Author: Charlie Aufenthie

Categories
Travel News

To promote vaccines, New Orleans dances with its heart on its sleeve

To promote vaccines, New Orleans dances with its heart on its sleeve

Since the summer, public health officials and politicians have repeatedly called for nationwide campaigns to promote immunization. But no significant federal campaign materialized, so relevant local officials began to develop their own advertising.

New Orleans is perhaps best placed to be at the forefront. Regularly battered by hurricanes, the city has an emergency management office operated by public messaging.

Vaccines against covid19>

Answers to your questions about vaccines

While the exact order of vaccinees can vary from state to state, most will likely prioritize medical workers and residents of long-term care facilities. If you want to understand how this decision is made, this article will help you.

Life will only return to normal when society as a whole is sufficiently protected against the coronavirus. Once countries authorize a vaccine, they will only be able to immunize a few percent of their citizens at most in the first two months. The unvaccinated majority will always remain vulnerable to infection. A growing number of coronavirus vaccines show strong protection against the disease. But it is also possible for people to spread the virus without even knowing they are infected, as they show only mild symptoms, if any. Scientists do not yet know if the vaccines also block the transmission of the coronavirus. So for now, even vaccinated people will have to wear masks, avoid crowds inside, etc. Once enough people are vaccinated, it will become very difficult for the coronavirus to find vulnerable people to infect. Depending on how quickly we as a society reach this goal, life may start to move closer to something normal by fall 2021.

Yes, but not forever. The two vaccines that will potentially be authorized this month clearly protect people against Covid-19 disease. But the clinical trials that delivered these results were not designed to determine whether vaccinated people could still spread the coronavirus without developing symptoms. It remains a possibility. We know that people naturally infected with the coronavirus can spread it without feeling a cough or other symptoms. Researchers will study this question intensely as the vaccines are rolled out. In the meantime, even vaccinated people will have to consider themselves as possible spreaders.

The Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine is given by injection into the arm, like other typical vaccines. The injection will be no different from any you received before. Tens of thousands of people have already received the vaccines and none of them have reported serious health problems. But some of them experienced short-lived discomfort, including aches and pains and flu-like symptoms that usually last for a day. People may need to plan to be absent from work or school after the second stroke. While these experiences are not pleasant, they are a good sign: they are the result of your own immune system encountering the vaccine and building a powerful response that will provide long-lasting immunity.

No. Moderna and Pfizer vaccines use a genetic molecule to stimulate the immune system. This molecule, known as mRNA, is ultimately destroyed by the body. The mRNA is packaged in an oily bubble that can fuse with a cell, allowing the molecule to slip inside. The cell uses mRNA to make proteins from the coronavirus, which can stimulate the immune system. At any given time, each of our cells can contain hundreds of thousands of mRNA molecules, which they produce to make their own proteins. Once these proteins are made, our cells then shred the mRNA with special enzymes. The mRNA molecules that our cells make can only survive for a few minutes. The mRNA in vaccines is designed to resist the enzymes in the cell for a little longer, so that the cells can make additional viral proteins and elicit a stronger immune response. But mRNA can only last a few days at most before being destroyed.

Earlier in the pandemic, he designed a “Masks Up, NOLA!” slogan. As the virus swept through neighborhoods, Laura A. Mellem, the city’s public engagement manager for its NOLA Ready program, was keenly aware that it was hitting black New Orleans in grossly disproportionate numbers. Blacks make up about 60 percent of the city’s population but nearly 74 percent of its deaths from Covid-19.

“But the communities that are most affected by the virus are probably the most hesitant about the vaccine, due to the long history of abuse against them in the name of science,” Ms. Mellem said.

How do you persuade them to have their picture taken?

In November, the city established the Vaccine Equity and Communications Task Force, a coalition of senior public health physicians, religious leaders, leaders from Black, Latin American and Latin American communities. Vietnamese women and heads of the city’s big social clubs. The group filled out surveys, identifying cultural icons that residents would like to see.

Rather than focusing their posts on the miseries brought on by the pandemic, Ms Mellem said, they decided to focus on an ambitious and inviting tone, a basic insight derived from behavior change research and leaders. opinion polls in cities like San Francisco. As Edward Maibach, a professor at George Mason University who studies public health messages, writes, the most effective communications “make the behaviors we promote easy, fun and popular.”

“I get the vaccine to visit my 92-year-old mother and eat at our favorite restaurants,” says Julie Nalibov of the Krewe of Red Beans, which helps the city’s struggling cultural artists, many of whom are over 70. .

