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China still grappling with COVID-19 despite foul play calls over source of virus

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Despite supension of covid protocols by many countries around the world as a sign that the virus has been defeated China still seems to be grappling with the debacle of Covid-19.

Proven reports have shown that the virus is man made and all the covid-protocols the UN and W.H.O did little or nothing to defeat the virus the world wonders what is happening in China.

Moves by several countries to mandate COVID-19 tests for passengers arriving from China reflect global concern that new bio-weapon in the name of variant could emerge in its ongoing explosive outbreak — and that the government may not inform the rest of the world quickly enough.

There have been no reports of new variants to date, but China has been accused of not being forthcoming about the virus since it first surfaced in the country in late 2019. The worry is that it may not be sharing data now on any signs of evolving strains that could spark fresh outbreaks elsewhere.

The U.S., Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan and Italy have announced testing requirements for passengers from China. The U.S. cited both the surge in infections and what it said was a lack of information, including genomic sequencing of the virus strains in the country.

Is this another ploy to unleash a more deadly virus on the world by proagonists of population control after the failure of Covid-19 to cause the intended devastation?

Anti-vaccine groups and scientists who have spoken out over the agenda behind the virus and the use of unscientific covid-19 protocols are concerned that there might be a sequel being cooked up.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin noted Thursday that many countries have not changed their policies for travelers from China and said that any measures should treat people from all countries equally.

Chinese state media has not reported the fallout from the surge widely and government officials have blamed Western media for hyping up the situation.

Isle Of Man’s First National Museum Marks 100 Years

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The Isle of Man’s first national museum is marking a century since it opened its doors for the first time.

But unlike other Victorian museums, the Manx Museum did not feature stuffed exotic animals and treasures from far-off lands.

Instead, it showcased Manx history, and the story of the everyday people of the Isle of Man.

Katie King, who curated a new exhibition marking the centenary, said that approach was “ground-breaking”.

The museum houses collections featuring natural and social history, archaeology, art, clothing and furniture, as well as the library and archives.

Ms King said, in contrast to its contemporary Victorian museums, which were attempting to “teach world history”, the Manx Museum was set up to “educate island people about themselves”.

Ordinary items were collected alongside more spectacular artefacts

She said: “Other museums were collecting from all over the world and we were just collecting ourselves, which might sound a bit naval gazing, but it wasn’t because the world was changing so dramatically.”

Although the collections include “really culturally significant objects” like Captain John Quilliam’s uniform from the Battle of Trafalgar, everyday objects like spinning wheels, butter bowls and things “that you might keep on your fireplace” were also kept, Ms King said.

“They were collecting ordinary things, and most importantly stories of ordinary people”, including songs and recordings of native Manx speakers and Manx dialects, she added.

Israel swears in Netanyahu as PM of hard-line government

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Benjamin Netanyahu was sworn into office Thursday, taking the helm of the most right-wing and religiously conservative government in Israel’s history and vowing to enact policies that could cause domestic and regional turmoil and alienate the country’s closest allies.

Netanyahu took the oath of office moments after parliament passed a vote of confidence in his new government. His return marks his sixth term in office, continuing his more than decade-long dominance over Israeli politics.

His new government has pledged to prioritize settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank, extend massive subsidies to his ultra-Orthodox allies and push for sweeping reform of the judicial system that could endanger the country’s democratic institutions. The plans have sparked an unprecedented uproar from across Israeli society, including the military, LGBTQ rights groups, the business community and others.

Netanyahu is the country’s longest serving prime minister, having held office from 2009 until 2021 and a stint in the 1990s. He was ousted from office last year after four deadlocked elections by a coalition of eight parties solely united in their opposition to his rule.

Despite his political comeback, he remains on trial for charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three corruption cases. He denies all charges against him, saying he is the victim of a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media, police and prosecutors.

Exploring Monuments Aux Morts, France

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Monuments aux Morts, also known as Rauba-Capeù War Memorial, is a grandiose monument in honor to the more than 3,000 people from the city of Nice who gave their lives during World War I, and it is located on Quai Rauba Capeau, just below the Castle Hill of Nice, within the French Republic.

Being one of the largest ones in France, the monument is 32 meters (105 feet) high and it is carved within the rock that holds what is better known as the beginning of the city, the Castle of Nice.

The main architect responsible for this interesting work is the Nice-born French architect Roger Séassal, and the construction was carried out between 1924 and 1927, where it was inaugurated on 28 January 1928 by Marshal Ferdinand Foch.

In addition to the very exceptional location, the Monuments aux Morts has a central urn-looking structure placed on columns and framed by three large arches, holding the 3,665 names of the people of Nice who died in the war, nonetheless, more names were added later when World War II ended and also ended the colonial wars.

On the base of the monument there are two high reliefs which represent liberty, strength, sacred fire and victory on the left side, while on the right one are represented work, home, love and fertility. The sculptor Alfred Janniot did an intriguing and very detailed reliefs which are inspiring the visitors to this alluring memorial.

This is one of the most important reasons why the nations should not forget their heroes, and as the city is trying to immortalize the heroes who gave their lives in order for the city of Nice to be free, we should never forget that we are living nowadays in peaceful times because they were fighting for that.

