Revelation by Disinfolab EU: Senate body asks govt to move Interpol against Indian chronicles

5 January 2021

ISLAMABAD: The Senate Committee on Interior on Monday passed a resolution, seeking the government to take up the issue of Indian chronicles duly revealed by Disinfolab EU with Interpol.

The meeting was led by its Chairman Senator Abdul Rehman Malik here at the Parliament House on Monday and was attended among others by senators Muhammad Javed Abbasi, Dr Shahzad Wasim, Mian M. Ateeq Shaikh, Rana Maqbool, and Sardar Shafique Tareen.

The meeting was also attended by the Federal Minister of Interior, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, special secretary Interior, additional secretary Interior, DIG Islamabad and Motorway Police, and senior officials from other departments. Rehman Malik welcomed Minister of Interior Sheikh Rashid in the meeting and congratulated him on assuming the charges. Sheikh Rashid thanked Rehman Malik and said that he sought his guidance for being a highly expert in interior affairs. Committee assured him of full support on national issues.

The resolution on issue of Indian chronicles, duly revealed by Disinfolab EU with Interpol as moved by Rehman Malik, was appreciated by all among others. He read the resolutions as “The committee strongly condemns the establishment of fake media houses/NGOs by India to spread incorrect, fake and baseless propaganda against Pakistan and using this disinformation worldwide also being used in FATF to blacklist Pakistan. The Indian moves and plans have been disclosed by EU Disinfolab, an independent watchdog, monitoring the international fake news worldwide.”

He states, “The committee feels that this act of India is a glaring violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan through hybrid, proxy war, international cybercrimes, and violation of UN Charter for using the soil of several countries, including the European Union against Pakistan. The committee demands that the Ministry of Interior and National Central Bureau should immediately move the matter with evidence to the Interpol for necessary legal action against India and report be submitted to the committee in three weeks.”

The committee has strongly condemned the killing of 13 coalminers identified as Hazara in Machh area of Balochistan and expressed heartfelt condolences with families of martyrs and the whole Hazara community. The committee demanded the government to investigate this barbaric act of terrorism and unearth the conspirators involved.

He appealed to both Shia and Sunnis not to fall into the traps of the enemy and stay united as the enemy trying to divide us by such activities.

Senate Standing Committee on Interior condemned and expressed great concerns and grief over the murder of 22 years old young Osama Nadeem Satti by Islamabad Police and expressed heartfelt condolences with the bereaved family. Police officials informed the committee that the incident was being investigated and that the committee would be briefed soon as the investigation is concluded.

The committee in its meeting considered and discussed in details various legislative bills that included ‘The Pakistan Penal Code (Amendment) Bill, 2019 (Ordinance No. VI) introduced by Senator Muhammad Azam Khan Swati, The Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020 [Section 376, Act XLV of 1860]” introduced by Senator Muhammad Javed Abbasi, “The Code of Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill, 2020” introduced by Senator Muhammad Javed Abbasi, “The Islamabad Capital Territory Trust (Amendment) Bill, 2020” introduced by Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, “The Anti-Terrorism (Amendment) Bill, 2020” introduced by Senator Mushtaq Ahmed, “The Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2020 [Section 297A, Act XLV of 1860]” introduced by Senator Muhammad Javed Abbasi and “The Fatal Accidents (Amendment) Bill, 2020” introduced by Senator Muhammad Javed Abbasi.

The Bill moved by Senator Mushtaq Ahmed were deferred due to his absence.

The Committee expressed annoyance over the absence of the law secretary and directed the law secretary to ensure his presence in the meeting during important legislation.

Senator Dr Shahzad Waseem, while presenting his views on the legislation on rape cases, said that such incidents will continue to happen till the strictest punishments are not introduced.

The committee adjourned further discussion till the next meeting after taking opinion from the Ministry of Law on all these draft laws.

EU warns Iran

Newsdesk

5 January 2021

The European Union warned on Monday that Iran’s move to enrich uranium to 20 percent would be a “considerable departure” from Tehran’s commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.

