Whoo!

The reason I did that is ,better now then later,that was always the right way,2nd i did it just for fun during the game with other players. i have a small Q ? I would like to know about what are you thinking with this 😄

For your info i got much more hours on servers like this one, I know i dont have a lot of here,but it was enough time to see what the server needs,maybe stricter discipline with admins,dont give easily admin to everyone,much more time to fro ugprades and etc. Dont allow anyone to get comfortable so easily. I know,i respect your opinion,i jsut wanna say make someone who's active during night or atleast stay there on the server as AFK just to prove those who break the rules to dont do any damage to other players/server.

Greetings NewlifeZM members. After a long time a came back to play sometimes and enjoy this game, a lot changed from the last time i was here, mostly bad things then the good once. First of all i would like to complain about admin work which is misarable,no game,technical or any other kind of support. During the night there is literally no admins active even if one of the important questions by making a request is ( ¤ Can You Stay Spectator Or Playing Between These Hours (24:00 To 12:00 PM): ) Players take that as advantade and team up to make themselve easier during the rounds/mods and etc. There is such many example which will distract players, especially the new ones. As I see this server forum is lead by so many players which aint possible to see in the server, many of the admins also dont care,just use their authority to their own sake. Its so sad to see all of this from day to day. Everyone is just thinking about being human and making frags, collecting points and etc. I could count many more mistakes but i think you know what I want to say. That path aint good for this server at all. Nobody is making any complain so I decide to say it first. Accept this a positive criticsm. Greetings Whoo! a.k.a Mandza.

An Australian man died after he was attacked by a shark on Tuesday at a po[CENSORED]r surfing spot in Queensland, authorities say. The 46-year-old man was bitten on his leg just after 5 p.m. while surfing at Greenmount Beach in Coolangatta, a suburb of the city of Gold Coast, according to the Queensland Police Service. He was surfing near the local lifesaving club's headquarters. Video from the scene showed at least six people rushing to get the victim out of the surf and onto the beach. Witness Jade Parker told CNN affiliate 7 News that he saw the man floating next to the surfboard as people went to help. "I just presumed he might have got knocked out, because he wasn't moving in the water," he said. Parker told 7 News that he saw that the man was badly injured, but surf lifesavers began treating him as soon as rescuers got him to the beach. Parker said the wound extended from the man's groin to slightly past his knee. "He was pretty much already gone by then," Parker said. Beach protected by shark nets People on the beach panicked as news of the attack spread, witness Leo Cabral told CNN affiliate 9 News. "Everyone was running around, there were kids crying on the sand ... A few people were standing by and were watching and couldn't believe what they were seeing," he said. "It was so sad, it was really sad." Cabral told 9 News that he was filming his 13-year-old son in the water when he heard people yelling "shark, shark, shark." "The first thing that came to my mind was that I just wanted my son and his friends to be out of the water ... I couldn't feel my body at all, I was completely frozen, I was blank, he told 9 News. "I started screaming to my son to get out of the water." A police helicopter to launched to search for the shark while beaches north and south of Greenmount were closed after the attack and nearby beaches will be closed on Wednesday, 9 News reported. Greenmount Beach is protected by shark nets, which are designed to catch potentially dangerous sharks, so they can't harm people. "The equipment lowers risk, but does not provide an impenetrable barrier between sharks and humans," according to the Queensland Government Shark Control Program's website. There have been at least six fatal shark attacks this year, according to the Australian Shark Attack File at the Taronga Conservation Society Australia. There were no fatal shark attacks last year and only one in 2018, according to the society's database. Gavin Naylor, the program director of the Florida Program for Shark Research, told CNN that the number of fatal shark attacks can jump dramatically from year to year. The program runs the International Shark Attack File, a global database of shark attacks. "We see fluctuations every year and we don't make too much of them," he said. Last month in New South Wales, a male surfer punched a great white shark repeatedly on the nose when it bit the woman he was surfing with. She was airlifted to a hospital for surgery and survived. In July, a 36-year-old man died after being attacked by a shark while spearfishing off the coast of Fraser Island in the Australian state of Queensland, and a 15-year-old boy died in a suspected shark attack while surfing in New South Wales. In June, a 60-year-old surfer died while surfing at Salt Beach near Kingscliff in New South Wales -- about 10 miles away from Tuesday's attack. In April, a Queensland wildlife ranger was killed by a great white, and in January a 57-year-old diver died from a shark attack in Western Australia state.

