Business
A garbage crisis engulfs Havana as fuel shortages stall trash pickup
Their focus was an improvised dump site on the sidewalk with rotting food scrs, torn bags, cardboard and rubble. Swarms of flies and stray cats gathered around the trash whose stench wafted on the breeze from the nearby sea.
“What you’re looking at is depressing,” lamented María Odalys Ramírez, a 63-year-old who lives across the street from the cital’s iconic Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital. “The trash in this area, the flies, the rats, the filth — it’s completely unsanitary.”
Without garbage collection, residents have begun burning waste in the streets, raising alarm among health officials over potentially toxic smoke.
Residents fear the coming months will bring worse conditions as summer heat intensifies and hurricane season begins.
A citywide tour by The Associated Press revealed identical scenes across Havana neighborhoods where locals said garbage trucks pass only irregularly.
In the city center and on the outskirts, cars, bicycles and pedestrians weave around the trash piles. Others pick through it, hoping to salvage something useful.
Havana as of last July was producing the equivalent of about 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools of solid waste every day, according the latest municipal figures available. Even then, municipal services collected just 57%.
The “improper management of urban solid waste” has been identified as a primary environmental challenge in Cuba’s national strategy, said Odalys Goicochea, an official at the ministry of science, technology and the environment.
Now, Goicochea warned, the current garbage collection situation, combined with rising temperatures and impending rains, could worsen the situation. The heat and moisture threaten to trigger a proliferation of disease-carrying flies and mosquitoes.
The crisis has sparked citizen initiatives to clean up neighborhoods.
One is El Batazo, an initiative operating across eight Havana blocks. A collector rings a bell twice daily to pick up pre-sorted household trash, while other project members sweep the streets.
Members then sell recyclable raw materials like aluminum and glass, repurpose food scrs to feed livestock and place the remaining trash into a container for later transport to a landfill.
“The fundamental impact of this project is proving to the community that it can be done,” said Evelyn Martínez, a collaborator at El Batazo. “It is entirely possible to live in a cleaner environment, give value to what we call ‘trash’ and put it to good use.”
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Business
Marin Shakespeare Company Opens Vibrant, Pride-Forward Production of ‘As You Like It’
SAN RAFAEL, Calif., June 3, 2026 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Love takes center stage under the summer sky as Marin Shakespeare Company presents As You Like It, adted and directed by Evren Odcikin and running June 19 through July 19 at the Forest Meadows Amphitheatre. A dazzling, music-filled, fashion-forward romp through the Forest of Arden. Joyous and romantic, this reimagining leans into the comedy’s delicious fluidity of gender and identity. Join the celebration of love, out loud, in all its forms.
Image ction: FRONT: Evren Odcikin, Lady Zen, Stevie DeMott, Lisa Wolpe* BACK: Adam Magill*, Dave Maier, Chris Steele, Cathleen Riddley*, David Sinaiko, Juenée Simon*, Fatemeh Mehraban. Photo
Odcikin’s vibrant production opens during Pride Month and invites audiences into one of Shakespeare’s most playful explorations of love and desire. In Odcikin’s vision, Arden is not simply a place of exile or esce. It is a world where people find the language, the community, and the courage to say who they are out loud.
This play has always held queer multitudes, says adtor and director Evren Odcikin. For me, Arden is not where these characters discover who they are. It’s where they finally get to say it out loud. This production is about community, self-articulation, and the kind of joy that is chosen, defiant, and hard-won.
The production draws a vivid contrast between the polished danger of the court and the liberated world of Arden. The court is sleek, status-obsessed, and tightly controlled; Arden is colorful, communal, musical, and alive — inspired less by a traditional pastoral fantasy than by the backyard of a queer Bay Area gathering place where weirdos and outsiders can breathe. With high fashion, music, movement, and the expansive beauty of MSC’s outdoor summer amphitheatre, this As You Like It trades the usual forest fantasy for something stranger, sharper, and more celebratory.
Evren’s vision expands the play in exactly the way great Shakespeare should, says Artistic Director Jon Tracy. It is deeply thoughtful, wildly theatrical, and full of life. This is a production about love, identity, community, and the courage it takes to be fully seen — all set inside one of Shakespeare’s most joyful comedies.
