#new jersey coronavirus

[beardedmrbean]

The South Jersey business owner who defied Gov. Phil Murphy’s COVID lockdown orders by keeping his gym open, racking up dozens of court summonses, has been cleared of all charges, his attorney said Tuesday.

Ian Smith, co-owner of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, opened his facility during the coronavirus pandemic in May 2020 in defiance of a state-ordered closing of nonessential businesses. Police arrested some gym members as they left after workouts at the facility.

Smith and co-owner Frank Trumbetti were fined more than $165,000 and faced more than 80 summonses charging them with violating a governor’s orders, operating without a mercantile license, creating a public nuisance and disturbing the peace.

At one point, the state Attorney General’s office recommended fines of up to $10,000 a day and imprisonment for the owners of Atilis if they did not shutter their business. Many of the charges also carried up to six months in jail, said Smith’s attorney, John McCann of Oakland in Bergen County.

“When you look at this, it didn’t make a lot of sense at the time. It kind of looked like they were throwing everything they could at these guys,” McCann said.

McCann said the summonses were written up by the Bellmawr Police Department, but the cases were later transferred to Winslow Township Municipal Court due to a conflict.

“Those charges hung over these guys’ heads for over four years,” McCann said.

On April 24, a judge in Winslow Township dismissed the charges but gave the prosecutors until this week to appeal.

“We didn’t get a lot of cooperation from Bellmawr with regard to discovery. The only thing we got with regard to discovery was the summonses,” McCann said Tuesday.

“You need the reports, you need a whole bunch of stuff. The judge in Winslow said Bellmawr didn’t provide their court with meaningful discovery to give to us,” McCann said. “She basically said that Bellmawr ignored the requests.”

When there was no appeal from officials in Bellmawr or the state, all charges were dropped with prejudice, meaning they cannot be filed again, according to McCann.

Bellmawr’s court clerk on Tuesday declined to comment on the case, and the court clerk in Winslow Township was not immediately available to comment.

A spokesperson for the state Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to a call and an email seeking comment Tuesday morning.

In an interview during the pandemic, Smith accused the state of being “very selective” about which businesses could stay open and those that could not.

“Telling people that liquor stores are essential but places they can come to work on their physical and mental health is not — it’s just not adding up. So, we decided to take matters into our own hands,” Smith said at the time.

In May 2020, the business filed a federal lawsuit against the state, accusing Murphy, along with then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal and other New Jersey officials of violating the owners’ constitutional rights by forcing them out of business indefinitely with no timeline for when they can reopen.

McCann on Tuesday said Atilis’ owners did not make money off gym memberships during the pandemic. The facility, for that period of time, became the campaign headquarters for Republican U.S Senate candidate Rik Mehta, who challenged Democrat Cory Booker for his U.S. Senate seat.

People entering Atilis were exercising their right to volunteer for Mehta’s candidacy. If they worked out while they were there, they were not charged a membership fee, McCann said.

“There was no income coming in but for the GoFundMe money they were raising to fight the state,” McCann said. The GoFundMe raised more than $530,000 for the gym owners’ cause.

On Sunday, Smith took to social media to claim victory in the gym’s fight against the state.

“The support we received locally, nationally, and internationally for our stand is something I will be forever grateful for,” Smith said.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

Some slightly good news for those in New Jersey: Outdoor dining is here to stay.

By Dino Flammia

⚫ Special rules set to expire on Nov. 30 are being extended permanently ⚫ The change was originally put in place due to COVID restrictions ⚫ Municipalities can still make their own decisions

Exemptions dating back to the coronavirus emergency were scheduled to expire at the end of this month, but a law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy on Monday says the changes are here to stay.

If you're a fan of the outdoor options offered by restaurants over the past few years, there's a better shot those options will be around again in the spring and summer of 2025.

The new law makes outdoor dining permissions permanent for restaurants.

“Outdoor dining has proven to be an incredibly successful venture over the past four years, benefiting business owners and patrons alike,” Murphy said. “I’m proud to continue this popular measure and look forward to seeing our restaurant industry continue to grow.”

When the operations of many businesses were restricted due to the COVID-19 emergency, the New Jersey Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control issued a special ruling that allowed restaurants and bars to establish temporary outdoor locations for customers.

Since then, legislation has pushed back the expiration date of the rule, and the measure that led to this law called for outdoor dining to stick around for good. Ahead of this latest update, the scheduled expiration for the outdoor dining date was Nov. 30.

Giving NJ residents what they want “Outdoor service has proven to be a real success for restaurants and the communities they serve,” said Sen. Paul A. Sarlo, D-Bergen, a sponsor of the measure. “It is good for the economy, beneficial for downtown business districts and very popular with patrons and local residents. It is a success story that is well worth continuing.”

According to the legislation's sponsors, it was crafted in direct response to what constituents and business owners have been saying they want.

“New Jersey businesses benefited immensely from the innovative measures we adopted during COVID to enable the use of outdoor spaces,” said Sen. Vincent Polistina, R-Atlantic, another sponsor of the bill. “By making the temporary outdoor dining and beverage laws permanent, our local businesses will continue to have the flexibility they need to thrive by maintaining the indoor and outdoor seating arrangements that patrons have come to enjoy."

The law lets business owners treat their parking lots or walkways as an extension of the restaurant. It also allows for tables and chairs to be set up on adjacent public sidewalks.

But municipalities do have a say. Under the measure, establishments looking to make outdoor services a permanent option need to file an application with the municipal zoning officer.

Municipalities would have the right to limit establishments from operating late at night, or from making too much noise with music or other entertainment.

[ridenwithbiden]

ICYMI last week

"The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday the launch of two new COVID-19 fraud strike forces, as 371 people were charged over offenses in connection to the alleged theft of more than $800 million in coronavirus aid.

Out of the 371 defendants charged with pandemic-related fraud, 119 of them either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial, according a DOJ press release. Authorities also said that more than $57 million in court-ordered restitution was imposed, and 117 civil matters occurred during the federal sweep, with more than $10.4 million in judgments.

Federal prosecutors also worked with law enforcement authorities to secure forfeiture of more than $231.4 million, the DOJ said.

“The Justice Department has now seized over $1.4 billion in COVID-19 relief funds that criminals had stolen and charged over 3,000 defendants with crimes in federal districts across the country,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.

“This latest action, involving over 300 defendants and over $830 million in alleged COVID-19 fraud, should send a clear message: the COVID-19 public health emergency may have ended, but the Justice Department’s work to identify and prosecute those who stole pandemic relief funds is far from over.”

The department also announced the launch of two additional coronavirus fraud strike forces: one at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado and one at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey.

The department said that the two new strike forces add to the three strikes launched last September in California, Florida and Maryland.

“The law enforcement actions announced today reflect the Justice Department’s focus — working with our law enforcement partners nationwide — on bringing to justice those who stole from American businesses and families at a time of national emergency,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said. “The two new Strike Forces launched today will increase our reach as we continue to pursue fraudsters and recover taxpayer funds, no matter how long it takes.”

[mariacallous]

In the first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic, government leaders paid $100 million for management consultants at McKinsey to model the spread of the coronavirus and build online dashboards to project hospital capacity.

It's unsurprising that leaders turned to McKinsey for help, given the notorious backwardness of government technology. Our everyday experience with online shopping and search only highlights the stark contrast between user-friendly interfaces and the frustrating inefficiencies of government websites—or worse yet, the ongoing need to visit a government office to submit forms in person. The 2016 animated movie Zootopia depicts literal sloths running the DMV, a scene that was guaranteed to get laughs given our low expectations of government responsiveness.