EU spokesman Peter Stano said Brussels would wait until a briefing from the director of the UN’s IAEA nuclear watchdog later in the day before deciding what action to take.

Earlier, an Iranian government spokesman said the Shahid Alimohammadi enrichment complex in Fordow had begun the “process for producing” uranium enriched to 20 percent. That would be well above the 3.67 percent cap set in the deal, known as the JCPOA, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

“If this announcement is going to be implemented… it would constitute a considerable departure from Iran’s nuclear commitments under the JCPOA,” Stano told reporters. This would have “serious nuclear non-proliferation implications”.

No EU decision on Moderna shot as blame game mounts

Newsdesk

5 January 2021

No EU decision on Moderna shot as blame game mounts

The EU’s drugs watchdog held off authorising Moderna’s coronavirus jab on Monday despite bringing forward a special meeting, as criticism mounts of the bloc’s slow vaccine roll-out.

The Amsterdam-based European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it would resume talks on Wednesday on whether to give the green light to what would be the EU’s second vaccine.

Under pressure from EU nations to speed up, the regulator had earlier fast-tracked the meeting to decide on approval from January 12 to Wednesday, and then again to Monday.

Despite launching its vaccination campaign with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, on December 27, the EU’s progress has been much slower than in the United States, Britain or Israel.

“EMA’s committee for human medicines discussion on Covid-19 vaccine (by) Moderna has not concluded today. It will continue on Wednesday,” the EMA said on Twitter.

“No further communication will be issued today by EMA.”

The European Commission had earlier defended the bloc against criticisms of its slow roll-out, and said its plans would get the EU past “bumps on the road”.

“It’s obvious that such a complex endeavour is always going to bring with it difficulties,” spokesman Eric Mamer told journalists.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine — developed in Germany — is the only one currently authorised for use in the European Union since its fast-track authorisation by the EMA on December 21.

The United States uses it alongside the Moderna vaccine, while Britain as of Monday also started using one by UK pharmaceuticals giant, AstraZeneca.

EU countries have been lagging far behind. France, for instance, has given a first jab to just over 500 people. Germany has started immunising 200,000.

The Netherlands, the last in the EU to start its vaccination programme, meanwhile said it was bringing forward the start of jabs — by two days to Wednesday.

The European Commission emphasised it had bought access to “almost two billion doses” of six potential vaccines — four times the population of the entire European Union.

US-based Moderna’s jab was found to be 94.1 percent effective in preventing Covid-19 compared to a placebo in a clinical trial of 30,400 people, performing slightly better in younger adults compared to the elderly.

The EMA said last week that the coronavirus vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, which was approved Wednesday in Britain, is unlikely to get a green light in the EU in the next month.

The fact that the watchdog moved from London to Amsterdam after Brexit has itself fuelled commentary about how Britain had been able to move faster after leaving the EU.

British EU residents barred from flights in post-Brexit ‘travel chaos’

Newsdesk

4 January 2021

British EU residents barred from flights in post-Brexit ‘travel chaos’

                Days after a “mutant” coronavirus strain ruined the Christmas plans of holidaymakers on both sides of the English Channel, Brexit red tape and confusion has raised hurdles for Britons attempting to return to their homes in several European countries.
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Central African Republic: Tension after assault on Bangassou – Vatican News

officialinstitutions

4 January 2021

Central African Republic: Tension after assault on Bangassou - Vatican News

Vatican News English Africa Service

The city’s Catholic Bishop, Juan-José Aguirre Muñoz, MCCI, said Monday, the situation was calm, but there had been looting, and many residents had fled into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

Table of Contents

An assault on the city by rebels and mercenaries

Earlier reports spoke of artillery attack on the city by the suspected infamous 3R rebels (3R -Retour, Réclamation, Réhabilitation) and the Popular Front for the Rebirth of Central African Republic (FPRC) rebels. Bishop Muñoz, however, said a combination of mercenaries and rebels had overrun the city. The mercenaries are looking for natural resources and wealth.

