Lora DiCarlo said her company’s robotic vibrator, the Osé, would redefine the market. But her hyped-up personal brand would be the real master stroke.
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Friday, October 16, 2020
Hotels on demand: Operators are selling 'subscriptions' to lure back visitors
InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott and Accor are among the major names that have launched or are considering monthly payment plans, as the hotel industry tries to attract restless remote workers ready for a change of scene.
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Get a Lifetime of Language Learning with Rosetta Stone at a Limited Time Discount
Language learning isn’t exclusively done in adolescence or through required credits in school, and honestly, it shouldn’t be. Becoming multilingual can benefit you immensely and doesn’t have to be too difficult whenever you decide to start. Maybe you’ve been trying to connect with your family’s first language, are aiming to become bilingual to better teach, or you’re prepping for a future trip—no matter the circumstance, Rosetta Stone has you covered with a pretty great deal.
Right now, you don’t need to commit to choosing just one language or experience level to purchase on your road to becoming multilingual. Rosetta Stone is giving you the opportunity to be a little indecisive and have access to ALL 24 of their language offerings for life. The programs are intuitive, and offer an immersive training method to get you reading, writing, and speaking new languages like a natural in no time.
The award-winning software will guide you through speech-recognition technology that analyzes the words you say 100 times per second. So, you know you’ll get the attention and detail you want, but through an easy at-home platform. You will also match words to visuals, so for those visual learners, you’ll appreciate the features designed for memory enhancement. The bundle allows you to learn one language at a time, but you’ll have access to all 24 for as long as you need, so you can build your repertoire.
You’ll also get lifetime access to 12min Microlibrary, a growing collection of books and audiobooks you can read (or listen to) in under 15 minutes, and a lifetime subscription to top-rated virtual private network (VPN) KeepSolid, which will keep your data safe while you browse online.
Originally $744, the Social Distancing Lifetime Subscription Bundle from Rosetta Stone is now on sale for $199. That’s a 73% discount.
Sponsored Content
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Thursday, October 15, 2020
Tennis pro Taylor Townsend announces pregnancy: ‘I’m so excited’
‘I’m so excited to embark on the journey of motherhood!’
Tennis pro Taylor Townsend took to social media this week to announce she is expecting her first child.
“BIG ANNOUNCEMENT,” Townsend, 24, wrote in an Instagram post. “Life has a funny way of putting you exactly where you are supposed to be. I’m so excited to embark on the journey of motherhood!!”
The exiciting news accompanied a video showing some of the highlights of her career so far. Check out the clip via the Instagram embed below.
Read More: Kelly Rowland announces she’s pregnant with second child
“At four years old I was told I would never make it and I should quit. At 12 I became the youngest-ever to win the Georgia state qualifier,” said Townsend in a voice-over. “At 15, I didn’t think I was good enough, but I proved myself wrong by winning the junior Australian open in singles and in doubles,” she continued.
“I kept fighting, I kept playing. In 2012, at sixteen, I became world number one junior, but when I was due to go to the US Open the USTA told me to stay home because I was not fit to play. I kept fighting, I kept playing. I reached the quarterfinals in singles and I won in doubles,” said Townsend.
“2015 I reached the third round at Roland Garros and entered the top 100. I kept fighting, I kept playing. In 2019 I shocked the tennis world by defeating the world number three and reaching the round of 16. For all my life, for all I heard my career say ‘you can’t’, ‘you won’t make it’ and I used it to find the motivation to continue playing,” she added.
Read More: ‘RHOP’ star Ashley Darby pregnant with second child
The clip continues with Townsend gushing about her journey into motherhood and showing off her baby bump.
“My entire life, my entire career, I’ve heard you can’t, you won’t and I’ve used it as a reason to fight hard and as motivation to keep playing,” she said. “I’m sure this won’t be any different, so I’ll have to prove them wrong again.
Townsend’s baby is due in March, which means she played in the 2020 U.S. Open while pregnant. She competed in both the singles and doubles tournaments.
Her Instagram bio has been updated to read “mom to be.”