More seriously, these doubts are reflected in the plummeting levels of public trust in government. From early Healthcare.gov failures to the more recent implosions of state unemployment websites, policymaking without attention to the technology that puts the policy into practice has led to disastrous consequences.

The root of the problem is that the government, the largest employer in the US, does not keep its employees up-to-date on the latest tools and technologies. When I served in the Obama White House as the nation’s first deputy chief technology officer, I had to learn constitutional basics and watch annual training videos on sexual harassment and cybersecurity. But I was never required to take a course on how to use technology to serve citizens and solve problems. In fact, the last significant legislation about what public professionals need to know was the Government Employee Training Act, from 1958, well before the internet was invented.

In the United States, public sector awareness of how to use data or human-centered design is very low. Out of 400-plus public servants surveyed in 2020, less than 25 percent received training in these more tech-enabled ways of working, though 70 percent said they wanted such training. 

But knowing how to use new technology does not have to be an afterthought, and in some places it no longer is. In Singapore, the Civil Service Training College requires technology and digital-skills training for its 145,000 civilian public servants. Canada’s “Busrides” training platform gives its quarter-million public servants short podcasts on topics like data science, AI, and machine learning to listen to during their commutes. In Argentina, career advancement and salary raises are tied to the completion of training in human-centered design and data-analytical thinking. When public professionals possess these skills—learning how to use technology to work in more agile ways, getting smarter from both data and community engagement—we all benefit.

Today I serve as chief innovation officer for the state of New Jersey, working to improve state websites that deliver crucial information and services. When New Jersey’s aging mainframe strained under the load of Covid jobless claims, for example, we wrote forms in plain language, simplified and eliminated questions, revamped the design, and made the site mobile-friendly. Small fixes that came from sitting down and listening to claimants translated into 48 minutes saved per person per application. New Jersey also created a Covid-19 website in three days so that the public had the information they wanted in one place. We made more than 134,000 updates as the pandemic wore on, so that residents benefited from frequent improvements.

Now with the explosion of interest in artificial intelligence, Congress is turning its attention to ensuring that those who work in government learn more about the technology. US senators Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Mike Braun (R-Indiana) are calling for universal leadership training in AI with the AI Leadership Training Act, which is moving forward to the full Senate for consideration. The bill directs the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal government's human resources department, to train federal leadership in AI basics and risks. However, it does not yet mandate the teaching of how to use AI to improve how the government works.

The AI Leadership Training Act is an important step in the right direction, but it needs to go beyond mandating basic AI training. It should require that the OPM teach public servants how to use AI technologies to enhance public service by making government services more accessible, providing constant access to city services, helping analyze data to understand citizen needs, and creating new opportunities for the public to participate in democratic decisionmaking.

For instance, cities are already experimenting with AI-based image generation for participatory urban planning, while San Francisco’s PAIGE AI chatbot is helping to answer business owners' questions about how to sell to the city. Helsinki, Finland, uses an AI-powered decisionmaking tool to analyze data and provide recommendations on city policies. In Dubai, leaders are not just learning AI in general, but learning how to use ChatGPT specifically. The legislation, too, should mandate that the OPM not just teach what AI is, but how to use it to serve citizens.

In keeping with the practice in every other country, the legislation should require that training to be free. This is already the case for the military. On the civilian side, however, the OPM is required to charge a fee for its training programs. A course titled Enabling 21st-Century Leaders, for example, costs $2,200 per person. Even if the individual applies to their organization for reimbursement, too often programs do not have budgets set aside for up-skilling.

If we want public servants to understand AI, we cannot charge them for it. There is no need to do so, either. Building on a program created in New Jersey, six states are now collaborating with each other in a project called InnovateUS to develop free live and self-paced learning in digital, data, and innovation skills. Because the content is all openly licensed and designed specifically for public servants, it can easily be shared across states and with the federal government as well.

The Act should also demand that the training be easy to find. Even if Congress mandates the training, public professionals will have a hard time finding it without the physical infrastructure to ensure that public servants can take and track their learning about tech and data. In Germany, the federal government’s Digital Academy offers a single site for digital up-skilling to ensure widespread participation. By contrast, in the United States, every federal agency has its own (and sometimes more than one) website where employees can look for training opportunities, and the OPM does not advertise its training across the federal government. While the Department of Defense has started building USALearning.gov so that all employees could eventually have access to the same content, this project needs to be accelerated.

The Act should also require that data on the outcomes of AI training be collected and published. The current absence of data on federal employee training prevents managers, researchers, and taxpayers from properly evaluating these training initiatives. More comprehensive information about our public workforce, beyond just demographics and job titles, could be used to measure the impact of AI training on cost savings, innovation, and performance improvements in serving the American public.

Unlike other political reforms that could take generations to achieve in our highly partisan and divisive political climate, investing in people—teaching public professionals how to use AI and the latest technology to work in more agile, evidence-based, and participatory ways to solve problems—is something we can do right now to create institutions that are more responsive, reliable, and deserving of our trust.

I understand the hesitance to talk about training people in government. When I worked for the Obama White House, the communications team was reluctant to make any public pronouncements about investing in government lest we be labeled “Big Government” advocates. Since the Reagan years, Republicans have promoted a “small government” narrative. But what matters to most Americans is not big or small but that we have a better government.

[ardhra2000]

7 Best Medicine Delivery Apps in US [2024]

Epocrates is one of the most recommended medical reference apps. It provides all sorts of clinical information on drugs, drug dosage, diagnosis, diseases, medical news, evidence-based clinical practices, and more. 

Further, the app can identify unknown pills, provide lab-test guidelines and therapeutic recommendations based on symptoms, making it a popular choice.

NowRx pharmacy has established itself as a leading medicine delivery app in the US. The app features video calls with pharmacists, Telehealth, and refills along with medicine delivery. However, customers criticized the app's UX.

CVS Pharmacy announced that in addition to their 1-2 day drug delivery service available across the country via their medicine delivery app, they would also offer hourly drug delivery. 

Netmeds is known for its smooth customer service. Customers can also book health checkups and virtual doctor appointments via Netmeds. Moreover, at Netmeds, you can book a doctor's visit and get follow-up appointments completely free of charge. 

The pharmacy delivery app has grown into more than just a drug delivery company. In addition to medicines, users can also buy health, diet, and fitness products from the app. 

Rite Aid is announcing the opening of new coronavirus test sites in New Jersey, Ohio, and Michigan.

Online delivery businesses intersect every sector. The changes in the consumer landscape and their shift to online shopping are due to the convenience, ease, and value the app provides. The health sector is not an exception. 

The medicine delivery apps come up with clinical information, virtual doctor meets, chat with therapists, Telehealth, and many more. Moreover, these apps allow you to schedule appointments and maintain healthcare reports at your fingertips.

[southjerseyweb]

Covid-19: These South Jersey Counties Have Highest Coronavirus Rates - Daily Voice

Three counties in South Jersey rank among the top 12 counties statewide in confirmed coronavirus cases, according to New Jersey Health Department …

[newstfionline]

Sunday, December 3, 2023

Calls grow for crackdown on US gambling (Guardian) The United States is heading into a “quagmire, if not crisis” of gambling addiction among young people, according to counselors and clinicians—prompting calls for a regulatory crackdown. Treatment clinics are grappling with an influx of patients in their teens and early 20s and helplines are reporting record levels of calls. New Jersey was the state that led the charge for the legalization of sports betting and, in 2018, successfully convinced the supreme court to overturn a decades-old federal law that prohibited the state from legalizing sports betting. Requests for support through New Jersey’s helpline more than doubled over the ensuing years, as the legal market ballooned. Hundreds of calls from concerned relatives each year have heightened fears in the state that problem gambling is sweeping through a new generation. Arnie Wexler, a counselor, has not seen anything like this before. “We’re killing the youth of America. It’s gotten crazy. Nobody cares,” he said.

