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The US has partnered with more than 1,000 Indian healthcare facilities to strengthen preparedness, including training of over 14,000 people on infection prevention and control, it said.

The US has also helped keep more than 213,000 frontline workers safe by imparting risk mitigation training for doctors, nurses, midwives, community volunteers, sanitation workers, and others actively responding to COVID-19 in India, the White House added.

It has also launched joint public messaging with UNICEF on COVID prevention that has reached more than 84 million people and provided 200 state-of-the-art ventilators to 29 healthcare facilities in 15 states to care for critically-ill COVID-19 patients, it said.

In its fact-sheet, the White House said that for 70 years, US public health experts from across the government, including USAID, HHS, CDC, FDA, and NIH, have worked in partnership with Indian officials to improve the health of India's most vulnerable communities.

Over the last 20 years, US foreign assistance to India has exceeded USD2.8 billion, including more than USD1.4 billion for healthcare. The two countries and other partners have worked together to reduce new HIV infections by 37 per cent between 2010 and 2019, it said.

Since 1998, the United States and India have worked together to combat tuberculosis (TB) through improved patient-centred diagnosis, treatment and prevention, helping treat 15 million people with the disease.

In the last five years, the United States has helped 40 million pregnant women receive vital health information and services, the White House said.

The United States, in partnership with the government of India and the World Health Organization, has supported initiatives at the district, state and national levels to build frontline disease detection capacity.

The two countries are also working together to advance global health security and fight outbreaks before they become pandemics, the White House added.

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US delivering supplies worth over USD 100 million to India; first flight to land on Thursday: White House - National Herald

He rounded off with The results of this are all around. As a famous band once sang, If you plant ice, youre gonna harvest wind. This (Covid-19 second wave) is a whirlwind. Maybe he had read an excerpt from Indias Power Elite: Class, Caste and a Cultural Revolution by Sanjay Baru, media advisor to Manmohan Singh when Singh was Prime Minister. Narendra Modi used Indias media elite for his own advantage, says Baru, hardly being original!

Mind you Sanjay Baru is no less media elite. Baru knows it, too, the clout that comes with being "media elite." His book is that of an insider taking us through the maze of press, power and politics. He breaks the essentials down to basics. Do medias close links with politicians give it clout or deprive it of credibility? he asks, and then answers with: It would appear that almost every media group takes a trade-off between the two sacrificing some credibility for either money or power.

Baru in his role as media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh must have been keenly aware of this trade-off. He did not cotton to certain journalists, especially to the one who, he says, is idiosyncratic and unabashedly partisan and pro-Modi, who is otherwise a thorough professional and personally amiable fellow. The amiable fellow is easily identifiable.

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On the defensive, PM Modi shifts gears and with 2024 far away, hopes to get out of the hole he has dug - National Herald

India's COVID numbers have far outstripped countries like the US and Brazil, which have been the poor performers till now. More worryingly, the number of positives to tests are now more than one out of five, more than four times what it was a few months back, indicating that the actual numbers of infected could be even higher.

What went wrong with the central government's handling the epidemic? The government was unprepared for the second wave which started its steep climb about a month back. The central government and its experts believed that the COVID-19 pandemic would be over by February 2021, and the country would go back to normal after that. The Modi government truly believed its propaganda of the so-called Department of Science and Technology supermodel and was busy chest-thumping on its great success in fighting the pandemic. It was preparing to convert its "success" into electoral victory in the next set of state elections when the second wave struck.

As the numbers started rising, instead of trying to work out a cooperative plan on a countrywide basis to combat the epidemic, the BJP went on an offensive. The central ministers blamed the state governments for not doing enough and the people for having abandoned the safety norms of masks and social distancing. This, notwithstanding that the central government had itself signalled a return to normal with public rallies, election campaigns and huge religious gatherings such as the Kumbha Mela. If people did relax the Covid-19 norms, they were only following what the leaders on the dais during ralliesNarendra Modi and Amit Shah includedwere doing.

The first COVID-19 wave had peaked around mid-September, touching nearly 100,000 new infections. It had gone down to half of that in one month, and from mid-October onwards, the numbers dropped even further till February end. This nearly four months of respite should have been used to strengthen the public health system in the country: increasing hospital beds, ICU facilities, building a supply chain for oxygen, and preparing protocols on how to handle the next wave.

Strengthening the public health system, introducing clear guidelines, getting the state and local governments to function together is the first line of defence in handling the pandemic. The tragedy is that the central government, which has centralised all powers under the Disaster Management Act, refused to prepare either itself or the states for this second wave in the belief that the pandemic was over.

See the article here:
New Delhi centralised power but blamed the states and abdicated its responsibility - National Herald

Speculations claimed that Google is working on a new global media control feature. However, there's a simple catch regarding its availability.