Before Donald Trump ever sought the Oval Office, he was preoccupied by its occupant President Barack Obama, publicly questioning his birthplace and privately describing him as "a Manchurian candidate" who obtained his Ivy League degrees only by way of affirmative action, according to a new book by Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen. Trump's disdain for Obama was so extreme that he took his fixation a step further, according to Cohen: Trump hired a "Faux-Bama" to participate in a video in which Trump "ritualistically belittled the first black president and then fired him." Cohen's book, "Disloyal: A Memoir," doesn't name the man who was allegedly hired to play Obama or provide a specific date for the incident, but it does include a photograph of Trump sitting behind a desk, facing a Black man wearing a suit with an American flag pin affixed to the lapel. On Trump's desk are two books, one displaying Obama's name in large letters. CNN obtained a copy of Cohen's book ahead of its Tuesday publication. As an insider who spent years as Trump's personal attorney and self-proclaimed "fixer," Cohen says he is uniquely equipped to unleash on Trump, whom Cohen describes as "a cheat, a liar, a fraud, a bully, a racist, a predator, a con man" and a person interested in using the presidency exclusively for his personal financial benefit. But according to federal prosecutors and Cohen's own guilty pleas, he, too, is a liar and a cheat. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to nine counts of federal crimes, including tax evasion, lying to Congress and campaign-finance violations he and prosecutors have said were done at Trump's direction to help him win the 2016 presidential election. CNN has reached out to the White House for comment. In a statement to the Washington Post, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said, "Michael Cohen is a disgraced felon and disbarred lawyer, who lied to Congress. He has lost all credibility, and it's unsurprising to see his latest attempt to profit off of lies." Cohen acknowledges and apologizes for his role in Trump's rise, saying he was "more than willing to lie, cheat, and bully" to help his long-time boss win the White House. And he recounts the pressure and guilt he experienced as he spoke out against Trump, writing that he considered suicide "as a way to escape the unrelenting insanity" in the weeks prior to testifying to Congress in 2019. But in the book, he disputes having committed certain crimes to which he has already admitted, portraying himself a victim of the "gangster tactics" of the federal prosecutors of the US Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York. Still, Cohen's account of Trump's personal nature and presidency is damning, and during Cohen's time in prison, he writes, "I became even more convinced that Trump will never leave office peacefully." Trump's model of a man in power, according to Cohen, is Vladimir Putin, and Trump is described as enamored of Putin's wealth and unilateral influence, and awestruck by what he sees as the Russian president's ability to control everything from the country's press to its financial institutions. "Locking up your political enemies, criminalizing dissent, terrifying or bankrupting the free press through libel lawsuits -- Trump's all-encompassing vision wasn't evident to me before he began to run for president," Cohen writes. "I honestly believe the most extreme ideas about power and its uses only really took shape as he began to seriously contemplate the implications of taking power and how he could leverage it to the absolute maximum level possible." He also argues that, with Trump himself expecting to lose the presidential race, Trump's goal in cozying up to Putin was to position himself to benefit financially from a planned real-estate development in Moscow after the election. "By ingratiating himself with Putin, and hinting at changes in American sanctions policy against the country under a Trump Presidency," Cohen writes, "the Boss was trying to nudge the Moscow Trump Tower project along." (One of the crimes to which Cohen pleaded guilty was lying to Congress about the duration of the negotiations regarding the Moscow development.) Cohen also portrays Trump as aspiring to have ties to the Russian president. After Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion he purchased for $41 million to a Russian oligarch named Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million in 2008, Cohen says, Trump told Cohen he believed the real buyer was Putin. Cohen, however, disputes the validity of a rumored videotape depicting Trump during a trip to Moscow, saying, "this claim never occurred, to the best of my knowledge and investigations." But Cohen discloses that during the summer of 2016, he received an anonymous call from a man who said he was in possession of a tape matching its description. Cohen told the caller that he would need to see a few seconds of the tape to determine if it was real, and the caller demanded $20 million before hanging up, never to be heard from again. Blacks & Latinos, 'They're not my people' If Putin is held in the highest regard in Trump's mind, Cohen writes, Trump's own voters rank among those in the lowest. Speaking to Cohen after Trump gathered religious leaders at Trump Tower in the lead up to the 2012 presidential race, an encounter during which they asked to "lay hands" on him, Trump asked Cohen, according to the book: "Can you believe that bullsh*t?...Can you believe people believe that bullsh*t?" In the wake of Trump's presidential kickoff announcement in 2015, in which he called Mexicans criminals and rapists, he dismissed concerns that he had alienated Latinos. "Plus, I will never get the Hispanic vote," Trump allegedly told Cohen. "Like the blacks, they're too stupid to vote for Trump. They're not my people." (Trump won 28% of the Latino vote in 2016.) Trump's contempt, in Cohen's telling, extends broadly. Cohen characterizes Trump bluntly as racist, and says that while he never heard Trump use the "N-word," Trump used other offensive language. Ranting about Obama after he won office in 2008, Trump said, "Tell me one country run by a black person that isn't a sh*thole...They are all complete f*cking toilets," according to Cohen. After Nelson Mandela died, Trump allegedly said of South Africa that "Mandela f*cked the whole country up. Now it's a sh*thole. F*ck Mandela. He was no leader." Cohen also divulges personal details about Trump, including his hair routine, described as a "three-step" combover designed to disguise "unsightly scars on his scalp from a failed hair-implant operation in the 1980s." Writing that he once witnessed Trump shortly after he showered, Cohen recalls that "when his hair wasn't done, his strands of dyed-golden hair reached below his shoulders along the right side of his head and on his back, like a balding Allman Brother or strung out old '60s hippie." Many instances of Trump's alleged deceit have previously been detailed by Cohen and others in recent years: Trump's alleged inflation of his net worth to publications like Forbes and Fortune and his minimizing of the value of his properties to avoid taxes, Cohen's pressuring of the New York Military Academy to not release Trump's high school records to avoid their public disclosure, Cohen paying to rig CNBC and Drudge Report polls in Trump's favor, Trump campaign officials hiring extras for $50 apiece to attend Trump's 2015 announcement that he was running for president and the alleged fraudulent Trump University scheme, over which Trump settled a class action lawsuit for $25 million.

