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After travelling for funeral, elderly siblings stuck in US yearn for home

When siblings Norma and Warren Williams left Jamaica to attend the funeral of a relative in Margate, South Florida, in February, they had no idea that a rapidly developing COVID-19 outbreak would have crippled global travel, leaving them stranded...




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Five-year INDECOM Act inertia - Williams, Golding still want prosecutorial powers for commission; DPP, Chuck, cops not sold on idea

Almost five years ago, lawmakers on a bipartisan committee of Parliament agreed unanimously to amend the law to give the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) the power to arrest and prosecute cops. That proposed amendment, which was...




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Changing Demography and Circumstances for Young Black Children in African and Caribbean Immigrant Families

This report finds that the 813,000 U.S. children under the age of 10 who have Black immigrant parents from Africa or the Caribbean generally fall in the middle of multiple well-being indicators, faring less well than Asian and white children but better than their native-born Black and Hispanic peers. Citizenship status, English proficiency, parental characteristics, poverty, housing, and access to social supports are examined.




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A Demographic Profile of Black Caribbean Immigrants in the United States

Immigration from the Caribbean to the United States is a relatively recent phenomenon, beginning largely after 1965. This report provides a demographic profile of the 1.7 million Caribbean immigrants in the United States: their geographic settlement, education and workforce characteristics, earnings, modes of entry, and more.




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Parenting Behavior, Health, and Cognitive Development among Children in Black Immigrant Families: Comparing the United States and the United Kingdom

This report focuses on the development of children of Black immigrants in the United States, comparing against the outcomes for their peers in native-born and other immigrant families. It also compares these U.S. children to those in the United Kingdom, where there is a large Black immigrant population but a notably different policy context of reception.




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Patterns and Predictors of School Readiness and Early Childhood Success among Young Children in Black Immigrant Families

Using a nationally representative U.S. birth-cohort study, this report examines levels of school readiness among young children by race/ethnicity and nativity. The authors identify the contextual factors — such as family circumstances, parenting practices, and enrollment in center-based child care — that encourage early school success.




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Sub-Saharan African Immigrants in the United States

From 1980 to 2013, the sub-Saharan African immigrant population in the United States increased from 130,000 to 1.5 million, roughly doubling each decade between 1980 and 2010. This profile provides up-to-date demographic information for sub-Saharan immigrants including location, educational attainment, workforce participation, and much more.




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Mark Wignall | Help! I need to be a child again

Last Thursday morning, I went to visit my youngest grandchild, three-year-old Morgan. As she emerged from her bedroom with her tablet in hand and a scream on her lips then saw me and barged towards me, I knew that a full embrace was not going to...




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Yaneek Page | It will be years, not months, for COVID-19 business recovery

ADVISORY COLUMN: SMALL BUSINESS On Thursday, May 7, the RJR/GLEANER Communications group staged a virtual town hall meeting on Television Jamaica titled “COVID-19...




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Virus crushes car rentals

Car-rental companies in Jamaica are facing a serious crush, with at least one medium player looking to shut down operations, and others, big and small, saying that they are barely holding on. The collapse in the vacation market and travel...




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Health Ministry conducting house to house testing for COVID in St Mary

Health Minister Dr Christopher Tufton and a 70-member team of healthcare workers are now in Dover, St Mary where they have been conducting house to house visits to test persons for COVID-19.  They have also been providing health...




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Arbery’s death raises echoes of US racial terror legacy

(AP): Many people saw more than the last moments of Ahmaud Arbery’s life when a video emerged this week of white men armed with guns confronting the black man; a struggle with punches thrown; three shots fired and Arbery collapsing...




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Reopenings result in new COVID cases in S. Korea, virus fears in Italy

(AP): South Korea’s capital, Seoul, has closed down more than 2,000 bars and other nightspots because of a new cluster of COVID-19 infections; Germany scrambled to contain fresh outbreaks at slaughterhouses; and...




