While the pandemic was a major blow for live music in 2020 (most artists either postponed or canceled their tours), country artists such as Miranda Lambert, Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Sam Hunt and Kelsea Ballerini have continued to have major success. The overall music industry only saw a 2.6 percent rise on streaming services since the coronavirus crisis, but the country genre soared 15.8 percent, according to MRC Data/Nielsen Music.“Partially what we’re seeing is the natural progression of country fans starting to catch up with these other formats — and the country market had a lot of catching up to do,” Billboard’s Melinda Newman told Time in October, noting that country fans are typically less eager to make the move from CDs to digital.Scroll down for everything you need to know about the 54th annual CMA Awards!- Advertisement – – Advertisement – “We couldn’t be more excited to bring all of these incredible performances to life next Wednesday night and give our artists the chance to come together, in a big way, on television for the first time in months,” executive producer Robert Deaton said in a statement.“As safety is our top priority, we have worked tirelessly over the past several months to fully transform Music City Center into a breathtaking setup that resembles the very first ‘CMA Awards Banquet and Show’ from 1967, and ensures our nominees, performers and their guests a fully safe and physically distant environment,” he continued. “We are honored, in this very challenging time, to help provide an escape and deliver a live awards show experience unlike any other this year.”The news came as a surprise to many fans of country music as this year’s ACM Awards and CMT Music Awards featured virtual performances and acceptance speeches.- Advertisement –
Time to break out the cowboy hats! The 2020 Country Music Association Awards are set to be held at the Music City Center in Nashville on Wednesday, November 11.Unlike many other awards shows this year, the CMAs will not be held virtually — and will have a live audience amid the COVID-19 pandemic.- Advertisement –
“Here’s the way we see it and the country should see it — that the people have spoken and we respect the majesty of the democratic system,” Mr. Bush said in the concession speech he delivered on election night in 1992. “I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock and offered my congratulations. He did run a strong campaign. I wish him well in the White House.”Transitions have faced roadblocks before. The most recent — in 2016, when Mr. Trump prepared to take over from President Barack Obama — was rocky and behind schedule because of shake-ups on Mr. Trump’s team. Eight years earlier, Mr. Obama’s transition faced snags because he had to replace his head of personnel multiple times. To be fair, Mr. Trump has 71 days to pen a similar note to Mr. Biden. But based on how things are going so far, that gesture appears unlikely. Mr. Trump has shattered Washington’s norms for four years, has yet to concede he lost the election and is stalling the start of a peaceful transition period, breaking from longstanding precedent.Mr. Bush was the last one-term president before Mr. Trump. But the similarities stop there.- Advertisement – – Advertisement – Mrs. Clinton, who described the letter as “gracious” on Instagram, wrote, “Since the very beginning, American presidents have accepted the will of the people and participated in a peaceful transfer of power. That’s what makes our democracy so unique, and so enduring.”
– Advertisement – Providing another example of how President Trump’s reaction to his election loss differs from other presidents’, Hillary Clinton on Tuesday posted a letter that an outgoing president, George H.W. Bush, wrote to an incoming one, Bill Clinton, in 1993.“You will be our president when you read this note,” Mr. Bush, a Republican and the last incumbent to lose re-election, wrote to Mr. Clinton, his Democratic successor, on Inauguration Day. “Your success is now our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you. Good luck.”
Maradona was initially admitted to another clinic in La Plata with signs of depression, anemia and dehydration, before being moved to Olivos when the subdural hematoma was discovered.Dr Luque said an accident likely caused the subdural hematoma but that Maradona did not recall any falls or mishaps.Maradona felt ill on October 30 while coaching first-division team Gimnasia y Esgrima. He had left before the end of the first half, raising questions about his health. 
