#Deputy Minister of Manpower

[hargo-news]

Improvement of BLK in Gorontalo Regency Requires Ministry Support

Improvement of BLK in Gorontalo Regency Requires Ministry Support #ImprovementOfBLK #MinistrySupport

Hargo.co.id, GORONTALO – The visit of the Deputy Minister of Manpower and Transmigration of the Republic of Indonesia, Afriansyah Noor, to Gorontalo Regency on Wednesday (1/24/2024) was utilized by Regent Nelson Pomalingo to convey the aspiration for the improvement of several BLKs (Vocational Training Centers) in Gorontalo Regency. Nelson revealed that BLK is one of the facilities owned by the…

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"How did the Canadian government see the war after the first, German conquests in  Western Europe? On April 30, 1940, O.D. Skelton wrote a document called The Present Outlook. Skelton was [Prime Minister Mackenzie] King’s under-secretary of Foreign Affairs, thus King’s deputy  minister, his most trusted advisor, one of the leading public servants in Ottawa. Skelton’s document was remarkable for its lack of foresight. For example, it suggested that Japan represented no danger to the allies. It also linked as one force the two, bitter enemies, communism and fascism, as rival forms of totalitarianism, which now united. Skelton  described the horrifying possibility of a victory of the associated Germans, Italians, and  Soviets as if Canada were in an undeclared war with the Soviet Union, now allied with the Nazis. Writing about U.S. neutrality, Skelton wrote that, in the recent past, probable victory for England and France against Germany meant that the American people rightly saw no need to fight against totalitarianism. With the possibility of a victory of a German-Italian-Russian coalition, American public opinion would now change. All this nonsense from one of the most powerful men in Ottawa, a man who had the ear and respect of King about Canada’s war policy. In actual fact, Skelton probably believed the government’s own propaganda about the nature of the war as being a war upon totalitarianism and, therefore, an undeclared war against the U.S.S.R. The nature of anti-Soviet manipulations in Europe during the phoney war was clarified eventually when Swedish diplomatic archives revealed that a week before the German blitzkrieg was launched upon the French, the French government and military had been preparing to  send 50,000 troops to wage war against the U.S.S.R. in Finland, rather than preparing to  defend France against Germany.

After France and the Low Countries fell to the Germans in the Spring of 1940, the character of the war changed for Canada. A general panic among the public ensued. Canada was now the most important ally of the British, isolated and beleaguered in Europe. Canadians rushed to volunteer for the military. The King government insisted upon the voluntary aspect of Canada’s contribution in military manpower. In October, 1939, Duplessis had sought re-election in Quebec by using the threat of conscription, against which Duplessis was to be the bulwark. Federal Liberals, led by Justice minister Ernest Lapointe, promised there would be no conscription, and pledged their seats in Quebec towards this commitment. Duplessis was defeated when Quebeckers voted for the provincial Liberals, led by Adélard Godbout.

What then was to be Canada’s contribution to the defence of Britain? King prepared Canada for a war of limited liability in terms of its contribution to the war effort. The priorities were to be economic aid, which would help Canadian capitalists make profits, re-launch the economy, and create jobs; national unity, especially the unity of King’s Liberal Party, powerful in Quebec; and defending Canada’s borders and infrastructure but even more importantly, Canada’s internal social order. In the immediate flush of pro-British enthusiasm after the start of proceedings, King had sent an army division of 20,000 troops to Britain. He soon regretted this decision when negotiations were held between Britain and Canada to train aviators in Canada as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. During the acrimonious negotiations with Britain, King fought and scrapped about the costs of the plan, $600 million per year, of which  Canada was to assume $350 million, in order to train 20,000 airmen per year for use by Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. King insisted that Canada’s contribution to the plan would be its most effective contribution to the war effort. Emphasis on the plan also permitted King to envisage a reduced loss of military lives, which might also ease pressure for conscription.

Many English-Canadians felt that King’s proposed contribution to the war was too calculated, too timid. They wanted Canada to do more than help Britain financially, guard borders and infrastructure, and train aviators. They wanted Canadians to fight alongside Britain, this in spite of the Phoney War early in WWII that precluded immediate, actual combat. In Ontario, the provincial Liberal government of Mitchell Hepburn said so in a resolution, adopted on January 18, 1940, which criticized King’s lack of vigorous execution of the war. King used this occasion to call elections, which were coming due as King was now in the fifth year of government. King manoeuvred the leader of the Tories, Robert Manion, into approving the no-conscription pledge to Quebeckers. On March 26, King won an overwhelming majority, 181 seats out of 245 in the House of Commons. The Liberals were now free to conduct a war of limited liability according to their priorities. King’s priorities for this war of limited liability illuminate the real reason why Canada went to war. Writes Jack Granatstein: “Canada went to war in September, 1939 because Britain had gone to war, and for no other reason. It was not a war for Poland; it was not a war against anti-semitism; it was not even a war against Naziism,” even though the horrible atrocity of the Nazi genocides against Jews, Gypsies, Slavs, and  political opponents did provide post facto moral justification for World War II and  Canada’s participation therein."

- Michael Martin, The Red Patch: Political imprisonment in Hull, Quebec during World War 2. Self-published, 2007. p. 59-62

[ukrainenews]

Daily Wrap Up May 11-14, 2023

Under the cut:

Two Russian pilots were killed on Friday when a Russian Mi-28 military helicopter crashed in the annexed peninsula of Crimea, Russian news agencies reported, citing the defence ministry.

The Russian news outlet Kommersant reported that two Russian fighter jets and two military helicopters had been shot down on Saturday close to the Ukrainian border.

Ukrainian forces have been able to capture more than ten Russian positions near Bakhmut, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said in a Telegram post on Sunday.

At least 21 people were injured and two others were hospitalized in the western Khmelnytskyi region of Ukraine after Russian attacks early Saturday morning, according to the deputy head of the regional military administration.

Moscow acknowledged on Friday that its forces had fallen back north of Ukraine's battlefield city of Bakhmut after a new Ukrainian offensive, in a retreat that the head of Russia's Wagner private army called a rout. The setback for Russia, which follows similar reports of Ukrainian advances south of the city, suggests a coordinated push by Kyiv to encircle Russian forces in Bakhmut, Moscow's main objective for months during the war's bloodiest fighting.

Two Russian pilots were killed on Friday when a Russian Mi-28 military helicopter crashed in the annexed peninsula of Crimea, Russian news agencies reported, citing the defence ministry.

The defence ministry said it believed the reason for the crash was equipment failure, the TASS news agency reported.

The crash occurred at 3.42pm local time during a training flight, and the helicopter was flying without weapons, news agencies cited the defence ministry as saying in a statement.

An investigation was opened to confirm the cause of the crash, which occurred in the Dzhankoi region of northern Crimea.

-via The Guardian

~

The Russian news outlet Kommersant reported that two Russian fighter jets and two military helicopters had been shot down on Saturday close to the Ukrainian border.

Kommersant said on its website that the Su-34 fighter-bomber, Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters had made up a raiding party, and had been “shot down almost simultaneously” in an ambush in the Bryansk region, adjoining northeast Ukraine.

“According to preliminary data … the fighters were supposed to deliver a missile and bomb attack on targets in the Chernihiv region of Ukraine, and the helicopters were there to back them up – among other things to pick up the ‘Su’ crews if they were shot down.”

The Russian state news agency Tass said a Russian Su-34 warplane had crashed in that region but did not specify a cause.

Tass also cited an emergency services official as saying an engine fire in a helicopter had caused it to crash near Klintsy, which is about 40 km (25 miles) from the border.

It made no mention of the Su-35 or of a second helicopter.

-via The Guardian

~

Ukrainian forces have been able to capture more than ten Russian positions near Bakhmut, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said in a Telegram post on Sunday.

“Today our units captured more than ten enemy positions in the north and south of Bakhmut's outskirts and cleared a large area of forest near Ivanivske,” Maliar said.

The minister also noted Ukraine “continues to move forward in the suburbs of Bakhmut.”

Maliar called the situation in Bakhmut “very hot.”

“The enemy has gathered all its forces there and is trying to advance, destroying everything in its path. Fierce fighting continues,” she added.

Some background: Bakhmut is the site of a months-long assault by Russian forces, including Wagner mercenaries, that has driven thousands from their homes and left the area devastated. But despite the vast amounts of manpower Russia has poured into capturing the city, they have been unable to take total control, and this week suffered heavy losses in the area.

CNN had previously reported that Ukrainian forces have been able to push the Russians back 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) around the eastern city of Bakhmut over the past week, Maliar said Friday.

-via CNN

~

At least 21 people were injured and two others were hospitalized in the western Khmelnytskyi region of Ukraine after Russian attacks early Saturday morning, according to the deputy head of the regional military administration.

"Today, the enemy once again attacked Khmelnytskyi with a strike drone, hitting one of the critical infrastructure facilities of the region, located outside the settlements," Serhii Tiurin said on Telegram. "As of now, we have 21 injured people. Two of them were hospitalized, the others received medical assistance and were transferred to outpatient treatment."

