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U-19 Women’s World Cup: Bangladesh emerge unbeaten group champions beating USA by 5 wkts
Bangladesh emerged unbeaten Group A champions to reach super-six stage of the ICC U-19 Women's T20 World Cup beating all losers USA by five wickets in a low scoring 3rd and last group match at Willowmoore Park B field in Benoni, South Africa on Wednesday.
With the day's feat, Bangladesh clinched the Group A crown with all-win record securing full six points from straight three matches after a creditable seven-wicket victory over giant Australia by and 10-run win over Sri Lanka.
Read more: ICC U-19 Women’s World Cup: Bangladesh clinch second consecutive win
In their last group match, USA team batted first after winning the toss and scored 103 runs for the loss of four wickets in stipulated 20 overs with one down batter Snigdha Paul scoring 26 runs and opener Disha Dhingra making 20 runs.
Bangladesh captain Disha Biswas grabbed two USA wickets for 13 runs in her four over spell and was adjudged the player of the match while Marufa Akter took one wicket for 17 runs in four overs.
In reply, Bangladesh lost five wickets to score match-winner 104 runs in 17.3 overs.
Shorna Akhter contributed 22 runs off just 12 balls hitting two fours and six, Rabeya Khan scored not out 18 off 24 balls with two boundaries, wicket keeper Dilara Akter 15-ball 17 runs with two boundaries while Misty Shaha made 13-ball 14 runs also with two fours while opener Sumaiya Akter scored 12-ball 10 runs, were the notable Bangladeshi batters reaching the double digit.
Read more: Women's Under-19 T20 World Cup: Bangladesh upset Australia by 7 wickets
Aditiba Chudasama claimed two Bangladesh wickets for 15 runs in her four over spell while Sai Tammayi Eyyunni and Bhumila Bhanriraju captured one wicket each conceding 19 and 23 runs respectively.
On the way to saving one, six lives lost
Lutfun Nahar Lima, a Bangladeshi immigrant, came to Bangladesh from the USA three months ago. She reached her parents' house in Barisal yesterday, planning to observe the death anniversaries of her grandparents with her mother.
But the same night she reached home, her mother, Jahanara Begum, suffered a stroke.
Jahanara was taken to Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital immediately but was referred to Dhaka's Neuroscience Hospital for advanced treatment.
Lima and two family members left for Dhaka with her mother in an ambulance after midnight. But they never made it.
All of them died on the spot in a deadly crash near Padma Bridge South police station in Shariatpur's Jajira upazila early Tuesday.
Lima, her sick mother, along with two other family members, were in the ambulance when it crashed into a speeding truck.
The accident took the lives of the mother-daughter duo and two other family members, health worker Fazle Rabbi, 28, and Masud Rana, 30.
Read more: 6 students killed in Oklahoma crash were in car that seats 4
The ambulance driver, Jilani, 28, and helper Rabiul Islam, 26, also died.
Visiting their house on Tuesday, people were seen gathering at the house. Relatives were mourning and neighbors and relatives were trying to console the family.
Jahanara Begum’s brother, Ashraf Ali Kha, was at a loss. He was seen wailing for his sister and niece from time to time.
The family was preparing to bury the dead. But it isn't yet decided where Jahanara and her daughter's bodies would be laid to rest, said Ashraf.
Kachipara Union Chairman Rafiqul Islam Talukder said people are mourning the loss of lives in the locality. A village watchman (chowkidar) was sent to their house to help them. Baufol Union Parishad will assist the family with the process.
Read more: 6 students killed in Oklahoma crash were in car that seats 4
AI Mamun, officer-in-charge of Baufol police station, said no complaint has been filed yet. They will start necessary legal procedures once a family member files a complaint.
Storms, tornadoes slam US South, killing at least 7 people
A giant, swirling storm system billowing across the South on Thursday killed at least six people in central Alabama, where a tornado ripped roofs off homes and uprooted trees in historic Selma, while another person was killed in Georgia, where severe winds knocked out power to tens of thousands of people.
In Autauga County, Alabama, 41 miles (66 kilometers) northeast of Selma, at least six fatalities were confirmed and an estimated 40 homes were damaged or destroyed by a tornado that cut a 20-mile (32-kilometer) path across two rural communities, said Ernie Baggett, the county’s emergency management director.
