A new home confinement order went into effect in Bay Area counties on Sunday night and Monday morning to try to limit the spread of COVID-19.
The order went into effect at 10:00 p.m. on Sunday in Contra Costa, Santa Clara and San Francisco counties.
At 00:01 am in the city of Berkeley and the rest of Alameda County.
Marin County will go into lockdown Tuesday at noon.
The six jurisdictions announced on Friday the regional order to require most non-essential businesses to close all internal and external operations.
Temporary closures include outdoor restaurants, playgrounds, aesthetics, museums, zoos, cinemas, and wineries, breweries and bars.
Shops and malls will be allowed to operate indoors with a capacity of 20 percent and without eating or drinking in the shops.
A state order announced Thursday will add such restrictions if a specific region of California reached the 15 percent limit of availability in intensive care units, a number that has already been reached by California and the San Joaquin Valley regions.
Health officials from all six jurisdictions decided to comply with the state government's requirements, even though the availability of the ICU in the Bay Area did not exceed the 15 percent availability barrier; as of this Sunday, the remaining 24.1 percent of the ICU occupancy was accounted for.
So far, the order does not cover other counties in the region.
The restrictions will remain in force at least until January 4.
Due to the health contingency for COVID-19 and given that San Mateo County is on purple alert - the highest risk - for the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, this time the new Redwood City Councilmen should be welcomed virtually this Monday, December 7 at 7:00 p.m. local time.
Join us to celebrate and recognize outgoing Council Members 12/7 at 7 p.m. The newly elected City Councilmembers will be installed at the same meeting. All are welcome to stay for the entirety of the meeting.
The ceremony also includes a recognition of outgoing Councillors Ian Bain, Janet Borgens, and Shelly Masur who, in turn, will receive and welcome to the new members of the CouncilDistrict 7, Alicia Aguirre; District 3, Lissette Espinoza-Ganica; District 1, Jeff Gee; and District 4, Michael Smith.
The event will take place virtually via the Zoom remote conference platform at redwoodcity.zoom.us with invitation code 963 2830 9893.
It is worth reminding the community that Redwood City Council votes in all other districts will be held until 2022.
San Francisco-based food innovation company East Just Inc. announced that, after a rigorous review process, its lab-grown chicken was approved for sale in Singapore, which could mark the beginning of a new food in the future.
In a statement the company said that this process is the first regulatory concession at the global level that allows the use of real meat grown directly in a laboratory for human consumption from animal cells.
This breakthrough for the industry builds on Singapore's reputation as a world leader in business, technology and culinary innovation, and emphasizes the country's dedication to entrepreneurial solutions that promote sound environmental management.
According to Eat Just co-founder and CEO Josh Tetrick, "Singapore has for many years been a leader in innovation, from information technology to biological products, and is now a world leader in building a healthier and safer food system.
This regulatory approval, he said, "will be the first of many in Singapore and in other countries. In partnership with the agricultural industry and forward-thinking policymakers, companies like ours can help meet the increased demand for animal protein as our population grows.
It should be noted that the role of cultured meat in creating a safer global food supply has been widely documented, and has even led to an increase in the application of animal cell culture technology for the development of food products in the last decade.
Meat production has increased dramatically in recent years. For example, in 2019 production was estimated at just over 335 million tons, while by 2050 consumption is expected to increase by more than 70 percent.
In addition, public health crises related to conventional meat consumption patterns require much safer, more efficient and less environmentally damaging ways to meet growing consumer demand.
According to safety and quality validations by the Singapore Food Agency, the cultured chicken met the standards for poultry meat, with an extremely low microbiological content and significantly cleaner than conventional chicken.
The analysis also showed that cultured chicken contains a high protein content, a diversified composition of amino acids, a relatively high content of healthy monounsaturated fats and is a rich source of minerals.
And although at the moment this product is significantly more expensive than conventional chicken, as production increases it will be even cheaper than the chicken we are used to buying in supermarkets.
