- Sports Hub’s Tony Massarotti suspended over racially insensitive on-air remarks WCVB Boston
- Boston sports radio host apologizes after making ‘ignorant’ comments on air: ‘I wish I could take them back’ Fox News
- Boston sports radio host Tony Massarotti under fire for racist comment New York Post
- Tony Massarotti, longtime Sports Hub host, suspended without pay for ‘insensitive’ on-air comments Boston 25 News
- Tony Massarotti suspended for ‘racist’ comment on 98.5 about Black people behind Mike Felger Boston Herald
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Tag Archives: Hubs
China battles Covid outbreaks in tourism hubs of Tibet and Hainan | Tibet
China is racing to stamp out Covid-19 outbreaks in the tourist hubs of Tibet and Hainan, with the authorities launching more rounds of mass testing and closing venues to contain the highly transmissible Omicron variant as Beijing presses ahead with its Covid zero strategy.
Mainland China reported 828 new domestically transmitted cases across more than a dozen provinces and regions for 8 August, with more than half of them in Hainan, a highly popular tourist destination, official data showed on Tuesday.
Tibet, which until now had reported only one symptomatic case since the pandemic started more than two years ago, has also reported cases.
Parts of Tibet were running mass Covid-19 testing on Tuesday, including its two largest cities, Lhasa and Shigatse, where local authorities suspended large events, closed entertainment and religious venues, and shut some tourist sites including the Potala Palace.
Tibetan authorities reported one local patient with confirmed symptoms and 21 local asymptomatic infections on 8 August. While the case load was very small compared with elsewhere in China and globally, the rare infections struck a nerve among some residents.
“Although my life and work aren’t affected much and Lhasa took actions very quickly, I was still quite shocked, as Tibet had been Covid-free for about 920 days,” said Yungchen, a 26-year-old Lhasa resident, who was told by her employer to work from home.
“I was a bit worried, because we don’t know when and where the infected people contracted the virus,” she told Reuters, preferring not to give her full name.
Yungchen said she doesn’t expect a Shanghai-style months-long lockdown in Lhasa, but still bought rice and cooking oil. She bought enough to last four to five days in case she is unable to dine out if Covid restrictions are tightened.
Shigatse, gateway city to the Everest region in Tibet, has scheduled a “silent period” lasting three days during which people are banned from entering or leaving, with many businesses suspended.
Both Lhasa and Shigatse were conducting a fresh round of mass testing, and the second round begins on Wednesday, state television said on Tuesday.
In Tibet’s western Ngari prefecture, a sparsely populated region that has attracted many pilgrims to Mount Kailash, three towns have started three rounds of mass testing, while the rest have started on their first, state television said.
Subvariants of Omicron are challenging China’s strategy of swiftly blocking the spread of each nascent cluster.
Tibet and Hainan, which have seen relatively few cases for more than two years, are now facing risks of persistent tight restrictions as the economy weakens. Their tourism-reliant economies could be particularly vulnerable if the outbreaks are prolonged.
In tropical Hainan, millions of residents are under lockdown across several cities and towns, allowed out only for necessary reasons such as Covid tests, grocery shopping and essential job roles.
Dongfang, a city of over 400,000 residents, entered a three-day lockdown starting on Tuesday. The provincial capital, Haikou, has lifted its lockdown that lasted hours on Monday.
About 178,000 tourists are also stranded on the island, according to state media reports. Hainan said on Tuesday certain tourists are allowed to leave if they can show negative test results.
Provincial authorities must adopt all measures to achieve by Friday “Covid zero at the community level” where no new cases emerge in communities outside quarantined areas, Hainan’s government said in a statement late on Monday.
Hainan’s success in containing smaller clusters in April and July has resulted in complacency among officials and residents, one provincial health official said.
Grocery apps try to shed NYC hubs’ ‘crackhouse’ reputation
Grocery delivery apps are looking to satisfy angry neighbors and New York City council members by rebranding their barebones and potentially illegal delivery hubs as high-tech retail locations that are open to the public.
As the legion of apps — including Gopuff, Getir, Gorillas and Jokr — have launched in the five boroughs over the past year, they’ve gobbled up space for dark stores that was previously occupied by delis and boutiques, turning the spaces into “dark stores” that house groceries and are closed to the public.