Several mobile homes were launched into the air and at least 12 people were injured severely enough to be taken to hospitals by emergency responders, Baggett told The Associated Press. He said crews were focused Thursday night on cutting through downed trees to look for people who may need help.
“It really did a good bit of damage. This is the worst that I’ve seen here in this county,” Baggett said.
In Georgia, a passenger died when a tree fell on a vehicle in Jackson during the storm, Butts County Coroner Lacey Prue said. In the same county southeast of Atlanta, the storm appeared to have knocked a freight train off its tracks, officials said.
Democrats question worker safety in Amazon warehouse rebuildNationwide, there were 33 separate tornado reports Thursday from the National Weather Service as of Thursday evening, with a handful of tornado warnings still in effect in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. However, the reports were not yet confirmed and some of them could later be classified as wind damage after assessments are done in coming days.
In Selma, a city etched in the history of the civil rights movement, a tornado cut a wide path through the downtown area, where brick buildings collapsed, oak trees were uprooted, cars were on their side and power lines were left dangling. Plumes of thick, black smoke rose over the city from a fire burning. It wasn’t immediately known whether the storm caused the blaze.
Selma Mayor James Perkins said no fatalities have been reported, but several people were seriously injured. First responders were continuing to assess the damage and officials hoped to get an aerial view of the city Friday morning.
A large tornado damaged homes and uprooted trees in Alabama Thursday as a powerful storm system pushed through the South. (Jan 12) “We have a lot of downed power lines,” he said. “There is a lot of danger on the streets.”
With widespread power outages, the Selma City Council held a meeting on the sidewalk, using lights from cellphones, to declare a state of emergency. A high school was opened as a shelter, officials said.
Mattie Moore was among Selma residents who picked up boxed meals offered by a charity downtown.
“Thank God that we’re here. It’s like something you see on TV,” Moore said of all the destruction.
A city of about 18,000 people, Selma is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west of the Alabama capital of Montgomery. It was a flashpoint of the civil rights movement and where Alabama state troopers viciously attacked Black people advocating for voting rights as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.
After the tornado passed, Krishun Moore emerged from her home to the sound of children crying and screaming. She and her mother encouraged the kids to keep screaming until they found the two of them on top of the roof of a damaged apartment. She estimated the kids were about 1 and 4 years old. Both of them are OK, she said through Facebook messenger.
Malesha McVay drove parallel to the tornado with her family. She said it got less than a mile (less than 2 kilometers) from her home before suddenly turning.
“We stopped and we prayed. We followed it and prayed,” she said. “It was a 100% God thing that it turned right before it hit my house.”
She took video of the giant twister, which would turn black as it swept away home after home.
“It would hit a house, and black smoke would swirl up,” she said. “It was very terrifying.”
About 40,000 customers were without power in Alabama on Thursday night, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages nationwide. In Georgia, about 86,000 customers were without electricity after the storm system carved a path across a tier of counties just south of Atlanta.
The storm hit in Griffin, south of Atlanta, with winds damaging a shopping area, local news outlets reported. A Hobby Lobby store partially lost its roof, and at least one car was flipped in the parking lot of a nearby Walmart.
Damage was also reported west of downtown Atlanta in Douglas County and Cobb County, with Cobb County government posting a damage report showing a crumbled cinder block wall at a warehouse in suburban Austell.
In Kentucky, the National Weather Service in Louisville confirmed that an EF-1 tornado struck Mercer County and said crews were surveying damage in a handful of other counties.
Three factors — a natural La Nina weather cycle, warming of the Gulf of Mexico likely related to climate change and a decades-long shift of tornadoes from the west to east — came together to make Thursday’s tornado outbreak unusual and damaging, said Victor Gensini, a meteorology professor at Northern Illinois University who studies tornado trends.
The La Nina, a cooling of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, was a factor in making a wavy jet stream that brought a cold front through, Gensini said. But that’s not enough for a tornado outbreak. What’s needed is moisture.
Normally the air in the Southeast is fairly dry this time of year but the dew point was twice what is normal, likely because of unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is likely influenced by climate change. That moisture hit the cold front and everything was in place, Gensini said.
