Thursday, December 29, 2022

And another day of spending bills, travelers from China, Israel moves far-right, Buffalo's death toll, land in very high risk of wildfires, the Nigerian schoolgirls, ‘nitrate-cured’ meat’s clear link to cancer, Andrew Tate’s disgustingness, and a legend of ‘the beautiful game’ passes on comes to a close:

“One day, I hope we can play ball together in heaven.” — Pelé, the day Maradona died

Covid Deaths

US: 1,117,751

World: 6,693,618

Covid Cases

US: 102,477,929

World: 663,883,263

Biden signs $1.7 trillion bill funding government operations. President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that will keep the federal government operating through the end of the federal budget year in September 2023, and provide tens of billions of dollars in new aid to Ukraine for its fight against the Russian military.

US will require COVID-19 testing for travelers from China. The U.S. announced new COVID-19 testing requirements Wednesday for all travelers from China, joining other nations imposing restrictions because of a surge of infections.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been sworn in as the leader of what is likely to be Israel's most right-wing government in history. Netanyahu and his government were sworn in on Thursday for his sixth term as prime minister, 18 months after he was ousted from power. He returns with the support of several far-right figures once consigned to the fringes of Israeli politics, after cobbling together a coalition shortly before last week’s deadline.

Death toll climbs as blizzard-battered Buffalo area digs out. Roads reopened Thursday in storm-besieged Buffalo as authorities continued searching for people who may have died or are stuck and suffering after last week’s blizzard.

85% of rural land in California is now in ‘high’ or ‘very high’ risk for wildfires, new analysis shows. The climate crisis is among the key factors in a new assessment that shows more than 85% of California’s rural and unincorporated land is now in “high” or “very high” severity zones for wildfire danger, the state’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) recently announced.

2022 will be warmest year on record in UK. The Met Office said the annual average temperature across the UK this year will exceed the previous record set in 2014, when the average was 9.88C.

‘I think of them’: Abducted Nigerian schoolgirls remembered. Margret Yama’s phone screensaver is a picture of her cousin, Rifkatu Galang, who is still held by Boko Haram extremists nearly nine years after she and 275 other girls were seized from their school in northeastern Nigeria.

‘Too much’ nitrite-cured meat brings clear risk of cancer, say scientists. A leading scientist has urged ministers to ban the use of nitrites in food after research highlighted the “clear” risk of developing cancer from eating processed meat such as bacon and ham too often. The study by scientists from Queen’s University Belfast found that mice fed a diet of processed meat containing the chemicals, which are used to cure bacon and give it its distinctive pink colour, developed 75% more cancerous tumours than mice fed nitrite-free pork.

FDA recalls blood pressure medication over cancer risks. The tablets were contaminated by substances known as nitrosamines, which the FDA reports are commonly found in food and water. These impurities are found in meats, dairy products and vegetables, and can increase a person’s risk of developing cancer when faced with prolonged exposure, according to the FDA.

Sesame will join the major food allergens list on January 1, FDA says. The FDA has been reviewing whether to put sesame seeds on the major food allergens list — which also includes milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans — for several years. Adding sesame to the major food allergens list means foods containing sesame will be subject to specific food allergen regulatory requirements, including those regarding labeling and manufacturing.

US House bans TikTok on lawmakers’ official phones. The U.S. House of Representatives has ordered its staff and lawmakers to delete TikTok from any government-issued mobile devices due to “security issues” with the popular video-sharing app. The order to delete the app was issued by Catherine Szpindor, the chief administrative officer of the House, whose office warned in August that the app represented a “high risk to users” citing a “number of security concerns.”

Insulin costs will be capped in 2023, but most people with diabetes won't benefit. The Inflation Reduction Act's insulin cap will apply only to people on Medicare, leaving behind more than 21 million people in the U.S. who may need the lifesaving drug.

Andrew Tate, brother detained in Romania in human trafficking case: reports. Tate was reportedly arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and forming an organized criminal group. Prosecutors said they found six women who the suspects had sexually exploited and that the suspects appear to have created an organized group to recruit, house and exploit women by forcing them to create pornographic content to be viewed on certain websites for money, according to Reuters…Tate’s arrest came one day after he sparred on Twitter with climate activist Greta Thunberg, bragging about his collection of 33 cars. “This is just the start,” Tate said. “Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.”  The 19-year-old Swedish activist responded by saying “yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com.” — Fucking hysterical! He got arrested because police used his clap back video to Greta to figure out where he was. More. On. Anyway, nicely done Greta. What’s not fucking hysterical is what this piece of shit has done to women, and how he believes women are partially responsible for rape and that they [women] belong to men. He’s just pure fucking trash.

