Cuomo ‘has no good answer’ for nursing home policy: Rep. Zeldin
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Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., criticizes the governor’s policy on ‘Sunday Morning Futures.’
The attack was carried out on Iranian-backed militias
A new study suggests that the first death from COVID-19 in Europe may have actually occurred in Serbia - 10 days before the first reported fatality came out of France.France reported Europe's first death on Feb. 15, 2020. But researchers in Belgrade now say that a 56-year-old construction worker from that city, who had not traveled abroad, was admitted to a hospital on Feb. 5 suffering from fever, cough and shortness of breath. He died within hours and an autopsy showed pneumonia was the cause. Months later, scientists at the Institute for Forensic Medicine of Belgrade's Medical Faculty, found evidence that the man had died from COVID.Milenko Bogdanovic, a forensic pathologist, says frozen samples were taken from the man's eye to prove the presence of the virus."One of the conclusions of this work would be that this is, for the time being, the first post-mortem corroborated death from COVID-19 in Europe to date."The study also says COVID-19 was probably the cause of reports of a pneumonia of unknown origin between January and February last year. Serbia's first official case was recorded on March 6, 2020.
Republican gathering began in 1974 and sees American conservatives debate social worries but has struggled with position on 'alt-right' in recent years
Showrunner Todd Helbing and star Tyler Hoechlin tell Insider what it was like paying homage to Superman's early days in the comics and cartoons.
Britain's Prince Philip is getting a lot better, his youngest son said on Tuesday after Buckingham Palace said the 99-year-old husband of Britain's Queen Elizabeth would remain in hospital for several more days to receive treatment for an infection. Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, walked into London's private King Edward VII Hospital last Tuesday evening after he was advised by his doctor to be admitted after he felt unwell, and has spent seven nights there. "He is comfortable and responding to treatment but is not expected to leave hospital for several days," Buckingham Palace said, adding he was receiving medical attention for an unspecified infection.
Iran expressed hope on Tuesday that South Korea and Japan would agree to release about $1 billion of Iranian funds frozen in the two countries because of U.S. sanctions, but South Korea said it still needed to discuss the matter with the United States. Iranian government spokesman Ali Rabiei said central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati had reached preliminary agreements with the ambassadors of Japan and South Korea on the fund releases.
Celebrity dermatologist Dr. Pimple Popper used her fingers to squeeze and loosen the "cute" and slimy lipoma on a woman's shoulder.
Sheikha Latifa, one of the daughters of the ruler of Dubai, has written to British police asking them to reopen their investigation into the kidnap of her older sister from a street in Cambridge in 2000, the BBC reported on Thursday. In a handwritten letter seen by the British broadcaster and dated 2018, Latifa asked Cambridgeshire Police to refocus on the case of her sister Shamsa, now 39, who was captured aged 18 and has not been seen in public since. The Dubai government's media office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Denmark plans to allow shops and some schools to reopen in March in a much awaited move that could however send hospital coronavirus admissions soaring in coming months. Denmark, which has one of the lowest infection rates in Europe, has seen general infection numbers drop after it introduced lockdown measures in December in a bid to curb a more contagious coronavirus variant. In what the prime minister has called a "calculated risk", the government will allow stores under 5,000 square metres to reopen, while outdoor leisure activities can resume with an upper limit of 25 people.
Lawyers for William Chrestman, a Proud Boys member, argued that the group believed it had Trump's "official endorsement."
Health authorities from across the world including, Europe, the United States, Britain and Australia, met during the first few weeks of this year to address the evolving situation and rising infections, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said. Global coronavirus infections have exceeded 110 million as highly transmissible variants are prompting drug developers and governments to tweak their testing and immunisation strategies, while regulators are working at record speeds to evaluate and approve treatments and vaccines.
