Chicago (Special to Informed Comment) – Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot ordered the removal of two statues of Christopher Columbus after police and protesters clashed last week. The confrontation at the navigator’s monument in Grant Park resulted in injuries to both officers and demonstrators. According to NBC News, Chicago Police Department officials confirmed that the gathering was peaceful until a small group began throwing objects. Carting away the Grant Park Columbus came after some protesters had earlier tried to pull it down. The second one stood in Arrigo Park, in the city’s Little Italy neighborhood.

Lightfoot’s move has sparked much local and national criticism.

Some Italian-Americans are angry about the mayor’s decision, considering it an insult to their national pride and a fellow countryman. The city’s Italian immigrant community raised the money for the Grant Park Columbus and gifted it to Chicago in honor of its centennial during the Century of Progress and Second World’s Fair in 1933.

Speaking of Italian ethnic pride, Columbus did not have much of that. He swore loyalty to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, who controlled what was then called the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily. With the exception of a couple of short, unsuccessful French incursions there, Spain dominated southern Italy for generations. Historian H.G. Koenigsberger writes that the Spanish “with their contingents of Italian soldiers, sacked their cities [and] laid waste their countryside … Spain, holding Sicily [and] Naples, … dominated and stifled Italian political life.”

I can not get a home loan approval: your rescue gu. And that means you got rejected, so what now?

When it comes to great majority of men and women, purchasing a house means getting a home loan. Many first-time home purchasers proceed through pre-qualification first, which gives these with an operating spending plan in the event that home loan is prosperous.

Although this could be a great option to figure out how big the mortgage you likely will get, it gives no guarantee of home loan approval down the track. Would-be and first-time purchasers are now and again provided an awful shock whenever they you will need to get home loan approval, with denial often establishing individuals straight right straight back for months and even years.

Getting knocked straight straight back for a home loan can appear to be a soul-crushing experience, payday loans New York nonetheless it does not have to function as the final end around the globe. Having home financing application denied does not mean you cannot get a home loan. It merely means you need to earn some modifications.

There are numerous reasoned explanations why a loan request could be refused, a few of that are relatively simple to fix. You’re going to have to do a little ongoing work, therefore it is crucial that you be proactive to see why you had been rejected before going ahead.

So that you got denied, so what now?

You can be rejected home financing for most reasons, a number of that are very easy to fix yet others that might be away from control. While loan providers consider the relationship betwixt your earnings and financial obligation amounts set alongside the home loan quantity, your credit score additionally plays a fundamental part.

PETALING JAYA, July 25: The head of a think tank has questioned the wisdom of using the threat of harsh punishment to ensure compliance with SOPs set by the government in its fight against Covid-19.

Azrul Mohd Khalib, CEO of the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy, asked whether the government could provide proof that long jail sentences or stiff fines would improve compliance.

“While it is tempting to use instruments of state such as fines and imprisonment to enforce measures such as home quarantines or compliance with SOPs, there is a problem with trying to strike fear or intimidate people into compliance,” he told FMT.

The use of fear could bring about discrimination and the blaming of victims, he said.

He also said the most likely to suffer strict punishments would be the poor.

“They will likely be jailed because they can’t afford to pay high fines. How does that help? We don’t need more people in jail as it increases vulnerability to infection.”

He also disagreed with putting the onus on businesses to ensure compliance.

“Businesses are already facing hardship through the loss of clients and customers. Many are facing closure and are struggling to survive.”

He said the government should instead improve its support of businesses to help them comply with the new regulations.

“Our dependence on the stick to beat others into submission rather than the carrot can prove to be our undoing,” he added.

He blamed the government for the complacency shown by members of the public.

“We are lulled into a false sense of security by the seemingly low reported data and the false perception that the cases largely involve non-nationals,” he said.

One day after a report that a respected Chinese virologist fled Hong Kong to accuse Beijing of a COVID cover-up, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon told the Daily Mail that scientists from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and other labs have defected to the West and are “turning over evidence” against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for their role in the COVID-19 pandemic which has claimed over 560,000 lives worldwide since last December.

“People are going to be shocked,” Bannon told the  Mail (“from a yacht off the East coast of America,” the Mail would like us to know).

The 66-year-old then said that defectors are cooperating with intelligence agencies in America, Europe and the UK, which have been assembling evidence to challenge the CCP claim that the pandemic originated in a wet market – not in a lab home to scientists who have come under fire for manipulating bat coronavirus to be more transmissible to humans.