Some local politicos have accused the apps of violating zoning laws by running warehouses out of properties zoned for retail, while local residents have griped about constant E-bike traffic, as well as workers loitering and smoking outside delivery hubs at all hours of the day.
“Rapid grocery delivery companies have come to realize that a dark store was nothing more than the modern day version of a crackhouse,” Brittain Ladd, a retail consultant who works with rapid delivery companies, told The Post. “They had the ugly covering over the window, people couldn’t go inside if they didn’t work there. It attracted people who would hang out and there were a number of complaints about the noise and the traffic.”
In some instances, The Post observed the floors of delivery hubs littered with trash. In others, delivery workers were seen riding E-bikes and scooters at lightning-fast speeds on city sidewalks. Even the cleanest and most well-organized hubs seem to feature fluorescent lighting and threadbare decor.
But now, in an apparent effort to satisfy both zoning laws and peeved neighbors, many of the delivery apps, including Getir, Gopuff and Gorillas, have started opening up their stores to walk-in customers.
Getir delivery hubs across the city added “Walk-ins welcome” signs to their storefronts in March. Gorillas hubs also removed film from their windows and added “in store pick-up!” signs to their stores in March, as first reported by The Post. GoPuff told The Post its stores have always welcomed walk-in customers, but some of its stores did not have posted “walk-in” hours until recently. Jokr did not respond to a request for comment on whether it accepts walk-ins or plans to add them.
Critics counter that the startups’ in-store pickup signs amount to little more than an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of concerned city council members like Gale Brewer and Christopher Marte, who have both urged city agencies to investigate whether the apps are violating zoning laws.
That idea is bolstered by the fact that the Getir, Gorillas and GoPuff apps do not appear to give users the option of selecting in-store pickup, instead offering delivery only.
“While currently customers can walk in and place orders for in-store pickup, we recognize that the process isn’t as streamlined as we’d like it to be,” Getir founder Nazim Salur told The Post. “We are always working to improve our store operations, including enhancing the in-store experience. We expect these changes to be completed in the near future.”
“We are here for the long-term and look forward to working with city officials and community leaders, as we create good jobs throughout New York City and provide a time-saving service that New Yorkers have already started to embrace,” Salur added.
Gorillas declined to comment. Jokr did not respond to requests for comment.
Many of the stores that are open to the public also flout city rules requiring stores to accept cash and include clearly labeled prices on all items, among other regulations, according to council member Brewer.
“You have to have labels on the cereal,” Brewer fumed to The Post. “That’s the law.”
Ladd, the retail consultant, said that delivery apps must work to make their stores “as inviting as possible” in an effort both to appease the city council and to satisfy neighbors, who may then begin to view the stores as neighborhood establishments rather than bleak eyesores.
“What I told Getir and what I told Gorillas is you have to change the perception of rapid grocery delivery from being something mysterious to being something inviting,” Ladd said.
But Ladd added that many of the startups have been reluctant to let outsiders into their stores because they “falsely believed they needed to keep what they did in those stores secret.”
“I’ve told all of them: none of you have a competitive advantage in this,” he said. “You all do the same thing.”
Fridge No More and Buyk, two other rapid delivery startups that folded in March, as exclusively reported by The Post, did not have signs welcoming customers into their stores.
New study shows microplastics turn into ‘hubs’ for pathogens, antibiotic-resistant bacteria
It’s estimated that an average-sized wastewater treatment plant serving roughly 400,000 residents will discharge up to 2,000,000 microplastic particles into the environment each day. Yet, researchers are still learning the environmental and human health impact of these ultra-fine plastic particles, less than 5 millimeters in length, found in everything from cosmetics, toothpaste and clothing microfibers, to our food, air and drinking water.
Now, researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology have shown that ubiquitous microplastics can become ‘hubs’ for antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pathogens to grow once they wash down household drains and enter wastewater treatment plants—forming a slimy layer of buildup, or biofilm, on their surface that allows pathogenic microorganisms and antibiotic waste to attach and comingle.
