On Thursday in Puerto Rico, activists in dozens of cars held a "Caravan Por La Vida," or "Caravan for Life," through San Juan to demand the government provide more COVID-19 tests and sufficient resources for people to stay at home during the pandemic. At least 92 people have died from COVID-19 in Puerto Rico, and last week the island was reporting a testing rate lower than any U.S. state, at an abysmal average of 15 tests a day for every 100,000 people. No one in Puerto Rico has received $1,200 checks from the government, according to San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz. Police stopped the caravan and said their sound trucks were illegal. When organizer Giovanni Roberto demanded that police describe the laws they were breaking, he was arrested. Roberto was released later in the night, and his charges of obstruction of justice were dropped. We hear voices from the protest. Special thanks to _Democracy Now!_ correspondent Juan Carlos Dávila.

At least 20 workers at meat processing plants have died from COVID-19, and around 5,000 have tested positive, but President Trump invoked an executive order to bar local governments from closing meat plants. We hear from meat plant workers and organizers about conditions during the pandemic and speak with Sindy Benavides, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, which is supporting the workers with a virtual town hall on food worker safety with presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and calling for Meatless May Mondays.

As the Senate reconvenes today, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is demanding that Congress use the next stimulus bill to protect corporations from liability for workers. "He wants to protect their right to engage in egregious misconduct," says Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen.

We speak with Dr. Richard Levitan, an emergency physician based in Littleton, New Hampshire, who volunteered at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan for 10 days at the height of the COVID-19 surge in April. Based on what he saw, he argues patients should be going to hospitals sooner and that medical professionals could use a small device you clip on your fingertip, called a pulse oximeter, to help detect the virus earlier by revealing oxygenation problems and elevated heart rates. "A pulse oximeter is just a measure of identifying how well the lungs are working, and, I believe, can be basically an early warning system in terms of patients to know who has COVID pneumonia," says Dr. Levitan.

We get an update from two doctors treating patients with the Navajo Nation, the largest Indigenous reservation in the country, which has been hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic. Dr. Michelle Tom is a member of the Navajo Nation and a family physician treating COVID-19 patients at the Winslow Indian Health Care Center and Little Colorado Medical Center in northern Arizona near the Navajo reservation. In Gallup, New Mexico, Dr. Sriram Shamasunder is leading a medical volunteer group of 21 nurses and doctors from the University of California, San Francisco as part of the HEAL Initiative. He says the coronavirus hit harder on the Navajo Nation due to a "trajectory of an underfunded health system," and notes the Indian Health Service is funded at one-third the rate per capita as Medicare. "The level of inequity that you're seeing … it's part of this pattern."

The spread of COVID-19 threatens the lives of more than 2.3 million people locked up in prisons and jails throughout the United States. We look at how the call to release prisoners during the coronavirus pandemic makes the case for prison abolition, with scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, co-founder of California Prison Moratorium Project and Critical Resistance and the author of "Golden Gulag: Prison, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California." Her forthcoming book is "Change Everything: Racial Capitalism and the Case for Abolition."

We look at an incredible story unfolding in Venezuela of a failed coup attempt. Did a former Green Beret mastermind it? Two Americans have been arrested in Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro claims the U.S. was behind the plot. "It looks like a bad Rambo movie, or a really bad telenovela," says Miguel Tinker Salas, author of "The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela." He notes that "the U.S. is seeking regime change ... and the consequences for Venezuela could be very dire going forward.”

We go to Moscow for an update on the pandemic in Russia, where the coronavirus is spreading rapidly, with at least 10,000 new cases a day and the second-highest infection rate in the world, and more than 100 medical workers have died fighting the virus, and many have reported lack of personal protective equipment. Meanwhile, three Russian healthcare workers mysteriously fell from hospital windows over the past two weeks. Two died, and the one who is hospitalized had posted a video online to note the lack of medical equipment and said he had to keep working despite testing positive. We speak with Joshua Yaffa, Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker magazine.

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide approaches 4 million and the pandemic could be with us for months or years, we look at who can access drugs like remdesivir, being developed by pharmaceutical giant Gilead, which has the patent for the drug and is poised to make massive profits. We look at how much drugs like remdesivir will cost, and who can access them, with writer Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa.

A 56-foot billboard called the Trump Death Clock was unveiled in Times Square in New York City. The tally of lives lost to government inaction was created by filmmaker Eugene Jarecki, who says, "On behalf of all of those who needlessly lost their lives to this failed leadership in a pandemic, we need a symbol, a symbol that cries out not only for accountability, but also for more responsible and responsive stewardship, going forward." As of the Friday morning broadcast, the death toll count was nearly 47,000 and growing.

We look at the deadly disparate impact of the pandemic on African Americans as told through an in-depth story for The New York Times Magazine by writer Linda Villarosa in her new piece, "'A Terrible Price': The Deadly Racial Disparities of Covid-19 in America," that tells what happened to the Zulu club, a Black social organization in New Orleans, during and after Mardi Gras. She reports that the experience is usually a joy, but the coronavirus made it a tragedy.

As more than 40 states begin to reopen, President Trump is downplaying the need for mass COVID-19 testing, even as he himself is now being tested every day for the virus. We speak with emergency physician Dr. Leana Wen, who says, "Widespread testing is so critical. … Why shouldn't this testing be available to all Americans?"