Dearborn’s Arab Americans Endure the Agony of War (NYT) Abdullah Hammoud, the 33-year-old mayor of Dearborn, Mich., feels the painful weight of a war being fought 6,000 miles away. He feels it through anguished stories told as he eats breakfast at AlTayeb Restaurant, as he visits Ronnie Berry’s Halal Meats, and in late-night discussions with his closest friends. He feels it when he sees cars and homes freshly draped with the Palestinian flag. He feels it during normally joyful moments: at his city’s Christmas tree lighting, where the mood felt notably somber and subdued; or on Halloween night, when far fewer kids than usual walked his city’s neighborhoods. “With the level of Islamophobia, parents are worried,” Mr. Hammoud says. “Many people are not in the mood to have a good time.” He pauses for a moment. “Not when bombs are dropping in Gaza.” Dearborn, a suburb of roughly 110,000 people bordering Detroit, has one of the highest percentages of Arab Americans among U.S. cities. Census figures show that it is roughly 54 percent Arab American, a figure experts believe is a significant undercount. This is a community suffering intensely as it beholds the carnage wrought by the war between Israel and Hamas.

Return to office push is 'totally dead,' experts say, as WFH persists (Yahoo News) Nearly four years into the coronavirus pandemic, the society-wide return of white-collar employees to their pre-pandemic offices that some have eagerly awaited and others have long dreaded remains largely unrealized. Restaurants and stadiums are packed, and students are back in school, but corporate executives and even some government leaders are finding it difficult to lure workers back to the office. After office occupancy approached 50% nationwide earlier this year, return-to-office (RTO) rates in many major cities remain stagnant. “The data all shows the RTO push is over,” remote work expert Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University told Yahoo News in an email. “Totally dead.”

Venezuela-Guyana tensions (Foreign Policy) On Sunday, Venezuela will hold an unusual referendum: Voters will say whether they agree with the administration’s stance that a large chunk of neighboring Guyana belongs to Venezuela. Guyana’s current boundaries are internationally recognized, but Venezuela has long claimed the Essequibo region—which makes up roughly two-thirds of Guyana—as its own. Venezuela relaxed its objections in recent decades, as South American neighbors and its ally Cuba backed Guyana’s claim to the land. But the decadesold dispute was revived after highly valuable oil was discovered off Guyana’s coast in 2015. Diplomatic tensions are now running high in South America, which has not had a major interstate war in almost a century.

As George Santos is expelled from Congress, Brazilians hang their heads (Washington Post) Before George Santos became a household name here in Rio de Janeiro, before the scandals and revelations, Victor Cavatti knew of him. He had found the New York Republican’s story inspiring—the son of two working-class Brazilian immigrants rising to the highest echelons of American power. But now, after Santos’s expulsion from the U.S. House of Representatives amid allegations of prolific misconduct and serial fabrication, Cavatti and much of Brazil are expressing a very different sentiment: shame. The New York Republican was said to be the first Brazilian American to reach the U.S. Congress. But he is out of office, disgraced, all within a single year. “It’s all so predictable,” Cavatti said with a sigh. “A son of Brazilians, involved in political scandals.” Despite its extraordinary beauty, loving people and wondrous culture, Brazil often doubts itself. It cares, deeply, what the rest of the world thinks of it. There is a collective inferiority that many Brazilians feel in comparing their nation to industrialized parts of the world. He could have done good, many said. He could have shown the world the best of Brazil. But instead, people said, he reinforced stereotypes they feared the world already had about their country.

A snowstorm brings Munich airport to a standstill and causes travel chaos in central Europe (AP) All flights were grounded at Munich’s airport Saturday after a winter storm dumped snow across southern Germany and parts of Austria, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, affecting travel across the region. After initially announcing a halt in air traffic until noon on Saturday, the airport later announced flights would be canceled until 6 a.m. Sunday. Other airports in the region, including in the Swiss financial capital, Zurich, also announced weather-related delays and cancellations. Trains to and from Munich’s central station were also halted, Germany’s national railway said, advising passengers to delay or reroute their journeys. Downed trees left “many thousands” of people without power across the state of Bavaria, the utility company Bayernwerk told dpa.

A Russian Village Buries a Soldier, and Tries to Make Sense of the War (NYT) A cold wind was blowing across the steppe, but Sapura Kadyrova didn’t see the point in bundling up. She was waiting to greet her son, who was arriving home from the war in a crimson government-issued casket. “So maybe I won’t be warm,” Ms. Kadyrova, 85, moaned. “Then just let me die.” All day long, she and her daughters had been greeting relatives, friends and neighbors who had come to pay their respects to her son, Garipul S. Kadyrov, who was killed near the front line in Klishchiivka in eastern Ukraine. In Russia’s big cities, the war can feel like distant background noise, with the latest iPhones on sale and things looking pretty much the same as before—save for ubiquitous army recruitment posters. While as many as 80 percent of Ukrainians have a close friend or relative who was injured or killed in the war, many Russians in urban centers still feel insulated from it. It is in villages like Ovsyanka, a former collective farm in southwestern Russia, where the pain and loss of the war are felt most profoundly. And as friends and neighbors gathered in Ms. Kadyrova’s small house, preparing food in the kitchen and sharing memories about the deceased, the grief mixed with a yearning to make sense of the loss of another soldier.

Ukraine conducts new attack on Russian railway deep in Siberia (Reuters) Ukraine’s domestic spy agency has detonated explosives on a Russian railway line deep in Siberia, the second attack this week on military supply routes in the area, a Ukrainian source told Reuters on Friday. The incidents appear to show Kyiv’s readiness and ability to conduct sabotage attacks deep inside Russia and disrupt Russian logistics far from the front lines of Moscow’s 21-month-old war in Ukraine. The source, who declined to be identified, said the explosives were detonated as a freight train crossed the Chertov Bridge in Siberia’s Buryatia region, which borders Mongolia and is thousands of kilometres from Ukraine. Baza, a Russian media outlet with security sources, said diesel fuel tanks had ignited on a train using the backup route and that six goods wagons had caught fire. It reported no casualties and said the cause of the explosions was unknown.

Israel intensifies its assault on southern Gaza (AP) Israel pounded targets in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, intensifying a renewed offensive that followed a weeklong truce with Hamas and giving rise to renewed concerns about civilian casualties. At least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed Friday morning, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, even as the United States urged ally Israel to do everything possible to protect civilians. Many of Israel’s attacks Saturday were focused on the Khan Younis area in southern Gaza, where the military said it had struck more than 50 Hamas targets with airstrikes, tank fire and its navy. The military dropped leaflets the day before warning residents to leave but, as of late Friday, there had been no reports of large numbers of people leaving, according to the United Nations. “There is no place to go,” lamented Emad Hajar, who fled with his wife and three children from the northern town of Beit Lahia a month ago to seek refuge in Khan Younis. “They expelled us from the north, and now they are pushing us to leave the south.”

Deepfakes from the Gaza war increase fears about AI’s power to mislead (AP) Among images of the bombed out homes and ravaged streets of Gaza, some stood out for the utter horror: Bloodied, abandoned infants. Viewed millions of times online since the war began, these images are deepfakes created using artificial intelligence. If you look closely you can see clues: fingers that curl oddly, or eyes that shimmer with an unnatural light—all telltale signs of digital deception. The outrage the images were created to provoke, however, is all too real. Pictures from the Israel-Hamas war have vividly and painfully illustrated AI’s potential as a propaganda tool, used to create lifelike images of carnage. hat’s made the potential of AI to become another form of weapon starkly apparent, and offered a glimpse of what’s to come during future conflicts, elections and other big events. “It’s going to get worse—a lot worse—before it gets better,” said Jean-Claude Goldenstein, CEO of CREOpoint, a tech company based in San Francisco and Paris that uses AI to assess the validity of online claims.

