NFL players Deandre Baker and Quinton Dunbar are facing armed robbery charges after a cookout in Florida on Wednesday ended with them allegedly stealing thousands of dollars worth of possessions from party guests.
Arrest warrants have been issued in Miramar for Baker, a cornerback for the New York Giants, and Dunbar, who plays corner for the Seattle Seahawks, law enforcement told TMZ on Thursday.
Law enforcement officials claim the two athletes, who are both from Miami, were partying at the cookout where guests were playing cards and video games. Things took a dramatic turn, however, when an argument ensued and Baker allegedly pulled out a semi-automatic firearm.
Jabrill Peppers #21, Oshane Ximines #53 and Deandre Baker #27 of the New York Giants react as a play is being reviewed during their game against the Minnesota Vikings at MetLife Stadium on October 06, 2019 in East Rutherford, New Jersey. (Photo by Emilee Chinn/Getty Images)
Police say Baker and Dunbar then robbed the guests, taking their watches and other valuable items. Baker also allegedly instructed a third man wearing a red mask to shoot a guest who had just walked into the party, but cops say no one was actually shot.
There is also conflicting reports from witnesses, as some told investigators that Baker did not have a gun.
Authorities claim the men got away with $7,000 in cash and several valuable watches including an $18,000 Rolex watch, a $25,000 Hublot, and an Audemars Piguet timepiece.
One witness said they met Baker and Dunbar just a few days before the incident and that the two had gambled away approximately $70,000. Witnesses also told police the men were gambling at the cookout on Wednesday.
Quinton Dunbar #23 of the Washington Redskins looks on during the first half against the New York Jets at FedExField on November 17, 2019 in Landover, Maryland. (Photo by Will Newton/Getty Images)
Some partygoers believe the robbery was planned from the beginning. Police say when the men finally took possession of the valuable belongings, three getaway cars — a Lamborghini, a Mercedes-Benz, and a BMW — arrived to “expedite an immediate departure.”
The Miramar Police Department confirmed to TMZ that both men have warrants out for their arrest, but said neither have been placed in custody. Law enforcement has reportedly been in talks with the football players’ representatives to negotiate a planned surrender.
Baker, 22, was the 30th pick in the 2019 NFL Draft and is expected to start with the Giants this season. Dunbar, who was traded to the Seahawks in March, is also expected to compete for a starter’s position.
The New York Giants issued a statement on behalf of Baker’s alleged involvement in the heist saying, “We are aware of the situation. We have been in contact with Deandre. We have no further comment at this time.”
The COVID-19, or novel coronavirus, pandemic has hit the food and restaurant industry hard with many restauranteurs struggling to keep their businesses afloat under the new stay-at-home restrictions. While the restaurant side of the industry may be on the verge of collapse, it is the polar opposite for supermarkets and other food items sold in local grocery stores. One sector that is particularly thriving under the virus outbreak is vegan food products.
An estimated one billion people worldwide do not eat meat and have removed animal products from their diets. In countries like Germany, the sales of vegetarian and vegan products have increased by 65.3% since 2017. Numerous celebrities such as Nick Cannon have invested in opening vegan restaurants while influencers like Tabitha Brown have found new fame teaching others how to make vegan dishes.
According to a Veganz poll, 95% of participants cited animal welfare as a factor in why they went without animal products while 83.9% also listed environmental reasons as a factor in opting for vegan products.
Since the start of the pandemic, vegan brands have seen a significant increase in sales and product gains. Beyond Meat have increased their sales by 82% since the beginning of the year. Bio Gaia gained 8%. This was during the same period the Dow Jones fell by 15% while the DAX lost 18% of its value.
According to forecasts and new data collected, the sales of vegan meat products worldwide will reach roughly $120 billion within five years. By 2040 that number could rise to $450 billion.
“Manufacturers of vegan products are also increasingly popular on the trading floor,” says cryptoscene analyst Raphael Lulay in a press statement. “Not least due to the food’s reception among consumers. In particular, progress in the field of in-vitro meat production could give an already strong growth trend a further boost.”
Millions of Americans are anxious to get out of the house and get back to work. Yet, no one truly knows what the workforce and the daily routines of going back to work will look like post-COVID-19. As leaders plan and prepare for the unknown, some are opting-in for digital health screening options. But the question remains, will it work as it relates to keeping people safe while on the job? Experts are saying that it might not.
In a recent New York Times piece, experts weighed in on a number of symptom-checking apps and fever-screening cameras that are said to predict sick workers and help flatten the curve. In short, they believe that a number of the devices could violate privacy and produce inaccurate reports.
For the story, The Times followed Subway franchise owner Bob Grewal who has begun screening his employees in Los Angeles. Grewal is using PopID, a facial recognition and fever detection camera service to take temperatures before staffers clock in and records historical health data. Grewal asked employees to check their temperatures four times a day.
“People are going to adjust,” Grewal told the Times. “They’re going to have to understand all the safety precautions that chains have taken.”
As leaders look for solutions to keep their businesses moving forward, experts say that added surveillance might not be as helpful as some might think.
Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota told The New York Times, “I think employers need to look carefully before they jump into any of this. Some companies are embarking upon things that are not going to help and may actually set us back.”
To date, Salesforce and PwC are using similar technologies to help track employees through contact tracing. A number of employers are said to follow suit using similar mapping and surveying efforts to monitor employees based on White House guidelines to re-open America.