Who is the complete opposite of trash is the one and only Pelé.

Pele: A sporting icon who made football beautiful. And, off the field, he campaigned tirelessly to improve conditions for the most deprived people in society.

RIP Pelé. He was 82.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Sunday, December 25, 2022

And another day of mutations, lies, bussing migrants, storms, disappearing plants and animals, banning women from working, reducing the risk of metastatic cancer, recalls, mosquitoes, minerals, and ‘deceptive’ movie trailers comes to a close:

“Greg Abbott isn’t a Christian—he’s a monster.” — Sawyer Hackett

Covid Deaths

US: 1,116,084

World: 6,686,052

Covid Cases

US: 102,236,095

World: 661,786,713

China’s COVID-19 surge raises odds of new coronavirus mutant. “China has a population that is very large and there’s limited immunity. And that seems to be the setting in which we may see an explosion of a new variant,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

Fox News' Sean Hannity says he knew all along Trump lost the election. Fox News star Sean Hannity – one of former President Donald Trump's strongest allies on the air and one of his closest advisers off it – admitted under oath that he never believed the lie that Trump was cheated of victory in the 2020 presidential election by a voting tech company. That stands in contrast to what played out on some of Fox's biggest shows – including Hannity's. On television, Fox News hosts, stars and guests amplified and embraced such wild and false claims, made by Trump, his campaign lawyers and surrogates, presenting them to millions of viewers. Hannity and a top Fox News executive who oversees prime-time programs told a different story about Trump's false claims of fraud under oath and in front of attorneys, during separate depositions in a $1.6 billion defamation suit. — Stop watching Fox News. 

More migrants dropped off outside vice president’s home in freezing weather on Christmas Eve. Several busloads of migrants were dropped off in front of Vice President Kamala Harris’ residence in Washington, DC, on Christmas Eve in 18 degree weather late Saturday. An initial two busloads were taken to local shelters, according to an administration official. More buses arrived outside the vice president’s residence later Saturday evening. A CNN team saw migrants being dropped off, with some migrants wearing only T-shirts in the freezing weather. They were given blankets and put on another bus that went to a local church.

“If you're ok with this, then you can't call yourself a Christian. I didn't make the rules. Jesus did (or, you know, the dudes who wrote all the bible stories down did).” — The Rude Pundit

Frigid monster storm across US claims at least 34 lives. Millions of people hunkered down against a deep freeze Sunday to ride out the winter storm that has killed at least 34 people across the United States and is expected to claim more lives after trapping some residents inside houses with heaping snow drifts and knocking out power to tens of thousands of homes and businesses.

65% of Antarctica’s plants and animals could disappear, scientists say. Its iconic penguins are most at risk. The study published Thursday in the journal PLOS Biology found that 65% of Antarctica’s native species, emperor penguins top among them, will likely disappear by the end of the century if the world continues its business-as-usual ways and fails to rein in planet-warming fossil fuel emissions.

Taliban order NGOs to ban female employees from coming to work. Afghanistan’s Taliban-run administration on Saturday ordered all local and foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to stop female employees from coming to work, according to an economy ministry letter, in the latest crackdown on women’s freedoms. The letter, confirmed by economy ministry spokesperson Abdulrahman Habib, said the female employees were not allowed to work until further notice because some had not adhered to the administration’s interpretation of Islamic dress code for women.

New Research: This Activity Can Reduce the Risk of Metastatic Cancer by 72%. According to recent Tel Aviv University research, aerobic exercise can significantly lower the chance of developing metastatic cancer by 72%. The researchers found that high-intensity aerobic exercise increased internal organs’ consumption of glucose (sugar), decreasing the amount of energy available to the tumor.

Target issues recall for more than 200,000 weighted blankets after 2 children die from asphyxiation. The girls, ages 4 and 6, died in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, after they were trapped in the blankets in April, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said in a news release.

High number of mosquitoes found with mutation that resists insecticides. The insecticides that target disease-spreading mosquitoes are running into nature's ultimate defense mechanism: evolution. Scientists reported Wednesday that mosquitoes in Cambodia and Vietnam increasingly carry a mutation that makes them resistant to a commonly deployed insecticide.