She’s currently ranked 90th in the Women’s Tennis Association rankings.
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Designing off-grid refrigeration technologies for crop storage in Kenya
For smallholder farmers living in hot and arid regions, getting fresh crops to market and selling them at the best price is a balancing act. If crops aren’t sold early enough, they wilt or ripen too quickly in the heat, and farmers have to sell them at reduced prices. Selling produce in the morning is a strategy many farmers use to beat the heat and ensure freshness, but that results in oversupply and competition at markets and further reduces the value of the produce sold. If farmers could chill their harvests — maintaining cool temperatures to keep them fresh for longer — then they could bring high-quality, fresh produce to afternoon markets and sell at better prices. Access to cold storage could also allow growers to harvest more produce before heading to markets, making these trips more efficient and profitable while also expanding consumers’ access to fresh produce.
Unfortunately, many smallholder farming communities lack access to the energy resources needed to support food preservation technologies like refrigeration. To address this challenge, an MIT research team funded by a 2019 seed grant from the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) is combining expertise in mechanical engineering, architecture, and energy systems to design affordable off-grid cold storage units for perishable crops. Three MIT principal investigators are leading this effort: Leon Glicksman, professor of building technology and mechanical engineering in the Department of Architecture; Daniel Frey, a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the faculty director for research at MIT D-Lab; and Eric Verploegen, a research engineer at MIT D-Lab. They are also collaborating with researchers at the University of Nairobi to study the impact of several different chamber designs on performance and usability in Kenya. Together, they are looking to develop a cost-effective large-scale cooperative storage facility that uses the evaporative cooling properties of water to keep harvests fresher, longer.
Evaporative cooling
Evaporative cooling involves the energy dynamics of the phase change of water from its liquid state into its gas state. Simply put, when dry air moves across a saturated surface such as a container full of water, the water molecules absorb a large amount of heat as they change from liquid to gas, cooling the surrounding air. Evaporative cooling isn’t a new concept. People have been leveraging this property of water to cool buildings and keep harvests fresh for thousands of years. Today, in many arid regions, people use a double clay pot system to harness the evaporative cooling process to prolong the freshness of fruit and vegetables. Known as a pot-in-pot cooler or Zeer pot, the space between a larger and smaller ceramic pot is filled with sand and kept wet. As water evaporates through the vessel walls, it lowers the temperature of the inner chamber.
However, while clay pot coolers can be effective for individual household use, they are limited by their storage capacity. Some larger-scale produce storage strategies that use evaporative cooling exist and are in use in Kenya and other countries and arid regions. In fact, Verploegen has focused his research at MIT D-Lab on evaporative cooling technologies since 2016, resulting in the production of several designs currently at the pilot stage.
Yet size still remains a challenge. Few designs exist today that are large enough to effectively store several metric tons of produce and that satisfy important criteria like ease of construction, quality of performance, and affordability, which would meet the storage needs for larger harvests or groups of farmers. Designs exist for solar-powered mechanical refrigeration; however, the costs associated with the energy, implementation, and maintenance of these units is prohibitive to many smallholder farmers around the world. Teaming up with Frey and Gliskman for this J-WAFS-funded effort, the group is aiming to address this lack of access. “For us, the questions became, ‘How can we scale evaporative cooling techniques and improve upon the existing ways that people have been using it for centuries?’” Glicksman reflects. With this in mind, the team set out to find a solution.
Sustainability as a design throughline
Initially the team’s focus was on improving the performance of existing cooling chamber technologies. “We worked with local folks [in Kenya] and built some of the more traditional designs that use charcoal,” says Verploegen. “However, what we found was that these efforts were very labor-intensive, time-consuming, and overall not very replicable.” Building on the ongoing user research performed by teams at the University of Nairobi and MIT D-Lab, the researchers have been exploring different kinds of materials for the structure, and settled on shipping containers as the basis for the chamber.
