Groton In the City of Groton s first Democratic primary in decades, incumbent City Mayor Keith Hedrick and challenger Town Councilor Aundré Bumgardner are vying for the city s top post.
The winner of the March 8 primary will not face a Republican challenger in the May 3 general election; the City of Groton Republican Committee has not endorsed a slate after prospective candidates cited concerns over “a hostile and threatening environment” for Republicans and withdrew their names.
The Democratic candidates for city mayor, both former Republicans, each bring goals for the next term, but both said the city s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and getting people vaccinated are top priorities.
JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia has detected two cases of the more infectious COVID-19 variant first discovered in Britain, officials said on Tuesday, marking a potential new complication for the country as it tries to contain one of the worst coronavirus outbreaks in Asia. Dante Saksono Harbuwono, the deputy health minister, said the discovery of the variant represented a new challenge. We ll be facing this pandemic with a higher degree of difficulty, he told a streamed conference. Indonesia s COVID-19 task force also confirmed cases of the variant, known as B117, had been found but declined further comment. Since Indonesia announced its first cases of COVID-19 a year ago it has reported more than 1.3 million infections and 36,000 deaths, though daily infections have been falling recently after peaking in January and early February. The British variant has also been found in other countries in Southeast Asia including Vietnam and the Philippines. Riza Putranto, a genomics researcher in
By Andreas Rinke BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel faced growing pressure to set out a clear roadmap to reopening German society from months of pandemic lockdown, with Finance Minister Olaf Scholz joining the chorus of voices saying existing plans did not go far enough. Draft plans, seen by Reuters, show ministers are planning to ease some restrictions beginning next week, a cautious approach that is likely to disappoint parents of school-age children and many business groups in Europe s largest economy. Scholz, his Social Democrat party s candidate to succeed the conservative Chancellor in this year s national election, called for more testing and vaccination to help speed the reopening process. Much of what we re hearing from the Chancellor s office doesn t go far enough, he told Bild newspaper. He wanted to see a combination of testing and opening, he said. And vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. Death rates and numbers of patients in intensive care have been declining since
Many essential workers in nonmedical fields, who have been hailed as heroes for continuing to work in person throughout the coronavirus pandemic, will have