Tag: america news

  • Mom of two holds Guinness World document in feeding hundreds of untimely infants

    By India Today World Desk: A mom of two, Elisabeth Anderson-Sierra, holds the Guinness World document for the most important donation of breastmilk by any particular person. A local of Aloha, Oregon of the United States donated 1,599.68 litres (56,301.20 UK fl oz) to a milk financial institution between 20 February 2015 and 20 June 2018. In the endeavour, she has saved the lives of many untimely infants.

    “This only accounts for milk that I donated to a milk bank between the years of 2015 and 2018,” Guinness World document quoted Elisabeth as saying.

    It is alleged that she has not solely donated milk to native households however got here out in help of recipients worldwide. Her donation estimates the full of breastmilk to be over 350,000 ounces.

    “Being able to turn that around and [have] that label removed in so many different stories has just been everything to me,” she said.

    “These are the things that I focus on. These are the positives and why I continue doing what I do.”

    Elisabeth told the Guinness World record that, in one instance, she had helped a premature baby in Puerto Rico. The baby had lost his mother due to childbirth complications and his father had been purchasing breastmilk from a milk bank.

    “My husband is Puerto Rican and we had gone to Puerto Rico proper after Hurricane Maria,” she said.

    She further spoke about her medical condition known as hyperlactation syndrome, where breastmilk overflow occurs due to increased milk production.

    “My physique creates a variety of the hormone known as prolactin and that’s what drives milk manufacturing,” said Elisabeth, while pressing on the importance of pumping equipment in order to yield so much breastmilk.

    She said that the milk pumping equipment can make “all of the distinction” in the output.

    “Your gear is an important a part of honing in on when you’re a pumping mother,” mentioned Elisabeth.

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  • Indian Americans condemn racist assault in Texas: ‘Alarming, but not uncommon…’

    Esmeralda Upton from Plano in Texas was arrested for the racially-motivated bodily and verbal assault of 4 South Asian girls in a parking zone on Wednesday.

    “The recent news of four Indian-origin women being harassed and abused with vile racial slurs in Plano, TX, has sent shock waves through the Indian-American community,” stated Sanjeev Joshipura from Indiaspora.

    “The viral video captures the unreal encounter of four friends facing a tirade in a suburban parking lot, following their quiet dinner meet-up. We at Indiaspora strongly condemn this racial attack and reiterate our commitment to fighting discrimination and prejudice in all its forms,” he stated.

    The assault is one more in a string of deplorable anti-Asian hate crimes which have taken place over the previous two years and comes on the heels of the same incident involving the primary India- American girl in Congress, Pramila Jaya, stated Indian American Impact.

    This is a get up name to all HUMANS and coloration be good to all – don’t throw racism… it’s a studying curve. #stophate #racism have a look at the result.. Racism nonetheless occurs on a regular basis – want it might cease. https://t.co/l1OeAczx3J

    — MissRoshni (@MissRoshni) August 25, 2022

    “Esmeralda Upton’s dangerous and violent sentiments towards the South-Asian community should not be taken lightly. For legal purposes, we are lucky that the racist tirade was caught on camera, but her shameless display of hate towards members of our community is alarming and, unfortunately, not uncommon,” stated Indian-American Impact govt director, Neil Makhija.

    “We are so thankful that the four victims of the attack were not severely physically harmed, but it’s imperative we begin to address the psychological effects of consistent attacks on minority communities. The state of Texas needs more than just a reactive approach to overt racism. Leadership should prioritise expanding multicultural education and implementing safety protocols in order to ensure the welfare of vulnerable people of colour, immigrants and women,” he stated.

    Joshipura stated the contributions of Indian Americans as immigrants to the US have been broadly recognised, however these accolades really feel much less gratifying within the face of such episodes.

    “As most of us acknowledge, systemic racism stands against the values of this great nation. We at Indiaspora ask our community to be vigilant and stand up to any form of intimidation and aggression. These acts should be reported to authorities and community leaders to ensure that no abuser walks away with impunity,” he stated.