In August 2020, the RAS Institute of Oil and Gas Problems, supported by the local Yamal authorities, conducted a major expedition to the new crater. Skoltech researchers were part of the final stages of that expedition. Credit: Evgeny Chuvilin A Russian TV crew flying over the Siberian tundra this summer spotted a massive crater 30 meters (100 feet) deep and 20 meters wide -- striking in its size, symmetry and the explosive force of nature that it must have taken to have created it. Scientists are not sure exactly how the huge hole, which is at least the ninth spotted in the region since 2013, formed. Initial theories floated when the first crater was discovered near an oil and gas field in the Yamal Peninsula in northwest Siberia included a meteorite impact, a UFO landing and the collapse of a secret underground military storage facility. While scientists now believe the giant hole is linked to an explosive buildup of methane gas -- which could be an unsettling result of warming temperatures in the region -- there is still a lot the researchers don't know. An aerial view of the newest crater that appeared this year. It's one of the largest that has appeared so far. In August 2020, the RAS Institute of Oil and Gas Problems, supported by the local Yamal authorities, conducted a major expedition to the new crater. Skoltech researchers were part of the final stages of that expedition. Credit: Evgeny Chuvilin "Right now, there is no single accepted theory on how these complex phenomena are formed," said Evgeny Chuvilin, lead research scientist at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology's Center for Hydrocarbon Recovery, who has visited the site of the newest crater to study its features. "It is possible they have been forming for years, but it is hard to estimate the numbers. Since craters usually appear in uninhabited and largely pristine areas of the Arctic, there is often no one to see and report them," Chuvilin said. "Even now, craters are mostly found by accident during routine, non-scientific helicopter flights or by reindeer herders and hunters." Permafrost, which amounts to two-thirds of the Russian territory, is a huge natural reservoir of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and recent hot summers, including in 2020, in the region may have played a role in creating these craters. Mining a mystery Chuvilin and his team are among the few scientists who have been down inside one of these craters to investigate how it formed and where the gas that causes them comes from. Accessing the craters has to be done with climbing gear and there is a limited window -- the craters turn into lakes within two years of being formed. The scientists took samples of permafrost soil, ground and ice from the rim of a hole -- known as the Erkuta crater -- during a field trip in 2017 after it was discovered by biologists who were in the area observing falcon nesting. The researchers conducted drone observations six months later. "The main issue with these craters is how incredibly fast, geologically, they form and how short-lived they are before they turn into lakes," Chuvilin said. "Finding one in the remote Arctic is always a stroke of luck for scientists." The study, which was published in June, showed that gases, mostly methane, can accumulate in the upper layers of permafrost from multiple sources -- both from the deep layers of the Earth and closer to the surface. The accumulation of these gases can create pressure that is strong enough to burst through the upper layers of frozen ground, scattering earth and rocks and creating the crater. "We want to stress that the studies of this crater problem are in a very early stage, and each new crater leads to new research and discoveries," he said. With the Erkuta crater, the scientists' model suggested that it formed in a dried-up lake that probably had something called an underlake talik -- a zone of unfrozen soils that started freezing gradually after the lake had dried out, building up the stress that was ultimately released in a powerful explosion -- a type of ice volcano. "Cryovolcanism, as some researchers call it, is a very poorly studied and described process in the cryosphere, an explosion involving rocks, ice, water and gases that leaves behind a crater. It is a potential threat to human activity in the Arctic, and we need to thoroughly study how gases, especially methane, are accumulated in the top layers of the permafrost and which conditions can cause the situation to go extreme," Chuvilin noted. Cryosphere refers to portions of Earth's surface where water is in solid form -- ice. "These methane emissions also contribute to the rising concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and climate change itself might be a factor in increasing cryovolcanism. But this is still something that needs to be researched," Chuvilin said. He said his team will publish more detailed information on the newest crater shortly in a scientific journal. He added it's one of the biggest found so far. Extreme summers Marina Leibman, a Russian permafrost expert at the Earth Cryosphere Institute at the Russian Academy of Sciences, was part of a team of researchers who have analyzed five gas emission craters using remote sensing data and field surveys. The researchers found the craters shared some similar features, most notably a 2- to 6-meter-high mound that formed before the explosion. The craters were all also located on gentle slopes and had a lower portion that was cylindrical like a can before opening into a funnel, with the opening diameter around 20 to 25 meters wide. The explosions all ejected ground ice, which in some cases leaves holes where huge frozen blocks have fallen on the surface. Leibman believed that extremely hot summers in the region in 2012 and 2016, and again this year, may have played a role in the growth and blowout of these mounds. The mounds appear and explode within as a little as three to five years. "The release of methane from permafrost ... is likely caused by rising air and ground temperature over the past decades. The formation of all GECs (gas emission craters) was preceded by anomalously warm summers," the study, which published in July this year, said.

Hello @Hossam Taibi Im not gonna bother you with more questions,after reading most of them I'm satisfied with the answers,and also as colleague from the project i would like to say how good and responsible you are. #PRO from me.