Diego Maradona’s doctor Leopoldo Luque says the Argentina legend has been recovering well after brain surgery – Advertisement – The former Boca Juniors, Barcelona and Napoli star has had addiction problems in the past.Morla said the surgery may have been Maradona’s toughest ever moment. 0:27 
“It could have taken his life,” the lawyer said. “What he misses now is the union of his family, being surrounded by health professionals.”Morla also called on friends and relatives of the former footballer to stop posting negative messages about each other on social media, saying the infighting is affecting the Argentina legend.“The situation here is clear – being at peace with the relatives,” Morla said. “They have to respect each other, coordinate the visits among themselves because in this case Diego has to recover. One has to give him peace and give him unity.” Maradona’s lawyer, Matias Morla, said the 60-year-old Argentine will continue to receive treatment for alcohol dependency. He is expected to stay in a house near his older daughters.The 1986 World Cup champion last week had an emergency operation for a subdural hematoma, which is an accumulation of blood between a membrane and his brain.Maradona’s personal doctor, neurologist Leopoldo Luque, said on Tuesday that even small amounts of alcohol consumption could have negative effects combined with the medication needed for his recovery.- Advertisement – 0:17 Diego Maradona was released from a Buenos Aires hospital on Wednesday, just over a week after brain surgery, and will continue his recovery in a private home. Footage broadcast by local TV stations showed the former World Cup winner leaving the Olivos clinic in an ambulance. Maradona’s doctor, Leopoldo Luque, told journalists that he had authorised the release.- Advertisement – – Advertisement – Tottenham head coach Jose Mourinho says he contacted Maradona to offer him his best wishes in his recovery from brain surgery
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– Advertisement – President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) shortly after taking office. The deal was to involve 12 countries and was supported by Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama as a way to counter China’s surging power in the region. – Advertisement –
According to the article, Collinge said Prusiner’s mice might be primed to suffer brain disease without any prion injection. Inoculating them with synthetic prions might trigger disease, but other stresses might have the same effect, he said. According to a UCSF news release, Prusiner and colleagues have long maintained that prions, unlike viruses, contain no genetic material (DNA or RNA). Infectious prions form when normal proteins in brain cells lose their corkscrew shape, called an alpha helix, and flatten into “beta sheets,” according to the release. The researchers suspect that this happens occasionally in people and animals but that the misshapen proteins are usually removed from brain cells. But sometimes, the researchers hypothesize, the prion triggers a chain reaction of protein misfolding, leading to nerve cell damage and eventually to death. Legname G, Baskaov IV, Hoang-Oanh BN, et al. Synthetic mammalian prions. Science 2004;30(5):673-6 [Abstract with links to full text and related news story] “Our study demonstrates that misfolding a particular segment of the normal prion protein is sufficient to transform the protein into infectious prions,” Legname commented in the news release. “A great deal of evidence indicates that prions are composed only of protein, but this is the first time that this has been directly shown in mammals.” Legname is an assistant adjunct professor of neurology in Prusiner’s laboratory. See also: The researchers used Escherichia coli to produce normal prion protein, according to their report in the Jul 30 issue of Science. They induced this protein to misfold into amyloid fibrils and then injected the fibrils into transgenic mice, which eventually showed signs of brain disease. When brain material from these mice was later inoculated into other mice, they got sick as well. An extract of brain tissue from one of the sick mice was then injected into groups of wild-type mice and other transgenic mice. The wild-type mice became ill after a mean of 154 days and the transgenic mice after 90 days, the report states. A related news story in Science says that biologists have tried for years to prove the infectious-prion hypothesis by purifying protein clumps from the brains of diseased animals and injecting them into healthy animals. But they haven’t been able to prove that the injections were free of other possible agents. And experiments using synthetic prionsuncontaminated by other brain tissuehaven’t consistently triggered disease, according to the story. The news release says the findings in the mice injected with synthetic prion material demonstrated the “four hallmarks of prion disease”: clinical signs of neurologic dysfunction (ataxia and rigidity), pathologic changes in the brain (sponginess, deposits of abnormal prion protein, astrocytic gliosis), prion resistance to breakdown by protease, and transmission of disease to wild-type and other transgenic mice. The news article in Science cites some doubts about the validity of Prusiner’s findings. For example, John Collinge, director of the Medical Research Council Prion Unit at University College London, speculated that the mice might have gotten sick even without any injection of prion protein. He said his group had worked with rodents having 10 times the normal level of prion protein but stopped using them after finding signs of prion-like disease in animals that hadn’t been inoculated with anything.
