STORY: The Space Telescope dubbed Euclid, named for the ancient Greek mathematician called the “father of geometry,” was carried aloft in the cargo bay of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that blasted off around 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
New insights from the $1.4 billion European Space Agency (ESA) mission, designed to last at least six years, are expected to transform astrophysics and perhaps understanding of the very nature of gravity itself.
Caitlyn Carnahan was a star patient in her MAT program in Oklahoma City, where she attended regular 12-step meetings and passed every urine test. But when someone from the state’s Department of Human Services arrived to question her in 2019 as she tended to her newborn son in the NICU, Carnahan felt as if all of her accomplishments were erased. The investigator asked why she had used Subutex, a form of buprenorphine, during pregnancy if she knew it could cause withdrawal symptoms, Carnahan told me. The woman also brought up Carnahan’s husband’s extensive record, including three arrests stemming from domestic incidents from when he was still using opioids. She asked Carnahan why she would be with such a person. “I can see where she’s going with this, and it was just terrifying,” Carnahan says. “It was like a scary movie.” Her son was in foster care for eight months.
Carnahan’s doctor had warned her that the hospital might call authorities, but many other women are caught completely by surprise. “I never, not one time, thought about C.P.S. coming to that hospital,” says G.W., who had a baby while taking Subutex in Louisiana in 2019. (G.W. asked to be identified by her initials to protect the privacy of her child.) After her son was removed, G.W. would constantly imagine where he was, what he was doing and mark another day without him on a calendar.
Her lawyer implored her to do whatever the social workers asked. “She would say: ‘Just keep your mouth shut. Just smile and let it go,’” G.W. told me. Caseworkers consider a parent’s cooperation a key factor in determining whether it’s safe to return a child to the home. Parents who aren’t compliant are often viewed as unstable or having poor judgment pregnant women.
Once a case has been opened, social workers can investigate virtually every aspect of a mother’s life: her housekeeping practices, her income, her romantic partner, the contents of her refrigerator. In South Carolina, Mary DeLancy, whose newborn son was placed into foster care in 2017, recalled being proud to show a caseworker her new apartment, filled with baby toys and stuffed animals, blankets, a bassinet and a bouncy chair — a far cry from the homeless shelter she previously lived in. “It was a huge deal,” she said. “We had worked really hard to get to that point.” But when the caseworker arrived, she pointed out the crib, saying it was outdated and needed to be replaced immediately. DeLancy started to doubt herself. “The more a parent questions ‘Do I deserve my own child?’ the less they try,” she said. “Because they feel like no matter what they do, they’ll never be good enough.”
Even a parent whose newborn is not removed faces a level of surveillance that can be difficult to withstand. “She’s literally 24 hours old — how am I neglecting her?” Blair Morgan-Dota remembers thinking when she was reported for child neglect after giving birth on Subutex. At first the Massachusetts caseworkers let her keep her baby, but when the stress of the case proved too much, and Morgan-Dota relapsed, the agency removed her daughter, and Morgan-Dota resigned herself to failure. “They are making me feel I’m not a good enough mother,” she said. “Maybe she’ll be better with someone else.”
David Gilmour, a Canadian-born entrepreneur who in the 1990s built a luxury resort on Wakaya, a tiny island he owned in Fiji, and then created Fiji Natural Artesian Water, turning a local resource into a leading bottled brand, died on June 11 in Manhattan. He was 91.
The cause was cardiac arrest, said David Roth, a friend and business partner.
By the time he bought Wakaya from two business partners in 1987, Mr. Gilmour had built several businesses over 30 years. He imported Scandinavian home furnishings and built high-end stereos. He helped assemble a chain of hotels in the South Pacific, which made him familiar with the archipelago nation of Fiji, and he co-founded a gold-mining company.
But there was something different about Wakaya. At the time, he was mourning the death of his only child, Erin Gilmour, who had been murdered in her apartment in Toronto in 1983.
He called the island “the last bastion of sanity in the world,” his wife, Jillian (Sweeney) Gilmour, said in a phone interview. “He thought when everything went kerflooey, this is where he would go.
