British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was briefly left lost for words on Monday when he lost his place in notes during a speech before regaling business leaders with an anecdote about his recent visit to a Peppa Pig theme park. Searching through his notes, Johnson sighed, said "blast it" and repeatedly muttered "forgive me" as he briefly interrupted his speech to the Confederation of British Industry in Port of Tyne, northern England. He recovered, talking about technology "unicorns" and then a visit to Peppa Pig World, a park based on the children's animated TV show about an exuberant pink pig and her friends and family. "Yesterday I went, as we all must, to Peppa Pig World," Johnson told the business executives. "I loved it. Peppa Pig World is very much my kind of place: it has very safe streets, discipline in schools." Johnson asked the audience of business executives who had been to the theme park in Hampshire, southern England, which says it is the world's largest Peppa Pig World and "perfect for toddlers". "I am surprised you haven't been there," Johnson said to those executives who had not visited the park, which includes various rides for young fans of Peppa. "Who would have believed that a pig that looks like a hairdryer or possibly a Picasso-like hairdryer, a pig that was rejected by the BBC, would now be exported to 180 countries with theme parks both in America and China?"
In the speech, Johnson, who also performed an impression of a car, told business leaders about what he terms the green industrial revolution. He also said the job of government should sometimes be to "get out of your hair" and ensure less regulation and taxation. Johnson was unabashed when reporters asked him about the speech and said he had made the points he had wanted. "I think that people got the vast majority of the points I wanted to make," Johnson said. "I thought it went over well." Johnson has had a difficult couple of weeks, being criticised for his handling of a "sleaze" crisis over lawmakers (MPs) being paid for second jobs outside parliament, and accused of policy reversals on high-speed rail and social care plans. read more "Tory (Conservative) MPs were worried last week that No 10 was losing its grip - not sure any of them will feel better if they were watching this morning's speech," the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said on Twitter. - Reuters
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JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon skipped Hong Kong’s stringent quarantine in his first visit to Asia in two and a half years, saying the restrictions were making it harder for the Wall Street bank to retain talent.Dimon arrived in Hong Kong on Monday for a 32-hour visit after being granted an exemption from the city’s Covid rules, which can impose as many as three weeks in hotel quarantine.
- Bloomberg How did radical, even violent, extremism infiltrate the ranks of police departments across the country?Now, an investigative report Friday by those same reporters reveals what many have long suspected: Active-duty police officers in some of our country’s largest departments are members of the Oath Keepers, which is also now under increased scrutiny for some members’ roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. At least 18 Oath Keepers associates, including the head of the militia organization, have been charged in the Capitol assault.
The Chicago Police Department was found to have 13 active employees on the Oath Keepers membership list. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department had at least three active-duty deputies. And at least two active NYPD officers appeared on the list. The investigative work by this joint team of journalists to identify current cops in specific departments raises two questions about radicalization in the ranks: How did we get here, and what do we do about it? The concern about potential violent extremism among police officers extends well beyond the Oath Keepers membership roster. This isn’t the first time that credible accusations of radicalization have been made against the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Two recent reports from Loyola Law School and the RAND Corp. detail the problems in that agency. As noted in the work by NPR and WNYC/Gothamist: “Those reports found a significant portion of Sheriff's Deputies have participated in subgroups, which have been accused of violent attacks and racial discrimination over decades. The reports specifically note one group active in the Compton, Calif., station known as 'The Executioners,' whose members have a tattoo resembling a skeleton wearing a Nazi helmet. According to the RAND Corporation report, which was commissioned by county officials, a whistleblower alleged that 'the Executioners encouraged shootings of civilians and had assaulted at least one other deputy at the station.'" The same leaked Oath Keepers data also exposed that dozens of police officers in Oregon had paid dues to the Oath Keepers. Ed Mullins, until recently the head of the NYPD’s police union, had been known to give TV interviews on Fox with a QAnon coffee mug displayed in his office. Earlier this year, NYPD Deputy Inspector James Kobel resigned when an investigation concluded he was the author of racist online posts on a department message board. And white supremacy ideology has surfaced in multiple other departments. How did radical, even violent, extremism infiltrate the ranks of departments across the country? While racism, extremism and bias in policing aren’t new phenomena, this current conduct has surfaced with startling brazenness. At least three factors contributed to a perfect storm of dangerously polarized policing: First, President Donald Trump strategically cultivated cops in his bid to win and maintain power by recruiting those who already wielded it. “Cops for Trump” rallies, often led by then-Vice President Mike Pence, played out in packed venues across the country, including one where Pence warned officers that they “won’t be safe” if Joe Biden were