In findings published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters, researchers found certain strains of bacteria elevated antibiotic resistance by up to 30 times while living on microplastic biofilms that can form inside activated sludge units at municipal wastewater treatment plants.
“A number of recent studies have focused on the negative impacts that millions of tons of microplastic waste a year is having on our freshwater and ocean environments, but until now the role of microplastics in our towns’ and cities’ wastewater treatment processes has largely been unknown,” said Mengyan Li, associate professor of chemistry and environmental science at NJIT and the study’s corresponding author. “These wastewater treatment plants can be hotspots where various chemicals, antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pathogens converge and what our study shows is that microplastics can serve as their carriers, posing imminent risks to aquatic biota and human health if they bypass the water treatment process.”
“Most wastewater treatment plants are not designed for the removal of microplastics, so they are constantly being released into the receiving environment,” added Dung Ngoc Pham, NJIT Ph.D. candidate and first author of the study. “Our goal was to investigate whether or not microplastics are enriching antibiotic-resistant bacteria from activated sludge at municipal wastewater treatment plants, and if so, learn more about the microbial communities involved.”
In their study, the team collected batches of sludge samples from three domestic wastewater treatment plants in northern New Jersey, inoculating the samples in the lab with two widespread commercial microplastics—polyethylene (PE) and polystyrene (PS). The team used a combination of quantitative PCR and next-generation sequencing techniques to identify the species of bacteria that tend to grow on the microplastics, tracking genetic changes of the bacteria along the way.
The analysis revealed that three genes in particular—sul1, sul2 and intI1— known to aid resistance to common antibiotics, sulfonamides, were found to be up to 30 times greater on the microplastic biofilms than in the lab’s control tests using sand biofilms after just three days.
When the team spiked the samples with the antibiotic, sulfamethoxazole (SMX), they found it further amplified the antibiotic resistance genes by up to 4.5-fold.
“Previously, we thought the presence of antibiotics would be necessary to enhance antibiotic-resistance genes in these microplastic-associated bacteria, but it seems microplastics can naturally allow for uptake of these resistance genes on their own.” said Pham. “The presence of antibiotics does have a significant multiplier effect however.”
Eight different species of bacteria were found highly enriched on the microplastics. Among these species, the team observed two emerging human pathogens typically linked with respiratory infection, Raoultella ornithinolytica and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, frequently hitchhiking on the microplastic biofilms.
The team say the most common strain found on the microplastics by far, Novosphingobium pokkalii, is likely a key initiator in forming the sticky biofilm that attracts such pathogens—as it proliferates it may contribute to the deterioration of the plastic and expand the biofilm. At the same time, the team’s study highlighted the role of the gene, intI1, a mobile genetic element chiefly responsible for enabling the exchange of antibiotic resistance genes among the microplastic-bound microbes.
“We might think of microplastics as tiny beads, but they provide an enormous surface area for microbes to reside,” explained Li. “When these microplastics enter the wastewater treatment plant and mix in with sludge, bacteria like Novosphingobium can accidentally attach to the surface and secrete glue-like extracellular substances. As other bacteria attach to the surface and grow, they can even swap DNA with each other. This is how the antibiotic resistance genes are being spread among the community.”
“We have evidence that the bacteria developed resistance to other antibiotics this way as well, such as aminoglycoside, beta-lactam and trimethoprim,” added Pham.
Now, Li says the lab is further studying the role of Novosphingobium in biofilm formation on microplastics. The team is also seeking to better understand the extent to which such pathogen-carrying microplastics may be bypassing water treatment processes, by studying resistance of microplastic biofilms during wastewater treatment with disinfectants such as UV light and chlorine.
“Some states are already considering new regulations on the use of microplastics in consumer products. This study raises calls for further investigation on microplastic biofilms in our wastewater systems and development of effective means for removing microplastics in aquatic environments,” said Li.
Microplastic sizes in Hudson-Raritan Estuary and coastal ocean revealed
More information:
Dung Ngoc Pham et al, Microplastics as hubs enriching antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pathogens in municipal activated sludge, Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.hazl.2021.100014
Dung Ngoc Pham et al, Microplastics as hubs enriching antibiotic-resistant bacteria and pathogens in municipal activated sludge, Journal of Hazardous Materials Letters (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.hazl.2021.100014
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Disney, HubSpot, Cloudflare, Coherent: What to Watch When the Stock Market Opens Today
Here’s what we’re watching ahead of Friday’s trading action.