“Yes, Bangassou has fallen into the hands of the rebels, many of whom are mercenaries and people from Niger. The morning (Sunday) was hectic. There was heavy artillery from 5 am with about thirty dead and wounded,” said Bishop Muñoz, the Bishop of Bangassou, a city in the southeastern Central African Republic, lying on the north bank of the Mbomou River.

Residents have fled to nearby DRC

The Bishop reports that, after trying to resist the rebel offensive, government soldiers fled Bangassou. “The military put up resistance for several hours” but were overwhelmed, said Bishop Muñoz.

As a result of the fighting, “part of the population of Bangassou has fled to Congo,” said the Bishop. Civilians have crossed the Mbomou River to seek refuge in the town of Ndu, just across the border. “Bangassou is almost deserted now. Sunday night went fairly well. There was no shooting,” confirmed Bishop Muñoz.

Touadera wins CAR’s presidential election

The siege on the city of Bangassou further complicates President Faustin-Archange Touadera’s electoral win announced Monday.

According to Reuters, Touadera won Central African Republic’s 27 December presidential election by securing more than 53% of votes in the first round, according to provisional results announced by the electoral commission on Monday.

“Faustin-Archange Touadera, having received the absolute majority of the vote in the first round with 53.9%, is declared winner,” Mathias Morouba, president of the electoral commission, told a news conference in the capital, Bangui.

CAR’s election was marred by a coordinated offensive carried out by rebel groups who tried to disrupt the vote after its highest court rejected former President Francois Bozize’s candidacy.

Bestselling author Kelly Oliver talks new book, and future plans

Newsdesk

4 January 2021

Bestselling author Kelly Oliver talks new book, and future plans

This book is the second in the Fiona Figg mysteries series.

Oliver is an award-winning, bestselling author of three mystery series: The Jessica James Mysteries, the middle grade Kassy O’Roarke, Pet Detective Mysteries, and historical cozies The Fiona Fig Mysteries. She garnered her Bachelor’s degree from Gonzaga University in Washington and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University.

When she is not writing mysteries, she is a distinguished professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Her book, High Treason at the Grand Hotel: A Fiona Figg Mystery, is a perfect mix of romance, intrigue, suspense, and humor.

Oliver is the author of 13 scholarly books, 10 anthologies, and over 100 articles, which include work on campus rape, reproductive technologies, women and the media, film noir, and Alfred Hitchcock.

Particularly impressive about her work is that it has been translated into seven languages, and she has published an op-ed on loving our pets in The New York Times. She has been spotlighted in ABC television news, the Canadian Broadcasting Network, and various radio programs.

She resides in Nashville with her husband, Benigno Trigo, and her furry family, Mischief and Mayhem.

‘High Treason at the Grand Hotel: A Fiona Figg Mystery’ is book two in the Fiona Figg series. The first book ‘Betrayal at Ravenswick: A Fiona Figg Mystery’ was a huge success, what was it like for you to release the new book?

It’s so exciting. I can’t wait to see what readers think of Fiona’s latest adventures in Paris. I write three different mystery series, but I have to admit, Fiona Figg is the most fun to write. I love doing historical research. I learn a lot of interesting tidbits and sprinkle them throughout the novels. And, Fiona is one of my favorite characters to write. I also like the continuing characters. And the series gives me the opportunity to develop those characters, along with Fiona, and their relationships.

How has Fiona Figg, the protagonist in this series, grown in the second book?

Fiona has gone from being a file clerk in the War Office to becoming a professional spy. In High Treason, she’s still learning and gaining confidence. But she’s come a long way from Betrayal at Ravenswick, where her husband had just left her for another woman, and she didn’t know how she would survive without him. In the first book, she takes on the mission to forget about Andrew, her philandering husband.

In the second book, she jumps into the mission out of a sense of adventure and to prove herself. She’s very conscious of the restrictions on women’s movements and women’s roles in the early Twentieth Century. That’s why—against the orders of her boss—she resorts to male disguises. Even while she’s traveling through spaces off-limits to women, she is constantly trying to prove that a woman can do the job as good as a man.

Fiona’s proto-feminism motivates her sometimes reckless behavior, but it also gives rise to a lot of the humor in the novels. Fiona is a very funny character, whether she means to be or not.

