[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Photos: Hurricane Isaias preparations at New Bern Grand Marina New Bern Sun Journal[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Photos: Hurricane Isaias preparations at New Bern Grand Marina New Bern Sun Journal[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Elk depredation continues to occur throughout southern Idaho Twin Falls Times-News
McDermott Will & Emery offices in Washington, D.C. Photo: Diego Radzinschi/ALMThe leaders of Hughes Hubbard & Reed’s international trade and defense industry practice groups have moved to McDermott Will & Emery in Washington, D.C., as part of a seven-lawyer team, McDermott announced Friday.
*May exclude premium content
Already have an account? Sign In Now
Press release from the Somerset County Government:
July 31, 2020
BRIDGEWATER – Somerset County Recycling is having another First Saturday of the Month Drop-off event on Aug. 1, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., at the Somerset County Recycling Center, located at 40 Polhemus Lane, Bridgewater, NJ 08807.
"Residents can take this opportunity to recycle unwanted items that are accumulating in their homes," said Somerset County Freeholder Melonie Marano, recycling liaison. "Recycling is vitally important for conserving our resources and to protect the environment for future generations."
Social distancing is required: Residents must wear facial coverings and gloves. Only one occupant per vehicle is permitted. Occupants should remain in their vehicles, but staff will be available at every station to help residents remove their items.
Proof of residency is required: Attendees should have a current driver's license, valid lease, tax bill or any other bill that shows proof of a Somerset County address. Pre-registration is not required. No businesses or commercial vehicles are allowed.
Drop off up to eight tires – with or without rims – scrap metal, used motor oil, oil filters, antifreeze and the usual curbside materials, including chipboard items, plastic bottles and containers marked #1 through #7. Chipboard items include gift, shoe, shirt and all retail boxes, as well as cereal, cookie, pasta, and cake and cracker boxes without the plastic liners. Accepted also is poster board, greeting cards, backing from writing pads and empty, dried-out steel paint cans.
Somerset County does not accept textiles at First Saturday of the Month drop-offs. Residents should continue to recycle used textiles at any local charity donation bin.
Donate canned goods and non-perishable food at First Saturday to help residents who have been affected by COVID-19.
For a complete listing of recyclable items, recycling events and more, visit www.co.somerset.nj.us/recycle. To learn more about First Saturday events, visit www.co.somerset.nj.us/1stSat or call the Somerset County Recycling Center at 732-469-3363.
To stay up to date with Somerset County events and information, sign up for free email alerts at www.co.somerset.nj.us/subscribe or follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
This press release was produced by the Somerset County Government. The views expressed here are the author's own.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Perinatal transmission of COVID-19 unlikely to occur with appropriate infection control strategies 2 Minute Medicine
Kirk Gallegos is a single father of four. He works construction in Barstow, Calif. Prudence Carter is a single mother of one. She's the dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley.
Both of them share the same problem with tens of millions of other parents around the country: Their public schools aren't operating full time in-person this fall. And the rest of the child care system, which had been stretched even before the pandemic, is itself under pressure.
The child care sector consists for the most part of small businesses and nonprofits supported by a patchwork of public subsidies. Centers and in-home day cares are mostly owned and operated by women, disproportionately women of color, many of whom live at poverty wages. Child care centers and after-school programs have lost income during shutdowns and because of state and local budget cuts, and many have been forced to close for safety reasons. Republicans have proposed $15 billion for the child care sector in the latest coronavirus aid package; Democrats are seeking more than three times that.
In the interim, families are being left to improvise. They're having to consider not only their children's safety, but also their academic progress and their well-being after months of isolation.
"I think parents are just trying to do what they have to do to survive in this moment," sums up Carter, who is a scholar of inequality in education.
Parents have a few different options, but none of them come without trade-offs, and they aren't available to all families equally.
Option 1: Step back from the workforce
The first resort for parents, and particularly mothers, is working less to take care of their own children. We're in an employment crisis anyway, but caregiving responsibilities are keeping some parents from even looking for work. A recent survey from the Bipartisan Policy Center found that 55% of Hispanic and 44% of Black parents on unemployment insurance were not planning to or did not accept an offer to return to work due to caregiving needs.
Gallegos, the construction worker, until recently had to juggle job hunting with taking care of his girls, who range in age from 1 to 10. "I would take them with me [on interviews], or [search] online. I didn't want to use the day care unless I really, really, really needed to."
For those who have the relative privilege to work from home, there is a subtler toll on productivity and well-being, particularly for mothers. Many are splitting their schedules, getting up early and staying up late to work while children sleep. Carter cites an analysis from her own field of higher education, suggesting that across disciplines, male scholars are producing relatively more work than their female counterparts, more so than before the pandemic.
Even as she's working to shift policies to make sure that her own faculty, staff and students who are caregivers aren't penalized for lagging research and publication under these conditions, Carter laments her own loss of "concentrated time." "It's really hard to write. I was hoping to get a new project off the ground this summer."
Option 2: In-home day cares
For school-aged children who don't have a family member to watch them for free, organized group child care and afterschool programs are the most common option, according to a recent policy analysis by the Urban Institute. But the pandemic has shut many of those as well, because the group sizes are too large for social distancing and cohorting, or because they've lost access to public school buildings, or both. That leaves the next most popular option: in-home day cares. Pre-pandemic, these small neighborhood businesses took care of 7 million children, including around 30 percent of infants and toddlers, according to the nonprofit Home Grown. Across the country almost all of these providers are women and almost half are women of color.