Experts believe that mandated health screenings could create a new class system for employment and a number of other issues.
Hank Greely, a professor at Stanford Law School who studies the social implications of new health technologies told the Times, “Do we really want a world where some people can go to work and others can’t based on their immunity status? The people who can’t will say, ‘This is unfair,’ and they’ll be right.”
Others have expressed concern about inaccuracies from infrared technologies that can’t detect sickness in people who are asymptomatic.
Health screenings can change the workforce indefinitely. For that reason, some employers are taking their own health and safety measures so that screening technology doesn’t interfere with how they do business.
For more insight, continue to read the full story on The New York Times.
London railway worker Belly Mujinga died just weeks after a man assaulted her. Mujinga was working at the city’s busy Victoria station when a customer became irate with her. In his aggression, he coughed and spat at her and her coworker on March 22. He then told them that he had coronavirus.
Both Mujinga and the coworker became ill not long after. Mujinga succumbed to the virus on April 5.
A police investigation was launched more than a month later. Railway police are asking for anyone with information about the incident to come forward.
Mujinga’s union, the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, said she was “a vulnerable person” and classified as high risk because of health issues “known to her employer.” Despite her preexisting conditions, Mujinga was reassigned to a more customer-facing role and was not provided with personal protective equipment.
Commuters arrive at London Victoria station. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images)
United Kingdom Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, called Mujinga’s death, “tragic.” He added, “The fact that she was abused for doing her job is utterly appalling.”
The incident has sparked outrage across the United Kingdom and in the United States where other acts of assault and even murder of essential employees have occurred during the coronavirus pandemic.
According to a report by the BBC, the TSSA union wrote a letter to Johnson appealing for more compensation for essential employees who will be dealing with more passengers as the country begins to reopen. “Belly Mujinga was one of many transport workers bravely going to work to keep our country moving through the pandemic and ensuring that other key workers can get to their workplaces.”
The report says that in addition to Mujinga, 42 other railway workers have died in the United Kingdom.
Mujinga leaves behind a husband and an 11-year-old daughter, Ingrid. A GoFundMe campaign to help support her family has raised tens of thousands of pounds. The page was been set up by Victoria staff Representative on behalf of her family.
Gabrielle Deculus began her entrepreneurial journey in 2008 at 19 and has earned herself a reputation for delivering results. For nearly a decade, Deculus has gained experience in branding, marketing, public relations, and social media while keeping people at the center of her work.
Deculus’ latest entrepreneurial accomplishment, Saint Josephine, is a marketing consulting firm for social good. She created this firm to house her brands, serve her clients, and build a space for partnerships to develop. One of the brands—Business Rules for Women (BRFW)—just celebrated a 240,000 milestone, now reaching success-driven women on six different continents. The BRFW online network distributes unique content to over 2 million viewers per month.
BLACK ENTERPRISE had the chance to speak with Deculus about Business Rules For Women, how to pivot your business strategy, and how to successfully execute a fully virtual conference.
BE: What is Business Rules For Women?
Deculus: Business Rules For Women was created for women who are looking to dominate in their careers. The Business Rules For Women platform was founded in April 2015 in Houston, Texas, and currently reaches over 1 million women each month through online content. We have built a global community for a wide range of women totaling just under 250,000 coming from major cities like Atlanta, New York, Houston, Los Angeles, and Lagos.
How were you able to successfully pivot a three-day conference into a virtual conference?
To me, it was all about pivoting this event. People purchased tickets and were traveling from all over to attend this conference so I had to make this happen. After many conversations with my team, volunteers, and mentors I decided that I had to have this conference. Before contacting the attendees I knew that I had to have a solution for them. I was able to work a deal with on-site vendors to transition the physical meeting into a fully virtual conference utilizing the technologies that were available. We were expecting a few hundred attendees so we literally had to pivot every aspect of the conference to the virtual space. We developed a conference app that allowed attendees to check-in at workshops, panels, and health and wellness events that were scheduled. We had a QVC-style business marketplace for our vendors to still take part in the virtual experience. We took the experience of a physical conference and took it virtual.
What key lessons did you take away as a result of having to pivot to a virtual conference?
Information and being a resource is so powerful. This is what this conference really did for us. It solidified the importance of education, and access for people. How can you continue to be a resource for women and men in the community regardless of uncontrollable things happen? Being innovative in the face of uncertainty is possible.
Three pieces of advice you have for entrepreneurs to get through this period of time:
Great companies are built when the rest of the world is in chaos. Be a solution and let people see you as a resource.
This is a time to reconfigure what your business looks like, and what your products and services look like. You may have a product or service that before COVID-19 was positioned for one thing. Now is a great opportunity to possibly re-market and pivot that same product for a solution it provides today.
Invest in yourself. This is a great opportunity to learn new skills and become even more of an expert in an area. There are a lot of free online classes and trainings that are available due to the climate we are in. Take advantage of them.
Frustrated with the lack of diversity featured in children’s puzzle drawings, Matthew Goins knew he had to start his own puzzle company to address that issue. The creation of Puzzle Huddle has led to young children being able to see images of kids that look just like them in the puzzle arena. With the effects of the coronavirus running rampant, forcing schools to close and families to stay at home, the timing has increased sales for Puzzle Huddle.