“The island itself is so beautiful,” she continued. “There’s an area called Chieftain’s Leap, with soaring cliffs, where peregrine falcons make their nests.”
In 1990, Mr. Gilmour opened the Wakaya Club & Spa, a cluster of eight free-standing suites on a former coconut plantation. At the time, he said, he opened it as “really just a place where my friends, those I can’t put up in my own home, can come and share the peace.” He added: “I don’t see it as terribly commercial, frankly. It will probably only break even.”
It nonetheless became popular with celebrities, including Tom Cruise, Bill and Melinda Gates (who spent part of their honeymoon there) and Keith Richards, who fell out of a palm tree there in 2006 and was flown to a hospital in New Zealand with a head injury.
One day in the 1990s, Mr. Gilmour saw guests at the property drinking Evian water.
“He said, ‘There’s something wrong with this picture,’ and I said, “What do you mean?’” Ms. Gilmour said. “And he said, ‘We’re on our own island, and they’re drinking water from Lake Geneva. I know that with Fiji’s rainfall, there must be a greater water source.’”
Mr. Gilmour learned of an underground aquifer beneath the volcanic highlands of the Fijian island of Viti Levu, with water rich in the mineral silica. In 1996, his company began packaging and shipping its distinctive square bottles around the world.
Mr. Gilmour said the water’s purity was the result of Fiji’s geographic remoteness. “There’s no acid rain, no industrial pollution, no pesticides,” he told The Palm Beach Post of Florida in 1998. “It’s the purest virgin ecosystem.”
Fiji is now the second-largest imported water brand in the United States (after San Pellegrino), according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation.
David Harrison Gilmour was born on Nov. 5, 1931, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and grew up in Toronto. His father, Adam Gilmour, was an investment banker, and his mother, Doris Godson Gilmour, was an opera singer.
Mr. Gilmour studied business management for a year at the University of Toronto. He then accepted his father’s offer of a $10-a-day stipend to travel through Europe, which he did for a while before returning to Canada.
“I learned what people are really like,” he told Palm Beach Illustrated in 2015. “I learned to touch only what I totally believe in 100 percent. And I learned how to take care of myself.”
He turned down his father’s offer to join his bank and instead moved to Montreal, where he sold pots and pans door to door for a year.
His first business was importing modern, streamlined Scandinavian housewares and furnishings. He followed that in 1958 with the start-up Clairtone Sound, a collaboration with Peter Munk, a Hungarian-born electrical engineer. The company made critically acclaimed, sophisticated hi-fi systems whose buyers included Frank Sinatra and Hugh Hefner. But it foundered after branching into televisions and shifting operations, disastrously, to Nova Scotia.
Amid steep losses, Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Munk were forced out of the company in 1968 and later settled a lawsuit claiming that they sold shares before the announcement of poor quarterly results in 1967.
They recovered quickly and in 1969 started Southern Pacific Properties, which accumulated more than 50 hotels in Australia and New Zealand as well as in Fiji, New Caledonia, Tahiti and other islands. An ambitious development that was to be built near the pyramids in Giza, Egypt, was eventually nixed by President Anwar Sadat in 1978.
Three years later, Tan Sri Khoo Teck Puat, a Singaporean banker, purchased Southern Pacific for a reported $130 million. But Wakaya remained separately owned by Mr. Gilmour and his partners, until Mr. Gilmour bought them out.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Munk were among the original partners in Barrick Gold, one of the world’s largest gold producers. Mr. Munk was its longtime chairman and chief executive, and Mr. Gilmour was a board member until 2001. Mr. Munk died in 2018.
Mr. Gilmour described his working relationship with Mr. Munk in 2008 with The Globe and Mail of Toronto. “I am more the entrepreneurial type who likes challenges of starting up, and Peter loves growing a colossus,” he said. “Once it reaches a critical mass, I kind of get bored sitting around a boardroom table.”
Fiji Water, marketed as a luxury brand, was a major commercial success. But, like other brands, it drew scorn from environmentalists, who criticized the industry for the amount of energy it consumed and the greenhouse gases created in making and shipping plastic bottles, and for the plastic waste they leave behind. Fiji, in particular, was singled out for shipping water to consumers thousands of miles away.