    UPDATE: Assaulter in video above Esmeralda Upton of Plano Texas has been ARRESTED by Police detectives this afternoon. She faces 2 prices of Assault Bodily Injury and Terroristic menace. Held on $10,000 bond.

    Hate and racism comes with a worth: https://t.co/VxCwG6u1Ip

    — Joyce Karam (@Joyce_Karam) August 25, 2022

    In an announcement, HinduPACT condemned the rising hate and vitriol towards a thriving and flourishing diaspora neighborhood that’s proudly a part of America’s civil society and material.

    Rakhi Israni, govt director, Legal, HinduPACT, stated together with the irrational hate being directed at Asian Americans generally, hate crimes towards Hindu Americans and Indian Americans are on the rise nationwide.

    “From the recent vicious incident at a Taco Bell in Fremont, California, to the attack on the four Indian-American women in Plano, Texas, it is unfortunately becoming too common in our daily society to verbally or, even worse, physically assault another person because of their skin colour, religion, or national origin. We urge the law enforcement in these cities to aggressively pursue these acts as hate crimes as a deterrent to others who choose to act on their irrational hatred for other people who differ from them in any way,” she stated.

  • ‘I just can’t stand by’: American veterans be part of the combat in Ukraine

    Hector served two violent excursions in Iraq as a U.S. Marine, then bought out, bought a pension and a civilian job, and thought he was executed with navy service. But Friday, he boarded a aircraft for another deployment, this time as a volunteer in Ukraine. He checked in a number of luggage full of rifle scopes, helmets and physique armor donated by different veterans.

    “Sanctions can help, but sanctions can’t help right now, and people need help right now,” mentioned the previous Marine, who lives in Tampa Bay, Florida, and like different veterans interviewed for this text requested that solely his first title be used for safety causes. “I can help right now.”

    He is one among a surge of U.S. veterans who say they’re now getting ready to hitch the combat in Ukraine, emboldened by the invitation of the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who this previous week introduced he was creating an “international legion” and requested volunteers from around the globe to assist defend his nation in opposition to Russia.

    Ukraine’s minister of international affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, echoed the decision for fighters, saying on Twitter, “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too.”

    Hector mentioned he hoped to coach Ukrainians in his experience: armored automobiles and heavy weapons.

    “A lot of veterans, we have a calling to serve, and we trained our whole career for this kind of war,” he mentioned. “Sitting by and doing nothing? I had to do that when Afghanistan fell apart, and it weighed heavily on me. I had to act.”

    All throughout the United States, small teams of navy veterans are gathering, planning and getting passports so as. After years of serving in smoldering occupations, attempting to unfold democracy in locations that had solely a tepid curiosity in it, many are hungry for what they see as a righteous combat to defend freedom in opposition to an autocratic aggressor with a standard and target-rich military.

    “It’s a conflict that has a clear good and bad side, and maybe that stands apart from other recent conflicts,” mentioned David Ribardo, a former Army officer who now owns a property administration enterprise in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “A lot of us are watching what is happening and just want to grab a rifle and go over there.”

    After the invasion, he noticed veterans flooding social media keen to hitch the combat. Unable to go due to commitments right here, he has spent the previous week appearing as a form of center man for a bunch known as Volunteers for Ukraine, figuring out veterans and different volunteers with helpful expertise and connecting them with donors who purchase gear and airline tickets.

    “It was very quickly overwhelming. Almost too many people wanted to help,” he mentioned. In the previous week, he mentioned he has labored to sift these with useful fight or medical expertise from folks he described as “combat tourists, who don’t have the correct experience and would not be an asset.”

    He mentioned his group has additionally needed to comb out numerous extremists.

    David Ribardo, a former Army officer who now owns a property administration enterprise in Allentown, Pa. on Friday, March 4, 2022. (Michelle Gustafson/The New York Times)

    Fundraising websites reminiscent of GoFundMe have guidelines in opposition to amassing cash for armed battle, so Ribardo mentioned his group and others have been cautious to keep away from particularly directing anybody to get entangled within the combating. Rather, he mentioned, he merely connects these he has vetted with individuals who wish to donate aircraft tickets and nonlethal provides, describing his position as being “a Tinder for veterans and donors.”