The production also brings two extraordinary guest artists to Marin Shakespeare Company’s summer stage. Lady Zen, pearing as Amiens and serving as composer and music director, is a Fulbright mezzo, poet, librettist, actor, and genre-defying entertainment artist whose Lyric Fusion Poetics blends opera, jazz, photogrhy, and spoken word. Based in Mexico, she has toured and taught across Central America and Europe, and previously composed music for MSC’s Hamlet.
Lisa Wolpe, pearing as Jacques, is one of the world’s great Shakespeare artists: a performer, director, educator, and founder of the all-female, multicultural Los Angeles Women’s Shakespeare Company. She has performed and directed at major Shakespeare companies across the world, and her acclaimed solo work Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender has toured internationally — making her presence especially electric in this gender-fluid reimagining.
The cast also features two acclaimed Bay Area performers at the heart of Shakespeare’s great comedy: Jeunée Simon as Rosalind and Adam Magill as Orlando. They are joined by Stevie DeMott as Olivia, Dave Maier as Charles/Oliver Martext, Fatemeh Mehraban as Celia, Cathleen Riddley as Adam/Duke Senior, David Sinaiko as Touchstone, and Chris Steele as Le Beau/Audrey.
At the center of the story are Rosalind and Orlando, two outsiders who recognize something true in one another before the rest of the world catches up. Around them, Shakespeare’s beloved comedy unfolds with mistaken identities, romantic confusion, sharp wit, music, movement, and a joyful collision of hearts. In Odcikin’s adtation, the ending becomes not simply a set of marriages, but a communal celebration of love in its many forms.
Performances run June 19 through July 19 at Forest Meadows Amphitheatre, located on the campus of Dominican University of California in San Rafael. Performances are Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 5 p.m.
Tickets are available now at:
PERFORMANCE DETAILS: Tickets $0 – $49 June 19 – Preview (Discount Tickets from $10-$25) June 21 – Senior Matinee ($20 Tickets for Seniors 65+) June 27 – Full Moon (Enjoy a full Moon rising above the stage!) June 28 – Family Day (FREE Admission for youths age 25 and under) July 2 – Pay-What-You-Will (Choose your own price!) ABOUT MARIN SHAKESPEARE COMPANY: Stories live at Marin Shakespeare Company, constantly reimagined and renewed through the bold choices of the artists who she them. We strive to be a hub for connection, using the complexity of world stories—past and present—through multiple theatrical forms to open space for questions, reflection, and action. Our productions invite audiences into worlds that are alive, urgent, and fully human, where laughter, wonder, and challenge coexist. Marin Shakespeare Company is Playing for Good. Learn more at:
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As You Like It
June 19 – July 19, 2026
Thursdays – Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.
Sundays at 5 p.m.
Forest Meadows Amphitheatre
890 Belle Ave, San Rafael, CA
Business
Cannons lost underwater during the American Revolution will soon go on display at a Georgia museum
SAVANNAH, Ga. () — A museum in Georgia’s oldest city on Wednesday welcomed a truckload of treasures from the earliest period of U.S. history — 17 cannons that experts believe sank to the bottom of the Savannah River during the American Revolution and remained undiscovered for nearly 240 years.
Workers carefully hoisted the big guns one-by-one from the back of a truck and wheeled them inside their new home at the Savannah History Museum, which will put them on display just in time for the Fourth of July celebration of America’s 250th birthday.
“They look brand new,” said Andrea Farmer, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers archaeologist who was part of the team that researched and preserved the cannons. “They could pretty much be fired if someone wanted to.”
The artifacts were discovered in 2021 when a dredge scooping sediment from the riverbed as part of an Army Corps project to deepen Savannah’s shipping channel pulled up a cannon in its metal jaws. The crew soon dug up two more.
In the course of just over a year, a total of 19 cannons were hoisted from the location just downstream from Savannah, which is where Georgia was founded in 1733 as the last of Britain’s 13 American colonies.
After being pulled from the river, most of the cannons left Georgia for several years to undergo cleaning and preservation work at a Texas lab.
One of the Revolution’s bloodiest battles was fought in Savannah
Archaeologists initially assumed the cannons likely dated to the Civil War. But further research indicated they’re likely almost a century older and sank during the buildup to the American Revolution’s bloody siege of Savannah.
Savannah was under British occupation in the fall of 1779, when colonists planned an attack to retake the city with help from French allies.