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Trinidad to start reopening Tuesday, but borders to remain closed until June

(CMC): Trinidad and Tobago says its borders are to remain closed until June, even as it embarks on softening restrictions to re energise the economy, which had been halted by COVID-19.   Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said the...




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Diasporas: New Partners in Global Development Policy

This edited volume examines the development impact of diasporas in six critical areas: entrepreneurship, capital markets, "nostalgia" trade and "heritage" tourism, philanthropy, volunteerism, and advocacy.




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Immigrants and Welfare: The Impact of Welfare Reform on America's Newcomers

This edited volume rigorously assesses the 1996 U.S. welfare reform law, questions whether its immigrant provisions were ever really necessary, and examines its impact on legal immigrants’ ability to integrate into American society.




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Hoja de ruta para la participación de las diásporas en el desarrollo: Un manual para políticos y profesionales de los países de origen y de acogida

Este manual ofrece a los formuladores de políticas y especialistas una guía accesible y práctica sobre las iniciativas gubernamentales referentes a la diáspora. Este manual contiene un menú, seleccionado cuidadosamente, de opciones normativas y programáticas viables basadas en experiencias reales en distintas partes del mundo.




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How Can Talent Abroad Induce Development at Home? Towards a Pragmatic Diaspora Agenda

This edited volume develops a pragmatic approach to the engagement of highly skilled members of the diaspora for the benefit of their countries of origin. The book, edited by a World Bank senior economist, is based on empirical work in middle-income and high-income economies.




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All at Sea: The Policy Challenges of Rescue, Interception, and Long-Term Response to Maritime Migration

With maritime migration the subject of significant policy and public focus in Europe, Australia, and beyond, this timely volume reviews the policy responses to irregular maritime arrivals at regional, national, and international levels. The book includes case studies of the major global hotspots—the Mediterranean, Gulf of Aden, Bay of Bengal/Andaman Sea, Australia, and the Caribbean—and examines trends and policy responses.




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Who shot Bob Marley?

Monday, May 11, marks 39 years since Robert Nesta Marley OM, died at the University of Miami Hospital in Florida. I was a youngster living on Sunflower Way in Mona Heights, Kingston, on December 3, 1976, when the reggae legend was shot at 56 Hope...




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LEP Workers & Access to Workforce Services: Perspectives on Current Barriers to Access and Prospects for Improvements Under WIA Reauthorization

In this webinar, experts discuss barriers immigrant and LEP individuals face in accessing the WIA system, how a revitalized WIA could address these barriers, and the extent to which the current Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee's WIA reauthorization proposal addresses these barriers.




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Limited English Proficient Individuals in the United States: Number, Share, Growth, and Linguistic Diversity

The number of U.S. residents deemed Limited English Proficient (LEP) has increased substantially in recent decades, consistent with the growth of the U.S. foreign-born population. This brief offers analysis on the number, share, growth, and linguistic diversity of LEP individuals in the United States from 1990 to 2010 at the national, state, and metropolitan-area levels.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Federal Update: A Conversation on Language Access with the U.S. Department of Justice

This MPI webinar features U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials discussing the department’s efforts to improve communications with Limited English Proficient (LEP) communities in federal and federally-funded programs and activities.




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Overcoming WIOA’s Barriers to Immigrant and Refugee Adult Learners

A webinar examining aspects of the implementation at state and local levels of the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) that may limit immigrant integration, along with a discussion on strategies that may help ensure more equitable access for immigrants and refugees to services provided under the law.  




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Immigrant Legalization: Assessing Labor Market Effects

Public Policy Institute of California researchers Magnus Lofstrom and Laura Hill discuss their research examining the potential labor market outcomes and other possible economic effects of a legalization program.




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Immigrant Legalization: Assessing Labor Market Effects

Public Policy Institute of California researchers Magnus Lofstrom and Laura Hill discuss their research examining the potential labor market outcomes and other possible economic effects of a legalization program. The discussion was moderated by Doris Meissner, MPI Senior Fellow and Director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program, with comments from MPI Senior Policy Analyst Randy Capps and Sherrie A. Kossoudji, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, and Adjunct Professor, Department of Economics, University of Michigan.




