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More than 170 health care workers at a Houston, Texas, hospital were reportedly suspended for two weeks without pay this week for choosing to not get the coronavirus vaccine by the hospital’s Monday deadline, which the hospital requires of its workers. The employees will be fired after the two weeks if they don’t get vaccinated, FOX 4 in Dallas reported. Houston Methodist Hospital President and CEO Marc Boom said that 99% of it more than 25,000 workers had been vaccinated by the deadline. "It is unfortunate that today’s milestone of Houston Methodist becoming the safest hospital system in the country...

“All FUSD students deserve to attend schools where they are safe, respected, and supported. Continuing to have police on campus harms Black and brown students who are exhausted from seeing their families harassed by police and witnessing high profile police-killings of young people on TV and social media. We know police on campus don’t prevent mass shootings. Since Columbine we’ve dramatically increased police presence in schools, yet mass shootings have grown exponentially,” said Ashley Rojas, Executive Director of Fresno Barrios Unidos and Fresno’s Education Justice Coalition. “Police criminalize Black and brown students. We have an opportunity here in Fresno to...

The 130-year-old exploration and education non-profit marked World Oceans Day on Tuesday by declaring that the waters around Antarctica will now be known as the Southern Ocean — the planet’s fifth ocean. “The Southern Ocean has long been recognized by scientists, but because there was never agreement internationally, we never officially recognized it,” National Geographic Society Geographer Alex Tait said. “It’s sort of geographic nerdiness in some ways,” Tait said. “We’ve always labeled it, but we labeled it slightly differently (than other oceans). This change was taking the last step and saying we want to recognize it because of its...

Journalists due to accompany Joe Biden on his first overseas trip as president were delayed on their outbound flight to England on Tuesday night - because of cicadas. A swarm of the noisy flying insects - part of the billions-strong Brood X which appears across the United States every 17 years - filled the engines of the White House press plane as it was on the runway at Dulles International Airport, reported The New York Times. The pilots were forced to turn the aircraft back to the departure gate. The insects were responsible for the delay, a spokesperson for Delta...

Former President Trump, perhaps trying to divert attention from his own disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, is now lashing out against Dr. Anthony Fauci for allegedly failing to seriously consider that the virus might have originated from China’s Wuhan lab, rather than from an animal’s transmission to humans. But judging from what Fauci told me in a June 4 interview, the most respected U.S. infectious diseases expert has not yet seen any convincing evidence that the virus may have escaped from a Chinese lab. Fauci, who heads the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and is a...

Here's an example: 'He'll run and he'll fall/ And he'll take it in stride'.........That just about sums up the skill-level involved here...... Only those with zero knowledge of the art of writing for children think they can knock off a picture book and thus add to their dazzling truth as a human being, a 'mother, wife, feminist and activist'. Or whatever. So only those with zero knowledge of how increasingly hard it is nowadays for truly talented authors to get published will be able to read Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex's contribution without weeping – either with mirth or despair....

One gifted 12-year-old is way ahead of the game when it comes to schooling. Mike Wimmer, from Salisbury, North Carolina, graduated from Rowan-Cabarrus Community College on May 21 with a 4.0 GPA and an associate degree. A week later, he graduated from Concord Academy High School with a 5.45 GPA as valedictorian.... ...Mike describes himself as a well-rounded person with an interest in all subjects, though he's always leaned more toward STEM fields. He calls himself the "math and science guy." "Technology in particular I like because it's limitless, and I can do whatever I want to with it," he...

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Cambridge University researchers claimed people were more likely to look down on others or react with disgust at questionable actions if they were afraid of Covid. The findings support earlier research which linked health threats with harsher moral judgment, and the idea that right and wrong are not based on rational thought alone. A study by researchers at the University of Nottingham earlier this year found that people's adherence to Covid restrictions is more heavily influenced by what their friends and family do than their own principles.

A former Olympian has been charged with defrauding the Small Business Administration over a pandemic loan. Luka Klasinc, a Slovenian figure skater, competed in the men's singles event at the 1992 Winter Olympics. ... ...Beginning last July, Klasinc's company received more than $1.5 million in Economic Injury Disaster Loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration. When accounts that controlled the money started making suspicious wire transfers, Klasinc's bank froze the funds, according to the criminal complaint....

Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam was locked down for hours because of a bomb threat. Play Video: https://www.kitv.com/clip/15223704/bomb-threat-locks-down-joint-base-pearl-harborhickam A bomb threat forced military officials to lock down Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. By the afternoon, it was back to normal for the busy Oahu base, after its gates were closed for four hours. The ripple effects of the bomb threat were also felt around Pearl Harbor. A line of traffic stretched out from Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam after its gates were closed at 9:39 a.m. Drivers not only waited to get in, but also were unable to leave because of a security...

BUCHAREST, Romania — Government ministers in the former Soviet and communist countries along the Black Sea basin are bracing for President Joe Biden’s meeting with Vladimir Putin of Russia next Wednesday in Geneva. But, analysts are warning them to keep their expectations low. They hope the American president will stand for democratic ideals and support their security, but regional analysts say they may be pawns in a broader geopolitical chess match between great power rivals. From Kyiv to Bucharest, government leaders are attempting to influence Biden ahead of the meeting, underscoring that their democracy depends on the United States and...

Five Republican senators wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to discuss their concern of "unequal justice" for the prosecution of Capitol rioters in comparison to some demonstrators during the social justice protests in 2020.Signed by Senators Ron Johnson, Tommy Tuberville, Mike Lee, Rick Scott and Ted Cruz, the letter highlighted a few instances of disruption by protests that may have resulted in unequal justice in the prosecution of those involved. They requested "information about our concerns regarding potential unequal justice administered in response to other recent instances of mass unrest, destruction, and loss of life throughout the...

Andrew Lloyd Webber has said he will open his theatres on 21 June, and is prepared to be arrested if authorities try to intervene. The composer has also warned he may have to sell his six West End venues if the government does not relax its restrictions as set out in its roadmap for England. The pandemic has had a catastrophic financial impact on the theatre industry and many have remained closed despite the ease in COVID-19 restrictions as it is not financially viable for them to open with reduced capacities. Lord Lloyd Webber is preparing for a production of...

El Salvador has become the first country to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. Lawmakers in the Central American country’s Congress voted by a “supermajority” in favor of the Bitcoin Law, receiving 62 out of 84 of the legislature’s vote. Earlier on Wednesday, President Nayib Bukele sent the law to to the country’s Congress for a vote. “The purpose of this law is to regulate bitcoin as unrestricted legal tender with liberating power, unlimited in any transaction, and to any title that public or private natural or legal persons require carrying out,” the law reads. Prices can now be shown in...

JUST IN - Vendor that runs the constituent services platform for many of US House offices hit by a ransomware attack (Punchbowl News) -- Just copying the Tweet

The US moratorium on gain-of-function experiments has been rescinded, but scientists are split over the benefits—and risks—of such studies. Talha Burki reports. On Dec 19, 2017, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that they would resume funding gain-of-function experiments involving influenza, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. A moratorium had been in place since October, 2014. At the time, the NIH had stated that the moratorium “will be effective until a robust and broad deliberative process is completed that results in the adoption of a new US Government gain-of-function research policy”. This process...

The New York Attorney General's Office is probing whether Governor Andrew Cuomo and his aides committed a crime by retaliating against women who accused him of sexual harassment, according to a report. Sources told the Washington Post investigators are looking into the possibility the governor and his inner circle broke state laws aimed at protecting whistleblowers that make it illegal to retaliate against alleged victims of sexual harassment. Officials are said to be especially interested in the controversial release of the personnel file of his first accuser, Lindsey Boylan, to the media which branded her a bully.

The Guardian has been mocked for branding apple pie racist after one of its writers said the treat was linked to 'a vast and ongoing genocide of indigenous people. Writing in the famously liberal publication, food writer Raj Patel claimed the all-American dessert was born of colonialism and slavery, after highlighting how apples had first arrived in the west from central Asia 4,000 years ago. The piece, titled 'Food injustice has deep roots: let's start with America's apple pie', claims the pie has 'bloody origins' and is 'as American as stolen land, wealth and labor.'

Joe Biden's hopes of passing his much-touted infrastructure bill now rest on a bipartisan group of senators after direct talks with Republicans collapsed. Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican representing West Virginia, had been liaising with the White House over the bill. But their talks collapsed on Tuesday. Instead Biden turned to a small group of about half a dozen Republicans and Democrats, hoping that they could find a way to reach a compromise.