May 21, 2021

Officials discourage travel to Guam amid COVID-19 surge

HAGATNA, Guam >> The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has elevated Guam’s COVID-19 risk level to its highest tier and is urging people to avoid traveling to the island.

Eighty-eight individuals were in isolation with COVID-19 infections in Guam as of Wednesday morning, with nine new patients identified Tuesday, according to Guam’s Joint Information Center. There have been 8,1118 confirmed infections and 139 deaths from the disease on Guam since the pandemic began.

Data from the Guam Department of Public Health and Social Services showed that newly confirmed infections and hospitalizations rose over the last seven days.

The CDC’s primary criteria for level 4, its highest risk level, is an incidence rate of more than 100 COVID-19 cases over the past 28 days, the Pacific Daily News reported Tuesday.

Read more: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/05/19/breaking-news/officials-discourage-travel-to-guam-amid-covid-19-surge/

May 21, 2021

South Korea's Moon to nudge Biden on North Korea diplomacy

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is hoping Friday’s White House meeting with President Joe Biden will lead to renewed diplomatic urgency by the U.S. on curbing North Korea’s nuclear program. The White House, however, is signaling that it is taking a longer view on one of the most difficult foreign policy challenges Biden faces.

Ahead of Friday’s meeting — just the second in-person foreign leader session for Biden because of the coronavirus pandemic — White House officials said North Korea will be a central focus of talks. Coordination on vaccine distribution, climate change and regional security concerns spurred by China are also high on the president’s list.

The White House announced last month that it had completed a review of North Korea policy and that Biden would veer from the strategies of his two most recent predecessors, rejecting both Donald Trump’s deeply personal effort to win over North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Barack Obama’s more hands-off approach.

But the administration has yet to detail what its third-way effort to try to prod the North to abandon its nuclear program will look like.

Read more: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/05/20/breaking-news/south-koreas-moon-to-nudge-biden-on-north-korea-diplomacy/

May 21, 2021

Hawaii unemployment assistance call center closed until Monday for pest control treatment

The Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations has temporarily suspended its unemployment insurance call center operations at the Hawai‘i Convention Center until Monday as the workspace undergoes pest control treatment, state officials said today.

“We are committed to continuing to serve our unemployment insurance claimants by routing all calls from the call center to our local UI claims offices. We ask for the public’s patience during this time, as we will be operating at a reduced capacity,” DLIR director Anne Perreira-Eustaquio said in a news release. “We appreciate the Hawai‘i Convention Center’s quick action to resolve this situation to ensure that our staff has a clean workspace to return to on Monday.”

Calls to the state call center phone number get an automated response saying the office is temporarily closed and are told to “call their local office for assistance.”

However the recording does not give any local numbers nor any information on where to find them.

Read more: https://www.staradvertiser.com/2021/05/20/breaking-news/hawaii-unemployment-assistance-call-center-closed-until-monday-for-pest-control-treatment/

May 21, 2021

Major Mexican tourist destination at 'imminent risk' of lockdown

In a major announcement last week, the governor of the Mexican state of Quintana Roo warned that the state had seen five straight weeks of increased COVID-19 rates following last month’s spring holidays. The dramatically rising case numbers led him to warn that Mexico’s number one tourist destination is at risk of “imminent” lockdown, according to the Associated Press.

“Rates in most of the rest of Mexico have been declining,” reported the A.P., “but Quintana Roo depends on tourism for 87% of its economic activity, and has instituted no travel bans or testing requirements.”

Home to major resort destinations, including Cancún, Cozumel and Tulum, Quintana Roo has had some of the highest rates of international tourism anywhere in the world, with U.S. Americans, in particular, swarming its beaches and relatively lax enforcement of COVID-19 masking and distancing protocols.

In a May 14 tweet, Gov. Carlos Joaquín wrote that the municipality of Benito Juárez, where Cancún is located, now has the highest number of positive cases since the pandemic began. "This is worrying," he wrote in Spanish.

Read more: https://www.lmtonline.com/life/travel/article/Cancun-tulum-Mexico-COVID19-danger-lockdown-16190897.php
(Laredo Morning Times)

May 21, 2021

Paxton Praises Traitor Mob Who Attacked US Capitol

During an interview with talk show host Mark Davis earlier today, Ken Paxton again defiled his office and abandoned all sense of decency by praising traitor protestors who included rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, saying “I was there. They were just amazing people.”

Stark, undeniable video evidence of the criminal mob storming the U.S. Capitol, beating police officers and calling for the deaths of the Vice President and the House Speaker has played before millions of Americans and burned the traitorous insurrection into our memories, creating an indelible stain on American history.

All along, Ken Paxton has disgraced his office and our state by filing phony and frivolous lawsuits promoting the Big Lie of election fraud when, in reality, the only legitimate charge of illegality surrounding Paxton is his own criminal indictment.