Tiurin said there was some damage sustained in the attack.

"In particular, educational, medical and cultural institutions, administrative buildings, industrial facilities, high-rise and individual residential buildings were damaged," he said.

Ukraine's Air Force said Saturday that 17 out of 21 Russian drones had been intercepted overnight by its air defense system.

-via CNN

~

Moscow acknowledged on Friday that its forces had fallen back north of Ukraine's battlefield city of Bakhmut after a new Ukrainian offensive, in a retreat that the head of Russia's Wagner private army called a rout.

The setback for Russia, which follows similar reports of Ukrainian advances south of the city, suggests a coordinated push by Kyiv to encircle Russian forces in Bakhmut, Moscow's main objective for months during the war's bloodiest fighting.

"In three days of counter-offensive activity, the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Bakhmut sector have liberated 17.3 sq. km (6.6 sq. miles) of territory," Serhiy Cherevatyi, spokesman for the "east" group of Ukrainian forces, said on the Telegram messaging app.

Both sides are now reporting the biggest Ukrainian gains in six months, although Ukraine has given few details and played down suggestions a huge, long-planned counteroffensive has officially begun.

Russian Defence Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said Ukraine had launched an assault north of Bakhmut with more than 1,000 troops and up to 40 tanks, a scale that if confirmed would amount to the biggest Ukrainian offensive since November.

The Russians had repelled 26 attacks but troops in one area had fallen back to regroup in more favourable positions near the Berkhivka reservoir northwest of Bakhmut, Konashenkov said.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner forces that have led the campaign in the city, said in an audio message: "What Konashenkov described, unfortunately, is called 'a rout' and not a regrouping".

In a separate video message, Prigozhin said the Ukrainians had seized high ground overlooking Bakhmut and opened the main highway leading into the city from the West.

"The loss of the Berkhivka reservoir - the loss of this territory they gave up - that's 5 sq km, just today," Prigozhin said.

"The enemy has completely freed up the Chasiv Yar-Bakhmut road which we had blocked. The enemy is now able to use this road, and secondly they have taken tactical high ground under which Bakhmut is located," said Prigozhin, who has repeatedly denounced Russia's regular military over the past week for failing to supply his men in Bakhmut.

Russian-installed officials said two missiles hit an industrial complex in Luhansk, in Russian-occupied territory around 100 km (60 miles) behind the front. Video posted on the internet showed huge columns of smoke above the city. The strike, just beyond the range of the main battlefield rockets Ukraine has previously deployed, came a day after Britain announced it was sending longer-range cruise missiles.

The Ukrainian advance near Bakhmut appears to have begun on Tuesday when a Ukrainian unit southwest of the city said it defeated a Russian brigade, recapturing a swathe of land. Prigozhin also said the Russian brigade there fled.

Reuters has not been able to independently verify the situation in the area.

In its evening report on Friday, the Ukrainian military command described fighting in Bakhmut and Russian shelling of nearby towns, but made no mention of any advance or Russian withdrawal.

Prigozhin, whose fighters have been battling to push Ukrainian forces out of Bakhmut's Western outskirts, has said the north and south flanks, guarded by regular Russian troops, were crumbling. Russia's defence ministry denies this.

In his nightly address, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the Russians were "already internally ready for defeat".

"They have already lost this war in their minds. We must put pressure on them every day so that their sense of defeat turns into their flight, their mistakes, their losses."

-via Reuters

[eaglesnick]

Britain’s Continued Lurch To The Right

Unelected Rishi Sunak and his Tory government are taking Britain closer and close to the extreme right in politics. According to the University of Oslo:

“Right-wing extremism is usually defined as a specific ideology characterised by ‘anti-democratic opposition towards equality'. It is associated with racism, xenophobia, exclusionary nationalism, conspiracy  theories, and authoritarianism.”

Although we are not yet an extreme right-wing nation there are those in the Tory party who would, and have, taken us further towards this goal than ever before. The most extreme Tory government was that headed by Liz Truss.

 A study by the Financial Times claimed the Tories under Liz Truss had become the “most right-wing government" in the world in terms of economic policies.

“The decision to slash tax for the rich, lift caps on bankers’ bonuses, and provide next-to-nothing for working class citizens has spooked international markets. Over the last few days, we’ve all looked on in horror as the value of The Pound fell like a stone.” (The London Economic: 30/09/22)

Liz Truss was very quickly deposed, but ONLY because the value of the pound went into free fall. If the money markets had not reacted so negatively towards Truss’s economic strategy she would still be Prime Minister along with all of her other right-wing policies. We have to remember that even before the Conservative party choose right-wing Liz Truss as its leader, the right was in the ascendancy, sparking headlines like this:

“The new Tory right is fanatical and dangerous…”  (Guardian:05/12/21)

That danger has not gone away with the appointment of Rishi Sunak as PM. His government has been full of right-wing politicians, from the now disgraced authoritarian bully, Dominic Raab to the anti-human rights Home Secretary, Suella Braverman. A former co-chair of the Conservative Party publicly accusing her party of failing to deal with “vile evidence of racism in the party a every level from MPs to activists”, while the present deputy chairman Lee Anderson has been accused of links with far-right groups, and of “parroting far-right information”.

The definition of far-right politics also includes the tendency to believe conspiracy theories and this is certainly a characteristic of Sunak’s government, Bully Raab firmly believed his civil servants were conspiring against him, which is one of the excuses he used in defence for bullying  his  staff.

We all know that despite the promises of the Tory Brexiteers things are not going as promised, their xenophobic and exclusionary nationalism leading to massive manpower shortages in our NHS, and a failing economy. Despite economic growth being at a standstill and inflation still in double figures, Sunak’s right-wing government continues to ignore the evidence of its actions and instead continues to push “free-market” economic policies because it is ideologically driven. While bankers have their bonus caps abolished public sector workers are expected to take real-term pay cuts and slide further towards poverty.

Worse, Sunak’s right-wing government is quite prepared to take workers to court to stop them from striking in support of a fair wage claim. And should anyone take to the streets to protest against this governments woeful running of the country then the police now have powers to stop and search individuals without suspicion, and the courts can ban individuals from being in certain places at certain times, and even limit the way they use the internet. 

The UN is so concerned about the new police powers that were passed into law only this week they had this to say:

“It is especially worrying that the law expands the powers of the police to stop and search individuals, including without suspicion; defines some of the new criminal offences in a vague and overly broad manner; and imposes unnecessary and disproportionate criminal sanctions on people organizing or taking part in peaceful protests…”  (United Nations:27/04/23)

If the UN is concerned about Britain becoming a right-wing police state then surely it is time we did the same.

[head-post]

15,000 AFU soldiers refused to execute orders

About 15,000 servicemen of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have been punished for refusing to obey orders from their commanders or for leaving a military unit unauthorisedly, an MP of the Verkhovna Rada from the Servant of the People Party, Yuriy Kamelchuk, Ukrainian media reported.

According to the MP, these servicemen were subjected to disciplinary penalties. Kamelchuk claimed:

Now they are actually not applied anywhere. Perhaps they are somewhere out there in the black work unofficially, but they are not in prison, not in a fine-bat.

The Rada deputy also called the biggest problem that among the AFU military personnel who have suffered disciplinary punishments, “there are few people who are ready to take up arms again.”

The situation with personnel in the army is worsening, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky himself spoke about the lach of manpower. Military conscripts now will be collected all over Europe. For example, Poland has already directly proposed to expel all conscripted Ukrainians from its territory.

Polish Defence Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz said that the Polish government was discussing the possibility of transferring evaders who are on the territory of the republic to Ukraine. However, he believes that this issue should be worked on at the level of the EU in order to make a common decision on Ukrainian refugees of conscription age.

The general crisis is aggravated by the fact that even those with military service experience are thrown into battle unprepared. 

Read more HERE

[cyberbenb]

ISW: Ukraine's offensive pace is no stalemate

The current pace of Ukraine's counteroffensive does not indicate a stalemate or inability to retake large territory, the Institute for the Study of War said in its assessment on July 4.

The Ukrainian military's gradual progress in eastern and southern Ukraine reflects a strategy of resource conservation over territorial acquisition, the ISW wrote in its analysis.

The strategic priority is "the maximum destruction" of Russian manpower and equipment, Defense Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said on Twitter, adding that "a war of destruction is equal to a war of kilometers."

Ukrainian forces face land mines and other impediments as they advance deeper into Russian-occupied territory. Admiral Rob Bauer, chair of NATO's military committee, told reporters he agreed with the cautious approach and that Ukraine was right to avoid high casualties.

"People should never think that this is an easy walkover," Bauer said.

Nonetheless, Ukraine's gradual advance has yielded territorial gains. Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar reported via Telegram that in the last week, Ukrainian forces liberated 9 kilometers in the east and 28 kilometers in the south.

The ISW compared Ukraine's current counteroffensive to its campaign to liberate Kherson Oblast between August and November 2022. In that case, a slow offensive eventually resulted in the successful liberation of Kherson.  