    Plenty of mainstream media retailers, together with Military Times and Time, have printed step-by-step guides on becoming a member of the navy in Ukraine. The Ukrainian authorities instructed volunteers to contact its consulates.

    Several veterans who contacted the consulates this previous week mentioned they have been nonetheless ready for a response and believed workers members have been overwhelmed.

    On Thursday, Zelenskyy mentioned in a video on Telegram that 16,000 volunteers had joined the worldwide brigade, though it’s unclear what the true quantity is. The New York Times was not in a position to establish any veterans actively combating in Ukraine.

    The outpouring of help is pushed, veterans mentioned, by previous experiences. Some wish to attempt to recapture the extraordinary readability and function they felt in conflict, which is usually lacking in trendy suburban life. Others need an opportunity to make amends for failed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and see the combat to defend a democracy in opposition to a totalitarian invader as the explanation they joined the navy.

    To an extent not seen in previous conflicts, the impulse to hitch has been fueled partly by an more and more linked world. Americans watching real-time video in Ukraine can, with a click on, hook up with like-minded volunteers across the globe. A veteran in Phoenix can discover a donor in London with unused airline miles, a driver in Warsaw, Poland, providing a free journey to the border and a neighborhood to stick with in Ukraine.

    Of course, conflict is never as simple because the deeply felt idealism that drives folks to enlist. And volunteers danger not solely their very own lives, but additionally drawing the United States right into a direct battle with Russia.

    “War is an unpredictable animal, and once you let it out, no one — no one — knows what will happen,” mentioned Daniel Gade, who misplaced a leg in Iraq earlier than happening to show management for a number of years on the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and retiring as a lieutenant colonel. He mentioned he understood the urge to combat however mentioned the danger of escalation leading to nuclear conflict was too nice.

    David Ribardo, a former Army officer who now owns a property administration enterprise in Allentown, Pa. on Friday, March 4, 2022. (Michelle Gustafson/The New York Times)

    “I just feel heartsick,” he mentioned. “War is terrible and the innocent always suffer most.”

    The danger of unintended escalation has led the U.S. authorities to attempt to maintain residents from changing into freelance fighters, not simply on this battle, however for hundreds of years. In 1793, President George Washington issued a Proclamation of Neutrality warning Americans to remain out of the French Revolution. But the efforts have been uneven, and infrequently swayed by the bigger nationwide sentiment. So over the generations, a gentle stream of idealists, romantics, mercenaries and filibusters have taken up arms, — driving with Pancho Villa in Mexico, ferrying arms to Cuba, battling communists in Africa and even attempting to determine new slave states in Central America.

    The civil conflict in Spain simply earlier than the beginning of World War II is the best-known instance. More than 3,000 Americans joined what turned know because the Lincoln-Washington Battalion, to combat with the elected leftist authorities in opposition to fascist forces.

    At the time, the United States wished to keep away from conflict with Europe, and stayed impartial, however the Young Communist League rented billboards to recruit fighters, and members of the institution held fundraisers to ship younger males abroad.

    That effort, now usually romanticized as a valiant prelude to the combat in opposition to the Nazis, ended badly. The poorly skilled and outfitted brigades made a disastrous assault of a fortified ridge in 1937 and three-quarters of the lads have been killed or wounded. Others confronted close to hunger in captivity. Their chief, a former math professor who was the inspiration for the protagonist in Ernest Hemingway’s novel “For Whom the Bell Tolls” was later captured and more than likely executed.

    On Thursday, Russian Defense Ministry spokesperson Igor Konashenkov instructed the Russian News Agency that international fighters wouldn’t be thought of troopers, however mercenaries, and wouldn’t be protected below humanitarian guidelines concerning the remedy of prisoners of conflict.

    “At best, they can expect to be prosecuted as criminals,” Konashenkov mentioned. “We are urging all foreign citizens who may have plans to go and fight for Kyiv’s nationalist regime to think a dozen times before getting on the way.”

