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The recent series of deadly shootings in the Seattle area “can never be tolerated and Seattle should be a city where safety is an innate right,” said Mayor Bruce Harrell.

At a press conference on the 15^{th of} August, Harrell reaffirmed his belief that the shooting tragedy should be stopped not only in Seattle but also nationwide, and that we need to increase the number of police officers and strengthen the laws related to gun control in Washington state.

During the weekend, from the 12th to the evening of the 14th, a total of seven shootings occurred in Seattle and Renton, killing one person and injuring 12 others. In a shooting near a pub near the T-Mobile Stadium, about 80 shots were fired indiscriminately, leaving an innocent 14-year-old girl with a gunshot wound to the leg.

Five of the 12 gunmen who were treated at Harborview Medical Center over the weekend were in critical condition and moved to an intensive care unit, a hospital spokeswoman said. The ages of these 12 people ranged from 14 to 34 years old.

The King County Coroner’s Office identified the man who was murdered early in the morning of 13th near Carl Anderson Park on Capitol Hill as Mercer Roe. On the side of the road opposite the park, there was a temporary memorial for Roy decorated with flowers and candles.

The Seattle Times added that Roy was the 36th victim to be murdered in Seattle this year, a pace faster than last year, when 41 people were killed in shootings. Last year, there were fewer than 53 in 2020 the previous year.

Across King County, shootings left 42 people dead and 170 injured by the end of June. Last year, 88 people died and 372 were injured. This is a significant increase from 2020, when 69 people were killed and 268 were injured.

Mayor Harrell said at a press conference that the crux of the problem was very simple: “There are too many guns and the bad guys have too many guns.”

Harrell had set a goal of adding 500 more Seattle police officers and had requested $2 million in incentives to recruit new officers and hire experienced officers. The city council will consider it this week.

The number of Seattle Police Department personnel, which stood at 1,300 between 2013 and 2019, is currently below 1,000, with 400 resigning or retiring after 2020, The Times reported.

According to a recent report by National Law Review, the number of permanent residence permits available for employment in the federal government’s fiscal year 2022, which ends in September, is about 280,000, double the 140,000 per year prescribed by regulations.

According to the media and immigration lawyers, the Federal State Department and the U.S. Immigration Services Agency (USCIS) set the maximum quota for permanent residency for employment in fiscal 2022 at an all-time high of more than 280,000. This is because about 140,000 unused family immigration quotas in fiscal 2021 were carried over, National Raw Review explained.

According to the federal immigration law, the annual permanent residency quota is set at 140,000 for employment immigrants and 226,000 for family immigrants. If there is any unused portion in the family immigration quota, it will be possible to increase the employment immigration permanent residence quota by the number of unused portions in the next fiscal year.

However, due to the delay in processing of permanent residency by the Federal Immigration Service due to the COVID-19 pandemic in fiscal 2021, about 140,000 family immigration permanent residency quotas were not filled.

Due to the corona crisis, this phenomenon also appeared in the last fiscal year, and as of fiscal 2021, the total number of employment migrants and permanent residency quotas amounted to 262,288, including the unused quota for family immigration in the previous fiscal year. However, due to the backlog of immigration procedures, 66,781 employment immigration quotas were not used during the 2021 fiscal year quota, immigration law lawyers said.

However, it is explained that there is no provision in the immigration law that, unlike the family immigration permanent residence quota, the unused portion of the employment immigration quota can be carried over to the next year.

As the extra quota in the work-immigrant sector has increased, the State Department and USCIS are said to be able to expedite the processing of employment-immigrant-permanent residency applications by the end of the fiscal year by the end of September so that as many cases as possible can be processed.

In this regard, the State Department and the USCIS were counted as having exhausted their quota for a total of 176,281 employment immigrants as of June 30, when the third quarter of fiscal 2022 ended. As a result, there are still more than 100,000 quotas for employment immigration permanent residency that can be used until the end of September, when fiscal year 2022 ends.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is planning to build a private airport near its Austin, Texas headquarters, Fox Business reported on the 2nd.

Fox Business reported that Musk is planning to build an airport for himself and Tesla and its affiliates in Basturb, about 32 kilometers east of Austin, where Tesla’s headquarters and Gigafactory plant are located, Fox Business quoted a report from Austonia, a Texas-area newspaper.

However, he added that the size of the airport and the opening date have not been decided yet as it is still in the planning stage.

In Texas, Tesla’s headquarters and Gigafactory, which were moved from California last year, are in Frugerville, about 32km north of Austin.

SpaceX also has large, major facilities in southern Texas, which Musk calls the “gateway to Mars.”