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Migration and Immigrants Two Years after the Financial Collapse: Where Do We Stand?

Immigrants have been disproportionately hit by the global economic crisis that began in 2008 and now confront a number of challenges. The report, which has a particular focus on Germany, Ireland, Spain, the United Kingdom, and United States finds that the unemployment gap between immigrant and native workers has widened in many places.




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Labor Standards Enforcement and Low-Wage Immigrants: Creating an Effective Enforcement System

This report highlights gaps and anomalies in labor protection, while recognizing that U.S. law sets significant standards for minimum wage, overtime pay, child labor, safe and healthy workplaces, antidiscrimination, labor organizing, and collective bargaining.




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Labor Standards Enforcement and Low-Wage Immigrants: Creating an Effective Enforcement System

This Migration Policy Institute webinar discusses labor enforcement laws during the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations and chronicles gaps in labor protection.




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Labor Standards Enforcement and Low-Wage Immigrants: Creating an Effective Enforcement System

This webinar discusses labor enforcement laws during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations and chronicles gaps in labor protection, while also discussing the elements necessary for an effective labor standards enforcement system and why labor standards enforcement should become a pillar of immigration policymaking.




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Immigrants in a Changing Labor Market: Responding to Economic Needs

This volume, which brings together research by leading economists and labor market specialists, examines the role immigrants play in the U.S. workforce, how they fare in good and bad economic times, and the effects they have on native-born workers and the labor sectors in which they are engaged. The book traces the powerful economic forces at play in today’s globalized world and includes policy prescriptions for making the American immigration system more responsive to labor market needs.




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Investing Wisely in the Future: How the U.S. Immigration System Can Better Meet U.S. Labor Market Needs

With the prospects for immigration reform greater than they have been in more than a decade and the U.S. economy slowly shrugging off the effects of the recession, the United States may be on the cusp of historic changes that make the immigration system a more effective tool for innovation, economic growth and the competitiveness of its firms—large and small. 




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Investing Wisely in the Future: How the U.S. Immigration System Can Better Meet U.S. Labor Market Needs

The release of MPI's book Immigrants in a Changing Labor Market and discussion with Jason Furman, Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council; Harry Holzer, Georgetown University Professor of Public Policy; and MPI's Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Madeleine Sumption, and Michael Fix.




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Tarantula toxin untangles pain pathways

A toxin isolated from the Togo starburst tarantula provides new insights into pain mechanisms and could lead to new treatments for irritable bowel syndrome

With their large, hairy bodies and long legs, tarantulas are an arachnophobe’s worst nightmare. For pain researchers, however, these outsized spiders are a dream come true: Their venom contains a cocktail of toxins, each of which activates pain-sensing nerve fibres in different ways, and researchers in the United States have now identified one such toxin that will help them to better understand pain, and could also lead to treatments for the chronic pain associated with irritable bowel syndrome.

Physical pain signals are transmitted from the body to the brain by specialised sensory neurons called nociceptors. These pain-sensing neurons have cell bodies located just outside the spinal cord, and possess a single conductive fibre that splits in two, with one branch extending out towards the skin surface, and the shorter one entering the back of the cord.

Related: Uncomfortably numb: The people who feel no pain

Related: Researchers identify gatekeeper neurons that control pain and itch

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Barack Obama Blindness: Failing to see the unexpected

New research demonstrates an extreme form of inattentional blindness in which we fail to see the unexpected

There’s much more to visual perception than meets the eye. What we see is not merely a matter of patterns of light falling on the retina, but rather is heavily influenced by so-called ‘top-down’ brain mechanisms, which can alter the visual information, and other types of sensory information, that enters the brain before it even reaches our conscious awareness.

