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SF – ANNOUNCEMENTS Next Phase of Reopening to Begin on Monday, September 14

(Photo shared from Radio.com website)

Mayor London Breed, Dr. Grant Colfax, Director of Health, and Assessor-Recorder Carmen Chu, co-Chair of the City’s Economic Recovery Task Force, announced that San Francisco is moving forward with additional reopening on Monday, Sept. 14, 2020. In addition to the previously announced businesses and activities planned for mid-September, indoor personal services and indoor gyms will be permitted to reopen next week with limited capacity. Only those services where face coverings can be worn at all times by everyone involved will reopen at this time.

Businesses, all with limited capacity

  • Hair salons and barbershops, indoors
  • Nail salons, indoors
  • Massage establishments, indoors
  • Tattoos and piercings, indoors
  • Gyms and fitness centers, indoors
  • One-on-one personal training, indoors
  • Drive-in movies, outdoors
  • Family entertainment, outdoors (like mini-golf and batting cages, but does not include playgrounds)
  • Tour buses and boats
  • Hotels and short-term rentals, expanded for tourists

NOTICE OF NOMINEES FOR PUBLIC OFFICE CITY OF WOODSIDE, CALIFORNIA

TOWN OF WOODSIDE
2955 WOODSIDE ROAD
WOODSIDE, CA 94062

NOTICE OF NOMINEES FOR PUBLIC OFFICE
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that the following individuals have been nominated for the designated positions to be filled in the General Municipal Election to be held in Town of Woodside on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.
District 1
Jennifer R. Wall – Board Member
District 3
Chris Shaw Councilor – Council Member
District 5
John R. Carvell – Board Member
District 7
Ned Fluet – Board Member
11/9/20
CNS-3395144 #
THE REPORTER

CITY OF SAN CARLOS NOTICE OF NOMINEES FOR PUBLIC OFFICE

YOU HEREBY GIVE NOTICE, pursuant to California Election Code 12110, of nominees for public office. The following individuals have been nominated for the positions designated to be filled in the General Municipal Election to be held in the City of San Carlos on Tuesday, November 3, 2020.

For City Council Member, vote for no more than two:

JT Eden

David B. Tom

John dugan

Ron collins

For City Treasurer, vote for no more than one:

Inge Tiegel Doherty

Crystal Mui, City Secretary

Posted & Fixed: Sep 11, 2020

11/9/20

CNS-3394155 #

THE REPORTER

Lila Downs at Fridays at Five’s SF Jazz Fest

Compiled by the El Reportero‘s staff

 

Mexican-American singer and songwriter Lila Downs is a GRAMMY winner and one of the most celebrated artists of her generation.

A native of Oaxaca, she’s built a career bridging cultures and languages, both as a musician and social activist for humanitarian causes. With guidance from her vocalist mother and inspiration from Mexican singing greats Chavela Vargas and Lucha Villa balanced by the gamut of American music she heard in the States, Downs made her major label debut with 1999’s jazz-informed La Sandunga, and her contributions to the 2002 Frida Kahlo biopic Frida elevated her status to that of a major international star.

She’s won a GRAMMY and multiple Latin GRAMMYs, including a nod for her newest Sony Music album, Salón, Lágrimas y Deseo (Salon, Tears and Desire). This performance, filmed in May 2019, is a celebration of that release.

On Oct. 30.

The coronavirus separates us, threatening the fabric of community – but music connects, which is why we’ve launched Fridays at Five. It’s what we need right now: a new series of weekly pre-recorded concerts that aspire to connect you – to music, to musicians, to the warm and unique feeling of experiencing live music at the SFJAZZ Center.

For just $5 a month ($60 annually), you can become a Member and tune in each Friday from 5–6 PM PT (8–9 PM ET) for the latest concert. Make it a regular date. Bring a glass of wine and cozy up – we think you will discover that digital technology can reveal new dimensions of musical performance. Fridays at Five is not your typical video concert series; it is designed to take you inside the music.