Southwest cuts 2,300 flights, schedule in sustained chaos

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Southwest Airlines continued to extract itself from sustained scheduling chaos Thursday, cancelling another 2,350 flights after a winter storm overwhelmed its operations days ago.

The Dallas carrier acknowledged it has inadequate and outdated operations technology that can leave flight crews out of position when adverse weather strikes.

Southwest was the only airline unable to recover from storm-related delays that began over the weekend when snow, ice and high winds raked portions of the country.

As has been the case every day this week, the vast majority of flight cancellations nationwide, are Southwest flights.

There were 2,451 flights cancelled before noon Thursday in the U.S., and 2,357 were Southwest routes, or about 58% of its entire schedule, according to the FlightAware tracking service.

The airline has warned that cancellations will continue for days.

The federal government is investigating what happened at Southwest with total cancellations soaring past 10,000 early in the week.

Southwest added a page to their website specifically for travelers who were stranded, but thousands of customers remain unable to reach the airline.

Russia hits key infrastructure with missiles across Ukraine

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Russian missiles hit Ukraine Thursday in the biggest wave of strikes in weeks, damaging power stations and other critical infrastructure during freezing winter weather.

Russia fired 69 missiles at energy facilities and Ukrainian forces shot down 54, Ukrainian military chief Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi said. Local officials said attacks killed at least two people around Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. The strikes also wounded at least six people across the country, although the toll of the attacks was growing as officials assessed the day’s events.

Russia dispatched explosive drones to selected regions overnight before broadening the barrage with air and sea-based missiles, the Ukrainian air force said. Air-raid sirens rang out across the country, and the military activated air-defense systems in Kyiv, the regional administration said.

Russia has attacked Ukrainian power and water supplies almost weekly since October while its ground forces struggle to hold ground and advance. Mayor Vitali Klitschko warned of power outages in the capital, asking people to stockpile water and to charge their electronic devices.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called the attacks“senseless barbarism.”

Throwback Thursday: History Of Christmas Crackers

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Christmas crackers are a traditional Christmas favorite in the UK. They were first made in about 1845-1850 by a London sweet maker called Tom Smith. He had seen the French ‘bon bon’ sweets (almonds wrapped in pretty paper) on a visit to Paris in 1840.

He came back to London and tried selling sweets like that in England and also included a small motto or riddle in with the sweet. But they didn’t sell very well.

In 1861 Tom Smith launched his new range of what he called ‘Bangs of Expectation’!

Legend says that, one night, while he was sitting in front of his log fire, he became very interested by the sparks and cracks coming from the fire. Suddenly, he thought what a fun idea it would be, if his sweets and toys could be opened with a crack when their fancy wrappers were pulled in half.

However, looking into the history of the Tom Smith company, it’s thought that Tom actually bought the recipe for the small cracks and bangs in crackers from a fireworks company called Brock’s Fireworks. The story of him sitting by the fire was probably added to help sell his new items.

Crackers were also nicknamed called ‘cosaques’ and were thought to be named after the ‘Cossack’ soldiers who had a reputation for riding on their horses and firing guns into the air.

When Tom died, his expanding cracker business was taken over by his three sons, Tom, Walter and Henry. Walter introduced the hats into crackers and he also traveled around the world looking for new ideas for gifts to put in the crackers.

The crowns might have been inspired from Epiphany cakes from Europe which are often decorated with a paper crown on the top.

The company built up a big range of ‘themed’ crackers. There were ones for bachelors and spinsters (single men and women), where the gifts were things like false teeth and wedding rings!

There were also crackers for Suffragettes (women who campaigned to get women the vote), war heroes and even Charlie Chaplain!

Crackers were also made for special occasions like Coronations. The British Royal Family still has special crackers made for them today!

Very expensive crackers were made such as the ‘Millionaire’s Crackers’ which contained a solid silver box with a piece of gold and silver jewerly inside it!

Cracker manufacturers also made large displays, such as horse drawn carriages and sleighs, for the big shops in London.

The Christmas Crackers that are used today are short cardboard tubes wrapped in colorful paper. There is normally a Cracker next to each plate on the Christmas dinner table.

When the crackers are pulled – with a bang! – a colorful party hat, a toy or gift and a festive joke falls out! The party hats look like crowns and it is thought that they symbolise the crowns that might have been worn by the Wise Men.

Crackers are famous for their very bad Christmas jokes! Here are some bad Christmas themed Cracker jokes!

The world’s longest Christmas cracker measured 63.1m (207ft) long and 4m (13ft) in diameter and was made by the parents of children at Ley Hill School and Pre-School, Chesham, Buckinghamshire, UK on 20 December 2001. Now that would be one big bang!

The biggest Christmas cracker pull was done by 1,478 people at an event organised by Honda Japan at Tochigi Proving Ground, Tochigi, Japan, on 18 October 2009. Now that would be a lot of bangs!

Local raw materials sourcing hits five-year low on insecurity

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The rise in insecurity and limited investments for local raw materials production in Nigeria is taking a toll on the local sourcing of raw materials by manufacturers in the country, BusinessDay analysis has shown.