Inside Ukraine’s costly mission to grind down Russia near Bakhmut

Editor’s note: The Kyiv Independent interviewed a few dozen soldiers deployed near Bakhmut and visited their positions in late May and early June. The soldiers are identified by their first names or call signs for security reasons amid the ongoing Russian war in Ukraine. NEAR IVANIVSKE VILLAGE, Don…

The Kyiv IndependentAsami Terajima

[aymanmatnews]

PAM launches "smart employee ID" regulating labor market.. #Kuwait Manpower Public Authority launched Tuesday "smart employee ID" identity within the Kuwait Mobile ID app, containing the expatriate employees' official information, as part of a host of decisions aiming to regulate labor market & curb fraud & manipulation. The Manpower Authority mentioned in a statement that this decision, protecting Kuwaiti households as well as workers from exploitation, came as per the instructions of First Deputy Prime Minister & Interior Minister Sheikh Talal Khaled Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah. The electronic ID includes the worker's legal standing, work permit data, address of the employing company, whether they work within the public or private sectors. It also allows Kuwaiti households to look into the domestic worker's official information prior to their arrival at the residence, underlining the necessity of authenticating employees electronic IDs, as well as keeping a copy of the data through scanning the QR code. It also urged private sector companies to assign employees to their correct jobs as per the gulf labor guide, to avoid violations of labor laws & resolutions. #الكويت https://www.instagram.com/p/CpM0KN0ov79/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ysbnews]

Russian Military ‘Scrambling' For Manpower As Ukraine’s Path to Victory Laid Bare — PART 2

EXPRESS | By Charlie Bradley | 8/31/2022

[Continued from PART1] » » » Various experts have given their view on what Russia is trying to accomplish at this point in the war. Speaking to the Moscow Times this week, independent military analyst Pavel Luzin said Russian command is “experimenting due to issues [on the battlefield] and are trying not to lose this war,”

It comes as General Alexander Dvornikov, who was reportedly previously in charge of the Russian offensive, has not been seen in public for weeks. Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Defence Minister Gennady Zhidko appeared alongside Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on a visit to eastern Ukraine last weekend. Some experts believe this indicates a shake-up in Moscow to try and turn the tide of the conflict. Military analyst Rob Lee tweeted: “It appears to confirm that Colonel-General Gennady Zhidko is the commander of Russian forces in Ukraine."

A US think tanks, the Institute for the Study of War, added: “Drastic rotations within the Russian military, if true, are not actions taken by a force on the verge of a major success." Shoigu's visit to Ukraine was his first since the war began. Russian state TV boasted that Shoigu would be making future visits to major cities including Kyiv, Odesa and Mykolaiv once they had been seized.

He handed out medals for heroism and told troops: “I am confident in you. You have many more glorious deeds ahead of you for the benefit of our fatherland, the armed forces and the airborne troops. Congratulations. Take care of yourselves." Ukraine's Centre for Strategic Communications and Information Security, which sits under the country's Ministry of Culture recently claimed that Russia has lost 35,000 lives in the conflict.

Russia has only given an official toll of troops killed on two occasions, the last on March 25, with a figure of 1,351. However, experts have said this figure is way too low an estimate.

▶️ Read the latest Ukraine News with videos on EXPRESS

[route22ny]

Inside DC’s Secret Covid Morgue

Written by Luke Mullins

April 21, 2020—The clerics have been sworn to secrecy. On this warm morning, they’ve come to a vast and empty parking lot, instructed not to tell anyone of its location. The pitch of asphalt is unusually secure, hidden behind a 12-foot chain-link fence that’s been swathed in sheets of black tarp to prevent anyone from peering through. At the front gate, armed soldiers stand guard.

Inside, large trailers are arranged behind tented canopies and banks of lights. Metal ramps are affixed to each trailer so that stretchers can be wheeled in. The interior walls of the trailers are lined with seven rows of metallic shelving, sturdy enough to support thousands of pounds. The temperature is 24 degrees.

The clergymen gather with a handful of city officials in front of the canopies. They form a circle, each six feet apart from the next.

Reverend Andre Towner of Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ.

Imam Talib Shareef of Nation’s Mosque.

Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld of Ohev Sholom–The National Synagogue.

Dr. Donell Harvin, a top official at DC’s homeland-security department.

Kimberly Lassiter, a supervisor at the medical examiner’s office.

And Dr. Roger Mitchell, the chief medical examiner himself.

Wearing masks and rubber gloves, they bow their heads. Tomorrow, the first body will be sent here. Today, a blessing.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

One by one, the clerics offer prayers, solemn exhortations for strength and humility, courage and dignity, resonating above the grinding hum of the trailers. Imam Shareef invokes the victims—“Their deaths,” he says, “are not to be in vain.” Reverend Towner prays for the workers, that their bodies will be protected from the virus, that their minds stay healthy during the difficult days ahead. Rabbi Herzfeld stresses the righteousness of the mission. “In Judaism,” he tells the group, “we believe that the greatest kindness is to care for the dead.”

***

It’s an ominous time in the nation’s capital. Several miles away, federal officials are dismissing warnings about the deadly airborne pathogen that has exploded out of Asia. Their unwillingness to act has impelled local governments across the country to launch their own scattered efforts to prevent Covid-19 from decimating their communities. In the District of Columbia, where African Americans make up 46 percent of the population, the task is especially urgent, given the virus’s disproportionately cruel impact on people of color.

Over the previous month, the city has been locked down as panicked residents watch their leaders navigate a 100-year crisis in real time. Mayor Muriel Bowser shuttered businesses. The DC Council pushed through legislation to extend unemployment benefits. Health-department officials opened testing sites and implored residents to wear masks and keep their distance. But away from public view, a weightier matter has come to preoccupy a little-known but essential corner of the bureaucracy: the caretakers of the dead.

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys. You’re not going to get discounts or big thank-you signs. The work we do, we do in silence.”

It’s a problem of space. As Drs. Mitchell and Harvin prepared for the pandemic, they realized that the city’s morgue didn’t have the capacity to handle the surge of fatalities that the virus would leave behind. And so, over the previous few weeks, they hustled to secure the land, equipment, and manpower necessary to build an additional facility.

The clergy who led prayers on the day the field morgue opened were there to make sure the space didn’t violate the tenets of their three distinct faiths, and to consecrate the site as one. Then the work began. Over the next two and a half months, Harvin, who describes himself as the “general in charge of the death troops,” and his top deputy, Lassiter, who has recovered bodies throughout DC for more than two decades, will oversee the makeshift mortuary. By the time the spring surge is through, 404 Covid victims will have passed through the site.

Still, through it all, almost no one in the city will have any idea the Covid morgue exists. The work is carried out in strict secrecy; staffers are instructed not to disclose the site’s location or tell anyone what takes place there, not even their own family members. A mistake—such as a body being released to the wrong family—would be humiliating for the mayor and the city. News footage of workers moving the dead could upset victims’ families, opening new wounds, or lure gawkers to the site. As much as anything else, though, the silence reflects the professional ethos of those who perform this work for a living. While they’re dispatched to every hurricane and school shooting, their efforts take place entirely behind the scenes. They are the first responders you never see.

The District of Columbua invited an imam, a rabbi, and a minister to consecrate the morgue.

***

“There’s not going to be a parade for you guys,” Harvin tells each new set of workers to arrive at the Covid morgue. “You’re not going to get discounts or big [thank-you] signs. The work we do, we do in silence. Not even the family members of the victims will know what we do. There’s a pride in that. There’s a silent pride in that,” he says. “You’re taking care of someone’s grandmother, grandfather, husband, daughter, son, and that’s a higher calling.” When it’s all over, they’ll return to their previous jobs or assignments and no one will ever know what they’ve done here. “It’s a heavy burden,” Harvin says. “It’s a very heavy burden.

“[But] the world is watching,” he assures them, “whether they see us or not.”

***

Donell Harvin is 48 years old, with a sturdy build and flecks of gray in his goatee. He’s married to a physician and has four daughters. He lives in Howard County and spends most of the year looking forward to his annual scuba-diving trip.

Over the last 30 years, Harvin has been an eyewitness to some of America’s darkest moments. As an EMT, he responded to the World Trade Center when it was bombed in 1993; after joining the New York Fire Department, he was there when the towers were destroyed in 2001. As a deputy director in New York’s medical examiner’s office, he led the effort to identify victims of Hurricane Sandy. And in 2012, at the request of Connecticut officials, Harvin assisted with forensics after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary.

His path from first responder to frontline bureaucrat began in the Bronx, where he spent his teenage years. After dropping out of high school, he got a GED and then a college scholarship from the Children’s Aid Society, enlisting as a paramedic. Though he loved the work, as a young father he began to worry about his safety. He was caught in shootouts while tending to accident victims and lost colleagues in ambulance crashes. On 9/11, his wife and daughters saw him on TV, racing away from the rubble, and then didn’t hear from him for 24 hours. Upon seeing their faces when he finally got home, he knew it was time for a change.