In-home care is the most affordable option for most families too — averaging around $300 a week for up to 11 or 12 hours a day, depending on the location and the age of children. The costs tend to be lower if you qualify for public subsidies.
Because of their size, these in home day cares have fewer licensing requirements. And industry experts said less staffing and overhead mean that women who run their own home-based day cares can make more money than they can in a standalone center.
"The long term vision of our company is to get more people to actually start their own home daycare," says Jessica Chang, the CEO of WeeCare. WeeCare is a platform that works sort of like a Lyft for in-home day cares, making thousands of these businesses searchable and helping with overhead like marketing and billing.
Chang, and Chris Bennett of Wonderschool, a similar platform, both argue this is a model that is nimble enough to potentially scale up to meet the sudden demand for care for school-aged children — if it had the right support.
"We're getting a lot of interest from folks who want to start microschools, and a number of our providers are expanding, too," says Bennett.
Gallegos qualified for a county subsidy to send his four daughters to Little Barstow WeeCare. He drops them off at 6:30 or 7 in the morning and picks them up in the evening. "They love it. I drop them off and sometimes they forget to say bye, they're running down the hallway to do whatever they want to do."
Maria Jensen, the owner-operator, helped him get in touch with the principal at his older daughters' public school to make sure they would have computers to do their schoolwork. When school starts remotely Aug. 10, Jensen will oversee them while they study.
"I talked to a few other day cares, they said they had room and they could take them, but they weren't doing the school part — the academic part. That was one of the most important parts to me."
Natalie Renew directs Home Grown, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality of in-home child care. She says many centers already take older kids after school, and she sees this sector stepping up to care for school aged children during the day.
"We're definitely hearing that there is demand and providers are getting calls from parents as school districts release their plans for the fall." But even as demand is growing, supply is in danger of falling. Child care providers who lost headcount and revenue during shutdowns are in danger of losing not only their businesses but their homes. Without a bailout, says Renew, "It's really sort of looking over the edge of a cliff. Many, many providers are already starting to close."
Health and safety is another key concern for in-home providers, as it is for anywhere people gather indoors during the pandemic. Renew says there isn't a lot of good evidence yet on just how safe these settings might be. But there are hopes that, "given the small group size of home based child care, that the threat of transmission may be lower there."
Ani Angel Gharibian runs Busy Bee, another WeeCare, in Los Angeles. She serves many children of essential workers, and is investing in desks and other equipment to expand to take in more school-aged kids during the day, as LA schools are coming back online-only. She says it's impossible to socially distance from infants, and she doesn't like making children wear masks all day, because, she says, it's bad for their language development and makes them "timid". She and her employees are nervous, but she says, "people are desperate for income at the moment. So even if they do have some reservations, priorities take over."
Option 3: "Pandemic pod"
One of the options that's gotten the most attention is associated with families of greater means — variously known as a "learning pod," or "pandemic pod." Generally, this means getting together a group of a few children to share the cost of a tutor, typically hosted at families' homes.
Ivan Kerbel is the founder of the Seattle area Facebook Group for founders of what he calls "pandemic-era nano-schools." He has two young children. Like so many parents, he's "in this impossible pickle of child care, parenting and schooling while doing our ostensible jobs."
Kerbel also wants his children to be able to play safely with other kids and to learn subjects like math and science by cooking and gardening, not just on the computer.
So he started this group to find other families who were interested in doing the same. There are now over 4,000 members in the Seattle area. Pandemic pod matchmaking groups like these have sprung up quickly all over the country. And the critiques have come just as fast and furious. In Oakland, Calif., a group of 14 public school principals signed an open letter this week criticizing the practice.
One aspect that particularly bothers critics is the idea of hiring teachers directly away from public schools who may be wary of the classroom this fall for safety reasons. Melinda Anderson, a journalist covering education and equity, calls the practice "pandemic driven opportunity hoarding." "Opportunity hoarding" is a sociological concept that basically means a group in power is grabbing up resources and excluding a less powerful group. Anderson says, "parents forming pandemic pods and micro-schools did not create school inequalities, but they're certainly exacerbating inequalities by seeking out options unavailable to everyone."
Some critics have gone farther. A Washington Post column compared the practice to that of white families a half-century ago seceding from the public school system and forming "segregation academies" in resistance to Brown vs. Board of Education.
Carter, the dean of the graduate school of education at Berkeley, doesn't see things in quite those terms. "Is this like post-Brown? I don't think so. I think the country's consciousness is at a different level." Casting these issues in terms of race and class leaves out affluent, educated parents of color like herself, she said, and "there is a presumption that working class and poor parents don't want these pods themselves."
Carter happens to be thinking about forming a learning pod, not only to get more time to write, but also because her son is lonely. "My child is crying, as an only child, saying, 'I miss my friends.' " At the same time, as a scholar, she's " thinking about how to minimize the impact of privilege on children's learning."
For example, Carter says it's important that pandemic pods be as temporary and informal as possible, and that families keep their spot in public schools, if possible, using the remote learning offered by the district, so that schools can hold on to the funding. She doesn't like the idea of parents going fully out on their own — leasing spaces and forming more permanent "micro-schools."
"I am not interested in the privatization of public education and this becoming an alternative." She also suggests that parents of means not push their children too hard academically this year. Everyone will have catching up to do when in-person schooling resumes, and age-based standards, she says, are arbitrary anyway. "I don't know about you, but when I was a little girl, I wasn't reading by the end of kindergarten."
