This is to inform you the Annual Broadwater Gala scheduled for April 4, 2020 is being postponed due to the Global COVID-19 crisis. Your health and safety is first and foremost in our minds and we hope everyone stays well.
The Gala Committee is working with the Board of Trustees, school faculty, parents and stakeholders to explore alternatives to the Gala which is the school’s single largest fundraiser. Our faculty and staff rely on the generous support of our Broadwater family to continue to serve our students and families by providing the best education available on the Eastern Shore year after year.
Although the event has to be postponed, the needs of our students, families, and our teachers remain and will likely increase. It will take a community effort to get through this time and we are deeply grateful for your ongoing generosity. Please consider giving to our Annual Viking Fund, which covers our expenses beyond tuition revenue, so we can continue to advance our mission. Your gift makes a positive impact on the lives of our students and teachers daily.
We understand that everyone is significantly impacted during this time, and welcome your feedback on how to best join together to support each other in the months to come.
The Southern Gateway Welcome Center is Temporarily Closed
Due to concerns over the Welcome Center’s personnel’s health, the Southern Gateway Welcome Center is temporarily closed.
Bathrooms are still available to the public and there are print Travel Guides available for any future trips you may be planning.
Riverside Health System Temporarily Restricts Visitors in Outpatient Settings
To protect the health of patients, team members and the community amid the continued spread of novel coronavirus COVID-19, Riverside Health System is temporarily restricting visitors in outpatient areas until further notice.
Outpatient setting visitation restrictions as of March 18, 2020 include the following.
No visitors may accompany outpatients, with these exceptions:
- One visitor may accompany a patient who needs assistance getting to and from their car.
- One visitor may accompany a patient who needs assistance understanding medical treatment.
Those people who are giving rides to patients but who do not wish to enter the building can call ahead to make arrangements for the patient to be transported from the car to the area of service.
These outpatient setting visitation changes are in addition to earlier restrictions to visitors in Riverside’s five hospitals.
No visitors may accompany hospital inpatients, with these exceptions:
- One visitor may accompany a patient in the emergency department if needed for the patient to understand medical treatment.
- One visitor may accompany a mother on the mother-baby unit.
- One visitor may accompany a patient who is having surgery.
- For visitors to patients who are at the end-of-life, exceptions will be made on a case-by-case basis.
Hospital inpatients will be encouraged to stay in touch with loved ones via video options, telephone or email, rather than in-person contact.
Riverside is closely monitoring the COVID-19 outbreak in step with the Virginia Department of Health.
There is no treatment for COVID-19, and most people will not need hospital care unless they are having trouble breathing, or if they develop moderate to severe respiratory illness. Most people who are sick are being advised to stay home to avoid spreading the illness to others.
It is important that the community continues to take precautions to safeguard themselves and prevent the potential spread of this illness.
Among the simple but effective actions to take to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 include the following:
- Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
- Practice social distancing of six feet or more.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth with unwashed hands.
- Clean your hands often. Wash with soap and warm water for at least 20 seconds, or use alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60 percent alcohol.
- Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, throw the tissue in the trash, and wash or sanitize your hands.
- Stay home if you are sick.
For more information about COVID-19 and Riverside Health System’s response, visit riversideonline.com/covid-19.
For more information on Riverside, visit www.riversideonline.com or contact:
Peter Glagola
Senior Director, Public Relations
peter.glagola@rivhs.com
757-719-2103
COVID-19 Hysteria will cause next Global Depression
The market sees the now-expected global recession caused by the COVID-19 outbreak morphing into an economic depression.
- Bankers and traders are looking to sell to boost cash positions and hunker down for the worst.
JPMorgan wrote down its expectations for global GDP to -1.1% in 2020, expecting the world’s economic growth will reverse for the full year, including a second quarter contraction of -14% in the U.S. and -22% in the eurozone. Also:
- Deutsche Bank economists foresee a “severe global recession occurring in the first half of 2020 … quarterly declines in GDP growth we anticipate substantially exceed anything previously recorded going back to at least World War II.”
- Both banks noted their forecasts are based on governments putting in place massive, yet-to-be-passed fiscal stimulus programs and fairly swift containment of the outbreak.
- “It is easy to imagine a still worse outcome,” DB analysts, led by head of economics research Peter Hooper and seven chief economists, wrote.
Pershing Square Capital Management CEO Bill Ackman, went on NBC to beg President Trump to shut down the U.S. economy for 30 days and put the country in a nationwide lockdown.
- “Until a vaccine is manufactured, distributed and injected we will go through a Depression-era period in the country,” Ackman said. “America will end as we know it unless we take this option.”