Let's journey back to a different time. One that feels far away. Early January 2020. Travelers were gearing up for another booming year of adventures -- from visits to Japan for the Olympics to cruises galore. But while we aimed for another year of far-flung trips, environmental activists continued their warnings about a growing climate catastrophe and the role travelers were playing. Some people had been heeding their calls and trying to plan more sustainable trips. Tips on going green from CNN Travel and other sites were po[CENSORED]r reading then. But for the most part, travel projections were for more of the same. We couldn't let problems such as emissions and overtourism keep us at home -- we had a world to see in 2020! Meanwhile, a new and different kind of threat -- one that couldn't be so easily swept aside -- was about to be unleashed. Reports were coming out about a new, mysterious virus in the interior of China. It wasn't SARS. It had infected dozens of people. But what was it? We had no idea that our world and the travel industry with it were about to be turned upside down. A disquieting quiet Almost in the blink of an eye, everything changed because of that new virus. It swept the globe. Countries closed their borders. The Summer Olympics were postponed. Cruise ships desperately searched for harbors to let passengers off. Airports were nearly empty. Beach resorts were deserted. Amusement parks became ghost towns. Covid-19 and coronavirus soon became household words. Then, we noticed something rather nice -- a silver lining of sorts -- during the spring shutdown. In normally polluted cities such as Los Angeles, skies were clearer. So was water -- people could see marine life in Venice's normally turgid, busy canals. To our delight, birdsong became easier to hear. There seemed to be a cause and effect at work. And it raised a lot of questions. Did the sudden drop in global travel really have an unexpected benefit for the environment? Are there ways to keep the perceived benefits going if or when the virus is under control? And perhaps most importantly, can we return to roaming the world one day but be better stewards of our planet while doing so? As with everything else involving the pandemic, the answers are hard and complicated. Emissions and carbon footprints One statistic -- a seemingly small number -- had big things to say about tourism and its effect on the environment before the pandemic: 8%. That's how much tourism contributed to global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a groundbreaking study from researchers at the University of Queensland Australia and University of Sydney in May 2018. (Greenhouse gas emissions trap heat in the atmosphere and cause the planet to warm quickly.) That was some four times higher than previously estimated. And the majority of this carbon footprint (the total amount of greenhouse gases we generate with our actions) came from high-income countries. The study also found the fast rise in tourism demand was "effectively outstripping" the technological improvements the industry was making toward reducing its carbon footprint. The study didn't have a sunny outlook going forward, either. "We project that, due to its high carbon intensity and continuing growth, tourism will constitute a growing part of the world's greenhouse gas emissions." Everything goes out the window No one knew in 2018 that we'd have a history-making coronavirus pandemic in 2020. That threw everything out the window about where we thought we'd be. The quarantines and shutdowns caused unprecedented slowdowns in the air transport and tourism industries, according to a July 2020 study from the University of Sydney. It found that overall global emissions dropped by 4.6%. That happens to be the largest drop in history. But while the environment got a break, the world's economy got slammed. Transport and tourism have been the worst-hit sectors, the study found. Arunima Malik of the University of Sydney's Business School and one of the authors of the study, put it this way in the study: "We are experiencing the worst economic shock since the Great Depression, while at the same time we have experienced the greatest drop in greenhouse gas emissions since the burning of fossil fuels began." Small countries hit hard Ya-Yen Sun, senior lecturer at the University of Queensland Australia's School of Business and another author on the studies, told CNN Travel that countries heavily reliant on tourism have been devastated. "We know tourism is one of the largest [economic] sectors in the world. It contributes about 10% of the global GDP and one in 10 jobs are related to tourism," Sun said.

China's government has accused Indian troops of illegally trespassing onto Chinese territory, in comments that could set the stage for a second tense border standoff between the two nuclear powers in just three months. In a statement Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in India said that Indian forces had "conducted flagrant provocations" over the weekend "which again stirred tension in the border areas." According to China, Indian troops deliberately crossed the 2,100 mile-long (3,379 kilometer) de facto border between the two countries, known as the Line of Actual Control, near Pangong Tso, a strategically located lake some 14,000 feet (4.2 kilometers) above sea level in the Himalayas. An Aerial photo taken on August 3, 2019 shows a road along the Pangong Tso lake in southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region. China and India have been sparring over the area that surrounds the lake since the two fought the first of several border wars in 1962. The Line of Actual Control, which passes through Pangong Tso, was established in the wake of the original conflict, but it's not an exact border. Though it shows up on maps, India and China do not agree on its precise location and both regularly accuse the other of overstepping it, or seeking to expand their territory. Tuesday's comments are the latest in a string of accusations and counter accusations. On Monday, India's Defense Ministry leveled a vague charge against the Chinese People's Liberation Army, accusing its troops of carrying out "provocative military movements to change the status quo." The Defense Ministry said that Indian troops preempted Chinese military activity and undertook measures to "thwart Chinese intentions to unilaterally change facts on the ground." Though the ministry did not comment on the specifics of the operation, in a statement, it said troops had undertaken measures to strengthen their position on the southern bank of Pangong Tso. China's Foreign Ministry denied any incursion into Indian territory, and the country's military and diplomatic officials are now accusing Indian troops of crossing the line. "India's move has grossly violated China's territorial sovereignty," the embassy spokesperson said Tuesday. "China has made solemn representations to the Indian side, urged the Indian side to strictly control and restrain its frontline troops, earnestly honor its commitments, immediately stop all the provocative actions, immediately withdraw its troops illegally trespassing the Line of Actual Control, immediately stop any actions leading to the escalation and complication of the situation." Pangong Tso is a long V-shaped body of water located south of the Galwan Valley. Though most of it lies in the Chinese region of Tibet, the portion that India controls is strategically important as it allows Indian forces to move into striking distance of a key Chinese mountain highway linking the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang, said Bharat Karnad, an expert in national security affiliated with the Indian Center for Policy Research. But while Pangong Tso's tactical importance may not have changed in nearly six decades, "the stakes are higher" now than ever, Karnad said. For India, the lake also serves as an important buffer to help defend the nearby region of Ladakh. According to Manoj Joshi a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a New Delhi-based think tank, the lake is a very obvious ingress route for military units looking to dominate or capture Leh, the largest town in Ladakh. "From a military stance, that's why it was defended strongly in 1962," said Joshi.

#PRO Sometimes you are kind of boring but you are a person who always wants to get better,improve own skills,knowledge,keep it going so!