Austin International Airport is only about 8 km south of Tesla’s headquarters, but it is known that Austin’s recent population surge has caused a significant increase in traffic, causing problems.

Musk frequently uses the 2015 Gulfstream G650 model and plans to introduce the newest model early next year, Ostonia said.

In the United States, an unusual accident occurred in which the co-pilot fell and died while preparing for an emergency landing due to a breakdown.

The pilot who was with him at the time stated that the co-pilot seemed to have escaped from the broken plane and jumped off himself to fall into the lake.

According to local media such as NBC News on the 1st, at 2:40 pm on the 29th of last month, a 10-seater small cargo plane with only the pilot and co-pilot on board made an emergency landing on the runway at Raleigh-Durham International Airport, North Carolina.

At that time, the pilot revealed to the control tower that one wheel of the plane did not come out and landed on the fuselage.

The plane slid off the runway and came to a halt as it entered a nearby lawn.

When firefighters arrived and retrieved the wrecked aircraft, only one pilot was found. In addition to the pilot at the time, co-pilot Charles Hugh Crooks, 23, was also on board, but his appearance could not be found.

However, the pilot brought up an unexpected story. Crooks himself jumped out of his aircraft during the flight.

The pilot stated that Crooks jumped from the aircraft during the flight to fall into a nearby river as the plane was about to crash land in an accident.

In fact, Crooks was found dead the day after the accident in the back yard of his home in a residential area 48 kilometers from the airport.

A resident near the house where Crooks crashed said in an interview with the local media, “At that time, there was a loud ‘thump’ from the backyard.

At the time, it was reported that Crooks’ body did not appear to be wearing a parachute.

But for now, there are only statements from the pilot. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating the details of the accident, believing that it cannot be ruled out that Crooks may have fallen from the plane in an accident.

The plane that crashed was a C-212 transport aircraft built in 1983 by the Spanish company CASA.

The pilot suffered minor injuries and was treated at the hospital and discharged.

People pedalling their bicycles vigorously under the clear summer sky! It looks like an outdoor sports facility in a village park, but this is the so-called ‘Bike Stage’ that became a hot topic at the Newport City Folk Music Festival in the United States.

This outdoor performance stage, which debuted this year, was born from the idea of an indie musician to think about the environment along with music. For this reason, unlike the existing outdoor concert halls, it is said that the power required for stage instruments and sound facilities is supplied by connecting solar panels and bicycle generators.

In particular, the bicycle generator, which is powered by human power, drew more attention as spectators could directly participate.

In addition, spectators who contributed to the generation of electricity were provided with front-row seats and free drinks to enjoy the performance up close.

A Ukrainian civilian cargo plane carrying munitions crashed in northern Greece on the 16th (local time), killing all eight crew members, AFP/Reuters reported.

According to reports, the freighter, an Antonov (AN)-12, owned by a Ukrainian transport company, crashed into a cornfield near Kavalasi, northern Greece, while leaving Serbia on the same day for Bangladesh.

It was confirmed that all eight Ukrainian crew members were killed in the accident.

Serbian authorities said the cargo plane was loaded with about 11.5 tons of domestic munitions, including training mortar shells.

He also emphasized that the buyer was the Bangladesh Ministry of Defense and had nothing to do with the Ukrainian war.

Serbia’s defense ministry countered, “Some media speculated that it was munitions destined for Ukraine, but this is completely false.”

The Greek military dispatched a specialized CBRN unit to the site to conduct a detailed investigation, but could not detect radioactive or chemical or biological hazardous substances harmful to the human body.

The cause of the accident was first identified as an engine failure.

According to Greek aviation authorities, the pilot of the cargo plane urgently informed the authorities that there was a problem with one of the plane’s engines before the crash.

In response, the aviation authorities arranged for landing at either the northern Thessaloniki airport or the Kavala airport, and the pilot chose the closer Kavala airport for an emergency landing, but communication was lost afterwards.

A resident who witnessed the accident said, “The engine of the accident was engulfed in flames.”

Andrew Dawson, 35, and his wife Erin, 32, of Traverse, Michigan, ran into an unexpected problem during a recent trip to the UK. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t use the cash I had exchanged in the US. “I’ve traveled all over the country, including small towns, and even small pubs only accept cards,” he said. “Many of these establishments didn’t take cash at all,” said Dawson, marketing manager for Tentcraft, which makes custom tents and accessories. Towards the end of the trip, we had a nice meal at an Indian restaurant and tried to use the exchanged cash. But they said they don’t take cash anymore.” Finally, a London hotel accepts cash payments, so they don’t have to bring their money back and exchange it for dollars.