Harvin went back to school and earned a master’s in emergency management. Landing a position with New York’s chief medical examiner, he became an expert in mass-fatality management—the grim business of identifying and processing victims of large-scale tragedies. He also came to know Mitchell, and the two worked together on Sandy Hook. Two years later, when Mitchell was hired as DC’s chief medical examiner, he recruited Harvin.

Donell Harvin, who was at Ground Zero on 9/11, helped devise DC’s Covid death-handling protocols.

***

Their immediate task in the District was to turn around an office plagued by mismanagement. But an equally important project loomed. The previous year, Washington had been shaken by tragedy when a mentally disturbed government contractor gunned down 12 people at the Navy Yard. Although the medical examiner’s office had properly managed those deaths, officials realized that a larger or more complex disaster would have overwhelmed its capabilities. The city needed a mass-fatality division robust enough to absorb the kind of tragedy that Harvin and Mitchell hoped Washington would never face. They went about building it—securing federal funds, adding staff, and running mass-casualty drills.

By early 2020, Harvin had been in Washington six years. He’d since left Mitchell’s office and finished a PhD in public health. He was teaching at Georgetown and had become chief of homeland security and intelligence at DC’s homeland-security agency. But the imminent arrival of Covid meant the District was facing the catastrophe he and Mitchell had trained for, the biggest mass-fatality event in the city’s history.

On March 2, Harvin went to DC’s Emergency Operations Center for the first day of formal briefings about how the city would navigate the pandemic. Halfway through the morning, he found a quiet spot in the hallway and placed a call to his mother. “This is going to be bad,” he said.

***

The city morgue is located at 401 E Street, Southwest. In any given year, only a fraction of the fatalities that occur in DC pass through the facility. When a person dies of natural causes at a hospital, nursing home, or hospice, a physician will typically sign the death certificate and release the body to a funeral home. It’s usually only those who die alone or in unnatural or suspicious circumstances whose bodies go to the morgue, where medical examiners determine the cause and manner of their death.

Initially, Harvin and Mitchell planned to use this same approach for the pandemic, relying on hospitals—where the bulk of virus-related deaths would take place—to serve as de facto Covid morgues. But they quickly revised their thinking. For one thing, little was known about how contagious the disease might be postmortem. Would storing victims at hospitals risk infecting staff? At the same time, Harvin learned from former colleagues in New York—which was being ravaged by the virus—that hospitals were too overwhelmed to manage the bodies properly. The result was an appalling spectacle: forklifts carrying pallet-loads of bodies outside hospitals, decedents stacked on top of one another in trailers. At one point, police discovered nearly 100 rotting corpses in unrefrigerated U-Hauls parked by a Brooklyn funeral home. As the funeral home’s owner told the New York Times, “I ran out of space.”

The city handles the body of every Covid fatality, a process meant to ensure victims don’t pile up at overwhelmed hospitals, as in New York. Above, an autopsy room and viewing area at the city morgue.

***

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for this type of disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up. “We saw that with Hurricane Katrina—bodies just left out there,” Harvin says. “And that’s a stain on our society.”

So Harvin and Mitchell made a decision that would set them apart from most coroners and medical examiners in the country. Instead of depending on the hospital system, the chief medical examiner’s office would assume responsibility. Every single person who dies of Covid in DC would be sent to Harvin and Mitchell’s team—a protocol that remains in place today.

By studying the mortality rate and projecting infection levels for the city, the men estimated that as many as 3,500 residents could perish in the pandemic. Or one in every 200. Putting aside the magnitude of the suffering, the math presented a serious logistical problem: The city morgue had an official capacity of only 205. The solution was apparent—they would have to build the Covid morgue.

Harvin immediately began acquiring the materials he’d need. He ordered six refrigerated trailers. He borrowed mobile light towers for nighttime work and generators for power. He acquired PPE, Porta-Potties, drinking water, 500 gallons of hand sanitizer, and heavy-duty body bags specially designed for mass tragedies, 4,000 in all. For families who couldn’t afford funerals, the District agreed to pay for cremations. And to prevent a backlog of fatalities, the city shortened the time it would hold unclaimed bodies before they could be cremated, from 30 to 15 days.

The truth is that all mass-fatality events carry the potential for disgrace. Amid the chaos of a calamity, victims get misidentified. Morgues fill up.

Meanwhile, Harvin combed the local and federal bureaucracy in search of an additional 30 workers—to volunteer. The Army agreed to detail members of its mortuary-affairs unit, which had operated similar morgues in combat zones. A trade association found out-of-state funeral directors who wanted to pitch in. DC’s Medical Reserve Corps, a group of volunteers willing to assist in health-related emergencies, provided workers. The DC Guard and the Air National Guard sent personnel.

As he rushed to get things in place, the virus was already spreading through Washington. Harvin felt the same sense of foreboding he’d experienced six years earlier when he was waiting for Hurricane Sandy to make landfall. “It’s like a slow-moving train,” he says. “You know it’s coming and you can’t stop it.”

***

While Harvin was acquiring equipment and manpower, his top lieutenant, Kim Lassiter, spent two days driving around the District, scouting possible sites for the morgue. At her last stop, she got out of her car and peered through the fence. The property had everything. It was city-owned land—a parking lot for DC employees, empty because staffers were now working from home. It was large enough for the trailers, and it could be secured with tarps and guards. Most important, the site was inconspicuous: You could drive right past it and not realize it was there. “This is perfect,” Lassiter thought.

Lassiter, a 54-year-old grandmother with a soft smile, is the second-longest-tenured medical examiner’s employee, with nearly a quarter century on the job. In the 1990s, she lifted the victims of gang wars off street corners and washed the blood from their wounds at the morgue. In 2002, she used x-rays to identify the remains of Chandra Levy, the 24-year-old intern whose murder had become the subject of national fascination when it was alleged she’d been dating a married congressman around the time of her disappearance. And in 2008, Lassiter carried the remains of four children—ages 5, 6, 11, and 17—from the house where they’d been decomposing for seven months, after their mother, Banita Jacks, became convinced they’d been possessed by demons and killed them.

Lassiter came to the work by way of her own personal tragedy. She grew up in a housing project in Prince George’s County, with five brothers and sisters. Her father wasn’t around, and her mother, who worked in healthcare, struggled to do it all on her own. She eventually fell victim to drug use. It was up to Lassiter—the eldest of the children—to run the household. She cut class three days a week to watch her siblings. At 12, she got a summer job to support the family. Even after she graduated from high school and entered the workforce, there were periods when she would drop everything to nurse her mother through the various chemical fogs and illnesses that encumber the life of an addict.

In 1987, when Lassiter was 21, her mother passed away. Lassiter was called to the hospital. A nurse escorted her to the elevator, and they rode down to the basement. There, in a frigid room, Lassiter found her mother lying motionless on a stretcher. Her eyes were still open. “I felt like,” Lassiter remembers, “she was waiting for me to show up.”

Kim Lassiter, a 25-year veteran of the medical examiner’s office, ran the Covid morgue day to day.

***

The nurse explained that her mother was being taken away for an autopsy. Lassiter didn’t know anything about the process, and the news frightened her. “If I could have gone with her through that,” she says, “I would have.”

Following the funeral, Lassiter obtained custody of her siblings, whom she supported through her job as a clerk at the US Department of Health and Human Services. A few years later, her life took an unexpected turn when she spotted an alarming story in the newspaper: The DC chief medical examiner’s office had released the wrong body to a grieving family. The incident sounded both outrageous and intriguing; more than anything, it reminded Lassiter—by then a mother herself—of when her mom had been sent to the morgue. She called the office, talked her way to a supervisor, and asked if she could help. She joined the office as a volunteer.

This was the late 1990s, and the agency was considerably smaller than it is today. Lassiter was quickly hired and eventually promoted, becoming one of seven technicians responsible for a full sweep of duties: fielding intake calls from police, snapping photographs at death scenes, transporting decedents to the morgue, and assisting with medical examinations and autopsies. She viewed the work not as some macabre responsibility but as an expression of love. While she hadn’t been able to care for her own mother after her death, she now looked after the deceased loved ones of others.

When arriving at a place of death, Lassiter is vigilant about wearing a blank facial expression, to acknowledge the gravity of the circumstances. She offers condolences, then completes her tasks—attaching the toe tag, placing the deceased into the body bag—at a diligent pace so as not to prolong the trauma of those looking on. Once an autopsy is complete, she uses tight, neat sutures to close the incisions. She then washes the stains from the body and wraps it in a crisp white sheet.

Occasionally, when working alone, Lassiter has found herself speaking out loud to the bodies. If she hits a pothole while driving someone to the morgue, she’ll apologize. I’m sorry. Upon entering the morgue’s cold-storage facility, she sometimes greets the people being kept there. Good morning. When examining a crime victim’s body—particularly when it’s a child’s—she often pledges to help get justice. I’ll do everything in my power to find the evidence needed to make whoever did this to you pay.