Categories
Travel News

In rural Montana, hope Biden will reopen the tracks

In rural Montana, hope Biden will reopen the tracks

DEER LODGE, Mont. – For nearly a century, passenger trains rumbled three times a week through this vast, grass-rich mountain valley in central Montana, home to more cattle than people, until Amtrak stops taking on the north coast of Hiawatha in 1979.

But with a new president known as “Amtrak Joe” and Democratic control of both houses of Congress, a dozen counties across the sparsely populated state are hoping for a return to passenger train service through the towns of Billings. , Bozeman, Helena and Missoula, and Whistle Stops like Deer Lodge in between, is closer than it has been in four decades.

“Residents of very rural parts of the state have to travel 175 miles to catch a plane or to seek medical services,” said David Strohmaier, a Missoula County commissioner who is one of the people responsible for the new Big Sky. Passenger Rail Authority. fundraising and lobbying for a return to passenger rail in southern Montana. “Rural communities see it as an opportunity for economic development, but also a social lifeline for residents who may have no other way to travel long distances for necessities.

Traveling between Chicago and Seattle, the Hiawatha served the largest cities in Montana. Its absence has left a void in a state where cities and services are widely dispersed and public transportation is poor or nonexistent, especially for low-income residents.

The Empire Builder, a daily Amtrak train reduced to three times a week during the coronavirus pandemic, travels from Chicago to Seattle and Portland, Oregon, through northern Montana, serving only small towns in one of the regions the most remote in the state.

Defending Amtrak’s current route funding is an ongoing battle, so the notion of adding new ones is seen as a long road. This is less true now, some say, due to the new president and Democratic control of both chambers.

President Biden’s infrastructure plan, for example, promises to “spark the second great rail revolution.”

“Passenger rail transport is a vital part of the US transportation network,” new transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement to the New York Times. “I believe the department should promote, help develop and fund passenger rail transportation in order to bring US railways into the 21st century.”

Expanding the service to new cities “is a tough step for a lot of people,” said Sean Jeans-Gail, vice president of policy and government affairs for the Rail Passengers Association. “At the same time, it feels like the stars are starting to align. We could get an honest infrastructure bill from God and that could mean money for expansion.

Amtrak officials have said they “support” the efforts of local officials to expand the service. “There are many places in the country that could benefit from a service restoration or a new service,” said Marc Magliari, a spokesperson for the company.

There has been some encouraging news for passenger rail transport recently, including the newly renovated Moynihan Train Hall next to Penn Station in New York City and the new generation of Acela trains scheduled to enter service this year in the Northeast Corridor.

The pandemic, however, has wreaked financial havoc on Amtrak, as it has on other forms of transportation. Attendance fell by 80%. The railroad received $ 1 billion from the 2020 stimulus.

And once-ambitious plans for high-speed rail in California have been drastically curtailed amid skyrocketing cost overruns, which may hurt the cause of rail expansion.

The new long distance service in Montana, if it did occur, would not be high speed. Amtrak long-distance trains have a maximum speed of 79 miles per hour.

Small communities across the country see economic hope in an Amtrak connection. Northern Montana still has the Empire Builder, which according to recent analysis contributes up to $ 40 million a year to the small communities it serves. It is the busiest of Amtrak’s intercity routes and last year carried some 433,000 passengers.

A rough figure for the start-up cost of re-establishing new service along the southern Montana route, Mr. Jeans-Gail said, is $ 50 million for better signage, track upgrades and l improvement of the station.

Nostalgia is not a small part of supporting train travel. The history of the past 150 years in the West has been linked to railroads, the first mode of transportation to cross long distances on trips that took days rather than weeks or months. They brought a radically different world to a wild and isolated land – for better or for worse. Farmers, miners, buffalo hunters and others came to develop and plunder a rich landscape and occupy the land.

Railways were also instrumental in creating national parks and park infrastructure, which their designers saw as destinations for passengers.

The town of Deer Lodge was an integral part of the early days of the Montana railroad and is steeped in rail history. The North Pacific came into being in the 1880s, and in 1907 the now defunct Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, known as Milwaukee Road, established its headquarters here from the Rocky Mountain division.

“My grandfathers and my father were both locomotive engineers on Milwaukee Road,” said Terry Jennings, who lives at Deer Lodge and sits on the board of directors of the Big Sky Passenger Rail Authority. “When Milwaukee Road pulled out, it financially destroyed the back of this city.