The lawsuit alleges police and prosecutors tried to shield the alleged shooters from prosecution
U.S. President Joseph Biden's new administration said on Wednesday it would continue its international re-engagement by seeking election to the U.N. Human Rights Council where it will press to eliminate a "disproportionate focus" on ally Israel. Under former President Donald Trump's more isolationist approach, Washington quit the council in 2018 but the Biden government has already returned as an observer. "I'm pleased to announce the United States will seek election to the Human Rights Council for the 2022-24 term," Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the council by video.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hoping to make it easier for Americans to find COVID-19 vaccines, is backing the test of a centralized online portal where the public can search for nearby vaccination locations with doses on hand. The website, called Vaccine Finder, is run by Boston Children’s Hospital with the help of several collaborators. It grew out of the H1N1 flu pandemic of 2009 and has been used for years to coordinate the distribution of flu and childhood vaccines. It expanded Wednesday to include the availability of coronavirus vaccines in several states. If the program goes well, the website’s developers plan to expand it nationwide in coming weeks to include nearly all vaccine providers that agree to be featured. That would make the website far more comprehensive than anything that exists now. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times “We’re trying to create a trusted site and bring some order to all this chaos and confusion around availability,” said John Brownstein, a Boston Children’s Hospital researcher who runs VaccineFinder.org. The project is not a panacea. It will not enable people to book appointments; it simply directs people to other portals where they can try to register to get vaccinated. Nor does the website address the key constraints — most notably the limited supply of vaccine doses — that are preventing more people from quickly getting shots. And there is a risk that the addition of yet another vaccine website will only exacerbate the current confusion. “It’s not a tool that’s going to necessarily make things easier for people to get the vaccine,” said Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers. “They’re going to see where vaccine is, but they’re still going to have challenges trying to get an appointment.” After a rocky start, the vaccination campaign in the United States has accelerated in recent weeks. Seventeen percent of adults have received a first dose, and 7.6% are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. That puts the government well on the way to fulfilling President Joe Biden’s promise that at least 100 million vaccine doses would be administered in the United States by his 100th day in office; he has since raised that target to 150 million doses. Despite the progress, though, getting appointments for vaccinations has been a source of great frustration for many people. Appointment slots are filled within minutes of becoming available. States, local health departments and pharmacy chains have their own sign-up websites that in many cases do not share data with one another. The CDC has its own vaccine administration management system, or VAMS, which some states are using to have people register for vaccinations and to collect essential data, but state officials have complained that it is clunky. Exasperated people have taken matters into their own hands, creating online navigator tools and “vaccine hunter” Facebook groups in cities like Los Angeles and New Orleans to help connect people with available doses. When the Vaccine Finder portal goes live this week, it will include some drugstores and grocery stores nationwide, plus many other locations, like mass-vaccination sites, in Alaska, Indiana, Iowa and Tennessee. Kristen Nordlund, a spokeswoman for the CDC, said the agency was encouraging vaccination locations to “provide accurate and up-to-date information on location, hours and availability of vaccines, so Americans can find vaccine sites easier.” Dr. Marcus Plescia, chief medical officer of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said, “I think people are optimistic and eagerly awaiting it.” He continued, “As with anything that we roll out in the middle of this pandemic, if there are glitches it could end up creating a lot of confusion, but I think we’ll just have to work through it.” Finding doses was relatively straightforward in the first weeks of the vaccine rollout, when eligible people — health care workers and residents and staff at long-term care facilities — were getting vaccinated mainly where they lived or worked. But states have since expanded their eligibility criteria to include older people, people with certain medical conditions and certain front line workers. More locations have also been added to give out vaccines, including stadiums and local pharmacies. The federal government did not create a centralized sign-up system for the vaccine rollout, and states have been slow to set up their own. In that void, counties, local health departments, pharmacy chains and other vaccine providers started their own appointment-booking websites, in some cases adapting systems they already had and in others buying new tools from vendors. These systems are often not synchronized to share information like which people have registered on their websites. That has frustrated state and local health officials, who cannot cross off their lists people who have secured an appointment at a different location after registering on multiple systems. “It’s harder to track vaccination appointments and offer them to people who need it most when the systems are so disjointed,” said Blaire Bryant, associate legislative director for health for the National Association of Counties. Federal and state lawmakers have been clamoring for more centralized registration systems. Rep. Anthony Brown, D-Md., last week introduced legislation that would create a nationwide sign-up system where the public can register to get vaccinated. More states have begun registration websites in recent weeks, but those systems typically don’t let people reserve a vaccine or an appointment directly. Instead, they help people navigate existing systems or sign up to get notified when they can schedule an appointment. The Vaccine Finder website is meant to complement, not replace, those efforts, said Brownstein, who is also the chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital. Google started the earliest version of what became the Vaccine Finder website. In 2012 Brownstein and his team took it over. Since then they have been working with state and local officials to identify locations that offer routine vaccinations. The project has received federal funding of about $1 million annually to maintain the website, first from the Department of Health and Human Services and since 2017 directly from the CDC. The U.S. government has provided more than $8 million to help the website expand for COVID-19 vaccines. The Vaccine Finder allows people to enter their ZIP code, the distance they’re willing to travel and which of the authorized vaccines they are seeking. That information generates a map dotted with nearby vaccination locations, with links to appointment-booking websites set up by states, local health departments and pharmacy chains. Vaccine providers can opt out of being highlighted on Vaccine Finder. For example, a provider might opt out if it is only vaccinating a certain slice of the population like health care workers. The website will show which places have doses available, based on data that vaccine locations are supposed to report daily. The need to report that information daily “could be a big lift and lead to varying degrees of accuracy in the system,” said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs at the National Association of City and County Health Officials. “As with anything, the value will be in the quality of the data provided,” she added. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2021 The New York Times Company
Some 29 million people in the UK could be entitled to up to £30 back on Apple or Samsung smartphones.
