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Egg McMuffin’s 50th birthday: You can get one at its 1971 price ’63 cents’

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11/18/2021

Egg McMuffin’s 50th birthday: You can get one at its 1971 price ’63 cents’

The McDonald’s Egg McMuffin turns 50 today. And to celebrate, the fast-food franchise is offering the iconic breakfast sandwich at its original price of 63 cents.

In early 1971, an owner/operator in Santa Barbara, Calif., set out to create a unique breakfast menu item. He ended up creating a version of an eggs benedict with cheese instead of Hollandaise sauce, plus a slice of Canadian bacon. And he used Teflon rings to make the eggs round, like an English muffin. The official Egg McMuffin — an open-faced sandwich served on a small tray with honey or jam — entered test markets the following year, and its national rollout was complete by 1975.

The deal won’t be on the table for long. The company says customers can only order the sandwiches from participating restaurants during “breakfast hours” and through the McDonald’s app.

McDonald’s says today’s a good day to celebrate the sandwich’s storied history and versatility. It notes that many customers put their own twist on the McMuffin, whether that’s by adding a McChicken patty and syrup (for a DIY chicken & waffles situation), swapping the English muffins for hash browns or adding salsa or jam.

“The Egg McMuffin, the first-ever quick service restaurant breakfast sandwich, joined the McDonald’s menu in 1971 in Santa Barbara, California, and customers have been getting creative with it ever since,” said Molly McKenna, McDonald’s senior director of brand communications.

Migrant camps grow in Mexico with US policy uncertainty

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11/18/2021

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Migrant camps grow in Mexico with US policy uncertainty

As darkness fell, about 250 police officers and city workers swept into a squalid camp for migrants hoping to apply for asylum in the United States. Migrants had to register for credentials or leave. Within hours, those who stayed were surrounded by enough chain-link fence to extend twice the height of the Statue of Liberty.

The Oct. 28 operation may have been the beginning of the end for a camp that once held about 2,000 people and blocks a major border crossing to the United States. There may be more camps to come.

First lady Jill Biden sharply criticized a similar camp in Matamoros, bordering Brownsville, Texas, on a 2019 visit, saying, “It’s not who we are as Americans.” The Biden administration touted its work closing that camp in March, but others sprang up around the same time in nearby Reynosa and in Tijuana.

The camps, full of young children, are a product of policies that force migrants to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court or prohibit them from seeking asylum under pandemic-related public health powers. Uncertainty about U.S. asylum policies has also contributed to growing migrant populations in Mexican border cities, creating conditions for more camps.

Migrants are often out of public view in border cities, but the Tijuana camp is highly visible and disruptive. Tents covered with blue tarps and black plastic bags block entry to a border crossing where an average of about 12,000 people entered the U.S. daily before the pandemic. It is one of three pedestrian crossings to San Diego.

The U.S. fully reopened land borders with Mexico and Canada to vaccinated travelers Nov. 8.

“There is no asylum process (in the United States) until further notice,” Enrique Lucero, the city’s director of migrant services, told people who asked about U.S. policy on a morning walk-through last week.

Since March 2020, the U.S. has used Title 42, named for a public health law, to expel adults and families without an opportunity for asylum; unaccompanied children are exempt. But the Biden administration has exercised that authority on only about one of every four who come in families, largely due to resource constraints and Mexico’s reluctance to take back Central American families.

It’s unclear why the U.S. releases many families to seek asylum and returns others to Mexico, prompting those who are turned back to stick around until they succeed.

The first count, on Oct. 29, showed 769 migrants, more than 40% children. Half were Mexican — many from strife-torn states of Guerrero and Michoacan — and one-third were Honduran, with El Salvadorans and Guatemalans accounting for nearly all the rest.

The steep decline just before registration likely reflects that many living there were Tijuana’s homeless, not migrants, Caballero said.