Starting at just $5 a month ($60 annually), you can sign up for or gift a digital membership and tune in with friends each Friday at 5 p.m. (PT) for the latest concert. Proceeds will help the SFJAZZ team prepare to reopen the SFJAZZ Center and bring you the same breadth of live concert and educational programming you’re used to. The music will outlive the virus.

Upcoming Artists 
Sept. 11 – Red Baraat
Sept. 18 – Wayne Shorter Celebration Pt. 5
w/ Wayne Shorter, Danilo Pérez, John Patitucci, & Terri Lyne Carrington
SEP 25 John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: A 50th Anniversary Celebration
w/ Ravi Coltrane, Joe Lovano, Geri Allen, Drew Gress, & Ralph Peterson Jr.
Oct 2 – Bobi Céspedes
Oct 9Thelonious Monk Birthday Celebration
w/ Joanne Brackeen, Kris Davis, & Helen Sung
Oct 16Mary Stallings & Bill Charlap Trio Oct 3 Taj Mahal Quartet

 

Think Big, Dream Big, Believe Big, and the results will be BIG!

Eleven days to sign up for the 11th annual Time to Wonder!

Dream Big 2020 will be the same fabulous event, with a twist!

We invite our entire large family of members, friends, patrons, supporters, parents, and children to join us for our first ever virtual gala.

– Interact with the Children’s Museum with never before seen footage.

– Learn about new exhibits from Collette Michaud, Founder & CEO.

– Experience first-hand stories from members on the valuable impact the Children’s Museum.

Peruse and bid on auction lots gathered locally; from wine to books, there is something for everyone. Come celebrate the wonder of the Children’s Museum.

Hear transformative stories, see the joy, and experience the life-changing moments. Join us for the free LIVE EVENT. Stories, celebrations, and plans for the future.

Children’s Museum of Sonoma County, On Sept. 13, 2020, 4:30 p.m., 1835 West Steele Lane Santa Rosa, California 95403.

Maria Becerra joins TINI & Lola Indigo for new music project

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reported by Griselda Flores

Shared from Billboard

 

Rising Argentine singer-songwriter Maria Becerra recruited compatriot TINI and up-and-coming Spanish artist Lola Indigo for her new “High” remix.

Premiering exclusively on Billboard today (Sept. 3), the eclectic, Latin trap-leaning remix finds the three leading ladies trading verses of heartbreak and despair. The minimalist and colorful music video, premiering along with the girl-power remix, was directed by Julian Levy. Becerra’s original “High” music video, released in December, has raked in more than 47 million views on YouTube.

Becerra, a leading voice in Argentina’s urban pop movement, was recently signed to 300 Entertainment, becoming the indie label’s first Latin signee. In a previous interview with Billboard, the rising star described her sound as a fusion of R&B, funk and trap.

 

The set marks the country music band’s first full-length foray into its Hispanic roots

The Mavericks debut at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Latin Pop Albums chart (dated Sept. 5) with En Español. The band concurrently earns its first top 10 on the all-genre Top Latin Albums chart, where the set bows at No. 8. The new album marks the first visit to the Latin album charts by the group, which has notched five top 10 efforts on the Top Country Albums chart dating back to 1994.

“This is an amazing feeling,” Raul Malo, The Mavericks’ lead singer, tells Billboard. “To wake up and receive a text from our manager that we have a No. 1 record. That’s not in the cards, this is beyond us. But you feel good about the work because you’ve put a lot of effort, a lot of love and time into it, so you make sure that you do everything in your power to propel it.” 

En Español bows with 5,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 27, according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data. Most of the set’s opening sum is attributed to album sales.

 

Rumba and national identity in Cuba at Timbalaye 2020

RONE – Rumba as an essential factor of national identity will be the main theme of the 12th edition of the festival dedicated to this musical genre organized in Cuba by Timbalaye, its main directors highlighted in Rome on Friday.

