Kolkata rickshaw-puller pedals his way to Ladakh | The Indian Express | Page 99
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Kolkata rickshaw-puller pedals his way to&Ladakh
Satyen Das returned home a few days ago and is now eyeing an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for the feat.
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| Kolkata |
Published:October 7,
A rickshaw-puller from the city pedalled for two months and covered a 3,000-km arduous journey to reach distant Ladakh valley to become the first man to achieve the feat.
After riding his rickshaw for 68 days through Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Srinagar and Kargil, 44-year-old Satyen Das said he had crossed the famous Khardung La pass in Ladakh on August 17.
He returned home a few days ago and is now eyeing an entry into the Guinness Book of World Records for plying rickshaw at an altitude above of 5000 metres.
His trip was financed by the Naktala Agrani Club in south Kolkata.
The secretary of the club, Patho Dey, said, “We estimated that the trip would cost around Rs 80,000 which we raised from among club members. We were impressed by his passion and determination to undertake the adventure.”
“After I crossed Pathankot in Jammu and , locals told me that they had never seen a rickshaw in their village,” Das said.
He said his journey was meant to promote rickshaw as a means of eco-friendly transport as well as to spread the message of world peace.
To record the feat, a documentary filmmaker from Kolkata accompanied him. He was also armed with maps to help him pick his way through.
This is not the first time Das undertook such a journey. Way back in 2008 he had gone all the way to Rohtang Pass in Himachal Pradesh in a rickshaw with his wife and
The best and the most challenging part of his journey was passing through an elevation of 17,582 feet at Khardung La pass which offers stunning views of the magnificent Himalayas.
As the road sloped upward, he had to get down from the rickshaw and pull it with hands through the rough mountainous terrain.
“It was very tiring and it took lot of time. But the view of natural beauty you get there makes you forget everything else in life,” Das said.
Proud moments during his journey were when locals and travellers stopped to click selfies with him and his rickshaw.
Das has many adventurous tales to recount on encountering wildlife during his trip including how he escaped a herd of wild elephants in Jhilmil forest near Haridwar and how he was petrified after seeing an Asian black bear standing near him while he was resting at night in his sleeping bag near Sonmarg.
Another scary moment was when he came face to face with the elusive snow leopard in Leh.
“Fortunately none of the animals attacked me,” the rickshaw ‘wallah’ said.
Marshalling his personal savings and generous donations from the local Naktala Agrani Club, he packed his luggage under the passenger’s seat and set off from his house on June 11.
He refurbished his rickshaw with an enhanced braking system, new tyres and a new body made of light steel.
Throughout his journey he pedalled to cover around 40-50 km every day and the night halts were in a religious place like temple or Gurudwara where he stayed safely for free of cost.
There were times when he couldn’t find any shelter and had to sleep under the open sky.
Having only elementary education, Das said the unique road trip was also a great learning experience as he got to understand the culture and diversity of India by criss-crossing different states, cities, towns and villages.
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U.S. District Judge declared the deal "unfair"
(SAN FRANCISCO) & A federal judge has rejected a legal settlement that would have divided up to $100 million among about 380,000 Uber drivers to resolve claims the ride-hailing service has been exploiting them by treating them as independent contractors instead of employees.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen declared the deal unfair in a decision issued late Thursday, complicating Uber’s efforts to remove the legal threat of having its drivers classified as employees.
That distinction would give Uber’s drivers more rights and benefits. That would in turn force the San Francisco company to change its business in ways that would cause its expenses to soar and potentially undercut its plans to eventually sell its stock in an initial public offering.
Uber expressed its disappointment with Chen’s ruling in a statement that said the company will consider its options. The alternatives include taking the case to trial, awaiting rulings in two appeals that would bolster Uber’s cause, or negotiating a revised settlement with the drivers in an attempt to appease Chen.