While writing ‘High Treason at the Grand Hotel: A Fiona Figg Mystery’ what was the biggest challenge, and the biggest success?

The biggest challenge was also the biggest success—at least I hope so. Namely, developing Fiona as a character in relation to the two other major recurring characters, Clifford Douglas and Fredrick Fredricks. I had to show how the characters change and grow in relation to each other without changing them, or their relationships, so much that they’re no longer believable.

Also, getting the historical details right is always a challenge. Given that High Treason is based on real historical characters, it was even more challenging. I wanted to imagine the inner lives of these real-life characters while also writing a rip-roaring good adventure. So balancing truth and fiction—and using fiction to get at the truth—was sometimes tricky.

Did you write this book while the pandemic was going on? What was that like for you?

Yes. I started the book about the same time the pandemic hit early last spring in New York, where I have a lot of friends. Before coming to Nashville to take a job at Vanderbilt University, I lived and worked on Long Island.

Like a lot of you, I lived in a constant state of high anxiety and fear, which has abated somewhat but hasn’t gone away. I agonized for my friends in New York. And then the pandemic spread across the country. To say it was distracting is an understatement.

You’d think since I was working from home in my day job as a philosophy professor, I could get a lot of writing done. But the opposite was the case. Like so many others, I spent way too much time “doom-surfing.”

On the other hand, the pandemic inspired me to connect with old friends, some of whom I hadn’t talked to in months or years. The fear of death will do that.

Fiona will be heading into 1918—the year of the Spanish Flu pandemic—very soon. And the experience of the pandemic has given me a lot of feelings and thoughts about illness and death to draw on when Fiona faces the plague of her day.

I know you just released this book, but I still have to ask – what’s next for you?

Thanks for asking. I also just released the third book in my kids’ mystery series, The Pet Detective Mysteries. So that’s fun. And, right now, I’m finishing the very first rough draft of the sixth in my contemporary suspense series, The Jessica James Mysteries. It’s called Cottonmouth and it takes Jessica back West, this time to Wyoming. I’m having a lot of fun with a new character, a federal marshal named Lexington Colt, who is part Rylan Givens and part V. I Warshawski.

To learn more about Kelly Oliver and her book High Treason at the Grand Hotel: A Fiona Figg Mystery, check out her official website, as well as her Facebook page, and follow her on Twitter.

Bestselling author Kelly Oliver

Kelly Oliver

UFO: The New American Religion

Dan Corjescu

4 January 2021

Perhaps the most interesting and telling fact about UFO sightings is that they have overwhelmingly occurred in the United States.

This might mean that either extraterrestrials are specifically observing the United States or
that the United States is peculiarly rich in those cultural characteristics that stimulate eyewitness reports concerning alleged extraterrestrial encounters.

I believe there is much more evidence for the latter supposition.

In a scientific age where the world’s traditional religions are under constant intellectual and moral attack, it would not be surprising that people would, not despite this but because of this, continue their search for spiritual meaning and situatedness.

As Sigmund Freud once famously proclaimed, many people, perhaps a majority, are possessed of an “oceanic feeling” which naturally leads them to religious speculation and to seek cultural forms of mystical participation.

Since Freud’s time, the “oceanic feeling” has not disappeared apparently, even if the traditional ways in which they have been expressed have significantly weakened.

The peculiar strength of religious feeling in the United States has often been noted starting
with the likes of Tocqueville through Karl Jaspers and continually debated by modern day sociologists. Many theories have been offered to try to explain this cultural phenomenon. The plural nature of the American religious market, the need for a cultural marker to signal
cooperation and safety in a vast unsure continent, the perceived need for a kind of social conformism. Indeed, self-identifying atheists are still at a marked social and political disadvantage within the United States, although there are recent signs that this is rapidly
changing.

So while the United States arguably still continues to be bathed in subjective lathes of
“oceanic feeling” the traditional ground and structures that once channeled that feeling have either weakened or, even, disappeared.

Enter the Alien.