As it turns out, the height and width of a shipping container meets the dimension specifications of users’ requirements. Plus, using shipping containers provides the opportunity to up-cycle existing, used materials. “I’m always checking out where used shipping containers are available and checking prices in various countries for our cost model,” Verploegen admits. So, in their current design, they retrofitted a shipping container with a double-layered insulating wall, a solar-powered fan to force air through a central matrix of wet pads, and interior storage crates arranged to maximize convection and cooling rates and ease of use.
This design is informed by several analytical models that the research team continues to develop. The models evaluate the effect that different evaporative cooling materials, arrangements of produce storage crates, and exterior insulating materials have on the efficiency and functionality of the cooling chamber. These models help maximize cooling capabilities while minimizing water and energy usage, and also inform decisions on material choices.
One such decision was the transition away from wetted charcoal as an evaporative cooling medium. Charcoal is commonly used as a cooling membrane material, but the release of CO2 during the burn-treatment process and subsequent negative environmental effects made it less attractive to the team. Currently, they are experimenting with plant-based aspen fiber and corrugated cellulose pads, which are both a cost-effective and environmentally sustainable solution. Lastly, the team has installed a solar-powered electronic control system that allows farmers to automate the chamber’s fan and water pumps, increasing efficiency and minimizing maintenance requirements.
Collaborating overseas
Critical to the research project’s development is collaboration with researchers at the University of Nairobi (UON) in Kenya. Professor Jane Ambuko, a leading horticulturist at UON in the Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection, is well-versed in post-harvest technologies. In addition to her expert knowledge on crop physiology and the effects of cooling on produce, Ambuko is well-connected within the local Kenyan farming community and has provided the team with critical introductions to local farmers willing to test out the team’s chamber prototypes. Another collaborator, Duncan Mbuge, an agricultural engineer in the UON Department of Environmental and Biosystems Engineering, has been able to provide insight into the design, construction, and materials selection for the cooling chambers.
The project has also involved exchange between MIT D-Lab and UON students, and this collaboration has opened up additional avenues for both institutions to work together. “The exchange of ideas [with MIT] has been mutually beneficial,” says Mbuge, “the net result has been an overall improvement in the technology.” The two professors, along with their research students, have continued monitoring and managing the pilot structure built in Kenya. “Together, with expertise from the MIT team, we complete each other,” adds Ambuko.
“The researchers at UON have a whole history and institutional knowledge of challenges that previously tried designs have come up against in real-world contexts,” Verploegen says, adding this has been essential to moving the MIT designs from concept to practice. Farmers have also played a major role in shaping the design and implementation of this technology. Following the D-Lab model, the MIT and UON research teams worked together to run a number of interviews and focus groups in farming communities in order to learn directly from users about their needs. The farmers in these communities have important insights into how to design a practical and effective cooling chamber that is suitable for use by farming cooperatives. Given that it will have more than one user, farmers have asked for a crate-stacking arrangement that will allow for easy inventory management. Farmers have pointed out additional benefits of the evaporative cooling chambers. “We have been told that these containers can also provide special protection from rodents,” Frey explains, “that turns out to be a very important for the farmers that we’re working with.”
Potential impacts
Overall, the team’s models indicate that a standard 40-foot-long shipping container outfitted as an evaporative cooler will be able to store between 6,500-8,000 kilograms of produce. The cost of constructing the chamber will likely be $7,000-$8,000, which, compared to mechanically refrigerated options of a similar size, offers over a 50 percent reduction in cost, making this new design very lucrative for farming cooperatives. One of the ways the team is keeping the production costs down is by using local materials and a centralized manufacturing strategy. “We are of the mindset that building a technology of this size and complexity centrally and then distributing it locally is the best way to make it accessible and affordable for these communities,” Verploegen says.
There are many benefits to making technologies accessible to and replicable by members of specific communities. Collaborative development is a cornerstone of D-Lab’s work, the academics and research program that Verploegen and Frey are a part of. “At D-Lab, we're interested in planting the idea that community involvement is critical in order to adapt technological solutions to people’s needs and to maximize their use of the resulting solution,” says Frey. While an emphasis on co-creation is expected to result in community buy-in for their cooling solution, centralized manufacturing and construction of the containers is an additional strategy aimed at ensuring the accessibility and affordability of the technology for the communities they aim to serve.