In another case earlier this year, Uber rival Lyft initially had a similar settlement with its drivers rejected by a different judge. Lyft raised its initial offer from $12.5 million to $27 million, good enough to win preliminary approval from U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in June.
Shannon Liss-Riordan, the lead attorney representing the Uber drivers, said she thinks a revised settlement is possible in this lawsuit, too. If not, she is prepared to take the case to trial, she told The Associated Press in an email. In that event, the case could be whittled to about 8,000 drivers because of binding arbitration clauses that Uber holds.
“I am disappointed the judge did not approve the settlement, but I understand and I have heard him,” Liss-Riordan wrote.
The agreement would have required Uber to pay at least $84 million to drivers in California and Massachusetts who had been picking up riders who requested them through the company’s service dating back to August 2009. Uber would have paid another $16 million to the drivers if the company’s market value increased by 1.5 times within the first year of its IPO.
If everyone covered in the lawsuit had filed for payments, the California drivers would have received an average of $10 to $1,950 apiece and the Massachusetts drivers would have received an average of $12 to $979.
Uber is currently a privately held company backed by venture capitalists and other investors who have valued the business at more than $60 billion, though some analysts question the reliability of that figure.
Chen also is skeptical of Uber’s prospects in an IPO, saying in his decision that he based his conclusions that the company would only end up paying the drivers a minimum of $84 million.
Most of the money would be designated to settle claims that Uber had been cheating them by refusing to reimburse them for mileage and phone usage while also refusing to pay them for overtime and prohibiting passengers from tipping them. Had the case gone to trial and the drivers prevailed on them, they might have won estimated $854 million, based on estimates from the drivers’ attorneys.
Given the risks facing the drivers had they not won those specific claims in a trial, Chen concluded the $84 million would have been a “fair and adequate” amount.
But Chen was troubled that the settlement also would have prevented the drivers from pursuing claims on a variety of other employment issues that could have generated another $1 billion in a trial verdict favoring their arguments. Lumping in those potential liabilities, the proposed settlement would be paying the drivers less than 5 percent of what they could win in a trial & a sum that Chen concluded “is not fair, adequate or reasonable.”
Since its introduction to Haiti in October 2010, cholera has killed more than 9,300 Haitians and sickened over 800,000
(PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) & A U.S. federal appeals court has upheld the United Nations’ immunity from a damage claim filed on behalf of 5,000
who blame the U.N. for an epidemic of the deadly disease in Haiti.
In a decision issued late Thursday, the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in New York affirmed a lower court’s January 2015 dismissal of a lawsuit brought in the worst outbreak of cholera in recent history.
“We have considered all of plaintiffs’ arguments on appeal and find them to be without merit,” the U.S. appellate judges said.
The ruling came shortly after U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq referred to the United Nations’ “own involvement” in the introduction of cholera to Haiti.
It was a significant statement because the U.N. has for years kept silent about allegations its peacekeepers introduced cholera to Haiti. It has answered lawsuits on behalf of victims filed in U.S. courts by claiming immunity under a 1946 convention.
Haq said in a statement that the U.N. needs to do “much more” to end the suffering of those affected and pledged that “a significantly new set of U.N. actions” will be presented publicly within the next two months.
But Haq reiterated that the U.N.’s legal position in claiming immunity hasn’t changed.
Brian Concannon, executive director of the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, said advocates for Haitian cholera victims will be watching the U.N.’s actions closely. They have 90 days to decide whether to file an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“We will decide how to proceed based on whether the U.N.’s actions fulfill the cholera victims’ rights to an effective remedy,” Concannon said in a statement.
Since its introduction to Haiti in October 2010, cholera has killed more than 9,300 Haitians and sickened over 800,000. It showed up some 10 months after a devastating earthquake in the south of Haiti, deepening the country’s misery at a time when it was ill-equipped to cope with another crisis.
The waterborne disease is now considered “endemic” in Haiti, meaning it’s an illness that occurs regularly.