Since then, the city’s population has declined from nearly 5,000 to less than 3,000, and there is an aspiration to reclaim some of its rail past and support its tourist economy. Deer Lodge is home to the State Prison, and the imposing stone castle-like Territorial Prison, removed in 1979, is a tourist attraction. The Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site on the outskirts of town operated as a cattle ranch in the 19th century.

Even if rail service reverts to the southern route, Deer Lodge might not get service right away, although the train likely stops nearby. If the railroad gets here, it will need new infrastructure. The town’s two wood-frame railway stations are now the Depot Church and the Powell County Seniors Center.

While some towns in Montana have exploded in recent years, many small towns are in an existential battle. The long distances and the sparse population of parts of Montana, sometimes called the Big Empty, make travel difficult and expensive.

Flying from Missoula to Billings, for example, requires a flight to Salt Lake City or Seattle first and a connection; a return flight can cost $ 500 or more. The bus service is irregular. Spending hours behind a wheel is often the only alternative.

A new train service would open up isolated parts of the vast state. “There’s a lot of Montana that’s virtually untouched that can only be seen from the railroad,” Mr. Jennings said.

And with an aging population for whom driving long distances becomes more and more difficult, rail service seems more and more attractive. “My husband’s family lives in Terry, 400 miles east,” said Deer Lodge Mayor Diana Solle. “We’re 70 years old and it’s a long journey.”

Montana is just one of many countries working on a new long-distance train service. Research and planning is underway to provide Amtrak service along the Colorado Front Range; new service between Mobile, Ala., and New Orleans; and additional service between Chicago and St. Paul, Minnesota. Virginia is adding tracks to expand high-speed train service between Richmond and Washington, connecting to the Northeast Corridor.

Mr Strohmaier said officials in Montana would like to open a new rail service to connect to places like Salt Lake City and Denver, especially for people who cannot afford to fly.

“There are economic and social disparities” in travel, he said. “This is the definition of fairness in transportation. This would provide more affordable transportation for a larger portion of the public than what is currently served. “

Categories
Travel News

Welcome to the graveyard of new year’s resolutions

Welcome to the graveyard of new year's resolutions

“The world is on fire,” said Asia Wong, clinical social worker and director of counseling and health services at Loyola University in New Orleans. “Why are you trying to lose 20 pounds?”

Last year, Rebecca Fletcher, a teacher in Wirral, England, said she spent the entire month of January without drinking alcohol.

After indulging in prosecco during the holidays, she decided to try to repeat this success.

Ms Fletcher, 49, said she gave up after two weeks.

“I’m sorry, Dry January. It just doesn’t work, ”she said on Twitter. post a photo of a glass of pinot grigio. “It’s not you. It’s me.”

Ms Fletcher said her month-long abstinence attempt was thwarted by the surge in Covid-19 cases that prompted the government to order a full lockdown and confused schools, where teachers and students were constantly uncertain when to return. to the classroom. And political instability in the United States has not helped, she said.

“It feels like wherever you turn it’s stressful,” Ms. Fletcher said. “Not to mention that of course it’s England, and it rained for three days.”

You shouldn’t be too hard on yourself, experts say.

Sarah Wakeman, an addiction doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, said the all-or-nothing approach to quitting smoking can leave people ashamed or disappointed.

“This is an unprecedented time,” she said. “We must all give each other a little grace.”

And while promises to stay sober for a month can be a good way for a person to assess why they drink and what they like and dislike about drinking, there are downsides to cutting out completely. alcohol for a specified period.

This approach “may cause some people to drink more heavily once they start drinking again,” said Dr Wakeman. “For example, someone may feel reassured that they can stop drinking and therefore feel less of the need to think about drinking the rest of the year.”

Nathian Shae Rodriguez, professor of journalism and media studies at San Diego State University, made two promises in December: say “no” more often and respond to emails faster.

“I’m a first-generation, queer-of-color Mexican-American teacher and that in itself comes with a lot of invisible work that people don’t recognize,” he said.

Students ask him for advice, and faculty members often ask him to speak about gay and immigrant rights at conferences or ask him to join committees, Professor Rodriguez said.

The vows he took for 2021 seemed like a simple and necessary gift of time.

“For the first two days I was on a roll,” said Professor Rodriguez, 39. He politely declined various requests to sit on committees and write letters of recommendation from students he did not know well.

Then came January 6 and the siege of the Capitol. The students were scared and confused and searched for him on social media, where he is active. Professor Rodriguez said gay students from conservative families felt particularly unhitched.