Leaders of US, Canada, Mexico show unity despite friction
President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau sought to downplay their frustrations with one another on migration and trade as they met for the near-annual North American Leaders Summit.
The leaders offered a unified front on Tuesday despite tensions that have put a strain on their relationships even as Biden has made repairing alliances a cornerstone of his foreign policy agenda.
The tensions were front and center when Biden and López Obrador met on Monday, with the Mexican president complaining of “abandonment” and “disdain” for Latin America.
But as they closed Tuesday’s summit in Mexico City with a joint news conference, the leaders offered an optimistic outlook.
“We’re true partners the three of us,” said Biden, adding that they had “genuine like” for one another. “We share a common vision for the future, grounded on common values.”
López Obrador, for his part, thanked Biden for not building “even one meter of wall,” a not so subtle dig at Biden’s Republican predecessor, Donald Trump. The warmth during their joint press conference stood in stark contrast to the more brusque exchange a day earlier.
Still, López Obrador prodded Biden to “insist” Congress regularize undocumented Mexican migrants who work in industries where American employers are struggling mightily to find enough workers.
The three-way gathering is held most years, although there was a hiatus while Trump was president. It’s often called the “three amigos summit,” a reference to the deep diplomatic and economic ties among the countries.
However, the leaders have found themselves at odds, especially as they struggle to handle an influx of migrants and to crack down on smugglers who profit from persuading people to make the dangerous trip to the United States.
In addition, Canada and the U.S. accuse López Obrador of violating a free trade pact by favoring Mexico’s state-owned utility over power plants built by foreign and private investors. Meanwhile, Trudeau and López Obrador are concerned about Biden’s efforts to boost domestic manufacturing, creating concerns that U.S. neighbors could be left behind.
Trudeau emphasized in a one-on-one meeting with Biden the benefits of free trade and warned against Buy America policies that the U.S. administration has promoted, according to the prime minister’s office. Nearly 80% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S., so avoiding protectionism remains a priority for Canada.
The key takeaways from the summit revolve around better connections among the three nations and a shared goal of a stronger North America on energy and in particular semiconductors, climate and a pledge to cut methane emissions, an agreement to manage large waves of migrants coming to the region and a more cohesive regional strategy on dealing with future pandemic-related health threats.
In their talks on Monday, López Obrador challenged Biden to improve life across the region, telling him that “you hold the key in your hand.”
“This is the moment for us to determine to do away with this abandonment, this disdain, and this forgetfulness for Latin America and the Caribbean,” Lopez Obrador said.
Biden responded by pointing to the billions of dollars that the United States spends in foreign aid around the world.
At the start of Tuesday’s Biden-Trudeau meeting, the leaders spoke familiarly and with optimism. Trudeau called the U.S. president “Joe” and Biden joked with Trudeau — after the Canadian leader had delivered a statement to reporters in English and French — that he should have paid more attention in his college French classes.
Biden and Trudeau also discussed their countries’ efforts to support Ukraine nearly 11 months after Russia’s invasion. Canada announced Tuesday that it would buy an American-made National Advanced Surface to Air Missile System, or NASAMS, to be donated to Ukraine. The medium-range ground-based air defense system, which protects against drone, missile and aircraft attacks, costs about $406 million and brings Canada’s contribution to Ukraine to more than $1 billion since the start of the war.
The White House said in a statement that the leaders also discussed “the generational opportunity to strengthen supply chains for critical minerals, electric vehicles, and semiconductors.” The U.S. administration also announced that Biden will make his first visit to Canada as president in March.
“There’s a lot of reasons to be optimistic, especially for those of us in our countries,” Trudeau said. “But it’s going to take a lot of work, something neither you or I or most our citizens have ever been afraid of.”
Biden and López Obrador haven’t been on particularly good terms for the past two years. The Mexican leader made no secret of his admiration for Trump, and last year he skipped a Los Angeles summit of the Americas because Biden didn’t invite the authoritarian leaders of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
But despite the tension, there’s been cooperation. The U.S. and Mexico have also reached an agreement on a major shift in migration policy, which Biden announced last week.