—U.S. stock futures edged lower Friday, putting the S&P 500 on track to end the week with muted gains after notching its ninth record closing high for 2021.
Futures tied to the S&P 500 slipped 0.3%, pointing to a drop after the opening bell. Contracts linked to the Nasdaq-100 Index edged down 0.3%, suggesting that technology stocks may also slip. Read our full market wrap.
What’s Coming Up
—The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index for the opening weeks of February, due at 10 a.m. ET, is expected to inch up to 80.8 from 79.0 at the end of January.
Market Movers to Watch
—All hail Baby Yoda. Walt Disney shares were up 0.9% ahead of the bell after the entertainment giant reported a first-quarter profit, as its flagship streaming service, Disney+, added more than 21 million new subscribers during the period. But the pandemic continued to zap results in the company’s movie-distribution and theme-park segments.
North Texas Coronavirus Vaccine Hubs to Receive Nearly 139K First Doses Next Week – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth
Seventeen hubs across North Texas will receive just over a quarter of the state’s allocation of first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine next week, state health officials say.
Of the state’s 520,425 first doses of the vaccine, 138,950 will go to hubs in North Texas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services.
In addition to the first doses, Texas DSHS said it was ordering 188,225 second doses of the vaccine for people who were vaccinated a few weeks ago.
Of the 17 hubs in North Texas, six are in Dallas County, four are in Collin County, three are in Tarrant County and there is one each in Denton, Fannin, Navarro and Parker counties.
Want to Get on a Vaccine Waitlist?
As the state begins to distribute the COVID-19 vaccines for those in Phase 1A and 1B, county health departments have begun waitlists for those wish to be inoculated.
You can now register to recieve the vaccination in Collin, Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties. Links are below:
Waitlist Links: Collin – Search Waitlist | Dallas | Denton | Tarrant
You do not need to be a resident of the county to register for a COVID-19 vaccine in that county — registration is open to anyone in Texas. For those without internet access, Tarrant County is also taking registrations by phone at 817-248-6299. In Dallas County, call the DCHHS vaccine hotline at 469-749-9900. In Denton County, call 940-349-2585.
Collin County is slated to receive 26,320 first doses of the vaccine distributed between its four providers: the Allen Fire Department, Baylor Scott & White Plano Collin County Health Care Services and the McKinney Fire Department.
The Frisco Fire Department is getting a one-time shipment of 7,800 first doses and the county will have six total vaccination sites.
The six hubs in Dallas County will receive a total of 43,150 first doses. The county’s hubs are Baylor University Medical Center, the city of Dallas, Dallas County Health and Human Services, Parkland Hospital, UT Southwestern Medical Center and the city of Garland Health Department.
Tarrant County’s three hubs, the Arlington Fire Department, Tarrant County Public Health and Texas Health, will split a combined 25,750 first doses.
Denton County Public Health, as the county’s only hub, will receive the largest allocation of any single provider in the state: 32,475. The county is planning to open a large-scale vaccination site at Texas Motor Speedway that will be by appointment only.
TMC Bonham Hospital in Fannin County will receive 975 first doses; the Corsicana-Navarro Public Health District will get 1,500; and the Parker County Hospital District in Weatherford will receive 1,950, according to DSHS.
There are 82 hub providers statewide in addition to hundreds of smaller providers, like pharmacies and hospitals, in 166 different counties.
The increase in the number of doses Texas will receive next week is due to two factors, according to DSHS. The first is a 30% increase in the number of Moderna doses the federal government is providing and the second is a one-time return of 126,750 doses of the Pfizer vaccine set aside for long-term care facilities. The initial distribution was overestimated, so some doses are being returned to the states, DSHS said.
The state is still vaccinating people in groups 1A and 1B, which includes health care workers, first responders, residents of long-term care facilities, people over 65 years old and people with underlying health conditions.
According to DSHS, 1.75 million people in Texas have received their first dose, while 410,000 have been fully vaccinated.