Climate change threatens African food supply (Washington Post) Scientists, government officials and farmers are reviving neglected crops and boosting agricultural productivity in a race to cushion Africa from growing food shortages exacerbated by climate change. Rising temperatures mean large chunks of Africa are whipsawing between increasingly severe droughts and more frequent and intense cyclones, threatening staple foods for hundreds of millions of people. The International Monetary Fund says each increase of 1 degree Celsius correlates to a 3 percent reduction in agricultural output in developing countries. It forecasts crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa will decline by 5 to 17 percent by 2050, despite a rapidly growing population. Smallholder farmers are already struggling.

[prelawland]

DC's Own NYSE: The Law Of Congressional Stock Trading

By Gregory Martinez,  Rutgers University–New Brunswick  Class of 2026

September 15, 2023

On January 24th, 2020, before the average American knew what a pandemic was, the United States Senate received a private briefing on the dangers of the then early-stage coronavirus from the soon-to-be-famous Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That same day, Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia (R) began selling dozens of stock holdings, totalling millions in value, trades that her household would continue to make throughout February. On average, the 15 stocks that Loeffler offloaded, all from companies soon to be vulnerable to the pandemic, lost a third of their value between then and March 2020, when COVID-19 became a more public threat Naturally, when The Daily Beast published a report detailing this series of events, the American public was less than pleased. Senators and virtually anyone with a high level role in government, being privy to sensitive information on a daily basis, have had questionable investments frequently come into scrutiny. The ethical troubles of government employees being able to trade goes beyond just insider trading, there are clear paths to conflicts of interest that could compromise decision making capabilities. Reports show that 78 members of Congress have violated the STOCK Act between 2012 and 2023, and after making excuses “including ignorance of the law, clerical errors, and mistakes by an accountant”, are typically only given a fine around $200, a slap on the wrist considering the potential severity of their actions. Insider trading laws exist to provide equity among investors, to make sure that no one has an unfair advantage over another. In a Congress where the majority of members are millionaires, and typically double or even triple their net worth during their years of service, it’s hard to argue that it’s an entirely fair fight against the average American.

For full article please visit

DC’s Own NYSE: The Shady World Of Congressional Stock Trading

at

New Jersey PreLaw Land

[cyarskaren52]

https://web.archive.org/web/20210106235601/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/05/us/politics/raphael-warnock-georgia-senate.html

Raphael Warnock’s Win Is One for the History Books

A Baptist preacher born and raised in Georgia, he will become his state’s first Black senator, breaking a barrier with distinct meaning in American politics.

GARDEN CITY, Ga. — There have been so few Black Democrats elected to the Senate that when Vice President-elect Kamala Harris campaigned for the Rev. Raphael Warnock in Savannah this week the pairing spoke volumes, even if unintentionally, about racial representation in statewide office.

In purely partisan terms, a leader of the Democratic Party was seeking to rally voters in an important Senate runoff election, the results of which will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the chamber. But it was also a rare chance for one Senate barrier breaker to pass the torch to another. Ms. Harris was the first Black woman and woman of color to serve as a senator from California. Mr. Warnock will become the first Black senator from Georgia.

During his speech at the event with Ms. Harris, Mr. Warnock described being arrested by police officers at the U.S. Capitol during protests and political action over the years.

“I wasn’t mad at them. They were doing their job and I was doing my job,” Mr. Warnock said. “But in a few days I’m going to meet those Capitol Hill police officers again and this time they will not be taking me to central booking. They can help me find my new office.”

Mr. Warnock’s victory over Senator Kelly Loeffler early Wednesday is a fitting culmination to an election cycle in which, hours after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the president-elect, he told Black voters, “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours.”

It is also a generational breakthrough for Southern Black Democrats.

Mr. Warnock, 51, the pastor who took the pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once preached, spoke on the campaign trail about his life experiences as a Black man born and raised in the South. He ran for office in a state where people in predominantly Black neighborhoods waited in disproportionately long lines to vote last year, and where one study found that more than 80 percent of the residents hospitalized for coronavirus in the state were Black — vestiges of systemic racism in the democratic and health care systems.

Political power in the former Jim Crow South, where few Black Americans have been elected to statewide office, is inextricably linked to race. And Mr. Warnock’s place in the political universe is distinct from the election of Ms. Harris, or Northerners like former President Barack Obama, previously a senator from Illinois, and Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Together, Mr. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, the other Democratic candidate, have the chance to expand the legislative agenda of Mr. Biden. But Mr. Warnock alone was seeking to overcome a barrier reinforced in the South over and over again, crystallized in a saying that became popular during the civil rights movement: “The South doesn’t care how close a Negro gets, just so he doesn’t get too high.”

On Tuesday, Black Democrats in Georgia said such history was not lost on them. Neither was how long it took the party to seriously pursue the possibility of success in Georgia.

“It took Democrats forever to invest in Georgia,” said Frazier Lively, a 71-year-old who lives in Macon and attended a recent rally. “Now you would hope what’s happening here is a message to what’s possible going forward.”

Felicia Davis, an organizer who has worked for years in Clayton County, said it was important to think about the coalition that is supporting Democrats as the next iteration of organizers who worked in the civil rights movement. She drew a direct line from their work to the current push to register and turn out Black voters for a Black candidate.

“You have to know the names: Joseph Lowery, Reverend James Orange, Rita Samuels, everybody knows these names,” Ms. Davis said. “All of them are dead now. But people have come together to continue that work. We register. We travel around the state, and we’ve gotten our voices heard.”

Throughout the presidential primary and general election, Democrats have had to wrestle with questions of racial representation, electability and how to balance a rising multicultural coalition with those who are more focused on transformational policy. In the primary, older Black voters balked at Black candidates like Mr. Booker and Ms. Harris in favor of Mr. Biden, on the belief that he was best suited to defeat Mr. Trump. Progressives — and particularly younger voters — supported more liberal candidates like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The Rev. William J. Barber II, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, said all politicians, including Black ones, are in the end judged on policy even if they are barrier-breaking figures.

“Policy, Policy, Policy, that’s the only reason you elect people in the office is to push policy,” he said, repeating the word to emphasize the point. “A Black person is not elected just to hold the position. And the truth of the matter is Black politicians, from the state, to the Congress, to the Senate, they have to ask themselves the question, have we put these issues at the center?”

One urgent issue for all candidates in 2020, especially Democrats, was the summer of racial reckoning. In Georgia, the killing of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020 ignited protests, isolated instances of property damage, and put intense pressure on public officials — including Black ones.

Mr. Warnock, then in the early stages of his Senate race, navigated the social justice movement for the first time as a candidate for public office rather than solely from behind the pulpit. The words were more measured, the indictments of White America less stinging, as he and other Democrats tried to channel the anger of the community into an electoral purpose.Supporters of Mr. Warnock at an event in Hephzibah, Ga., on Monday.Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

This week, during a campaign stop in Brunswick, Ga., Mr. Warnock spoke with Mr. Arbery’s father.

He did not mention the killing in his speech, but talked about his own family’s history as sharecroppers and victims of racial injustice.

“That’s why I love America because you always have a path to make a great country even greater,” Mr. Warnock said.