A 15-metric ton meteorite crashed in Africa. Now 2 new minerals have been found in it. Scientists have identified two minerals never before seen on Earth in a meteorite weighing 15.2 metric tons (33,510 pounds).

'Deceptive' Movie Trailers a Target For Legal Action. When two fans of Ana de Armas rented Yesterday after seeing de Armas in the trailer, only to realize at the end of the movie that her part had been cut, they were so unhappy that they went to court over it. And won. In a rather bizarre Free Speech case, a federal judge has ruled in favor of movie-goers over the protests of Universal Studios, saying that studios cannot release “deceptive movie trailers.”

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

And another day of Ukraine still standing, severe Covid in China, flu medicine released from national stockpile, George Santos lying about everything, facial recognition tech at a Rockettes show, and dolphins with Alzheimer's disease comes to a close:

“Not many world leaders have defied both Donald Trump's blackmail and Vladimir Putin's aggression. Zelensky is that rare hero.” — David Frum

“Anyone who’s pro-Putin today would’ve been a pro-Nazi “isolationist” in 1939, a Confederate in 1861, and an anti-federalist opposing the ratification of the Constitution in 1787.” — Tristan Snell 

Covid Deaths

US: 1,114,931 (+1123)

World: 6,678,284 (+2632)

Covid Cases

US: 102,048,475 (+182,548)

World: 659,653,555 (+780,579)

Zelenskyy thanks ‘every American,’ sees ‘turning point’. Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy told cheering U.S. legislators during a defiant wartime visit to the nation’s capital on Wednesday that against all odds his country still stands, thanking Americans for helping to fund the war effort with money that is “not charity,” but an “investment” in global security and democracy.

Undoing of Roe quickly shifts abortion in states. Anti-abortion groups hoped and strategized for decades for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that was delivered in June, ending a court-protected right to abortion after nearly 50 years. The fallout was immediate and far-reaching — and it’s not over yet.

WHO “very concerned” about reports of severe COVID in China. The head of the World Health Organization said the agency is “very concerned” about rising reports of severe coronavirus disease across China after the country largely abandoned its “zero COVID” policy, warning that its lagging vaccination rate could result in large numbers of vulnerable people getting infected.

As flu rages, US releases medicine from national stockpile. The Biden administration said Wednesday it will release doses of prescription flu medicine from the Strategic National Stockpile to states as flu-sickened patients continue to flock to hospitals and doctors’ offices around the country.

Claims by incoming Republican Rep. George Santos that his grandparents “survived the Holocaust” as Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium who changed their surname to survive are contradicted by sources reviewed by CNN’s KFile including family trees compiled by genealogy websites, records on Jewish refugees and interviews with multiple genealogists…The incoming Republican lawmaker has faced scrutiny over his resume since The New York Times revealed on Monday that Santos’ biography appeared to be partly fictional. CNN confirmed details of The New York Times reporting on Monday, including that he may have misrepresented parts of his resume about his college education and employment history.

Did Republican Representative-elect George Santos lie about everything? As revealed in the New York Times on Monday, it wasn’t just that Santos exaggerated his résumé, he had allegedly invented it out of whole cloth. The Times found that he apparently did not graduate from Baruch College, he did not work for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, there were no records of him being a successful financier, nor were there of him registering his animal rescue charity. The Times also found that he had been charged with check fraud in Brazil.

Girl Scout mom kicked out of Radio City and barred from seeing Rockettes after facial recognition tech identified her. The mom, and lawyers like her who work for firms that are suing Radio City's parent company, MSG Entertainment, are barred from setting foot in its venues while litigation is ongoing.

Dolphins show hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, new study suggests. The brains of three species of dolphin found stranded along the Scottish coast have shown the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease, according to new research, providing greater insight into the disease in species other than humans. The findings may also provide a possible answer to unexplained strandings of dolphins along the coast, researchers said.

RIP Franco Harris. He was 72.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Tuesday, December 20, 2022

And another day of witness tampering, Trump’s taxes, millions to lose Medicaid, expanded global surveillance, the ‘death penalty’ of child welfare, more Twitter chaos, and racism on social media after World Cup loss comes to a close:

“I fear we've still only scratched the surface on how ugly this is all going to get.” — Justin Baragona

Covid Deaths

US: 1,113,808 (+501)

World: 6,675,652 (+2236)

Covid Cases

US: 101,865,927 (+40,848)

World: 658,872,976 (+649,207)

Trump’s former White House ethics lawyer told Cassidy Hutchinson to give misleading testimony to January 6 committee, sources say. The January 6 committee made a startling allegation on Monday, claiming it had evidence that a Trump-backed attorney urged a key witness to mislead the committee about details they recalled. Though the committee declined to identify the people, CNN has learned that Stefan Passantino, the top ethics attorney in the Trump White House, is the lawyer who allegedly advised his then-client, former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, to tell the committee that she did not recall details that she did, sources familiar with the committee’s work tell CNN.