elected president. Trump also promoted the false notion that only his supporters were defenders of police, which caused most police unions, including the country’s largest, to endorse Trump for president. Second, the violent summer of 2020, triggered by the murder of George Floyd and the routine excessive use of force by police, led to civil unrest. Those nationwide protests didn’t just require protracted police presences — the protests were aimed at the police themselves. While most Americans were validly questioning and appalled by the police brutality in the Floyd case, over 2,000 police officers were injured by protesters. To police, the violence against them became a self-fulfilling MAGA prophecy — caused not by their own colleagues’ misconduct but, as they were led to believe, by far-left liberals and minorities intent on destroying the country. Third, the “defund the police” movement was the wrong branding at precisely the worst time in terms of police perceiving that they, indeed, lived in an “us versus them” society. In fact, it wasn’t just the police who bristled at the notion that their agency budgets could be slashed and their jobs reassigned. In Minneapolis, voters last week rejected a proposal to abolish the police department and turn it into a reshaped public safety agency. But for many officers, the radicalization process had already happened. Counter-radicalization of police officers won’t be easy, but it can be done. The answer isn’t to defund the police, because, in reality, corrective measures are likely to require increased budgets. Those measures must include changing the way police candidates are recruited. Targeted recruitment of college-educated, proven problem solvers, from a wide variety of academic, cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds, will take more money, not less. Enhanced screening and vetting, including polygraphs and social media analysis, to identify and weed out those applicants more likely to default to physicality over verbal de-escalation or to act upon biases and violent ideologies, can be accomplished — but again, it will cost more, not less. Such vetting and background investigation can’t end with the application process but rather must be systematically incorporated throughout officers’ careers. - MSNBC Leaders from nearly every country in the world have converged upon Glasgow, Scotland, for COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference that experts are touting as the most important environmental summit in history. The conference, delayed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was designed as the check-in for the progress countries are making after entering the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, a value that would be disastrous to exceed, according to climate scientists. More ambitious efforts aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Not one country is going into COP26 on track to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to experts. They will need to work together to find collective solutions that will drastically cut down on greenhouse gas emissions. "We need to move from commitments into action," Jim Harmon, chairman of the World Resources Institute, told ABC News. "The path to a better future is still possible, but time is running out." All eyes will be on the biggest emitters: China, the U.S. and India. While China is responsible for about 26% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, more than all other developed countries combined, the cumulative emissions from the U.S. over the past century are likely twice that of China's, David Sandalow, a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, told ABC News. After a quick greeting with Biden, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson kickstarted COP26 with opening remarks. Johnson said that while the average age of leaders in the room was over 60, the results of the COP26 conference will be judged by the young people outside and children who are not yet born. "If we fail they will not forgive us. They will know that Glasgow was the historic turning point when history failed to turn," Johnson said. U.N. Secretary-General Anthony Guterres echoed the need for urgency in his remarks, highlighting the need to mitigate and reduce global emissions by 45% by 2030.
"Enough of treating nature like a toilet," Guterres said. "Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves." - ABC News White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Sunday that she had tested positive for COVID-19, days after pulling out of the president's overseas trip due to a family emergency. Psaki is vaccinated, and said she is only experiencing mild symptoms. Psaki said in a statement on Sunday that emergency was "members of my household testing positive for COVID-19." "Since then, I have quarantined and tested negative (via PCR) for COVID on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday," Psaki said. "However, today, I tested positive for COVID. While I have not had close contact in person with the president or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday — and tested negative for four days after that last contact — I am disclosing today's positive test out of an abundance of transparency. I last saw the president on Tuesday, when we sat outside more than six feet apart, and wore masks." Psaki said she planned to return to work in person after quarantining for 10 days following a negative rapid test, which she said is the White House requirement. Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who is accompanying President Biden on his current trip to Europe, told reporters Monday that he tested negative for COVID-19 on Sunday. She said the president wasn't tested because of Psaki — he was tested because it was part of a requirement to enter the U.K.
Mr. Biden, 78, received the two-dose Pfizer vaccine in December and January, and received his booster shot on September 27. - CBS News |
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July 2022
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