Mr. Gilmour sold Fiji Water to Roll International in 2004, and Wakaya to Clare Bronfman, an heir to the Seagram’s liquor fortune, in 2016, after a Category 5 cyclone devastated the island. “We sold it for 10 cents on the dollar,” Ms. Gilmour said. In 2020, Ms. Bronfman was sentenced to prison for her role in enabling the Nxivm sex cult.
Mr. Gilmour’s wife is his only immediate survivor. His marriages to Anna Wilmot, Erin’s mother, and to Diane Williams ended in divorce. He lived in Manhattan and Palm Beach.
Mr. Gilmour, who sold his Palm Beach estate last year for $44.9 million, had one last company in his portfolio at his death: Wakaya Perfection, a wellness company that sells powders and capsules of ginger and turmeric grown in volcanic soil in Fiji and Nicaragua.
“David had this belief that organic, single-source, very pure, high-quality ginger and turmeric would be something that people wanted,” Mr. Roth, who started the company with Mr. Gilmour, said by phone. “And Oprah chose it twice as one of her favorite things.”
An airline passenger in Thailand had part of her leg amputated this week after an accident on a moving airport walkway, the Thai authorities said.
The accident, involving a 57-year-old woman, occurred Thursday in the domestic terminal of Don Mueang International, the older and smaller of two major airports that serve Bangkok, the capital.
It’s unclear precisely what happened. Local news media initially reported that the woman’s leg had been pulled into the walkway’s machinery after she tripped on her suitcase. But her family said on Saturday that she had been walking normally when part of the walkway collapsed.
What’s clear is that her leg was amputated up to the kneecap after the accident. The Thai authorities are now trying to determine if the accident resulted from human error or an equipment malfunction.
Such walkways are known as “moving walks” to government regulators and construction companies. Moving walks are often talked about in the same breath as escalators because they use similar technology and move at about the same speed — generally 100 feet per minute, or just over 1 mile per hour.
The main difference is incline. An escalator sits at about 30 degrees, but a moving walk’s incline is typically no more than a tenth of that. Many moving walks are flat.
Escalators and moving walks ease the movement of billions of people through airports, shopping malls and other public spaces each year. The National Elevator Industry, Inc., an industry group in the United States, estimates that about 105 billion passengers ride escalators annually — the world’s population, multiplied by 13 — in the United States alone.
Escalators and moving walks are widely seen as very safe. But, like virtually any form of public transportation, they occasionally malfunction.
In Australia, for example, inspectors in the state of Queensland found two recent examples of moving walks that were operating with a missing pallet, the technical term for the metal slats that separate passengers from the whirring machinery below.
And in Thailand, a passenger at Don Mueang International Airport reported losing a shoe to the machinery of a moving walk in 2019, Thai news media outlets reported this week.
Data for the safety of moving walks is scarce. But if we go by escalator safety data, the answer is “not very.”
An average of two deaths per year in the United States involve escalators, lower than the figure for elevators, according to a 2013 review of U.S. government data by the Center for Construction Research and Training, a nonprofit group in Maryland.
The risk of injury is higher: About 10,000 escalator-related injuries result in a trip to the emergency room in the United States each year. But even that figure is exceedingly small if you consider the sheer volume of escalator and moving walk trips that people take every day.
In Thailand, the moving walk where the accident occurred this week had been used at Don Mueang International since 1996, the airport’s director, Karant Thanakuljeerapat, told reporters.
Don Mueang carried more than 13 million domestic passengers last year, and nearly twice as many in the years immediately before the coronavirus pandemic, according to government data. So over nearly three decades, a moving walk there could have carried many tens of millions of passengers.
On a recent morning at the Louvre, Anya Firestone handed out bottles of Evian. “Because ‘the art of drinking’ begins with hydration,” she said.
Ms. Firestone, 34, a museum guide-conférencière (tour guide) and art integration strategist, wore rhinestone earrings in the shape of olive martinis, pink Manolo Blahniks, the Mini Bar clutch by Charlotte Olympia and a Marni dress printed with likenesses of Venus.