But no amount of careful word choice — or television advertisements with hopeful slogans and puppies — could stop his candidacy from becoming a lightning rod in an era defined by race, racial grievance and those who seek to capitalize on its backlash. After the general election was over, and it was clear there would be a runoff against Ms. Loeffler, Mr. Warnock became the subject of an all-out conservative assault, which sought to define him as an out-of-touch radical who was against Georgia’s values. Ms. Loeffler, a Republican, seized on snippets from his sermons from his pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church, presenting out-of-context statements on the military and Israel as ammunition.

While Republicans largely ignored Mr. Ossoff’s candidacy at their rallies, they took aim at Mr. Warnock repeatedly.

“Warnock is the most radical and dangerous left-wing candidate ever to seek this office, and certainly in the state of Georgia, and he does not have your values,” Mr. Trump said at his rally in Dalton, Ga., on Monday.

Mr. Trump does not get to define Georgia’s values, however. Voters made that clear in November, when Mr. Biden won the state — a result the president is baselessly continuing to question. Georgia’s population, and with it, perhaps, its values, is changing. The state’s Latino and Asian-American populations are growing, and the suburbs are drawing younger voters and college-educated moderates as well.

That is perhaps why Mr. Warnock the candidate sounded less like Mr. Warnock the preacher and more like Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat whose strategy of voter turnout specifically emphasizes multiculturalism rather than Blackness.

Ms. Abrams, in a recent interview, said she tries not to focus on one group over another when talking about how Georgia became a Democratic bright spot.

“I want us to be really clear that this requires the investment and support of multiple communities,” Ms. Abrams said. “This is a multiracial, multiethnic, multigenerational coalition. And the extent to which we give primacy to one group at the exclusion of the other, I become nervous.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Warnock’s journey from Black pastor to Black senator is an exercise of a different type of faith: It’s a belief that American politics can change from the inside, that the Democratic Party’s most loyal voters can see themselves represented in Congress. That there is room to push the country forward within its institutions, rather than diagnosing its problems from outside.

The latter is something Black pastors, who by tradition often tell uncomfortable truths, have done for centuries. The Black senator is a singular road, occupied by few people in American history, and none from Georgia at all.

Sent from my iPhone

[charles5436]

Role Of Technology In Tracking A Potential COVID Hotspot || NeoDrafts

Role Of Technology In Tracking A Potential COVID Hotspot. Coronavirus has remained a hot topic in and around the world for approximately 7 months. Ignoring the conspiracy theories and the blame game that the nations are playing with each other, COVID 19 is a legitimate threat to humanity. With no known cure and a vaccine doubtful in the foreseeable future, the only way to protect oneself comes down to prevention.  Such is the gravity of the pandemic situation.

Role Of Google In The Mission Of “Prevention” Of COVID 19 Causing Virus:

The unofficial king of data collection and data prediction is Google. And this feature of Google has come to aid the world suffering from this deadly pandemic causing novel coronavirus. Apart from providing with the latest news of the virus-like vaccine updates, country-wise breakdown of COVID cases, etc., Google has successfully used it’s technological advancement to humanity’s advantage.

According to a survey, Google can predict the next potential coronavirus hotspot. This is not the first time that the search engine has been used to predict the next possible outbreak location. This powerful tool has been already used to track influenza.

Let Us Learn How Google Is Predicting The Possible COVID 19 Hotspot:

A US study has successfully discovered a correlation. It is between the search of specific ailments on Google to the developments of COVID hotspots within a month’s gap. Analyzing the data collected from January to April this year (2020), Massachusetts General Hospital had found that when there was a spike in searches for gastrointestinal symptoms, a COVID hotspot emerged in the area weeks later.

In other areas from New York, New Jersey, California, Illinois and Massachusetts, a similar search trend on the loss of smell and taste on Google, ended with a discovery of a COVID hotspot at the location of the searches in the following three to four weeks.

What Is The Advantage Of This Search Tool?

In most of these cases, search words like “Why can’t I smell” etc. have almost perfectly matched the outbreak locations. Google declared these locations as hotspots approximately 14 days later. An idea of a possible hotspot even before the drastic spread of the virus would be a godsend to prevent the number of deaths caused by COVID by arresting it’s spread to vulnerable people. Survey of search words for Gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea and loss of appetite have also yielded the same results. That is an accurate pinpoint of a potential COVID hotspot.

The results of this survey helps in curbing or at the least, helps authorities to equip and face the situation. Whether technology is a boon or a bane has been a topic of debate since decades. But considering the pandemic situation, it is a blessing in disguise. Powerful tools such as Google Trends have proven to be successful in data collection and prediction. Both are related to public health and other sensitive yet significant matters.

[covid-safer-hotties]

New XEC COVID subvariant poses potential threat heading into winter. Doctors urge vaccinations - Published Sept 23, 2024

By Rong-Gong Lin II

A new coronavirus subvariant is gaining steam and drawing more attention as a potential threat heading into late autumn and winter — a development that threatens to reverse recent promising transmission trends and is prompting doctors to renew their calls for residents to get an updated vaccine.

XEC, which was first detected in Germany, is gaining traction in Western Europe, said Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, regional chief of infectious diseases at Kaiser Permanente Southern California. Like virtually all coronavirus strains that have emerged in the past few years, it’s a member of the sprawling Omicron family — and a hybrid between two previously documented subvariants, KP.3 and KS.1.1.

Past surges have tended “to move from Western Europe to the East Coast to the West Coast of the U.S.,” Hudson said. “So if this does take off more and more as we get towards the colder weather months, this probably would be the variant that will potentially take hold.”

XEC hasn’t been widely seen nationally so far. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, KP.3.1.1, a descendant of the FLiRT subvariants, is the dominant circulating strain nationwide. For the two-week period ending Sept. 14, KP.3.1.1 was estimated to comprise 52.7% of the nation’s coronavirus specimens.

XEC, by comparison, isn’t yet being tracked on the CDC’s variant website. A subvariant needs to make up an estimated 1% or more of coronavirus cases nationwide to qualify.

But there are estimates that XEC makes up 13% of coronavirus samples in Germany and 7% in Britain, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, a UC San Francisco infectious diseases expert.

“We’ll have to see how things go. If this does take off, probably we would start to see it more like November, December time,” Hudson said. “So like after Halloween — when the weather will probably get more reliably cool here, people start to go indoors more often — that’s when we’re more likely to see this potentially take hold.”

Any fall or winter resurgence, which has become a reliable occurrence ever since the emergence of COVID-19, would follow a prolonged summer surge that surprised doctors and experts with its strength.

One silver lining, though, is that the timing and strength of the summer COVID surge probably means it could be a couple of months before many people become more susceptible to reinfection, Chin-Hong said.

Last winter’s COVID peak in California — in terms of viral levels in wastewater — was the first week of January.

After the surprisingly strong summer surge, COVID is now declining or probably declining in 22 states, including California and Texas, as well as the District of Columbia, the CDC said Friday.

The COVID trend is stable or uncertain in another 22 states, including Florida and New York. COVID is projected to be growing or probably growing in New Jersey, Washington and Massachusetts, and there was no data for the three remaining states.

Still, new COVID infections remain relatively high in many parts of the country. Coronavirus levels in wastewater are still considered “high” or “very high” in 40 states, including California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania and Ohio, the CDC said Friday. They were categorized as “low” or “minimal” in six states, including New York, Michigan, Nevada and Hawaii.

In Los Angeles County, coronavirus indicators are on a downward trend. For the 10-day period that ended Sept. 7, the most recent available, coronavirus levels in wastewater were at 56% of last winter’s peak. That’s down from the 10-day period that ended Aug. 24, when viral levels were at 75% of last winter’s peak.