Even traditional safe havens were not seen as safe enough during Wednesday’s selling.
- Gold dropped by 3% and U.S. and German government debt, viewed as the safest bonds on earth, were sold despite a 5% decline on the S&P 500 and a rout that saw WTI crude oil prices fall 14% and crash below $22 a barrel.
“What people are doing is looking at things that they can sell to raise cash, and that’s part of the crisis market situation,” Jim Caron, head of fixed income global macro strategies for Morgan Stanley Investment Management, told CNBC. “When these things happen, people sell what they can sell, not what they want to sell.”
All Boob Jobs delayed due to Chinese Coronavirus
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced that all elective surgeries, non-essential medical, surgical, and dental procedures be delayed during the 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
As more healthcare providers are increasingly being asked to assist with the COVID-19 response, it is critical that they consider whether non-essential surgeries and procedures can be delayed so they can preserve personal protective equipment (PPE), beds, and ventilators.
The recommendations provide a framework for hospitals and clinicians to implement immediately during the COVID-19 response. The recommendations outline factors that should be considered for postponing elective surgeries, and non-essential medical, surgical, and dental procedures. Those factors include patient risk factors, availability of beds, staff and PPE, and the urgency of the procedure. This will help providers to focus on addressing more urgent cases and preserve resources needed for the COVID-19 response. The decision about proceeding with non-essential surgeries and procedures will be made at the local level by the clinician, patient, hospital, and state and local health departments.
NOAA appoints new Director for the Office of Aquaculture
NOAA announced the appointment of Ms. Danielle Blacklock as the agency’s new Director for the Office of Aquaculture. In that role she will oversee the aquaculture component of NOAA’s sustainable seafood portfolio. She will also be responsible for providing the strategic vision for developing a strong marine aquaculture industry in the United States. Specifically, she will lead the office’s work on several distinct priority areas including regulation and policy, science, outreach, and international activities in support of U.S. aquaculture. She will assume her new duties on Monday, March 16.
“I am thrilled about Danielle’s vision for the office and our role as catalysts for the expansion of marine aquaculture in the United States,” said Paul N. Doremus, Deputy Assistant Administrator for Operations at NOAA Fisheries. “Building a strong domestic aquaculture industry is a win-win. It’s good for the economy and good for the planet.”
“Writ large, U.S. marine aquaculture provides a complement to our world class wild capture fisheries and will be vital for supporting our nation’s seafood production, year-round jobs, rebuilding protected species and habitats, and enhancing coastal resilience.”
Ms. Blacklock said her vision for the office is “to help the United States move even more decisively toward becoming a global leader in sustainable seafood production. Wild capture fisheries and farmed seafood are intertwined and both are critical to our nation’s future food supply.”
She added, “I plan to work inclusively and transparently to guide the development of sustainable farms in federal waters, while supporting additional development in state waters and associated land-based facilities.”
Ms. Blacklock comes to this position after serving in various roles within the agency for the past 10 years. Most recently, she has been serving as a Senior Policy Advisor for Aquaculture. In this role, Ms. Blacklock also completed a six-month assignment at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, focused on aquaculture sustainability globally. She also served as the Acting Deputy in the Office of Aquaculture for several months. Prior to that, she was the Senior Advisor for Operations at Fisheries, providing advice and support to the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Operations. Her portfolio included budget management, facilities, human resources, strategic communications, international affairs, and equal employment opportunities. Previously, she served as a Recreational Fisheries Specialist, a Fisheries Management Specialist, a Congressional Liaison. She also served as the agency’s liaison in the NOAA Program Coordination Office following her Knauss Sea Grant Fellowship.
Ms. Blacklock received her Master’s Degree in Marine Affairs from the University of Washington, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Marine Science from the University of Maine. She is also a current participant in NOAA’s Leadership Development Competencies Program. She has authored a number of policy and academic papers. She also received a Department of Commerce Bronze Medal in 2018.
Ms. Blacklock succeeds Dr. Michael Rubino, who was appointed the agency’s first Director of the Office of Aquaculture. He became the agency’s first Senior Advisor for Seafood Strategy in April 2019. Mr. David O’Brien has served as the acting office director in the interim and will return to his duties as the deputy for the office.
History Notes this week of March 14
37 A.D.: Caligula becomes Emperor of the Roman Empire upon the death of his great uncle, Tiberius.
44BC: Julius Caesar, dictator of the Roman Republic, is stabbed to death** by a cabal of Roman senators. According to Plutarch, Caesar was warned by a seer to be on his guard against a great peril on the Ides of March. On his way to the Theater of Pompey (where he would be assassinated), Caesar saw the seer and joked, “Well, the Ides of March have come,” to which the seer replied, “Ay, they have come, but they are not gone.”