While the current design has been developed for farmers near Nairobi in Kenya, these evaporative cooling devices could be deployed in a host of other regions in Kenya, as well as parts of West Africa and regions of western India such as Rajasthan and Gujarat. Verploegen, who is also leading a related J-WAFS-funded effort on evaporative cooling through the J-WAFS Grant for Water and Food Projects in India, is developing designs for crop storage for farms in western India. He says that “the scale of need is what determines what kind of evaporative cooling technology a community might need.” His work in India is focused on helping to disseminate technologies that are smaller and constructed at the location where they will be used, using brick and sand. He is also “helping to make them more efficient and improving the design to best fit local needs.”
Ultimately, the research team’s goal is to make their evaporative cooling chamber something that local farming communities will consistently use and benefit from. To do this, they have to “come up with not only the MIT solution, but a solution that the people on the ground find is the best for them,” says Glicksman. They hope that this technology will not only help producers economically, but that it will also enable widespread food storage and preservation capabilities, allowing better access for populations to fresh produce.
To read more about this work, visit the project site via J-WAFS.
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Rudy Giuliani’s daughter endorses Biden, slams dad and Trump in op-ed
‘I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name.’
Caroline Giuliani, the daughter of Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, has endorsed Joe Biden for president.
In a new Vanity Fair essay on Thursday, Giuliani notes that “the only way to end this nightmare is to vote.”
Giuliani, 31, and her father, 76, the former mayor of New York, are divided when it comes to politics. In her essay, she describes him as a “polarizing mayor who became the president’s personal bulldog,” and calls Trump’s four years in the White House a “reign of terror.”
Read More: Rudy Giuliani warns ‘Black Lives Matter wants to take your house’
“I accept that most people will start reading this piece because you saw the headline with my father’s name. But now that you’re here, I’d like to tell you how urgent I think this moment is,” she writes.
“Trump and his enablers have used his presidency to stoke the injustice that already permeated our society, taking it to dramatically new, Bond-villain heights,” says Giuliani, a self described “filmmaker in the LGBTQ+ community who tells stories about mental health, sexuality, and other stigmatized issues.”
She admits in the essay that she and her father “are multiverses apart, politically and otherwise.”
“I’ve spent a lifetime forging an identity in the arts separate from my last name, so publicly declaring myself as a ‘Giuliani’ feels counterintuitive,” she writes, “but I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now. The stakes are too high.”
In her social media bio, Giuliani, who voted for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, calls herself a “LIBERAL, obviously.”
“If being the daughter of a polarizing mayor … has taught me anything, it is that corruption starts with “yes-men” and women, the cronies who create an echo chamber of lies and subservience to maintain their proximity to power,” she says in the Vanity Fair piece.
Read More: Rudy Giuliani: Dead people generally vote for Democrats, rather than Republicans
“In 2016, I realized I needed to speak out in a more substantial way than just debating my dad in private (especially since I wasn’t getting anywhere with that), so I publicly supported Hillary Clinton and began canvassing for congressional candidates,” Giuliani shares.
“I may not be able to change my father’s mind, but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office,” she writes. “It’s taken persistence and nerve to find my voice in politics, and I’m using it now to ask you to stand with me in the fight to end Donald Trump’s reign of terror.”
Giuliani concludes by urging voters to “elect a compassionate and decent president.”
“I fully understand that some of you want a nominee who is more progressive,” she writes. “Biden wasn’t my first choice when the primaries started. But I know what is at stake, and Joe Biden will be everyone’s president if elected.”
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Willow Smith says she, Jaden felt ‘shunned’ by Black community
‘Even some of our family members, I would feel they thought, ‘You’re too different.’
As the offspring of Hollywood royalty, Willow Smith and her brother Jaden Smith rock to a different beat, which has stirred up controversy and criticism over their self-expression.
By the time she was a teenager, Willow was a rock star thanks to her 2010 hit single “Whip My Hair.” The song went platinum and topped the U.S. charts at number 11. At age 15, Jaden was allowed to move into his own home as part of his journey toward independence.