She escorted Matt Stanley, her client, and his Parisian date, Salomé Bes, 30, past the long lines at the museum’s entrance and toward the Code of Hammurabi. The set of ancient Babylonian laws included “an eye for an eye,” she explained, and it also dealt with issues of alcoholic beverages, like watered-down wine and the peoples’ “right to beer,” as she pithily put it.
“Pretty impressive!” said Mr. Stanley, the chief executive of a memory care community near Austin, Texas. Mr. Stanley, 43, had hired Ms. Firestone to design a two-day visit around alcohol.
“You’re going to see that drinking and art had the same upbringing and moved in the same direction — from a religious context with prayers and libations to decadence and debauchery,” said Ms. Firestone, who calls her custom tours “cou-tours,” a play on couture.
Last fall, Ms. Firestone starred in “The Real Girlfriends of Paris,” a reality show broadcast on Bravo that followed six 20- and 30-something American women as they navigated work, life and l’amour. She said that the opportunity to put her business, called Maison Firestone, on public view was the main reason she had done the show.
But Ms. Firestone had also liked the idea of elevating the oft-scorned TV genre with art and culture. (Not to mention some pun- and Yiddish-inflected wit.) “By the way,” she said, “I don’t describe myself as American. I say I’m New-Yorkaise.”
Ms. Firestone was raised in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood Manhattan; her parents were actors. She first moved to Paris in 2010 after college at George Washington University, for an artist residency, during which she wrote poetry and sculpted oversize macarons. (People thought they were colorful hamburgers,” she said, explaining that the confection had not become popular yet.)
She worked briefly as an au pair, channeling Mary Poppins and Maria von Trapp, she said. But Ms. Firestone likened her current plot to the TV shows “Emily in Paris” — “Love her chutzpah, less her bucket hats,” she said of the protagonist — and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
After a master’s degree in French cultural studies from Columbia Global Center in Paris, she spent a few years traveling between New York and Paris, offering custom tours and writing about art and brand intersections for Highsnobiety. Maison Firestone — which also designs themed events with luxury brands — followed from that interest in “art as branding,” she said.
At “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” a white marble statue from Hellenistic Greece, better known as “Niké,” for example, Ms. Firestone noted that the figure’s wings had inspired the sportswear empire’s Swoosh logo.
Ms. Firestone’s clients used to find her only by word of mouth, but now about half of them, including Mr. Stanley, come to her via the Bravo show and Instagram. The majority are visiting France from the United States; the cost of a tour starts at $2,400 for one or two people for one day.
Her angle is to take “art off the wall to show its intersection with things that people already enjoy and consume,” Ms. Firestone said, be it champagne or Schiaparelli or N.F.T.s. Recent and upcoming tours have been designed for drag queens, the crypto team at a venture capital firm, “Eloise-like” little girls with a fondness for dinosaurs, and a man who is blind.
Working her way through Dionysian art and decorative works, Louis XIV’s stemware, and the occasional Bravo fan (“I just want to say that I loved the show!”), Ms. Firestone directed Mr. Stanley and Ms. Bes into the museum’s largest room, where the Mona Lisa hangs on a wall across from “The Wedding Feast at Cana,” an immense piece by the 16th-century artist Paolo Veronese that depicts Jesus Christ turning water into wine. “You can see wine tastings happening all over the painting,” she said.
After lunch at the Ritz, which naturally featured cocktails and champagne, the itinerary called for the Musée d’Orsay. “The Louvre was a former palace, this is a former train station,” Ms. Firestone said. She likes companion visits to the two museums, which, she said, help to show how art entered modernity by breaking from the monarchy, the church and the academy and spilling into the cafes of Paris.
“L’Absinthe” by Edgar Degas pictured what she called a “tapped out” woman with a glass of the infamous green spirit on a table before her. Nearby was a painting by Édouard Manet of the same woman (the actress Ellen Andrée), titled “Plum Brandy.” Ms. Firestone prompted her clients to ponder the difference. “She’s not nearly so sad or so schnockered here, right? She seems OK.”