Now, Paxton is joining Trump sycophants in Congress who are denying truth and trying to rewrite history by claiming that the traitors who attacked our Capitol are something different than the violent mob video evidence confirms them to be.

Read more: https://lonestarproject.net/2021/05/18/paxton-praises-mob-who-attacked-capitol/

May 21, 2021

Ted Cruz's Wildly Dishonest Defense of Voter Suppression

by Ben Jealous


Sen. Ted Cruz is a shameless liar. And he isn’t even a very good one. Witness his latest dishonest defense of Georgia’s new voter suppression law.

Cruz published a column in the Wall Street Journal attacking business leaders who have criticized the anti-voting law. He claimed that critics were hurting the reputations of “patriotic leaders protecting our elections and expanding the right to vote.”

Expanding the right to vote? As I said, he is shameless.

First, let’s remember where this new law came from. Georgia Republicans pushed it through after President Joe Biden and Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their elections. The law has one purpose: to prevent future victories by Democrats by making it harder for particular groups of people—Black people, working people, women, people with disabilities, and younger and older people—to vote.

Read more: https://forwardtimes.com/ted-cruzs-wildly-dishonest-defense-of-voter-suppression/
(Houston Forward Times)

May 21, 2021

NBA Creates Annual Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion Award

The NBA announced the creation of the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion award, a new annual honor that will recognize a current NBA player for pursuing social justice and upholding the league’s decades-long values of equality, respect and inclusion.

The award is named after six-time NBA champion and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The recipient will have advanced Abdul-Jabbar’s mission to drive change and inspired others to reflect on injustice and take collective action in their communities over the previous year.

The winner of the Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Social Justice Champion honor will select an organization to receive a $100,000 contribution on his behalf. The other four finalists will each select an organization to receive a $25,000 contribution.

“I’m honored and grateful to be associated with this award that will recognize the dedicated and selfless people fighting to promote social justice for all marginalized people,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “To me, it’s another giant step in the right direction for the country and all people who value equality.”

Read more: https://forwardtimes.com/nba-creates-annual-kareem-abdul-jabbar-social-justice-champion-award/
(Houston Forward Times)

May 21, 2021

Howard University Appoints Phylicia Rashad as Dean of Its College of Fine Arts

The actress behind Clair Huxtable is returning to her alma mater, as a dean.

Howard University recently named multi-award winning TV, stage and film actress and director Phylicia Rashad as dean of its College of Fine Arts.

Rashad, who is also a Houston native, began her career on Broadway before moving on to play Bill Cosby’s TV wife on the long-running 1980s hit “The Cosby Show.” She was also a theater acting major at Howard when she graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor’s in fine arts in 1970.

Now, Rashad, 72, said she looks forward to returning to the Northwest Washington school that shaped her theatrical skills while she also studied courses such as psychology, French history and Greek theater.

Read more: https://forwardtimes.com/howard-university-appoints-phylicia-rashad-as-dean-of-its-college-of-fine-arts/
(Houston Forward Times)

May 21, 2021

Judge says former employee must pay back money defrauded from University of North Texas

Tiffany O’Neal, 47, was sentenced Monday in federal court for misappropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial aid payments to herself and her husband while working at the University of North Texas.

The judge sentenced her to five years of federal probation and ordered her to pay $234,113 in restitution.

The maximum penalty was up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $20,000, as well as up to three years of supervised release.

O’Neal worked in the UNT financial aid office while a student for roughly five years, during 2012-17.

Read more: https://dentonrc.com/education/judge-says-former-employee-must-pay-back-money-defrauded-from-unt/article_1b7a04a7-8bcf-56a1-83b7-4071ef704271.html
(Denton Record-Chronicle)

Five years probation for stealing over $200,000 doesn't seem adequate.

May 21, 2021

Mexican president draws US into dispute over Tamaulipas governor

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico has made little headway defusing a bizarre standoff over the possible arrest of a a sitting state governor facing charges of tax evasion, money laundering and organized crime.

But President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made one thing clear Thursday: Any diplomatic documents the United States sends to Mexico are at risk of being published by the president himself.

Mexico is already facing questions about the clarity of its legal system, and doubts about whether the U.S. can continue to share intelligence with Mexican officials. But this week’s dispute over border state Gov. Francisco Garcia Cabeza de Vaca threatens to do damage on both fronts.

A disagreement between courts, prosecutors and state and federal legislatures make it unclear whether the Tamaulipas state governor can be arrested, or whether he still enjoys immunity from prosecution as an elected official.

Read more: https://myrgv.com/local-news/2021/05/20/mexican-president-draws-us-into-dispute-over-tamps-governor/