One idea that's popped up to address equity concerns is to have each pod include a sliding scale or scholarship spot. Ivan Kerbel says he's trying to institute a rule in his Seattle group: "If you have a group of four kids, the fourth kid is free, if you have a group of five kids, the fifth kid is free." For example, Kerbel says that he's planning to set up ukulele lessons for his 5-year-old. He is in touch with a local refugee resettlement agency to see if a Somali refugee child is able to join.
Carter cautions that pods that include a "diversity" slot also have to work hard to be inclusive. "What are you going to do socially and culturally to make sure that that child feels deeply included?"
Kerbel has personal experience with this. He says when he emigrated from Eastern Europe as a child, barely speaking English, a classmate was assigned to be his friend. He remembers feeling grateful.
He adds that he feels that children are going to learn not only math or music right now, but also directly from the choices we make: "How did their parents respond to the pandemic? Did they widen their social circle? Did they broaden their horizons? Or did they just sort of hunker down and, you know, shut the rest of the world out?"
Carter sees the pandemic magnifying all kinds of inequities, but in some ways it's also putting many different kinds of families in the same boat.
"We don't have leadership. Resources are so minimal. And so people are trying to use their innovation to just make things work so that they can actually continue to support the families."
Sales of spirits continued to outperform wine and beer in the US off-trade in the week ending 18 July 2020, according to Nielsen data.
Tequila is one of the main growth drivers for spirits in the US off-trade
For the one-week period ending 18 July, spirits sales in the US off-trade grew 29.3%, while wine increased by 19.7% and beer, flavoured malt beverages (FMB) and cider, rose by 15.4%.
Danelle Kosmal, vice-president of beverage alcohol at Nielsen, said: “While growth rates have ebbed for all three categories, coinciding with on-premise reopening to varying extents, spirits has clung on to its earlier growth better than either beer or wine, while the latter’s growth has decelerated the most. That may be attributed to some business moving back to the more wine-friendly restaurant environment, which is less impacted by new closures than bars.
“Looking at just those more recent growth rates may be a better indication of what we’ll potentially see through the end of the summer, and maybe even into the fall, as consumers settle into their new normal.”
Nielsen said spirits’ growth continues to surpass other alcohol categories by a wide margin and continues to take share from the total alcohol category. The analyst compared growth rates between the restricted Covid-19 period (first week of March until the end of May) and the reopening period (week ending 6 June until week ending 18 July). Nielsen found that the growth of American whiskey, cordials, gin, rum and vodka slowed much faster than the total spirits category.
Meanwhile, the segments that grew as the US moved into the reopening period were Cognac, Scotch and Japanese whisky.
The two main growth drivers for spirits in the off-trade were ready-to-drink (RTD) cocktails and Tequila. Nielsen noted that RTD cocktails grew 89% in the first three months of 2020 compared to the same period last year. Over the last seven weeks, the category increased by 81%. Canned offerings now represent around a third of the RTD category over the last 52 weeks, Nielsen found, with the segment recording triple-digit growth. Tequila rose by more than 67% during both periods.
From the first week of March (restricted Covid-19 period) until the week ending 18 July, spirits grew 34.7%, wine was up 27% and beer, FMB and cider increased by 19.8%.
Within the beer, FMB and cider category, hard seltzers continued to witness “phenomenal” growth rates, Nielsen said, particularly when compared to the “summer of seltzers” in 2019. During the seven-day period ending 18 July, hard seltzers grew 142% compared to the same week last year.
There's no question that the Seahawks landed a premium player in trading for Jamal Adams, but they certainly paid a high price to do so.
To acquire the All-Pro safety, Seattle sent its first-round picks in the next two NFL drafts, a 2021 third-round pick and Bradley McDougald -- a pretty good safety in his own right -- to the New York Jets. The Seahawks also received the Jets' 2022 fourth-round pick in the deal.
There hasn't been a great track record for teams giving up that much in a trade for a player who, albeit is a star, will still need to be paid a record-setting contract extension. Just look at the position the Los Angeles Rams find themselves in after coughing up a similar package to land cornerback Jalen Ramsey.
Consequently, the general consensus is that the Seahawks gave up too much in the trade, particularly due to the fact that safety isn't considered a premium salary position like quarterbacks, left tackles and pass rushers are. ESPN's Bill Barnwell explored that theory in detail, and didn't come away with a considerably different conclusion.
[49ERS INSIDER PODCAST: Listen to the latest episode]
The Seahawks, as you might expect, feel differently. Seattle general manager John Schneider recently joined NBC Sports' Peter King Podcast and defended the transaction -- specifically including a second first-round pick in the package.
"The way we view it is -- and I hope this comes across the right way -- but historically we've been picking in the late 20s," Schneider told King. " ... When you're picking in the late 20s, it's a different challenge. And we just viewed it as an opportunity to say if we were picking at 27 and to move up to No. 26, what does that look like to us on draft weekend? And quite honestly we felt it was appropriate for us that that would be the right compensation.
"Now that can be debated, right? It's fun, it's entertainment for everybody, I get it. But when you're in that arena with somebody and you're having those negotiations and you're trying to figure out what your future is gonna look like -- and what your windows of opportunity look like -- we just felt like we should go for it. And you can't sit here and preach that you're going to be a consistent championship-caliber football team and not be in something like this and go for it."
On one hand, you can't fault Schneider's logic. The Seahawks definitely must be considered an NFC contender now, and unlike the Rams, they have a quarterback in Russell Wilson capable of leading them to the Super Bowl.
On the other, he uses some very curious reasoning.