This is a much more sustainable way of meeting the future food needs of the population, since this way of growing meat requires 99 percent less land and up to 96 percent less water.
Thus, the company takes a further step towards the small-scale commercial launch of its new Good Meat brand, details of which will be made known in the future.
The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday that it has filed a lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that the technology firm favored migrant or foreign workers on H-1B visas and others on temporary visas over U.S. citizen employees.
In a statement, the Justice Department said Facebook refused to recruit qualified U.S. workers for more than 2,600 jobs, reserving them for temporary visa holders it wanted to sponsor for permanent work authorization.
The positions, which were allegedly discriminated against by Facebook, offered an average salary of approximately $156,000 and, according to the lawsuit, the company did not advertise these positions on its career website as it normally does.
Assistant Attorney General Eric S. Dreiband of the Civil Rights Division said the department alleges that Facebook "committed widespread and intentional violations of the law by reserving positions for temporary visa holders rather than considering interested and qualified U.S. workers.
"This lawsuit follows an almost two-year investigation... Our message is clear: if companies deny employment opportunities by illegally preferring temporary visa holders, the Justice Department will hold them accountable," the official added.
The complaint states that, from January 1, 2018 to September 18, 2019, Facebook employed tactics that discriminated against U.S. workers and preferred holders of temporary work visas in connection with the labor certification process (PERM).
It also alleges that Facebook attempted to channel jobs to temporary visa holders, at the expense of U.S. workers, by not advertising those vacancies on its career website and refusing to consider U.S. workers who applied for those positions.
In its investigation, the department determined that Facebook's "ineffective" recruitment methods deterred U.S. workers from applying for their PERM jobs.
Thus, the department concluded that, during the referred period, Facebook received between zero and one U.S. applicant for 99.7 percent of its PERM positions, while comparable positions advertised on its career site during a similar period generally attracted 100 or more applicants.
It should be noted that the PERM process is administered by the Department of Labor and allows employers to offer permanent positions to temporary visa holders, making them legal permanent residents who can live and work in the U.S. indefinitely.
However, the PERM process requires that an employer demonstrate that there are no qualified U.S. workers available for the position that the employer plans to offer the temporary visa holder.
Indeed, H-1B visas are often used by the technology sector to bring highly skilled foreign workers to the U.S. However, for some critics of these permits, the laws governing such visas are lax and make it too easy to replace U.S. workers with cheaper foreign labor.
According to a statement picked up by the U.S. media, technology giant spokesman Daniel Robertson, "Facebook has been cooperating with the Justice Department in its review of this matter and while we dispute the allegations in the complaint, we cannot comment further on the pending litigation.
The Facebook lawsuit is the latest example of the Trump administration's crusade against Silicon Valley in its effort to restrict immigration of foreign workers.
This is totally contrary to what companies such as Facebook and Apple have said, as they believe that banning such visas would stifle the ability of American companies to attract the best talent, drive innovation and promote economic prosperity.
In June, Trump issued a presidential proclamation that temporarily blocked foreign workers entering on H-1B visas, ensuring that 525,000 U.S. jobs would be restored.
According to a May Economic Policy Institute report, the top 30 employers of H-1B workers include Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Alphabet's Google, Apple and Facebook.
Wilma and Ricardo divorced this year after six months of confinement after spending 16 years sleeping in the same bed. They have a daughter, Carolina, three dogs, two parrots, two cats and an anthill that they got for Caro on her birthday.
Ricardo had an affair last year and, although they had decided to give each other one last chance, the confinement ended up annihilating what was left of their relationship.
Was it adventure or was it confinement that ended up untying the ties of love after so many years?
A study of married life during confinement and extramarital relationships addresses several topics, including sex, stress, dating during a pandemic, thoughts about the future of marriage, monogamy, and divorce.