(Photo : Photo by Carsten Koall/Getty Images)In this photo illustration the app of Google Chrome is displayed on a smartphone on March 3, 2018 in Berlin, Germany. The left-wing organizers of the event cited Google's profit-oriented mass collection of personal data about people as well as the gentrification locals fear will accelerate should the Google Campus open. Google is reportedly planning to open a Google Campus, which is meant to create a venue for startups and technological exchange, this summer in a building that once housed an electric relay station in the heart of Kreuzberg.

According to XDA Developers' latest report, the new capability offers a new icon, which can be located at the address bar that opens a simple playback controls window. This section has a pause/play button.

On the other hand, the feature shows the URL and the song title of the video or sound content. Aside from this, the new global media control feature also shows what album the song is from.

Google confirmed that the new progress bar and dynamic backgrounds will be available once the media controls update is released on the latest Chrome Canary Build Version 91.

The new Google Chrome global media control progress bar was first leaked by the Reddit user u/Leopeva64-2.

(Photo : Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)In this photo illustration, The Google logo is projected onto a man on August 09, 2017 in London, England. Founded in 1995 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google now makes hundreds of products used by billions of people across the globe, from YouTube and Android to Smartbox and Google Search.

Also Read:Google Plans to Shut Down Shopping App, Prompting Users to Switch to the Web Version

"Google has made some changes to the Global media controls UI and one of those changes is the addition of a progress bar, here you can see the new design," said the leaker.

The Reddit user also provided two videos that show how Google Chrome's new feature works. Aside from the mentioned features above, the two videos also show that the progress bar also offers the users Live Captions. However, the feature only offers English language as of now.

As of the moment, the new feature is only available in the latest Chrome Canary. Once you have installed it, you can find the new progress bar by searching the new #global-media-controls-modern-ui flag.

When you find it, all you need to do is activate the new feature so that the new media control progress bar will appear whenever you play a soundtrack or video. Meanwhile, Google said that the users should wait a few more weeks before it sends out the new updates on the stable channel.

If ever you decide to install the new Chrome Canary, you need to remember that it is advised for daily usage since this browser is still an incomplete and unstable version of Chrome.

For more news updates about Google Chrome and its upcoming features, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article:Google Play Movies and TV App is Bidding Farewell to Smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Roku, and Vizio-Is YouTube TV Worth It?

This article is owned by TechTimes

Written by:Giuliano de Leon

2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.

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Google Chrome to Have New Global Media Control Progress Bar, But Will Not be Available to All - Tech Times

The for-profit national home builders want a one-size fits all approach in Minnesotas 850 cities and 1,700 townships. That is why they are advancing legislation in St. Paul that is a serious threat to the local control entrusted to cities in how they grow.

If losing local control were not bad enough, proposed legislation holds the potential for raising the taxes of residents in growing cities. There are two questions before your legislators:

Who should oversee housing growth? A. The cities. B. The state.

Who should pay for growth? A. National home builders. B. Existing taxpayers.

How are the proposals bad for cities and taxpayers?

Elimination of local control. The national home builders want legislation that encourages duplexes and fourplexes to be built alongside existing single-family homes. Cities want all types of housing; and local controls specify where high density housing is best. Should legislation move forward, local controls and protections would be eroded and the character of single-family neighborhoods would be forever changed with the addition of multifamily units next to single-family homes.

Capping of development fees. Every new home in a city gets connected to water and sewer. In a land of 10,000 lakes, cities have vastly different landscapes which adds to the complexity and cost of infrastructure. The capping of fees would have significant negative implications for cities and taxpayers. If national home builders are successful, cities will either make budget cuts or raise taxes on existing residents to cover the unfunded gap on infrastructure brought by growth.

Building fees based on size vs. valuation. Today, cities use valuation to determine building fees. Valuation makes sense because it recognizes the variation in one home as compared to another. Consider two 1,500 square-foot homesone has two bathrooms and a basement, the other, one bathroom and no basement. Todays valuation fee can distinguish between the two homes.

The national home builders want to shift the building fees from valuation to one based on size. If successful, this would be a serious setback to housing affordability for first-time buyers. That buyer would find the permit fee on a starter home disproportionately high. Conversely, the higher amenity home would get a break as their fee would be proportionately low. This is neither equitable nor fair, especially when you consider the low supply of affordable housing.

Let your legislators know what their answers should be to the questions facing them (hopefully, you believe, as I, that the answer to both questions is A).

There is no time like the present, legislators need to hear from you today. Please tell them to leave local controls in place and make national home builders pay for the growth they bring!

Prior Lake Planning Commission

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Letter: Proposed legislation is a threat to local control - SW News Media