The hardest days are the ones when she finds herself face to face with someone she knows. One morning, as Lassiter was preparing for autopsies, she checked the manifest and saw a familiar name. It was an older woman, a friend of her mother’s who’d looked out for Lassiter as a child. She walked into the cold-storage room, slid the body out of its cabinet, and said goodbye. It was the only time she ever broke down crying at the morgue.

***

April 22, 2020—The day after the religious leaders consecrate the site, the Covid morgue begins to stir with workers in face shields, gloves, and white protective suits. It’s been six weeks since DC recorded its first case of Covid, and the death toll has exceeded the city morgue’s capacity. Now the first wave of bodies is arriving.

The process begins with a phone call. A hospital official, or sometimes a police officer, contacts the medical examiner’s office. Lassiter, who is chief of the transport unit, dispatches her team to the scene. Two workers, in full PPE, arrive in a black, unmarked van. They present paperwork for the physician’s signature. In the hospital’s morgue, they take custody of the body. Opening the body bag, they attach identification. They zip the bag closed and spray the outside with disinfectant, then place it into a second, heavy-duty body bag. They disinfect it again. The workers lift the decedent onto a stretcher and paste an identification tag onto the bag. They slide the stretcher into the back of the unmarked van.

Every body arriving at the Covid morgue is first accounted for at the intake tent, then transferred to a refrigerated trailer.

***

At the Covid morgue, the workers move the decedent onto a table in the intake tent. Here, they weigh the body, to help confirm identification, and enter the victim’s name into a computer. They wheel the decedent across the blacktop and up into one of the refrigerated trailers. Next, the transfer. If the victim is heavy, the workers—at least two, sometimes four—lift the body onto one of the lower shelves. If the person is light, they place the body on a higher shelf. The staff use internal coding—6D, 2A—to record the exact location. They exit the trailer, remove their protective suits, and put on fresh ones.

A victim typically remains at the Covid morgue a few days, rarely longer than a week. During that time, a separate team calls family members to help them through the paperwork. Once burial arrangements are made, the funeral director schedules a pickup. The workers wheel the victim out of cold storage and into a second tented canopy—the release tent. They again wipe down the outside of the body bag. They again spray it with disinfectant. The funeral director pulls up. They load the dead into the hearse.

***

Though it was difficult to find volunteers, Harvin had assembled what he called “a coalition of the willing.” The active-duty Army morticians and military reservists, the citizen volunteers, the funeral directors, along with medical-examiner staffers and UDC students. While many had backgrounds in mortuary services, others did not. “We had people,” Harvin says, “who had never touched a dead body before—never seen a dead body.”

When each new group of volunteers arrived, Harvin—“the general in charge of the death troops”—brought them together to discuss the effort. The victims had come to the Covid morgue after suffering lonely and terrifying deaths—hooked up to breathing tubes, surrounded by masked doctors and nurses. “These people often were dropped off at the hospital, and they couldn’t see their loved ones for two or three or four weeks,” he continued. “They expired around complete strangers.” The staff’s goal, Harvin told the troops, was to provide each person with a dignity in death that they didn’t experience during their last days of life.

The operation has depended on volunteers—students, funeral directors, military reservists with no prior training.

***

Then he turned it over to Lassiter, who ran the day-to-day operations. She instructed new volunteers how to implement the values Harvin had espoused. When carrying the deceased, move deliberately and with caution. Keep the body as horizontal as possible. Do not, under any circumstances, stack one on top of another. Check, double-check, and triple-check the manifest to make sure each victim is in the correct rack. And pay respect through your words. Lassiter never refers to the deceased as “corpses” or “cadavers” or “cases.” Instead, she calls them “my people.”

“That’s the only way I can get [the workers] to treat them the way they would treat someone that they love,” Lassiter says. “Because it makes them see how special these people are to me.”

***

Gerald Slater, 86, was a television executive at PBS and WETA.

Richard Paul Thornell, 83, was a Howard law-school professor who helped establish the Peace Corps’s first-ever program, in Ghana.

Jose Mardoqueo Reyes, 54, was a refugee of El Salvador’s civil war and a beloved internet-radio broadcaster.

Luevella Jackson, 87, was among the first female bus drivers in DC’s public-school system.

Samuel Shumaker III, 90, was an Army colonel who also taught English and creative writing at UDC.

Florence Gilkes, 97, was a loving wife and aunt, as well as a dedicated fan of the Washington Football Team.

Iraj Askarinam, 76, owned a restaurant in Adams Morgan, where he regularly provided free meals to the homeless. They called him “Mr. Spaghetti.”

***

By May, the pandemic’s bleakest days had arrived at the morgue. The daily influx of new decedents fluctuated—eight one day, 19 the next. As the volume swelled, the workers came face to face with the breadth of the city’s suffering. They began recognizing the last names of victims they’d been dispatched to retrieve, and it dawned on them that these were additional members of already devastated families. Payton McFadden, a UDC premed grad, describes the crushing duty of traveling to a DC hospital to collect the body of a Covid-positive baby: “We had went and gotten one of the [baby’s] family members one week prior. [Covid] was slowly but surely matriculating through the whole house.” In a searing example of the District’s racial inequality, 74 percent of the fatalities were Black. “I will never forget this as long as I live, ever,” Lassiter says. “It just took so many people at one time, so suddenly.”

A Chicago-area funeral director who asked to be identified only by her first name, Stacey, came to Washington to volunteer. She served in the medical examiner’s main office, calling families and guiding them through the process of finalizing death certificates and retrieving loved ones. On one occasion, she spoke with a man whose father was in the Covid morgue, and he dissolved into tears. The man explained that they’d been estranged for years. It was only recently that they’d finally begun speaking again. “We do help carry that burden of grief,” she says. “And it’s hard.” On another day, she had a series of conversations with a police officer whose mother was at the disaster morgue. When the officer suddenly stopped returning her calls, Stacey got hold of his wife, who told her he’d been hospitalized with Covid himself. Nearly a year later, she still wonders about him. “It is always in the back of my head,” she says. “I don’t know [if] he made it through.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. A worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend.

As the morgue’s lead official, Harvin was spending up to 12 hours a day at the site. “Everyone’s talking about Covid and fatalities, and it’s just numbers to them. We’re actually dealing with them,” he says. “I have a PhD and I’m in there putting on gloves and a [protective] suit and I’m helping the crews move bodies in and out of trailers. It’s visceral for us.”

The staff feared for their own safety. “The scariest thing was [potentially being] exposed ourselves,” says Denise Lyles, supervisor of the investigation unit. Lassiter grew terrified that she’d infect her family. “I have a husband that goes out and he works. I was concerned about him,” she says. “Grandchildren that are asthmatic, concerned about them.”

Routine tasks touched off bouts of anguish. While checking the manifest, a worker might spot a detail about a victim that resonated personally: a birthday shared with the worker’s daughter, the same last name as a best friend. Harvin and Lassiter did what they could to look out for their staff’s mental health. At the end of each day, Lassiter pulled people aside to see if anyone was experiencing symptoms of anxiety or depression, connecting them with counselors or chaplains. Over time, even veterans of the medical examiner’s office began struggling with the weight of their mission.

After several weeks at the site, Harvin found that when he returned home from work, he would drift into a haze. He had no appetite. He stopped engaging his wife in conversation. He passed entire evenings staring blankly into the television. “I don’t even know what I’m watching,” he recalls. “I had no motivation.”

Harvin, of course, had worked mass tragedy before. After hijackers flew the first plane into the World Trade Center, he approached the South Tower on foot. From two blocks away, he saw bodies falling from the sky and his entire body froze. He couldn’t take another step forward. Minutes later, there was a deafening sound and the tower disappeared into a cloud of gray debris. Out of the rubble came a speeding ambulance. Harvin jumped into the back along with dozens of other firefighters and cops. As they neared the North Tower, Harvin turned to one of them. “Doesn’t it look like this one’s leaning?” he said.

He spent the next two days at Ground Zero searching for survivors and recovering the dead. The experience was so traumatizing that he vowed never to return to the site. But he found the work at the Covid morgue even more emotionally taxing. “I survived September 11,” he says. “I didn’t know if I was going to survive this.”

“There were so many women. So many mothers there.”

While he was able to walk away from Ground Zero after the attack,the pandemic was taking new victims each day. Every time Harvin arrived at the Covid morgue, he confronted a fresh supply of misery, and there was no end in sight. “Your mind and your soul get worn down far long before you body [does],” he says. Recognizing that he was experiencing depression, he turned to colleagues at the homeland-security department and found solace in chatting with them virtually.

For Lassiter, the pain manifested not as psychological trauma but as profound sadness. The heartache was always there, growing more intense over time. May 9—Mother’s Day—was the hardest. It had always been a tough one, the day her own mother’s death was most painful. But there was an additional heaviness now; she couldn’t stop thinking about everyone at the Covid morgue. “There were so many women,” she says. “So many mothers there.”