We give you 5 keys to manage your marriage and (possible) infidelity during the pandemic:
You be the one to initiate sex
Wear something sexy or something you know your partner likes. Start by looking for some kind of contact or throwing a look. Maybe some words you know will trigger the other one and prompt him/her to play.
Being locked up doesn't mean we spend all day like bunnies. The 58 % of married people who date outside of marriage comment that their spouse has not initiated any sexual intimacy during quarantine. It is not surprising then that 75 % of the unfaithful have less sexual intercourse than usual or none at all with their spouse.
When sex is so important, yet so unattainable in marriage, people will inevitably look for another place to have their needs met. Since confinement, marriages have had to spend the longest period of time with their spouses, and not be able to leave! Clearly, the answer is in your hands. If sexual pleasure is not on the menu, it will go to another restaurant that serves it... and warmly.
Trust and instill confidence in your partner in times of uncertainty and stress, do not resort to third parties
Ricardo felt anxiety, worry and fear, frustration and anger. Wilma boredom. But both felt discomfort and uncertainty caused by the pandemic and confinement. With the bad news and the third wave the country is in, it is hard to stay positive.
However, Ricardo felt great relief when his infidelity began, it is a great distraction, something he longed for and something that allows him to maintain a sense of normalcy.
It could even be said that infidelity is a reliable form of personal care, for Ricardo, since his state of mind increased and he is not alone, as is the case with many infidels, according to the study on married life and infidelity during the pandemic.
It's the same with sex, if you don't open up to your partner and tell them your fears and uncertainties, your deepest desires and share your state of mind, you'll have to put it somewhere else. In the same way, you must leave the door open so that your partner feels confident to deposit what he or she has inside you.
Only you are responsible for your happiness, not your partner
The myth is that of the fairy tale where your spouse must be your main and only confidant, BFF (best friend forever), lover, haven of peace and also dress in blue to save you from every problem you face or from the other side, dress in pink and wait patiently, docile and quietly for the storm to pass; it must stop at once.
The pandemic has definitely changed the way we interact with others, in some ways, for the better.
Avoiding COVID-19 infection leaves you with few alternatives, since the best thing to do is to stay at home and get away from people. This makes interaction with your partner difficult, since you tend to overload yourself to do absolutely everything with just one person. Those of you who are married may have realized that you cannot depend on your spouse for everything, and this bubble is a way of meeting your various needs.
Happiness can only be found in yourself, and burdening your partner with such responsibility will only aggravate the situation. Think that when you met you were happy, together yes, but you were happy before he or she came. Besides, you owe it to yourself.
Another alternative to happiness
An alternative, with all the risks that they imply, could be to create a healthy social bubble for socializing and personal fulfillment. However, creating the bubble necessarily implies a previous selection and forces us to think about what we need and who can give it to us. When you are alone, who do you call? When you need fun, who do you want to see? When you want passion, who do you look for? Perhaps the answers indicate that it will be a different person for each situation.
There is no one person who can offer fulfillment in all aspects of life, not even a spouse. Perhaps times are beginning to come up with new ways of building sex-affective relationships where there is no longer room for monogamy.
Lara Ferreiro, an expert psychologist in sexuality and couples therapy says that:
"In times of pandemic, it is the lover who is meeting and attending to the emotional and sexual needs of many, not the partner. Even spending more time together than ever with your partner is not enough to match everything your lover offers you. In them they find not only a physiological outlet; their lover is their confidant and their main emotional support that helps them to cope with the current situation in their home. Monogamy is a concept that no longer works for many, and is beginning to be questioned and even revised.
Let's not talk about opening up your marriage, but what do we do about infidelity then? In the end, maybe the affair is a way to avoid divorce
What a hoax! Before the altar one never promises to spend 24 hours a day every day glued to one's partner without leaving home.
It is understandable that new tensions, stress and even some arguments at home have surfaced, as couples in marriage now spend more time together since the confinement began than they ever did since they met. As a result, divorce consultations have increased by as much as 25% according to The National Law Review. But the unfaithful go their own way. For them, divorce is the last thing on their minds, and they thank their alternative relationship for it.