Paris, she said, had by then been transformed by Napoleon III’s urban planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann, bringing with it grand department stores like Le Bon Marché and Samaritaine.
Ms. Firestone and Mr. Stanley met the next day at Samaritaine, where she had arranged for a cognac tasting and some shopping in the private apartments with a stylist. “Bonjour. How y’all doin’?” Mr. Stanley said, greeting the staff. “I’m not an aristocrat — I’m just a cowboy!” He chose a pair of drawstring trousers by Maison Margiela.
Afterward, in a taxi, Ms. Firestone pointed at a Prada ad featuring Scarlett Johansson. “I think they’re referencing that Man Ray photo of Kiki de Montparnasse,” she said. “We like a good art-brand ref.” She Googled the Man Ray photograph on her phone and held it up for Mr. Stanley to see, who said he felt like he had gotten a master class.
“Who doesn’t love their hand held in Paris?” Ms. Firestone said.
Enhance one’s power skills with “The Project Management Pathway: Your 90-Day Project” and unlock one’s transformation as a high-performing project management leader. True leadership begins with leading oneself, and the key to unlocking one’s leadership lies in one’s power skills.
Gresham, Oregon, June 28. 2023, Out of the thousands of books published each year, most are simply meant to be read, but this one is meant to be experienced. The Project Management Pathway is not just a book; it’s a transformative journey that makes the reader an active participant in their own success. Whether they’re a beginner or looking to take their project management skills to the next level, this interactive workbook is the ultimate guide.
In the dynamic realm of project management, mere technical expertise is not enough. It’s one’s power skills—the driving force behind growth, resilience, and self-regulation—that set one apart as a remarkable leader. While expertise in methodologies is crucial, true success lies in how the reader performs these methodologies and leads their teams. This workbook bridges the gap by equipping readers with the tools to build a strategic mindset, productivity, and emotional/social intelligence skills. Through active training, journaling, problem-solving, and a personalized 90-day project plan, readers will accelerate their progress to transformation.
It all starts with oneself. The Project Management Pathway guides readers through self-exploration of their goals, motivations, values, fears, habits, and more. It is designed to help them perform at the highest level by teaching them how to manage their self and their tasks effectively. Readers will gain a deep understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, enabling them to prioritize tasks that align with their skill set. As a result, they’ll experience improved task management, increased productivity, reduced stress, and the ability to achieve objectives of the highest quality.
Inside this comprehensive workbook, readers will find a wealth of resources. The first 181 pages are dedicated to education, interactive tools, and preparation for their 90-day journey. They’ll have access to over twelve valuable tools, including Earned Value, The Five Pillars of Project Management, Personal SWOT Analysis, The Art of Productivity, and the Stakeholder Circle of Trust, to name a few. Additionally, the planning and journaling section spans 280 pages, providing the ultimate planning framework to bring projects to life.
Upon completing The Project Management Pathway, readers will have gained vital skills to manage their self and their tasks effectively. Say goodbye to chaos, decision fatigue, frustration, and burnout. Say hello to self-regulation, maintained energy levels, inspiration, and higher levels of success. This journey will instill a strong sense of purpose, resilience, and unstoppable self-confidence for professional and personal fulfillment.
The Project Management Pathway is for existing project managers who are ready to rise above the standard to lead themselves and their teams through high-performance. It’s also for aspiring project managers who want to kickstart their career with a targeted roadmap for success. Furthermore, entrepreneurs, business owners, executives, and anyone seeking to harness the power of project management will find immense value in this resource. All will benefit from actively practicing the power skills that lead to the habits of high-performing project managers.
By learning to self-regulate in conflicts and high-stress situations while maintaining energy from start to finish, readers will not only lead themselves, but also inspire and lead others. Prepare to be transformed as this immersive workbook takes one on a profound voyage of self-discovery to take one’s success into one’s own hands and become the project management leader you are meant to be.
About The Author:
Jeremiah Hammon is a leading program manager, senior project manager, and sought-after project management coach working in some of the most complex and high stakes industries in the world.