460 A.D.: Death of Patrick* of Ireland. Patrick was son of a deacon and grandson of a priest in Roman Britain. He was kidnapped by Irish brigands when he was 16, and was held as a slave in the western part of the island, until the voice of a dream [funny- my fingers originally wrote “dram”] told him to escape back to Britain and take orders as a priest. He did, and after a time he saw another vision, this time imploring him to return to Ireland to spread the Gospel. Patrick did his holy work among the pagan Celts, preaching and converting to Christianity people of all classes and stations. He used the shamrock as an aid to teach the doctrine of the Trinity, he baptized thousands of people, ordained priests, converted wealthy women and the sons of royalty. He lead what became the first bloodless conversion of essentially an entire people to Christianity. March 17s celebration of his life began as a feast day in the early 17th century, was first celebrated in the New World in Boston in 1737. The day also served as a one-day respite from Lent, the forty-day period of fasting.
624: The Muslim army of Medina defeats the Quraysh of Mecca, an improbable victory credited to either divine intervention or the genius of Mohammad.
1314: Death of Jacques de Molay (b.1243), the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, burned at the stake. The Templars were a monastic military order that grew out of the First Crusade’s conquest of Jerusalem in 1096. Within a few years, Christian pilgrims again began arriving in the city, and two knights of the Crusade, Hughes de Payens and Godfrey de Saint-Omer proposed establishing a monastic order that could protect them. They established their headquarters in what is now the Al Asqa mosque, which they called the Temple of Solomon, built on the ruins of the original temple, and from which they derived their name. The order quickly grew and was recognized by the Pope in 1129. For nearly 200 years the Templars epitomized knightly Crusading virtues, in addition to growing very wealthy*. Templar orders throughout Europe began functioning as banks, and because of the financial hold they had over many of the royal houses in Europe, and the secrecy of their proceedings, their power began to be seen as a serious political threat. By 1306, King Philip IV of France, deeply in debt to the Templars as a result of his wars with England, began a systematic campaign to destroy the order. In concert with Philip, Pope Clement ordered all Christian monarchs to arrest the Orders and seize their assets. Philip devised a secret plan to arrest every Templar in France, including de Molay, and carried it out in a massive nighttime raid on Friday, the 13th of October 1307. The Templars were charged with numerous acts, including apostasy, idolatry, heresy, obscene rituals, homosexuality, financial corruption, fraud and secrecy. Under torture, many confessed their alleged crimes, and after torture, most recanted. Those who recanted were burned at the stake for relapsing into apostasy. The elderly de Molay, who had confessed only under torture, eventually retracted his statement. His associate, the Preceptor of Normandy, followed de Molay’s example and insisted on his innocence. Both men were declared guilty of being relapsed heretics, and they were sentenced to be burned alive at the stake in Paris on March 18, 1314. De Molay reportedly remained defiant to the end, asking to be tied in such a way that he could face the Notre Dame Cathedral and hold his hands together in prayer. According to legend, he called out from the flames that both Pope Clement and King Philip would soon meet him before God. Pope Clement died only a month later, and King Philip died in a hunting accident before the end of the year. Templar wealth was a mystery to European society of the time, and rumors abounded that they had made common cause with the Satan, or that they found the lost treasure of Solomon, which they guarded at their closed monastery on the Temple Mount. Further, the sudden disappearance of the Templars after 1307 only added fuel to the suspicion that they had moved underground into a secret society, an urban legend not dissipated by the 17th century rise of Masonic orders who explicitly adopted much of the symbolism and secret rituals attached to the Templars.
1521: Three-quarters of the way around his historic circumnavigation, Ferdinand Magellan lands in the Philippines.
1621: Only a few months into their colonial experience, the Pilgrim settlers of Plymouth, Massachusetts are startled by the appearance of an Abenaki Indian who walks boldly into their encampment and greets them with, “Welcome, Englishmen! My name is Samoset.”
1751: Birth of James Madison.
1766: British parliament repeals the Stamp Act.
1776: South Carolina becomes the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain by establishing its own government.
1776: British forces complete their evacuation of Boston after George Washington’s stunning capture of Dorchester Heights a week prior. The event is celebrated in Boston as Evacuation Day.