Their superstar parents, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett-Smith, have caught plenty of heat over their parenting style. Willow says the fiercest backlash she and her eccentric sibling have received has come from the Black community, ABC News reports.
Read More: Willow Smith responds to Jada Pinkett Smith’s ‘entanglement’ with August Alsina
“With the African American community, I kind of felt like me and Jaden were shunned a little bit,” she said Tuesday on her mother’s Facebook Watch series Red Table Talk.
The 19-year-old singer admitted to Jada and grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Norris that she felt the Black community refused to “take pride” in her and Jaden because they’re “too weird.”
“Even some of our family members, I would feel they thought, ‘You’re too different,’” she said in the episode.
Jada shared that she has been mom-shamed over the freedom she and Will allow their children to to have.
“It’s something that we as a community really have to learn how to let go of,” Jada explained. “I know that people felt like: ‘It’s dangerous. You cannot afford to raise your children this way because it’s dangerous. You know what it’s like to be a Black or brown person in this world. You are doing your kids a disservice.'”
Read More: Will and Jada staged intervention for son Jaden after drastic weight loss
Meanwhile, Willow recently penned a personal essay for Vogue in which she unpacks her relationship with social media amid the COVID crisis.
“When you’re forced to be with your thoughts, be by yourself, it can be scary and uncomfortable. I feel that every day. But I also feel the need to ask myself, ‘Why am I so uncomfortable?’ ‘Where are these thoughts coming from?’ ‘Why can’t I just sit by myself and feel at peace and at home?’ It’s been about digging into those questions in a way that we wouldn’t get to do, if it weren’t for the time we’ve had to reflect this year,” she wrote.
Adding, “If we’re given the opportunity to hang out with friends or go to a party, most people would rather do that than take time to sit and hash out those demons and insecure feelings. I feel like a lot of people, including myself, have been given that opportunity during quarantine.”
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Trump, Biden go at it — from a distance — in town halls
The presidential candidates strike differences in temperament, views on racial justice, and approaches to the pandemic.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden squared off, in a way, Thursday night, their scuttled second debate replaced by dueling televised town halls that showcased striking differences in temperament, views on racial justice and approaches to the pandemic that has reshaped the nation.
Trump was defensive about his administration’s handling of the coronavirus, which has claimed more than 215,000 American lives, and evasive when pressed about whether he took a required COVID-19 test before his first debate with Biden. Angry and combative, he refused to denounce the QAnon conspiracy group —and only testily did so on white supremacists.
Read More: Trump refuses to condemn white supremacy, tells Proud Boys to ‘stand by’
The president also appeared to acknowledge he was in debt and left open the possibility that some of it was owed to a foreign bank. He insisted that he didn’t owe any money to Russia or any “sinister people” and suggested that being $400 million in debt was a “very very small percentage” compared to his overall assets.
Biden, appearing nearly 1,200 miles away, denounced the White House’s handling of the virus, declaring that it was at fault for closing a pandemic response office established by the Obama administration in which he served. Though vague at times, he acknowledged it was a mistake to support a 1994 crime bill that led to increased Black incarceration and suggested he finally will offer clarity on his position on expanding the Supreme Court if Trump’s nominee to the bench is seated before Election Day.
Trump, less than two weeks after being diagnosed with COVID-19, dodged directly answering whether he took a test the day of the Sept. 29 debate, only saying “possibly I did, possibly I didn’t.” Debate rules required that each candidate, using the honor system, had tested negative prior to the Cleveland event, but Trump spoke in circles when asked when he last tested negative.
It was his positive test two days later that created Thursday’s odd spectacle, which deprived most viewers of a simultaneous look at the candidates just 19 days before Election Day. The moment seemed fitting for a race unlike any other, as yet another campaign ritual changed by the pandemic that has rewritten the norms of society.
The presidential rivals took questions in different cities on different networks: Trump on NBC from Miami, Biden on ABC from Philadelphia. Trump backed out of plans for the presidential faceoff originally scheduled for the evening after debate organizers said it would be held virtually following his COVID-19 diagnosis.