Several European Union countries have reported offers from "alleged intermediaries" for 900 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for some 12.7 billion euros, the bloc's anti-fraud agency OLAF said on Thursday. OLAF opened an inquiry earlier this month into scam vaccine offers, underlining how fraudsters have sought to capitalise on a botched EU inoculation campaign against COVID-19 that is hampering the bloc's economic recovery. "OLAF received information from several EU member states about offers of COVID-19 vaccines by alleged intermediaries," the agency's press office said in a statement sent to Reuters.
‘Donald Trump and Mike Pence had a great call last week!’ Miller
Every morning before their shift at a Kajima construction site, workers check their vital signs.Location: SingaporeAll it takes is a 45-second scan of his face using an app developed by Singapore start-up Nervotec. The app takes note of heart rate,oxygen levels, respiration rate, and even stress levels using Artificial Intelligence-based technology.So how does it work?The Nervotec app uses remote photoplethysmography (rPPG) and AI to capture and analyze the user's vitals.The smartphone camera measures the differences in the reflectivity of light that hit the user's skin, which corresponds to the different pulse rates of the body. Computer vision and predictive analysis AI then monitor the user's face and conclude the readings for their vital signs.Here’s Nervotec Founder Jonathan Lau.(SOUNDBITE) (English) NERVOTEC FOUNDER JONATHAN LAU, SAYING:" What we do, is we use the white light that's now reflecting off my face, we apply smart computer visions techniques to first identify the face, then filter this white light into the channels we're interested in, and then deriving the vital signs from those channels."Kajima has been using Nervotec's app at its work sites in Singapore since December 2020 - to complement daily temperature screenings.It’s part of a government-initiated program which provides companies with technology still in their trial stages to help them adjust to the new norms.Kajima’s senior manager Tan Kee Chuan says the Nervotec app is his company’s "first line of defense" against another health crisis.(SOUNDBITE) (English) SENIOR ENGINEER AT KAJIMA, TAN KEE CHUAN, SAYING: "The application acts as a first line of defense by scanning the workers just by using the handphone. It is very convenient provided that the worker adheres to this scanning on a daily basis. So we do have our own temperature monitoring system installed as a second line of defense, to reject all of the personnel who are deemed unfit for work." Similar apps that utilize smartphone cameras to scan users' vital signs do exist…but Nervotec claims that its technology goes one step further by using the data to offer a "diagnosis" of the user's health condition.Professor Chwee Teck Lim is the director of the National University of Singapore’s Institute of Health Innovation and Technology. (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE'S INSTITUTE OF HEALTH INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY, PROFESSOR CHWEE TECK LIM, SAYING: "So what Nervotec is proposing could potentially be a game-changer, they are trying to use the smartphone camera coupled with an AI-driven app, to capture an image of the face then thereafter be able to measure the vital signs. So currently, I think they claim that they can obtain accuracy of down to two beats per minute for heart rate, and also two percentage in terms of oxygen saturation. But it remains to be seen, I think we still have to go through this FDA (Food and Drug Administration) regulatory test before we can determine how accurate this technology is."The app is still under review….but Lau said there is significant interest in the technology. (SOUNDBITE) (English) NERVOTEC FOUNDER JONATHAN LAU, SAYING: "We see the most traction coming from healthcare providers, both private and public, more than the authorities, because the ability to use rPPG and to have constant remote patient monitoring without the need for additional manpower or equipment is really a big problem solver for a lot of healthcare providers, globally."
From ornate to subtle, these beautiful screens double as functional artOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest
Luca Attanasio, 43, Italian military policeman Vittorio Iacovacci, 30, and a Congolese driver, whose name has not been released, were confirmed dead by the Italian government in a statement.They were killed on Monday when their convoy was attacked at about 10:15 a.m. (0815 GMT) in an attempted kidnap near the town of Kanyamahoro, about 25 km (15 miles) north of the regional capital Goma, a spokesman for the Virunga National Park told Reuters.The driver was working for the U.N. World Food Programme, it said in a statement, adding that a number of other passengers were injured.