ansible
ansible's JournalValentina Tereshko, first woman in space brought down to earth by anger in bid to prolong Putin rule
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Valentina Tereshkova was hailed as a hero when she became the first woman in space in 1963.
Now 83, she has became a hate figure for some Russians after this week putting forward a constitutional amendment that could allow President Vladimir Putin to stay in power until 2036.
At least two online petitions have been launched against her, one calling for a street named after her to be renamed and another asking for one of her honorific titles to be revoked.
She has also been widely mocked by critics on social media.
“Tereshkova - the first woman who bravely traveled into cosmic cold and darkness, and then brought the entire country there,” read one message on Twitter reposted by Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
Opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov wrote: “This whole obscene fuss over the constitution was conceived for the sake of one moment ... two new terms for Putin. Tereshkova, who still remembers (Soviet dictator Josef) Stalin well, did not disappoint.”
A household name in Russia, Tereshkova, who holds an array of state honors including a Hero of the Soviet Union medal, became the world’s first female astronaut in June 1963, spending 71 hours in orbit on board a Soviet Vostok spacecraft.
A staunch backer of Putin and the traditional values he has espoused, she has been a lawmaker in the lower chamber of parliament since 2011.
Her amendment, since backed by both houses of parliament, allows Putin to ignore the current constitutional limits and run for president again in 2024, potentially opening the way for him to serve two more six-year terms consecutively.
The moves has been applauded by Putin’s admirers but critics have accused him of plotting to stay in power for life and have blamed Tereshkova.
One petition, that has garnered nearly 8,000 signatures, calls for Tereshkova to be stripped of her title of “honorary citizen” of Tutayev, a town northeast of Moscow near where she was born.
“...Tereshkova actively took part in the show that some people are calling a state coup,” it says, adding she had discredited the honor of the town’s residents.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-putin-lawmaker/first-woman-in-space-brought-down-to-earth-by-anger-over-bid-to-prolong-putin-rule-idUSKBN21021H
Gun sales surge as coronavirus grips US
Source: thehill
Gun sales throughout the country have surged as the coronavirus outbreak grips the U.S. Americans are flocking to gun stores and waiting in long lines as they worry about what’s to come in the next few months with society all but shut down, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.
Gun sales in the states most affected by the virus thus far, such as California, New York and Washington, are particularly on the rise. Consumers reportedly include both first-time buyers worried about the state of society and previous gun owners who are unsettled by the prospect of the government limiting gun purchases during the national emergency.
The increase in gun sales reportedly began several weeks ago, in states including Washington and California, where large numbers of Asian Americans purchased guns out of fear of the anti-Asian bias that has spiked amid the pandemic. But states with high numbers of coronavirus aren’t the only ones where residents are lining up for ammunition, with Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin and Delaware experiencing increased sales and high demand, according to various reports.
Ammo.com reported a 68 percent increase in sales between Feb. 23 and March 4, when compared to the previous 11 days, USA Today reported. Gun control advocates have warned that the many nationwide school closures will lead to children and teenagers being in homes with unsecured guns.
Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/finance/487804-gun-sales-surge-as-coronavirus-grips-us
African Nations Turn the Tables, Imposing Travel Restrictions Against U.S., Europe, and China
AS THE NOVEL coronavirus rages through the world and spreads rapidly in the U.S., Africa is the least-affected continent at the moment, with less than 300 reported cases in roughly half of its 54 countries so far. A number of media outlets have reacted with a confounded tone, surprised that Africa does not have more cases and wondering if the low numbers are due to a lack of testing.
Health officials say that the main reason the continent has thus far been spared major outbreaks is due to the infrastructure set up during the Ebola epidemic that is still in place, and lower overall international air travel rates. At the same time, they acknowledge that the picture is not all sunny — the virus in some countries is likely spreading unchecked. But in Nigeria, the continent’s largest country by population, investments in lab capacity and coordination with the World Health Organization (WHO) for testing have paid dividends. “Over the last three years, we have strengthened capacity at our National Reference Laboratory to provide molecular diagnosis for all epidemic prone diseases and highly infectious pathogens,” Chikwe Ihekweazu, the director of Nigeria’s Center for Disease Control, told The Conversation.