The camp occupies a large, once-barren plaza. A warren of walkways includes rows that are wide enough in some parts for two people to stroll in opposite directions. People lounge inside tents or outside in folding chairs.

There are 12 portable bathrooms, 10 showers and a shared water tap for washing clothes. Charities donate food to migrants who prepare hot chocolate, fried eggs, hot dogs and spaghetti for everyone. The federal utility recently stopped the camp from stealing electricity, leaving it dark at night and forcing the makeshift kitchen to rely on canned food.

The future is less certain for a migrant camp in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. It has about 2,000 people in a plaza near the city’s main border crossing, said Felicia Rangel-Samponaro, director of The Sidewalk School, which educates children there.

The Biden administration, under a court order, plans to soon reinstate a Trump-era policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in the U.S. It hinges on approval from Mexican officials, who have told U.S. authorities they need more shelter beds and worry about violence in the state of Tamaulipas, which includes Reynosa.

The “Remain in Mexico” policy is expected to resume in “the coming weeks” after U.S. and Mexican authorities resolve “one set of outstanding issues,” Blas Nuñez-Nieto, acting assistant U.S. Homeland Security secretary for border and immigration policy, said in a court filing Monday. He did not elaborate.

Caballero said U.S. authorities haven’t pressured Mexico to reopen the busy pedestrian crossing between Tijuana and San Diego. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement it is working closely with Mexico “to determine how to resume normal travel safely and sustainably.”

The mayor plans to ask Mexico’s National Guard to help prevent camps from popping up again in Tijuana.

“The reality is that camps are going to be established if we are unprepared,” she said.

S.Korea reported biggest jump in COVID as thousands take college exam

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11/18/2021

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S.Korea reported biggest jump in COVID as thousands take college exam

South Korea reported its biggest daily jump in coronavirus infections since the start of the pandemic as hundreds of thousands of masked students flocked to schools on Thursday for the country’s highly competitive college entrance exam amid growing concerns about the delta-driven spread.

About 509,000 students were taking the one-day exam at 1,395 sites across the nation, including hospitals and shelters.

The annual exam, called “Suneung,” or the College Scholastic Ability Test, is crucial in the education-obsessed country, where careers, social standings and even marriage prospects greatly depend on which university a person attends.

Students were required to have their temperatures taken before entering classrooms, and those with fevers were sent to separate testing areas. The Education Ministry said that 68 infected students and 105 others in self-quarantine took the hours-long test in isolation.

The 3,292 new cases reported by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Thursday marked the second straight day of over 3,000 cases. The agency said 29 patients died in the past 24 hours, bringing the death toll to 3,187, while 506 others were in serious or critical condition.

To reduce noise, transportation authorities were planning to temporarily stop landings and departures of planes at airports during the English-listening part of the test. Government offices and private companies had their employees come in late, and the country’s stock market delayed its opening by an hour to clear roads for test-takers.

While schools have been alternating between on-and-offline classes, the Education Ministry had planned a full return to classrooms starting next week to help reduce education gaps and align with the government’s virus strategies.

Officials eased social distancing rules starting this month in what they described as the first step toward restoring some pre-pandemic normalcy. In allowing larger social gatherings and longer indoor dining hours at restaurants, officials cited concerns about the pandemic’s impact on the economy and expressed hope that improving vaccination rates would keep hospitalizations and deaths down even if the virus continues to spread.

SpaceX will attempt to launch its 1st Starship to orbit in January

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11/18/2021

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SpaceX will attempt to launch its 1st Starship to orbit in January

SpaceX founder Elon Musk said Wednesday that his company will attempt to launch its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship to orbit in January, but he’s not betting on success for that first test flight.

Musk said he’s confident Starship — launching for the first time atop a mega booster — will successfully reach orbit sometime in 2022. After a dozen or so orbital test flights next year, SpaceX then would start launching valuable satellites and other payloads to orbit on Starships in 2023, he said.