Researchers say there is ample scientific evidence the disease was introduced to Haiti’s biggest river by inadequately treated sewage from a base of U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal, one of the units that have rotated in and out of a multinational force in Haiti since 2004.
"He never strayed from his morals or values or faith and he was an extraordinary patriot"
(MINNEAPOLIS) & Retired Army Gen. John W. Vessey, who rose through the ranks in a 46-year military career to become chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under President Ronald Reagan, has died. He was 94.
Vessey & who enlisted as a private in the Minnesota National Guard in 1939, fought in World War II and Vietnam, and was the nation’s top military officer when he retired to his home state of Minnesota in 1985 & died Thursday evening, his daughter, Sarah Vessey told The Associated Press. He was surrounded by family and died of natural causes, she said.
After being named chairman of the joint chiefs in 1982, Vessey helped oversee the military buildup that Reagan championed when he took office just over a year earlier.
“It was probably the greatest peacetime modernization of the American military establishment that ever took place,” Vessey recalled in a 2004 interview. “We improved every facet of the armed forces, from the recruiting and retention, the selection of individuals, to the way they lived, but most importantly to the way they fought.”
Vessey said the Soviet Union had been making a “big push” to solidify its position in Europe, deploying SS20 intermediate-range nuclear missiles and strengthening its ground forces in East Germany, “dabbling” in West European elections at a time when NATO was shaky, and stepping up its espionage.
By the time Vessey retired in 1985, he said, NATO was strong once again, the United States had deployed Pershing II and cruise missiles in response to the Soviet SS20s, and negotiations with the Soviets to eliminate each side’s intermediate-range missiles were just about complete.
“He was smart and combined good common sense with good military judgment, and he knew how to get things done,” Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank, said in a 2006 interview. Korb worked with Vessey while serving as an assistant secretary of defense from 1981 to 1985. “He was a person of integrity.”
Even in retirement, Vessey heard from presidents and the Pentagon looking for help.
Reagan sent Vessey back to Vietnam in 1987 to account for Americans missing in action and bring back any still alive. His other tasks included reuniting separated families and getting former South Vietnamese leaders out of prison camps, Amerasian children out of Vietnam and the Vietnamese out of Cambodia.
“In typical Ronald Reagan optimistic fashion, he said, ‘Well, it ought to take you about three months,'” Vessey recalled with a laugh. “Six years later I told Bill Clinton that I had checked off all of those things and would like to be relieved.”
Vessey’s work to resolve the fate of the MIAs was “terribly important” because the issue had become a “rallying cry” for people who thought the United States had pulled out of Vietnam too soon or that the Pentagon was covering something up, Korb said.
In retirement, Vessey also chaired the advisory board of the Center for Preventive Action, an arm of the Council on Foreign Relations that seeks to prevent conflic consulted for the Defense Science Board, Army Science Board and the Sandia National L and led a campaign to build up the endowment funds of colleges affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.
While Vessey generally wielded his influence in military and foreign policy circles away from the public spotlight after he retired, he made news in 2006 when he spoke out against a push to weaken protections under the Geneva Conventions against torture of prisoners, particularly as they applied to suspected terrorists.
He wrote Sen. John McCain expressing concern that doing so “would undermine the moral basis” that had traditionally guided U.S. conduct in war, and that “could give opponents a legal argument for the mistreatment of Americans being held prisoner in time of war.”
Another retired chairman of the joint chiefs, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, called Vessey’s comments “powerful and eloquent” in his own letter to McCain. Those letters became ammunition in the congressional debate over the use of coercive interrogation techniques in the war on terror.
“He never strayed from his morals or values or faith and he was an extraordinary patriot,” Sarah Vessey said of her father.
Vessey was born in Minneapolis in 1922. He enlisted in the Minnesota National Guard at age 17, when the threat of Nazi Germany was looming over Europe. He was called to active duty and fought in Northern Africa and Italy, where he received a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant at the battle of Anzio in 1944.