The pandemic is exposing major flaws in higher income countries’ health systems and turning the tables on decades of travel restrictions targeting Africans. When West Africa suffered from the Ebola crisis from 2014-2016, the region was often painted as a weak link in the global health system, and many airlines cut flights to Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Four years later, Africa is at risk of contamination primarily from Europe, China, and the U.S. Besides Egypt, nearly all the continent’s confirmed cases have come from travelers from European or east Asian countries, though that looks likely to change soon as cases rise rapidly across the continent and community transmission becomes more likely.
In a dramatic shift in fortunes, African countries — whose citizens often have to prove their health status to even get a visa to travel to Europe — have moved swiftly to control arrivals from European countries. Ghana and Kenya announced new measures prohibiting travelers from countries affected by Covid-19, the first two African nations to put in place blanket travel bans, while Senegal and Kenya also announced school closures. The Democratic Republic of Congo imposed quarantine measures on travelers from Italy, France, China and Germany. After restricting travelers from high-risk countries to quarantine, Mauritania deported 15 Italian tourists and Tunisia deported 30 other Italians for violating theirs. Rwanda, Uganda, Mali, and others have imposed similar quarantine measure for European travelers, while across the continent, passengers are screened for their temperature at international airports. A Cameroonian news outlet reported higher arrivals from Italy due to people trying escape their coronavirus-infected country.
Dr. Craig Spencer, the American doctor who contracted the Ebola virus while providing emergency medical relief in Guinea in 2014, agrees the Ebola experience left many African countries better prepared. “There’s been a substantial increase in both the human resource capacity, the financial investment, and really, the logistical strengthening of public health and epidemic response capacity in sub-Saharan Africa,” Dr. Spencer, who is the Director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, told The Intercept.
https://theintercept.com/2020/03/15/african-nations-turn-the-tables-imposing-travel-restrictions-against-u-s-europe-and-china-to-stave-off-coronavirus/
Trump pitched 0% payroll tax rate for the rest of the year, White House official says
President Donald Trump, in a meeting with Republican lawmakers Tuesday on Capitol Hill, pitched a 0% payroll tax rate for employers and employees that would last through the rest of this year, a White House official told CNBC.
There was also discussion of making the payroll tax rollback permanent, said the official, who declined to be named. Payroll taxes are used to fund Medicare and Social Security. When asked about the potential cost of a payroll tax cut, the official pushed back and asked why there is always a focus on the cost of tax cuts.
The development comes as Trump and the White House try to put together an economic stimulus plan to counteract the impact from the widening coronavirus outbreak. After a 2,000-point drop by the Dow Jones Industrial Average on Monday, the Dow bounced back somewhat Tuesday, rising 1,000 points late in the trading session.
Earlier Tuesday, CNBC reported that the White House was not ready to roll out a specific plan of action on the economy while the deadly coronavirus spreads. Trump stunned people in the White House on Monday, according to officials, when he said that he would announce economic policy proposals at a news conference Tuesday.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/10/trump-pitched-0percent-payroll-tax-rate-for-the-rest-of-this-year-white-house-officials-say.html
London lab paying people 3500 ($4500) to be infected with #Covid_19 and isolated for 2 weeks
Damn, I'm poor enough to seriously do this if this was in the US. Would you?
It sounds tempting: a payment of £3,500 to spend two weeks relaxing in front of the television, playing video games or catching up on some reading. There is a catch, however — you will be infected with a coronavirus and banned from physical contact with the outside world.
As part of a global experiment, up to 24 people at a time will be paid to be infected with a coronavirus in a $2bn (£1.53bn) race to find a vaccine for Covid-19.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-vaccine-race-volunteers-to-be-infected-in-the-uk-ck0s72x8k
'Preppers' have endured years of mockery. Coronavirus fears have given them a booming self-survival
(CNN)Do you have your "bug-out bag" (BOB) ready for when the "s*** hits the fan" (SHTF), or will you "bug in" for "the end of the world as we know it" (TEOTWAWKI)?
This jargon is well understood within niche "prepper" communities, whose members spend their lives preparing for impending Armageddon -- natural disasters, pandemics or financial collapse.
And the ideas that drive this culture are becoming increasingly mainstream as coronavirus panic sees people across the world stockpiling rations, sourcing gas masks and self-isolating at home.
Now, "civilians" are turning to expert preppers in droves for help in getting ready for the worst.
Nander Knobben, who runs an online prepper store from the Netherlands, told CNN he helps people "to become less dependent on the external things, like the government."