Goins talked to BLACK ENTERPRISE about how his company is different than most and his life as an entrepreneur.
BE: What motivated you to become an entrepreneur and how has that decision affected your life?
I’ve had a lifelong interest in becoming an entrepreneur. I sold Blow-Pops out of my locker and bookbag in middle school. I’ve also had a lifetime discipline and interest in academic progress through school. My academic and pragmatic career disposition had more influence over my life until recently.
My upbringing in Detroit, then attending Howard University, connected to a peer group of people that are determined to achieve and make a difference in the world. I feel like a part of a generational cohort that know we need to make a difference where we can.
Self-employment has created increased uncertainty and income instability, but it’s one of the most fun and fulfilling things I’ve ever done.
What inspired you to start your children’s puzzle company, Puzzle Huddle and how is business these days?
As my family grew to include three young children, we looked for toys and games that would support their learning. Puzzles are a pretty standard purchase for families with young children, but I was very frustrated with the lack of diversity featured in the puzzle drawings.
We had an unseasonal increase in sales as many school districts suspended class and parents were preparing to have their children at home during the day.
During this coronavirus pandemic, have you seen any type of change in people ordering items from your company?
More families are ordering and we’ve also seen an increased interest in larger, more complex puzzles because students of all ages have been affected by school closures.
What sets Puzzle Huddle apart from other companies that may be similar in theory?
Our puzzles emphasize diversity and career images. Browsing our website we hope people notice the ranges of skin colors, hair textures, and career images. We enjoy hearing from parents and children that believe the puzzle art was drawn to look like them. We started with STEM images and we’ve added public safety careers, art professionals, Bible story characters, and others.
What has entrepreneurship taught you and what advice would you give others seeking to start their own endeavor?
Entrepreneurship requires comfort with risk taking and storytelling. I recognized early that people were interested in the small business journey, so we communicate a storyline around our products and business journey.
A reporter from News4Jax was the first to notice the note. Jenese Harris photographed and tweeted it. She mentioned the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and TMZ in the tweet.
While covering the Ahmaud Arbery case on Tuesday, May 12, I noticed this card. I took a photo of it. I understand this is now a piece of evidence and a part of the investigation. Did the person witness the death? @GBI_GA@TMZpic.twitter.com/WGKksyZCMd
Attorneys for Arbery’s family became aware of the note and released a statement.
“The family of Ahmaud Arbery is very interested in reaching out to the individual who left the heartfelt note at the site of Ahmaud Arbery’s death. They feel great sympathy for the person who wrote that note and would like to speak with them to determine what they knew or what they saw,” the statement read, “If that person would like to confidentially come forward and communicate with the family, they can contact the legal team or reach out directly to Mr. Arbery’s family.”
According to an update by TMZ, Arbery’s family attorney, Lee Merritt, said a picture of the note will be sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. A copy of the picture will be sent to the appropriate investigators within the District Attorney’s office.
The ambiguous note seems to suggest that there is a possible unknown witness to the Feb 23 slaying of Arbery by Gregory and Travis McMichael. Merritt reportedly called the note a “critical piece of evidence.”
The statement from the attorneys continues, “Ahmaud Arbery’s family has been overwhelmed by the well-wishes and expressions of kindness sent to them from people around the world. They would like to extend their sincere thanks to those who have taken the time to send a letter, write an email or honor Mr. Arbery in their own way. Support from family and friends and the kindness of strangers are the only things keeping them going during this incredibly difficult time.”
As the US Chamber of Commerce’s Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Outreach, Rick C. Wade plays a pivotal role in ensuring companies, large and small, take care of business as they grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic.
For two years, he has been busy initiating programs to forge diverse relationships and partnerships for the world’s largest business organization representing 3 million firms. Over the past two months, however, Wade has been in engaged in everything from rallying the business community to lobby Congress to replenish stimulus funding to holding conference calls to help companies put employees back to work.
As a senior adviser to President Obama and Deputy Chief of Staff at Commerce during The Great Recession, the Lancaster, South Carolina, native intimately knows how such crises can devastate black businesses. That’s why he’s spent considerable focus on helping African American entrepreneurs gain access to immediate financial and strategic resources while guiding them to remake their firms for a post-COVID environment.
“There’s nothing more urgent than short-term measures to keep businesses alive. That has to be our No. 1 objective. As we’re doing this, we have to recognize that the American economy is being redesigned and we can’t afford to be left out of that redesign. You got to take the initiative to reboot, reinvent, reimagine,” he asserts, citing healthcare, tech, and global business as prospective entrepreneurial hotspots.
The following are edited excerpts of Black Enterprise’s interview with Wade on today’s unpredictable business environment.
What has been the impact of the COVID-19 environment on your role at the Chamber?
A lot of what I do is making sure that we build an economy that’s diverse and inclusive, not just in terms of workforce, but access to funding and opportunities for African American- and other minority-owned business, and to the extent that we are inclusive in our policy advocacy on Capitol Hill. So the urgency, immediacy, intensity of this work is so important because, as we’ve seen, this pandemic could have a disproportionate and adverse impact on the African American business community as well as other minority communities.
With the second tranche of funding for PPP that started on April 27 and new provisions for financing through Minority Depository Institutions and Community Development Financial Institutions [CDFIs}, have you been encouraged by the availability of capital to black- and minority-owned businesses?