He married his wife, , right after he shipped home. He made the Army his career, serving mostly in field artillery units stateside and abroad. His postings included several in West Germany.
During the Vietnam War, Vessey was a lieutenant colonel in the battle of Suoi Tre, where U.S. forces held off a fierce attack from a much larger North Vietnamese and Viet Cong force in 1967. Vessey was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the Army’s second-highest medal, and his unit received a Presidential Unit Citation.
He was promoted to brigadier general in 1971. He earned his fourth star in 1976 and was put in charge of U.S. and U.N. forces in South Korea.
Vessey showed his character after his opposition to President Jimmy Carter’s proposal to withdraw from Korea cost him a promotion to Army chief of staff, Korb said. Instead, Vessey became vice chief of staff of the Army in 1979 under the younger Gen. Edward C. Meyer.
“You never heard him complain or not defer to the real chief,” Korb said.
Vessey was building a lake home back in Minnesota when Reagan asked him to defer retirement and named him the 10th chairman of the joint chiefs. The general was never a self-promoter and never lobbied for the job, Korb said.
Congress didn’t strengthen the chairman’s role until 1986, Korb said, so while Vessey was nominally in charge, he had to lead by consensus. Vessey “had the perfect temperament” for that, Korb said.
Vessey and the joint chiefs advised against the 1982 deployment of Marines to Lebanon, which ended after 241 Marines were killed in a suicide attack on their barracks in Beirut in 1983. However, he directed the swift and successful 1983 U.S. intervention in Grenada.
“Jack Vessey always remembered the s he understood those soldiers are the background of any army,” Reagan said at a ceremony when Vessey finally did retire in 1985. “He noticed them, spoke to them, looked out for them. Jack Vessey never forgot what it was like to be an enlisted man, to be just a GI.”
Vessey then settled on Little Whitefish Lake near Garrison, Minnesota, keeping a promise to his wife that they’d return before the snow fell.
“He and my mom were so happy to be back,” Sarah Vessey said Thursday.
The couple had two other children: John III and David.
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush awarded Vessey the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, paying tribute to his efforts to account for the missing in action.
Bush called him, “the ultimate never-say-die soldier, the last four-star combat veteran of World War II to retire.”
Associated Press writer Sarah Rankin in Chicago contributed to this report.
Rio police chief asserts that no robbery took place and that the swimmers had instead vandalized a gas station bathroom
In an escalation of the controversy involving four American swimmers, Brazilian authorities on Thursday with falsely reporting a crime. To be clear, a recommendation of a charge is not the equivalent of an actual charge. An actual charge in Brazil requires that a person be caught in the act or arrested pursuant to a warrant issued by a judicial authority. Put another way, Lochte or Feigen might not be charged at any point, although it could take days or weeks before that is determined. If Lochte and Feigen are ultimately charged with false reporting, a conviction on this particular offense normally results in a fine rather than incarceration.
Locke and Feigen, along with Gunnar Bentz and Jack Conger, have claimed that they were victims of an armed robbery when assailants posing as Rio police took their wallets at gunpoint. After investigating the claim, the Rio police could not corroborate it.
Earlier on Thursday, Rio&s police chief, Fernando Veloso, held a press conference in which he asserted that no robbery took place and that the swimmers had instead vandalized a gas station bathroom. The swimmers& &stolen& money, according to authorities, was not stolen. Instead, the swimmers allegedly transferred the money on their own volition to the owner of the gas station. They did so, so the theory goes, in order to compensate him for damages they caused while drunk.
Whether the transfer of money was truly voluntarily remains the subject of debate. Reports suggest that two armed guards confronted the swimmers at the gas station and pointed guns at them. If true, the portrayal of the exchange of money as truly &voluntarily& would be problematic. Further, while surveillance video made public to some extent supports the account of Brazilian authorities&the swimmers are clearly at a gas station and there&s no evidence they were pulled over by assailants posing as Rio police&it does not show the swimmers engaged in any violent acts. There are also rumors that as many as three minutes are missing from the surveillance video and that those three minutes would show the swimmers forced out of a car at gunpoint.