To say that the price of moving up to the 26th pick from 27 justifies including a second first-round pick in the trade package is just plain wrong.
In April's 2020 draft, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers sent the 49ers a 2020 fourth-round selection (No. 117 overall) along with their own No. 14 pick in exchange for San Francisco's No. 13 pick and a 2020 seventh-round selection. So, essentially, the Bucs traded a fourth for a seventh to move up one spot in the first round -- and that was in the top half of the round.
The later in the draft, the less a team generally has to offer in trading up for a pick. So to move up to 26 from 27, in theory, would cost the Seahawks less than it cost Tampa Bay to move up from 14 to 13.
Certainly not a first-round pick.
[RELATED: 49ers' Kittle was factor in Adams trade, 'Hawks GM admits]
In fact, according to the often-referenced Draft Pick Trade Value Chart, the difference in value between the 26th pick (700) and the 27th pick (680) is the equivalent of the value of the No. 178 overall pick, which falls roughly midway through the sixth round.
So, while it remains to be seen if the Seahawks will regret their decision to give up what they did for Adams, it certainly seems like they will if that was their prevailing logic.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
Traffic delays to occur on county trunk | Records | ehextra.com EH Extra-xl.jpg)
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is "very happy" with the progress made in both its hardware financing and trade-in options.
The chief executive made the comments during the company's third quarter earnings call with investors, first responding to a question from analyst Katy Huberty.
Cook referenced the company's June rollout of interest-free financing offers, and added that the payment option complements the company's existing trade-in programs.
On trade-ins, Cook said the option is becoming a more common "trend," and added that it's terrific because it's great for the environment and acts as a subsidy.
Taken together, Cook said that trade-in and interest-free financing both make its devices "super affordable," and that Apple is "happy with what [they're] seeing in that regard."
Cook added that both programs are doing well "in a number of geographies," including China — whether a large portion of the installed user base still uses pre-iPhone X devices. The Apple executive positioned those options as a way to get users in the region, and elsewhere, to upgrade to newer devices.
Even when beach conditions appear sunny and calm, tropical systems can cause rip currents so dangerous that lifeguards often refer to them as drowning machines.
Even a tropical system hundreds of miles offshore can create strong, narrow currents flowing outward from the beach through the surf zone. Rip currents are typically about 30 feet wide and most dangerous during low tide.
Often, the most dangerous rip currents occur when skies are clear.
Large swells produced by storms well offshore can create conditions that cause rip currents. For example, in 2019, when Hurricane Lorenzo was over 2,000 miles away from the U.S., the beaches were sunny and temperatures were in the 80s.
It was great beach weather, but Lorenzo generated large ocean swells stretching from Florida to New Jersey. There were seven drownings, four of which were in the Carolinas, including two at Kure Beach. The takeaway? We have to pay attention to tropical systems even when they are thousands of miles away.
Rip currents contribute to 80% of surf rescues in the Carolinas. In North Carolina, we average 10 rip current deaths every year. Since 2011, half of the people who drowned were bystanders trying to help someone caught in a rip current, and 84% of deaths were vacationers.
Check the rip current conditions before you hit the beach, and only swim at a beach with lifeguards. Watch for warning flags, and never try to out swim a rip current.
If you get caught in a rip current, float on your back or swim parallel to the shore until you are safe. Call for help if you see someone in trouble.
Above all, remember rip currents can be out there even if there is no tropical system in sight.
[unable to retrieve full-text content]
How Does Occupant Ejection Occur in Car Accidents? Lawyers.com BlogStanding on the deck of the Captain Carl, his 34-foot lobster boat, Jeff Woodman reflects on how the rocky shores of Spruce Head, Maine, have become an unlikely frontline in both President Donald Trump’s global tariff wars and America’s battle against the coronavirus pandemic.
“Lobstering has been a family business. I’m third-generation,” says Woodman. “But it’s changing.”
Maine’s world-famous lobster industry is sinking. For years, China had been the top buyer of U.S. lobster, 80% of which is caught off the state’s coast. But when Beijing retaliated for a second round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, it slapped a 25% levy on the elite treat and reduced its tariff on Canadian catches. As the Trump Administration continues battling with the E.U., Europe, too, has been buying more from Canada; Ottawa and Belgium signed a trade deal three years ago that eliminated tariffs on Canadian lobster, while U.S. catches retain an 8% tax.
As a result, by early this year, Maine’s year-on-year lobster exports to China and Europe had both dropped by about 50%. The market for Homarus Americanus has shrunk to little more than domestic consumption and a limited number of wealthy epicures in Singapore, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, says Annie Tselikis, the executive director of the Maine Lobster Dealers’ Association.
“Then comes COVID,” Tselikis says. The major U.S. buyers of Maine lobster – casinos, cruise ships, restaurants, resorts, and corporate campuses — all shut down. The state’s lobstermen and women are still venturing out, but about a third of them have received nearly $15 million in federal Paycheck Protection Program loans to help them cope with the COVID-19 related losses.
Make sense of what matters in Washington. Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter.
Mainers aren’t used to being caught up in national crises, other than wars. Despite the long tradition of Beltway residents flocking to the state each summer, America’s Vacationland has an ambivalent relationship with the federal government. Policies and programs devised with good intentions in Washington haven’t always survived the voyage Down East as well as a plane full of live lobster can make the 10-hour trip in a “cloud pack” – tails down, claws up – from a warehouse in Spruce Head to Europe.