We all are very interested in data and being able to measure the impact of these funds, which we don’t know yet. Due to the provisions of providing the $60 billion to CDFIs and minority depository institutions, credit union, et cetera, these are places where minority enterprises are more likely to have open relationships. So I’ve been hearing encouraging news that that process has been working but that is a first step to what has to be a longer-term investment to make sure that minority enterprises across the country are not left behind.
The recent MetLife -US Chamber study found that only one-third of small businesses have applied or tried to apply for a PPP loan. So what can you do in your role to just encourage more small businesses and minority businesses to apply for the PPP funding?
I think in the short term, we have to consider the outreach that we have been dealing with, literally on a day-to-day basis, to make sure black-owned companies understand the application process and know that they’re eligible. I have been leading calls and been on calls with organizations from fraternities and sororities to faith communities and other organizations trying to get the word out. We’ve also been working closely with one of our partners, the Minority Business Development Agency [MBDA] and their minority business development centers across the country to engage minority firms at every level possible and give them the technical support they need to be successful in the application process.
Wade with members of the Minority Business Development Agency
So how should business owners position their companies post-crisis?
We’ve got to think short term because we have an immediate problem and if we don’t address it my fear is that a lot of minority businesses won’t survive. But we also found that we must think long term and figure out this whole broader access to capital issue, and not just from the lending institutions, but private equity.
One of the areas that I’ve had a lot of experience at the Department of Commerce is following direct investment. How do we look at every piece of capital and build a structure that is a very diverse structure in terms of capital access for black-owned enterprises? What about joint ventures? What about acquisitions? What about new structures for partnerships? Also, reimagining business infrastructure and restructuring how we access capital to do business. There’s going to be a lot of innovations that come out of this new normal world that we live in. I want to make sure that African American businesses are thinking and leaning forward in providing business solutions to these challenges that we are confronted with.
So your message to black business is to do what they need to do to stay alive today but at the same time, focus on what’s going to be the new, new economy?
Yes. There’s going to be the new economy. How can we fit in this new design model of the future? I’ll give you an example. I had a call with barbershops and beauty salons and trying to get them connected because we know how important an important role they play in our social and organizational structure. We are trying to get them connected to PPP and other resources to keep them alive. In reimagining our community, I then ask what is the role of barbershops in terms of healthcare information? There’s a study I found in The New England Journal of Medicine where barbershops were used to convey information about hypertension to black men, coupled with their medication, and there was significant improvement of hypertension among black men.
So when I say lean forward, how can we re-examine and reimagine the businesses that we have to help address some of these underlying structural, historical challenges that have always existed in the black community? And I think that presents opportunities. For example, having pharmacies co-located at churches or in barbershops to give people the ability to access prescription drugs as well as educate them on healthy eating and lifestyles.
So based on your role and what you’re communicating, now is not the time to stand still and look for saviors because in a certain sense, like in every environment, we must be our own cavalry.
That’s right. You got to take it upon yourself, take the imitative to reboot, reinvent, reimagine. And in my role at the largest business organization in the world, I want to support black entrepreneurs and help them create these innovative new approaches. So we have tremendous access. So what are the innovative partnerships that we could create with small and big businesses to help provide solutions that’s a win-win for both small businesses as well as corporate America?
NBA legend and entrepreneur Isiah Thomas and Wade at the AT&T lunch during 2020 NBA All-Star Weekend
We Must have A Seat At The Policymaking Table
One aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it fully communicates the importance for black business owners to be involved in politics and policy, which are the drivers of immediate solutions.
I regularly convene all the diverse chambers—the black, Hispanic and Asian chambers—to get them connected to the policies at the federal level and helping them to adjust as it cascades down to the state and local level., we have to be in the room at the table as policies are being constructed.
That’s one of the big value areas of the Chamber. We’re the voice of business as related to Congress, the state level as related to legislatures, and local level related to city councils. This is where the design concept of policy begins. Our work begins with politics, and it ends with policy and accountability. Oftentimes we vote and think, “That’s it.” We have to make sure we are part of that design of the laws, regulations, and policies being promulgated and the results that come from laws and regulations and policies already implemented. There’s a tremendous gap there.
So in designing this new paradigm, do you believe that black businesses need to make a pivot to global markets?
We’re not in the room during the global conversation, considering that 95% of the world’s consumers live outside the United States. So if we really want to think about how we could peak in the future, we’ve got to think and be global. Oftentimes I’m trying to be a bridge at the Chamber, not just in the United States. The American Chambers of Commerce are in over 120 countries around the world. So our footprint is not just domestic but is also global.
US Chamber President Suzanne Clark, Howard University President Wayne Frederick and Wade with next-gen scholars
Keeping The Diverse Talent Pipeline Flowing
In terms of the current environment, how do you move forward with your next-Gen Initiative and the role of HBCUs?
For the last two summers, I’ve focused on next-gen scholars from HBCUs around the country. That program is really about internships and creating a talent pipeline in hopes that these young people will look at business policy advocacy and working in business, and working in corporate America as a career path. We’re going to continue that in this new virtual world.