“They needed to be reassured that everything would be fine,” he said. Saying no seemed impossible.

An effective way to keep a resolution is to remember that you have 11 more months to reach your goals, said Ms. Wong, the social worker.

“It’s a good time to take stock,” she said. “It’s a good time to reflect and say, ‘If I could change things, what would I change? “

Then, she added, “commit to this as a one-year plan.”

Humans are wired to deal with stress by escaping and then rewarding, said Judy Grisel, Bucknell University psychology professor and behavioral neuroscientist.

Ideally, this escape should be through movement, such as going for a run or walking.

But often, especially in the middle of January in the northern hemisphere, when the days are still short and the even warmer regions are cold and dreary, getting away means having a drink, sitting in front of the television or having a drink. smartphone and scroll without thinking. via social networks.

People believe they can break their bad habits when they have to move, she said.

The movement, she said, “is an untapped resource.”

Dr Grisel described a friend who quit by running around the block every time he felt like a cigarette. It’s harder to follow this advice when it’s cold outside, she admitted.

“I think this is part of the January problem,” Dr Grisel said. “It’s so dark and cold that we don’t want to move. It’s a really tough time, probably the hardest time to change. “

So the movement we choose can be very small: strum a guitar or call a friend, she says.

“My favorite thing is picking up the garbage,” said Dr. Grisel. “I would just take a plastic bag and go to the side of a road to pick up the garbage. What is helpful is that I am moving and can see the change on the street. “

And we have good news. The days are already getting longer for this half of the globe, the sun sets later, and a geologist has found a rock formation that resembles Cookie Monster. Things are improving.

Categories
Travel News

Why vaccines alone won’t end the pandemic

Why vaccines alone won't end the pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic in the United States has raged almost uncontrollably for so long that millions of vaccinations won’t be able to stop the spread of the disease unless people continue to wear masks and maintain social distancing measures until mid-summer or later, according to a new model by scientists at Columbia University.

The arrival of highly effective vaccines in December raised hopes that they would eventually slow or stop the spread of the disease to the rest of the population. But vaccines alone are not enough, the model shows. And if precautions like working remotely, restricting travel and wearing masks are relaxed too soon, it could mean millions of infections and thousands more deaths.



If current restrictions remain in place until the end of July

If the restrictions are lifted in February


There is no doubt that getting the vaccine protects the recipient. Yet several infectious disease researchers contacted by The New York Times warned that it would be months before enough people in the United States received the vaccines to allow normal life to resume.

Only then will the number of people who are immune – those who have had the disease and recovered, plus those who have been vaccinated – will be large enough to cut the wind from the pandemic, said Jeffrey Shaman, a epidemiologist at Columbia who shared his team. modeling calculations.

Dr Shaman estimates that more than 105 million people have already been infected across the United States, well above the number of cases that have been reported. And its projections show that millions more infections are yet to come as the vaccine is rolled out.

Estimated total number of infections in the United States if current restrictions are …

… In place until the end of July

158 million East. total infections

… Reinforced until the end of July

19 million fewer infections

… Reinforced until February

9 million fewer infections

… Raised in mid-March

6 million additional infections

… Raised in February

29 million additional infections

Social distancing, masking and the like are expected to stay in place until the end of July, “and that can be optimistic,” Dr Shaman said. Otherwise, another resurgence of the virus is possible.

“There are people who will want to relax the controls that we have in place,” said Dr Shaman. “If we start to think, ‘We have a vaccine, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, we can stop in a few months’ – it’s way too soon.”

The coming months will be crucial in the race to reduce new infections and deaths, as there will ultimately be fewer people the virus infect as the pandemic continues.

Lifting the restrictions in early February, after most healthcare workers and nursing home residents are vaccinated, would mean far more infections in the long run than keeping the restrictions in place until mid- March, for example.



If the restrictions are lifted in February

If the restrictions are lifted in mid-March


Even with current precautions, parts of the country have allowed the pandemic to rage so uncontrollably that it is too late for the vaccine to have a major impact, Dr Shaman said. His group estimates that 60% of the population of North Dakota has already been infected. Vaccines will help, but the pandemic is mostly draining itself off as fewer and fewer people are available to infect, he said.

On the flip side, in Vermont, with an infection rate of around 10%, the vaccine could protect almost any population if deployed quickly enough, Dr Shaman said. California is teetering somewhere in between as new outbreaks occur.