This was not the case for Wilma and Ricardo, who after the deception only saw the solution of separating definitively. But one cannot help but wonder if for many others, an affair, an affair, is not the escape valve required, from time to time, to save the marriage.
Susan Barnum. Protest against child detention outside Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas.
Pamela Cruz. Peninsula 360 Press [P360P].
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has become the epicenter of some of the greatest horrors of the past four years, embodied in stories that, so far, cannot be forgotten.
Among these stories, he mentions the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are those of children crying breathlessly after being separated by their parents at the border, or of little ones sleeping in cages on the ground in the open air.
Perhaps the cruelest of all is the photograph of a girl desperately clinging to her father's neck with her arm around him, who ended up drowning on the side of the Rio Bravo as they tried to cross to the United States.
The disturbing image has generated comparisons with other photos, such as that of the death of Aylan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian boy who drowned in 2015 when his family was trying to reach a shrine in Greece; or that of Omran Daqneesh, 5, when he was wounded in an air raid in Aleppo.
Just as these images focused the world's attention on the humanitarian crisis in Syria and Turkey, the intense image of the little girl and her father drowned in the Rio Bravo was a stark reminder of the human cost of the migration crisis.
Cuando el presidente electo Joe Biden asuma el cargo en enero próximo, refiere ACLU, debe asegurarse de que este tipo de abusos nunca vuelvan a ocurrir, así como de erradicar el clima de propagación de miedo en la frontera, que ha excusado la crueldad y ha enfrentado al abuso con impunidad.
While the new administration is contemplating how to fund the Department of Homeland Security's management in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it will also have to focus on significantly cutting the budget of the Customs and Border Protection agency.
The federal agency is one of the largest in the country, with some 45,600 sworn officers and agents, along with a budget of more than $17 billion for both Border Patrol and port of entry operations.
Despite its size, the Department of Homeland Security stated in 2019 that 40 percent of CBP resources were being absorbed by an "unprecedented increase" in the number of families fleeing Central American countries, and it was unable to manage other border security missions.
Thus, for the ACLU, CBP should have no role in the detention of individuals beyond a short processing period, since, in the last two years, at least seven children died in CBP custody or shortly after their release, because they received late or no medical care at all.
CBP should also be removed from the asylum process, as it has been found to have confiscated crucial personal documents or lied on government forms, and should not make decisions about how and when to separate families arriving at the border.
Also, adds the ACLU, reforms are needed to address CBP's culture of impunity for abuse, including the death of people at the hands of CBP, since, since January 2010, at least 117 people, including some US citizens, have died following encounters with CBP.
As Biden's transition team contemplates a new model for receiving asylum seekers, it should also develop alternatives for detaining them.
Similarly, stricter standards are needed to limit CBP's use of lethal force, require agency officials to keep their credentials visible, and use body cameras. As well as a complaint mechanism that is accessible online, a uniform process for reviewing and investigating abuse and ensuring that CBP personnel are held accountable for inhumane treatment.
Accountability will require more than the appointment of new leadership, concludes the ACLU, but will require a rebalancing and recalculation of the role of CBP.
El gobernador de California, Gavin Newsom confirmó, a través de su cuenta de Twitter, el plan de vacunación que será puesto en marcha en dicho estado. Comenzará «a mediados de diciembre», dijo Newsom, luego de que anunciara una nueva orden de confinamiento en casa.
VACCINE UPDATE: CA will be receiving 327k doses of the new Pfizer #COVID19 vaccine in mid December.
The Drafting Guidelines Workgroup & Community Advisory Committee have now finalized recommendations for who will receive these initial doses.
327,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the 6 regions of California; likewise, Newsom pointed out that, starting this Friday, the regions will begin to place orders according to need in their three stages:
Region I: 126,750 doses.