NASA has contracted with SpaceX to use Starship for delivering astronauts to the lunar surface as early as 2025. Musk plans to use the reusable ships to eventually land people on Mars.

The shiny, stainless steel Starship and its first-stage booster — called the Super Heavy — will be the biggest rocket ever to fly, towering 394 feet (120 meters). Liftoff thrust, Musk noted, will be more than double that of NASA’s Saturn V rockets that carried astronauts to the moon a half-century ago.

The Super Heavy has yet to soar. But a full-scale Starship model in May flew to an altitude of more than 6 miles (10 kilometers) before successfully landing back at the SpaceX complex near Texas’ southernmost tip.

The Starship and Super Heavy for the first orbital test flight have both been completed, according to Musk. By the end of November, the company hopes to be finished with the launch pad and tower, with testing in December. The Federal Aviation Administration should be done by the end of the year with its review, leading to a launch in January or February at the latest, Musk noted.

Unpacking the Redistricting Session and What’s Next in the Fight for Fair Maps

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Eugene Lee

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11/18/2021

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“Unpacking the Redistricting Session and What’s Next in the Fight for Fair Maps in Alabama”, the webinar was held by Ethnic Media Service with the experts.

Four panels presented the facts and political issues for the residents.

You can watch the Youtube video as shown below.

100,000 People Died from Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S.

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11/18/2021

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100,000 People Died from Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S.

More than 100,000 people died over a 12-month period from fatal drug overdoses for the first time in U.S. history, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

“This tragic milestone represents an increase of 28.5%” over the same period just a year earlier, said Dr. Deb Houry with the CDC in a call with reporters Wednesday.

Experts blame the continuing surge on the spread of more dangerous street drugs and on disruptions to drug treatment programs caused by the pandemic.

Dr. Nora Volkov, who heads the National Institute On Drug Abuse, part of the National Institutes of Health, predicted the surge of fatalities would continue because of the spread of more dangerous street drugs.

“They are among the most addictive drugs that we know of and the most lethal,” Volkov said.

In recent years, Mexican drug cartels have pivoted to manufacturing and distributing fentanyl and methamphetamines, which are cheaper to produce and can be shipped in small quantities that are difficult to detect.

Anne Milgram, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, acknowledged Wednesday that efforts to slow trafficking of these drugs haven’t worked.

“This year alone DEA has seized enough fentanyl to provide every member of the U.S. population with a lethal dose,” Milgram said. “We are still seizing more fentanyl each and every day.”

The Biden administration is calling on Congress to approve more than $10 billion in funding for drug treatment and interdiction programs. The White House also asked states to relax rules that complicate access to Naloxone, a medication that can reverse overdoses caused by fentanyl and other opioids.

But the Biden administration has sent mixed signals on how committed it is to following science-based “harm reduction” strategies proven to help keep people with addiction alive.

Rapper Young Dolph is killed in Memphis

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11/18/2021

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Rapper Adolph Robert Thornton Jr., better known by his stage name Young Dolph, was shot and killed in Memphis on Wednesday, according to police.

Memphis Police Department Chief CJ Davis said officers responded to a shooting at a cookie shop at around 12:30 p.m. where the victim was pronounced dead at the scene.

“The preliminary information indicates that the victim is Adolph Robert Thornton Jr. However this information will be confirmed once the identification process has been completed,” Davis said in a statement.

Officials said no information about a suspect is available.

The 36-year-old rapper, who is from Memphis, released a successful, independently produced debut album, King of Memphis, in 2016.

Then he made three other albums that reached the top 10 in the Billboard 200, including his latest work, Rich Slave, which was released in 2020. The album became his highest-charting project, peaking at number four on the Billboard 200.

Young Dolph was the victim of multiple shootings in recent years. In 2017, more than 100 shots were fired at his bulletproof SUV in Charlotte, N.C. He managed to walk away unharmed and later released a song about the incident called, “100 Shots.”