China launched a series of ballistic missiles into the South China Sea this week, according to United States defense officials, part of a flurry of military exercises extending thousands of miles along the country's coastline, as tensions with Washington over the disputed waterway continue to escalate. Beijing claims almost all of the vast South China Sea as its sovereign territory and has stepped-up efforts to assert its dominance over the resource-rich waters in recent years, transforming a string of obscure reefs and atolls into heavily fortified man-made islands and increasing its naval activity in the region. China's territorial ambitions are contested by at least five other countries, and have been rejected outright by Washington which has declared Beijing's claims to be illegal under international law. A US defense official told CNN that the Chinese military launched four medium-range missiles from mainland China on Wednesday. The missiles impacted in the northern reaches of the South China Sea between Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands, known as the Xisha Islands in China, the official said. In a statement Thursday, the Pentagon described the drills as the latest in a long string of Chinese actions intended to "assert unlawful maritime claims" that disadvantage neighboring countries. The comments follow the announcement Wednesday that the US government will impose sanctions on dozens of Chinese companies for assisting Beijing in the development and militarization of artificial islands in the South China Sea. 'Neither confirm nor deny' Senior Col. Wu Qian, a spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of National Defense, said on Thursday that China had carried out drills in waters and airspace between Qingdao in northeastern China and the disputed Spratly islands -- known as Nansha in China -- in the South China Sea, but did not mention the missiles outright. According to Wu, the drills "did not target any country." Though China's Defense Ministry has not confirmed the missile tests, China's government controlled media made several detailed references to the launches, citing reports in overseas media. Those reports said the missiles involved were DF-21D and DF-26 missiles, both of which have been touted in Chinese propaganda as highly accurate and able to hit ships moving at sea. "China's DF-26 and DF-21D are the world's first ballistic missiles capable of targeting large and medium-sized vessels, earning them the title of 'aircraft carrier killers,'" the state-run Global Times said on Thursday, citing military observers. A separate editorial in the same outlet acknowledged speculation around the launch of the DF-21D and DF-26 missiles, saying only that the "Chinese side has neither confirmed nor denied it." The editorial added that China "must increase its actions in the waters accordingly to suppress US arrogance and reinforce the US understanding that China does not fear a war." Home to vital international shipping lanes, the South China Sea is widely deemed as a potential flashpoint for a military conflict between the US and China. Wednesday's tests come a month after two US aircraft carrier strike groups, led by the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan, completed combined exercises in the South China Sea for the first time in six years. The US has increased its naval activity in the region in recent months, carrying out routine patrols, referred to as freedom of navigation operations. On Thursday a US guided-missile destroyer sailed near the Chinese-claimed Paracel Islands. In a news conference call on Thursday, US Vice Adm. Scott Conn, commander of the US Navy's Third Fleet, talked up the US naval presence in the region and its ability to respond to Chinese threats. "In terms of launching of the ballistic missiles, the US Navy has 38 ships underway today in the Indo-Pacific region, including the South China Sea, and we continue to fly and sail and operate anywhere international law allows to demonstrate our commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific and reassure our allies and partners," he said.

When Dior, Hermès and France's other luxury giants unveiled their Spring-Summer 2021 collections at the online-only Paris Men's Fashion Week last month, Louis Vuitton was conspicuous by its absence. Rather than making do with a virtual showcase, the label posted a cryptic short video, "Zoooom With Friends," in which a squad of cartoon mascots loaded up crates on a ship setting sail along the River Seine. That shipment has now arrived -- literally and metaphorically -- in Shanghai. On Thursday, Louis Vuitton revealed its new menswear collection for Spring-Summer 2021, dubbed "Message in a Bottle," in spectacular fashion, on the banks of the Huangpu River. Although travel restrictions prevented artistic director for menswear, Virgil Abloh, from attending in person, his eclectic DNA was stamped throughout the collection, which came in streams of formal garments followed by animal-themed streetwear and bright block colors. The pandemic hit the fashion industry hard, but Paris Fashion Week is going ahead in September Lauryn Hill was beamed onto a branded shipping container for a virtual performance, which was live-streamed on Louis Vuitton's Instagram and website. But, otherwise, this was a distinctly physical show -- one on a scale rarely seen anywhere in the world since the coronavirus pandemic started disrupting the global fashion calendar back in February. There were few face masks in sight. Audience members could be seen sitting in close proximity to one another, fanning themselves with Louis Vuitton paddles in the early evening heat. And while safety measures were taken, including temperature checks and paper-free tickets, the show marked a return to normalcy, said creative consultant and former Elle China editor, Ye Zi (also known as Leaf Greener), who was in attendance. "It's like we're back to our new normal lifestyle," she said in a phone interview. Spending again The decision to eschew Paris for Shanghai may, of course, have been a practical one. Physical fashion shows are not entirely out of the question in Europe (Jacquemus, for instance, unveiled its new collection in a wheat field outside Paris), but social distancing requirements have made conventional showcases all but impossible. In China, however, many restrictions have eased, and some live events are being held. On the day of Louis Vuitton's show, Shanghai reported just seven new cases of Covid-19, none of which had been transmitted locally, according to Chinese state media.