An international colloquium, concerts, performance of folkloric projects and interviews to legendary ‘rumberos’ (rumba performers) are part of the agenda of ‘Timbalaye-Festival ‘Ruta de la Rumba (Rumba Route),’ which took place virtually from August 27 to 30, in tune with the circumstances generated by Covid-19.

Ulises Mora and Irma Castillo, president and vice president, respectively, of ‘Timbalaye,’ an international promoter of Cuban culture, offered details about the festival in which the participated from Rome due to the movement limitations imposed by the pandemic.

Once again, Timbalaye in neighborhoods interacted with people, even at a distance, especially in the family environment where staying is greater than usual due to the social distancing measures implemented to protect themselves and protect others, Mora stated.

Castillo, Ulises’ partner in life and in promoting Cuba’s culture as folkloric dance teachers in Italy, underlined Timbalaye’s contribution to recognize rumba as UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2015.

Ron Paul: Coronavirus is the New ‘Terrorism’

Politicians will never resist the temptation to use crises as excuses to gain more power

 

by Ron Paul

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed the next multi-trillion dollar “coronavirus relief” spending bill that will support testing, tracing, treatment, isolation, and mask policies that have been part of a “national strategic plan” she has been advocating. The Trump administration is not opposing Pelosi’s plan on principle. Instead, it is haggling over the price.

But, even if the strategic plan could be implemented at little or no monetary cost, it would still impose an unacceptable cost in lost liberty.

Pelosi’s plan will lead to either a federal mask mandate or federal funding of state and local mask mandate enforcement. Those who resist wearing masks could likely be reported to the authorities by government-funded mask monitors. We can label this the “Stasi” approach to health policy, after the infamous East German secret police force.

Contact tracing could lead to forcing individuals to download a tracing app. The app would record where an individual goes and alert authorities that an individual has been near someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.

The strategic plan could eventually include Bill Gates’ and Anthony Fauci’s suggestion that individuals receive “digital certificates” indicating they are vaccinated for or immune to coronavirus. A certificate would be required before an individual can go to work, to school, or even to the grocery store. The need to demonstrate vaccination for or immunity to coronavirus in order to resume normal life would cause many people to “voluntarily” receive a potentially dangerous coronavirus vaccine.

The Trump administration has already spent billions of dollars to support efforts of companies to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Policymakers have stated that once a vaccine is developed it will be rushed into production and onto the market. Supporters of expediting production and use of a vaccine should remember the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle. The swine flu vaccine was rushed into production in response to political pressure to “do something.” The result was a vaccine that was more of a danger than the flu.

Unfortunately, those who raise legitimate concerns regarding the safety of vaccines are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” This is the equivalent of stating that anyone who dares criticize our interventionist foreign policy “hates freedom” and is probably a “terrorist sympathizer.”

The coronavirus panic has given new life to the push for a unique patient identifier. The unique patient identifier was authorized in 1996, but appropriations bills since 1998 have contained a provision forbidding the federal government from developing and implementing the identifier. Unfortunately, two weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the ban. The unique patient identifier would aid government efforts to track and vaccinate every American, as well as to infringe in other ways on liberty in the name of “health.”

Politicians and bureaucrats cannot eliminate a virus any more than they can eliminate terrorism. What they can do is use terrorism, a virus, and other real, exaggerated, or manufactured crises to expand their power at the expense of our liberty.

Politicians will never resist the temptation to use crises as excuses to gain more power. Therefore, it is up to those of us who know the truth to spread the message of liberty and grow the liberty movement, A strong liberty movement is the only thing that can force the politicians to stop stealing our liberty while promising phantom security from terrorists and viruses.

This article first appeared at RonPaulInstitute.org.

The birth of the cashless society

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

 

Dear readers:

 

Once in while people come to me and ask me if I know anything about bit coins – digital money. But the truth is, deep inside me, I don’t like it, because it is the way that the government will control every penny you make, and with a click on the keyboard, can take away all the money you have if it was necessary – for whatever reasons.