Region II: 80,497 doses.
Region III: 8,592 doses.
Region IV: 35,145 doses.
Region V: 16,706 doses
Region VI: 59,910 doses.
The vaccination plan will consist of 3 stages, the first of which I feel is the most important:
Stage 1
Intensive care, psychiatric and correctional hospitals.
Skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities and similar environments for the elderly or medically vulnerable.
Paramedics, paramedics and others who provide emergency medical services.
Dialysis centers.
Stage 2
Intermediate care facilities.
Home health care and support services
Community health workers.
Public health personnel in the field.
Primary care clinics: Rural health centers, correctional facilities clinics and urgent care clinics.
Stage 3, other settings and other health workers
Specialized clinics.
Laboratory workers.
Dental and oral health clinics.
Pharmacy staff who do not work at higher levels
Both the distribution and application of the COVID-19 vaccines will be logistically challenging because, as mentioned, refrigerated containers at very low temperatures are needed to keep the doses safe, but Newsom is confident that after the first part of the application, the work will be efficient from start to finish over the next few months.
"Our intensive care units are filling up fast. Our mortality rate is increasing. To stop the resurgence of #COVID19 and thus save lives, California is announcing a Regional Home Confinement Order," said California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Our ICUs are climbing quickly toward their capacity. Our death rate is rising.
To slow the surge of #COVID19 and save lives, CA is introducing a Regional Stay-At-Home Order.
Regions where ICU capacity⁰fall below 15% will be placed into this Stay-at-Home Order ⁰for 3 weeks.
And that's because, he points, "regions where the capacity of the intensive care units is less than 15%" of their capacity, will enter such confinement for the next three weeks". However, he points out that no region has been required to enter this new confinement order.
He recalled that, if this order is implemented, it is a temporary measure. "Hope is coming. Relief - from the pandemic - is coming." He recalled that the first doses of the first vaccines will be available in the coming weeks.
Through his Twitter account, the governor of California indicated that the economic sectors that will remain open in the regions where the new confinement order applies include only schools that have already reopened, critical infrastructure, retail - taking care of the 20% of maximum capacity - and restaurants that only offer take-out.
The businesses to be closed during the next three weeks in the regions designated for the new containment order will be bars, warehouses, personal and aesthetic services.
All non-essential travel is temporarily restricted throughout the state of California during the implementation of the new confinement order.
The governor added the importance of being as physically active as possible and virtually connected. He recommended going out to parks or beaches. Go for a walk or bike ride. Fishing, yoga, walking the pets, taking outdoor fitness classes, running, skiing or, instead, snowboard.
The United Kingdom granted emergency approval Wednesday to Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine, making it the first Western country to allow mass vaccination against the disease, which has killed more than 1.487 million people worldwide.
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson stressed via his Twitter account that the approval of a vaccine is a big step towards normality, but the rules in the country area have not changed and restrictions must be followed to protect others.
"Until the vaccine is fully implemented, our plan depends on all of us continuing to make the necessary sacrifices to protect those we love," he added.
According to CNN, the United Kingdom ordered 40 million doses of the vaccine, so next week 800,000 initial doses would be delivered from Pfizer's facilities in Belgium, and a few million more before the end of the year.
Thus, older people living in residential homes, frontline health workers and other vulnerable people would be at the top of the priority list for vaccination.
According to the final analysis of the phase 3 trial, which Pfizer published last month, the vaccine was 95 percent effective in preventing the disease, even in older adults, and caused no serious safety problems.
At the time, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the study results marked an important step in the historic eight-month journey "to deliver a vaccine that can help end this devastating pandemic".
For this reason, he said, marketing authorization would be requested "in a few days" from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), since with thousands of people infected every day around the world, "we urgently need to bring a safe and effective vaccine to the world.
Notably, the announcement means the U.K. has overtaken the U.S. and the European Union in the race to approve a vaccine, a decision that comes with a vaccination campaign unprecedented in modern medicine, including an information crusade about the benefits of vaccines.