It was customary for Americans traveling abroad to exchange their local currency. Either at the bank or at the A.T.M. or money changer in that country. However, with the contactless payment trend accelerated by the pandemic, it is now possible to travel abroad without touching a physical currency or coin such as pounds, krone or euros.

Charuta Padinis, senior vice president at Focusrite, a research firm in the entertainment industry said, “The act of making payments by tapping with a card or phone will continue in the future,”.

Of course, the change to cashless travel did not start as a pandemic. Digital payment methods and mobile wallets are a long-term trend that has continued in Asia over the past decade and other regions over the past three years, said Michael Orlando, COO of Yapstone, a global payment company.

“But there’s no doubt that the pandemic has accelerated this trend,” said Matt Schultz, chief credit analyst at Lending Tree, an online lender. When the pandemic began, consumers began to order more things online and by phone. He pointed out, “I felt more comfortable handing over a card or using a QR code or mobile app rather than using cash.”

If you’re traveling abroad this summer for the first time since the pandemic, how do you know when you need cash next (tips and toilets) and when you don’t (shopping and restaurants), and how to optimize your credit and bank card and digital payment options?

Many businesses outside the US these days only accept contactless cards. “I put a chip in or swipe on a mobile card reader that the waiter brought,” Dawson said throughout the trip, “but every time I was told I had to ‘tap’.” Contactless technology has “became the de facto standard for almost a decade” outside the US, said Ben Sofitt, executive director of digital wealth management platform Unifimoney. According to Mastercard, half of its global transactions are now done contactless.

Check your card before heading overseas to ensure you have the contactless payment option.  If you are unsure, call your credit card company to find out before you travel. Make sure the card you carry doesn’t swell with foreign exchange transaction fees. Nick Iwen, director of Points Guy, a website dedicated to travel-related content, said Capital One VentureOne was a good choice.

If you’re asked if you want to pay in your national currency or in US dollars, say you want to pay in your local currency to avoid ‘heavy currency exchange fees’. Max Jones, owner of Change Travel, travel advisor and concierge agency at Virtuoso Network. has advised

You can use contactless cards to pay for bus and train fares in many places (including New York City). There is no need to pay extra or worry about how much to top up for a transit card. You also don’t have to struggle with confusing instructions at the kiosk. With the ease of contactless fares and the app’s instructions, you can use public transport as if you were a local.

Nicole Gustas, 51, marketing director for an insurance company, said while traveling to New Zealand and Australia, he was often embarrassed by merchants who refused to use his credit card because it was not a contactless card. To solve her problem, she installed her Google Pay on her own phone.

Once you scan the QR code using your phone’s camera, you can complete the payment using your digital wallet or by entering your card information.

Despite the widespread use of cashless payments, there may be cases in which cash is required. If you’re traveling in a big city like London, or if you’re on a group tour, there’s nothing wrong with relying solely on your card. However, if you are backpacking or use the small shops and small restaurants, there may be situations where you will need to spend some cash.

This situation differs slightly from country to country. Germany was the country with the most cash use before the pandemic. But even stores that previously accepted cash only are now displaying signs saying they prefer contactless payments. In contrast, Scandinavia, Australia and New Zealand have been “the most active card holders” over the past decade. Spain and France are being mixed, Jones said.

You may need cash when using your car. Some toll roads will not accept US debit or credit cards. You may also need coins for parking. Another case where cash is required is a tip. As a tip for people who clean your hotel room or lift your luggage, it’s a good idea to have around $100 in change, said Pauline Frommer, editor of the travel guide Frommer Guidebook and related websites.

(Cutler, Maine) Maine will again be full of tourists this summer, and vacation stayers will finally be there after two summers of deprivation. But nothing dooms visitors to elbowing on the beaches in the south of the state. To the east, the coast, much less frequented, still looks wild.

Many tourists will return to Maine this summer. They will reconnect with the fine sandy beaches, but also the endless traffic jams on Route 1. However, with the thousands of kilometers of coast of the State, there is always a way to find a little calm by the sea.

The path has been advancing for almost 2 km in a dense forest on the ground covered with flowers when the air suddenly takes on the salty smell of the sea. A few steps further, the horizon opens. On the left as on the right, large conifers play acrobats, sometimes with a root in the air, at the top of the cliffs. Here and there, small pebble beaches are revealed between the rock walls. There is a fishing boat offshore to break the silence, but no road or house for miles around.

Yes, against all odds, nature has retained its full rights over parts of Maine’s coast, like here in Cutler’s public lands.