President Donald Trump will take the White House stage Thursday evening after three nights of propaganda and pageantry at the Republican National Convention for a speech that's expected to paper over his flawed handling of the coronavirus pandemic and deliver a searing indictment of his rival Joe Biden. Trump will accept his party's renomination for president at a time when the nation has passed the grim milestone of more than 180,000 deaths as a result of Covid-19 and some 5.8 million US cases -- more than anywhere else in the world. The President is expected to cast his response in glowing terms, highlighting the administration's efforts to produce a vaccine by the end of the year and its purchase of 150 million rapid tests to be distributed across the country in partnership with Abbott Laboratories. Multiple speakers, such as Vice President Mike Pence and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, have referred to the pandemic in the past tense during the convention. As of Thursday afternoon, more than 3,600 Americans had died during the three days of the convention-- more than the number who died during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Throughout the week, the campaign has also trashed normal protocol and decorum designed to protect the institution of the presidency from over-politicization. With the most high-profile speech of the week set to come from the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday night, Trump's usage of official government venues and powers for his reelection campaign will get its starkest display yet. Among the other blatant uses of official government property and pageantry for political purposes have been a naturalization ceremony in the White House, a pardon for a political supporter, the use of federal property for political speeches, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo addressing the convention while on an international trip and the participation of numerous administration officials attending political events on public property. In another meeting aired at the convention, Trump greeted former US hostages freed during his term, accepting their lavish praise. The administration has been more successful than its predecessors in this area but received criticism for making such a big deal out of the releases -- some experts worry it shows would-be kidnappers how much such releases mean to the President and could make Americans less safe abroad. Trump will be introduced on Thursday by his daughter Ivanka Trump and a crowd of more than 1,500 will attend the speech and the fireworks that follow. The White House thus far has offered conflicting information about how the guests will be screened for Covid-19. A senior administration official said the White House Coronavirus Task Force was not consulted about convention plans for Trump's speech. The official said it made more sense for the campaign and the task force to "stay out of each other's way." Health experts on the task force have been advising Americans to avoid large crowds during the pandemic. The President is also expected, in some form, to address the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man. Blake was shot seven times in the back Sunday by an officer as he tried to enter an SUV where three of his children were waiting. Early Wednesday morning, a 17-year-old Illinois youth -- whose social media accounts show an affinity for Trump, guns and the police -- allegedly shot and killed two people, and injured another, who were at one of the nighttime protests in Kenosha. So far Trump has refused to answer questions about the two incidents in Wisconsin or to say whether he watched the video of Blake being shot by police, and it's unclear if he will make any statement of sympathy to Blake's family or Black Americans once again angered by police brutality. So far, the convention has largely stayed away from mentioning events in Wisconsin, aside from Pence who on Wednesday night tossed a mention of the city into a line about how "the violence must stop." Throughout the summer, Trump has described anti-police protesters as "THUGS," and his administration cleared peaceful protesters with tear gas from a location in front of the White House before the President participated in a photo op in front of a nearby church with a Bible in hand. The administration says the clearing was done so fencing could be put up, not because of Trump's photo. Speakers at the convention have repeatedly falsely argued that Biden hasn't addressed the violence that some protests have devolved into, and Trump is expected to echo those statements on Thursday. Pence gave a preview of the night's theme when he said Wednesday that Americans wouldn't be safe in Joe Biden's America. In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday afternoon, Biden said that Trump is "absolutely" rooting for violence in the country's streets so he can claim a "law and order" mantle heading into the November election. But Biden also pointed out that the violence playing out around the country is happening under Trump's watch, despite his attempts to blame his rival. "If you think about it, Donald Trump saying you're not going to be safe in Joe Biden's America -- all the video being played is being played in Donald Trump's America," Biden told Cooper with a laugh on CNN's "Newsroom." "The country will be substantially safer when he is no longer in office," Biden added. In the lead-up to Trump's speech, which is expected to stretch for at least an hour, the Republican convention has been an exercise in reinventing the image of a wild and erratic presidency in which Trump has mismanaged the pandemic and openly traded in insensitive racial and sexist rhetoric, largely through his tweets. Over the last three nights, the President has been portrayed as a benevolent force, a champion of women and a man of humanity and empathy, in an apparent effort to counter the picture of Biden's political career as painted by Democrats last week. As the Trump campaign tries to repair the President's poor standing among female voters, and to humanize his tone-deaf appeals to "the Suburban Housewives of America," some of his closest female subordinates -- including outgoing White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and daughter-in-law, Lara Trump -- offered testimony to the President's support of professional women. Speakers have accused Biden and his family of being mired in corruption while Trump has refused to divest from his businesses and his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have earned millions from their commercial interests while working for the US government -- a few of a flurry of the conflicts of interest surrounding the administration. The contradiction between the reality of Trump's presidency and the image portrayed on television this week was underscored on Thursday when the President blasted the National Basketball Association as a "political organization" after players boycotted playoff games to demand action following the shooting of Blake in Wisconsin in the latest example of police brutality. Players from the NBA and several other sports leagues, including the WNBA, refused to play games on Wednesday and Thursday in protest of police violence. All week, convention organizers have used Black and other minority speakers to counter the impression that the President is racist. But Trump, and the convention as a whole, has failed to address police violence against Black people. Instead, the issue is raised only in demands for an end to protests that erupted after Blake's shooting and portraying them as an affront to law and order.