The model takes into account factors such as the speed and order of vaccine distribution, vaccine effectiveness after one and two doses, current social distancing measures, and the transmissibility of the virus. It assumes that groups like healthcare workers and the elderly will be prioritized according to CDC guidelines, and vaccination will continue at a rate of up to five million doses per week.

The group looked at scenarios in which current social distancing measures were relaxed earlier or later in the vaccine rollout, and what might happen if they were strengthened. The research was funded by Pfizer, one of the vaccine makers, as well as the National Science Foundation and the Morris-Singer Foundation.

Of the scenarios investigated by the researchers, those in which restrictions were tightened and then kept in place until a large portion of the population could receive the vaccine resulted in some of the rarest total infections.



If the restrictions are tightened until February

If the restrictions are tightened until the end of July


Other researchers have said they agree with Dr Shaman’s general conclusions, although the model involves a number of approximations and has yet to be published or subjected to formal review.

The discovery “passes the gut test,” said Trevor Bedford, a geneticist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington. He said the pace of the vaccine rollout was an unknown that could change the findings. The Biden administration has said it intends to speed up distribution, but those claims have yet to be tested.

Dr Bedford also warned that a new variant of the virus which recently emerged from the UK and is believed to be more transmissible than others circulating in the US “could cause a larger spring wave than this. which was modeled here.

Lauren Ancel Meyers, professor of biology and statistics at the University of Texas at Austin, said that Dr Shaman’s reasoning “everything makes intuitive sense”. Dr Meyers said she agreed that uncontrolled outbreaks in many places in 2020 had reduced the benefits of a vaccine.

“Unfortunately, we have allowed this virus to spread widely and we are launching the vaccination campaign at the height of the threat,” said Dr Meyers. “The more the virus spreads before the vaccine reaches people, the less deaths we can avoid with the vaccine.”

Dr Meyers added, however, that death numbers could drop sooner than infections with the right vaccination strategy, possibly allowing parts of the country to open up faster than expected. It depends on frontline workers at high risk and those most at risk of dying to get the vaccine quickly, she said.

“We could get to the point where, while the virus is still spreading, it is just less deadly at the population level and policymakers feel comfortable relaxing some of the measures we now have in place to protect our health systems and save lives ”. Dr Meyers said.

Overall, the results are likely bad news for millions of people who would love to get back to normal life, from a guilt-free night out at a restaurant to a discussion of football scores after school, as soon as possible.

Policymakers who will need to establish and sometimes enforce these restrictions in 2021 are already aware of the long term ahead, Seattle Mayor Jenny A. Durkan said in an interview.

“I think the modeling is absolutely believable,” said Ms. Durkan, who has received praise for incorporating science into her own policy decisions. The mayor said she was preparing Seattle to continue social distancing measures “at least through the summer and probably into the fall.”

“It’s just human nature to hope,” Ms. Durkan said. “I think people thought that if there was a vaccine it would be safe to come together again, and it isn’t.

Vaccinating people offers collective protection because the virus is spread by jumping from person to person. If the virus encounters someone who cannot catch the disease, this eliminates a pathway for infecting someone else.

For simplicity, in his team’s models, Dr Shaman assumed that neither those who recovered from the disease nor those who were vaccinated could develop or transmit it again. He estimated the vaccine’s efficacy to be 95% after the two standard doses for currently available vaccines.

All models incorporate some approximation, and Dr Bruce Y. Lee, professor of health policy and management at New York City University, said scientists would be cautious using the new calculations to determine precisely when the disease is likely to go away. . Dr Lee said his own modeling determined the virus could drop to much lower levels by July.

This condition, sometimes referred to as “herd immunity,” does not mean the disease has been eradicated, Dr Lee said. “Reaching the collective immunity threshold means that the people around you are immune to something,” Dr Lee said.

Vulnerable people can still contract the disease once herd immunity is achieved, said David Engelthaler, who heads the infectious disease arm of the Institute for Translational Genomics Research in Arizona. The number of cases, however, is no longer increasing exponentially and can remain relatively constant, he said.

“You’re not going to destroy this thing by getting collective immunity; clusters and peaks continue to occur, ”said Dr. Engelthaler.

Still, he said, growth will inevitably slow down and stop – in his opinion, a little sooner than some other researchers predict. He said the combination of vaccine immunity and infection could start to curb the pandemic in late spring or early summer.

“Then we can start thinking about normal civilization again,” Dr. Engelthaler said.