1781: Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Near Greensboro, North Carolina a short (90 minutes) sharp battle between 1,900 British Regulars under General Cornwallis against 4,000 Continental soldiers under General Nathaneal Greene. Because of ground lost (and held) the battle was a technical loss for the Americans. But with a quarter of the British force suffering casualties, it was a classic Pyrrhic victory, prompting Whig party leader James Fox to declare, “Another such victory would ruin the British army.” Greene and his forces move south into South Carolina to un-do the earlier work of Cornwallis’ & Tarleton’s armies. Convinced he was still winning the war, Cornwallis advances into Virginia, where he eventually sets up his headquarters in Yorktown.
1802: Alarmed by continuing threats from British Canada, Congress authorizes the establishment of a military academy at West Point, New York.
1813: Birth of David Livingstone (d.1873), I presume.
1815: Prince Wilhelm of the house of Orange-Nassau, proclaims himself King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, becoming the first constitutional monarch in the Low Countries. You would be correct it you reasoned that this proclamation came as a result of much diplomatic wheeling and dealing that accompanied the demise of France’s Napoleonic empire. Until they were conquered by Napoleon, the region was part of the Hapsburg Empire- as the Austrian Netherlands- and was often a pawn in the dynastic wars of the previous 300 years.
1845: A patent is issued to Stephen Perry of London, for the rubber band.
1850: Henry Wells and William Fargo start a new stagecoach line, called American Express.
1853: Death of Christian Doppler (b.1803). The Austrian mathematician and physicist is best known for his theory that the frequency of waves depends on the relative speed of the source and the observer. In astronomy this is known as a “red shift” (receding) or “blue shift” (approaching) in the motion of stars, and is at the heart of the Big Bang theory of a constantly expanding universe.
1858: Birth of Rudolf Diesel (d.1913). Born in Paris to a German family living in France, his family emigrated to London at the breakout of the Franco-Prussian war. After again emigrating back to Germany, the young Diesel at age 12 decided to become an engineer. He obviously did well in the discipline. Interestingly, besides inventing the internal combustion cycle that bears his name, his disappearance off of an English steamer at sea in September of 1913 remains an unsolved mystery.
1863: The new Confederate raider and blockade runner SS Georgiana is destroyed on the night of her first run out of Charleston harbor. Built in Scotland, she is designed for speed with heavily raked masts, auxiliary steam propulsion, and a deep hold for cargo. She is also pierced for 14 guns to act as a privateer once clear of the Union blockade. After her loss, rumors abound about 300 gold bars lost in the wreckage, which is quickly buried by the shifting sands of the barrier islands.
1865:Battle of Bentonville, NC, the last major engagement between the Union army of William Tecumseh Sherman and the Confederates of Joe Johnson. The fight lasted through the night of the 21st, when Johnson pulled back his battered remnants across Mill Creek, burning the bridge behind him. Both armies subsequently worked their way northward toward Virginia in an attempt to join up with their respective commanders, U.S. Grant and Robert E. Lee.
1916: General John J. Pershing leads the 7th and 10th Cavalry Regiments across the border into Mexico in pursuit of Pancho Villa.
1917: Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates the throne in favor of his youngest brother, the Grand Duke Mikhail. With a provisional revolutionary government already consolidating power, the Grand Duke declines the honor until it can be ratified by the Duma, which itself declines to retain the monarchy. This period is known as the “February Revolution,” and marks the end of over 300 years of the Romanov dynasty.
1918: The geniuses in Congress authorize “Daylight Savings Time.”
1920: The actual geniuses in the U.S. Senate decisively reject- for the second time- the Treaty of Versailles.
1926: Robert Goddard launches the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket in Auburn, Massachusetts.
1931: Gambling is legalized in Nevada.
1940: German Furher Adolf Hitler and Italian Duce Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass to form the Pact of Steel against France and Great Britain.
1944: Just outside the city of bella Napoli, Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing 26 and sending thousands into panic.
1965: The wreck of SS Georgina is found and positively identified by salvage diver E. Lee Spence. He recovers many interesting artifacts from the wreckage, but no gold. The remains of the hull are in water shallow enough to be visited with only a snorkel.
1966: Launch of Gemini 8, the 12th U.S. manned spaceflight, and the first to rendezvous and dock with another spacecraft, the Agena, and the first spaceflight to abort due to an in-flight emergency while in orbit. Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott noticed attitude control problems shortly after docking with the Agena, exacerbated by a rapid depletion of fuel for their thrusters. Un-docking from the Agena, their Gemini capsule then began an un-commanded roll, which Armstrong was initially able to stop with opposite thrusters. But as soon as he released the controls, thruster #8 began firing continuously on its own, sending the spacecraft into violent gyrations that threatened to incapacitate the crew. Armstrong’s steely test pilot nerves took over, and he shut off the orbital maneuvering system and brought the spacecraft back under control with the re-entry system. NASA ordered an immediate de-orbit, and the flight ended with a splashdown in the Pacific secondary recovery zone, around 500 miles east of Okinawa instead of the prime recovery zone in the Western Atlantic. Their coolness under extreme pressure was key to their selection as commanders of Apollo 11 (Armstrong) and Apollos 9 & 15 (Scott).