“Our results provide compelling evidence that prions are infectious proteins,” states the report by a team mostly from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Led by Giuseppe Legname, the team included Stanley Prusiner, the discoverer of prions, as senior author. In their full report, the authors contend that their success in synthesizing infectious prions shows that such prions can form spontaneously from normal prion protein in mammals. “The formation of prions from recPrP [recombinant prion protein] is sufficient for the spontaneous formation of prions; thus, no exogenous agent is required for prions to form in any mammal,” they state. In the news release, Prusiner said the findings offer an explanation for the sporadic form of CJD, which occurs in about 1 to 2 people per million and is believed to develop spontaneously. He also expressed a belief that sporadic BSE can occur and that increased testing of cattle will reveal it in 1 to 5 cattle per million. The spread of BSE in Britain in recent years has been blamed on the use of cattle feed containing protein from BSE-infected cattle. Aug 4, 2004 (CIDRAP News) California researchers triggered brain disease in mice by injecting a synthetic form of prion protein into their brains, providing what the researchers call “compelling” evidence that prions alone cause diseases like bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD). Prusiner’s group used genetically modified E coli to make prion protein free of brain tissue. They then took a segment of this protein and induced it to misfold into amyloid (waxy) fibrils by putting it in a shaking device, according to the UCSF release. Then they inoculated the amyloid fibrils into transgenic mice. The mice were of a genetically modified strain that produce the normal version of the same prion protein fragment the experimenters were using, according to the release. The transgenic mice make 16 times as much of this protein as wild-type mice do, which shortens the incubation time when the mice are exposed to infectious prions. When the mice were still healthy after 300 days, the investigators were ready to call the experiment a failure, according to the release. But at 380 days, one of the mice showed signs of brain disease, and all of the mice had fallen ill by 660 days after the study began. Control mice that had been injected with a saline solution remained well. UCSF news releasehttp://pub.ucsf.edu/newsservices/releases/200407274/
Nov 2, 2007 (CIDRAP News) –Officials in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam have reported new outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza in poultry this week.In Bangladesh, an official from the government’s livestock department said the H5N1 virus was detected at three farms in the northern part of the country, Reuters reported today. Workers culled about 6,000 chickens, which were buried over the last 2 days, the report said.The country’s last reported H5N1 outbreak occurred in May, according to a World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) report.Meanwhile, a livestock official in Pakistan said yesterday that 45,000 chicks at a breeding operation in the Northwest Frontier province were destroyed and buried after a laboratory in Islamabad identified the H5N1 virus in samples from the flock, The Post, a Pakistani newspaper, reported today.According to OIE reports, Pakistan’s last poultry outbreak occurred in July.Elsewhere, veterinary officials in Vietnam reported two more H5N1 outbreaks in ducks, according to a report from Xinhua, China’s state news agency. An outbreak that began on Oct 29 in southern Vietnam’s Tra Vinh province struck a flock of 2-month-old ducks, killing 400 and sickening 500, the report said.On Oct 28 an H5N1 outbreak killed 210 of 400 ducks at a household in northern Vietnam’s Nam Dinh province, the Xinhua report said.According to OIE reports, Vietnam had six H5N1 outbreaks in October, all involving unvaccinated ducks. Besides Tra Vinh and Nam Dinh, affected provinces included Cao Bang in the north and Quang Tri in central Vietnam. Before October, Vietnam’s last reported outbreaks occurred in August.In other avian flu developments, authorities in Canada have lifted remaining restrictions on the movement of birds and bird products in Saskatchewan, according to an Oct 31 press release from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA). The restrictions were imposed in late September when a highly pathogenic H7N3 strain of avian flu was detected in chickens at a commercial poultry operation in the province.No other cases of avian influenza were found after the initial outbreak, the CFIA said. Import restrictions imposed by some countries after the outbreak will be addressed on a case-by-case basis, the CFIA said.See also:OIE reports on outbreaks in Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Pakistanhttp://www.oie.int/downld/AVIAN%20INFLUENZA/A2007_AI.php
