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With the Election Commission of India imposing a complete ban on all physical rallies, roadshows and corner meetings etc till January 15, all the political parties in Punjab have swung into action to reach out to grassroot level workers and voters through social media.

Interestingly, while the main political parties including the Congress, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), BJP and its new political partner Punjab Lok Congress (PLC) have welcomed the step initiated by the ECI keeping in mind the resurgent COVID pandemic, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) has lodged an objection to it. It has displayed restlessness ever since after the ECI banned physical rallies and enforced a virtual mode of election campaigns.

The ruling Congress party took an early lead in the direction, coming out with a virtual campaign for the Assembly elections. Punjab Congress president Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday kick-started the party's digital campaign and revealed an agenda of governance reforms primarily through digitisation and making a Digital Punjab.

Claiming to be the first party to come out with a virtual campaign, Sidhu said the Congress had been emphasising the importance of digitisation and maintaining a virtual interaction with the electorate.

Asserting that the state Congress had maximum engagement and outreach in digital space, Sidhu said, We are ready for an online campaign, coordinating with our workers and leaders at district, Assembly and booth levels.

He said the partys social media war room had more than 10000 WhatsApp groups and they were reaching out to people at the booth level via Facebook, WhatsApp and other digital mediums.

The party aimed to create a Digital Punjab wherein over 150 government services, permits and approvals would be made available to people on their doorstep. The revolution was intended to begin with the first-of-its-kind Digital Election, planned to be held in Punjab, and pave the way for digitalisation for all other activities, he added.

Appreciating the ECIs decision, AAP leader Harpal Cheema termed it a style of their party which they have been following during the pandemic. We have always believed in door-to-door campaigns in small groups, he claimed.

Manwhile, the BJP, which with the assistance of RSS has been trying to make its presence felt in the state, claims to have enough experience in organising virtually rallies. Sources in the Punjab BJP IT Cell revealed that the party was prepared for the virtual election campaign.

Former Punjab Chief Minister Capt. Amarinder Singh, founder of Punjab Lok Congress (PLC), has also welcomed the ECIs decision. The PLC has also started setting up a war room to launch a virtual election campaign.

Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), a former political partner of the BJP, has however smelt a conspiracy behind the ECIs order, claiming that the decision is aimed at giving a benefit to the BJP. Apprehending that its rural vote bank, on which the SAD has always relied, would be lost, the party has raised objections on the virtual mode of election campaign.

SAD spokesperson Dr. Daljeet Singh Cheema said, Virtual rallies are impossible. Does the EC think elders, rural people, labourers, daily wagers and voters below the poverty line will have smartphones, Internet to access such rallies?

Cheema claimed the party had conveyed its opposition to the EC in a verbal communication on Sunday. He said it was a ritual for candidates to reach out to voters, listen to their concerns, problems and offer solutions through promises. Would the virtual rallies, meetings be a two-way communication? How will the election commission compensate for a lag on the Internet? he questioned.

See the rest here:
Virtual poll campaign: Congress surges ahead of other parties in Punjab; SAD cries foul at ECIs directive - National Herald

Omicron is a variant of global concern due to its high transmissibility. Emerging research has revealed that the Omicron variant causes less damage to the lungs and less severe disease when compared to other variants.

"It's a well known fact that myalgias are commonly seen in viral infections. Covid is not an exception but we are seeing more cases of back pain with Omicron even after recovery which patients label as weakness," Dr. Arun Chowdary Kotaru, Consultant, Respiratory/ Pulmonology and Sleep Medicine, Artemis Hospital, told IANS.

However, since data on Omicron is limited and gene sequencing is costly, the reason is "difficult to explain", Kotaru said.

First detected in South Africa and Botswana in late November, Omicron has been discovered in more than 100 countries and across all seven continents, as per the open access data sharing platform GISAID.

India on Wednesday registered 4,033 Omicron cases from 27 states. Of these, 1,552 have been discharged from hospitals.

Meanwhile, scientists at Department of Biotechnology's Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG) in India said that the highly transmissible Omicron with three sub-variants - BA.1, BA.2 and BA.3 - is likely replacing the previously dominant Delta strain in India, pushing the daily tally of Covid cases in the country.

Read more from the original source:
More cases of back pain with Omicron after recovery: Experts - National Herald

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Contact NAN | National Action Network :: Rev. Al Sharpton ...

Speaking outside a courthouse in Glynn County, Georgia, Reverend Al Sharpton said Wednesday's guilty verdict in the case of Ahmaud Arbery's murder signaled that the almost all-white jury decided that "Black lives do matter."

"A jury of 11 whites and one Black, in the Deep South, stood up in the courtroom and said that Black lives do matter," Sharpton said at a press conference.

Leading the group in prayer, Sharpton said "[God] came in the state of Georgiaa state known for segregation, a state known for Jim Crowand you turned it around. You took a young, unarmed boy...and you put his name in history."

"Years from now, decades from now, they'll be talking about a boy named Ahmaud Arbery that taught this country what justice looks like," he added.

The jury reached a relatively quick verdict on Wednesday, given the number of defendants and the fact that each defendant faced multiple felony counts. After roughly ten and a half hours of deliberations, the jury found all three defendants guilty of felony murder.

Travis McMichael was found guilty on all nine counts he faced.

Greg McMichael was acquitted on one count of malice murder, but found guilty on the other eight charges. William "Roddie" Bryan was acquitted on one count each of malice murder, felony murder and aggravated assault, but found guilty on the other six charges.

Sharpton thanked everyone who marched in the Black Lives Matter protests demanding justice for Arbery and his family and for marching and rallying outside of the courthouse, despite comments from the defendants' defense attorneys referring to them as a "lynch mob."

