Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

UK testing every person in Liverpool for virus | TheHill

The British government announced on Tuesday that everyone in Liverpool will be tested for the novel coronavirus as part of a trial program starting this week.

The government said in a statement that people who work or live in the city will be tested, regardless of if they are experiencing symptoms or not.

New technology, including swab tests and lateral flow tests, will allow test results to be provided within an hour or less without lab processing, the government added.

Source: UK testing every person in Liverpool for virus | TheHill

Kenosha shooting victim’s father slams Trump for defending Rittenhouse: ‘How dare he’ | TheHill

“Self-defense, that’s impossible,” John Huber, father of Anthony, said during a video court hearing.

“He had already killed a guy and tried to run. My son was a hero. He tried to stop him. He was a hero. Anyone who says otherwise is dead wrong, including the president. How dare he,” Huber added.

Trump declined to denounce Rittenhouse in late August after the fatal incident, saying the teenager was “very violently attacked”and “probably would have been killed” himself if he hadn’t fired his gun.

Source: Kenosha shooting victim’s father slams Trump for defending Rittenhouse: ‘How dare he’ | TheHill

1st HIV self-test approved in Canada | CBC News

Federal regulators have approved the first HIV self-test in Canada, a long-awaited move that experts have said is critical to reaching people who don’t know they have the virus.

Health Canada granted a medical device licence on Monday to a one-minute, finger-prick blood test manufactured by Richmond, B.C.-based bioLytical Laboratories.

Source: 1st HIV self-test approved in Canada | CBC News

Black women shed blood, sweat and tears to gain a voice. Granny, this vote is for you | US news | The Guardian

Ms Rose was ineligible to vote for nearly half of her 98 years.

“When I walked into that voting booth, I took the spirit of my ancestors with me, thinking about how many people have died, were hung on trees, bitten by dogs, sprayed with firehoses,” he said. “They overcame all that.

“Covid is nothing compared to what our ancestors went through to secure the right to vote for all of us.”

I didn’t anticipate Granny would be one of those ancestors whose spirit would hold me up as I held on to her pearls.

Black women are exceptionally impacted by three national crises yet are still most often left out of policy, excluded from news coverage, and most easily stereotyped. For every one of the ancestors who couldn’t make it to this day, we say your names.

This election day, we take the spirit of our ancestors like Ms Rose, and every Black man and woman whose story has never, or is just yet to be, told. We forge our futures cloaked in the legacies of our past.

Ancestors, this vote is for you.

Source: Black women shed blood, sweat and tears to gain a voice. Granny, this vote is for you | US news | The Guardian

Human

Unlocking The Hidden Me

#poetry #haiku #senryu

Contented, benign

Destitute yet heart to give

A human, really??

In our contemporary world, the lion’s share of us ‘people’ live by the principle of give and take. A rare sight it is to see someone not abiding this rule. Compassion is on the verge of extinction and lie embedded in books just like another 3 syllable word.

The very essence has been lost or to say will be lost in the years to come. Even relationships are not forgiven, they do get washed away in the rain of avariciousness.

To be kind, you don’t require to dissipate a million dollars (as it does not proportionate to being one) instead just an illumination of hope, a word of sobriety, a pat of appreciation, an anchor in times of a hurricane, tears of sympathy, a medicine in illness, a shelter in a squall and a heart to…

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Coronavirus surges across midwest as Trump attacks health professionals | World news | The Guardian

“More and more facilities are requesting [personal protective equipment],” said Dr Shikha Gupta, executive director of Get Us PPE, a non-profit which supplies healthcare facilities with PPE, when they cannot find equipment through suppliers. “We are deeply unprepared for what that’s going to bring as hospitals reach capacity across the US with surging caseloads.”

Nursing homes, where less than 1% of Americans live but which account for 41% of Covid-19 deaths, also remain extremely vulnerable to outbreaks.

“We lack personal protective equipment, we lack comprehensive surveillance and testing, and, to be honest, a number of nursing homes still struggle with infection control,” David C Grabowski, a health policy professor at Harvard Medical School, said. “We’ve seen this play out now twice.”

Nancy Roberts, a respiratory therapist at St Luke’s, said she had seen Covid-19-positive patients come in, “and they’re on just a little bit of oxygen, and in 24 hours they could be intubated and on a ventilator, and they’re terrified.