Knobben has had "orders flying in" since the coronavirus outbreak began. He sold almost as many masks, rations, radios and water filters in February as he did in six months last year, and people he hasn't spoken to in years have been messaging him to request supplies.
At home, the 29-year-old has rations for two or three months, about 84 liters of water, blankets, candles, live chickens, spare oil for his car, a first-aid kit and a BOB (or portable survival kit) packed with a flashlight and freeze-dried food.
"If you prep it now and have food in the house for a month and it isn't the coronavirus, maybe in a few years you'll need it for another scenario, so it's never a bad idea to take some precautions," he said. "I don't want to be dependent on anybody, I want to take care of myself.
"You store it in your house and then you just get on with living your life."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/europe/coronavirus-preppers-business-europe-gbr-intl/index.html
Mom of missing kids invokes her 5th amendment right against self-incrimination
(NEWSER) – Lori Vallow, the mother of two Idaho children missing since September, was extradited from Hawaii to Idaho on a red-eye flight arriving Thursday, CBS News reports. On Wednesday, before that flight took off, Vallow invoked her fifth amendment right against self-incrimination, the Daily Beast reports. Her lawyer said Vallow should not be questioned on the trip to Idaho; the judge responded that once Vallow is in the custody of Idaho officials, the Hawaii court has no jurisdiction. "Yes, but I want to make a record of that so her Idaho attorney can suppress any statements they may try to elicit," Vallow's attorney said. An Idaho team was in Hawaii to take Vallow back to Idaho, where she will appear before a judge Friday.
She is facing charges including two counts of felony abandonment in the disappearance of her children Tylee Ryan, 17, and Joshua "JJ" Vallow, 7. Earlier this week the children's stepfather, Vallow's fifth husband Chad Daybell, insisted to ABC News that "the kids are safe." That statement came days after Daybell spoke publicly on the case for the first time last week; during that initial statement, he had said he "just can't comment" on where the children were or how they were doing. Vallow's attorney has said in the past that the reason she failed to produce them when a court ordered her to do so was fears they would be put into foster care. Vallow's adult niece has also been questioned in the convoluted case, and attorneys for her say she's now cooperating with FBI investigators and has turned over her computer.)
https://www.newser.com/story/287802/mom-of-missing-kids-pleads-the-5th.html
UK government plans to ban the sale of diesel and gasoline cars by 2035
The U.K. government wants to end the sale of new diesel and petrol (gasoline) cars by the year 2035.
The plans, which were announced Tuesday and are subject to consultation, also include hybrid vehicles. U.K. authorities had previously said the sale of new petrol and diesel vans and cars would end in 2040.
Grant Shapps, the U.K.’s transport secretary, said that the government’s £1.5 billion ($1.95 billion) strategy to “make owning an electric vehicle as easy as possible” was working, claiming that in 2019 a “fully electric car was sold every 15 minutes.”
“We want to go further than ever before,” Shapps added. “That’s why we are bringing forward our already ambitious target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to tackle climate change and reduce emissions.”
In practice, ending the sale of petrol, diesel or hybrid cars or vans would leave consumers with a choice between electric and hydrogen vehicles.
“Drivers support measures to clean up air quality and reduce CO2 emissions but these stretched targets are incredibly challenging,” Edmund King, the president of driving association the AA, said in a statement issued in response to the government’s new target.
“We must question whether we will have a sufficient supply of a full cross section of zero emissions vehicles in less than fifteen years,” King added.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/04/uk-government-plans-to-ban-sale-of-diesel-and-gasoline-cars-by-2035.html
Can you imagine any other presidential candidate shopping at Ross?
I know many people who would look down at you for even shopping here.
Overbudget, behind schedule, California bullet train cost rises another billion
SACRAMENTO, Calif (AP) The California High-Speed Rail Authority on Wednesday bumped its overall cost estimate for completing the rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles to $80.3 billion, blaming inflationary increases and better cost projections for a $1.3 billion boost that still is smaller than in previous years.
After years of embarrassing cost overruns and delays, managers of California's ambitious bullet-train project insisted that they are on pace to meet a preliminary 2022 federal deadline for laying track along the first segment in the Central Valley.
But that will use up virtually all the money the project has available.
https://www.kron4.com/news/california/california-bullet-train-cost-rises-by-another-1-billion/
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