[Jpost] To offer proof, the group shared a photo of a masked artist constructing one of the monolith structures, with the caption "you mean it wasn't aliens?!"
[IsraelTimes] Trump’s personal lawyer,76, traveled extensively across the country in recent days contesting election results, frequently meeting without a mask on; no details on his condition.
.@RudyGiuliani, by far the greatest mayor in the history of NYC, and who has been working tirelessly exposing the most corrupt election (by far!) in the history of the USA, has tested positive for the China Virus. Get better soon Rudy, we will carry on!!!
UK gears up for huge vaccination plan watched by the world
[AlAhram] The coronavirus vaccine developed by American drugmaker Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech was being sent to hospitals across the U.K. in super-cold containers on Sunday, two days ahead of the kickoff of Britain's biggest-ever immunization program, one being closely watched around the world.
Around 800,000 doses of the vaccine are expected to be in place for the start of the rollout on Tuesday
Last week the U.K. became the first country to authorize the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine for emergency use. In trials, the vaccine was shown to have around 95% efficacy. Vaccinations will be administered starting Tuesday at around 50 hospital hubs in England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will also begin their vaccination rollouts the same day.
Governments and health agencies around the world will be monitoring the British vaccination program to note its successes and failures and adjust their own plans accordingly. The United States hopes to start vaccinations later this month. British regulatory authorities are also examining data on vaccines made by Moderna and AstraZeneca-Oxford University.
The excitement in Britain, which has Europe's highest virus-related death toll at more than 61,000, was palpable.
Patients aged 80 and above who are already attending hospitals as outpatients and those being discharged after a stay in the hospital will be among the first to receive the jab in Britain. Hospitals will also start inviting over 80s in for a vaccine shot and will work with nursing homes to book staff into vaccination clinics. Any appointments not taken up will be offered to those health workers deemed to be at the highest risk of serious illness from COVID-19. Everyone who is vaccinated will need a booster jab 21 days later.
The U.K. has secured 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which can cover 20 million people. Since the British government will only immunize people over 16, around 55 million people in the U.K. will be eligible.
"European countries have already purchased the vaccine and are set to use it. So, it will not be Iran's turn soon," Bakhtabadi said, according to the report. "Transportation of the coronavirus vaccine also has its specific complications," Bakhtabadi noted, adding that "Iran should rule out the import of vaccines from the United States."
However, these comments are contrast to Health Minister Saeed Namakis' remarks that Iran is in the midst of securing 18 million doses of the vaccine from European nations. According to the Radio Farda report, the minister said Iran had secured "four sources" to purchase the doses from.
Iran's total deaths from coronavirus surpassed 50,000 on Saturday, with more than one million people infected, although transmission rates in the Middle East's worst-affected country are slowing, state TV reported.
EgyptAir ready to transport coronavirus vaccine
[AlAhram] Most of the vaccines on the horizon need to be kept at very low temperatures, especially the one made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, which must be kept at a temperature of about -70C.
The transportation process will be carried out using refrigerated containers to keep the doses at the required temperatures before they are discharged from the planes, Zakariya noted.
He added that they can then be warehoused at a refrigerated yard the company owns before being delivered to their final destinations.
Russia's sovereign wealth fund has agreed in September to supply 25 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine to Egypt via Pharco, one of the country's leading pharmaceutical groups.
Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly has also recently delegated the Ministers of Health and Finance to take the necessary measures and procedures to contract GAVI, the vaccine alliance, to provide the country with a 20 million-dose batch of the coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague) ...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men... vaccine.
GAVI aims to guarantee rapid and fair access to COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, mainly for middle-income and under-developed countries.
The amount would cover up to 20 percent of the country's needs, with priority given to medical staff and those most vulnerable to the disease, according to previous remarks by Health Minister Hala Zayed.
Egyptian Cabinet Spokesman Nader Saad, however, said Egypt will not receive any doses before the first half of 2021 since GAVI already has a long list of requests from different countries to get the much-awaited vaccine. Saad added that GAVI is also waiting for the trial vaccines to obtain the necessary emergency approval from the World Health Organization (WHO) to fulfil the countries’ demands.
Coronavirus has caused the death of 6,750 people and infected a total of 118,014 in Egypt.
The UK and Bahrain have granted an emergency-use authorisation for a coronavirus vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech.