An average of 239 coronavirus cases a day were reported for the week that ended Sept. 15, down 31% from the prior week. Officially reported coronavirus cases are an undercount, as they don’t factor in tests done at home or account for the fact that many people aren’t testing at all when sick. But the trends are still useful in determining how a COVID wave is progressing.

The share of emergency department visits classified as coronavirus-related in L.A. County was 2.8% for the week that ended Sept. 15, down from 3.5% the prior week.

The average number of COVID-19 deaths, however, is rising — an expected development given the surge in illness and the lag in reporting fatalities. An average of 4.9 COVID deaths were reported per day for the week that ended Aug. 27 in L.A. County, up from the prior week’s number of 4.3.

COVID levels in the wastewater of the San Francisco Bay Area are also settling down. Coronavirus levels were considered medium in the sewersheds of San José and Palo Alto, and low in Sunnyvale and Gilroy, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department said.

The rate at which coronavirus tests are coming back positive is falling in California. For the week that ended Sept. 16, 8.9% of reported coronavirus tests — typically those done at medical facilities — returned positive results. The seasonal peak was 12.8%, for the week that ended Aug. 10, according to the latest data.

It remains unclear how bad this winter’s respiratory virus season will be. COVID isn’t the only game in town, as health officials also are closely monitoring flu and respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV.

The CDC in late August forecasted that this fall-and-winter season will either be similar to last year, or perhaps slightly less potent. But that forecast could be overly optimistic, the agency warned, if some assumptions are off — such as if fewer people get vaccinated than expected.

The situation may be improved because people may still have some residual immunity from flu and RSV, Chin-Hong said, which flared up the past couple of winters. Also helping matters is the rollout of vaccines against RSV, which became available last year.

Still, every winter carries its own respiratory illness risk. Circulation of a type of flu that’s different than the ones included in the vaccine would make those shots less effective, for instance.

And the experience from parts of the Southern Hemisphere for their winter suggests the respiratory virus season could be active here, Hudson said.

“Australia — they had a pretty robust and early flu season, and we are already starting to see a couple of cases of flu here in the U.S., which is pretty darn early,” Hudson said.

The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older get the updated COVID-19 and flu vaccines. The immunizations are widely available, and the best time to get vaccinated is in September and October, the CDC says.

After a coronavirus infection, people may consider waiting three months to get the latest COVID vaccination, according to the CDC. But people can also choose to get it as soon as they feel better.

“I always have hope. And if folks get vaccinated — this is the perfect time now to get vaccinated against flu, get the new COVID shot — we could potentially tamp down on what will certainly be another more typical fall-and-winter surge. But I think the jury is out in terms of how bad it is going to be,” Hudson said.

Getting vaccinated “means fewer sick days and more time with your loved ones. We are stronger when we are all protected against respiratory diseases,” Dr. Tomás Aragón, the director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement.

Older or immunocompromised people who haven’t been vaccinated in more than a year are at highest risk for severe COVID illness and death, officials say.

Data show that people who got last year’s updated COVID vaccine were 54% less likely to get the disease between mid-September 2023 through January, according to the CDC.

A flu vaccine that’s well matched to the circulating viruses can also reduce the likelihood of becoming sick enough to require a doctor’s visit — by 40% to 60%, the CDC said.

There are needle-free options for getting the flu vaccine, such as FluMist, which has been available for many years as a nasal spray for non-pregnant people ages 2 to 49. On Friday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved at-home use of FluMist — meaning adults can administer the vaccine to themselves or their children.

A prescription will still be needed for the at-home option, which is expected to be available starting fall 2025.

COVID remains a greater risk to public health than the flu, the CDC says. Since Oct. 1, at least 55,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported nationally. At least 25,000 flu deaths are estimated over that same time period. Flu death estimates are expected to be updated in October or November.

The CDC recommends RSV vaccinations for all adults age 75 and older, as well as those ages 60 to 74 who are at increased risk for severe disease. The RSV vaccine, however, is not annual, so people who got one last year don’t need to get another one at this time.

An RSV vaccine is also available for expectant mothers at weeks 32 to 36 of pregnancy to pass protection to their fetuses. An RSV antibody is available for babies and some young children, too.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it will again make four free COVID tests available through the mail for households. You can register at covidtests.gov starting at the end of September.

Besides getting vaccinated, California health officials urged people to take other steps to prevent getting sick and infecting others. They include staying home when sick, testing for COVID and flu if you’re sick, wearing a mask in indoor public settings, washing hands, covering cough and sneezes, and ventilating indoor spaces.

[kensfoodfind]

Cocozza (the "pop-up")

NOTE: This was originally written for my main blog at KensFoodFind.com during the COVID-19 pandemic when many restaurants, including the Majestic Grille (where Cocozza stood in for) closed. Because it was a huge success, the owners decided to turn the "pop-up" concept into a full-blown restaurant in Harbor Town, Downtown Memphis' secluded community on the northern end of Mud Island. Since then, the restaurant's popularity has grown in Downtown Memphis and beyond. As a result, I went back to the restaurant to see it for myself, resulting in an updated review. The following is what I initially wrote about Cocozza. Enjoy.

_____________________

I learned that today is the last day for Cocozza American Italian, the "pop-up" started by the owners of The Majestic Grille to take the restaurant's place during the coronavirus pandemic. According to the blog I Love Memphis, the inspiration for Cocozza comes mostly from family recipes of co-owner and Italian-American Deni Reilly. Most of the menu is traditional Italian with items like spaghetti, lasagna and Chicken Parmesan. To quote the restaurant's website, it is a "red sauce joint" that is unpretentious in both its menu and how it presents itself. On the night that I visited (December of 2020), I kept it simple in getting the spaghetti and meatballs along with an appetizer (the Majestic… er, Cocozza's popular fried calamari) and a dessert (lemon cheesecake).

From what I remember, everything in the pasta was great. From the meatballs to the thick sauce, this was a well made meal that holds its own with other great restaurants like Bardog Tavern (coincidentally, both Deni and Bardog's owner Aldo Dean are Italian-Americans from New Jersey). I hope the spaghetti and the other Italian dishes will have a future with either the Majestic or as "Cocozza."

As I'm writing this post, this will be Cocozza's last night as a "pop-up" restaurant. With the world on the verge of returning to normal, Deni and her husband (the marvelous Chef Patrick Reilly) will soon resume operations of The Majestic Grille. I'm hopeful that "Cocozza" will continue in some form, such as a catering service or as retail products (prepackaged meals) that are currently selling in grocery stores like Cordelia's Market (aka "Miss Cordelia's") and High Point Grocery. Maybe demand could lead to a permanent "Cocozza" independent of The Majestic Grille, setting up shop in a neighborhood like the South Main Arts District. Regardless of its future, I appreciate the efforts of the Reillys for being innovative in keeping their restaurant going in these rough times. If this is it for Cocozza, it was great while it lasted.

DATE: Recently, the Reillys signed a lease in Harbor Town where they will relaunch Cocozza this Fall (2022). It will be located in 110 Harbor Town Square, next to Cordelia's Market. To learn more details, check out this article in The Commercial Appeal.

Website: EatCocozza.com

[smithoon]



 Victim ecstasy: Guo wen turtle was caught, finally can not jump around

On March 15,2023, Guo Wengui, a fugitive who absconded to the United States, was arrested by the New York police on suspicion of fraud and other charges. After sober ecstasy, the case was plagued, and the huge debt finally made him unable to jump. As a wanted man to hide, do not clip the tail of Guo Wengui, everywhere fraud "believers", even if caught, still continue to rob the behavior of paying Paul, is already trapped in a dead cycle, no way out, the head was kicked by the donkey bully brother will steal chicken not anti erosion rice, why bitter to zai?!