When French ships carrying troops were spotted off the Georgia coast, British forces scuttled at least six ships in the Savannah River downstream from the city to block the French vessels.
The land battle that followed was one of the bloodiest of the war. British forces killed nearly 300 colonial fighters and their allies, and wounded hundreds more.
The Savannah History Museum sits right next to the battlefield. Its staff on Wednesday hoisted the cannons, weighing up to 1500 pounds (680 kilograms) iece, onto custom display mounts that staffers likened to giant wine racks.
The cannons will be part of a new exhibit on Savannah’s role in the American Revolution, which is scheduled to open Fourth of July weekend, said Samantha Moss, the museum’s curator.
“Our great team has been prepping for months — building mounts and planning how we can safely display these very large, very special artifacts,” she said.
Cleaning the crusty cannons took years
Each of the iron cannons emerged from the river covered by a thick crust of mud and minerals.
Two were left in that raw state and put on display at the museum. The other 17 were sent to Texas A&M University, which has a lab that specializes in preserving underwater artifacts. Its staff spent years painstakingly cleaning the big guns and coating them in paint and wax to prevent rusting and corrosion.
“A lot of them have scour marks on the side from anchors or dredging, so there’s some scarring on the cannons,” said Chris Dostal, a professor of nautical archaeology who leads Texas A&M’s Conservation Research Lab. “But most of them look pretty exceptional.”
Most of the cannons arrived with wooden plugs still sealing their bores, which remained packed with cannonballs and gunpowder charges.
Dostal said radiocarbon dating of the wooden stoppers placed them roughly in the late 1700s. His team shared the cannons’ measurements and other details with experts in London, who concluded three of them were very likely forged by the British military.
The rest peared to be of French design but bore no telltale markings. Dostal said he suspects those guns may have been cast in America around the time of the war.
Other artifacts found with the cannons included pieces of anchors and a portion of a ship’s bronze bell. Like the cannons, none of them bore engravings indicating which ship they came from.
That means many details of the cannons’ origins remain a mystery.
“You don’t have all of the information,” Farmer said. “You’re trying to piece it together as best as you can.”
Business
Republicans won the redistricting battle. Now voters will decide whether they win Congress
Republicans could net about 10 additional U.S. House seats in the November elections if redrawn voting districts perform as they were intended. The question is whether that’s enough for the GOP to hold on to a majority in the chamber, where Democrats need to gain only a few seats to take control.
Political trends and historic patterns favor Democrats. President Donald Trump’s proval ratings are negative. And the incumbent’s party has lost House seats in every midterm election over the past two decades.
Nearly 145 million people — about two of every five U.S. residents — live in states with new congressional districts for this election.
Yet the mid-decade redistricting battle didn’t go as far as it could have.
Here’s a look at the states with new U.S. House ms:
Texas
Current m: 13 Democrats, 25 Republicans
Missouri
Current m: two Democrats, six Republicans
North Carolina
Current m: four Democrats, 10 Republicans
Ohio
Current m: five Democrats, 10 Republicans
California
Current m: 43 Democrats, nine Republicans
Utah
Current m: no Democrats, four Republicans
Florida
Current m: eight Democrats, 20 Republicans
Tennessee
Current m: one Democrat, eight Republicans
Louisiana
Current m: two Democrats, four Republicans
Alabama
Current m: two Democrats, five Republicans
Business
Secured Signing Announces Seamless Integration with Actionstep to Automate Law Firm Workflows
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., June 3, 2026 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Secured Signing, a leading provider of secure digital signature, online notarization, video signing and identity verification solutions, announces a powerful new integration with Actionstep, the cloud‑based practice management platform trusted by modern law firms.
Image ction: Image ction: Secured Signing Announces Seamless Integration with Actionstep to Automate Law Firm Workflows.
This integration delivers a frictionless workflow that empowers legal professionals to draft, send, sign, and file documents all without ever leaving Actionstep platform.
In an industry where manual data entry often leads to costly errors and lost billable hours, this integration offers a direct solution: Sign. Save. Stay in Actionstep.
By plugging Secured Signing directly into the Actionstep dashboard, firm data such as signer names, emails, and matter numbers are pre-populated automatically. Once a document is executed, it “returns home,” automatically saving back against the correct matter and updating relevant data fields in real-time.