Under the plan, the U.S. will send 30,000 migrants per month from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela back across the border from among those who entered the U.S. illegally. Migrants who arrive from those four countries are not easily returned to their home countries for a variety of reasons.
In addition, 30,000 people per month from those four nations who get sponsors, background checks and an airline flight to the U.S. will be able to work legally in the country for two years.
The number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has risen dramatically during Biden’s first two years in office. There were more than 2.38 million stops during the year that ended Sept. 30, the first time the number topped 2 million.
López Obrador spoke at length about Mexico’s efforts to control the flow into the United States of fentanyl, the synthetic opioid that has become a scourge for many American communities. He noted that his government gave the military control of sea ports to help with the interdiction of precursor chemicals coming from Asia.
“We are battling fentanyl, these chemicals, and we are doing it because we care. No human is foreign to us,” he said. “It really matters to us to be able to help with what is happening in the United States, the deaths from fentanyl. But also as we discussed today, it is not only an issue for the United States, because if we don’t confront this problem, this scourge, we are going to suffer it, too. So we have to act in a coordinated way.”
Canada is being nudged by the U.S. and other allies to lead an international mission to Haiti to help solve the ongoing humanitarian and security crisis.
Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry and the country’s Council of Ministers sent an urgent appeal Oct. 7 calling for “the immediate deployment of a specialized armed force, in sufficient quantity” to stop the crisis caused partly by the “criminal actions of armed gangs.” But more than three months later, no countries have stepped forward.
Trudeau on Tuesday called the situation “heartbreaking.” Both he and Biden said they will work with the United Nations Security Council to assist the Caribbean nation but also expressed caution about direct intervention.
“We need to make sure that the solutions are driven by the people of Haiti themselves,” Trudeau said.
6-year-old shoots teacher in Virginia classroom: Police
A 6-year-old student shot and wounded a teacher at his school in Virginia during an altercation inside a first-grade classroom Friday, police and school officials in the city of Newport News said.
Experts said a school shooting involving a 6-year-old is extremely rare, although not unheard of, while Virginia law limits the ways in which a child that age can be punished for such a crime.
No students were injured in the shooting at Richneck Elementary School, police said. The teacher — a woman in her 30s — suffered life-threatening injuries. Her condition had improved somewhat by late afternoon, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said.
“We did not have a situation where someone was going around the school shooting,” Drew told reporters, later adding that the gunshot was not an accident.
Drew said the student and teacher had known each other in a classroom setting.
He said the boy had a handgun in the classroom, and investigators were trying to figure out where he obtained it. The police chief did not provide further details about the shooting, the altercation or what happened inside the school.
Joselin Glover, whose son is in fourth grade, told The Virginian-Pilot newspaper she got a text from the school stating that one person was shot and another was in custody.
“My heart stopped,” she said. “I was freaking out, very nervous. Just wondering if that one person was my son.”
Also Read: 8 found fatally shot in Utah home, including 5 children
Carlos, her 9-year-old, was at recess. But he said he and his classmates were soon holed up in the back of a classroom.
“Most of the whole class was crying,” Carlos told the newspaper.
Parents and students were reunited at a gymnasium door, Newport News Public Schools said via Facebook.
The police chief did not specifically address questions about whether authorities were in touch with the boy’s parents, but said members of the police department were handling that investigation.
“We have been in contact with our commonwealth’s attorney (local prosecutor) and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man,” Drew said.
Newport News is a city of about 185,000 people in southeastern Virginia known for its shipyard, which builds the nation’s aircraft carriers and other U.S. Navy vessels.
Richneck has about 550 students who are in kindergarten through fifth grade, according to the Virginia Department of Education’s website. School officials have already said that there will be no classes at the school on Monday.
“Today our students got a lesson in gun violence,” said George Parker III, Newport News schools superintendent, “and what guns can do to disrupt, not only an educational environment, but also a family, a community.”
Virginia law does not allow 6-year-olds to be tried as adults
In addition, a 6-year-old is too young to be committed to the custody of the Department of Juvenile Justice if found guilty.
A juvenile judge would have authority, though, to revoke a parent’s custody and place a child under the purview of the Department of Social Services.
A school shooting involving a 6-year-old is extremely rare, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Boston’s Northeastern University.