“For somebody to not believe this is happening, it blows my mind. I cannot personally wrap my head around that,” Roberts said. ‘One death is one too many deaths from this virus.”

Source: Coronavirus surges across midwest as Trump attacks health professionals | World news | The Guardian

Mask mandates: Why every state should have one, in 4 charts – Vox

As it turns out, North Dakota, which doesn’t require masks anywhere, had the lowest mask-wearing rate in the country in October, according to survey data. It also had 146 coronavirus cases per 100,000 as of November 2, the highest per capita rate of any state in the county, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

North Dakota is not the only state without a mask policy in the throes of a major outbreak, however: Eight out of the top 10 states that saw the highest new cases per capita in October do not have a mask mandate, as the chart below shows. (Several of these Great Plains and Midwestern states were spared significant outbreaks of the virus until the fall.)

Source: Mask mandates: Why every state should have one, in 4 charts – Vox

Federal Judge Blocks Trump Rule Designed To Impede Immigrants Seeking Green Cards : NPR

U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman in Chicago, Ill., rejected a rule Monday implemented by the Trump administration that aimed to deny green cards to immigrants utilizing food stamps and other public benefits. The decision applies nationwide, not just in the state of Illinois.

Source: Federal Judge Blocks Trump Rule Designed To Impede Immigrants Seeking Green Cards : NPR

Joe Biden Personal Essay – How Joe Biden Comforted Me After My Son’s Diagnosis

One Sunday morning a few weeks after the interview, before the issue had even gone to press, my son, almost 7, awoke with a headache. His eyes began to close. It got worse quickly, and within an hour he was airlifted to a children’s hospital. My wife, Sarah, rode with him in the helicopter, and our other son and I drove 90 on the highway.

There was a brain surgery he almost didn’t survive. Then another. Doctors said words to us, and we tried to make sense of them.

Leukemia…aggressive…there was a hemorrhage…craniotomy…we just don’t know…

Sometime during the fever dream of that first week, an email came through: a PDF of the Biden interview, ready for the printer—these get sent around to the staff automatically. I read it, twice.

“We’ve always taken care of each other.”

Late at night, lying awake on the pull-out hospital bed, I sent a note to Hunter. I thanked him and his dad—their candor that day in Maryland, and the things they said, were replaying in my head. It was helping, and I just wanted him to know. I was trying to mute the terrifying words we were hearing in the hospital by amplifying their stories of getting back up again and again and again.

The next day I was sitting alone in my son’s room on the ICU—Sarah had gone for soup. His head was wrapped in gauze, his eyes swollen shut. Machines beeped softly around him, and he lay perfectly still under the hospital sheets.

Just then, my phone rang: a weird number. I answered. It was the sitting vice president of the United States.

“Ryan, it’s Joe Biden. Dammit I’m so sorry. What happened?”

I told him, as best I could, functioning as I was on little food or sleep. He spoke in detail of the brain aneurysm he had suffered in 1988, how it felt, what the doctors had done for him, and whether there were any similarities here. He offered to put me in touch with experts in the fields of cancer and brain injury. He was searching, asking questions, trying to be of use.

“I’m s’damn sorry, Ryan.”

The next day, he called again, this time with the name of someone he thought might be helpful.

A couple of months later, I got another call: The vice president was going to be in New York, and wanted to know whether it would be convenient for my wife and me to see him. Our son had been transferred to Memorial Sloan-Kettering for treatment, and one or both of us was with him day and night. But the nurses said they would look after him for an hour while we went across town to see Joe Biden.

We found ourselves in a small room off a ballroom at a hotel where he had just given a speech. There was no one in there, really—a couple of Secret Service agents, his scheduling person, a few others. He saw us, strode over, and the first thing he did was just hug us. Both of us at once, his long arms around us, tight, three people standing there as one for a good minute.

Our arms loosened, we stood back. His suit jacket was a little rumpled.

We waited for him to talk first. His eyes were wet, and he said, “How’s your boy?” Joe Biden was crying for us, because he knew how it was when the pain feels like it will never end.

There were no cameras. There was no one filming. He wasn’t running for anything. He was just doing what you do, as a human, even when no one’s watching.

Source: Joe Biden Personal Essay – How Joe Biden Comforted Me After My Son’s Diagnosis