Huawei Matepad T8 has been launched in Romania along with the Huawei Y5P and the Huawei Y6P phones. The tablet is available in a single Deepsea Blue color and traditional themed design. The tablet has a thick bezel around

The point of taxation in the present case would be the date of JDA itself and service tax would be applicable as the JDA was entered before 01.07.2017 and the time to discharge such liability would be the month following the month in which SA was entered or handover of flats to the landowner has tak

Since the coming into force of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 (IBC) and operationalisation of National Company Law Tribunal(s) in India, various new legal issues have cropped up over the last 3 years before the NCLTs and NCLAT, which finally reached before the Hon'ble Supreme Court and still c

Recently Gujarat High Court ([TS-858-HC-2018(GUJ)-NT-Torrent Power Ltd]) has held that when a company is engaged in the business of supply and distribution of electric power which is principal supply, the ancillary and related supply such as application fee for release of connection, meter testing f

GST law was introduced with the objective of seamless flow of input tax credit but on actual implementation of CGST Act, 2017, admissibility of input tax credit has been restricted subject to provisions contained in section 17(5) of the CGST Act, 2017. The input tax credit on motor vehicles was disp

The applicant is engaged in the business of providing the tour operators with the ‘Ancillary services’ such as Elephant Ride, guide charges, assistance charges, home host dinner, lunch/dinner at local restaurants, boat ride, camel ride, and saree turban tying, etc. Moreover, ancillary services do no

The provision contained in section 136 of the CGST Act, 2017 also states that a statement made and signed by a person on appearance in response to any summons issued under section 70 during the course of any inquiry or proceedings under this Act shall be relevant for the purpose of proving in any pr

We hereby discuss one of the important aspect of any investigation, i.e., issuing summon to persons concerned with the investigation so as to take their statements and produce the documents which would form important evidence for the entire proceedings. Before proceeding further, it is important to

The delay in retrospective amendment regarding computation of interest liability under GST regime has led to flood of writ petitions in High Courts seeking relief from recovery proceedings initiated by the government. The revenue authorities have consistently held that interest liability gets automa

The present update intends to discuss the Advance Ruling given in the case of M/s T & D Electricals. The question placed before the Advance Ruling was the requirement of separate registration for executing works contract in another State and leviability of tax-whether CGST/SGST or IGST if separate r

The present update intends to discuss the recent advance ruling given by AAR Karnataka in the case of M/s T & D Electricals.

New evidence from neutrinos points to one of several theories about why the cosmos is made of matter and not antimatter

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

LabCorp’s Pixel kits rely on self-swabbing and mailing samples, and they have yet to be scaled up for widespread use

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

A hotter planet could change the relationship among infectious agents, their hosts and the human body’s defense mechanisms

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Proposed cuts could end decades of U.S. leadership in exploring that world

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Assays that detect prior novel coronavirus infections could reveal the extent of outbreaks. But they may give individuals false security

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Antigen-based assays could be used in the home, but critics say their error rates are still an issue

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Events with extreme temperatures and humidity are occurring twice as often now as they were 40 years ago

-- Read more on ScientificAmerican.com

Logistics Management Group News Editor Jeff Berman recently caught up with Walter Kemmsies, economist and chief strategist for industrial real estate firm JLL. Their wide-ranging conversation covered various topics, including: the impact of COVID-19 on logistics and supply chain operations, inventory management shifts, and why now is a great time to be in industrial real estate, among others.

The CBA said that the objective of the CISCC is to advance uniform national policies that will strengthen United States supply chains and also ensure the timely flow of critical goods in various ways.

Well, it’s just about a month until The Obelisk Gate releases in print and ebook — August 16th in the US, August 18th in the UK, no idea why it’s different — and per my usual pre-publication tradition, I’m now posting the uncopyedited first chapter of the book for people to peruse (and if you […]

These will be scattered because I’m in the middle of today’s wordcount, and therefore I don’t have time to make them clear or organized in any way. Book 3 proceeds! I’ve had time to process the Hugo win, a little. Mostly I did it by spending yesterday introverting and writing, because that’s how I chew […]

As I’ve mentioned on social media, I only have two works eligible for awards nomination from 2017: The Stone Sky, and my Uncanny short story Henosis. Last year was tough, so I didn’t get much writing done. I’m sure a lot of you can relate. But since people have asked for my thoughts on this… […]

For reasons that I cannot fathom, I can’t figure out how to change the sidebar of my blog anymore. It’s probably something simple, but since I don’t really use this blog much anymore, I’ve forgotten most of my PHP and CSS. Plus, WordPress keeps changing things to make them harder to figure out! Argh. Anyway. […]

Originally posted on - blogs by NPG staff

Originally posted on - blogs by NPG staff

Originally posted on - blogs by NPG staff

I’m finally getting around to reading a book that a kind Hatter got me almost a decade ago (thanks, Andrei!), Stalin’s Children: Three Generations of Love, War, and Survival by Owen Matthews, and am enjoying it greatly; the first chapter has material of clear LH interest: I spoke Russian before I spoke English. Until I […]

Kelly Grovier at BBC Culture writes a piece that perfectly illustrates the pitfalls of the popular belief that earliest attestation is the same thing as word creation. Her thesis is that “it was often female writers who sculpted the fresh coinages that kept language rippling with poignancy and power.” She illustrates it by combing the […]