The other part is how do we engage HBCU leadership as we develop pathways forward for business in our economy? We hosted last year over 60 HBCU presidents at the Chamber and the conversation about the future of higher education in business. So the role of HBCUs is extremely important as we think about not just the workforce of tomorrow but finding entrepreneurs and solving some of the top challenges that we have in our society. How do we move to research at HBCUs from innovation into commercialization? We ultimately create this inclusive economy. This is a really important partnership. In fact, the first time ever in the history of the Chamber, we have the first president of a university on that board; Howard University President Wayne A.I. Frederick.
What are some examples of how you are engaging HBCUs?
We are looking at how to work with faculty and connect them to some of the policy centers within the Chamber. I recently brought Tuskegee University to participate in our largest summit, the Aviation Summit. We seek to develop a business ecosystem in and around Tuskegee considering they’re one of the largest producers of aerospace engineers. I was thrilled to get them engaged in the summit that included pretty much every CEO of every airline across the industry in America. Whether it is aviation, technology, healthcare or pharmaceutical manufacturing, connectivity to that industry produces opportunities for us to create jobs.
What are some of the other initiatives in which you are focused?
I’m really, really proud of our engagement with the Kellogg Foundation around the Business Case for Racial Equity. Again, this is something I believe demonstrates that the Chamber is leaning in on this issue. Prior to the pandemic, we were having roundtable conversations with business leaders, owners, and stakeholders in Mississippi, New Mexico, and Michigan. I wanted to point that out because we have to deal with racial equity from a business perspective if we’re going to close the equity gap in our economy. Companies will understand that if we close this gap, the economy wins. We look forward to expanding on that in the future.
Another unique program that I put together is called the Business Huddle, convening professional athletes with corporate CEOs and helping them understand how to expand their firms and become more competitive in their businesses. I wanted to mention those things because it gives you a sense of the breadth and depth of the Chamber’s reach. We have an extraordinary footprint where we can be an advocate for diversity, inclusion, asset, equity, capital from all of these different lenses.
Civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump is the latest addition to the legal team representing the family of Breonna Taylor, a26-year-old black EMT worker who was shot eight times by Louisville Metro Police officers in her own apartment, according toUSA Today.
The Taylor family hired Crump, a Tallahassee, Florida-based attorney who is known for his involvement in high-profile cases of black Americans who were killed in controversial shootings, including Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice. Crump has also taken on the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old black man who was shot and killed by two white men in Georgia in late February.
Taylor was shot by Louisville Metro Police officers who had entered her apartment around 1 AM on March 13. Police claim the officers were there to serve a search warrant as part of a narcotics investigation, but there were no drugs found at the EMT’s home.
“We stand with the family of this young woman in demanding answers from the Louisville Police Department,” Crump said. “Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding her death, the department has not provided any answers regarding the facts and circumstances of how this tragedy occurred, nor have they taken responsibility for her senseless killing.”
Crump joins local attorneys Sam Aguiar and Lonita Baker in representing the family. Crump, who called Taylor’s death “inexcusable” said no one from Louisville police has been held accountable for her death.
— Benjamin Crump, Esq. (@AttorneyCrump) May 13, 2020
Taylor’s family filed a lawsuit alleging that police fired more than 20 rounds into her home, striking objects in the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, both bedrooms, and into an adjacent residence where a 5-year-old child and pregnant mother were present.
The lawsuit alleges wrongful death, excessive force, and gross negligence on the part of the police officers. They are seeking compensatory and punitive damages, as well as legal fees through a jury trial.
“Breonna had committed no crime, posed no immediate threat to the safety of the defendants, and did not actively resist or attempt to evade arrest prior to being repeatedly shot and killed by the defendants,” the suit says.
Becoming a lawyer is no easy feat and thousands of dedicated students around the world work tirelessly to gain entrance into a promising law program. For one South African woman, not only did she obtain her law school degree, she proceeded to use her education to open her own law firm all before the age of 30.
At the age of 25, Sne Mthembu became the founder and director of her own law firm, Passcara and Partners Inc., based out of Durban, South Africa. Her focus is on handling cases dealing with family and personal injury law among others.
“I took it as a challenge upon myself to do it. I then decided that no matter what people say I’m going to do this,” she told Power FM. “It was difficult from the point where I started my degree to where I am now. I don’t regret anything.”
Mthembu says she’s confident with her new venture despite the challenges that lie ahead of her. “What is hard in our field is marketing yourself. There is a thin line between marketing and touting. Touting is like when you are asking or begging for clients,” she said. “It makes it hard to market because you don’t want to cross that thin line that the [legal] council has put for us.”
She recently celebrated the huge achievement on her Twitter where she introduced herself as the founder and director. She wrote, “I am to Inspire. If I did it then so can you!!!”
Allow me to Introduce myself. My name is Sinenhlanhla Passcara Mthembu and I am the Founder and Director of Passcara and Partners Incorporated. I am a 25 year old and the owner of this Law Firm.
I am to Inspire. If I did it then so can you!!! #GirlsTalkZApic.twitter.com/fIypgaqTKe
Romania and Singapore don’t seem to have much in common, but they both owe their robust broadband in part to videogame fanatics seeking better connections.
It’s not one thing, it’s everything. Older people are more likely to catch the disease, to suffer from it more severely, and to have a tougher recovery.
How do protons fuse to power the sun? What happens to neutrinos inside a collapsing star after a supernova? How did atomic nuclei form from protons and neutrons in the first few minutes after the Big Bang?
Simulating these mysterious processes requires some extremely complex calculations, sophisticated algorithms, and a vast amount of supercomputing power.