Fox told The Associated Press Friday evening that he could think of one previous incident involving a child that age.
In 2000, a 6-year-old boy fired a bullet from a .32-caliber gun inside Buell Elementary near Flint, Michigan, 60 miles (96 kilometers) from Detroit, striking 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in the neck, according to an AP article from the time. She died a half-hour later.
Fox analyzed school shooting data sets going back to 1970 from the Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which is located at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. He said the data listed school shootings involving children ages 7, 8, 9 and older, but not 6-year-olds.
Another factor that stands out about the Virginia shooting is that it occurred in a classroom, Fox said. Many occur outside a school building where students are unsupervised.
From 2010 through 2021, there were more than 800 school-related shootings in K-12 schools that involved 1,149 victims. Thirty percent of those occurred in the school building, said Fox, who published the 2010 book, “Violence and Security on Campus: From Preschool Through College.”
“There are students who killed teachers, more typically high school students,” Fox said. “I don’t know of other cases where a 6-year-old shot a teacher.”
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Barakat reported from Falls Church, Virginia.
8 found fatally shot in Utah home, including 5 children
Eight people including five children were found dead from gunshot wounds in a southern Utah home Wednesday, according to authorities who did not provide more details or a potential motive for the killings.
The victims were found when police did a welfare check at the residence, according to a statement by city officials in Enoch, a city of about 8,000 people located 245 miles (394 kilometers) south of Salt Lake City.
Read more: 3 dead in Paris shooting; suspect arrested
Police said they did not detect any threat to the public.
Iron County School District officials said in a letter sent to parents that the five children attended schools in the district.
Enoch City Manager Rob Dotson said the community was sent reeling by news of the eight bodies and that the deceased — all members of one family — were well known in the southern Utah town.
“Many of us have served with them in church, in the community and gone to school with these individuals,” Dotson said in a video statement Wednesday night.
“This community at this time is hurting. They’re feeling loss, they’re feeling pain and they have a lot of questions,” Dotson added, noting that officials planned on releasing more information as it becomes available and the police investigation progresses.
Read more: 5 dead and suspect killed in Toronto area condo shooting
Welfare checks based on calls to the police department like the one that led them to the residence where the bodies were found are routine when individuals are not seen for extended periods of time, Dotson said.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox offered condolences in a tweet Wednesday night.
US calls on all political parties in Bangladesh to respect rule of law, avoid violence
The United States has called on all political parties in Bangladesh to respect the rule of law, refrain from violence, harassment and intimidation."Genuine elections require the ability of all candidates to engage voters free from violence, harassment and intimidation," said US Department of State spokesperson Ned Price during a regular media briefing in Washington DC on January 3.When it comes to reports of violence, harassment, intimidation, unjustified detention, he said, they call on the government to investigate these reports thoroughly, transparently, impartially, and to hold the perpetrators to account.The US spokesperson said they call on the Bangladesh government to ensure that no party or candidate threatens, incites, or conducts violence against another party or candidate.On Monday, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said the government is not worried about the next national election, noting that the election will be held timely and fairly."Election will be held at the time of election. We believe in people," he told reporters at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.Momen said the government is committed to holding a "free, fair, transparent, and inclusive" election.He said it would be good if all parties join the next election. If not, that is okay too, he said.Asked whether the government could assure the foreigners about a fair election, Momen said, “It’s not our headache; it is your headache. Why should I assure foreigners? If we work accordingly, they will understand.”He said the next election is still far and in other countries they see election-related events just two months ahead of the scheduled election. “Here we see election-centric noises one year ahead of the election. This is very sad.”Momen said there is an "independent Election Commission with transparent arrangements" to hold fair elections.
Move on from COVID? Child care disruptions continue
Forty-seven. That’s how many days of child care Kathryn Anne Edwards’ 3-year-old son has missed in the past year.
RSV, COVID-19 and two bouts of the dreaded preschool scourge of hand, foot and mouth disease struck one after another. The illnesses were so disruptive that the labor economist quit her full-time job at the Rand Corp., a think tank. She switched last month to independent contract work to give her more flexibility to care for her son and 4-month-old daughter.
In the first and even second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, multi-week quarantines and isolations were common for many Americans, especially children. But nine weeks of missed child care, nearly three years in?