A belief in highly intelligent (read technically advanced) aliens is, in many ways, a
perfect expression of a new American religion.

Firstly, in a society that, itself, is highly technical, scientific, expansionary (and at least
mildly threatening), and puts a high cultural value on power, speed, and practical intelligence, Aliens seem to fit the bill of a refracted American presence somewhere beyond our vision, experience, and capabilities. Indeed, it is my view, that “ET” is a
semi-unconscious projection of ourselves: space faring, colonialist, technical without a specific goal or creed other than ceaseless economic expansion.

As Emile Durkheim noted more than a century ago, a people’s religion is a parallax mirror of itself: its self-perception, ideals, fears, wants, and spiritual needs.

The Alien here is a thinly disguised American technocrat or member of a privileged elite.
Powerful, inscrutable, amoral, secretive, vaguely menacing and, above all, omnipresent if not always immediately visible.

The fear and wonder of the
Alien is the fear and wonder of a modern technical civilization that
has seemed to escape any kind of moral control.

Indeed, the religion of the
Alien is more like the religion of Alien ation in
the Hegelian sense.

A total
giving away of ourselves to something outside of us and thus beyond
our control.

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British stocks jump 1.5pc on first trading day outside EU

Newsdesk

4 January 2021

British stocks jump 1.5pc on first trading day outside EU

People walk through the lobby of the London Stock Exchange in London December 3, 2015. ― Reuters pic

LONDON, Jan 4 — The London stock market jumped more than 1.5 per cent today in a strong start to 2021 on the first trading day since Britain formally left the EU’s single market and customs union.

The benchmark FTSE 100 index rallied 1.54 per cent to 6,560.33 points at the open, having last traded on New Year’s Eve when it had lost 1.5 per cent.

In the eurozone today, Frankfurt’s DAX 30 rose 1.2 per cent to 13,885.07 points and the Paris CAC 40 gained 1.3 per cent to 5,625.44.

The UK formally left the European Union on January 31, 2020 but remained in a standstill transition period up to December 31 as both sides negotiated a post-Brexit trade deal which was sealed only at the last moment on December 24.

Britain formally left the European customs union and single market at 2300 GMT on December 31.

“The finer implications of the UK’s exit remain to be seen but the fact that a deal was agreed prior to the deadline removes some of the overhang which had been haunting the index for some time,” said Richard Hunter, head of markets at Interactive Investor.

Asian equities also began 2021 in strong fashion on burgeoning optimism about the economic outlook, despite ongoing fears over the coronavirus health crisis.

Investors are hopeful that the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines will offset a surge in infection rates.

With uncertainty over Brexit and a new US stimulus package gone, sights are set on economic recovery from the calamity that was 2020, with a broad expectation that countries will enjoy strong rebounds as life gets back to some semblance of normal. — AFP

San Francisco and Prague: A Double Portrait

Guest Author

4 January 2021

San Francisco and Prague: A Double Portrait

San Francisco and Prague are beautiful cities. In San Francisco, it’s the lucent blue of a vast bay, pastel homes climbing formidable hills — and a magnificent bridge spanning the chasm just where bay and ocean meet.

In Prague, it’s the low graceful Charles Bridge spanning the river that winds through a bejeweled city. Cathedral spires pierce the sky above — and Prague Castle looms over the ancient bridge and nearby medieval towers.

Untouched in 20th century wars, Prague (after communism) was a sleeping beauty — waking from decades of enforced slumber.

Two cities, epicenters of change

Both cities, San Francisco in the 1960s, and Prague in the 1990s, were epicenters of change — magnets for idealistic youth longing to be part of building something new.

Bay Area historian Dennis McNally spent two decades as publicist for the Grateful Dead. More recently, he curated a photo exhibit of the 1967 Summer of Love.

“The counter-culture of the 1960s,” he says, “was transformative. It wasn’t just free love and drugs. It was political protest and racial justice, redefining sexuality, organic food, environmentalism, yoga — fringe issues then — mainstream today.”

That counter-culture ranged from Black Panther headquarters in Oakland, to free speech and anti-war protests in Berkeley — to Ken Kesey’s earlier acid trips in Palo Alto.