Nevertheless, the northeastern state and its embattled lobstermen and women have become one of many focal points in the upcoming election. As Republicans seek to hold on to their Senate majority, Maine is home to one of the toughest races, in which Republican Sen. Susan Collins is locked in a tight race with her well-funded opponent Sara Gideon, the Democratic speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
With control of the Senate and presidency at stake, one of the nation’s least populous states has assumed a disproportionate political importance. Trump visited the inland city of Bangor on June 5 and threatened to slap a new tariff on European cars if the Europeans didn’t immediately eliminate their tariff on American lobster. On June 24, he ordered the Agriculture Department to offer the lobster industry a bailout similar to those given to farmers also caught in his trade war with China.
So far, the results of those efforts only appear to have validated decades of local Republican skepticism about the federal government’s competence to manage the economy. Representatives of the $1.4 billion-a-year lobster industry, along with Collins and Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats, and the state’s two House representatives, Democrats Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden, have met with staffers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and its Foreign Agricultural Service, only to find that the department, not surprisingly, doesn’t know much about lobstering. At one meeting, an Agriculture Department representative asked a member of the Lobster Dealer’s Association, “Why don’t you just concentrate on China?”
The state’s politicians have found themselves tutoring government bureaucrats who are more familiar with corn than crustaceans while they try to understand why they’re trapped in a battle over China’s poaching of American technology. “It’s very frustrating to be caught in a trade war over intellectual property,” says Tselikis. “It’s not like the soybean industry. We’re sort of in a no-man’s land.”
Not only have lobster sales plummeted, keeping a lobster business running has become harder as Trump’s tariff wars have escalated, says Woodman. The burly lobsterman says bait and fuel are more expensive, as are digital water thermometers and the satellite technology and color screen he uses to navigate Penobscot Bay. Lobster pots, now made of steel instead of wood, cost $70 to $90 each, thanks in part to Trump’s tariffs on Canadian steel, he says. A new boat, he adds, can cost $100,000.
Even if there is a truce in the trade wars, lobstermen are facing heavy seas ahead. Over the past 15 years, Gulf of Maine has been warming faster than 99% of the world’s other saltwater bodies, according to a study from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and lobster are migrating to cooler waters. The state’s fleet is aging, access to capital is limited, and wages are dropping. A “sternman,” who baits and sets the traps and hauls them in, used to make $30,000 a year, but is now making about $23,000, according to Woodman. Entry level jobs in the industry pay $15 to $17 an hour, says Tselikis.
Without newcomers willing to apprentice themselves, learn the trade, and spend long hours on wet slippery decks in cold seas at that pay grade, it has become harder to find crew members. Sometimes Woodman’s 74-year-old father, for whom his boat is named, and his seven-year-old son help crew for him.
The influx of funds from the forgivable PPP loans has helped some people in the industry. According to the Small Business Administration, some 1,360 Maine lobstermen – about one in every three – have received loans of less than $150,000, more than workers in any other industry in the state. But as in other industries, the biggest players got more from the federal trough. Four of the state’s largest lobster companies hauled in $350,000 to $1 million, according to the SBA.
Those who didn’t get enough federal cash to weather the multiple crises facing the industry are learning to adapt. Some, like Woodman, are shipping their catch to processing plants in neighboring New Brunswick, which then sell them, tariff free, to China and Europe and back to customers in the U.S. He and others also are capitalizing on the market for frozen lobster, usually tail and claw meat, but now also entire crustaceans. “Everybody’s trying to think outside the box,” Woodman says.
Pensacola police arrested a suspect late Wednesday in connection to a shooting that hospitalized a man earlier that day.
It was the third shooting to occur within a 14-day period at the Pensacola Village Apartments located on East Fairfield Drive.
Jerome Young, 29, of Pensacola, was charged with firing a weapon in public or residential property, aggregated battery with a deadly weapon, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and criminal mischief.
First shooting at the complex: 1 man hospitalized after shooting at Pensacola apartment complex
Second shooting at the complex: Pensacola police arrest man accused of firing shots after argument at apartment complex
Third shooting Wednesday at the complex: Police investigate third shooting at the same Pensacola apartments within last two weeks
Young was booked into the Escambia County Jail on Wednesday with a $52,000 bond, and county records indicated that he remained in custody as of Thursday morning.
According to his arrest report, Young interjected himself into a verbal argument between two women and one of the women’s boyfriends, who Young ended up shooting outside of the “O” building at the Pensacola Village Apartments.
Young told the other man, “Boy, you’ll die here,” before displaying a gun, the report stated. The other man replied, “I’m not about to run from no gun.”
Young shot the other man in his pelvic area with a handgun, the report stated. The shooting victim was later transported to a local hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
It was the third shooting to occur at the Pensacola Village Apartments within two weeks.
On July 15, a 20-year-old man was shot at the apartment complex around 10:30 p.m., suffering a single non-life-threatening gunshot wound. He was transported by ambulance to Sacred Heart Hospital, and no arrest has been made, Wood said.
Two days later, on July 17, a Pensacola man was accused of firing a gun at two other men as they were attempting to leave the apartment complex.
Nija Simpson, 31, was arrested later that day and charged with reckless discharge of a firearm, carrying a concealed firearm, possession of a weapon by a convicted felon and two counts of aggravated assault.
Investigators learned that Simpson had been engaged in a verbal argument with the two other men, and when they tried to leave the Pensacola Village Apartments in their car, Simpson opened fire, Wood said. No one was injured.
