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ODESSA, Texas — A SWAT team raided an open business, Big Daddy Zanes, in West Odessa on Monday. The business was open but also there were armed men carrying on a peaceful protest near the bar. Owner, Gabrielle Ellison, said she spoke with the Ector County Sheriff’s Office prior to the protest. According to Ellison, she was told everything would be fine as long as men with guns are not seen on the property. Out of respect for law enforcement, she said she confined the men to an area in the back, which is her private property.

PING LIST - Please contact me as needed... COVID-19 Update As of 05/06/2020 23:45 PDST     Johns Hopkins University - Capture Nations InformatonAs of 00/00/2020 23:45 PDST     Johns Hopkins University - Capture Counties InformatonAs of 00/00/2020 23:46 PDST     Johns Hopkins University - Process JHU DataAs of 00/00/2020 23:59 PDST     WorldofMeters - Document Core NumbersAs of 00/00/2020 23:59 PDST     WorldofMeters - Capture Nations InformatonAs of 00/00/2020 23:59 PDST     WorldofMeters - Capture States InformatonAs of 00/00/2020 00:00 PDST     WorldofMeters - Data Processing begins...As of 00/00/2020 ??:?? PDST    ...

As complaints about dire shortages of protective gear for medical workers on the frontlines of the Covid-19 crisis began to stream in, President Donald Trump was quick to point the finger of blame at his predecessor, Barack Obama. It was Obama and other administrations, he said, who left the shelves of the nation's Strategic National Stockpile bare of the items needed to combat the coronavirus. To an extent, the President was right. The Obama administration did use and then failed to replace items from the stockpile to fight the 2009 H1N1 "swine flu" pandemic.

1942 - The Battle of the Coral Sea resumes as Task Force Seventeen (TF-17) intercepts the Japanese intending to invade Port Moresby, New Guinea marking the first naval battle where aircraft carriers engage each other out of sight from one another. My Dad was on the USS Yorktown CV-5 during the Battle of the Coral Sea. Here is some of his recollections of that event. Background: My dad was born in 1922. He enlisted in the Navy Jan 1940. In June he reported to the USS Yorktown CV-5 as a fireman. He was assigned to #4 Engine Room and his...

BEIJING - The European Union ambassador to China said on Thursday it was “regrettable” that part of an opinion piece co-authored by 27 European ambassadors and published in the official China Daily had been removed before publication. A comparison between the original op-ed uploaded onto the EU embassy website and the one published on Tuesday by the China Daily showed that in a sentence beginning, “But the outbreak of the coronavirus”, the words that followed - “in China, and its subsequent spread to the rest of the world over the past three months” - were removed. “It is regrettable that...

Sydney (AFP) -- Thousands of Australians are expected to take their own lives because of the financial and psychological stress of the coronavirus crisis, far outstripping the death toll from the disease itself, experts warned Thursday. Modelling by the Brain and Mind Centre at Sydney University predicted an additional 750 to 1,500 suicides per year for up to five years as a result of the impacts of the pandemic and economic shutdowns imposed to curb its spread. That would mark a spike of 25 to 50 percent over the 3,000 suicides usually recorded each year in the country.

I believe the evidence suggests that COVID-19 was a very early stage in the development of a chilling new bioweapon known as a targeted pathogen. The concept is to genetically modify a highly-contagious virus so that it is largely asymptomatic for 99.999% of the population, but is highly lethal to individuals that match the specifically encoded genetic target map. As long as you are able to obtain a genetic sample of your target, you can launch an attack against him by releasing a tiny sample of the virus into an urban population anywhere in the world, and within a few...

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LANSING, MI. (WILX) A group of armed individuals stood in front of the Capitol building Wednesday afternoon to make a statement. They told News 10 they are trying to change the narrative, escorting lawmakers like State Representative Sarah Anthony, (D) Lansing, inside of the Capitol. "We're here because we watched our state representatives who've been elected and elevated to the level to make laws for us feel intimidated by the crowds who were out here, the white supremacy that was out here. So we figured we wanted to do something about that to make them feel safe," said Michael Lynn...

The defense of Joe Biden on the allegations that have disrupted his campaign has gone through some fascinating twists and turns. At first, in the wake of Tara Reade’s accusation that he sexually assaulted her in 1993, the reaction in media and political circles was largely silence. Reade seemed to come out of nowhere, so there was little need to acknowledge her story. Many media outlets stuck with silence after the New York Times and Washington Post published their accounts 19 days later. In other outlets, the second reaction was that she was probably not telling the truth -- after...