The Bay Area in the 1960s exemplified freedom. The future promised to be better than the present. “Doing your own thing” embodied a vision that far reaching societal change was coming.

Late, but I was there

I came late to the San Francisco scene. I spent the summer of 1970 in Berkeley. It was there, on June 21st, in the Pauley Ballroom on Sproul Plaza at the University of California, that I attended my first Grateful Dead concert.

It was ostensibly a concert to raise money for an Indian tribe — displaced from land near Mt. Shasta. Stewart Brand, creator of the Whole Earth Catalogue, was there, too.

What I remember most was a giant inflatable, transparent bubble — like a Buckminster Fuller dome, in which people danced and moved freely.

People’s park

On Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, a popular record shop had cleared a section of its display window and placed at the center the cover of the just released “Workingman’s Dead” album.

An understated advertisement beneath the album said simply, “New Dead.”

My sublet apartment at the corner of Ellsworth and Dwight Way was not far from where “People’s Park” had been. It was a block of vacant university property — which radical students had occupied a year earlier.

They christened the space “People’s Park — and turned it into a free speech zone where protesters and hippies gathered promoting alternative lifestyles.

In May 1969, (then-California Governor Ronald Reagan) sent in police and national guardsmen to reclaim the park — and quell the huge demonstrations of students wanting to preserve it.

It was an electric time in Berkeley, the city hailed by Tom Hayden in Ramparts magazine as “America’s first liberated territory.”

Another cultural revolution, this time in Prague

A generation later, on a smaller scale — but at least as significant — another cultural revolution took hold. This time in Prague (in central Europe — behind what was once behind the Iron Curtain).

In November 1989, a self-deprecating playwright, Vaclav Havel, was catapulted from prison to the presidency of Czechoslovakia.

This modest wordsmith — a true master of irony — was an unlikely pied piper. Yet, in the glow of freedom that followed peaceful revolution, the young and committed in the arts and business flocked to Prague — pilgrims seeking something bigger than themselves.

How to build a post-communist society?

Privileged young Americans, trekking through Europe, were lured to the city by beauty and cheap accommodation. They were among the first to be smitten by Prague — in a time of uncertainty and possibility.

How is a post-communist society built? How do people respond when the shackles stifling all forms of expression are removed? What kind of society should be built…

Would it be Havel’s idealistic land of peace and love, where towns had a pub and sweet shop on every corner? Or the crass, pulsating capitalism favored by Havel’s arch-rival — free-market ideologue Vaclav Klaus?

New newspapers and bookstores

In 1990, five students from Santa Barbara started an English-language newspaper — a bi-weekly called “Prognosis.”

A year later, some broke away to start a rival paper, the Prague Post – which was funded by a wealthy Texas investor.

Alan Levy, an expatriate New Yorker, approaching 60, and living in Vienna at the time, became editor.

He had been expelled from Czechoslovakia in 1968, after Soviet troops invaded to extinguish the Prague Spring — a brief period of freedom during which the arts flourished.

It was Levy who famously said that post-communist Prague was a haven for artists, the “left bank of the 1990s,” — like Paris in the 1920s.

Inspiration from Shakespeare

Other young Americans in 1993 opened The Globe Bookstore and Coffee House — modeled after Shakespeare and Company in Paris and City Lights in San Francisco.

Mark Baker, from Ohio, was a Globe founder — and still lives in Prague. He arrived, he says, “carried away with the optimism unleashed by the fall of communism.” It was, says Baker, an exhilarating time as Prague and all of eastern Europe reopened to the world.

Prague, of course, could not match San Francisco for depth or duration, as there were formidable language and cultural obstacles.

Havel himself in the early 1990s spoke little English. Nonetheless, the Globe prospered for several years — becoming a literary landmark that hosted readings by notable Czechs and Alan Ginsburg, whose poem “Howl” had first been read in San Francisco.

I was fortunate enough to have personally experienced Prague during this magical time. From 1994 to 1997, I lived with my family in a house on the crown of a hill — which gazed down over Prague Castle in the distance.