Now you can save you ‘dirty, contaminated’ paper dollars hidden under your mattress and taken to whatever destination you choose. I don’t think is good for humanity, is not good for anyone, except the elite. In the following article, investigative journalist, James Corbett, explains it so well, that I bet you will never venture to accept it, but will resist it as much as you possible can. – Marvin Ramírez

 

by James Corbett

 

August 29, 2020 – As we all know by now, the entire corona crisis was and is an excuse for The Great Reset. And, as anyone who has followed the financial prognostication space for the past decade knows, “the great reset” has been used nearly interchangeably with “the global currency reset” to describe the collapse of the old dollar-centric Bretton Woods system and the rise of a new international monetary order.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the post-corona Great Reset being hyped by the World Economic Forum and their globalist fellow travelers is itself predicated on a global currency reset. But this global currency reset has a distinctly 21st-century technocratic flavor.

The form that this currency reset is taking reveals itself in the latest headlines from the world of central banking:

U.S. Moves Closer To Digital Dollar“.

Bank of England Governor Signals Central Bank Digital Currency is Coming

China To Begin Major Expansion Of Digital Currency Testing

Yes, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the central banksters are using “The Great Reset” as a smokescreen to smuggle through one of their most cherished fantasies: the cashless society. Soon, central banks will be issuing national digital currencies and tracking every single transaction in the economy in real time.

And if you were able to read that last paragraph without feeling a chill run down your spine, then you need to get up to speed on what the cashless society entails and why it must be resisted with every last fiber of our being.

First, the specifics.

The “digital dollar” that the US senate banking committee is holding hearings about is the same digital dollar proposal that I talked about in my podcast on The Greatest Depression this past March. As you’ll recall, the Digital Dollar Project is being promoted by the World Economic Forum (surprise, surprise) and sold to the public via the old Cold War trick of “the  Chinese are doing it, so we have to, too!”

Specifically, as the globalist crony insiders explained in their Wall Street Journal op ed on the idea last year:

“We propose a digital dollar—a government-sanctioned blockchain protocol, created and maintained by an independent nongovernmental group but administered by banks and other trusted payment organizations. Cash brought into the system would be exchanged for digital U.S. dollars on a blockchain, with the cash lodged in special escrow accounts maintained by the Federal Reserve.”

In other words, the fine folks over at the Fed would be the invisible counter-party watching lovingly over the digital money system. What could possibly go wrong?

The digital dollar being proposed is a type of “Central Bank Digital Currency” (CBDC), which the Bank for International Settlements (aka the central bank of central banks) was writing about back in 2017. In fact, the idea goes back even further, to a proposed Fed-run central bank cryptocurrency called Fedcoin (I kid you not).

As I explained last year, the point of these “central bank digital currencies” is to take advantage of The Bitcoin Psyop by presenting the cashless society as the cool, hip new spin on that bitcoin/crypto thing all the cool kids are talking about. Of course, this “Fedcoin” concept utterly subverts the very core impetus for bitcoin and cryptocurrency right off the bat, a point highlighted and underlined in the original “Fedcoin” proposal: “It (Fedcoin) reintroduces one central point of control to the monetary system by granting a central bank the ability to set the supply of tokens on a Fedcoin blockchain.”

In other words: “Hey guys, you know that idea for making central banks obsolete by taking the money creation power completely out of their hands and bypassing all intermediaries in the banking system? Well, this is exactly like that, except we’re going to put all the power over this system in the hands of the central bank.” Sadly, few in the public will even be able to see the blatant contradiction.

And, given that this is now being portrayed as some sort of monetary arms race with those dastardly Chinese and their proposed digital yuan, you can bet that a good portion of the public will embrace this new currency with open arms.

As researcher Steven Guinness has been meticulously documenting at his blog over the last several months, this introduction of central bank digital currencies in England and elsewhere is being fast-tracked by the Bank for International Settlements on the back of the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” agenda and is slated to be ready by 2025. The current scamdemic pandemonium only further helps to prepare the public to get ready to trade in their filthy, virus-laden cash for healthy virtual Fedcoins.