Working in aerospace, nuclear energy, civil engineering, and crane and hoist operations, he has led international projects involving millions of dollars, intertwined workflows, stringent government requirements, tight deadlines, hundreds of people, in often uncompromising and chaotic environments. Not only has he led such high-profile endeavors, but he has also led and trained the project managers and team members within these cross functional environments.
Jeremiah began his project management career fifteen years ago. He is a Senior Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Program Manager 2. He has experienced the ups and downs, risks, rewards, and challenges of project management. He spent countless hours self-educating, often learning the hard way, about what it takes to navigate projects, lead project managers, and the teams they serve. Valuable lessons around self-awareness, personal growth, self-regulation, and clear communication have been the key to developing his project success and leadership.
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Follow Jeremiah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremiahrhammonjr/
Jeremiah also has services involving freelance project management, small to medium sized business team building and small group coaching.
Media Contact:
Project Revolution
Attn: Jeremiah Hammon
Gresham, Oregon
406-209-7719
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Stockton, California, June 28, 2023, FDR Warehouse, a trusted partner in warehousing and supply chain operations based in Stockton, California, has announced the launch of its new Partnership Program. This initiative invites other logistics companies, brokers, transportation companies, and professionals in the warehousing and logistics sector to collaborate and grow together.
The FDR Warehouse Partnership Program stands apart from standard business alliances by incorporating the company’s warehousing and logistics services into a profitable referral incentive structure. Under this program, partners will receive 10% of the referral revenue for each successful referral they introduce.
“The introduction of the Partnership Program aligns with our aim to foster growth and encourage stronger relationships within the logistics industry,” stated Valentin Galkin, CEO at FDR Warehouse. “We see it as a way to strengthen connections and facilitate mutual success.”
Partners can avail of FDR Warehouse’s extensive services and capabilities. FDR Warehouse provides over 1,000,000 square feet of storage space in Stockton, managed by an experienced team. The services available to partners range from long-term storage and short-term freight storage to cross-docking services and a variety of value-added logistics services.
Situated in Central Valley, California in close proximity to crucial transportation networks, FDR Warehouse is well-positioned to service the entire continental USA.
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FDR Warehouse is not merely a storage provider but a reliable partner in supply chain operations. Known for its scalability, flexibility, and efficiency, FDR Warehouse has cemented its place as a leading logistics provider in Stockton. With a wide array of services, including long-term storage, cross-docking services, short-term freight storage, and value-added logistics services, FDR Warehouse is committed to ensuring seamless and effective supply chain operations.
To become a part of this collaborative initiative, interested businesses can register for the FDR Warehouse Partnership Program on the company’s website at: www.fdrwarehouse.com/partnership
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Media Contact:
FDR Warehouse
Attn: Alexandria Ohlinger
1820 Industrial Dr.
Stockton, CA 95206
415-545-8295
partnerships@fdrwarehouse.com
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marketing@fdrwarehouse.com
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Friday that it is now tracking multiple additional COVID-19 variants separately, adding more Omicron descendants to a long list of novel strains that are vying for the national market.
EU.1.1, a strain that was initially identified by experts earlier this year because of its quick climb in various European countries, is one of the new varieties that the CDC is currently monitoring.
The variety, which has a few more alterations to its spike protein that may be promoting its spread, is a more distant descendant of the XBB.1.5 mutant that had risen earlier this year.
According to the CDC, EU.1.1 is now present in 1.7% of cases across the country, but may already account for 8.7% of cases in the region that includes Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming.
It is too soon to say whether EU.1.1 will cause different or new symptoms in the United States.
Health experts claim that there is little evidence that COVID-19’s effects have changed as a result of earlier versions, despite some anecdotal accounts to the contrary. Reports of shifting symptoms are further complicated by the possibility that changes in the underlying immunity of persons who are infected over time may affect how they are affected by the virus.
According to current estimates, almost all Americans either have antibodies from vaccinations, infections, or a mix of the two. According to data released by the CDC on Thursday, reinfections are now a major cause of hospitalizations and fatalities.
