 25% to 20%.
Dexamethasone does not appear to help people with milder symptoms of coronavirus who do not need help with their breathing.
Quaker Oats has announced it will rename its brand Aunt Jemima (a line of syrups and foods), acknowledging it was based on a racial stereotype.
For over 130 years, Aunt Jemima’s logo has featured a black woman named after a character from minstrel shows in the 1800s that mocked African-Americans.
The company said past branding updates to address these issues were “not enough”.
Criticism against the brand has renewed amid the national debate over racism sparked by George Floyd’s death.
Image source: AuntJemima.com
Kristin Kroepfl, Quaker Foods North America’s chief marketing officer, said the company is working “to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives”.
She said: “We also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations.
“We are starting by removing the image and changing the name.”
Quaker has not offered further details on the coming changes, which were first reported by NBC News.
In addition, Aunt Jemima is to donate at least $5 million over the next five years to support the African American community, according to parent company PepsiCo.
The branding on Aunt Jemima’s syrups, mixes and other food products features an image of a black woman that has often been linked to stereotypes around slavery.
In a 2015 opinion piece for the New York Times, Cornell University African-American literature professor Riché Richardson described Aunt Jemima as “an outgrowth of Old South plantation nostalgia and romance”.
He said the brand perpetuated the idea of a “mammy” character – a submissive black woman who nurtured her white master’s children.
Founded in 1889, the Aunt Jemima logo was based on storyteller, cook and missionary Nancy Green, Quaker’s site says.
According to the African American Registry non-profit database, Nancy Green was born into slavery in Kentucky in 1834.
Aunt Jemima joins a number of companies offering change in light of the global protests and renewed debate over racism in America, sparked by the recent police killings of George Floyd and other African Americans.