Theoretical physicist William Detmold marshals these tools to “look” into the quantum realm. “Improved calculations of these processes enable us to learn about fundamental properties of the universe,” he says. “Of the visible universe, most mass is made of protons. Understanding the structure of the proton and its properties seems pretty important to me.”
Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest particle accelerator, investigate those properties by smashing particles together and poring over the subatomic wreckage for clues to what makes up and binds together matter.
Detmold, an associate professor in the Department of Physics and a member of the Center for Theoretical Physics and the Laboratory for Nuclear Science, starts instead from first principles — namely, the theory of the Standard Model of particle physics.
The Standard Model describes three of the four fundamental forces of particle physics (with the exception of gravity) and all of the known subatomic particles.
The theory has succeeded in predicting the results of experiments time and time again, including, perhaps most famously, the 2011 confirmation by LHC researchers of the existence of the Higgs boson.
A core focus of Detmold’s research is on “confronting experimental data” from experiments such as the LHC. After devising calculations, running them on multiple supercomputers, and sifting through the enormous quantity of statistics they crank out — a process that can take from six months to several years — Detmold and his team then “take all that data and do a lot of analysis to extract key physics quantities — for example, the mass of the proton, as a numerical value with an uncertainty range.”
“My driving concern in this regard is how will this analysis impact experimental results,” Detmold says. “In some cases, we do these calculations in order to interpret experiments done at the LHC, and ask: Is the Standard Model describing what’s going on there?”
Detmold has made important advances in solving the complex equations of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), a quantum field theory that describes the strong interactions inside of a proton, between quarks (the smallest known constituent of matter) and gluons (the forces that bind them together).
He has performed some of the first QCD calculations of certain particle decays reactions. They have, for the most part, aligned very closely with results from the LHC.
“There are no really stark discrepancies between the Standard Model and LHC results, but there are some interesting tensions,” he says. “My work has been looking at some of those tensions.”
Inspired to ask questions
Detmold’s interest in quantum physics dates to his schoolboy days, growing up in Adelaide, Australia. “I remember reading a bunch of popular science books as a young kid,” he recalls, “and being very intrigued about quarks, gluons, and other fundamental particles, and wanting to get into the mathematical tools to work with them.”
He would go on to earn both his bachelors degree and PhD from the University of Adelaide. As an undergraduate studying mathematics, he encountered a professor who opened his eyes to the mysteries of quantum mechanics. “It was probably the most exciting class I’ve had. And I get to teach that now.”
He’s been teaching that introductory course on quantum mechanics at MIT for a few years now, and he has become adept at spotting those students who are similarly seized by the subject. “In every class there are students you can see the enthusiasm dripping off the page as they write their problem sets. It’s exciting to interact with them.”
While he can’t always bring the full complexity of his research into those conversations, he tries to infuse them with the spirit of his enterprise: how to ask the questions that might yield new insights into the deep structures of the universe.
“You can frame things in ways to inspire students to go into research and push themselves to learn more,” he says. “A lot of teaching is about motivating students to go and find out more themselves, not just information transmission. And hopefully I inspire my students the way my professor inspired me.”
He adds: “With all of us stuck at home or in remote locations, I’m not sure that anyone is feeling particularly inspired right now, but this pandemic will eventually end, and sometimes getting lost in the intricacies of Maxwell’s equations gives a nice break from what is going on in the world.”
Enhancing experiments
When he isn’t teaching or analyzing supercomputer data, Detmold is often helping to plan better experiments.
The Electron-Ion Collider, a facility planned for construction over the next decade at Brookhaven National Lab on Long Island, aims to advance understanding of the internal structure of the proton. Some of Detmold’s calculations are aimed at providing a qualitative picture of the structure of gluons inside the proton, to help the project’s designers know what to look for, in terms of orders of magnitude for detecting certain quantities.
“We can make predictions for what we’ll be seeing if you design it in a certain way,” he says.
Detmold has also become something of an expert at orchestrating complex supercomputing projects. That entails figuring out how to run a huge number of calculations in an efficient way, given the limited availability of supercomputing power and time.
He and his lab members have developed algorithms and software infrastructure to run these calculations on massive supercomputers, some of which have different types of processing units that make data management complicated. “It’s a research project in its own right, how to perform those calculations in a way that’s efficient.”
Indeed, Detmold spends time working on how improve methods for getting to the answer. New algorithms, he says, are a key to advancing computation to tackle new problems, calculating nuclear structures and reactions in the context of the Standard Model.
“Let’s say there’s a quantity we want to compute, but with the tools we have at the moment it takes 10,000 years of running a massive supercomputer,” he says. “Coming up with a new way to calculate something that actually makes it possible to do — that’s exciting.”
Inspiring interest in the unknown
But fundamental mysteries are still at the center of Detmold’s work. As quarks and gluons get farther apart from each other, the strength of their interactions increases. To understand what’s happening in these low-energy states, he has advanced the use of a computational technique known as lattice quantum chromodynamics (LQCD), which places the quantum fields of the quarks and gluons on a discretized grid of points to represent space-time.
In 2017, Detmold and colleagues made the first-ever LQCD calculations of the rate of proton-proton fusion — the process by which two protons fuse together to form a deuteron.
This process kicks off the nuclear reactions that power the sun. It’s also exceedingly difficult to study through experiments. “If you try to smash together two protons, their electric charges mean they don’t want to be near each other,” says Detmold.