But still, this may just seem like a technological upgrade to our payment systems. People increasingly pay with cards or payment apps anyway, so what difference does it make if we eliminate cash altogether?

I have done a lot of work on the cashless society over the years, but it’s one of those concepts that is so large and so difficult to envision in its entirety that it’s worth revisiting here. To get a sense of how the cashless society is not about payment convenience but about control over every aspect of your lives, watch this short video that the ACLU put out a decade and a half ago:

This video wasn’t even meant to warn about the cashless society. The hapless victim of this pizza transaction ends up being forced to pay in cash because his credit card is maxed out. But nonetheless, this is the vision of the cashless society in a nutshell. In the cashless society, your entire payment history and all of the information that is tied into that history will be plainly visible to those who have access to it. And if the government issues a decree about what you are or are not able to purchase, that decree will be enforced at the point of sale. At that point, freedom will only be found in the counter-economy.

If you want to get a handle on what such a future will look like, imagine the following scenario:

You are out for a walk late at night. You come to a red light, but there is no one around. You hesitate a moment, double-check that there is really no one in sight and then dash across the intersection. In the two seconds it takes you to cross the road, a large LED screen above the street lights up with your picture and your name. Two seconds after that you feel a buzz in your pocket. Taking out your phone you find a message from your bank informing you that you have been fined for jaywalking and that your social credit score has been reduced.

The next day, you find yourself at the airport, preparing to board a flight to visit your family on the other side of the country. When you go to check in you receive a message that your social credit score is too low and you will not be allowed to board the plane. Enraged, you curse the airline, the government’s social credit system, its jaywalking laws, and even the government itself.

Unbeknownst to you, someone has recorded your outburst and uploads it to social media, where you are quickly identified. The police come to your home the next day and take you downtown where you are shackled in a chair and made to recant your statements about the government.

Sound like something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel? Well, it’s not. It’s just a mundane portrayal of everyday life in current day China.

Facial recognition deployed to monitor the streets and automatically issue fines for jaywalking and other minor infractions? Check.

Social credit scores tied in to your ability to board public transportation or access government services? Check.

Police hauling people in for angrily ranting about the government and shackling them until they recant? Check.

The cashless society is about so much more than just how we pay for things at the store. Tied into a system of persistent technological surveillance, it represents the ultimate control over our lives. Can there be any doubt as to why the World Economic Forum and the Bank for International Settlements are working in concert with the central banks of the world and organizations like the Bill Gates-co-founded Better Than Cash Alliance to pave the way for this nightmare to become a reality.

The Birth of the Cashless Society — Hive

Hey, gordo, watch those M&Ms

Law cracks down (again) on unhealthy snacks. New labeling rules follow ban on salt shakers, soft drink tax

 

by Carlisle Johnson

 

“Fat-shaming” is a 21st century generational word. In 2013, the United Nations, the world’s biggest NGO, crossed into the Health Maintenance Organization universe by fat-shaming the entire nation of Mexico.

Naming it the world’s fattest nation, knocking the United States off its No. 1 perch as the world’s fattest with a seismic thud, the UN ignited a national reaction from the Rio Grande to the Rio Suchiate, Mexico’s northern and southern borders, respectively.

Since 2013 the Mexican government, with a notable lack of success, has crusaded to change that image if not that reality.

The word “fat” is by nature subjective. Few would call Dutch painter Reubens’ models fat, most would prefer voluptuous. Although history is silent on the issue, it is unlikely that any of King Henry VIII’s surviving wives used the 16th century F-word in his presence.

Yet for most of the 20th century many newspapers’ comic pages carried a strip called simply Gordo, created by a Mexican American. Judging by its widespread use, gordo, or fat, is still a common, almost affectionate nickname in Mexico, the government’s best efforts notwithstanding.