    Despite the dangers — each particular person and strategic — the U.S. authorities has thus far been measured in its warnings. Asked throughout a information convention this previous week what he would inform Americans who wish to combat in Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pointed to official statements, first issued weeks in the past, imploring U.S. residents within the nation to depart instantly.

    He mentioned: “For those who want to help Ukraine and help its people, there are many ways to do that, including by supporting and helping the many NGOs that are working to provide humanitarian assistance; providing resources themselves to groups that are trying to help Ukraine by being advocates for Ukraine and for peaceful resolution to this crisis that was created by Russia.”

    Hector, a former Marine, heads to a flight to Warsaw, Poland from Sarasota-Bradenton Regional Airport in Sarasota, Fla. on Friday, March 4, 2022, to assist practice Ukrainians. All throughout the nation, small teams of navy veterans are hungry for what they see as a righteous combat to defend freedom in opposition to an autocratic aggressor. (Zack Wittman/The New York Times)

    That has not dissuaded numerous veterans who’re all too aware of the dangers of fight.

    James was a medic who first noticed fight when he changed one other medic killed in combating in Iraq in 2006. He did two extra excursions, in Iraq and Afghanistan, seeing a lot blood and demise that 10 years after leaving the navy he nonetheless attends remedy at a veterans hospital.

    But this previous week, as he watched Russian forces shell cities throughout Ukraine, he determined that he needed to attempt to go there to assist.

    “Combat has a cost, that’s for sure; you think you can come back from war the same, but you can’t,” James mentioned in a telephone interview from his house in Dallas, the place he mentioned he was ready to listen to again from Ukrainian officers. “But I feel obligated. It’s the innocent people being attacked — the kids. It’s the kids, man. I just can’t stand by.”

    Chase, a graduate pupil in Virginia, mentioned that he volunteered to combat the Islamic State group in Syria in 2019 and felt the identical urgency for Ukraine, however he warned in opposition to merely going to the border and not using a plan.

    In Syria, he mentioned he knew well-meaning volunteers who have been detained for weeks by native Kurdish authorities as a result of they arrived unannounced. He organized with Kurdish protection forces earlier than arriving in Syria. There he spent months as a humble foot soldier with little pay and solely fundamental rations.

    Tactically, as an inexperienced grunt, he mentioned, he was of little worth. But to the folks of northeastern Syria, he was a strong image that the world was with them.

    “I was a sign to them that the world was watching and they mattered,” he mentioned.

    Just a few months into his time in Syria, he was shot within the leg and finally returned to the United States. He got here house and labored for a septic tank firm, then bought a job writing about used vehicles. When he noticed explosions hitting Ukraine this previous week, the a part of him that went to conflict three years in the past reawakened.

    “Everything here is just kind of empty, and it doesn’t seem like I’m doing anything important,” he mentioned in an interview from an extended-stay resort in Virginia the place he’s residing. “So I am trying to go. I don’t think I have a choice. You have to draw the line.”

  • World information round-up: 5 in a single day developments from across the globe

    Here is a round-up of the highest developments all over the world at this time.
    1. Russia strikes extra troops westward amid Ukraine tensions
    Russia is sending an unspecified variety of troops from the nation’s far east to Belarus for main struggle video games, officers mentioned Tuesday, a deployment that may additional beef up Russian army presence close to Ukraine amid Western fears of a deliberate invasion. Amid the hovering tensions, the White House warned that Russia might assault its neighbour at “any point,” whereas the UK delivered a batch of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine.

    A collection of talks final week between Russia, the US and NATO didn’t quell the tensions over Ukraine. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will meet his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Geneva on Friday in one other try and defuse the disaster.
    2. UK PM Johnson underneath strain amid studies of looming management problem
    British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is on the point of going through a management problem, in response to studies, after an offended backlash over claims events had been held at his residence throughout coronavirus lockdowns.