Colin Warren-Hicks can be reached at colinwarrenhicks@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — On July 23, after several months of anticipation within Vietnam’s conservation community, the government released a new directive on managing the wildlife trade in the country.
The directive’s key provisions include an order to stop the already-illegal activities of “importing living or dead wild animals, eggs, larvae, parts and derivatives of wild animals … until there is further direction from the Prime Minister or there is permission by the Prime Minister in special circumstances.”
Additionally, it calls for the elimination of markets that facilitate the illegal wildlife trade. The directive does exclude “aquatic species for production and processing for food and animal feed.”
Vietnam is a major hub for both domestic and international wildlife trafficking, and this directive could have far-reaching implications.
“WWF-Vietnam are very pleased to see the issuance of this Prime Ministerial Directive in relation to improving control of the trade of wild animals in Vietnam,” said Benjamin Rawson, conservation and program development director of WWF-Vietnam. “While there have been directives which contain some similar language in the past in relation to controlling the hunting, trade and consumption of wildlife, this has, until recently, been an issue of biodiversity conservation.”
Earlier this year, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc tasked the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development with drafting a ban on wildlife trade and consumption in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, linking the issue with public health and the economy. Although science has not confirmed the exact origin of the virus behind the pandemic, experts believe it leapt from a wild animal to a human at a market in Wuhan, China.
Importantly, the new directive is not a wildlife trade ban, as has been widely reported since its release. In response to that reporting, the New York-based NGO the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) released a statement on July 27 saying “the directive does not ‘ban the wildlife trade,’ rather it calls for heightened enforcement of existing laws on illegal wildlife trade in Vietnam.”
None of the experts interviewed for this article referred to a ban either, instead using the official term of “directive.”
There are important new aspects of the directive, however. For example, according to the WCS statement, “the Directive requests the courts and prosecutors to impose strict penalties on those who abuse their position and authority to commit wildlife crimes. This is the first time such corruption has been acknowledged and prioritized.”
It also directly lays out responsibilities for eight national-level ministries, including the very powerful public security and defense ministries, in addition to state media and state judicial bodies.
“I had thought it would not be easy to have a directive that all the ministries would agree on, so although it came out a lot later than we had wished, it was a great move by the Prime Minister to show Vietnam’s commitment to contribute to the global effort to prevent another pandemic,” Hong Hoang, founder and executive director of CHANGE, an environmental NGO based in Ho Chi Minh City, wrote in an email.
Trang Nguyen, founder of the Vietnam-based conservation organization WildAct, said she was also happy to see the directive’s release, but noted some additional shortcomings.
“The directive does not include the domestic use of wildlife for medicine, or as pets,” she said. “It is also unclear which control or management will be put in place for the domestic, legal trade of wildlife and wildlife farming. The trade of legal wildlife products and places such as wildlife farms are also a cause of zoonotic outbreaks.”
Hoang, meanwhile, said she hopes the directive lends urgency to tackling the illegal wildlife trade.
“I think the directive signed by the Prime Minister in this context will make the wildlife trade more like an emergency, an urgent thing to do, which will push ministries and the involved parties to take it more seriously,” she said.
All three conservationists stressed that enforcement will be essential.
“Vietnam has many laws protecting wildlife and biodiversity already, but law enforcement has always been a huge challenge,” Hoang said. “I really hope this time, using the strong language of the directive, we can engage with the provincial governments, the police, Customs, and the media to make sure the directive is seriously implemented by all sectors at all levels.”
Under Vietnam’s current penal code, revised in 2017, individuals who break laws related to endangered species can be jailed for up to 15 years or fined up to $86,500; corporations can have operations suspended for up to three years or be fined up to $650,000. However, very few people have been prosecuted under these laws, despite massive busts involving trafficked rhino and elephant ivory, as well as pangolin scales and meat.
“Implementation and enforcement are what we need to see,” Nguyen added. “Hopefully this will not be lip-service. I think the strongest message from the government would be physically closing down the domestic illegal wildlife markets, most of which have been around for a very long time and are rather well-known.”
Meanwhile, Vietnam faces a new wave of COVID-19 infections after going 99 days without detecting any community transmission of the virus, a development that could distract from efforts to extinguish the illegal wildlife trade.
Banner image: A critically endangered douc langur (genus Pygathrix) in Vietnam, where doucs are sold as pets or for medicine or meat. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the editor of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Press release from the Village of Cedarhurst:
July 29 2020
Our monthly Meeting of the Board of Trustees will be held on Monday, August 3, 2020 at 8:00 PM.
The Village is committed to protecting the health and safety of our residents. Therefore, consistent with New York State law and in accordance with all applicable Emergency Orders, Village Hall will be open for this board meeting with limited occupancy. A face mask must be worn at all times while in the building and social distancing must be adhered to at all times. We will also be broadcasting our board meeting via Zoom.
For Zoom Participants
First, if you do not have Zoom, download one of the following, depending on your device:
To attend our August 3rd meeting click here. For a basic tutorial on joining a meeting click here.
For Telephone Call-in Participation (Zoom software is not needed)
If you wish to participate by phone instead of through an online video Zoom connection, here's how:
Call-in Number: 1 929 205 6099Meeting ID: 922 5686 1256(then follow the prompts; no response to participant ID is needed)
Any questions prior to the meeting may be emailed to village@cedarhurst.gov. If you wish to speak during the meeting, please use the "raised hand" function during the meeting or press #9 if calling in by phone.
This press release was produced by the Village of Cedarhurst. The views expressed here are the author's own.