Though she was scheduled to be off, Lassiter didn’t feel right staying home on that particular day. She left her house in Prince George’s County and made the 25-minute drive to the site. Arriving at the morgue, she put on a protective suit and greeted the workers. “What are you doing here?” they asked. “It’s Mother’s Day,”

“I know,” she replied, “but I came down because I wanted to really thank you for what you’re doing.” She understood that some of them were mothers themselves, and she appreciated them for spending the day at the site.

Lassiter walked over to the cold-storage trailers and turned to face her people. “Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms,” she said. As she returned to the car, she noticed a lightness of spirit.

“It felt kind of like a sign of relief,” she says. “Just to speak out. To let them know that someone cares.”

***

June 2020—As summer approaches, the pace at the Covid morgue begins to slow. Fewer victims are arriving; the number of bodies in the trailers is declining. By the end of the month, the volume is thin enough that it can be handled at the city morgue. Washington’s first wave of Covid has reached its conclusion.

It’s time for Harvin to shut down the disaster morgue, at least for now. But before doing so, he organizes a final ritual. On July 7, 2020, Rabbi Herzfeld, Reverend Towner, and Imam Shareef return to the site. They were present at the beginning, and Harvin wants them here today, too.

The faith leaders gather by the intake tent as a group of three dozen workers form concentric circles around them. They offer prayers of thanksgiving that the work is coming to an end. “It is at death that the earth receives its treasures,” says Imam Shareef. “And we want to honor the facility that now has allowed for individuals to be returned back to the earth.”

After the ceremony, Lassiter assembles the men and women on her team to thank them for their two and a half months of service. When she finishes, a soldier who was assigned to the site pulls a patch off his flak jacket and approaches her. “This patch has been around the world,” he tells Lassiter, “and I want you to have it.”

Though the pandemic rages on, Harvin and Lassiter can’t help but feel a certain triumph. They haven’t misidentified any bodies. None of their team has contracted Covid. They know they may be back. But in a dark and painful year, this is a good day.

Months later, Lassiter will remember it, the special pride she felt that despite dozens of workers toiling and thousands of pounds of equipment rumbling, despite 404 fatalities passing through, word of the Covid morgue never reached the public. Her colleagues hadn’t enlisted for accolades. They’d pressed through the fear and the grief in order to care for the innocent victims of a historic pandemic.

“It felt good,” Lassiter says. “Even if no one would ever know about it.”

It’s been nearly a year since the pandemic struck Washington. In the first four months of lockdown, the city lost three times as many jobs as it did during the 2008 recession. By July, small business revenue had been cut in half. Metrorail ridership has plunged by as much as 90 percent. Over the coming four years, the District is anticipating a budget gap of roughly $800 million. All told, more than 933,514 people in DC, Maryland, and Virginia have contracted the virus, and 15,148 have died.

Today, Covid fatalities are being processed at the city morgue in Southwest DC; although the number of deaths is once again elevated, it’s well below the peaks of last spring. At the disaster morgue, the light towers have been hauled away and the generators have gone silent. The trailers are resting on a deserted blacktop. Each day, thousands of cars pass right by the site, oblivious to what happened there. If they knew where to look, though, the drivers could see something that Harvin made sure to leave in place. The DC and US flags, rising above the fence.

***

This article appears in the March 2021 issue of Washingtonian.

[tinyshe]

The shadow government of ousted former lawmakers in Myanmar has formed an armed militia aimed at opposing the military junta that seized control of the country in a coup on February 1 and killed more than 760 people who protested against the army takeover, organizers said Wednesday. The National Unity Government said the creation of the People’s Defense Force was exercising the authority given to it with the landslide victory of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy in November elections. The three-week-old NUG said the force is necessary to prevent killings and other violent acts against the people by the junta, which calls itself the State Administration Council. “Today, May 5, we formed the People’s Defense Force. Preparations for this army were made a long time ago. A lot of time has gone into training,” said Khin Ma Ma Myo, the NUG’s deputy minister of defense. “Training is more important than manpower and weapons. A defense acquisition department has been established under the Ministry of Defense,” he told RFA’s Myanmar Service. The NUG statement called the PDF a precursor to a “Federal Union Army” which would team up the majority ethnic Burman militia with Myanmar’s many armed ethnic rebel groups to fight the well-trained Myanmar military. The ethnic groups have been supporting anti-coup dissidents by providing shelter and training, but many powerful ethnic armies have sat out the conflict so far, and some remain distrustful of the NUG, which is made up of representatives of the government they were fighting before the coup. The Karen National Union, which represents the Karen ethnic minority, whose state in eastern Myanmar has been under attack by junta warplanes, voiced support for the new militia, and is discussing “fighting a common enemy,” according the group’s top foreign affairs official, Padoe Saw Tawnee. “I think there will be a lot to discuss, such as the formation of units,” he told RFA. Hla Kyaw Zaw, a Myanmar-based political and military analyst, told RFA the important lesson from the opposition against the coup, called the “Spring Revolution,” is the need for an armed uprising. “People have learned two valuable lessons from all this. They have learned that they have to fight back with weapons … and that all ethnic groups must unify to fight this military dictatorship,” said Hla Kyaw Zaw. ‘David and Goliath’ The NUG is also attempting to gain recognition from the international community. At a U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday, Myanmar’s representative to the United Nations, Kyaw Moe Tun, who was appointed prior to the coup, called on the U.S. and other countries to offer support to the NUG. “The international community's recognition and engagement with the NUG is a critical step to take, and it could pave the way to end the violence, to save the lives of innocent civilians and protect them from the military’s brutal and inhumane acts, to restore democracy in Myanmar, and provide humanitarian assistance to the people in need,” he said. Despite the NUG’s optimism, the defense force’s goal of taking on the Myanmar military is unrealistic, said Thein Tun Oo, a former army officer and executive director of the pro-military think tank the Thayninga Institute for Strategic Studies. “They have issued many statements and most of their officials are just working on paperwork for the rival government,” he said. But in a sign that support for the junta among some ethnic groups is eroding, the Arakan National Party, which represents the Rakhine people in the country’s westernmost state, announced it had halted its cooperation with the junta, which had given a Rakhine leader a seat on the SAC. The military regime had not met demands for the repeal of the terrorist designation of its affiliate, the Arakan Army, and the release of arrested on terror charges during a two-year-long war, the ANP’s leader said. “We have made requests and proposals in the interests of our state, but they were all ignored. … We are not happy with the current situation and there is no point of going on like this if we want to see some positive development,” ANP Chairman Thar Tun Hla told RFA. Anthony Davis, a Bangkok-based security analyst who writes for IHS-Janes security and defense publications, told RFA last month that a fight between an alliance of ethnic armed organizations and the Myanmar military, known as the Tatmadaw in Burmese, would be a "David and Goliath contest" "If you look at all the ethnic armed organizations in Myanmar, you’re looking maybe at around 75,000 to 78,000 armed troops. Now, on the Tatmadaw side, the army is in total probably around 350,000, so it’s significantly larger," he said, speaking before the formation of the NUG in mid-April. He added, however, that a loose combination of ethnic armies "in their own areas conducting operations against the Tatmadaw at the same time … would be a very, very significant problem for the Tatmadaw despite their firepower and despite their numbers." Local militias kill troops Recent days have seen local militias kill junta troops in Chin state, near the border with India, and the downing of a military helicopter in northern Kachin state, as well as a series of attacks in other parts of Myanmar in which outgunned civilians have taken up crude arms and killed more than two dozen security forces. In the Chin state capital Hakha, the Chin Defense Force said an army soldier was killed in a shootout in front of the Innwa Bank Tuesday night, the latest of nine soldier deaths since May 2. In a township outside Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, about 20 people armed with machetes and knives attacked a police post guarding a Chinese oil pipeline at dawn on Wednesday, killing three police guards. "I heard gunshots around 5 a.m.  What we learned is that five policemen were on duty at the police post and two escaped. Three died,” a local resident who requested anonymity told RFA. “The military later came to our village and were checking people’s movements and searched houses.” An unknown attacker threw a hand grenade into the house of the administrator of a village near Tamu in the northwestern Sagaing region, killing his mother, daughter and granddaughter,” a local resident told RFA. “The administrator was asking people to hand over their arms and was checking houses. This started an exchange of fire between the Tamu Defense Force and the military. During the commotion the house was bombed,” said the resident of Tamu, a city near the border with India where locals had killed 14 soldiers in a series of attacks in late March and early April. In Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, bombs went off in front of the junta-aligned Moe Gaung Hospital and some ward administrators were attacked and killed, witnesses said. The bombing followed another bombing Tuesday night of a building that had formerly been the Armed Forces Records Office building and was just opened as a hospital by junta leader Gen. Min Aung Hlaing last weekend. There were no reported injuries in the earlier blast. RFA attempted to contact military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun for comment on Wednesday’s violence but he could not be reached.   According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Myanmar, security forces have killed more than 769 people across the country since the coup. Nearly 3,700 people have been arrested, while nearly 1,460 are at large but facing arrest warrants. Human Rights Watch and over 200 other nongovernmental organizations from around the world on Wednesday called on the United Nations Security Council to impose an arms embargo on Myanmar. “No government should sell a single bullet to the junta under these circumstances,” the groups said. “Imposing a global arms embargo on Myanmar is the minimum necessary step the Security Council should take in response to the military’s escalating violence." Report by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. English version edited by Eugene Whong.  source

[sageglobalresponse]

The Federation Government is set to create 30,000 jobs through the Community Safety and Human Security Programme (CSHSP) initiative to reduce crimes and violence across the country.