This development may also intensify pressure on U.S. regulators, who are being criticized by the White House for not moving faster to get the doses to people.
According to U.S. regulators, they were falling behind in recent days because they are virtually on their own to pore over thousands of pages of raw data on vaccine trials before they reach approval.
Instead of accepting the findings of studies shown by vaccine manufacturers, U.S. regulators have to validate the results themselves.
Born on December 14, 1916 in San Francisco, California, like her literature, Shirley Hardie Jackson's childhood was full of aberrations and contradictions that would deeply mark the writer. Her mother, Geraldine even said that she had not had to be born. The reason she gave was because she needed to spend more time with her handsome husband. Facing her mother's personality, little Shirley had trouble socializing with her peers. She preferred, much to her mother's chagrin, to isolate herself in order to write. She asked herself questions like her character, the teenage Merricat of The Road Through the Wall (1948): "Who wants us out there? The world is full of bad people."
His adolescence, also broken by not fitting the standards of beauty prevailing at the time, suffered from overweight. His literary activity would grow as Jackson finished college, collaborating with literary magazines such as Harper's, The New Republic, The New Yorker, among others. Soon after, she married the literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman with whom she would have, "four children, four cats, a dog and a hamster" as she would write.
His literature is peppered with a stench of strangeness and vileness; a prevailing mystery that he lived through, or rather suffered from, in the town of North Bennington, New England, where he would live a little hell thanks to the accusation he made, along with other parents, of a local teacher for physically abusing students. The inhabitants of the village were on top of him and he was often offended by this action, a situation which exacerbated his already isolated tendency and which he reflected well in his novel The Road Through the Wall where a couple of women are harassed by an entire village, forcing them to stay indoors or go out very little, in the face of a massacre that has taken place in their unclear home.
The voice that predominates in Shirley is struggling with its immediate spaces to which it fills them with mysteries and everyday situations that by their simplicity makes them spin with great narrative precision, let's say without getting dirty, but yes, transforming it, turning the common into something abnormal and even terrifying.
Shirley, suffered the United States after the 50's, those of the cold war, a village society, hostile and conservative where the role of women was relegated to domestic work. Jackson, relived with her husband the rejection that her mother Geraldine had shown her; Stanley called her: "that talented idiot" controlled her finances (even though she earned much more than he did) and forced her, moreover, to endure her infidelities.
He lived in a state of continuous excitement from which he fed his favorite subjects: anguish and claustrophobia. The protagonists of his works are dragged by the force of circumstances and their personal ghosts: the monstrous is found in family relationships, circles of friends, neighbours, houses and villages.
He died on August 8, 1965. In addition to being overweight, he suffered from alcoholism. His health was weakened by the constant use of barbiturates to control his growing anxiety. She spent her last days at home, prey to a terrible agoraphobia: its prevalence has had a boost that has led scholars to rescue works such as the The Haunting of Hill House which has been adapted on Netflix and directed by Mike Falanagan.
Your story The Lottery was the one that brought her to fame, it also made her receive more than ten letters a day where they congratulated her and even threatened her not to go near places because the story, a normalization of evil, seemed to them grotesque and frightening.
Jackson even signed that he couldn't stand people, "who think you start writing the moment you sit down at your desk and pick up your pen and finish writing when you leave it; a writer is always writing. Isolated from the world, she had to deal with her children and family life, which not infrequently became an obstacle.
Thanks to the subjects she addressed, the publishers of her time associated her novels with an author who practiced witchcraft, something that deeply annoyed the writer and yet she was convinced that she had suffered "magical" attacks of clairvoyance. Some of her characters spoke with cats and had great knowledge of herbalism. Although she didn't like the nickname her literature sublimated her life, it gave her the opportunity to escape the continuous confinement that brought her family life from where she fought to escape through her letters. He died of a heart attack when he was 48 years old.