Thursday's loss for the S&P 500 also nearly mirrors its jump from the day before, when the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates at their record low but highlighted how uncertain the path is for the economy, and how it's mostly dependent on what happens with the coronavirus pandemic. If the market stays at its current level, it would be the second time that the index has flip-flopped this week.
Energy stocks had some of the market's sharpest losses, dropping in concert with oil prices amid worries about weaker demand amid a struggling global economy. Exxon Mobil dropped 4.5%, and ConocoPhillips lost 9.5%.
Financial stocks were also weak, hurt by a drop in interest rates that reins in the profits to be made from lending. JPMorgan Chase fell 3.4%, and Citigroup lost 4.9%
Technology stocks held up better than the rest of the market, as they have through the pandemic. The sector fell 1.2% in Thursday morning trading, less than half the decline of financial stocks.
Four of the biggest tech-oriented companies are scheduled to report their latest quarter results after trading ends. Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google's parent company are all up more than 12% this year, when the S&P 500 is down 0.2%. Amazon is up more than 60%.
Investors have continued to flock to such stocks on expectations that sales for the companies will continue to explode as the pandemic accelerates life's shift toward online. But with great expectations also comes the possibility of great disappointment, and discouraging reports from the four would have big effects on the market. They alone account for nearly 16% of the S&P 500 by market value.
Investors are also continuing to wait for signs of progress from Capitol Hill, where Congress is debating how and whether to offer more aid for the economy ravaged by the pandemic. An extra $600 in weekly unemployment benefits from the federal government is about to expire, and that cash is growing in importance as the number of laid-off workers ticks higher.
A little more than 1.4 million U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, according to a Thursday report from the Labor Department. That's up by 12,000 from a week earlier.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 0.54% from 0.58% late Wednesday. It tends to move with investors' expectations for the economy and inflation.
Gold pulled back a bit from its record heights, offering at least a pause to its huge rally amid a weakening dollar, rock-bottom interest rates and worries about the economy. It fell 0.3% to $1,947.20 per ounce.
Benchmark U.S. crude dropped 2.2% to $40.37 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, lost 1.9% to $43.27 per barrel.
In European stock markets, Germany's DAX lost 3.5%, and France's CAC 40 dropped 2.1%. The FTSE 100 in London was down 2.5%.
In Asia, Japan's Nikkei 225 slipped 0.3%, South Korea's Kospi added 0.2% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.7%. Stocks in Shanghai slipped 0.2%.
But women’s relationship with trade is complex, as it can also lead to job losses and a concentration of work in lower-skilled jobs To ensure that trade enhances opportunities for everyone—regardless of gender—policymakers should assess the potential impact of trade rules on various groups of people and develop policy responses based on evidence.
Research on gender equality and trade has been held back by limited data and a lack of understanding of the connections between the economic roles women play as workers, consumers, and decision makers. Building on new analysis and new sex-disaggregated data, this report aims to advance understanding on the relationship between trade and gender equality and to identify a series of opportunities through which women can gain from trade.
Women and Trade: The Role of Trade in Promoting Women’s Equality—a joint report by the World Bank Group and the World Trade Organization—marks the first major effort to quantify how women are affected by trade through the use of a new gender-disaggregated labor dataset. This analysis helps governments understand how trade policies will affect women and men differently.
Vincent Trocheck was part of a wave of NHL players moved at the February trade deadline, jumping right into the lineup a day later for a learn-on-the-fly introduction to his new Carolina Hurricanes team.
Hardly an easy task.
"Obviously coming from a different team, you're going to have a little bit of confusion," he said. "Different systems, different styles of play."
Those new additions are in a different position as the NHL returns from its pandemic shutdown. They've had months to study film. They've had two-plus weeks of camp-style workouts to build chemistry with teammates. And that could provide a big boost for the teams that added them five months ago for a (delayed) run at the Stanley Cup.
"Anybody who got traded at the deadline for any team in this tournament, I think they're going to benefit from it," said New York Islanders coach Barry Trotz, whose team acquired center Jean-Gabriel Pageau from Ottawa.
That wasn't the plan, of course, when teams made deals ahead of the Feb. 24 deadline, which saw a record 32 trades and a record-tying 55 players dealt that final day. The expectation for playoff-contending teams was for new arrivals to spend the final six weeks of the regular season carving out roles ahead of the postseason.
Instead, the coronavirus halted everything in March.
The league allowed teams to reopen facilities for voluntary workouts in June. Then came two weeks of training camp in July, leading to this weekend's start of the playoffs featuring 24 teams divided between Toronto and Edmonton, Alberta.
Amid the shutdown, some injured players had time to heal. Coaches who took over during the season got their own fresh start. And trade-deadline acquisitions have had a chance to catch up, too, from Washington winger Ilya Kovalchuk to Vegas goaltender Robin Lehner.
Fittingly, it was one of those players — Conor Sheary, back with the Pittsburgh Penguins — who scored the first goal of the NHL's restart in Tuesday's exhibition loss to Philadelphia.
"Players come in, it's at the end of the season, there's probably a little bit of pressure to perform," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said. "You don't know anybody. You're unfamiliar with the coaches, with the system, your teammates — and then all of a sudden, you get four months kind of off.
"But that didn't mean you were four months away from your coaches or your teammates. Now you're in the group chats, you're communicating with everybody. You know everybody personally a lot better. And then when you come back, it's almost like: wow, it's your second year with the team."
Cooper's Lightning — part of the Eastern Conference's round robin for top seeds — acquired forwards Blake Coleman (from New Jersey) and Barclay Goodrow (from San Jose) in February.