Read More: Trump vows not to participate in virtual debate with Biden
The town halls offered a different format for the two candidates to present themselves to voters, after the pair held a chaotic and combative first debate late last month. The difference in the men’s tone was immediate and striking.
Trump was Trump. He was loud and argumentative, fighting with the host, Savannah Guthrie, complaining about the questioning — and eventually saying for the first time that he would honor the results of a fair election, but only after casting an extraordinary amount doubt on the likeliness of fairness.
“And then they talk ’Will you accept a peaceful transfer,'” Trump said. “And the answer is, ‘Yes, I will.’ But I want it to be an honest election, and so does everybody else.”
He again sought to minimize revelations from a New York Times investigation that he has more than $400 million in debt and suggested that reports are wrong that he paid little or no federal income taxes in most years over the past two decades. He insisted that Americans should not be alarmed by his debt and repeatedly insisted that he is “underleveraged.”
“It’s a tiny percentage of my net worth,” Trump said of his reported debt. But he left open the possibility that some of his debt is owed to a foreign bank by saying. “No, I don’t owe Russia money. I owe a very, very small, it’s called mortgages.”
Biden meanwhile, took a far different, softer, approach with audience questions. The former vice president, who struggled growing up with a stutter, stuttered slightly at the start of the program and at one point squeezed his eyes shut and slowed down his response to clearly enunciate his words. At times his answers droned on.
Dressed in a blue suit and holding a white cloth mask in one hand, the Democratic nominee also brought a small card of notes on stage and referred to it while promising to roll back tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. He said doing so would save, as he consulted his notes, “let me see… $92 billion.”
Biden vowed to say before Election Day whether he will support expanding the number of justices on the Supreme Court if Democrats win the presidency, the Senate and hold the House after November.
Read More: Harris slams GOP for trying to ‘jam through’ Supreme Court nominee at hearing
He has for weeks refused to answer the question but went further Thursday night. He said, “I’m still not a fan” of expanding the court, but that his ultimate decision depended on how the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court “is handled” and “how much they rush this.”
Biden also blasted Trump’s foreign policy, declaring that “’America first’ has made ‘America alone’” and “This president embraces all the thugs in the world.” He turned introspective when asked what it would say if he lost.
“It could say that I’m a lousy candidate, that I didn’t do a good job,” Biden said. “But I think, I hope that it doesn’t say that we’re as racially, ethnically and religiously at odds as it appears the president wants us to be.”
Biden said he plans to participate in next week’s debate but that he would ask Trump to take a COVID-19 test before arriving. “It’s just decency” for everyone around him, including non-candidates like camera operators, Biden said.
The two men are still scheduled to occupy the same space for a debate for a second and final time next week in Nashville. But the cancellation of Thursday’s debate still reverberated for both campaigns.
Trump and Biden battled on Sept. 29 in Cleveland in a debate defined both by the president’s constant hectoring of his opponent, which sent his support lower, and by its place on the calendar: just two days before Trump announced he had tested positive for coronavirus.
Trump was hospitalized for three days, and while he later convalesced at the White House the debate commission moved to make their second debate remote — which the president immediately rejected.
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ESPN Atlanta Falcons reporter Vaughn McClure dies at 48
The Chicago native was found dead at his home near Atlanta.
ESPN NFL reporter Vaughn McClure died this week at age 48.
His cause of death has not yet been revealed. The company confirmed Thursday that the Chicago native was found dead at his home near Atlanta.
McClure joined ESPN in 2013 and most recently was the Atlanta Falcons reporter as part of NFL Nation. He also contributed to ESPN’s television, radio and digital coverage.
“We are saddened to learn of the passing of ESPN’s Vaughn McClure,” Falcons president Rich McKay said in a statement. “He was an earnest, thoughtful reporter who had a passion for his craft and the relationships he held. He will be missed dearly and we are holding his family, friends and associates in our thoughts and prayers,” he added.