Expats in winter

I devoured each issue of the city’s English language papers. And on winter nights, coming from the airport and flights from shabby Sofia or Bucharest, it was a huge treat to wind through the cobbled lanes of Holesovice — and stop at The Globe to see what was happening.

No matter how late, there were people inside perusing books and speaking English. A cappuccino — or something stronger — could be had from the cafe and, near the front, there was an overstuffed chair where one could sit and unwind.

Back to old glory — and more

Prague today is more beautiful than ever. It sparkles from badly needed renovation. Privatization removed buildings — and small business from the dead hand of state control.

However, Prague’s artistic scene is a mere shadow of what it was in the 1990s — or the pre-WW1 period of Franz Kafka and Alfonse Mucha.

Not only are Havel and Levy long gone. Political corruption is endemic — and the vibrant expatriate community has shrunk. The Prague Post went bankrupt and, under new ownership, The Globe isn’t doing much matter.

The glorious Prague cultural scene of the 1990s, laments Mark Baker, was largely a media creation. The critical base of intellectuals and artists wasn’t big enough to last.

As goes Prague, so does San Francisco

Sadly, more or less the same thing occurred in San Francisco. Dennis McNally complains that, after the tech giants arrived in the Silicon Valley, the city’s artistic scene choked on money.

He says “young people no longer come for adventure or enlightenment, they come to get rich.” Before that, he continues, AIDS had devastated the gay community — deflating the arts.

Tech is the new magnet drawing the ambitious and well educated of another generation to San Francisco.

Preferring the city to the monotonous Silicon Valley suburbs where they work, the influx of the technocrats drove rents sky-high — and prompted huge developments in the old Mission district — obliterating most of what remained of 1960s hippiedom.

Conclusion

Today, San Francisco and Prague, these once vibrant meccas, cry out for a Vaclav Havel or someone like him.

As Alan Levy said of Havel, “it was his example of intelligence, modesty, artistry and love that drew people to Prague.”

EU grants Finland EUR 3 million to promote export of meat to the Chinese market

Mette Larsen

4 January 2021

EU grants Finland EUR 3 million to promote export of meat to the Chinese market

HKscan pork products in China

Finland has been given almost EUR 3 million by the European Union to help finance a project aimed at promoting the export of pork and poultry meat to the Chinese market. Premium products that are widely popular in Chinese cuisine.

The campaign will focus on the safety, traceability and good taste of high-quality pork and poultry meat responsibly produced in the EU and Finland targeting Chinese retail and food service customers in both international and local companies in the four major cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Chongqing in China.

Funding applicant Ruokatieto Yhdistys ry, Finnish non-governmental, non-profit inter-trade association that promotes food production and food culture in Finland, will also carry out the project together with its two member companies HKScan, Finnish manufacturer of meat foods and products and Atria, Finnish food industry company, which both currently export pork to China.

HKScan’s Juha Ruohola, EVP, Export, import and meat balance says, “It is great to continue the well-done export promotion work in China with EU funding. Warmest thanks to the partners who contributed to the success of the project. The export promotion support now granted will help us increase the sales and awareness of our products in the very demanding Chinese market.”

Atria was the first Finnish company to secure a license for the export of pork products to China in 2017. HKScan and Zhejiang Qinglian Food have since 2018 commercialized, sold and marketed Finnish HK Rypsiporsas (Omega-3 Pork) products in the local market in China through the commercial enterprise Nordic Lotus Food Inc.

Read the full article here

Latest news of Europe and the world.

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Central African Republic: Tension after assault on Bangassou – Vatican News

An assault on the city by rebels and mercenaries

Residents have fled to nearby DRC

Touadera wins CAR’s presidential election

Bestselling author Kelly Oliver talks new book, and future plans

UFO: The New American Religion

British stocks jump 1.5pc on first trading day outside EU

San Francisco and Prague: A Double Portrait

Two cities, epicenters of change

Late, but I was there

People’s park

Another cultural revolution, this time in Prague

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Back to old glory — and more

As goes Prague, so does San Francisco

Conclusion

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