Late Thursday evening, the U.S. Olympic Committee
on behalf of its CEO, Scott Blackmun. In his remarks, Blackmun apologizes for the swimmers& conduct and attempts to diffuse the crisis. &The behavior of these athletes is not acceptable,& Blackmun writes, &nor does it represent the values of Team USA or the conduct of the vast majority of its members.& Blackmun&s statement also reveals that the passports of Bentz and Conger have been returned and the two swimmers recently departed Rio.
The different legal situations of the four swimmers
Although the four swimmers are linked together in this crisis, their legal statuses are dissimilar. Obviously, two of them&Lochte and Feigen&are now the targets of recommendations that they be charged with a crime. The other two&Bentz and Conger&have not (yet) been recommended for charges. While those are important distinctions, the current whereabouts of the four may prove much more influential.
Let&s consider Locthe first. Although he has been recommended for a charge, Lochte has a major advantage over his three teammates: he&s in the United States. As I explained in another , it would be extremely difficult for Brazil to successfully pursue an extradition of Lochte. The extradition treaty between the United States and Brazil does not authorize extradition for the criminal act of falsely reporting a crime. Even if it did, extradition is a lengthy process that must be approved by multiple persons at the State Department, Justice Department and federal courts.
To be sure, Lochte could suffer other legal consequences. Companies with which he has signed endorsement contracts could contemplate voiding or suspending those contracts on grounds that Lochte has violated &morals clause& language in those deals. Most endorsement contracts authorize an endorsed company with substantial flexibility in whether to exit or suspend a contract when an athlete attracts public controversy. Even if Lochte doesn&t lose any endorsement deals, this incident may damage his reputation and deter other companies from wanting him as a product endorser. In addition, , both the International Olympic Committee and the U.S. Olympic Committee could take punitive action against the swimmers.
While Lochte may be in the best position legally, Feigen appears to be in the worst. Like Lochte, Feigen could soon be charged with a crime. But unlike Lochte, Feigen is still in Brazil. According to Blackmun, Feigen has provided Brazilian authorities with a &revised statement& and he hopes to secure his passport &as soon as possible.& If Blackmun is accurately describing Feigen&s current situation, there&s a good chance Feigen will be able to leave Rio in a matter of hours or days. Alternatively, if Feigen is charged, he would become a defendant in a criminal matter and would likely have to appear in court, possibly on multiple occasions. He&d be required to remain in Brazil until his case is resolved. In that scenario and unless Feigen and Brazilian authorities negotiated a plea deal (which could happen at any time), Feigen could be required to stay in Brazil for weeks or potentially longer. As , Feigen, if charged, would receive aid from the U.S. Consulate General in Rio, but that aid would not get him home.
Meanwhile, Bentz and Conger are not recommended for charges at this time, and Blackmun&s statement indicates that the two swimmers are leaving or have already left Brazil. They were removed from a flight Wednesday night. Brazilian authorities told media on Thursday that Bentz and Conger admitted that they made up the robbery story. Perhaps as a reward for their alleged admission, Bentz and Conger have not been charged. The two swimmers are not allowed leave the country without Brazil&s approval. Don&t be surprised if a condition of their departure from Brazil is a public apology.
Brazilian authorities may hope that their recommendation of charges for Feigen, coupled with the absence of a recommendation of charges for Bentz and Conger, pressures Feigen into making an admission. Feigen now knows that it is more likely he&ll be charged, but he still has time to make an admission before that would happen. Blackmun&s statement that Feigen provided a &revised statement& suggests that Feigen may have already made an admission.