Those efforts included banning salt shakers on restaurant tables, a measure that lasted about 30 days and may have generated a never-caught-on Ranchero ballad called Where Have All the Salt Shakers Gone?

Undeterred, the government escalated the battle, slapping a special tax on soft drinks. “How’d that work out?” I asked Bruno (not a nickname), my local Walmart manager. “Great,” he said, “We sold out completely of soft drinks,” presumably thanks to canny Mexican shoppers racing to beat the tax.

The Mexican government has continued on the same course.

With effect October 1, the Mexican government has dropped the Big One, employing the Nuclear Option and turning America’s favorite M&Ms and Mexico’s favorite Mamuts (Mammoths) into collectors’ treasures, if not fossils.

Uncatchily-named NOM-051, legislation to fat-shame the packaged food industry and its customers, passed the Mexican Congress by a hefty —anything but a Weight Watchers — margin.

Accordingly, as of October 1 the packaging in which M&Ms and Mamuts are sold will be illegal. In a country where guns are generally illegal and selling stolen or smuggled gasoline is universally illegal, both iconic sweets feloniously use caricatures and mouth-watering words to lure Mexico’s Hansel and Gretels into a witch’s calorie cage.

How it will work out this time around is speculative. I foresee consumers stripping the shelves of their favorite packaged foods, cartels adding M&Ms and Mamuts to their product lines, and tourists from abroad being strip searched by zealous customs officials, but I hope the movement stops short of turning Mexico into the world’s thinnest nation: North Korea.

(Carlisle Johnson is a frequent contributor to Mexico News Daily. He writes from his home in Guatemala.)

Lawyers for ex-cartel boss ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán file appeal

Jury misconduct, isolation from his attorneys cited as grounds

 

by Mexico News Daily

 

Lawyers for Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán have filed a second appeal to overturn his conviction and sentence of life plus 30 years handed down last year after he was found guilty of drug trafficking, money laundering, homicide, kidnapping and other charges.

The 245-page appeal was filed with the New York Second Circuit Court of Appeals late Friday night. “Chapo Guzmán’s prosecution was marred by rampant excess and overreach, both governmental and judicial,” lead attorney Marc Fernich wrote in the motion.

Last summer lawyers for the imprisoned Sinaloa Cartel leader filed an initial appeal the day after his sentence was handed down, arguing that a member of the jury told Vice News that several jurors regularly followed the case on social media during the trial in violation of the judge’s orders.

The appeal was denied.

“This request is the textbook definition of a fishing expedition, rather than clear, strong, substantial and incontrovertible evidence that a specific, nonspeculative impropriety has occurred,’” the judge wrote at the time.

Mariel Colón Miró, a 27-year-old attorney who is part of Guzmán’s legal team, hopes the latest motion will result in a new trial for the former cartel kingpin. “We are very optimistic that something positive will come out of this,” she told reporters, noting that the process could take from two to five years.

Guzmán, 63, is serving out his sentence in Florence, Colorado’s “Supermax” prison, the most secure penal institution in the country and known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

The new appeal repeats the allegations of jury misconduct and also argues that because Guzmán was maintained in total isolation following his extradition to the United States in January 2017 he was prevented from collaborating with his lawyers on his defense before and during his trial.

“These measures of total confinement, extreme torture even when his innocence had to be presumed (before his conviction) violated his fifth and sixth amendments,” Colón said.

The attorney, who joined the defense team right after passing the bar exam, says her last visit with her client was in March before visits to the prison was banned due to the coronavirus. She said solitary confinement has left him anxious and depressed.

“He’s even more alone now after Covid-19,” Colón told CNN last month. “They completely canceled all visits, legal and social. He was allowed three hours a week of outdoor exercise but that has also been suspended in order to limit his contact with the guards, so of course this has been hard, or harder on him and it has affected Mr. Guzmán emotionally and psychologically in my opinion.”

Drug Enforcement Administration special agent Ray Donovan, who spent years investigating the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel, had little sympathy for the drug lord, who he said was convicted on a “mountain” of evidence.