Law firms running on Actionstep already benefit from an exceptionally powerful practice management platform, said Mike Eyal, CEO of Secured Signing. Now, they can amplify that power with a sophisticated, purpose‑built e-Signature and digital identity layer.
This integration delivers the seamless, reliable signing experience legal teams expect eliminating copying, pasting, manual filing, and every other workflow bottleneck.
KEY FEATURES OF THE INTEGRATION:
- Direct Dashboard Initiation: Initiate signature requests, Remote Online Notarization (RON), In Person Electronic Notary (IPEN), Video Signing, and identity verification directly within Actionstep.
- Automatic Matter-Centric Save-Back: Executed documents are automatically filed against the matching matter number, ensuring a tamper-evident audit trail is always where it belongs.
- Real-Time Status : Monitor document signing progress at a glance to keep deadlines on track and instantly spot matters that need follow‑
- Enhanced Security & Identity Verification: Features include proactive deepfake detection and biometric matching to safeguard firms against signer identity fraud.
This integration is purpose-built for law firms of any size that require enterprise‑grade security, including PKI‑based Advanced Electronic Signatures (AES), individual digital certificates for every signer, Online Notary, and Remote Witnessing, all while delivering a completely frictionless user experience.
The Secured Signing for Actionstep integration is available now. For more information or to request a demo, visit Secured Signing.
Learn more at:
ABOUT SECURED SIGNING Secured Signing is a global provider of digital document signing offering Advanced e-Signatures and Remote Online Notarization solutions, trusted by legal professionals, financial institutions, healthcare providers, government agencies, and businesses worldwide. Its platform combines compliance-grade security with an intuitive user experience, enabling organizations to execute documents with confidence — wherever their signers are located. For more information, visit:
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Business
Edimakor V5.0.0 Revolutionizes AI Video Creation with Reference to Video and AI Ads Features
NEW YORK, N.Y., June 3, 2026 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Video production using AI has completely evolved since the early days when users created random video clips based only on a text prompt. Nowadays, users are calling for consistent quality, improved control, and fast turnaround times, making these types of previously available tools irrelevant. The HitPaw Edimakor new version 5.0.0 addresses this demand by providing comprehensive solutions (new features) that make video content creation easy for creators by integrating Reference to Video, Ability to Create AI ads, ability to do video clones (i.e., create a copy of anyone). This update moves video production from a traditional model to a more intelligent Procedure.
Image ction: Edimakor V5.0.0 Revolutionizes AI Video Creation.
REFERENCE TO VIDEO POWERED BY WAN 2.7
Edimakor V5.0.0 completely redefines the AI Video landsce, where many AI Video tools start anew every time an AI is executed. Incorporate your own images, video, or audio as reference material with a text prompt, and Edimakor will produce an engaging video that has the same visual output from beginning to end. The integration of the newly incorporated Wan 2.7 model powers this process, delivering the level of quality and consistency that generic generation cannot provide. Your style is still your style.
AI IMAGE EDITING CLEAN, FAST, PROFESSIONAL
Two major enhancements In Edimakor AI Image Editing:
- Remove or replace the background of an image to produce an entire series of professional photos with different backgrounds for various marketing scenes.
- Take out unwanted objects, remove blemishes, change the colour of items, and add or replace items in large areas of photos easily using simple selections.
AI ADS ONE CLICK TO A PROFESSIONAL AD CAMPAIGN
Edimakor V5.0.0 offers you an entire ad generation suite that will allow you to generate high-quality video or image-based ads for e-commerce or brand marketing, in one click!
Main features:
- Unified product and brand management with AI customized characters that represent your brand.
- Creative advertisements, use of consumer-generated content, product showcase advertisements, and promotional advertisements.
- AI background sw, virtual try-on, and model hand-holding product shot feature.
VIDEO CLONING CTURE WHAT WORKS
Using Video Cloning function, you can upload your reference clip or photogrh(s), and Edimakor will produce for you a fully-functioning video marketing piece using the same style, camera angles, lighting, and action as your reference material. This one tool alone can save hundreds of hours of video production work each week.
CONCLUSION
With Edimakor V5.0.0, you will have a full creative video production studio all contained in one tool, which includes reference-based generation of viral content, cloning of other successful advertisements, professional-grade advertisement production, and the ability to produce emotional-sounding voiceovers.
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