Airbnb is letting go of a quarter of its workforce, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky told employees in a memo on Tuesday, as the coronavirus pandemic has decimated demand for his company’s services. The home-sharing platform, which was widely expected to go public this year, becomes the latest sharing economy company to institute or consider instituting significant layoffs. Uber is reportedly considering laying off 20% of its workers while Lyft has already laid off 17% of its employees. "We are collectively living through the most harrowing crisis of our lifetime, and as it began to unfold, global travel came to...

Three marquee San Francisco tech companies — Uber, Airbnb and Lyft — which exemplified a new generation of megabillion-dollar startups, have now slashed staffs in response to the coronavirus pandemic and shelter-in-place orders. Ride-hailing company Uber, among the city’s largest employers, was the latest to do so, laying off 14% of its workforce, or 3,700 recruiting and customer support employees worldwide, on Wednesday in the biggest round of layoffs to date for a San Francisco tech company during the crisis. Uber’s smaller rival Lyft had 982 layoffs last week, or 17% of its staff, and will implement furloughs and pay...

Mexicans have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic in many ways, including beer lovers finding it particularly difficult to quench their thirst as supplies run dry due to reduced production. Fernando Rodriguez wanted to have a beer while taking part in a virtual party, one of the only ways to celebrate under containment measures. After searching several stores in his Mexico City neighborhood, he eventually had to pay almost double. "In one shop... it was hidden away. They told me they could sell it to me at a much higher price. It was among the last supplies," the 33-year-old told...

Small businesses in areas hit hardest by the coronavirus epidemic haven't been able to secure loans through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), according to a new study released Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The study has actually shown a "negative relationship" between a state's COVID-19 cases per capita and its share of small businesses getting PPP funding. Most PPP loans have gone to central and midwestern states that have reported the fewest number of coronavirus cases. "In New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus in the United States, less than 20 percent of small businesses have...

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has pushed back on calls to change a key requirement for small businesses to obtain aid under the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sounds open to loosening it. Hotel and restaurant groups have criticized a rule that says 75% of the Paycheck Protection Program loan’s proceeds must go toward payroll expenses. Mnuchin on Monday rejected the requests for a change that have come from those groups and other organizations. “This is the way the program was designed by Congress, and we think it has the right intent to get the money to...

A quarter of the British workforce is sitting at home in its pajamas receiving 80% of its pay, up to a maximum of £2,500 ($3,000) a month, guaranteed by the government until the end of June. A similar scheme has been put in place for the self-employed. The prime minister's official spokesman said: "Since the launch, 800,000 employers have used the Job Retention Scheme to furlough 6.3 million jobs. The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) estimated that the scheme would cost the Treasury a total £39bn." This incredibly over-generous scheme by the British government was grasped at hungrily by big...

Police are searching for three suspects they say were involved in a Miramar home invasion and shooting, which left two people wounded early Wednesday morning and started with an online date. According to Miramar police, the incident occurred at 3:20 a.m. near the 2900 block of SW 120th Terrace. They say one of the victims met one of the suspects, a woman, on a dating app and invited her over. When the woman showed up at the victim’s home, two men who were with her entered the house with weapons, police said. Police say an altercation between the victims and...

As Rodney Butler walks through the dark halls of the Foxwoods Resort and Casino in Connecticut, he laments that the 4,500 slot machines throughout the establishment that he considers home are turned off. It’s “unbelievable,” Butler said. “They should be clinging and clanging right now.” Foxwoods, in Mashantucket, Connecticut, is one of the largest casinos in the world. It’s owned and operated by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, for which Butler is the chairman. He says that up until the coronavirus, COVID-19, came to the United States, the casino had never shut its doors. **SNIP** Across the country, from Las...

The U.S. Air Force's experimental unmanned space plane is about to take off again, this time with a new attachment near its tail to hold more payloads. Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett announced Wednesday that the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle (OTV) will take off May 16 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, for its sixth mission, which will incorporate tasks for U.S. Space Force and NASA, among other agencies. "This important mission will host more experiments than any prior X-37B flight, including two NASA experiments," she told viewers during a conference hosted by the Space Foundation. One NASA experiment...

New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell's announcement this week that businesses reopening when coronavirus restrictions are eased May 16 will be required to keep track of their customers has prompted questions from businesses and customers alike. How will the new protocol be enforced? How will customers be logged? And most important: Will the businesses and their customers play ball? Cantrell said Tuesday the goal is for companies to help "box in" coronavirus by providing data to health officials, but she offered few details about the plan. And there is little evidence of a similar mandate in the U.S. Efforts closest to...