Utah has many incidences of EU.1.1
Utah laboratories have sequenced the most EU.1.1 infections of any state, and the state’s public health laboratory has reported almost 100 cases of EU.1.1 to international virus databases.
In contrast, laboratories in the nearby states of Nevada and Colorado have only recorded single-digit numbers of infections with the EU.1.1 sequence.
Although the nation as a whole is currently hovering around record-low levels seen during the previous spring and summer months, Utah’s overall COVID-19 patterns currently look similar to those of the rest of the country.
A group of academic and government modelers recently predicted that COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths will likely continue to decline in the United States over the course of at least the next two years, with further peaks in the fall and winter unlikely to top prior highs.
According to CDC data, the rate of new COVID-19 hospital admissions and ER visits in Utah has mostly reduced or plateaued in recent months. There are also still much fewer reported nursing home cases than during previous winter peaks.
Requests for response from a spokeswoman for the Utah Department of Health and Human Services were not promptly fulfilled.
The majority of SARS-CoV-2 variants countrywide are still categorized by the CDC into one of four strains that make up the XBB family.
The most prevalent is XBB.1.5, which is now expected to account for only 27.0% of infections. Another is the combination of XBB.1.9.2 and XBB.1.9.1, which accounts for 24.4% of cases. With 19.9% of all circulating viruses, XBB.1.16 is the next most prevalent virus. At 10.6% nationwide, XBB.2.3 comes in below them.
The COVID-19 vaccines this autumn should be modified to target the XBB.1.5 variant, the Food and Drug Administration determined earlier this month. Officials claim that because all of these strains—as well as a wide range of their direct descendants—appears to be so closely related, the new vaccinations will increase protection for all of them.
Moderna declared on Thursday that it has already formalized the completion of its application for authority to use its newly redesigned shots for the fall in an emergency.
While the new vaccine is ostensibly intended to target XBB.1.5, the pharmaceutical highlighted research that suggests it would also provide “robust human immune responses” that are successful at defending against XBB.1.5’s relatives XBB.1.16 and XBB.2.3.
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Reuters: London Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary force, made it seem as though he had launched an armed convoy on a Saturday 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) charge toward Moscow in an implausible attempt to overthrow the military hierarchy.
Russian local officials advised locals to avoid a military convoy that was on the main highway connecting the southern region of European Russia, which borders Ukraine, with Moscow.
After Prigozhin claimed—without offering any proof—that the military leadership had killed a significant number of his militants in an airstrike and threatened to punish them, the Russian government accused him of mounting an armed uprising.
The armed mutiny charge, which carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, was filed against Prigozhin by the internal security agency FSB.
Many facts surrounding the rapid change of events remain unknown, but it appears to be the worst domestic issue President Vladimir Putin has encountered since he authorized a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February of last year, which he described as a “special military operation.”
Prigozhin, whose Wagner militia was instrumental in the capture of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut last month, has been publicly accusing Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu of rank incompetence and depriving Wagner of supplies and support during its battles in Ukraine.
The ministry said in a statement that Prigozhin’s charges were “not true and are an informational provocation” as their dispute appeared to be coming to a climax.
According to Prigozhin, his actions weren’t a military takeover. However, he seemed to imply that 25,000 fighters were on their way to Moscow to overthrow the leaders of the defense establishment in a frenetic series of audio transmissions, in which the sound of his voice occasionally varied and could not be independently verified.
He had appeared to cross a new boundary in his bitter dispute with the ministry early on Friday when he said that Putin’s justification for the invasion of Ukraine was based on fabrications made up by the army’s senior brass.
Prigozhin announced on the Telegram app about 2 a.m. (2300 GMT) that his men had entered Russia from Ukraine and were in Rostov.
According to him, they were prepared to “go all the way” with the top brass and eliminate anyone standing in their way.
At about the same time, Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, was quoted by the official news agency TASS as saying that all of Russia’s top security services were updating Putin “round the clock” on the execution of his directives about Prigozhin.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced on his Telegram account that security in Moscow was being reinforced.