Categories
Travel News

Wave of student suicides pushes Las Vegas schools to reopen

Wave of student suicides pushes Las Vegas schools to reopen

This fall, when most school districts decided not to reopen, more parents began to speak out. Parents of a 14-year-old boy from Maryland who committed suicide in October described how their son had “given up” after his district decided not to return in the fall. In December, an 11-year-old boy in Sacramento shot himself in his Zoom course. Weeks later, the father of a teenager in Maine attributed his son’s suicide to isolation from the pandemic.

“We knew he was upset because he could no longer participate in his school activities, football,” Jay Smith told a local television station. “We never guessed it was so bad.”

President Biden has presented a robust plan to speed up vaccinations, expand coronavirus testing and spend billions of dollars to help districts reopen most of their schools in his first 100 days in office.

By then, children in districts like Clark County, with more than 300,000 students, will be out of school for over a year.

“Every day we feel like we have run out of time,” Dr Jara said.

As the pandemic approaches, youth suicide rates have been on the rise for a decade; by 2018, suicide had become the second leading cause of death among young people and young adults, behind accidents. And the most recent Behavioral Risk Survey, released last year by the CDC, which tracks trends in high school student health, shows a steady increase over the past decade in the percentage of students who report having lingering feelings of sadness or hopelessness, as well as in those who planned and attempted suicide.

Since the lockdowns, districts have been reporting clusters of suicides, CDC’s Dr Massetti said, and many said they were struggling to connect students to services.

“Without in-person instruction, there is a gap that is currently not being addressed,” she said.

Suzie Button, senior clinical director of high school programming at the Jed Foundation, a New York-based nonprofit that works on suicide prevention, said hundreds of schools and colleges – including the county de Clark – are teaming up with the organization to better serve students during the pandemic.

Categories
Travel News

Man threatened with murder of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, officials say

Man threatened with murder of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, officials say

A Trump supporter who stormed the Capitol on January 6 threatened on social media to assassinate Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez that day and also threatened the Capitol Police officer who killed a woman as she tried to enter the building, federal prosecutors said.

The man, Garret Miller, 34, of Richardson, Texas, was arrested Wednesday and charged with, among other things, threats, knowingly entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct on the streets. Capitol grounds, according to a criminal complaint.

Surveillance video from inside the Capitol, a selfie and video posted by Mr Miller and comments he made on social media showed he was part of a mob that had pushed police to entering the Capitol, disrupting Congress as it certified President Donald J. Trump’s loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr., the complaint says.

Credit…United States District Court for the District of Columbia

In one instance, Mr Miller posted a photo of himself inside the Capitol, the complaint says, prompting someone on Facebook to comment, “Brother, are you in ?! Nice! “Mr. Miller replied,” I just wanted to self-incriminate a little lol. “

Mr. Miller also threatened Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, after she wrote “Impeach” on Twitter on Jan.6, the complaint says. Mr Miller responded with his own tweet which read, “Assassinate AOC,” the FBI said.

In another tweet to Ms Ocasio-Cortez, Mr Miller said that “we have acted with honor”, “we were not armed” and we were “nice to the police,” the FBI said.

The criminal complaint included screenshots of Mr Miller’s tweets.

Prosecutors said Mr Miller also threatened the Capitol Police officer who shot dead Ashli ​​Babbitt, a Trump supporter, as she poked her head through the frame of a shattered window leading to the lobby Of the president.

Mr Miller referred to Ms Babbitt as his ‘sister in combat’ and, referring to the officer who shot her, said he would ‘tighten her neck with a nice rope’, according to messages he received. written on social networks, indicates the complaint.

Writing on Facebook on Jan. 16, Miller said the officer “was not going to survive long,” and claimed that “millions” of people agreed with him that the officer deserved ” to die ”, according to the complaint.

A man who answered the phone at a number listed for Mr. Miller said, “We have no comment at this time.”

Mr Miller’s attorney, F. Clinton Broden, said that “his client’s comments on social media reflect very thoughtless political hyperbole in very divided times and will certainly not happen again in the future.”

“He accepts responsibility for his actions,” he said.

He said Miller had yet to be invited to plead and his detention hearing was set for Monday.

“Mr. Miller regrets his actions in a misguided effort to show his support for former President Trump,” Mr. Broden said. “He enjoys the full support of his family and has always been a respectful citizen laws.

A spokeswoman for Ms Ocasio-Cortez did not immediately respond to a message on Saturday night. Ms Ocasio-Cortez has previously said that she often receives death threats.

She called the Capitol siege an “extremely traumatic event” and said many members of Congress had “almost and narrowly escaped death” that day.

Seamus Hughes contribution to reports.