We&ll see. A strange story keeps getting stranger.
is a legal analyst and writer for Sports Illustrated. He is also a Massachusetts attorney and the founding director of the Sports and Entertainment Law Institute at the University of New Hampshire School of Law. McCann also created and teaches the Deflategate undergraduate course at UNH. He serves on the Board of Advisors to the Harvard Law School Systemic Justice Project and is the distinguished visiting Hall of Fame Professor of Law at Mississippi College School of Law. He is also on the faculty of the Oregon Law Summer Sports Institute.
After his tale of being held up at gunpoint in Rio unraveled, the entire Olympic Village seemed to tilt on its axis
This has been a pretty fine
for . Sure, the women’s soccer team wilted and Kerri Walsh Jennings
extend her record streak of beach volleyball gold medals to four, but the
have been brimming with the , from
smashing records in the pool to the
in the gym to the undersung women’s eight crew
world title.
Now, an apparent display of ugly Americanism threatens to overshadow it all.
After ‘s harrowing tale of being held up at gunpoint in Rio
that inflamed tensions between the U.S. and Brazil, the entire Olympic Village seemed to tilt slightly on its axis.
And so, four days after Lochte
that he had a loaded gun pressed against his head, media from all over the world gathered at a theater in Rio to hear local officials give their version of events. In short: Brazilian police said Lochte concocted much of his story and that he and fellow U.S. swimmers Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen were not victims of any crime. Instead, officials said they vandalized a gas station bathroom and then were confronted by armed security guards before paying for the damage and taking a cab back to the Olympic Village.
The press conference had the feel of a tabloid spectacle, with TV cameramen and photographers stepping over each other to enter the theater across the street from a Rio police station. “Great story, great story,” a theater worker said to a group of American journalists upon hearing where they hailed from. “That’s why you’re so good at the movies.”
Since then, Bentz and Conger have been allowed to return to the U.S. after giving statements about the incident to local officials, according to the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Late Thursday night, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun offered an apology “to our hosts in Rio and the people of Brazil for this distracting ordeal in the midst of what should rightly be a celebration of excellence.”
Brazilian authorities have recommended Lochte, who is back in the U.S., and Feigen, who may soon join him, be charged with falsely reporting a crime & an offense
with a fine. The sanctions from USA Swimming . But no matter the ultimate outcome, Lochte’s Olympics have ended in shame. And he’s sullied what has been an outstanding American effort in Rio.
And you thought you made poor friendship choices?
A British man
intended for his best friend’s bachelor party and then faked cancer.
Martyn Galvin, 30, was asked to be the best man at his unnamed closest friend’s wedding, the Guardian reports. As part of his duties, he was invited to organize the bachelor party, which was to consist of a trip to the historic Czech Republic capital, Prague, and a day enjoying horse-racing in the beautiful northern English city of York.
Although the groom and 16 of his friends gave Galvin over $10,500 for the party, problems emerged with tickets and payments. Galvin then said he had cancer in order to invoke sympathy and avoid answering questions about the party plans.
According to the Guardian, the groom and his friends did not realize that no flights to or accommodation in Prague had been arranged until they turned up at a domestic U.K. airport hoping to board a plane.
A call to Galvin’s mother then exposed his cancer as fake.
In sentencing Galvin to 20 months for his deception, the judge called the case &one of the nastiest and meanest I&ve encountered in my time involved in criminal law.&
....At least if they're millennials
Being a good provider isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, says a new study. Guys who are required to earn the lion’s share of the family income are less happy and less healthy than guys who aren’t. And the higher the percentage of the bacon a guy has to bring home, the bigger hit his body and brain take.
The new study, which will be presented this weekend at the American Sociological Association’s annual conference in Seattle, looked at 15 years of data on married people between the ages of 18 and 32 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. “The data definitely seems to indicate that, in general, as men take responsibility for greater and greater shares of the couple’s pooled income, they experience declines in their psychological well-being and health,” says the lead author Christin Munsch, an assistant professor of sociology at University of Connecticut.
The data suggests that men are at their lowest when they are their families& only breadwinner. That’s when happiness scores fall to 5% lower and health scores 3.5% lower, on average, than when both partners pitch in equally.