"They kept on marching and let us know that all whites are not racists and all the Blacks are not worthless," he said.

The trial in Georgia has drawn crowds of people demanding a guilty verdict in the death of Arbery, including an influx of Black pastors who poured into the city of Brunswick after one of the defense attorneys raised issue with the number of Black pastors, like Sharpton, who accompanied the Arbery family during the trial.

Sharpton added that while Thursday's Thanksgiving holiday will still be a somber holiday for the Arberys, with an empty chair at the table for Ahmaud, his mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones "can look at that chair and say to Ahmaud, 'I fought a good fight and I brought you some justice.'"

"Even though it will be a somber and solemn Thanksgiving, you can thank God you didn't let your boy down," Sharpton told the Arbery family.

View post:
Al Sharpton Says Almost All-White Jury in Arbery Case ...

On Saturday's installment ofVelshion MSNBC, left-wing activist,provocateur, and PoliticsNationhost Al Sharpton joined fill-inhost Lindsey Reiser to say that the country is heading back to the days of Jim Crowand to criticize Democrats for not passing Sharpton's partisan wish list.

Reiser got the hyperbolic segment started by quoting Sharpton's recent comments to Politico, declaring and wondering: "Do you feel,I feel like it was much more on thefront burner several months agowhen we were seeing states passthese restrictive voting laws and then likeany news cycle the attentionshifted.So, do you think the publicattention will shift also?"

Sharpton claimed the shift in media attention "is whatopened up the door to states likeGeorgia and North Carolina andOhio and Texas to start changingstate election laws and they've changed them right now." Adding: "Youve seen in certaincounties in Georgia where they literally changed theelection boards of certaincounties.Which means they would be able tocount the vote.Well, those counties being stacked up byright-wingers appointed by statelegislators would not have certifiedBiden as the winner."

There is no evidence to suggest that what Sharpton said is true, but he was just getting started. Next, Sharpton lumped abortion in with "voting rights" and claimedfederalism equals Jim Crow:

So, we are going back to a states' rights model where they are nolonger respects the UnitedStates of the union.They are saying we will decidestate by state what is going tobe the election laws, the abortionlaws, the voting laws, the civilrights laws, and who would be thepresident.We cannot go back to the JimCrow states' rights era all theway back until to the Civil War.We are in a state of emergencywhen it comes to the urgency ofthis moment.

Of course, even if Sharpton gets everything he wants, the states will still choose the president through the Electoral College. Reiser put this civic illiteracy aside and asked, "Rev, do you feel almost ayear into the Bidenadministration that black votersfeel let down, that nothing has been significantly passedon this issue?And again, if we go into 2022 and we dont see important action, do you think it willimpact the midterms?"

After declaring Biden has done some good things, he lamented there has been no progress on "voting rights" or police reforms and concluded by continuing his self-appointed leader of all black people schtick, "I think inaction on that levelwill lead to inaction on a lotof voter turnout.I'm getting it on my syndicated radio show, Im getting it from chapters all over National Action Networkwhich I lead."

Despite Sharpton's over-inflated view of his own importance, 63 percentof black Georgians support voter ID for absentee ballots.

This segment was sponsored byT-Mobile.

Here is a transcript for the December 18 show:

MSNBC'sVelshiDecember 18, 20218:46 AM ET

(...)

LINDSEY REISER: You know, reverend, in an interview with Politico, you said that the, quote, urgency could not be morepalpable than it is right now to take action onvoting rights.So, why is this current moment that were in socritical? And do you feel,I feel like it was much more on thefront burner several months agowhen we were seeing states passthese restrictive voting laws and then likeany news cycle the attentionshifted.So, do you think that the public's attention will shift also?

AL SHARPTON: I think that, that is our job whichis why we continue rallying andmarching and doing what isnecessary to keep the public'sattention.The shift, in my opinion, is whatopened up the door to states likeGeorgia and North Carolina andOhio and Texas to start changingstate election laws and they've changed them right now.

Youve seen in certaincounties in Georgia where they literally changed theelection boards of certaincounties.Which means they would be able tocount the vote.Well, those counties being stacked up byright-wingers appointed by statelegislatures would not have certifiedBiden as the winner.This is not something that wouldvebe bad for Biden, it would have disenfranchised the voters.

So, we are going back to a statesrights model where they are nolonger respectingthe UnitedStates of the union.They are saying that we will decidestate-by-state what is going tobe the election laws, the abortionlaws, the voting laws, the civilrights laws, and who would be thepresident.

We cannot go back to the JimCrow states rights era all theway back until to the Civil War.We are in a state of emergencywhen it comes to the urgency ofthis moment.

REISER: Rev, do you feel almost ayear into the Bidenadministration that black votersfeel let down, that nothing has been significantly passedon this issue?And again, if we go into 2022 and we dont see important action, do you think it willimpact the midterms?

SHARPTON: I think that we made it clear when we supported overwhelming theBiden ticket that we wanted votingrights and police reform.We are now a week from Christmaswith neither.Thereve been other things that have beengood.He helped fairly, I think, in someareas.But, the areas we most voted andrallied for, theres notbeen significant movement. AndI think inaction on that levelwill lead to inaction on a lotof voter turnout.

I'm getting it on my syndicated radio show, Im getting it from chapters all over National Action Networkwhich I lead.I'm saying it not to make athreat, but to give a forecast.Sometimes the weatherman tellsyou the storm is coming.Don't blame the weatherman forthe storm.I'm telling you inaction issetting in.If theres no action on thereason there was action in thefirst place.

(...)

The rest is here:
Sharpton Claims U.S. Going 'Back To Jim Crow' | Newsbusters