“It shows where this field can go,” he says of his team’s breakthrough. “It’s one of the simplest nuclear reactions, but it opens the doorway to saying we can address these directly from the Standard Model. We’re trying to build upon this work and calculate related reactions.”
Another recent project involved using LQCD to study the formation of nuclei in the universe its earliest moments. As well as looking at these processes for the actual universe, he’s performed computations that change certain parameters — the masses of quarks and how strongly they interact — in order to “predict” how the reactions of Big Bang nucleosynthesis might have happened and how much they might have affected the evolution of the universe.
“These calculations can tell you how likely it is to end up producing universes like the one we see,” Detmold says.
The research described in this article has been published as a working paper but has not yet been peer-reviewed by experts in the field.
When hospitals face ventilator shortages during the Covid-19 crisis, they often rely on state policies to determine which patients are assigned the equipment. In Michigan, for example, medical personnel who get sick have priority for ventilators. Many other states determine patient priority from a formula using a patient’s prognosis and age.
Those rules address tough decisions, but as constituted they also raise questions about equity, since these policies prioritize particular groups — such as health care workers and younger patients. A new working paper co-authored by an MIT professor offers an alternative design: a “reserve system” that would allocate medical resources among multiple groups at the same time, rather than applying a single set of criteria to all patients.
“The overwhelming majority of states use a single-dimension priority points system to allocate ventilators,” says MIT economist Parag Pathak, an expert in designing markets that allocate nonfinancial goods. “Instead of requiring a single score for all units, we suggest what we call reserve categories, where for [only] a portion of units, we use one such priority ordering.” With such an approach, he adds, “You never run into this situation where [one group] either gets all of the ventilators, or they get none of them.”
The principles behind the reserve system need not only apply to ventilators, notes Pathak. Looking ahead to the full trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic, the concept also relates to the distribution of tests, therapeutic treatments, and vaccines — any medical resource where demand exceeds supply.
The paper, “Leaving No Ethical Value Behind: Triage Protocol Design for Pandemic Rationing,” appears in the National Bureau of Economic Research working paper series. In addition to Pathak, the authors are Boston College economics professors Tayfun Sönmez, Utku Unver, and Bumin Yenmez.
Capacity constraints
In many cases, the Covid-19 virus attacks the lungs, making breathing difficult and necessitating the use of ventilators for some patients. As of March 2020, the U.S. had somewhere between 72,000 and 82,000 ventilators available, but some hospitals have had shortages, and even with increased ventilator production, there may be more shortages ahead.
Several states had already developed their own ventilator-use policies, prior to the pandemic. Michigan crafted its rules in 2012. In New York, a 2015 ventilator task force built a policy that has been largely adopted by California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania.
The New York policy uses the “SOFA” score — the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment — to rate the short-term health of six organ systems in patients on a scale from 1 to 4, with a lower score being better. The New York system takes this initial SOFA score, then adds scores for the long-term prognosis for a patient (based on their co-morbidities), and the patient’s age. Patients with the lowest overall scores receive ventilators; everyone is reassessed every 48 hours. This is the system many hospitals have been using during the Covid-19 crisis.
The SOFA-based approach has the benefit of simplicity, though its formula is necessarily somewhat arbitrary. But this is hardly the only approach that could be used in these situations. Some patients’ rights advocates could contend that all patients should simply be treated equally, meaning that no health-based criteria should be used. By contrast, Michigan-style policies are determinedly “instrumental” in nature: By prioritizing health care workers, the aim is to save people who could help save even more lives.
The researchers say in the paper they are taking a “middle-ground approach,” by emphasizing that a state can, in effect, combine the other approaches. A state could have one ventilator reserve for the general public, one for frontline health care workers, one for patients who need ventilators due to non-Covid-19 illnesses, or use additional categories.
Pathak says he is “agnostic” about what the range of categories should exist, but underlines that a blend of priorities is preferable to a one-size-fits-all system.
“The reason some of these rationing guidelines have constrained themselves in what values they can entertain is because of the allocation mechanism,” Pathak says. “Whenever you write down a guideline like this, it’s a statement about what values are important, and really, in a nutshell, about whose life matters more. This is why we think our proposal is compelling. If you are excluding certain values just because of the allocation mechanism, what kind of message is that sending?”
Rewards for Good Samaritans?
To be sure, the researchers explain in the paper, the specifics of the “reserve system” approach do matter. The definitions of reserve-system categories could either be overlapping or exclusive, for example: Are medical personnel only eligible for a group of ventilators reserved for them, or are they also eligible for ventilators assigned to the rest of the general public?
Moreover, the order in which the particular ventilator reserves are assigned can affect the overall distribution of the devices. Suppose a state deems medical personnel to be eligible for two different ventilator reserves — those for the general public and those reserved just for health care workers. If the ventilators assigned to the general public are deployed first, medical workers will end up having access to more ventilators than if their own supply was tapped into first, as the researchers detail in the paper.
Such principles have been explored in past research by all the co-authors, including Sönmez, who Pathak calls a “heroic figure in the field” of market-design principles.
Given the time frame in which the pandemic is unfolding, and the many areas in which the reserve system can be applied, the research hope their work will begin to inform public officials and policmakers by the time, say, effective therapeutics for Covid-19 become more prevalent.