Data obtained from the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) showed that local sourcing of raw materials in the first half of this year was 52 percent, the lowest in five years.

Between 2017 and 2021, local sourcing of raw materials hovered between 53 percent and 60.72 percent. During the period under review, foreign exchange shortage, naira devaluation as well as the disruptions in global supply chain caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine crisis forced many manufacturers to look inwards for production inputs.

MAN said in its latest half-year report that the sector is generally faced with limited investment in domestic production of raw materials for utilisation in most of the sub-sectors owing to limited funding and policy incentives in the country.

“The basic industrial chemical sub-sector faced severe inactivity in the first six months of 2022 due to lack of domestic production of basic chemicals,” it said.

BusinessDay had recently reported that Grif, makers of aluminium drums, and Federated Steel Mills, makers of iron rods, exited Nigeria because they could not get annealed cold-rolled steel, which was its key raw material, causing the country to lose vital investments.

Economic experts and manufacturers told BusinessDay that issues around rising insecurity, unavailability of some materials and low product quality constitute setbacks for the anticipated 100 percent local sourcing of raw materials through partnership with local producers and backward integration activities.

Since the security situation became intense a few years ago, agricultural activities from which most fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms benefit from have been greatly impacted as farmers had to abandon their farmlands because of kidnapping, banditry, herder-farmer conflicts, terrorism and other forms of insecurity in major crops-producing states.

Over the years, insecurity in the country has increased significantly, especially in the northern part of the country, with data from the Global Terrorism Index showing that Nigeria is the third most terrorised country in the world, after Afghanistan and Iraq, with record terror-related deaths estimated at 1,245 in 2019 and 1,606 in 2020.

Data from the 2021 Economic Value of Peace report by the Institute for Economics and Peace show that the cost of violence in Nigeria from 2007 to 2019 was $1.34 trillion.

Muda Yusuf, chief executive officer of Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, told BusinessDay that insecurity in some parts of the country is posing a major threat to fostering local sourcing of raw material as well as the backward integration plan of the federal government despite huge investments made and the commitments of companies.

How It Is Celebrated: Christmas In Jamaica

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Christmas is a very special time in Jamaica and like a lot of other countries, radio stations play carols all through the Christmas period.

Lots of people paint their houses and hang new curtains and decorations for Christmas. Most families spend Christmas Day at home with friends and family members.

In Jamaica, on Christmas Eve the ‘Grand Market’ happens. It is a really exciting time, especially for children.

In every town and city there is a cross between a festival and a market. During the day, people go shopping for Christmas foods, sweets and toys, etc.

You might also buy some new clothes ready for the celebrations in the evening. (But you don’t want to spend all your money during the day as there were lots of great things to buy in the evening as well!)

Around 6.00pm the evening part of Grand Market starts and it lasts until the morning! Everyone comes out on their new or best clothes, including children, to celebrate and party all night.

All the streets, shops and many houses are decorated with lights. There are normally street vendors selling food like jerk chicken, boiled corn, and sweets like candy canes and sugarcane.

Following the Grand Market, some people will go to a Midnight Mass Church Service and others will party all night. Many people will also go to a Church Service on Christmas Day morning before the end of Grand Market.

The Christmas day meal is usually prepared on Christmas Eve. The Christmas Day breakfast includes ackee and saltfish, breadfruit, fried plantains, boiled bananas, freshly squeezed fruit juice and tea.

Dinner is usually served in the late afternoon and this may include turkey, chicken, curry goat, stewed oxtail and very importantly rice and peas.

Jamaican red wine and rum fruitcake is traditional and is eaten in most homes.

The fruits in the cake are soaked in red wine and white rum for months before Christmas.

Once Upon A Time – December 29 – 1860 – First British Seagoing Iron-Clad Warship, HMS Warrior Is Launched

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1835 Treaty of New Echota is signed between the US government and representatives of a minority Cherokee political faction to cede all lands of the Cherokee east of the Mississippi River to the United States

1845 Texas admitted as 28th state of the Union

1903 French Equatorial Africa separates into Gabon, Chad and Ubangi-Shari

1911 Sun Yat-sen elected 1st President of the Republic of China

1997 Hong Kong begins slaughtering all its chickens to prevent bird flu

HISTORICAL EVENTS TODAY EVENTS IN 2022

TODAY IN FILM & TV

1913 1st movie serial “Adventures of Kathlyn” premieres in Chicago

TODAY IN MUSIC

1902 Scot Joplin copyrights “The Entertainer” and several other piano rag compositions through the US Copyright Office

TODAY IN SPORT

1989 Wayne Gretzky and Martina Navratilova, named athletes of decade by the Associated Press

MORE FACTS…

1860 The first British seagoing iron-clad warship, HMS Warrior is launched

FAMOUS WEDDINGS

1941 Actress Maureen O’Hara (21) marries second husband director Will Price (28) (divorced 1953)

1954 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin (24) weds Joan Archer

1957 American singing duo Steve Lawrence (22) and Eydie Gormé (29) wed at the home of casino owner Beldon Katleman in Las Vegas