Moscow aims to vaccinate 7 million as daily cases rise
[Jpost] Moscow wants to vaccinate up to seven million people, its Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, as Russia on Sunday reported yet another record high number of new COVID-19 cases.
Moscow began distributing its Sputnik V COVID-19 shot via 70 clinics on Saturday to the most exposed groups, marking Russia's first large-scale vaccination against the disease.
Russia reported a record daily increase of 29,039 new cases, taking the national total to 2,460,770 since the pandemic began, while the official national death toll rose to 43,141.
Russia, which has the world's fourth-highest number of coronavirus cases, puts high hopes on its vaccines but some scientists have raised concerns about the speed at which it gave the regulatory go-ahead and launched mass inoculations.
The first Israelis expected to be vaccinated are those working in medical services, the elderly and people at especially high risk.
On Friday, Israel signed an agreement with Moderna to triple the number of vaccines the American pharmaceutical company will supply. The original agreement for two million doses was expanded to six million — enough for three million Israelis.
TV networks reported Thursday that Israel is also set to receive up to four million doses of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine by the end of this month — enough for two million people. The combined five million vaccines would be enough to inoculate over half of Israel’s population of nine million.
Israel is also in talks with other companies to obtain their vaccines and is working, at a slower pace on its own home-produced immunization.
There are 13,149 active coronavirus patients in Israel, according to Health Ministry figure released Sunday evening. Since the start of the outbreak earlier this year there have been 344,798 people diagnosed with the coronavirus and 2,915 have died from COVID-19, the disease it causes.
Dr. Moncef Slaoui tells CNN’s “State of the Union” that only time will tell for certain, but that, in his opinion, the vaccine’s effectiveness could last for “many, many years,” with older people and others who are more vulnerable requiring a booster every three to five years.
He says that one of the hallmarks of immune systems is memory, so the body’s response to the coronavirus will be much faster once vaccinated.
He says that once 70 to 80% of the population is vaccinated, “the virus will go down.”
[FEE] Many families took one look at their school district’s remote or hybrid learning offerings this fall and said "no, thank you." That’s the message gleaned from national and state-specific data on the surging number of homeschooled students this academic year.
Prior to the pandemic and related school closures last spring, there were just under two million homeschoolers in the US, representing about 3.4 percent of the total K-12 school-age population. According to recent polling by Education Week, that percentage has more than doubled to nine percent this fall, or nearly five million homeschoolers. This estimate mirrors related polling from Gallup in August suggesting that 10 percent of US students would be homeschooled this year.
State-level data show just how dramatic the surge in homeschooling has been, particularly in areas where many district schools continue to be closed for full-time, in-person learning. In Massachusetts, for example, the Boston Globe reported last week that 7,188 students statewide transferred from public schools into homeschooling this year, compared to only 802 homeschooling transfers last year.
In North Carolina, homeschooling filings nearly tripled, with over 10,000 parent forms submitted over the summer, compared to about 3,500 last year. In fact, so many parents in North Carolina completed their online intent to homeschool forms during the first week of July (when the system began accepting filings for this year), that it crashed the state’s nonpublic education website.
In New York City, homeschooling increased by nearly one-third this fall. More than 10,000 students withdrew from the city’s public schools this year for homeschooling, compared to about 2,500 student withdrawals last year. In Vermont, homeschooling applications were up 75 percent compared to last year, with similar patterns seen in neighboring New Hampshire. In Wisconsin, homeschooling filings more than doubled this year, and in Connecticut, more than six times as many students have left the public schools for homeschooling compared to last year.
According to the Education Week survey, it’s lower-income families who are more likely to be choosing homeschooling during the pandemic. This challenges the continued criticism that "pandemic pods" and other family-centered learning models are only options for more privileged families. Indeed, as the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... pointed out in July in response to these criticisms, "the population of home-schoolers — before the pandemic — was less affluent than average."
PUBLIC SCHOOL ENROLLMENT PLUMMETS
Driven in large part by new homeschoolers, public schools across the country are experiencing plummeting enrollment. For instance, in Arizona, public school enrollment is down five percent compared to last year, and in Massachusetts it's down four percent.
In addition to the homeschooling surge, some families have opted out of their district school for private and parochial schools that have been better able to meet parent demand for in-person learning during the pandemic. A new analysis of private school enrollment finds that 70 percent of private schools surveyed experienced either increased or constant enrollment compared to last year. Of those indicating that their enrollment remained the same, it was due to already being at capacity.