“The idea is to try to take the current [ventilator] crisis and make progress in other areas,” Pathak says. “We’re quite interested in trying to get this deployed and have it be part of rationing guidelines.”
It’s something the man himself would likely have approved of as the Prince estate announced today that Prince’s 1985 concert from the Syracuse stop on his iconic “Purple Rain” tour will be part of a COVID-19 charity effort, reports Variety.
The three-day streaming event Prince and the Revolution: Live will be posted to Prince’s official YouTube page from Friday, May 14 through 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, May 17.
(Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
The concert video will benefit the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization which is supported by the UN Foundation and Swiss Philanthropy Foundation.
According to the Variety report, for every dollar donated, Google will match it with $2 up to $5M.
A Thursday night watch party is planned with Revolution drummer Bobby Z on hand for a pre-watch chat moderated by public radio host Andrea Swensson, who does most of the Prince coverage for Minnesota public radio’s The Current.
The concert was one of the last stops on the “Purple Rain” tour and took place on March 30th, 1985. The concert was included as a DVD on the “1999 Super Deluxe” album release. You can see the concert setlist HERE.
During his lifetime, Prince contributed to a number of charitable causes, many of them that were specific to African-Americans from Black Lives Matter to Harlem Children’s Zone. He also donated to #YesWeCode an initiative that teaches coding to underprivileged young people of color.
Prince performs at the Conga Room L.A. Live on March 29, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
In 2015, during the Baltimore uprising after the death of Freddy Gray, Jr. Prince performed a ‘Rally 4 Peace” benefit concert at the city’s Royal Farms Arena with a portion of the proceeds earmarked for youth charities. He also recorded the song “Baltimore” which is on his “Hit and Run Phase 2” release, which would be his last.
According to the Baltimore Sun, at the show, Prince told the crowd: “The system is broken. It’s going to take the young people to fix it this time. We need new ideas, new life. … The next time I come to Baltimore I want to stay in a hotel owned by you.”
Earlier this month two men in Los Angeles were arrested for assaulting a Target security guard after they were asked to leave the store for refusing to wear face masks. Now it appears they may have broken the employee’s arm during the scuffle.
According to a press release Monday, on May 1st, two men, later identified as Phillip Hamilton, 31, and Paul Hamilton, 29 — entered a Target in the Van Nuys area shortly after 10 a.m. local time. They were immediately approached for failing to follow the statewide rule to wear a mask in retail stores.
As the two men were being escorted out of the building one of the suspects “without provocation, turned and punched a store employee, causing him and the suspect to fall to the floor,” the release read.
Police have confirmed the guard broke his arm when hitting the ground and there is surveillance video from the store which shows the suspects being escorted out of the store just moments before unleashing their attack.
The footage shows both the guard and his attacker hitting the ground as another member of the security team rushed to help, only to also be dragged down to the floor. Once the altercation escalated into a full out brawl, two more people rushed over to attempt to break up the fight.
The Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics were ultimately called to the scene to take the injured guard to a local hospital. According to CNN, later that same day the two suspects were arrested on felony battery charges with their bail each set at $50,000. Both men have since made bail and been released.
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Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear on Thursday called for the federal investigation of the Louiseville police shooting of EMT worker Breonna Taylor.
In an official statement shared by his Twitter account, Gov. Beshear said “The public reports concerning the death of Breonna Taylor are troubling. Her family and the public at large deserve the full facts regarding her death.”
— Governor Andy Beshear (@GovAndyBeshear) May 13, 2020
Beshear, who is former attorney general, said prosecutors at the local, state and federal level “should carefully review the results of the initial investigation.” He also noted that doing so is important because “many are concerned that justice is not blind.”
The Democratic governor joins a growing number of community members and activists who have called for Taylor’s home shooting on March 13 to be investigated. Taylor, 26, was shot 8 times by police during what her family in a lawsuit called “a botched” raid at her apartment.
Breonna Taylor is pictured in an undated photo. (Credit: Instagram/@keyanna.guifarro)
Police allege they opened fire after Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Walker, 27, fired a shot in what he said was in self-defense. The police reacted by firing more than 20 shots into the home. Taylor, a qualified EMT who worked at two local hospitals, died at the scene.
“Shots were blindly fired by the officers all throughout Breonna’s home,” Taylor family claims in a lawsuit. “Breonna had posed no threat to the officers and did nothing to deserve to die at their hands.”
Ben Crump, the powerful civil rights attorney, stated what he believed happened that fateful day.
“There are witnesses who are her neighbors … nobody heard the police announcing themselves,” Crump said. “This was a botched execution of a search warrant where they already had the person they were searching for in custody.”
Crump, who is also serving as counsel for the Ahmaud Arbery family, has continued to seek justice and bring awareness to Taylor’s death. He told the New York Daily News on Tuesday that he is demanding the release of the 911 tape.
“We’re asking that they release the 911 call and release the warrant,” Crump said Tuesday. “This family wants to know the honest truth, how police could execute an innocent, beautiful young lady whose mother says was one of the brightest lights in the world. She loved helping people.”
Crump also took issue with Walker being arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder on a police officer as LMPD Sgt. John Mattingly was struck in the leg. Crump insisted that Walker was a licensed gun permit who acted within his rights.
theGrio’s Stephanie Guerilus contributed to this report.