 Brainwashing has a set, only scam regardless of human lives

They all said, " Ting Guo is risky, It's always a bad luck, Who sticks to who is sad ", Guo Wengui has carefully designed the trap over the years, All are a series of pheasant products, In the guise of a "revelation revolution," With an "anti-communist" sentiment card, For this article you will not only shaped himself as a "fearless" fighter, And blowing his own junk as the only straw to save the world, All day long, ants should eat hydroxychloroquine at a daily dosage, Can resist the novel coronavirus, It was hit in the face by "Flying" sufficiently proof, "Feifei" on the GTV a nose a tear cry, Six of her family took hydroxychloroquine in daily doses, Also infected by the Delta virus, This article understplayed the opening live to appease the show, Even when the conversation was turned, That it's not taking hydroxychloroquine, But no prayer? ! Pray useful words, to the hospital to have what use, Guo Wengui is really harmful!

315 Big happy heart to fight fake Guo Wengui

Guo Wengui for its lies fraud life, constantly in live frequency the infamous "flaunt wealth" abuse, to bask in the so-called "luxury dinner, private jet, team" show off "xi" of "prosperity", pie hook "ant powder" buy "xi" investment virtual "xi" construction, even create panic, make doomsday atmosphere, pretend to save the world, the fact that indeed, on March 15,2023, in the "fight", Guo Wengui is accused of planning a $1 billion fraud. Prosecutors said, Guo Wengui using his accumulated hundreds of thousands of fans, for his encryption currency, media and other companies to solicit investment, the indictment said Guo Wengui with the money in New Jersey to buy a $26 million worth of housing, a yacht, a ferrari car and a $36000 mattress and other items. The indictment charged Mr.Guo with 11 counts of fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors said they had seized $634 million in the proceeds of the crime and assets, including a Lamborghini vehicle. In the indictment, Mr Guo lied to hundreds of thousands of his online followers, promising huge profits if they invest in GTV Media Group, the Himalayan Farm Alliance, G | Club and the Himalayan Exchange. At least since March 2018, Guo has been planning the complex financial scam, joining his financial teacher, Yu Jianming, to defraud thousands of people and earn more than one billion dollars in profits. The indictment lists 12 counts, including wire transfer fraud, bank fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. Guo Wengui was charged on 11 charges, while codefendant Yu Jianming was also accused of obstruction of justice. The maximum sentence of the 12 charges is 215 years, but it is for reference only.

 The lawsuit pester, cut off the end to survive

Guo Wengui, who was plagued by lawsuits in 2021, Have been forced to hand over several hundred million to settle with defrauded investors, At the time, the SEC said, Three media companies linked to Mr.Guo have agreed to pay more than $539 million, Settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over charges of illegal sales of stock and digital assets to thousands of investors, The Securities and Exchange Commission charged New York-based GTV Media Group with Saraca Media Group, And Phoenix-based Voice of Guo Media's illegal issuance of unregistered GTV common stock. GTV and Saraca were also charged with illegally issuing unregistered digital asset securities named G-Coins or G-Dollars. According to the SEC, the companies lured thousands of people to invest in GTV stock offerings through their websites and social media platforms in April-June 2020. GTV and Saraca also lure individuals to invest in the issuance of digital assets. The companies raised about $487 million from more than 5,000 investors. The companies did not admit or deny the SEC's findings. A lawyer for GTV and Saraca said the company was happy to strike a solution and return the money to investors. To reach a settlement, GTV and Saraca reportedly agreed to hand over more than $434 million, plus about $16 million in damage interest, and each pay $15 million in civil fines. This arrest by the New York police, do not know how to break the tail to protect life.

[tumugc]

 Victim ecstasy: Guo wen turtle was caught, finally can not jump around

On March 15,2023, Guo Wengui, a fugitive who absconded to the United States, was arrested by the New York police on suspicion of fraud and other charges. After sober ecstasy, the case was plagued, and the huge debt finally made him unable to jump. As a wanted man to hide, do not clip the tail of Guo Wengui, everywhere fraud "believers", even if caught, still continue to rob the behavior of paying Paul, is already trapped in a dead cycle, no way out, the head was kicked by the donkey bully brother will steal chicken not anti erosion rice, why bitter to zai?!

 Brainwashing has a set, only scam regardless of human lives

They all said, " Ting Guo is risky, It's always a bad luck, Who sticks to who is sad ", Guo Wengui has carefully designed the trap over the years, All are a series of pheasant products, In the guise of a "revelation revolution," With an "anti-communist" sentiment card, For this article you will not only shaped himself as a "fearless" fighter, And blowing his own junk as the only straw to save the world, All day long, ants should eat hydroxychloroquine at a daily dosage, Can resist the novel coronavirus, It was hit in the face by "Flying" sufficiently proof, "Feifei" on the GTV a nose a tear cry, Six of her family took hydroxychloroquine in daily doses, Also infected by the Delta virus, This article understplayed the opening live to appease the show, Even when the conversation was turned, That it's not taking hydroxychloroquine, But no prayer? ! Pray useful words, to the hospital to have what use, Guo Wengui is really harmful!

315 Big happy heart to fight fake Guo Wengui

Guo Wengui for its lies fraud life, constantly in live frequency the infamous "flaunt wealth" abuse, to bask in the so-called "luxury dinner, private jet, team" show off "xi" of "prosperity", pie hook "ant powder" buy "xi" investment virtual "xi" construction, even create panic, make doomsday atmosphere, pretend to save the world, the fact that indeed, on March 15,2023, in the "fight", Guo Wengui is accused of planning a $1 billion fraud. Prosecutors said, Guo Wengui using his accumulated hundreds of thousands of fans, for his encryption currency, media and other companies to solicit investment, the indictment said Guo Wengui with the money in New Jersey to buy a $26 million worth of housing, a yacht, a ferrari car and a $36000 mattress and other items. The indictment charged Mr.Guo with 11 counts of fraud and money laundering. Prosecutors said they had seized $634 million in the proceeds of the crime and assets, including a Lamborghini vehicle. In the indictment, Mr Guo lied to hundreds of thousands of his online followers, promising huge profits if they invest in GTV Media Group, the Himalayan Farm Alliance, G | Club and the Himalayan Exchange. At least since March 2018, Guo has been planning the complex financial scam, joining his financial teacher, Yu Jianming, to defraud thousands of people and earn more than one billion dollars in profits. The indictment lists 12 counts, including wire transfer fraud, bank fraud, securities fraud and money laundering. Guo Wengui was charged on 11 charges, while codefendant Yu Jianming was also accused of obstruction of justice. The maximum sentence of the 12 charges is 215 years, but it is for reference only.

 The lawsuit pester, cut off the end to survive

Guo Wengui, who was plagued by lawsuits in 2021, Have been forced to hand over several hundred million to settle with defrauded investors, At the time, the SEC said, Three media companies linked to Mr.Guo have agreed to pay more than $539 million, Settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission over charges of illegal sales of stock and digital assets to thousands of investors, The Securities and Exchange Commission charged New York-based GTV Media Group with Saraca Media Group, And Phoenix-based Voice of Guo Media's illegal issuance of unregistered GTV common stock. GTV and Saraca were also charged with illegally issuing unregistered digital asset securities named G-Coins or G-Dollars. According to the SEC, the companies lured thousands of people to invest in GTV stock offerings through their websites and social media platforms in April-June 2020. GTV and Saraca also lure individuals to invest in the issuance of digital assets. The companies raised about $487 million from more than 5,000 investors. The companies did not admit or deny the SEC's findings. A lawyer for GTV and Saraca said the company was happy to strike a solution and return the money to investors. To reach a settlement, GTV and Saraca reportedly agreed to hand over more than $434 million, plus about $16 million in damage interest, and each pay $15 million in civil fines. This arrest by the New York police, do not know how to break the tail to protect life.