For women, carrying a heavier financial load has the opposite effect. As they earn more their psychological wellbeing rises. And when they earn less, they feel worse. Unlike the men, women’s health didn’t seem to be affected by their earning status within the family.
Could it be that the guys whose wives earn almost as much as they do are happier and healthier simply because they have more money or don’t have to work as hard? It seems not. The researchers explored a number of other explanations: age, education, absolute income, and hours worked per week. None accounted for what they were seeing.
The message here seems to be that it really gets humans down when they have some sort of expectation imposed on them because of which gender they are.
have shown that men who earn less than their wives are more likely to cheat, possibly because it threatens their identity as males, and they are seeking to reassert it. (On the other hand, she also found that men who earn a lot more than their spouses were also more likely to cheat, probably because they can.)
While male breadwinners still feel like the norm to many people, they actually were a phenomenon for a very short period of history, .’There is no such thing as the traditional male-breadwinner family,” she wrote in 2013. “It was a late-arriving, short-lived aberration in the history of the world, and it&s over. We need to move on.”
Millennials may be the first generation to have dispensed with the “guy-as-provider” identity completely. “We know Millennials, more so than previous generations, want egalitarian relationships in which both partners contribute financially and both partners are responsible for domestic labor and childcare,” says Musnch. “The findings may reflect as mismatch between what men want and what happens when they are forced to take on more traditional responsibilities.”
The health department confirmed 206 cases of hepatitis A as of earlier this week
(HONOLULU) & U.S. Food and Drug Administration tests found hepatitis A in scallops from the Philippines, which have been identified as the likely source of an outbreak of the virus in Hawaii.
The Hawaii Department of Health announced Thursday the FDA laboratory test results of frozen Sea Port Bay Scallops. They’re produced by De Oro Resources Inc. Messages left with the company’s main office in the Philippines weren’t immediately returned.
The scallops are imported by Sea Port Products Corp. in Washington state. An employee referred requests for comment to a spokeswoman, who didn’t immediately respond.
There’s a Hawaii-wide embargo on the product, meaning businesses aren’t allowed to sell them and consumers are advised not to eat them, the health department said.
Health officials on Monday identified frozen scallops served raw at a sushi chain as the probable source of the outbreak. They ordered 11 Genki Sushi restaurants on Oahu and Kauai to close. The popular restaurants, which serve sushi on conveyor belts, must dispose of their food supply and disposable items like cups and napkins and disinfect the facilities before they reopen.
“This laboratory confirmation is important validation of our investigation findings,” state epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said in a statement Thursday. “We are continuing efforts to end this outbreak by working to assure no other product is left in the state and to monitor for those who unfortunately may have been infected and do not yet have symptoms.”
The health department confirmed 206 cases of hepatitis A as of earlier this week. The disease can cause fever, loss of appetite, nausea and other ailments.
He’s always gone his own way, and this time it may cost him
Ryan Lochte has always railed against the confining and conforming limits of a sport in which athletes are nearly indistinguishable from one another under their standard issue goggles and caps. During training for the 2012 Olympics, where Lochte was expected to be an anchor of the U.S. men’s swim team, he continued to risk injury playing basketball and skateboarding despite his coach’s request that he avoid them out of precaution. &Oh, yeah, he&s terrified of me playing other sports,& Lochte . &He&s waiting for me to come in one day with a broken ankle or something. But I told him, ‘This is me. If I break my ankle right now, this Olympics wasn&t meant to be.’ I&m going to keep living my life the way I&ve been living my life, and nothing is going to change that even if the Olympics are coming up.&
That carefree attitude has served Lochte well in the pool: his 12 Olympic medals are tied with Jenny Thompson for , behind only Michael Phelps, Lochte’s longtime friend and rival. And it has made him a draw for reporters. In a sport known for relatively vanilla stars, Lochte has been a Technicolor blast. But Lochte’s damn-the-consequences approach may have finally caught up with him this week, after his
about being held up at gunpoint in Rio
into a bizarre saga that could leave his reputation in tatters.