Coleman said they were "kind of thrown the kitchen sink as far as systems and trying to pick things up on the fly."
"Obviously having a camp here has been great because I'm able to focus on the systems and really not have to worry about it in-game," Coleman said. "You kind of want that stuff to be just second nature and not have to think about it. I think it's been good. It feels like I'm part of the team now and not just the new guy, and it's exciting that we have this chance."
The Hurricanes made three deadline-day acquisitions, including defensemen Sami Vatanen and Brady Skjei amid injury concerns about All-Star Dougie Hamilton, and fellow blue-liner Brett Pesce.
Trocheck, who had 31 goals two seasons ago with Florida, said the time off helped him more than his seven games with Carolina by providing time to study more film. Then came camp workouts with teammates to become "100% acclimated."
"I think they're the ones that need the time the most," Hurricanes coach Rod Brind'Amour said. "You put a system in place and you kind of expect all the guys to grasp it, but you realize quickly that you watch it 100 hours a day, four months, you know it inside-out.
"Players, that's not how they get it. They get it from practicing the reps."
In all, 29 players acquired on deadline day are on NHL playoff rosters, spread across 17 of 24 teams. Other teams, like reigning Cup champion St. Louis and Winnipeg, made moves earlier in February.
"It was almost like I forgot we traded for them because they just fit so well, fit in so nicely," Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff said of Cody Eakin and Dylan DeMelo. "It feels like they've been part of the group from the beginning. And maybe it's because you pause and you have the restart that we do here right now, that everybody's on that even footing."
___
AP Hockey Writer Stephen Whyno contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contracts to buy U.S. previously owned homes rose to a nearly 14-1/2-year high in June, the latest indication that the housing market was weathering the COVID-19 pandemic far better than the broader economy.
FILE PHOTO: A new apartment building housing construction site is seen in Los Angeles, California, U.S. July 30, 2018. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson
Other data on Wednesday showed a sharp decline in the goods trade deficit last month, with trade boosted by a rebound in exports after three straight monthly decreases as the coronavirus upended global demand. The upbeat reports, however, did not change expectations that the economy contracted at its steepest pace since the Great Depression in the second quarter.
“Trade flows bounced but the underlying trend remains weak, driven by slow global activity and weak demand,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics in White Plains, New York.
The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, rose 16.6% to 116.1 in June. That was the highest level since January 2006.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast pending home contracts, which become sales after a month or two, increasing 15% in June. Pending home sales advanced 6.3% from a year ago.
The report followed on the heels of news on Tuesday that the homeownership rate raced to its highest level in nearly 12 years in the second quarter.
Reports this month showed a surge in homebuilder confidence in July, and an acceleration in home construction and sales of both new and previously owned homes in June.
The housing market is being boosted by historically low mortgage rates, offsetting record unemployment triggered by the coronavirus crisis, which has fallen disproportionately on workers in low-wage industries.
The public health crisis has seen the emergence of home offices and schooling, fueling demand for bigger homes in small metro areas, rural markets and large metro suburbs. But hurdles remain for the sector, which accounts for less than 5% of gross domestic product.
New cases of the respiratory illness are surging across the country. Analysts say disrupts to economic activity as authorities try to slow the spread of the virus could unleash a wave of white-collar job losses. There is also a persistent shortage of homes available for sale.
“The spike in COVID-19 infections in states in the South and the West, regions that account for well over 60% of existing home sales, may put some downward pressure on sales in the months ahead,” said Nancy Vanden Houten, lead economist at Oxford Economics in New York.
Stocks on Wall Street were trading higher. The dollar fell against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were mixed.
Pending home sales increased 11.9% in the populous South in June. They soared 11.7% in the West and surged 54.4% in the Northeast. Contracts rose 12.2% in the Midwest.
In a separate report on Wednesday, the Commerce Department said the goods trade deficit dropped 6.1% to $70.6 billion last month. Exports of goods accelerated 13.9% to $102.6 billion, eclipsing a 4.8% increase in goods imports to $173.2 billion. Goods imports fell in May to their lowest level since July 2010.
The rebound in exports was led by a 144.1% surge in shipments of motor vehicles and parts. Exports of capital goods soared 11.0% and consumer goods jumped 12.6%. There were also increases in exports of industrial supplies and other goods, but shipments of food, feeds and beverages fell.
Imports of motor vehicles and parts accelerated 107.7% last month. There were also strong gains in imports of capital and consumer goods. Imports of industrial supplies, however, fell.
Though the smaller goods trade deficit is a boost in the calculation of gross domestic product, it was offset by continued decreases in retail and wholesale inventories. Prior declines in imports forced businesses to draw down inventories.
“Even with the narrowing in the deficit between May and June, it widened on average between the first and second quarter so net exports should drag on growth in the second quarter,” said Daniel Silver, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.
The government is scheduled on Thursday to publish its snapshot of second-quarter GDP. According to a Reuters survey of economists, GDP probably contracted at a 34.1% annualized rate last quarter, the sharpest drop in output since record-keeping started in 1947. The economy contracted 5% in the January-March quarter. It entered recession in February.
Retail inventories dropped 2.6% in June after decreasing 6.2% in May. Motor vehicle and parts inventories tumbled 6.5%.
Retail inventories, excluding motor vehicles and parts, the component that goes into the calculation of GDP, fell 0.8% after dropping 1.7% in May. Wholesale inventories fell 2.0% in June after sliding 1.2% in the prior month.
Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Andrea Ricci