1968:The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.
1969: Golda Meir is seated as the first female Prime Minister of the State of Israel.
1982: Argentine forces invade the Falkland Islands, triggering a war with the United Kingdom.
Chinese Immigration Benefits put into COVID19 recovery bill
Increasing Chinese immigration to the United States seems like an odd thing to put in a COVID19 recovery bill.
Sen. Lindsey Graham is using the coronavirus recovery bills to expand EB-5 green cards to wealthy Chinese if they lend money to U.S. real estate investors and other companies, according to Politico magazine.
“How can people pushing this not see how politically explosive this is?” said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “An EB-5 increase would almost exclusively benefit Chinese: It is hard to imagine what they are thinking.”
Under the EB-5 visa, wealthy foreign nationals can claim that they will invest at least $500,000 and thus receive Green Cards for their family for at least two years, with pathways to American citizenship available as well. The only requirement is that the EB-5 investor creates ten U.S. jobs and help revitalize “distressed” areas, though more often than not investors fund projects in wealthy zip codes.
Currently, 10,000 foreign nationals and their families are allowed to enter the U.S. every year on the EB-5 visa. The overwhelming majority of EB-5 visas are rewarded to China’s elite — driving a migration of rich Chinese to cities across the country.
The plan is afoot even as President Trump’s administration is considering action against China for allowing the coronavirus to spread across the globe.
“Increasing Chinese immigration to the United States seems like an odd thing to put in a #COVID19 recovery bill,” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said in response to reports of increasing EB-5 visa admissions. “Right?!”
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) has mapped out the ever-growing list of scandals and corruption in the EB-5 visa program where wealthy foreign investors have been known to never follow through on their promise to invest.
Why does China have a high security, Bio-Safety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory in Wuhan?
Free Pressers noted that soon after Xi’s Feb. 14 comments, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a new directive titled: “Instructions on strengthening bio-security management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel Coronavirus.”
All this seems to indicate that the Chinese government has a very real problem securing its deadly pathogens.
Why does China have a high security, Bio-Safety Level-4 (BSL-4) laboratory in Wuhan anyway?
Is it part of a secret Chinese bioweapons research program? Is it related in any way to the novel coronavirus outbreak?
According to Nature, this bio-containment laboratory in Wuhan, built with assistance from France, is only three years old. It was cleared by the Chinese government in 2017 to work with the world’s most dangerous pathogens–BSL-4 labs are built to contain highly infectious and lethal agents such as the Ebola, Nipah and Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever viruses, as well as SARS, coronavirus, and pandemic influenza virus.
Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory is meant to help Chinese scientists “prepare for and respond to future infectious disease outbreaks,” according to a 2019 report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Nature also notes, that some scientists worry about pathogens escaping, and others are concerned these labs could be part of a covert biological weapons program. The plan to expand this lab into a bigger network of labs only heightens these concerns.
Governor Northam Requests Declaration to Assist Small Businesses Affected by COVID-19
Request comes a day after Congresswoman Luria advises Governor Northam to submit the request
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Governor Ralph Northam requested an Economic Disaster Loan Declaration for the Commonwealth of Virginia. This comes a day after Congresswoman Luria sent a letter to the Governor urging him to submit this request. An Economic Disaster Loan Declaration would ensure impacted small businesses are eligible to receive emergency resources now available from the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act signed into law earlier this month.
“Small businesses are the bedrock of our Coastal Virginia economy, and we must act quickly and decisively to help them during this public health crisis,” said Congresswoman Luria. “I am pleased that the Governor is taking advantage of federal government resources by asking the Small Business Administration to issue an Economic Injury Disaster Loan declaration.”
On March 6, the President signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act into law. This bill contains emergency funding to research and develop vaccines and treatments for COVID-19. It also established an Economic Injury Disaster Loan program to assist small businesses with the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program provides low-interest loans of up to $2 million to small businesses devastated by the aftereffects of a disaster such as the COVID-19 pandemic. To qualify, businesses must not have access to other sources of credit. This program is administered by the Small Business Administration and is activated by a request from the state or territory’s governor.
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