“The rest of the world has moved on from the crisis that I’m still in,” said Edwards, who studies women’s issues. “That’s sometimes how it feels like to me.”
This fall and winter have upended life for working parents of little children, who thought the worst of the pandemic was behind them. The arrival of vaccines for younger children and the end of quarantines for COVID exposure were supposed to bring relief.
Instead, families were treated to what some called a “tripledemic.” Flu, COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus cases collided, stressing children’s hospitals and threatening the already imperiled child care system. Even parents of babies with less serious cases of COVID-19 have run into 10-day isolation rules that have taxed the patience of employers.
A record-high 104,000 people missed work in October because of child care problems, surpassing even early pandemic levels, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows. Child care-related absences fell to 59,000 in November, but numbers still surpass typical pre-pandemic levels.
The instability has hurt many working parents’ finances. Most of those who missed work in October because of child care problems didn’t get paid, according to an analysis from the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank.
Now, doctors are bracing for the number of sick children to rise after families gathered for the holidays.
“I think we’re going to have to be ready to do it all over again,” said Dr. Eric Biondi, director of pediatric hospital medicine at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center in Maryland.
Illnesses among teachers and children have strained a child care system that’s already short-staffed.
“This is the worst year I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Shaunna Baillargeon, owner of Muddy Puddles Early Learning Program in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. She faces “a constant battle of staff and children being sick with a different virus every day,” with no backups if a teacher calls in sick.
At the Washington, D.C., day care where Jana Williams teaches, illness has caused classroom shutdowns almost weekly since October. Her 19-month-old daughter is also enrolled there, coming down with the same viruses.
“It’s stressful,” she said before Christmas, when she was home with her sick toddler. “You want to stay home and care for your child. But then it’s like, you have to get to work.”
Read more: Global Covid cases near 634 million
During the early months of the pandemic, women in the prime of their careers left the labor market at a rate far exceeding men. They were more likely to work in the service-oriented fields that were decimated, and they often were caring for children, Edwards said.
Women have since returned to the workforce, particularly women of color, said economist Diane Swonk of professional services firm KPMG.
But the participation of prime-age working women in the U.S. lags most industrialized nations, Swonk said. Advocates have long blamed the country’s lack of universal preschool and paid family leave.
Finding child care and heading back to work has proved far from simple. At the pandemic’s height, more than one-third of day care jobs were lost, Edwards said. Staffing hasn’t fully recovered. As of November, the country had 8% fewer child care workers than before the pandemic, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.
The strong labor market has driven up the cost to hire new workers. That means child care spots are pricey and hard to find. Even centers with openings may close when staff or kids are sick.
That babies and toddlers are prone to illnesses adds to the challenge. In the wake of COVID, day cares are more anxious about accepting a snotty toddler.
Isolation guidelines have hit parents of babies especially hard. While older preschoolers who have COVID-19 may return with masks after five days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children under 2 stay home for 10 days, or until they test negative twice, 48 hours apart.
Read more: COVID-19: US vaccine donations to Bangladesh exceed 100 million
One issue is masks aren’t recommended for the under-2 crowd. Their smaller airways mean wearing them can increase the risk of suffocation, according to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio.
Not all centers are adhering to the CDC’s guidance. But many are following it to the letter, or even going further.
When Chicago educator Tamisha Holifield and her daughter had COVID-19 in May, the toddler had to miss 15 days of child care. Bouts of colds have followed, in what Holifield described as a “constant whirlwind” of sickness that has been stressful both financially and emotionally.
“It’s a major inconvenience. But I’m a single parent, so I don’t have a choice. If I drop the ball, the game is over,” Holifield said.
Disruption from illness can have ripple effects on young kids. Unduly stressed parents can become a stress on the baby, which can in turn cause sleep, gastrointestinal or socialization problems, said Dr. Sherri Alderman, a developmental-behavioral pediatrician.
The situation has also strained employers. Brad Lukas, chief nursing officer at Corewell Health Beaumont Grosse Pointe Hospital in Michigan, has seen eight or nine nurses calling out per shift, some because of sick children.