The Minister of Special Duties and Intergovernmental Affairs, Sen. George Akume, made the disclosure at the inauguration of a 22-man committee of CSHSP, Nasarawa State chapter, on Tuesday.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the Federal Government had, early in the year, inaugurated a committee on CSHSP, with members drawn from security institutions, relevant ministries and various civil society organisations.

NAN also reports that CSHSP was aimed at making the country safe, secure and violence-free, particularly at the grassroots.

Akume said that CSHSP was also working towards creating skilled manpower for 50,000 persons in all the 774 local government area, including the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“Implementation of CSHSP is prepared to work with relevant security institutions, stakeholders and non-state actors in expanding the narratives and intelligence toward community safety,” he said.

The minister, however, expressed worries that in spite of efforts by government, NGOs and community leaders to stem the tide of insecurity and violence, crimes in the country were still on the increase.

According to him, the country’s national security, under the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration, places emphasis on enhancing the social well-being of citizens.

Also speaking, Gov. Abdullahi Sule of Nasarawa, commended the federal government for the choice of the state in the hosting the programme, after the inauguration of CSHSP members at the federal level.

According to Sule, the programme is to demonstrate federal government’s commitment to safety, where everyone has a role to play in ensuring the development of sustainable communities.

“The event is timely, coming at a time when the nation is faced with intermittent security challenges and its attendant consequences on human lives and socio-economic development of the nation.

“The programme is a response to complexities of security threats, ethnic violence and communal clashes that we have in the country,” he said.

In his contributions, the Minister Ministry of Interior, Mr Rauf Aregbesola, represented by Mr Ibiloye Oluyemi, Deputy Commandant, Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC), pledged his readiness to give maximum support to the initiative.

“I will deploy all the machineries within the ministry to ensure that this laudable initiative succeeds,” he said. (NAN)

[exampappa]

Daily Current Affairs 27th April 2020

CSIR Developed Herbal Decongestant Spray

CSIR Developed Herbal Decongestant Spray The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-National Botanical Research Institute (CSIR-NBRI) developed herbal decongestant spray The spray is used to prevent COVID-19 infection and to ease wearing masks. Importance of this Spray Wearing mask for a long time creates difficulty in breathing and congestion in respiratory system. The herbal spray will help to address this problem. Why masks are difficult to wear? The main issue of wearing face mask is Carbon Dioxide, which is accumulated in the inner cavity of the mask The accumulated carbon dioxide goes back to the lungs when a person breathes. This creates difficulty in breathing when a person wears mask for a long time. Decongestant Spray The spray has been created by blending four plant-based oil The CSIR has not disclosed the names of the plants due to issues related to intellectual property rights The spray has been prepared based on the guidelines of Ministry of AYUSH. The spray clears windpipe and thus helps in removing mucus or cough that helps to ease breathing. This will also help to reduce the stress caused by excessive decongestion. CSIR-NBRI The NBRI is a Lucknow based laboratory that mainly focuses on botanical research work The institute is to transfer technology to Indian companies for commercial production The masks then produced with the spray are to be sent to the front- line workers fighting against COVID-19

Jeevan Shakti Yojana Launched By Madhya Pradesh Govt Why in News?

Jeevan Shakti Yojana Launched By Madhya Pradesh Govt Why in News? Madhya Pradesh(MP) chief minister launched Jeevan shakti yojana on 26th April 2020 What is Jeevan Shakti yojana Jeevan Shakti Yojana is to make masks on large scale in the state This scheme launched to fight against COVID 19 It also provides livelihood to women at homes Under this scheme double layer masks will be made 100 percent cotton used to make these masks These masks will be effective in the prevention of Corona virus. How to avail this scheme? Women has to register for this schemem through online Government will directly gives order Once the order received they have to submit the masks Once masks receieved the amount directly deposited to their accounts on the same day The state government has issued a helpline number 0755-2700800 to join the scheme. women appreciated this scheme

Immunity Passports Issuance Issue Raised by WHO

Immunity Passports Issuance Issue Raised by WHO What are Immunity Passports that are warned against by WHO? The World Health Organization(WHO) warned against issuance of immunity passports The organization is against the concept due to its non evidence till now on people who have recovered from COVID-19 or developed antibodies will not get infected again. What are Immunity Passports? Immunity passports are given to persons those recovered from COVId-19 and has tested positive to hold antibodies against the disease. The presence of antibodies according to immunity passports say that the person will not get infected by COVID-19 again. What are the issues? Though the idea of immunity passports has not been implemented widely, several organizations are opposing on adopting the idea This is because, it is unknown that how long the antibodies formed against the COVID-19 lasts in human body Also, it is unknown if this strain of virus is similar to that of the other strains such as MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) and SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory System) Also, immunity developed helps to protect the person from developing the illness but may not prevent from getting infected. Why Immunity Passports? The countries that have imposed lock down are now trying to return to normalcy It would be convenient for the countries when the citizens hold such a pass like that of the immunity passport This will help in restricting movement of people actually infected and allow others to lead a normal life

Ball Tampering considered by ICC recently What is it? How it works?

Ball Tampering considered by ICC recently What is it? How it works? The International Cricket Council (ICC) is considering to legalize ball tampering. Why in News? The ICC is considering to use an artificial substance under the supervision of umpires to polish cricket balls as applying saliva risks the spread of COVID-19. The use of artificial substance has been banned in cricket. What is ball tampering? Ball Tampering is an action in which the player of the fielding team in cricket illegally alters the condition of the ball It is done to achieve favourable bowling conditions against the batsman Using sweat or spit to remove the mud or to polish the ball is common and is allowed. Why is sweat or spit used? The sweat or spit is used to make the ball look shiny. The technique is used by the bowlers after the ball gets older, mostly after 35 overs. The sweat or spit is used to make one side shiny and the other side rough. Logic behind it The swing of the ball depends on three factors namely climatic conditions, shiny side and behaviour of the pitch. The science of shiny side is applied in using sweat or spit. The cricket ball creates turbulence as its swings. In conventional swing, ball moves towards the side of greater turbulence. On the other hand, during reverse swing, it goes other way. Therefore, the bowler polishes one side of the ball to make it reverse swing. This is done to create challenging conditions for the batsman. What law says? According to the Laws of Cricket the subsection 3 says the ball shall be polished without use of artificial substances It can be dried with towel to remove the mud in the ball

CISF Launched e-karyalay application for movement of files

CISF Launched e-karyalay application for movement of files Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) launched ‘e-karyalay’ an electronic office application on April 24, 2020 to enable the movement of files and documents without physical touch It is to prevent coronavirus infection About CISF: It is the national civil aviation security force with 63 airports and also guards the Delhi Metro and other vital infrastructure in the aerospace and nuclear domain & was established under the Act of Parliament- Central Industrial Security Force Act, 1968 in 1969. It is under the Home Affairs ministry. Headquarters– New Delhi, India Director General– Rajesh Ranjan Union Minister of Ministry of Home affairs– Amit shah About the app Designed by its in-house technical team for the usage of the 1.62 lakhs personnel & it resembles each and every function of traditional file movement. Has digital signature features to handle various securities related concerns and keep pace with existing standards. Hosted on the CISF Cloud with all security arrangements to safeguard the data & a data recovery site is established to maintain around-the-clock services. Gives the same visual appearance as the file with the notes on the left and all the correspondence and attachments on the right & Files can be opened, worked, parked and closed. App’s ‘Dak’ or letters management section handles all sorts of communication between various levels of functional hierarchy & it enables to transfer the dak (snail mail) directly to the file noting Since the government allows only officers above the rank of deputy secretary to go to office, holding only one-third of the manpower below this rank on a given day at work, the app will reduce the workload & will enable officials to work from home.