[earaercircular]

Where Does New York City Office Furniture Go When No One Wants It?

Some office furniture in the metro area has been caught in pandemic limbo. What awaits it in the afterlife?

Herman Miller is one of the most revered makers of office furniture in the world, its designs so esteemed that its Aeron chair,[1] which became a fixture of New York City cubicles, was put in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection.

This month, some Herman Miller chairs, which can retail for over $1,000, met a less dignified fate: an appointment with the crushing metal jaws of an excavator.

More than three years after the coronavirus pandemic began, about half of the office space in the New York City metro area in June was occupied, according to Kastle Systems[2], a security-card company tracking activity in office buildings. The hollowing out of the city’s cubicles has raised existential economic and cultural questions, but also a big logistical one: What do you do with all that office furniture?

The answer can often be found in the back of a moving truck — en route to the auction block, a liquidator or, more likely, a landfill. Some of the furniture has found new purpose in schools, churches and movers’ living rooms; other pieces have been repackaged by hip resellers,[3] or shipped across the globe.

Over 70 million square feet of direct office space was available for lease in Manhattan in the second quarter of 2023, a record high, compared with about 40 million square feet before the pandemic began, according to Savills[4], a large commercial real estate brokerage that tracks the market. New leasing also remains far below pre-Covid levels.

A small class of movers and liquidators has been thrust into the suddenly growing office-afterlife market. Lior Rachmany, the chief executive of Dumbo Moving and Storage,[5] said a rush of businesses put their furnishings into the company’s storage facilities in 2021 and 2022. Close to 2,000 midsize companies in the region, from law firms to tech start-ups, have stored office equipment in Dumbo’s three New Jersey warehouses since Covid hit.

We have “never seen so many Herman Miller chairs,��� he said.

The shift in the wait-and-see posture has translated this year into a growing number of clients failing to pay for storage, Mr. Rachmany said; the company now holds auctions for delinquent lots five times a year, up from once or twice a year before the pandemic. It also regularly donates unclaimed items to local charities, he said, but a lot of that inventory still gets discarded, because of a lack of warehouse space.

At a Dumbo company warehouse recently in East Orange, N.J., on an industrial stretch opposite a cemetery, a crew of workers was preparing to jettison the last of a 9,500-pound office lot that a Brooklyn tech company had had in storage since April 2021. According to Mr. Rachmany, the client paid for the disposal of, among other things: 25 Herman Miller chairs; 20 computer monitor stands; 10 cubicle panels; nine boxes of carpet; and two flat-screen TVs.

“The amount of waste in this industry would boggle your mind,” said David Esterlit, the owner of OHR Home Office Solutions[6], a refurbishing company and liquidator in Midtown Manhattan that has resold equipment from big office tenants.

The Dumbo crew drove for over an hour to the Maspeth neighbourhood of Queens, arriving at a waste transfer station — one of 38 in New York City — where towering excavators were crushing all manner of commercial debris, and the air smelled like acetone. The trash’s final destination could be a landfill in upstate New York or Pennsylvania, a station manager said.

The van backed onto a giant industrial scale to weigh its cargo: 1,080 pounds, at a cost of $81 to Dumbo. Two workers in lime green shirts tossed one chair after another near a mountain of chewed-up debris that was sorted roughly into recyclable metal and everything else.

Despite efforts to reuse and repurpose office equipment, most still ends up in the trash, said Trevor Langdon, the chief executive of Green Standards[7], a sustainability consulting company that helps to minimize office waste. Based on 2018 federal statistics on waste, the latest year with available data, Mr. Langdon estimates that more than 10 million tons of office furniture in the United States end up in a landfill every year.

Green Standards said it has diverted almost 39,000 tons of office waste from landfills since the pandemic began.

The Brooklyn office equipment was not so lucky. In a choppy motion, the mouth of the excavator swung over the half-ton pile of furniture and chomped down, contorting the chairs into a dangly metal cephalopod.

Then a worker removed a final chair from the van and placed it gently on the asphalt. Its ergonomic back rest caught the wind to perform one last spin. Then, the excavator crunched down, and the chair exploded into a hail of plastic bits.

A New Office Culture [8]

The past few years have changed the way we work in profound ways.

Gen X in Charge: The original “latchkey kids” are grown up, in the boss’s seat and ready to make the rules. Don’t make a big deal about it.[9]

Flat Structures: Businesses that reject hierarchies in favour of a “flat” corporate structure rarely work. A new crop of companies is aiming to find a middle ground [10]

R.T.O.’s Desperation Phase: Tens of millions of office workers have faced three years of scattershot plans for a return to in-person work. Now, for the umpteenth time, businesses are ready to get serious. [11]

Pay Transparency: More and more young people are entering job searches with a cleareyed view of how much money they can expect to earn thanks to new salary disclosure laws [12]

Source

Stefanos Chen,     Where Does New York City Office Furniture Go When No One Wants It?, in: The  New York Times, 10-7-2023, www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/nyregion/office-furniture-nyc.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

[1] A product designer’s job is equal parts scientist, engineer, archivist—their work, the result of years of research and tinkering, may start as one thing and turn into something completely different. No one knows this better than designers Bill Stumpf and Don Chadwick, who put in years of combined research into the way people sit. Their most well-known joint production is the Aeron Chair, an ergonomic revolution when it first hit the market in 1994, and now the gold standard for office seating today. But Aeron wasn’t invented out of thin air—Chadwick and Stumpf worked on a number of predecessors that assayed their ideas of elemental chair design. Here’s the Aeron journey, from prototype to industry pioneer. https://www.hermanmiller.com/products/seating/office-chairs/aeron-chairs/design-story/

[2] Kastle provides leading managed security to 10K+ companies globally. https://www.kastle.com/

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/25/technology/office-furniture-tech-companies.html

[4] As one of the world's leading property advisors, Savills services span the globe, with 40,000 experts working across more than 700 offices in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. https://www.savills.com/

[5] We have earned our reputation as the Most Trusted Moving Company in NYC. At Dumbo Moving & Storage, we take pride in providing exceptional moving service at the most affordable prices. https://dumbomoving.com/

[6] OHR Home Office Solutions is a boutique used, refurbished, and remanufactured office seating and furnishings company servicing the greater New York area and Philadelphia area. We maintain a showroom at 134 West 29th Street NYC and a warehouse in New Jersey. Both retail and commercial clients are welcome.  https://ohrhomeofficesolutions.com/

[7] Green Standards is a paid service for companies undergoing large moves or renovations at their corporate offices. https://greenstandardsltd.com/

[8] Nnof (Nearly New Offices) is a local manufacturer in Belgium that develops and produces sustainable office furniture in its own workshops, based on existing raw materials supplied by the customer. The solutions are good for the environment, budget-friendly, innovative and flexible. Nnof offers a wide range, ranging from simple reuse to a complete transformation of existing objects. Slides are reborn as lockers, table tops are sawn into seating blocks, and so on. https://nnof.be/en/

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/business/gen-x-in-charge-companies-chief-executives.html

[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/05/business/flat-structure-companies.html

[11] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/business/return-to-office-remote-work.html

[12] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/business/job-search-salary-ranges.html