Not everything is wild in this part of the country. But driving east on Route 1, the landscape changes once you pass the junction to Bar Harbor. Mini golf courses have disappeared, and motels are rare, some are even abandoned. The opulent mansions, so numerous in Camden, have given way to modest colonial-style residences, with their weathered wooden cladding. Around Lubec and Eastport, the two easternmost (small) towns in the United States, many houses even seem to come straight out of an Edward Hopper canvas, melancholy included.

Eastern Maine, known as the Downeast, is fishing country. Especially lobster. Almost every successive cove on the coast is home to a small port. Cluttered with cages and buoys. And surrounded by a handful of houses. In the bays at low tide, cockle pickers emerge from the mist. And on land, the vast fields of wild blueberries hug the hills for a long time.

Visitors are fewer. Life seems tougher. “The pandemic has been tough in this part of the state,” says Lisa Hanscom, who operates a blueberry farm and rents two small cabins in Roque Bluffs. “A lot of businesses have closed.”

However, the attractions of the Downeast are not lacking for those who love the great outdoors.

You can do countless hikes by the sea, such as Cutler, but also at the foot of the West Quoddy Head lighthouse, and in many reserves or state parks, especially on the shores of the immense Cobscook Bay, where birdwatchers come to observe around 300 species of birds.

“The US economy is already in recession,” said Cassie Wood, CEO of Arc Investment Management, who is called the “money tree sister” in Korea. He appeared on CNBC’s popular program ‘Squawk Box’ on the 28th (local time) and argued that “the inventory increase is serious.”

“The United States underestimated the seriousness and enduring power of inflation,” she admitted. “Inflation was much hotter than expected due to the disruption of the supply chain caused by the coronavirus and geopolitical risks such as the Ukraine crisis,” he said.

Inflation in the US was the biggest increase since December 1981, when the consumer price index (CPI) rose 8.6% in May compared to the previous year. As a result, the consumer sentiment index surveyed by the University of Michigan fell to 50 in June, the lowest level since the University of Michigan began the related survey. 0

People who invest heavily in technology stocks, are having the most difficult time this year as a sell-off in technology stocks has emerged. His flagship fund, the Ark Innovation ETF, has fallen 52% this year and 66% from its 52-week high.

The US dollar dominates the foreign exchange market. Demand for safe assets such as the Swiss franc and the Japanese yen, which is often accompanied by concerns about an economic slowdown and rising uncertainty, has continued to rise, but only the dollar continues to rise. Foreign investors are buying U.S. dollars with the money they sold stocks and bonds amid an unsettling flow.

Foreign dollar holdings, record high The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 21st (local time) that the amount of foreign dollar cash holdings is approaching an all-time high. Amid soaring inflation (inflation), central banks around the world are raising interest rates, and fears of a global economic downturn are mounting. Deutsche Bank foreign exchange strategist George Sarabellos pointed out in his analysis note that “the dollar is one of the rare financial assets that provides a return as a hedge against stagflation around the world.” Stagflation is a phenomenon in which both inflation and economic slowdown occur.

An unstable market as central banks around the world fail to control inflation, rapid rate hikes are driving the global economy into recession, while concerns over stagflation that inflation will not be able to catch are driving the financial markets to hell. All financial products, including stocks, bonds, cryptocurrencies, and commodities, are falling. Although it started a strong rebound today, the S&P 500 index, a market condition indicator for the New York Stock Exchange, has fallen more than 20% from its previous high on the 13th, entering an official bear market. Meanwhile, the dollar is attracting investors from all over the world by offering the only stable value.

Swiss Franc, Endo The WSJ Dollar Index, which measures the value of the US dollar against 16 currencies, has risen 3% this month. The dollar has risen about 12% over the past year, although the upward trend slowed last week when the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points. The Swiss franc and Japanese yen, which served as safety valves along with the dollar when the market was unstable, are also failing this time. As the Bank of Japan (BOJ) continued its zero-interest rate policy, the yen lost its attractiveness as a store of value, and the Swiss franc has not received much attention.

There is no alternative Fund managers are acknowledging that the current high dollar value is a bubble, but they continue to buy the dollar because there is no other alternative. As the central bank’s interest rate hikes and the flow of risky assets continue to flow, they believe that the dollar, the key currency, will have no choice but to maintain its highest level in decades.

There is a high pessimism that the US economy will almost certainly fall into recession within next year at the latest, but there is no alternative. “In theory, we can expect the dollar to fall in the long run due to high inflation in real terms,” said Hugo Ranzioni, head of global foreign exchange management at Neuberger Berman. Rancioni predicted that the dollar would depreciate by then when concerns about a global economic slowdown subside and geopolitical tensions such as the Ukraine