That same year, he was involved in another shooting outside of a hotel in Los Angeles.

At the time, LAPD officials told reporters that the shooting occurred after an argument with three men, “which escalated to a physical fight. At one point, Young Dolph was knocked to the ground. And then one of the suspects pulled out a handgun and began shooting at him.”

Young Dolph escaped from the scene, running to a nearby store. He was later taken to a hospital and underwent surgery.

“I Have to Tell What Happened” Meng Hongwei’s Wife criticizes China

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11/18/2021

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“I Have to Tell What Happened” Meng Hongwei’s Wife criticizes China

In China, she enjoyed the privileges that flowed from being married to a senior member of the governing elite. Her husband was a top police official in the security apparatus that keeps the Communist Party in power, so trusted that China sent him to France to take up a prestigious role at Interpol.

But Meng Hongwei, the former Interpol president, has now vanished into China’s sprawling penal system, purged in a stunning fall from grace. And his wife is alone with their twin boys in France, a political refugee under round-the-clock French police protection following what she suspects was an attempt by Chinese agents to kidnap and deliver them to an uncertain fate.

From being an insider, Grace Meng has become an outsider looking in — and says she is horrified by what she sees.

So much so that she is now shedding her anonymity, potentially putting herself and her family at additional risk, to speak out against China’s authoritarian government that her husband — a vice minister of public security — served before disappearing in 2018. He was later tried and imprisoned.

“The monster” is how Meng now speaks of the government he worked for. “Because they eat their children.”

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Meng chose for the first time to show her face, agreeing to be filmed and photographed without the dark lighting and from-the-back camera angles that she previously insisted on, so she could speak openly and in unprecedented detail about her husband, herself and the cataclysm that tore them apart.

“I have the responsibility to show my face, to tell the world what happened,” she told The AP. “During the past three years, I learned — just like we know how to live with the COVID — I know how to live with the monster, the authority.”

Among the global critics of China — many of them now mobilizing against the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing — Meng brings the unique perspective of a former insider who has walked through the looking glass and emerged with her views transformed. So profound is the change that she has largely stopped using her Chinese name, Gao Ge. She says she now feels more herself as Grace, her chosen name, with her husband’s surname, Meng.

“I have died and been reborn,” she says.

About Meng, his whereabouts and health as an imprisoned soon-to-be 68-year-old, she is entirely in the dark. Their last communication was two text messages he sent on Sept. 25, 2018, on a work trip to Beijing. The first said, “wait for my call.” That was followed four minutes later by an emoji of a kitchen knife, apparently signaling danger. She thinks he likely sent them from his office at the Ministry of Public Security.

Since then, she says she has had no contact with him and that multiple letters sent by her lawyers to Chinese authorities have gone unanswered. She is not even sure he is alive.

“This has already saddened me beyond the point where I can be saddened further,” she said. “Of course, it’s equally cruel to my children.”

“I don’t want the children to have no father,” she added, starting to cry. “Whenever the children hear someone knocking on the door, they always go to look. I know that they’re hoping that the person coming inside will be their father. But each time, when they realize that it isn’t, they silently lower their heads. They are extremely brave.”

Official word about Meng’s fate came out in dribs and drabs. A statement in October 2018, just moments after Grace Meng had first met reporters in Lyon, France, to sound the alarm about his disappearance, announced that he was being investigated for unspecified legal violations. That signaled that he was the latest high-ranking Chinese official to fall victim to a party purge.

Interpol announced that Meng had resigned as president, effective immediately. That still infuriates his wife, who says the Lyon-based police body “was of no help at all.” She argues that by not taking a firmer stand, the global organization that works on shared law enforcement issues has only encouraged authoritarian behavior from Beijing.

“Can someone who has been forcibly disappeared write a resignation letter of their own free will?” she asked. “Can a police organization turn a blind eye to a typical criminal offense like this?”