    After Johnson denied an accusation by his former adviser that he had lied to parliament about one social gathering, the Daily Telegraph and ITV News, citing sources, mentioned the required variety of letters from his personal lawmakers calling for a no-confidence vote in his management may very well be reached on Wednesday. As many as 20 Conservative lawmakers who gained their seats on the final normal election in 2019 plan to submit letters of no confidence in Johnson, the Telegraph reported.
    3. Millionaires group requires wealth tax at digital Davos
    A bunch of greater than 100 billionaires and millionaires has issued a plea to political and enterprise leaders convening just about for the World Economic Forum: make us pay extra tax. The group calling itself the “Patriotic Millionaires” mentioned that the ultra-wealthy weren’t at present being pressured to pay their share of the worldwide financial restoration from the pandemic.

    “As millionaires, we know that the current tax system is not fair. Most of us can say that, while the world has gone through an immense amount of suffering in the last two years, we have actually seen our wealth rise during the pandemic — yet few if any of us can honestly say that we pay our fair share in taxes,” the signatories mentioned in an open letter, printed on the event of the World Economic Forum’s “virtual Davos”, which started on Jan. 17.
    4. Texas hostage-taker was recognized to UK intelligence businesses, says media report
    The gunman who took 4 folks hostage at a Texas synagogue in a 10-hour standoff that led to his demise was checked towards legislation enforcement databases earlier than coming into the US however raised no purple flags, the White House mentioned Tuesday. Malik Faisal Akram, a 44-year-old British citizen, arrived within the US at Kennedy Airport in New York on a vacationer visa about two weeks in the past, officers mentioned.
    This Jan 2 picture reveals Malik Faisal Akram at a Dallas homeless shelter. (OurCalling, LLC by way of AP)
    British media, together with the Guardian, reported Tuesday that Akram was investigated by the home intelligence service MI5 as a attainable “terrorist threat” in 2020, however the investigation was closed after authorities concluded he posed no risk.
    5. Covid-19 well being emergency may very well be over this yr, says WHO
    The head of emergencies on the World Health Organisation mentioned Tuesday that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic — deaths, hospitalisations and lockdowns — may very well be over this yr if large inequities in vaccinations and medicines are addressed shortly.

    Dr. Michael Ryan, talking throughout a panel dialogue on vaccine inequity hosted by the World Economic Forum, additionally waded into the rising debate about whether or not Covid-19 needs to be thought-about endemic, a label some international locations like Spain have known as for to raised assist dwell with the virus, or nonetheless a pandemic — involving intensified measures that many international locations have taken to combat the unfold. “Endemic malaria kills hundreds of thousands of people; endemic HIV; endemic violence in our inner cities. Endemic in itself does not mean good. Endemic just means it’s here forever,” he mentioned.

  • Honduras: Indigenous activist killed in entrance of household

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    Honduran police have been investigating the homicide of environmental activist and member of the indigenous Lenca neighborhood Felix Vasquez, authorities mentioned on Monday.
    The 70-year-old activist was shot by a gaggle of masked males in his house, within the central village of El Ocotal. Members of his household witnessed the crime.
    Police have been seeking to see if Vasquez had enemies in the neighborhood and if he reported receiving loss of life threats. They “hope to have an answer soon,” police official Kevin Hernandez informed journalists.
    In addition to his environmental work, Vasquez was an outspoken human rights advocate and a frontrunner of an affiliation representing farmers and indigenous individuals.
    He had additionally meant to run for the nation’s parliament in 2021.
    A repeat of Caceras homicide?
    According to the Coalition Against Impunity (CCI), Vasquez had filed complaints to nationwide authorities for allegedly dealing with political persecution lately.
    “The state is directly responsible for his murder due to its omissions in the face of the serious risks of which it was duly aware,” the CCI mentioned.
    Honduras is without doubt one of the most harmful international locations on this planet for activists, with 14 killed in 2019, in response to non-governmental group Global Witness. Vasquez’s killing prompted comparisons with the loss of life of one other Lenca activist, Berta Caceres, 4 years in the past.
    Caceres was gunned down inside her house in March 2016. She beforehand reported receiving loss of life threats for opposing a dam building undertaking.

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