What , if any, Lochte and the three other U.S. swimmers involved in the incident will face is not yet known. In addition to the legal fallout, the swimmers may also have to contend with severe sanctions from the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Swimming. In a statement issued late Thursday night, USOC CEO Scott Blackmun apologized to “our hosts in Rio and the people of Brazil” and promised to review “any potential consequences for the athletes.”
USA Swimming, the sport’s governing body in America, said it too would determine whether the incident violated their code of conduct. The organization has meted out punishment beyond the law before, and those cases were without international ramifications. In 2015, Phelps was barred from competing at the world championships as a consequence of his DUI arrest the previous year, despite his having served the legal sentence for the charge.
In Rio, Lochte arrived with a shade of , a dye job he received while at training camp in Atlanta. It was only the latest expression, he said, of his personality. &It&s a bold statement, it&s different,& he said at the start of the Rio Games. &That&s me, that&s my personality, just being different.& In 2012, Lochte covered his teeth in a stars-and-stripes grill for a medals ceremony but was reportedly asked not to wear it again. &I am trying to make swimming bigger than the sport is now,& he told TIME in 2012. &The only way to do it is by showing your personality out there.&
Riding his newfound fame after London, Lochte and his family participated in a TV reality show, &What Would Ryan Lochte Do?& which made sport of his immature hijinks for a single, short-lived season. He’s also talked for years about his desire to start a clothing line and move into the fashion industry after his swimming career ended. So far, he’s designed
with Speedo and a gaudy set of sunglasses featuring his hallmark expression, ‘Jeah,’ but has yet to produce a full apparel line.
It&s hard not to see Lochte’s attention seeking in both . Just a year apart, Lochte, 32, has seen his spectacular success
by the younger Phelps’ . But those who know him well say Lochte&s need to chart his own course was apparent well before he began living in someone else&s shadow.
His mother Ileana, who was born in Cuba and emigrated with her family to the U.S. when she was 7, was Lochte&s first swim coach and had trouble getting her son to play by the rules even then. &I would let him swim with the older kids for warm-up, and then send him out [of the pool], because it would take him the rest of the practice to finish with his shower and play in the locker room and the slip &n slide,& she
His father coached him next and wasn&t as forgiving. &He was a hard ass,” Lochte said. “He would pull me out of the water and start yelling at me. It was scary.& (Lochte’s parents have since divorced.)
Lochte suffered knee injuries in recent years and moved to Charlotte, N.C., to recover and train in earnest for Rio. He changed coaches and seemed motivated by Phelps& return to competitive swimming and the possibility of racing against him again at the Olympics. He made it back, but their . The 200-m individual medley was supposed to be their final Olympic showdown. Lochte started fast but then faded. His longtime rival took gold, while Lochte finished off the podium in fifth.
Two days later, he stepped into that taxi with three teammates on the relay who helped him win his only medal in Rio. It may well be his last.
Could we be closer to actually getting the album?
It isn’t Boys Don’t Cry, but at least it’s something. Just before midnight Thursday,
Music dropped a “visual album” by Frank Ocean called . Both the 45-minute video and the overlaid music are ambient and smooth & perhaps a hint of what’s to come on s long-awaited sophomore project.
For months, Boys Don’t Cry has existed only in the context of the . Only on Friday did we
that the album is in fact real. Whether the prolonged release is the consequence of tormented genius or simply this century’s great marketing stunt does not matter & Ocean’s fans are hungry for it.
Updates have come in intermittent, tangential spurts & like the release of “Endless,” which dropped only about an hour after Ocean’s
began (for the second time this month) to play a livestream of what appears to be the artist in a sparse warehouse, tinkering away on a wooden set design, with new music in the background.
There is, of course, no precise indication of what all this means. Time will tell.