Categories
Travel News

Pennsylvania lawmaker played key role in Trump plot to overthrow Acting Attorney General

Pennsylvania lawmaker played key role in Trump plot to overthrow Acting Attorney General

But the plan was in line with the posture Mr. Perry had taken since November, when he began falsely claiming that there had been widespread election fraud, and throughout that time Mr. Perry remained defiant. Faced with calls to step down because of his role in efforts to overthrow the election, Mr. Perry responded in one word: “No”.

Mr. Perry, a retired Pennsylvania National Guard brigadier general and Iraq War veteran, has previously been under scrutiny for his openness to the conspiracy. He baselessly suggested that the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas by a single shooter could have been influenced by “terrorist infiltration across the southern border”. and refused to support a resolution condemning QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy movement. (Mr Perry said he believed the resolution violated individuals’ right to free speech and that he did not personally endorse the movement.)

One of the first supporters of the “Stop the Steal” movement,

Mr Perry was one of 126 House Republicans who joined a legal case in December to support an extraordinary trial aimed at overturning Mr Biden’s victory. And he joined more than two dozen of his colleagues in urging Mr. Trump to ask William P. Barr, the attorney general, “to investigate the irregularities in the 2020 election.”

He opposed the certification of Pennsylvania’s election results on behalf of 79 other House Republicans, although he later recognized Mr. Biden as president-elect.

The plan Mr. Perry devised with Mr. Clark sparked a crisis in the Department of Justice. When Mr Clark contacted Mr Rosen with the letter from Georgia at the end of December, Mr Rosen refused to send it, according to four former administration officials. On January 3, Mr. Clark informed Mr. Rosen that he would accept his job at Mr. Trump’s request.

As Mr. Rosen prepared to meet Mr. Trump later in the day and fight for his post, his top deputies, including Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard P. Donoghue, and his outgoing chief of staff , Patrick Hovakimian, summoned the senior leaders of the department. during a conference call, according to five former officials familiar with the call.

They told department heads that Mr. Rosen’s job was under threat because of Mr. Clark’s machinations and said they would resign if Mr. Rosen was fired. They ended the call by asking their co-workers to think in private about what they would do if this happened. Over the next 15 minutes, all of them emailed or texted Mr. Hovakimian, saying they were going to quit.

Categories
Travel News

“A tragedy of incredible magnitude”: the United States records 25 million cases of the virus.

"A tragedy of incredible magnitude": the United States records 25 million cases of the virus.

Epidemiologists say the actual number of infections is likely much higher than official figures. Even with testing much more widespread now than in the early months of the pandemic, they say, many people who have never had symptoms may not have been tested or counted.

Ira Longini, professor of biostatistics at the University of Florida, estimates that about 20% of Americans have had the virus – more than double the number reported. Statistical modeling he recently completed for Florida suggests that a third of the state’s population has been infected at some point, which is four times the reported share.

There should be national coordination study to go beyond modeling estimates and get a solid understanding of how many people actually had the virus, he said. The CDC is performing serologic testing, he said, but not enough to provide a full picture.

“In the end, we don’t know, but we can guess from the modeling,” Dr. Longini said.

The proportion can vary considerably from place to place. In Dewey County, SD, nearly one in four residents has tested positive, but in San Juan County, Wash., Only one in 200 has it.

Most of the U.S. metropolitan areas with the most reported cases relative to their populations are in the south or southwest, where the virus has spread rapidly in recent times, but some are in areas like the Grandes Plains which were worse off in the fall. The top five are Yuma, Arizona; Gallup, NM; Bismarck, ND; and Lubbock and Eagle Pass, Texas.

The metropolitan areas with the highest number of new cases per capita over the past two weeks reflect the same trend, and also underscore the virulence of the epidemic in California. These areas are Laredo and Eagle Pass, Texas; Inland Empire, California; Jefferson, Georgia; and Oxnard, California.

More than a million people are known to have tested positive in Los Angeles County, one of the nation’s hot spots in recent months. And George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California at San Francisco, estimated that the actual number of infections there is double, or one in five Angelenos.

“It’s not enough for collective immunity, but it’s enough to blunt the curve,” he said.

Categories
Travel News

Bomb explodes in California church known for anti-LGBTQ views

Bomb explodes in California church known for anti-LGBTQ views

“In no way can we say that anyone linked to the protests is involved or responsible for this crime,” said Chief Reynoso. “We don’t know the motive at this point.”

The First Works Baptist Church was founded in 2017, according to its website.