[KhaamaPress] The Independent Directorate of Local Governance (ICRC) said at least eight women have been appointed as social deputies in eight different provinces upon an official decree by the Presidential Palace on Sunday.
Bayati Salimi as the social deputy of Kapisa province, Breshna Sherzai as the social deputy of Kunar province ... which is right down the road from Chitral. Kunar is Haqqani country..... , Hosy Andar as the social deputy of Ghazni province, Breshna Safi as the social deputy of the Laghman ...Afghan province with a population of about 445,600, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a rural society. During the invasions of Alexander the Great, the area was known as Lampaka, wich is apparently Olde Macedonian for Laghman.The city of Mihtarlam serves as the bucolic capital of the province. The population is half Pashtun, the remainder Tadjik and Pashai. It had a repution for great wealth until it was conquered in the tenth century by Abu Mansur Sabuktigin.
He conquered it and set fire to the places in its vicinity which were inhabited by infidels, and demolishing the idol-temples, he established Islam in them, He marched and captured other cities and killed the polluted wretches, destroying the idolatrous and gratifying the Musulmans. After wounding and killing beyond all measure, his hands and those of his friends became cold in counting the value of the plundered property.
After that it was mostly notable for the production of dirt, rocks, and holy men... province, and Maryam Rahmani have been appointed as the social deputy of Zabul province.
Meanwhile, ...back at the comedy club, Boogie ducked another tomato... Zaheda Faizan has been appointed as the social deputy of Nuristan province, Rohgol Khairzad has been appointed as the social deputy of Nimroz province, and Zarghoneh Shirzad has been appointed as the social deputy of Badghis province.
The appointment of female deputies came months after the cabinet planned to appoint female deputy governor for each province.
2 Women Mysteriously Killed in Herat: Police
[KhaamaPress] Local officials in Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... province say the bodies of two women have been found in downtown Herat.
Abdul Ahad Walizdah, a front man for the Herat Police Command, told media on Sunday, that the bodies of two women were found last night in downtown Herat.
According to Walizadah, one of the women is 50 years old and the other is 25 years old, whose bodies were found in the seventh security district of Herat city.
Walizadah added that the motive for the murder was still unknown and that a police investigation had been launched to obtain details.
The western province of Herat is one of the provinces where the crime rate is high compared to other neighboring provinces.
Local security officials have temporarily banned two-passenger cycle of violences in Herat over security deterioration.
Theft, extortion, robbery, kidnapping, and assassinations are among the cases that raised concerns all over the country.
15 Busted on Drug Trafficking across Afghanistan
[KhaamaPress] At least 15 suspects have been arrested after the Counter Narcotic Police of Afghanistan (CNPA) carried multiple operations across northern province of the country, said the Ministry of Interior Affairs in a statement Sunday.
According to the statement, the suspects were comprehended in Kabul, Balkh, Daikundi, Ghazni, Parwan and Badghis provinces.
"15 suspects were arrested over drug trafficking charges after CNPA carried several separate Counter-Narcotics operations in Kabul, Balkh, Takhar, Daikundi, Ghazni, Parwan & Badghis provinces," said MoIA in a tweet.
Officials did not provide further details, but said, "CNPA seized some amount of illicit drugs from the arrested."
Earlier, the national police has arrested at least 24 suspects on various criminal charges in operations carried across the capital city Kabul on Saturday, said the Ministry of Interior Affairs in a statement.
"ANP operations team has arrested 24 criminal suspects in Kabul & its surrounding districts within the past 48 hours," said the MoIA in a tweet.
According to the statement, officials seized at least two pistols from the detainees.
"Two pistols were also seized from the detainees," the tweet added. "The arrest of these criminals took place within the implementing framework of the security covenant."
Kabul Police Nabs 24 on Criminal Charges across Capital City
[KhaamaPress] The national police has arrested at least 24 suspects on various criminal charges in operations carried across the capital city Kabul on Saturday, said the Ministry of Interior Affairs in a statement.
"ANP operations team has arrested 24 criminal suspects in Kabul & its surrounding districts within the past 48 hours," said the MoIA in a tweet.
According to the statement, officials seized at least two pistols from the detainees.
"Two pistols were also seized from the detainees," the tweet added. "The arrest of these criminals took place within the implementing framework of the security covenant."
Judge Killed in Kabul, Family Seeks Justice
[ToloNews] A judge, Pamir Faizi, who was head of the inquiry department of military attorneys office, was killed in an attack by gunnies near Marshal Fahim Military Academy in the west of Kabul on Sunday.