Will we soon be able to pay for all tourist services without physical money, but via SMS, mobile phone, contactless payment…?Certainly, as the trend is positive, and most importantly, there is a great need for spending on the simplest possible way of payment. The thing is very simple, if we are a tourist and come to the beach, we do not want to burden ourselves with changing the currency, do we have a lot of money with us, will they lose their wallet, etc.… we want a simple and efficient solution, that we are not burdened with payment. On the other hand, everyone always has a mobile phone with them, so we can and should pay for all basic services in the near future, such as renting deck chairs, drinks in restaurants, bread and pastries, buying souvenirs… so all those little things ie services / products that we use every day as tourists and consumers.It is only a matter of time before the first cafe will offer to pay for coffee via SMS or mobile phone. Of course first and foremost, I need to address the issue of security and gain trust. But the trends, as MasterCard’s new edition of MasterIndex research tells us, are very good and going in that direction.The rapid growth in the popularity of contactless payments and the growth in the use of mobile payments and online purchases represent a cross-section of the use of financial services in Croatia according to the latest edition of MasterIndex research by Mastercard.The profession predicts that by 2022 there will be more non-cash transactions in Europe than those involving cash, and these European trends have taken root in our market as well. Thus, as many as 92% of respondents own at least one card, 50% of cardholders have 3 or more cards, while the average number of cards per person is 2.7. The use of cards increases with the level of education and ability to pay, and they are most often used by respondents over the age of 40 and more often by men. At points of sale, 95% of respondents use cards regularly – more precisely, 84% of cardholders do so at least once a week, and as many as 28% every day. For credit or deferred card users, these numbers are growing, so 90% of them use the card at the point of sale at least once a week.”Želja potrošača za jednostavnim, sigurnim, brzim i digitalnim rješenjima u segmentu plaćanja raste. Naime, evolucija tehnologije odgovorna je i za evoluciju u plaćanju – današnji povezani potrošači preferiraju bezgotovinske transakcije, a povezani uređaji za koje se očekuje da će ih do 2020. u svijetu biti 30 milijardi donose nove prilike za trgovinu i bezgotovinsko plaćanje”, She pointed out Sanja Žigić, direktorica kompanije Mastercard u Hrvatskoj, te dodala: „Stoga ne iznenađuje da su rezultati najnovijeg izdanja istraživanje MasterIndex potvrdili trend rasta svih oblika bezgotovinskog plaćanja i u našoj zemlji. Kartice su uobičajeno, čak i preferirano sredstvo plaćanja među hrvatskim građanima, a raste i kupnja online koja uvelike podrazumijeva bezgotovinsko plaćanje. “Beskontaktno plaćanje navika je većine ispitanika Kad je riječ o beskontaktnim plaćanjima, čak je 99% korisnika kartica čulo za taj način plaćanja, u usporedbi s 96% u listopadu 2016. i 91% u listopadu 2015. No, korištenje beskontaktnih plaćanja doživjelo je još veći skok – 68% njih danas plaća beskontaktno, za razliku od 53% u listopadu 2016. i 36% u listopadu 2015. Beskontaktno plaćanje najviše koriste ispitanici s visokim primanjima, a najpopularnije je u Istri i Primorju gdje 78% ispitanika plaća beskontaktno.Ispitanici misle da je beskontaktno plaćanje brzo, jednostavno i bolje od gotovinskog, a 18% onih koji imaju beskontaktnu karticu koriste je svaki dan.Strelovit rast uporabe beskontaktnih kartica pokazuje da Hrvati vole koristiti ovu vrstu jednostavnog, brzog i sigurnog plaćanja. Kako za kupnje do 100 kuna samo treba beskontaktnu karticu prisloniti na POS terminal, dok je za one iznad 100 kuna nakon prislanjanja kartice potrebno unijeti PIN ili