In 2019, China announced that Meng had been stripped of his Communist Party membership. It said he abused his power to satisfy his family’s “extravagant lifestyle” and allowed his wife to use his authority for personal benefit. In January 2020, a court announced he’d been sentenced to 13 years and six months in prison on charges of accepting more than $2 million in bribes. The court said he confessed guilt and expressed regret.

His wife has long maintained that the accusations were trumped up and that her husband was purged because he’d been using his high-profile position to push for change.

“It’s a fake case. It’s an example of a political disagreement being turned into a criminal affair,” she said. “The extent of corruption in China today is extremely serious. It’s everywhere. But there are two different opinions about how to solve corruption. One is the method used now. The other is to move toward constitutional democracy, to solve the problem at its roots.”

Grace Meng also has political connections through her own family. Her mother served on an advisory body to the Chinese legislature. And the family has previous experience of political trauma. After the Communist takeover in 1949, Grace Meng’s grandfather was stripped of his business assets and later imprisoned in a labor camp, she said.

History, she says, is repeating itself.

“Of course, this is a great tragedy in our family, a source of great suffering,” she told the AP. “But I also know that very many families in China today are facing a similar fate to mine.”

Vaccinating kids can help win the battle against COVID, experts argue

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Eugene Lee

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11/18/2021

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Vaccinating kids can help win the battle against COVID, experts argue

Ethnic Media Services(EMS) invited experts to hold a webinar on children’s vaccinations on November 12.

In November, COVID-19 vaccinations for children aged 5-11 began across the United States. Last month, the Federation.

This is because emergency use approval and recommendations have been issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

As a result, children aged 12-18 and elementary school students will be vaccinated. The CDC’s director Rochelle Wollensky recommends vaccinations for children, but it is not mandatory.

According to the CDC, there are 6 million cases of COVID-19 infection in children in the United States, of which More than 64,000 children were hospitalized and 650 children died.

However, regarding this child, Vaccination is expected to curb the spread of the virus and ensure safe face-to-face classes.

In addition, the reality is that many parents are still cautious about children’s vaccinations.

“We received phone calls, emails and text messages from families that were just eagerly awaiting the vaccine for their children,” said Jennifer Miller, a pediatrician with East Bay Pediatrics.

“But we also have another group of patients who have been more cautious and more hesitant.”

The latter, mostly families of color, are afraid to vaccinate their children because they do not know the long-term consequences of the shot, or because they are afraid of side effects such as infertility (denied by scientists) or myocarditis (inflammation in the heart that has occurred exceptionally in men after the second dose and it is very easy to treat.)

Although many parents have been vaccinated, they prefer a wait-and-see approach when it comes to their children because they feel the burden of making decisions on behalf of people too young to decide for themselves.

Dr. Miller cites the mental health impacts she is seeing among her young patients as another reason for ensuring they get vaccines.

“Not only are we dealing with a pandemic because of COVID, but we are dealing with a mental health pandemic,” she said. “Children and adolescents have been removed from their school routine, their peers, their sports and their clubs.

They are depressed and anxious due to the loss of family members to COVID; they experience frequent sadness.

“These children need to get back into school full time,” the pediatrician added.

“We have kindergarteners that didn’t learn how to read and kids with special needs who didn’t get their own occupational therapy.” These educational disparities occur much more commonly in families of color. “If those families do not go out and get vaccinated, these kids will continue to fall behind and won’t be able to compete with their peers.”

There have been more than 6 million positive COVID cases in children in the United States since the pandemic began, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), resulting in 64,000 hospitalizations and 650 deaths.

That’s why CDC Director Rochelle Wollensky endorsed the advisory group’s recommendation on immunization practices to move on mass childhood vaccination.

“There is no doubt that children are less at risk for severe disease from COVID,” said Monica Gandhi, Professor of Medicine at UC San Francisco School of Medicine.