His family said security agencies have failed to ensure the safety of attorneys and judges, and they called on the president and the interior affairs minister to find the perpetrators of the attack.
The neighbors of the judge said that he survived a mine explosion some months ago.
"He was a talented judge and an honest man," said Abdul Dayan Dayan, a relative of the judge.
The attack on Pamir Faizi happened at around 7:30 am on Sunday when he was on his way to his office. "This case must be investigated to find out who has done this and they should be hanged in front of my eyes," she said.
Faizi was a graduate of law and political science and had studied at a police academy. He served in security agencies for 15 years.
"Ashraf Ghani ...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money... is happy that he is the president. He should have some ’shame.’ Same to the interior minister," Faizi’s friend Habib-Ur-Rahman said.
In another incident, an investor, Islamuddin, was maimed in an attack by gunnies in Guldara district, Kabul province, on Saturday evening.
"We should either leave this country or our problem should be addressed. The government has security and intelligence agencies and they should find those who shot my brother," said Sirajuddin, brother of the investor.
His relatives called on the security agencies to prevent such attacks.
"We the investors are concerned about where we should go. A police outpost was very close to the incident," said Khwaja Hamid Siddiqi, a relative of the investor.
The National Directorate of Security ...the Afghan national intel agency... last week said the leader of a assassination cell was arrested but such incidents have continued to occur, as Kabul residents attest.
Surge of Hong Kong residents getting BNO passport in 2020
City faces exodus as China clamps down on financial hub
The U.K. is granting the most special travel documents to Hong Kong residents since the 1997 handover, bolstering predictions of a mass exodus as China tightens its grip over the former British colony.
Some 216,398 Hong Kong residents received British National (Overseas) passports during the first 10 months of the year, higher than any annual figure stretching back to 1997, according to data provided by the U.K.’s Passport Office under the Freedom of Information Act.
In October alone, the office issued 59,798 Hongkongers with BNOs, or 52% higher than in the same period last year, and the highest monthly figure since the Passport Office began readily compiling them in 2015. That translates to more than five every minute, based on an average eight-hour working day.
The numbers, which also include renewals, provide the latest glimpse of the departures Hong Kong faces as this year’s sudden enactment of a national security law — in response to the mass anti-Beijing protests last year — raised concerns about dwindling freedoms in the Asian financial hub.
The monthly numbers began spiking up in July, when the U.K. upgraded the status of BNO passport holders. They can now stay in Britannia for five years and have an easier path toward U.K. citizenship.
China has criticized the U.K.’s move to invite more Hong Kong residents to its borders as an inappropriate interference in the country’s domestic affairs.
"The U.K. side violated its promises, insisted on going its own way and repeatedly played up the issue of BNO passports," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a regular news briefing Friday in Beijing. "As the British side violated its commitment first, China will consider not recognizing the BNO passport as a valid travel document and reserves the right to take further measures."
Meanwhile, ...back at the wreckage, Captain Poindexter wished he had thought to pack sun block... real estate agents in London have been seeing a surge in interest from Hong Kong, with inquiries up almost 80% this year for some agencies.
There are an estimated 2.9 million Hongkongers eligible for BNOs and as many as 2.3 million of their dependents, according to a U.K. government study. Of those eligible, the U.K. estimates as many as 322,000 will move to the country between 2021-2025.
The Hong Kong government’s Information Services Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The BNO identity document is a product of the British colonial era that ended in 1997. It was made to recognize Hong Kong residents of the time as overseas British nationals, but only gave holders the right to visit the country for as long as six months.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Jpost] To offer proof, the group shared a photo of a masked artist constructing one of the monolith structures, with the caption "you mean it wasn't aliens?!"
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
[FEE] Many families took one look at their school district’s remote or hybrid learning offerings this fall and said "no, thank you." That’s the message gleaned from national and state-specific data on the surging number of homeschooled students this academic year.
...Afghan province with a population of about 445,600, which is multi-ethnic and mostly a rural society. During the invasions of Alexander the Great, the area was known as Lampaka, wich is apparently Olde Macedonian for 
...former chancellor of Kabul University, now president of Afghanistan. Before returning to Afghanistan in 2002 he was a scholar of political science and anthropology. He worked at the World Bank working on international development assistance. As Finance Minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he led Afghanistan's attempted economic recovery until the Karzais stole all the money...
