Sharplift News

2021-06-21 14:15:03 American Airlines has canceled hundreds of flights scheduled for the weekend and Monday due to staffing shortages, including employees out sick, as well as maintenance issues. The company canceled 123 flights scheduled for Saturday, 178 for Sunday, and 97 for Monday, mostly involving Airbus A320 and Boeing 737 aircraft, according to ABC.

American, the world's largest airline, said it also may continue to cancel at least 50 to 60 flights per day during the remainer of June and 50 to 80 flights per day in July, but that it will try to notify customers far ahead of their scheduled flight, according to ABC.

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21-June-2021

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2021-06-21 12:30:04 Biden's talks with Ghani this Friday will be their first face-to-face meeting since the former senator took up the presidency in January. The US leader is set to pledge diplomatic, economic and humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan to prevent it from becoming a haven for militants. But since the announcement that the United States planned to end its presence there after nearly 20 years of war, the Taliban have seized at least 30 districts across the country.

The US is also offering sanctuary for Afghans who worked for the NATO-led coalition over the past two decades amid fears that the Taliban might carry out reprisals against them and their families. Twenty members of Congress earlier this month appealed to President Joe Biden in an open letter to "immediately" evacuate the more than 18,000 interpreters and their families, who have filed for visas to come to the United States.

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21-June-2021

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2021-06-21 10:45:02 Myanmar's junta chief arrived in Moscow on Sunday to attend a security conference, marking only his second known trip abroad since he seized power in a coup.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military overthrew civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) government in February. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing left the capital Naypyidaw Sunday on a special flight to attend the Moscow Conference for International Security, state-run MRTV said.

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21-June-2021

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2021-06-21 09:01:06 When it comes to the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China, the sky is by no means the limit. As the two countries jockey for economic, technological, geopolitical and even ideological superiority on Earth, space has become a natural extension -- and crucial frontier -- in their great power competition.

And due to the inherent dual-use nature of space technologies, what's at stake extends far beyond mere scientific prestige and global standing. In addition to national defense, so much of our life on Earth -- from digital communications to navigation -- depends on satellites in space. Since 2011, NASA has been effectively banned from cooperating with China, after Congress passed the Wolf Amendment due to espionage-related concerns.

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21-June-2021

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2021-06-20 13:45:04 Jessica Lauser is relentless on the chess board. She plays quickly, applying constant pressure on her opponents. She attacks constantly Her success in the game has won her dozens of major accolades, and a spot on a championship squad that held its own against the best chess players in the world last year. If this dossier isn't impressive enough, consider that Lauser is legally blind.

For Lauser, 41, chess has been an obsession and avid pastime since the second grade. She's leaned on it to help her transcend a tough childhood. She loves the game, and she has never let her disability get in the way of this passion.

Lauser has been blind for almost her entire life. She was born 4 months prematurely, and needed oxygen, which damaged her eyes, a condition called retinopathy. Because of this condition, one eye is completely blind; in the other she has 20/480 eyesight. This means her visual field is severely limited and that she has little to no depth perception.

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20-June-2021

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2021-06-20 11:30:09 Women in Istanbul took to the streets on Saturday to protest Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s decision to withdraw from the Istanbul Convention, effective July 1. Established by the Council of Europe in 2011, the convention targets violence against women and domestic violence.

Erdogan issued a decree annulling Turkey’s ratification of the convention on March 20. Turkey will officially renounce its membership on July 1. Protesters gathered on the streets of Istanbul on Saturday to voice their anger at the government’s decision to withdraw from the measure, which is aimed at protecting women from gender-based violence.

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20-June-2021

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2021-06-20 09:15:06 The Australian government said on Saturday it was lodging a formal complaint with the World Trade Organization about China’s imposition of anti-dumping duties on Australian wine exports, escalating further the trade standoff with Beijing.

Relations with China, already rocky after Australia banned Huawei from its nascent 5G broadband networking in 2018, have worsened since Canberra called for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus, first reported in central China last year.

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20-June-2021

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2021-06-20 07:15:06 As of Friday, the Health Ministry had recorded 498,499 deaths, with a daily average of more than 2,000 in the last seven days. According to a consortium of the country's main media groups, the overall death toll rose to 500,022 Saturday afternoon. The government releases its toll after 2100 GMT.

Brazil, with a population of 212 million, became the second country after the United States to surpass 500,000 Covid-19 deaths. The South American country experienced a second wave of the pandemic this year, when it topped 4,000 deaths per day.

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20-June-2021

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2021-06-19 19:30:05 Conservative judiciary head Ebrahim Raisi has been elected Iran’s eighth president, the interior ministry has announced.

The ministry confirmed on Saturday that Raisi won 61.95 percent of the vote on a voter turnout of 48.8 percent – the lowest turnout for a presidential election since the 1979 revolution. Raisi got 28,933,004 votes. At 3,726,870 votes, void votes finished second in the race, also for the first time since the establishment of the Islamic Republic.

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19-June-2021

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2021-06-19 13:00:03 German authorities warned Friday about the spread of the delta variant throughout the country; about half of its population has received a first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Lothar Wieler, head of Germany′s Robert Koch Institute (RKI) for Infection Diseases, said that although the delta variant first discovered in India only makes up 6% of the current cases, "its share is growing."

Wieler said that he expects the delta variant will hit hardest "in autumn at the latest," with the country′s top public health official urging people to carry on wearing masks indoors and get vaccinated. "It is not a question of if delta will become dominant, but a question of when," he added.

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19-June-2021

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