Related: Memory contaminates perception | Mo Costandi

Related: Language boosts invisible objects into visual awareness | Mo Costandi

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Researchers develop non-invasive deep brain stimulation method

Researchers at MIT have developed a new method of electrically stimulating deep brain tissues without opening the skull

Since 1997, more than 100,000 Parkinson’s Disease patients have been treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS), a surgical technique that involves the implantation of ultra-thin wire electrodes. The implanted device, sometimes referred to as a ‘brain pacemaker’, delivers electrical pulses to a structure called the subthalamic nucleus, located near the centre of the brain, and effectively alleviates many of the physical symptoms of the disease, such as tremor, muscle rigidity, and slowed movements.

DBS is generally safe but, like any surgical procedure, comes with some risks. First and foremost, it is highly invasive, requiring small holes to be drilled in the patient’s skull, through which the electrodes are inserted. Potential complications of this include infection, stroke, and bleeding on the brain. The electrodes, which are implanted for long periods of time, sometimes move out of place; they can also cause swelling at the implantation site; and the wire connecting them to the battery, typically placed under the skin of the chest, can erode, all of which require additional surgical procedures.

Related: Blowing up the brain to reveal its finer details

Related: Traces of memory in a dish | Mo Costandi

Continue reading...




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[ Other - Games & Recreation ] Open Question : A dnd session where the party killed a manticore and decided to bring the corpse back to town to sell. How much money should this give them?




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Are the people who are complaining about this "LOCKDOWN" and want things opened up, the MAIN REASON the US WILL DIE OF COVID-19 ?

I say - Lock everything down, as we are, and keep everything locked down for years  This way, what every these people are complaining about will be long gone 




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[ Polls & Surveys ] Open Question : Why are all the best tasting foods "for kids only"?




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Are state/national forests open to go hiking?




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Will my friend be arrested for going fishing on his kayak everyday? ?

He catches the fish, breathes on them, then throws them back. These infected fish will infect all bodies of water with Covid-19. He goes saltwater and fresh water fishing 




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[ Politics ] Open Question : Why is it that marijuana unlocks your 6th sense?




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[ Movies ] Open Question : What are some very little known great/good horror or sci-fi movies to watch?

Examples being: XTro (UK), Oldboy (S.Korea), Girl With a Dragon Tattoo (Sweden), Predestination (Australia) ... something like these




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[ Polls & Surveys ] Open Question : What happens if you go to a concert just to stand in the corner and stink the place up with your farts?




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[ Standards & Testing ] Open Question : Can you help me my exam question?




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[ Movies ] Open Question : Name of a movie about a man visiting a small town living with a single mom and her son. Everyone thinks he is a coward but he is a war hero?




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[ Religion & Spirituality ] Open Question : The Epistles were written to the members of the body of Christ who'd been Holy Spirit baptized (I Cor 12:11-13). What are today's Christians?

....GOING TO DO WHEN THEY BELIEVE THEY APPLY TO THEM BUT THEY HAVEN'T BEEN HOLY SPIRIT BAPTIZED? TODAY'S CHRISTIANS HAVEN'T BEEN "QUICKENED BACK TO LIFE" (EPHESIANS 2:1)  BY HIS "POWER THAT CAME UPON THEM" (ACTS 1:8) WITH HOLY SPIRIT BAPTISM (ACTS 1:5) AS THEY WERE "BORN AGAIN OF THE SPIRIT" (JOHN 3:5-7) FROM THEIR "DEAD SPIRITS" (ROMANS 5:12-14) AND WERE "RESURRECTED" (I COR 15) FROM THEIR GRAVES" (EZEKIEL 37:12-14). WHAT ARE THESE "DEAD SPIRITS" GOING TO DO? 




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Britain to launch 14-day quarantine for arriving travelers, airlines say

British airlines said they have been told the government is planning a 14-day quarantine for anyone arriving there from any country other Ireland.




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Memo: Prior COVID-19 diagnosis 'permanently disqualifying' for U.S. military service

Military Entrance Processing Stations won't process individuals who have had COVID-19 for military service, even if they've fully recovered from the virus, the Pentagon confirmed this week.