Read More: ESPN’s Jalen Rose calls for arrest in Breonna Taylor case during Eastern Conference finals
“We all loved Vaughn,” said John Pluym, senior deputy editor for digital NFL coverage at ESPN. “He had a heart of gold. He was so helpful to our reporters. In the last few hours, we’ve heard so many stories about how Vaughn had helped them with a story or how he put in a good word for them with a coach or player.”
Pluym added: “Talking to Vaughn on the phone was always a joy. I loved how you could just sense the excitement in his voice for being able to cover the Falcons for ESPN. We will all miss him greatly. And I’ll end this the way Vaughn ended every phone call with a colleague: ‘Appreciate you. Love you.’ We all loved him, too.”
The Falcons said in a statement: “We are saddened to learn of the passing of ESPN’s Vaughn McClure. He was an earnest, thoughtful reporter who had a passion for his craft and the relationships he held. He will be missed dearly and we are holding his family, friends and associates in our thoughts and prayers.”
Read More: Thomas Q. Jones says ‘acting became therapy’ after NFL career
Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher and ESPN NFL Nation reporter Turron Davenport were among the fans, athletes and colleagues who posted tributes and condolences on social media.
“Vaughn was an awesome guy. So many times I can remember him reaching out to me to make sure I was all good. Rest in power my guy. You will absolutely be missed,” Davenport tweeted.
“People will probably remember how Vaughn was able to connect and develop trusting relationships with many of the athletes he covered, or how diligent he was about deadlines, or the countless times he volunteered to help out a colleague on another sport,” said Patricia Mays, senior director of content strategy and distribution at ESPN. “But what I respected most was how committed he was to continually improving. One of the last emails I received from him was asking for feedback. He wrote: ‘Would love to talk to you after the season about how I can get better at a lot of things. I want to be great at this job.'”
Prior to joining the ESPN family, McClure covered the Bears for the Chicago Tribune. He also worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, Fresno Bee and South Bend Tribune, according to the report. He graduated from Northern Illinois University in 1994.
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Kamala Harris Suspends Travel After Two Staffers Test Positive For Coronavirus
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris announced Thursday she will suspend travel after two staff members tested positive for coronavirus.
According to a statement from campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign learned late Wednesday that Harris’s Communications Director Liz Allen, and a “non-staff flight crew member” contracted the coronavirus. Neither person had contact with Biden or Harris 48 hours before they were tested.
O’Malley Dillon said the former attorney general will suspend her events through Sunday “out of an abundance of caution.” Harris was scheduled to spend Thursday in North Carolina.
“After being with Senator Harris, both individuals attended personal, non-campaign events in the past week. Under our campaign’s strict health protocols, both individuals had to be tested before returning to their work with the campaign from these personal events,” O’Malley Dillon said in a statement to CNN. “These protocols help protect the campaign, the staff, and anyone who they may have contact with; the importance of having such protocols—which include testing before resuming duties, regular testing while working in-person, isolation after time off, and masking and distancing while on campaign duties—have been illustrated once again.”
O’Malley Dillon said Harris, her husband, Doug Emhoff, and Biden have tested negative multiple times since the two staffers tested positive for coronavirus.
The news of a potential coronavirus outbreak within the Biden campaign comes less than two weeks after President Trump and more than 18 people in his circle admitted they’d contracted the virus since former senior adviser Hope Hicks tested positive in early October.
Others who’ve contracted the coronavirus in Trump’s circle include his campaign manager Bill Stepien; Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel; Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and two of her deputies, Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt; Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway; former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah); Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), and Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.); Nick Luna, the president’s personal assistant; and the first lady, Melania, and their son, Barron.
As a result of Trump’s COVID-19 infection, Trump and Biden will host competiting town hall events Thursday night instead of a second debate. Biden’s town hall will be on ABC, while NBC, MSNBC, and CNBC will host Trump’s town hall.
NBC is already facing backlash on Twitter for agreeing to host Trump’s town hall. The election has already begun in several states due to early voting and Democrats have a significant edge but that is not expected to hold up as Election Day draws closer.
from Black Enterprise https://ift.tt/34XMGUm
via Gabe's Musing's
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