“Thousands of people died or were ordered killed because of the Sinaloa Cartel. So yeah, he doesn’t leave his cell. It is boring. It’s monotonous. It’s a daily routine. It is very sad but here’s the difference. He’s alive.”

Source: El Universal (sp), CNN (en)

 

Despite an uptick, Health Ministry sees 6-week downward trend in virus cases

New data shows that deaths overall were up 59 percent in 24 states between March and August

New coronavirus case numbers declined or remained stable for six consecutive weeks between mid-July and late August, Deputy Health Minister Hugo López-Gatell said Sunday.

He told the Health Ministry’s coronavirus press briefing that new case numbers have generally trended downwards since epidemiological week 30, which ran from July 19 to 25.

Between weeks 33 – August 9 to 15 – and 34, “there wasn’t a reduction but at least there wasn’t an increase,” he said.

López-Gatell noted Friday that the reduction in new case numbers had stalled between weeks 33 and 34 and attributed the “disconcerting” leveling off to the further reopening of the economy.

The deputy minister told reporters Sunday that data currently shows that new case numbers declined 15 percent between weeks 34 and 35, which concluded on Aug. 29.

However, a decline of that size is unlikely to be maintained because the Health Ministry is still registering coronavirus data for the latter week.

“This number won’t remain 15 percent, it might be 14, 13 or 12; we can’t predict by how much it will reduced,” López-Gatell said, adding that final data might show that case numbers actually plateaued between weeks 34 and 35.

“But it’s important to have the expectation that [new case numbers] won’t rise,” he said.

López-Gatell also said that the positivity rate – the percentage of Covid-19 tests that come back positive – declined continuously in recent weeks.

The positivity rate reached 57 percent in epidemiological week 29 – July 12 to 18 – but by week 35 it had declined to 40 percent, he said.

Mexico’s positivity rate is still very high compared to most other countries because testing is mainly targeted at people with serious coronavirus-like symptoms.

Source: Reforma (sp), El Universal (sp).

Assange is back to the dock, extradition trial resumed

by the El Reportero’s wire services

 

London, Sept. 7 – WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is back to the dock on Monday at the London Criminal Court as the trial to determine whether he will be extradited to the United States was resumed.

As happened before, during the first part of the trial in February, Assange is in a glass cubicle at a side of the courtroom, protected by two security guards and apart from the defense team.

The Australian journalist, whom the United States wants to try for leaking thousands of secret files from US diplomacy and the military on WikiLeaks, only spoke when Judge Vanessa Baraitser, in charge of ruling on his extradition, asked him to confirm his identity.

At the beginning of the trial, one of Assange’s defense attorneys, Edward Fitzgerald, told the judge that it was the first time he had seen his client over the last six months.

The extradition hearing must last at least three weeks, and the losing party can appeal the sentence.

If Assange is handed over to US justice, he might be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

Brazilians defend life on Independence Day

BRASILIA, Sept. 7 – Popular, social and union movements will hold rallies throughout Brazil as part of the so-called Cry of the Excluded, following the Independence Day celebrations on Monday, under the slogan ‘Life in first place.’

According to a note published by the Brazilian Labor Union (CUT), the request for ‘work, land, shelter and participation’ also accompanies that phrase.

The protests will also raise flags against the project of wage and social austerity by the government of Jair Bolsonaro and the lack of a national command to fight Covid-19 that has so far claimed about 127,000 deaths and more than four million cases in the country.

The event, organized by the Popular Movement Organization and supported by CUT Sao Paulo, will now be held at Plaza Oswaldo Cruz.

Since 1995, the Cry of the Excluded has been mobilizing citizens across Brazil on September 7 as a counterpoint to that of Independence.

Brazil proclaimed its emancipation from Portugal on September 7, 1822. Prince of Portugal, Pedro I of Brazil, liberator and father of the Brazilian nation, announced the Cry of Independence on the banks of the Ipiranga River, in Sao Paulo.