Mr. Mejia said the church had been at its current site for three years. The church, a low-rise building on a street corner, resembles a storefront, with restaurants and homes nearby.

“It’s not really going to deter us from doing what we always do,” Mejia said on Saturday. “We are not afraid of this. It’s just a little bump in the road, and we still plan to have the church tomorrow, obviously not at this current location, but we still plan to have a church and once that’s all said and done, we let’s go back. “

The church is part of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, a network of 22 American churches and eight international churches known for their hateful rhetoric and calls on the government to round up and execute gays, the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization with a goal nonprofit that analyzes hate groups, reported in 2019.

Mr. Mejia is an outspoken sidekick of network leader Steven Anderson, an Arizona pastor who has been widely convicted of celebrating the 2016 shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Fla., Where 49 people have been killed, the Southern Poverty Law Center told me.

Mr Anderson also gained notoriety in 2009 for saying in a sermon that he prayed for the death of President Barack Obama and was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League in 2014 for what it called his “story. anti-Semitism ”.

Calls and an email to Mr Anderson’s church were not immediately returned.

Mr. Mejia and Mr. Anderson were among a number of church leaders who spoke at a ‘Make America Straight Again’ conference in Orlando in 2019, two days after the third anniversary of the Pulse massacre. , according to the legal center.

Categories
Travel News

How reporters and hosts remember Larry King

How reporters and hosts remember Larry King

Celebrities, presenters and politicians were among the many who remembered Larry King, the host of the CNN show “Larry King Live”, who died Saturday at the age of 87.

“Larry King was a broadcasting giant and a master of celebrity-statesman interviewing on television,” Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s international leader, tweeted.

“His name is synonymous with CNN and he played a vital role in the rise of the network,” she said. “EVERYBODY wanted to be on Larry King Live.”

Oprah winfrey said: “It was always a pleasure to sit at your table. And listen to your stories. Thanks Larry King. “

Wolf Blitzer, host of “The Situation Room” on CNN, called Mr. King “an incredible interviewer and mentor to many of us.”

Ryan Seacrest TV host said he had “lost a dear friend and mentor. Truly an American treasure.

“He taught me so much,” former CBS late-night host Craig Ferguson said.

“He was a real man,” added Ferguson. “He probably even taught me that word.”

Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, said that “the world has lost a true broadcasting legend.”

From 1985 to 2010, Mr. King launched “Larry King Live”, CNN’s longest-running and highest rated program. He interviewed a disparate range of subjects, from President Richard M. Nixon and royalty to “experts” on UFOs and paranormal phenomena.

He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. A statement from his company, Ora Media, did not specify the cause of death, but Mr King had recently been treated for Covid-19. In 2019, he was hospitalized with chest pain and he said he also suffered a stroke.

A Tweeter TV host Piers Morgan raised his eyebrows on Saturday. “Larry King was one of my heroes,” he wrote, “until we had a fight after I replaced him on CNN and he said my show was’ like watching your beautiful -mother going over a cliff in your new Bentley. ‘ ‘

But, Mr Morgan continued, “he was a brilliant broadcaster and a masterful television interviewer.”

Former President Bill Clinton said he enjoyed his “over 20 talks” with Mr. King, adding, “He gave the American people a direct line and worked hard to get the truth for them, with straightforward but fair questions.”

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo of New York honored Mr. King, who grew up in Brooklyn, as “a boy from Brooklyn,” Tweeter that “New York sends its condolences to its family and many friends.”

Newt Gingrich, the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, hailed Mr King as a broadcast pioneer.

“I have always loved doing his TV shows and sometimes he would ask me to be the guest host while he was on vacation,” Mr. Gingrich tweeted, noting that an episode featuring animals from the Columbus Zoo was among her favorites.

Celine Dion said Mr. King “made us all feel like we were talking with a lifelong friend. There will never be anyone like him, and he will be sadly missed.

Basketball star Magic Johnson said he had known Mr. King since arriving in Los Angeles 42 years ago.

“Larry King Live” changed CNN in the 1980s, with its mix of entertainment and news, he said. “I loved being on the show,” he said. “Larry was one of the best interviewers on television.”

Greta Van Susteren, host of “Full Court Press”, tweeted that a New York Times news alert referring to Mr. King’s interviews with “presidents, psychics, movie stars and crooks” showed “he was so broad.”

“Unlike some who can only interview one type of guest (eg politicians),” she says, “Larry could interview EVERYBODY and he did and he interviewed EVERYONE. “