Beijing has accused the US of sending a U-2 spy plane into a no-fly zone to "trespass" on live-fire exercises being conducted by China below. The high-altitude US reconnaissance craft went into airspace Beijing deemed off limits during drills by the People's Liberation Army's Northern Theater Command on Tuesday, Wu Qian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Defense Ministry, said in a statement. "The trespass severely affected China's normal exercises and training activities, and violated the rules of behavior for air and maritime safety between China and the United States, as well as relevant international practices," Wu said. "The US action could easily have resulted in misjudgments and even accidents." Two exercises were underway Tuesday in Northern Theater Command, according to Chinese state media. A statement from US Pacific Air Forces to CNN confirmed a U-2 flight -- but said it did not violate any rules. "A U-2 sortie was conducted in the Indo-Pacific area of operations and within the accepted international rules and regulations governing aircraft flights. Pacific Air Forces personnel will continue to fly and operate anywhere international law allows, at the time and tempo of our choosing," the statement said. Military analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command's Joint Intelligence Center, expressed doubt about Beijing's claims. "Flying over rarely -- if ever -- happens anymore," he said, adding the US spy plane's equipment is so sophisticated that it didn't need to get so close to monitor the Chinese exercises. A Cold War aircraft updated The unarmed U-2 is one of the oldest aircraft in the US inventory. The first model, developed to monitor the military buildup of the Soviet Union early in the Cold War, flew in the 1950s. Those early models flew at 70,000 feet to stay out of range of antiaircraft missiles. But while height was the U-2's early advantage, it has received substantial upgrades in the decades since to keep its distance too. "U-2s have long-distance surveillance systems now. So, they can monitor and image from dozens of miles away. They have electronic and long-range infrared and electro-optical sensors," Schuster said. He said Beijing is focusing on the U-2's history to try to make a political point. "The Chinese are using the traditional view of U-2s as overhead imagery platforms to present a picture of dangerous penetration of a closed exercise air space," Schuster said. "The Chinese couldn't intercept and shoulder the U-2 away, but they resent any collection of their exercise activities." China launched three military exercise on Monday alone in Pacific waters, from the South China Sea in the south to the Bohai Sea in the north. Meanwhile, another exercise was finishing Wednesday in the Yellow Sea, according to a report from the state-run China Daily. "The past month has seen more military exercises conducted by the PLA than any previous month in many years," China Daily reported, citing Li Jie, a retired researcher at the PLA Naval Research Academy. The US, meanwhile, has been stepping up its own military activities around the Pacific. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in July that US Navy freedom of navigation operations, in which US warships sail close to contested islands occupied by China, were at record levels last year -- and that pace would continue in 2020. US Air Force deploys bombers Esper's statement came after the US Navy staged exercises involving two aircraft carrier strike groups in the South China Sea, the first time it had done so in six years. The US Air Force has been active around the Indo-Pacific too, recently sending three of its B-2 stealth bombers to an island base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, as well as B-1 bombers to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam. On August 17, the US Pacific Air Forces touted the fact that B-1s, B-2s, plus US Navy and Marine Corps fighters and jets from the Japan Air Self Defense Force were all engaged in exercises in the Indo-Pacific in a single 24-hour period. These missions show the ability of Air Force Global Strike Command to deliver lethal, ready, long-range strike options to geographic combatant commanders anytime, anywhere," a statement from Pacific Air Forces said. China says US air activity over the South China Sea in particular has been significant. In an interview with the state-run Xinhua news agency in early August, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi accused Washington of sending 2,000 military flights over the South China Sea in the first half of this year. That would be a rate of almost 11 a day. US officials would not confirm those numbers. "There has been no significant change to our military operations in or around the South China Sea," Maj. Randy Ready, spokesman for the US Indo-Pacific Command, said. "Though the frequency and scope of our operations vary based on the current operating environment, the US has a persistent military presence and routinely operates throughout the Indo-Pacific, including the waters and airspace surrounding the South China Sea, just as we have for more than a century." Tensions have also been increasing on the subject of Taiwan. In August, US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar visited Taipei -- the highest-ranking US official to go there in decades -- and the sale of 66 US F-16 fighter jets to the self-governing island was finalized. During Azar's visit, the PLA sent fighter jets across the median line of the Taiwan Strait that separates Taiwan from the mainland -- only the third time it has purposely done so since 1999. US 'accelerating' defense strategy This week, Esper penned an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal saying the US was "accelerating" its National Defense Strategy (NDS). "The NDS guides our efforts to adapt and modernize America's armed forces for great-power competition, with China being our principal focus," Esper wrote. The US defense chief said the PLA was a tool of the Chinese Communist Party. "China's leaders view the military as central to achieving their objectives. Prominent among these is to reshape the international order in ways that undermine globally accepted rules while normalizing authoritarianism, creating conditions to allow the Chinese Communist Party to coerce other countries and impede their sovereignty," Esper wrote. He said he was coming to the Pacific this week to meet with leaders from the region, with stops in Hawaii, Palau and Guam. Esper's stop in Hawaii will come as the US wraps up biennial RIMPAC exercises in Hawaii. Usually the world's largest naval exercises, they have been scaled back this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with only 10 nations participating.