Dhanwantari: Assam govt new medicine delivery scheme

Dhanwantari: Assam govt new medicine delivery scheme The Assam state government’s health department has launched a special scheme called ‘Dhanwantari’ on April 24, 2020   Under this scheme medicines which are not available locally will be delivered to patients at home This medicine is free up to 200 rupees About Assam: Capital– Dispur Chief minister– Sarbananda Sonowal Governor– Jagdish Mukhi Notable Points about Dhanwantari This is covering the distance more than 10 km If the medicine is not in 10 km then govt will deliver it They initiated a dedicated number 104 to avail the medicine Health Dept delivers within 24 hours if the medicine available in the district 48 hours required to deliver from other places A total of 4,000 MPWs (Multipurpose Health Workers), ASHA (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers and aspirants from across the state will be directly involved in this service   Read the full article

[irvinenewshq]

Indonesia considers minimal wage hike in 2023

The Manpower Ministry remains to be finalising particulars on staff’ minimal wage in 2023, which shall be introduced on the finish of November this yr. This was in response to Manpower Minister Ida Fauziyah, who mentioned that she has requested the Director Common for Industrial Relations and Labour Inspection to hearken to the aspirations of the employees. When requested about the potential for a wage enhance, Ida claimed there can be a hike of some p.c. Beforehand, staff had demanded a 13% enhance in wages in 2023 because of inflation and financial development. In the meantime, the Nationwide Wage Council (Depenas) Deputy Chairman Adi Mahfudz Wuhadji mentioned inflation would definitely be a consideration for the 2023 minimal wage.  “So, the rise is definitely a consequence of inflation or financial development. That’s what we have to know. Once we speak about regulation, we set it, so it’s not a rise. If it’s elevated, it’s due to inflation or financial development,” he mentioned.  READ: Indonesia appears to be like to coach extra tech literate staff In 2021, the 2022 minimal wage is stipulated in Authorities Regulation No. 36/2022, with a rise of 1.09% from the earlier yr, reported Tempo. From January 1, 2022, the month-to-month minimal wage in Indonesia was elevated from IDR4,416,186 (US$282.8) to IDR4,641,854 (US$297.2). Originally published at Irvine News HQ

[covid19updater]

COVID19 Updates: 08/24/2021

Iowa:  Iowa school district delays school start due to staff COVID-19 outbreak LINK

US:  The US could have the pandemic under control by spring of 2022 if the "overwhelming majority" of the population gets vaccinated, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Monday. LINK

India:  #COVID19 | Kerala reports 24,296 new cases, 173 deaths and 19,349 recoveries today; Test positivity rate at 18.04%

UK: New cases by day in Scotland since 08/09:  

2021-08-24: 4323

2021-08-23: 3189

2021-08-22: 3190 2021-08-21: 3464 2021-08-20: 3613 2021-08-19: 3367 s021-08-18: 2531 2021-08-17: 1815 2021-08-16: 1567 2021-08-15: 1498 2021-08-14: 1383 2021-08-13: 1542 2021-08-12: 1525 2021-08-11: 1498 2021-08-10: 1032 2021-08-09: 851

Florida:  32-yo #Florida Polk County Sheriff's Deputy Christopher Broadhead has died of #COVID19. Sheriff Grady Judd said ~50 deputies have #COVID19 & at least 4 are hospitalized LINK

World:  The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant is poised to acquire complete resistance to wild-type spike vaccines LINK

US:  US covid hospitalizations reached nearly 96,000 today. That's 74% of pandemic peak, despite some recent reduction in rate of rise (and it isn’t even fall yet)

RUMINT (US):  I have a friend who just tested positive. She's vax'd and her household has VERY little exposure. She and husband work from home and son is virtual school. They only do curbside pickup for groceries. She 1st lost taste/smell then started forgetting things and mixing up words.  She was sure she couldn't possibly have covid but had someone pick up home tests. Her husband tested neg. The only exposure is husband took son to a covid safe appointment last week. Fever is 99. Worst part is major brain fog. This is getting WILD and scary

Israel:  Are we doomed? Israel's Prime Minister is crazy (or an idiot): "People who received two vaccine shots walk around feeling like they are protected... they don't understand that the second vaccine has faded against the "Delta" - they must quickly get vaccinated with the 3rd dose!".  Israel government next outrageous step: The "Green passport" will be valid only for 6 months from the moment you received the 2nd shot! Tomorrow the director of the iMoH will decide whether the booster shots will be permitted/coerced for 30+ people(or for the entire population?!)

Florida:  Florida’s COVID-19 resurgence: State reports 42,143 new cases and 726 new deaths over two days LINK

US:  U.S. COVID update: 253K new cases as many states, including Florida, dump weekend backlogs - New cases: 253,182 - Average: 158,238 (+8,764) - In hospital: 95,743 (+1,556) - In ICU: 23,994 (+496) - New deaths: 1,312

Singapore:  All 62 Covid-19 cases detected among migrant workers from the North Coast Lodge dormitory in Woodlands on Monday (Aug 23) were fully vaccinated, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) on Tuesday.

Louisiana:  A tense standoff in Slidell, Louisiana, over mask mandates is one of dozens that have unfolded at local school board meetings across the US in recent weeks as schools debate how to return to in-person instruction amid the resurgent threat of the Delta variant;

Hawaii:  Hawaii’s Governor has asked that visitors & residents reduce travel to the islands, while the state struggles to control the spread of Delta variant. Gov David Ige said on Monday local time that he wants to curtail travel to Hawaii through to the end of October;

World:  #BREAKING US VP Kamala Harris' trip to Hanoi delayed due to 'health incident': embassy

UK: +30,838. That is 4k more cases than this time last week. 174 new deaths. The most since early March.

Israel:  The Ministry of Health of Israel announced that today, Tuesday, that 9,831 new cases of coronavirus were diagnosed yesterday. This is the highest figure recorded since last January, and almost the most cases ever for a single day. The infection rate is currently 6.63%. Currently, there are 72,572 active cases of COVID-19 nationwide, including 1,124 who are hospitalized. The number of patients in serious condition is 678. Of this number, 168 are in critical condition and 123 are intubated on artificial respirators.

Japan:  JAPAN WILL EXTEND THE COVID STATE OF EMERGENCY TO HOKKAIDO AND SEVEN MORE PREFECTURES

World:  JUST IN - Pfizer CEO says #COVID19 vaccine-resistant variant likely to emerge, but the big pharma company would be able to turn around a "variant-specific" new mRNA jab within 3 months (Fox)

Ohio:  After 8 fully-vaccinated family members get COVID, Miami Valley woman still encourages vaccines LINK

Arkansas:  BREAKING: There are no empty ICU beds left in Arkansas, according to Gov. Asa Hutchinson. LINK

Tennessee:  Nashville public schools reported 395 students and 67 teachers tested positive for COVID in the last week. LINK

Alabama:  "Per the Alabama Hospital Association, the state currently has 1,536 staffed ICU beds and 1,589 ICU patients. That means the state’s ICU bed deficit has ballooned to 53." LINK

California: LA COVID-19 Breakthrough Cases Climb As Young Adults Drive Spread LINK

Florida:  Orange County Public Schools in Florida reported 400 students + teachers have tested positive for COVID overnight. LINK

Canada: British Columbia:  As of Aug 25, masks will be mandatory in all indoor public spaces for people 12+, to help slow COVID-19 transmission and help prepare for the fall respiratory illness season. This applies to everyone, regardless of vaccination status. LINK

Op/Ed: Doctor:  My extreme confidence in effectiveness of vaccines was misplaced. It was based largely on how well they performed initially in Israel, which is nearly fully vaccinated. The recent data there is horrible with even deaths now picking up.

RUMINT (Florida):  My son went back to school yesterday for his senior year after missing the last 1.5 years of in person edumication. He was nervous but loved it and even more so today....he did say prepare to get sick (even though we got a vax) as the halls were so packed between classes that kids could barely move. Did report that everyone appeared to be following mask protocols at least, and outdoor lunchtime with friends (which they all do need)....but his exact words were: "PREPARE TO BE SICK". Only 2 days in and not heard of any reported cases yet....I say give it week. They have enacted strict seating charts so that if someone does get sick, they ONLY toss out temporarily those other kids sitting immediately around the infected one instead of the entire class like last year (but for each class the infected kid was in)...and there is currently NO plan in place for those forced to quarantine from school for 10 days to be able to at least stay up on the classes missed via ZOOM watching (not interactive ZOOM like last year...no ZOOM at all!). Just a 10 day paid vacation from school...oh, and they will have to keep up on their own apparently. I will provide an update on this after Labor Day unless all hell breaks loose before then....mega sigh.

Georgia:  Nearly 2K Georgia children testing positive for COVID-19 a day on average. School districts in metro Atlanta are reporting that over 13,000 children and teens have tested positive for COVID-19 since the start of the school year. LINK

[aymanmatnews]

First Deputy PM: KuwaitVisa app to secure, regulate workers' entry into country.. #Kuwait First Deputy Prime Minister, Interior Minister & Acting Defense Minister Sheikh Talal Khaled Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah announced Saturday the KuwaitVisa app which will be launched soon. - KuwaitVisa app aim of securing & regulating the entry of workers into the country. - The app aims to protect society & limit the entry of those "wanted by the courts, or those with infectious diseases. - The launch of the Public Authority for Manpower for the (smart employee ID), which will be included through the (Kuwait ID) app, & it includes the official information related to the worker. - The meeting resulted in a set of decisions aimed at addressing the demographics, regulating the labor market, limiting manipulation & fraud in addition to enhancing security & safety in society. #الكويت https://www.instagram.com/p/CoP8BITo034/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=