“Even though the risk is lower, during the Delta variant surge, COVID was the sixth leading cause of death in children.”

Gandhi cited three reasons why children should be vaccinated: to protect them against the virus; to reduce transmission to others, especially older parents and grandparents; and because the dose is safe.

These reasons are particularly relevant for communities of color which have a higher incidence of diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, making them more vulnerable to COVID.

“During the (clinical) trial with 2,268 children, there was a reduction in COVID symptomatic infections of 90.7%.” Gandhi said. Because of the rare cases of myocarditis, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized Pfizer to provide a 10 mg dose for children ages 5 to 11, in contrast to the 30 mg that adults receive. In Moderna’s case, the dose is higher: 100 mg.

Gandhi suggests that there will be greater efficacy in children if the doses are given more than three weeks apart, based on data from the National Institute of Public Health in Quebec:Canada chose to administer the doses eight weeks apart which was 92% effective versus 82% effectiveness when the doses were given closer together.

“We are still at about 68% for the vaccination rate across the country among eligibles over 12years of age,” Gandhi said.

“With 28 million vaccinated children, the virus will be able to find fewer and fewer susceptible hosts.”

Misinformation and fears Maria Meraz, Founder-Director of Parent Engagement Academy, works annually with around 3,000 parents in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, 90% of them immigrants and first-generation Latinos.

She said that the misinformation spread about the vaccine on networks such as WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube is “terrible”.

“These parents are low-income families and many of them don’t have access to (cable) TV… they get their information from sources that are not the best such as friends and family.”

Meraz works with several school districts that provide social-emotional support services to guide parents through a dilemma that causes them great anxiety: While many do not agree with vaccination, they know they have no other option.

“They have to send their children to school because they have to go to work,” Meraz said.
Madison Sandoval, a Bay Area school nurse, cited a new fear that children who have not been vaccinated may wind up becoming targets for cyberbullying.

Sandoval recalled that masking and ventilation are really effective measures to prevent the
spread of COVID within schools and that as long as vaccines are not mandatory to attend classrooms, they should be implemented.

Nearly one million children ages 5 to 11 have been vaccinated in the United States since the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was approved for this age group on September 20.

Efforts to immunize 28 million infants could mark a turning point in the battle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, but many parents are still reluctant to vaccinate their kids.

A Frida Kahlo self-portrait sold for $34.9 million

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11/17/2021

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A Frida Kahlo self-portrait sold for $34.9 million

Frida Kahlo’s “Diego y yo,” a painting of herself with her husband’s image on her forehead, sold for $34.9 million in a Sotheby’s auction Tuesday night. The art dealer described it as “the last of her great self-portraits.”

It’s the most money ever paid at auction for a work by a Latin American artist. The price is also more than triple the highest amount previously paid for a Kahlo work in an auction.

Kahlo created the painting in 1949, 20 years after she married the muralist Diego Rivera. It marked a time when the Mexican artist was at the height of her abilities, and also when her health was declining: Kahlo had numerous surgeries on her spine in 1949, and she began a nine-month hospital stay. When she emerged, she often relied on a wheelchair.

In “Diego y yo,” Kahlo depicts herself with three tears flowing from her eyes, with her husband superimposed above her famous eyebrows. By 1949, Kahlo and Rivera had reconciled many of their differences in the turbulent relationship. But the painting is widely seen as Kahlo’s expression of pain over Rivera’s affair with the actress María Félix — Rivera painted a portrait of a barely clothed Félix in that same year.

With a final sale price approaching $35 million, “Diego y yo”obliterates the previous auction record for a Latin American piece of art, which was set by Rivera’s painting “The Rivals.” Kahlo’s husband painted The Rivals a few years after they married; it fetched a $9.8 million price at a Christie’s auction in 2018.

It’s not the first time “Diego y yo” has made history: when the painting sold for $1.4 million in 1990, Kahlo became the first Latin American artist to surpass the $1 million mark at auction.