A military convoy was on the M-4 highway between Rostov-on-Don, the regional capital, and Moscow about 5 a.m. (0200 GMT), according to the Voronezh region’s administration, which warned locals not to use it on Telegram.
A convoy of several military vehicles, including at least one tank and one armored vehicle on flatbed trucks, was seen in unconfirmed video that was released on social media. It was unclear where they were or whether fighters were present in the convoy’s covered trucks. Russian flags could be seen flying from several of the trucks.
Videos broadcast on Rostov-on-Don-based channels showed tanks outside the Southern Military District’s headquarters and armed soldiers in uniform skirting the city’s regional police headquarters on foot. Reuters was able to corroborate the locations but was unable to pinpoint when the footage was taken.
Those who destroyed our lands, who destroyed the lives of many tens of thousands of Russian soldiers, will be punished, Prigozhin warned in his audio messages. I kindly request that no one show resistance.
He declared, pledging to take down any air forces or checkpoints in Wagner’s path, There are 25,000 of us and we are going to figure out why chaos is happening in the country.
The FSB said that Prigozhin had called for the outbreak of an armed civil war on Russian territory and that his activities had stabbed in the back Russian personnel engaged in combat with pro-fascist Ukrainian forces.
We implore the warriors to avoid making fatal errors, to cease using force against the Russian people, to refrain from carrying out Prigozhin’s criminal and treacherous orders, and to take steps to have him detained.
In a video message, Lieutenant-General of the Army Vladimir Alekseyev pleaded with Prigozhin to change his mind.
You are attempting to infringe on the president’s authority, he continued, who alone has the power to name the top military officials.
The deputy commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, Army General Sergei Surovikin, who has previously received plaudits from Prigozhin, stated in a video that “the enemy is just waiting for our internal political situation to worsen.
You must comply with the wishes and directives of the Russian Federation’s president of the people before it is too late. Pull the columns to a halt and put them back on their permanent bases, he stated.
Wagner-related Telegram account purportedly captured the scene of an airstrike against its fighters in an unconfirmed video. It displayed a woodland with little fires burning and trees that seemed like they had been violently smashed. One body appeared, but there was no other obvious sign of an attack.
A missile attack was launched on the camps of Private Military Company Wagner, said the caption. several victims. Witnesses claim that the attack was carried out by the Russian Ministry of Defence’s military and that it came from behind.
Wagner’s military victory, won at great human cost, has been used by Prigozhin to publicly criticize Moscow while carefully avoiding criticism of Putin.
However, he rejected Putin’s main rationale for invading Ukraine 16 months ago for the first time on Friday, for which many Russians have been punished or imprisoned.
The Australian government has imposed sanctions on three men who were engaged in shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.
The government has been coordinating sanctions against the trio since November 2022, when they were found guilty by the District Court of The Hague of their part in the downing of MH17 and the murder of all 298 aboard, including 38 Australian citizens or residents.
Sergey Dubinskiy, a Russian, and Leonid Kharchenko, a citizen of Ukraine, who were both convicted guilty in court and given life sentences, are the targets of the sanctions.
Sergey Muchkaev, a colonel in the Russian Armed Forces, is a Russian native who has also received sanctions from Australia.
Muchkaev led the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in July 2014, which provided the Buk-TELAR missile system that brought down MH17.
Igor Girkin, a different convicted offender, received sanctions from Australia in 2014 for his support of separatist action in eastern Ukraine.
The three individuals sanctioned “actively supported actions and policies that threatened the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine as either separatist leaders within the so-called ‘People’s Republic of Donetsk’ at the time of the downing of Flight MH17 or as a member of the Russian Armed Forces,” said Foreign Minister Penny Wong.
The Australian government’s continued commitment to holding those accountable for the downing of Flight MH17 is demonstrated by these measures.
She declared that Australia would pursue all options in order to find “truth, justice, and accountability” for the victims.
Our hearts continue to be with the departed, their families, and loved ones, added Senator Wong.
Russia has been urged by Australia to work with the Netherlands to ensure that the offenders serve out their sentences under Dutch law.
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