“We’re seeing a lot of people reduce their hours,” Lukas said. His own wife cut back nursing shifts so she can mostly stay home with their young children.
The continued chaos for young families is isolating, especially when other Americans’ lives are back to normal, said Lauren Hipp, early learning chief at MomsRising, an advocacy organization.
“I feel pretty angry about it,” said Hipp, whose own 2-, 6- and 8-year-old children have been wracked with illnesses, including RSV. “To feel like society has passed you by is a really difficult and lonely feeling.”
2022 was a year of turning around: BGMEA
The just-concluded 2022 was a year of turning around and rebuilding the economy, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) said Saturday (December 31, 2022) as revellers in major city centres across the world ushered in the first new year without Covid-19 restrictions, since the pandemic began in 2020, with countdowns and fireworks.
"Despite all the challenges created by the century's biggest disaster, Covid-19, we proved our resilience and turned around," BGMEA Director Md Mohiuddin Rubel said.
"We are in a new challenge – the advanced economies are heading towards recession while our economy has not fully recovered from the pandemic crisis yet. Due to the current geopolitical crisis, the prices of commodities, including fuel and food, are rising while the global inflation rate hit a record 8.8 percent in 2022 which was 4.7 percent in 2021."
So, the demand for products and purchasing power in the international market is shrinking. All these are affecting the retail sales market as well as disrupting the global supply chain.
Read more: Bangladesh RMG industry emphasizes technologies to enhance competitiveness, transparency: BGMEA chief
"However, in the 2021-22 fiscal, our apparel export stood at $42.61 billion. It was a landmark in the history of readymade garments (RMG) manufacturing as we exceeded the $40 billion mark in 40 years of journey," Rubel said.
"Apart from the major markets – the European Union (EU) and US – our export share in non-traditional markets doubled – from 6.87 percent in FY09 to 14.96 percent in FY22. Among the major non-traditional markets, growth in Japan, India and South Korea was significant."
According to the "World Trade Statistical Review" published by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2021, Bangladesh ranked as the second largest apparel exporter in the world with a 6.37 percent share of the global market.
"Bangladesh has already become the top denim-sourcing country for the US and EU. Now we are in close competition with the largest apparel exporter, China," Rubel said. "2022 will also remain a distinct year for us as we have exceeded $50 billion in exports."
Read More: July-November: Bangladesh’s exports to major countries show "encouraging growth"
"In 2022, we realigned our vision with ESG priorities and the Sustainable Development Goal 2030. We have the highest number of LEED green RMG factories certified by USGBC. Currently, the number of LEED Green factories is 183, of which 60 are platinum," the BGMEA director said.
One of the biggest successes in 2022 was "Made in Bangladesh Week," he added.
"Going forward, not only in 2023 but also in the next decade, we have to maintain and continue all of these transformations. Achieving excellence in products, fibre, and market diversification and value addition are the key opportunities for this sector," Rubel said.
"Also, we need to develop our capacity in the backward and forward linkage industries. At the same time, we need to focus on innovation, technological upgradation, design and skill development and overall business capabilities."
Read more: BGMEA delegation meets US State Department official to discuss RMG issues
Mega Millions Tuesday jackpot surpasses estimated $565M
The holiday shopping season — for Mega Millions lottery ticket buyers, at least — is ramping up as officials say the estimated jackpot for Tuesday night’s drawing has surpassed half a billion dollars.
As of late Monday, lottery officials estimate Tuesday’s prize at $565 million — or more than $293 million if delivered in cash — after there were no lucky winners holding a ticket that matched all six numbers in the last drawing held on Friday.
Tuesday’s drawing will be held at 11 p.m. EST.
Read more: Mega projects won’t affect the economy: PM
Tickets sold in California and Florida for an Oct. 14 drawing shared the last Mega Millions jackpot of $502 million. The lottery’s top prize has been building anew over 20 drawings held since then.
Lottery officials say there have been 11 winning jackpots of $500 million or more since Mega Millions began in 2002. The record Mega Millions jackpot is more than $1.5 billion, won in 2018, and a jackpot surpassing $1.3 billion was won in Illinois in July.
The largest U.S. lottery jackpot ever won was $2.04 billion in November. The winner bought the lucky Powerball ticket in Southern California.