potpis, ova je vrsta plaćanja idealna za djelatnosti u kojima je brzina od presudne važnosti, poput restorana brze hrane, benzinskih postaja, ljekarni, kina ili javnog prijevoza.Raste sklonost online kupnji Na internetu kupuje čak 84% korisnika kartica, u usporedbi s 81% u listopadu 2016., a 34% ih to čini više puta mjesečno, što ukazuje na rast popularnosti kupnje online među Hrvatima. Najaktivniji online shopperi su ispitanici u dobnoj skupini od 30 do 39, s visokim stupnjem obrazovanja. Kad je riječ o korisnicima kreditnih kartica ili onih s odgodom plaćanja, među njima je tek 10% onih koji nikad ili gotovo nikad ne kupuju putem interneta, dok je u listopadu 2016. takvih bilo 15%.Najčešće se kupuju odjeća, obuća i modni dodaci (67%), potrošačka elektronika (48%), predmeti za kućanstvo (32%), kozmetika i parfemi (28%) te ulaznice za kulturna događanja (26%). Visoko na popisu su i usluge turističkih agencija, igračke i oprema za bebe, knjige i glazba te softver i zrakoplovne karte. Odjeća i obuća te kozmetika i parfemi najpopularniji su među ženama, najmlađim ispitanicima te ispitanicima iz Dalmacije. Potrošačka elektronika je najatraktivnija muškim ispitanicima s visokim primanjima iz Like, Korduna i Banovine, a predmeti za kućanstvo onima s mjesečnim primanjima iznad 12.000 kuna iz Sjeverne Hrvatske i Istre. Zanimanje za ulaznice za kulturna događanja najviše pokazuju ispitanici više razine obrazovanja, iz dobne skupine 40-49 godina te s primanjima iznad 5.500 kuna. Knjige i glazba te usluge turističkih agencija najpopularnije su kod ispitanika višeg socioekonomskog statusa, a igračke i oprema za bebe ispitanicima iz dobne skupine od 30 do 39 godina.PayPal i slične usluge pri internetskoj kupnji koristi 32% online kupaca u usporedbi s 35% u listopadu 2016., a plaćanje kreditnim karticama kao i prije godinu dana 25% njih, no među korisnicima kreditnih kartica ili kartica s odgodom plaćanja taj postotak raste na 38%. Također, korištenje kreditnih pri kupnji na internetu raste s godinama starosti i prihodima, a najpopularnije je u Zagrebu i Lici, Kordunu i Banovini. Internetsko bankarstvo za kupnju online koristi 6% online kupaca, a debitne kartice 23% njih, najčešće najmlađih ispitanika.39% online kupaca preferira inozemne e-trgovine, 13% njih domaće, dok 49% njih podjednako kupuje online u Hrvatskoj i u inozemstvu. Atraktivnost domaćih webshopova raste s dobi ispitanika. Online kupce se pitalo pohranjuju li informacije o svojoj kartici u sučeljima internetskih trgovina – 34% ih je to učinilo u inozemnim webshopovima (25% u listopadu 2016.), ponajviše Dalmatinaca, 13% u domaćim (11% u listopadu 2016.), najčešće ispitanika iz Like, a 5% u mobilnim aplikacijama trgovca (6% u listopadu 2016.).Online kupce se pitalo i plaćaju li račune online. To ih čini 75%, za razliku od 68% u svibnju 2017. 57% online kupaca račune plaća preko internetskog bankarstva, 32% koristi mobilno bankarstvo, a samo 21% njih ističe da račune uvijek plaća u poslovnicama.Popularnost kupnje online objašnjavaju brojne prednosti za korisnike – pristupačne cijene (ovu prednost ističe 72% online kupaca), ušteda vremena (65%), bolja ponuda nego u klasičnim trgovinama (59%) i dostupnost trgovina u bilo koje vrijeme (55%), a među prednostima ispitanici ističu i predmete koji su ekskluzivno dostupni online, kao i mogućnost bolje usporedbe cijena i dostave. Pristupačne cijene (73%) i besplatna dostava (66%) su glavni motivi koji bi potaknuli online kupce da još češće kupuju online. Istovremeno, glavne prepreke za shopping na internetu su briga o tome je li kupnja online dovoljno sigurna (57%) te činjenica da žele predmet koji kupuju vidjeti uživo (52%).Mobilna plaćanja sve popularnijaPrimijećen je trend rasta u mobilnom plaćanju: m-banking s 44% na 47%, kupnja putem mobilnog telefona uz plaćanje karticom sa 16% na 21% te naplata preko računa za mobilne usluge s 18% na 23%, dok su i dalje najpopularnija SMS plaćanja koja je koristilo 74% ispitanika, u usporedbi sa 71% u svibnju 2017.Iako mobilno plaćanje karticama još nije redovita praksa u Hrvatskoj, ovaj je porast odraz činjenice da mogućnosti koje nude pametni telefoni, u kombinaciji s najnovijim standardima platnih terminala postavljenih posljednjih godina u Europi, vode prema budućnosti u kojoj će svugdje biti dostupna plaćanja pametnim telefonima. Inače, u ovom su segmentu i dalje najpopularnija SMS plaćanja koja koristi 74% korisnika kartica, u usporedbi sa 71% u svibnju 2017.