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A former California police officer who became known as the notorious Golden State Killer said he was "truly sorry" before he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole on Friday. Joseph DeAngelo, 74, who confessed to 13 murders and dozens of rapes, terrorized the victims in the 1970s and '80s. "When a person commits monstrous acts they need to be locked away where they could never harm another innocent person," Sacramento Superior Court Judge Michael Bowman said. Before sentencing, DeAngelo, in orange prison scrubs and a white shirt, rose from his wheelchair and removed a white face mask. He told relatives of his victims, many seated in the vast room: "I've listened to all your statements, each one of them and I am truly sorry to everyone I hurt." Last June, DeAngelo pleaded guilty to raping more than 50 women and murdering 13 people. As part of a plea deal, he also admitted to crimes he has not been charged with. Bowman imposed 11 consecutive life without parole sentences, plus an additional life sentence and another eight years. The judge said the court statements delivered by victims and their families "will always stay with me." "I was moved by their courage, their grace, their strength -- all qualities you clearly lack," Bowman told the defendant. "This is the absolute maximum sentence the court is able to impose under the law," the judge added. "And while the court has no power to make a determination where the defendant is imprisoned, the survivors have spoken: Clearly the defendant deserves no mercy." Victims and family members applauded and, moments later, the masked defendant was wheeled out of the large university ballroom where the sentencing was held to allow for social distancing. Prosecutors called for the maximum penalty as they remembered DeAngelo's "voiceless" victims and their "unspeakable" suffering. They referred to the killer as the boogeyman, the devil, a madman and a beast who will never walk the streets again. Defense lawyers read letters from the defendant's friends and family members in which they described DeAngelo's father as a stern military man and womanizer who abused the defendant as a child. A niece wrote that DeAngelo saved her life after she was physically abused by her own father. "His horrific crimes are unspeakable and forever changed the lives of our victims," Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton said in a statement after sentencing. "I want to underscore the strength our victims and their families displayed over the years, and their courage this week to share in open court with all of us the pain and agony they have endured over the years." Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said the victims -- whether in heaven or here on earth -- were now "free from the shackles they and their loved ones were forced to endure since their paths intersected with the devil." On Thursday, DeAngelos's ex-wife broke her silence in a statement submitted to the court but not expected to be read aloud. Sacramento attorney Sharon Huddle, who married DeAngelo in 1973, said his actions have had "a devastating and pervasive" effect on her life. "I will never be the same person," she wrote. "I now live everyday with the knowledge of how he attacked and severely damaged hundreds of innocent people's lives and murdered 13 innocent people who were loved and have now been missed for 40 years or more." Huddle never once refers to him by name and calls him "the defendant" all through. "I have lost the ability to trust people," she said. "I trusted the defendant when he told me he had to work, or was going pheasant hunting, or going to visit his parents hundreds of miles away. When I was not around I trusted he was doing what he told me he was doing." A serial rapist known by many names Over the course of his crime spree that spanned California, Joseph James DeAngelo has been known as the Golden State Killer, the East Area Rapist, the Original Night Stalker and the Visalia Ransacker. One by one, victims and family members took the stand, describing in unpalatable detail the horrors inflicted upon them by the former police officer. One woman, who was just 7 years old and asleep when her mother was bound and raped by DeAngelo, described him threatening her mother not to make a sound lest it wake her. "He threatened to cut my ear off and bring it to her," she said. When she woke, "I could sense evil, then all hell broke loose." Comparing him to the fictional cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter, she said DeAngelo was "proof monsters were real. I had met the boogeyman." Others told of numbness in their hands that lasted for months because their wrists were bound so tightly in the attacks. More than 40 years after the attacks, most victims spoke of lifelong scars. Many showed defiance and testified about not allowing their lives to be defined by these incidents and finding their way to happiness despite the indelible damage left by DeAngelo. Anger simmered throughout the statements. "May he rot in hell," Karen Veilleux said on behalf of her sister Phyllis. Another woman punctuated her statement by calling DeAngelo "subhuman" and aggressively showing him her middle finger. DeAngelo made his plea to avoid the death penalty though the state has a moratorium on executions. One man speaking on behalf of his mother said that effort was futile. "A lot of people might wish to carry out the death penalty themselves, but can't you see? The sentence has already been given. You have been robbed of your entire life, yet you are too stupid to notice," he said.

This isn't the first time leaders have struggled with deciding whether to keep schools open in a pandemic. During the influenza pandemic in 1918, even though the world was a very different place, the discussion was just as heated. That pandemic killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide, including 675,000 Americans, before it was all over, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the vast majority of cities closed their schools, three opted to keep them open -- New York, Chicago and New Haven, according to historians. The decisions of health officials in those cities was based largely on the hypothesis of public health officials that students were safer and better off at school. It was, after all, the height of the Progressive Era, with its emphasis on hygiene in schools and more nurses for each student than is thinkable now. New York had almost 1 million school children in 1918 and about 75% of them lived in tenements, in crowded, often unsanitary conditions, according to a 2010 article in Public Health Reports, the official journal of the US Surgeon General and the US Public Health Service. "For students from the tenement districts, school offered a clean, well-ventilated environment where teachers, nurses, and doctors already practiced — and documented — thorough, routine medical inspections," according to the Public Health Reports. The city was one of the hardest and earliest hit by the flu, said Dr. Howard Markel, a medical historian and director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. He was a co-author of the 2010 Public Health Reports article. "(Children) leave their often unsanitary homes for large, clean, airy school buildings, where there is always a system of inspection and examination enforced," New York's health commissioner at the time, Dr. Royal S. Copeland, told the New York Times after the pandemic had peaked there. Students weren't allowed to gather outside school and had to report to their teacher immediately, according to Copeland. Teachers checked students for any signs of the flu, and students who had symptoms were isolated. If students had a fever, someone from the health department would take them home, and the health official would judge whether the conditions were suitable for "isolation and care," according to Public Health Reports. If not, they were sent to a hospital. "The health department required families of the children recovering at home to either have a family physician or use the services of a public health doctor at no charge," the Public Health Report article said. The argument in Chicago for leaving schools open for its 500,000 students was the same: keeping schools open would keep the children off the streets and away from infected adults, the reasoning went. If social distancing was helpful then, it would have been made easier by the fact that absenteeism in schools soared during the pandemic, perhaps because of what one Chicago public health official called "fluphobia" among parents. "The absentee rate was so great, it really didn't matter" that schools were open, Markel said. Part of Chicago's strategy was to ensure that fresh air was circulated. School rooms were overheated during the winter so that windows could remain open at all times, according to a 1918 paper by the Chicago Department of Health. The paper concluded that an analysis of data showed that "the decision of keeping the schools of this city open during the recent influenza epidemic was justified."

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