GOP’s usual embrace of Trump muted after criminal referral. The Republican Party quickly and forcefully rallied behind Donald Trump in the hours after federal agents seized classified documents from his Florida estate this summer. Four months later, that sense of intensity and urgency was missing — at least for now — after the Jan. 6 House committee voted to recommend the Justice Department bring criminal charges against him. Leading Republicans largely avoided the historic criminal referral Monday, while others pressed to weigh in offered muted defenses — or none at all.

Trump tax audits required by law were delayed, panel says. A report issued Tuesday by the Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee found that required IRS audits of Donald Trump were delayed, and committee members voted along party lines to also release tax filings of the former president who broke political norms by refusing to release the information on his own.

Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan. Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.

Police seize on Covid-19 tech to expand global surveillance. In the pandemic’s bewildering early days, millions worldwide believed government officials who said they needed confidential data for new tech tools that could help stop coronavirus’ spread. In return, governments got a firehose of individuals’ private health details, photographs that captured their facial measurements and their home addresses. Now, from Beijing to Jerusalem to Hyderabad, India, and Perth, Australia, The Associated Press has found that authorities used these technologies and data to halt travel for activists and ordinary people, harass marginalized communities and link people’s health information to other surveillance and law enforcement tools. In some cases, data was shared with spy agencies. The issue has taken on fresh urgency almost three years into the pandemic as China’s ultra-strict zero-COVID policies recently ignited the sharpest public rebuke of the country’s authoritarian leadership since the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. For more than a year, AP journalists interviewed sources and pored over thousands of documents to trace how technologies marketed to “flatten the curve” were put to other uses. Just as the balance between privacy and national security shifted after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, COVID-19 has given officials justification to embed tracking tools in society that have lasted long after lockdowns.

The ‘death penalty’ of child welfare: In 6 months, some parents lose their children forever. Twenty-five years ago, Congress passed a law aimed at speeding up adoptions for children languishing in foster care. In the process, it destroyed hundreds of thousands of families through the termination of parental rights. Once considered a last resort reserved for parents who abandon their children, the involuntary and permanent termination of parental rights now hangs over every mother and father accused of any form of abuse or neglect — including allegations of nonviolent behavior like drug use or truancy, the two central parenting issues in the Snodgrasses’ case. Known in the legal world as the “death penalty” of child welfare, it can happen in a matter of months...Over the past 25 years, courts and child protective services agencies have increasingly turned to this ultimate consequence, partly in response to Clinton-era federal policies that support faster adoptions. According to a recent study, the risk that a child will experience the loss of their legal relationship with their parents roughly doubled from 2000 to 2016. One in 100 U.S. children — disproportionately Black and Native American — experience termination through the child welfare system before they turn 18, the study found. Most of those families became entangled in the system because of allegations of neglect, a broad category closely linked to poverty and substance use. Just 15% of children whose parents’ rights were severed around the country from 2015 to 2019 had been removed from their homes because of concerns about physical or sexual abuse, according to the ProPublica and NBC News analysis. (The reasons ultimately cited for the terminations themselves weren’t provided in the data.) -- Wrong on so many levels. And so much room for the state to abuse this power.

A Texas superintendent ordered school librarians to remove LGBTQ books. Now the federal government is investigating. The U.S. Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm has launched an investigation into a North Texas school district whose superintendent was secretly recorded ordering librarians to remove LGBTQ-themed library books. Education and legal experts say the federal probe of the Granbury Independent School District — which stemmed from a complaint by the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and reporting by NBC News, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune — appears to be the first such investigation explicitly tied to the nationwide movement to ban school library books dealing with sexuality and gender.

Women banned from universities in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Despite initially promising a more moderate rule and women’s and minority rights, the Taliban have widely implemented their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, or Sharia. They have banned girls from middle school and high school, restricted women from most employment and ordered them to wear head-to-toe clothing in public. Women are also banned from parks and gyms.

After Kingsley Coman missed a penalty in the World Cup final shootout, Twitter and Instagram were flooded with racist messages directed at the French national team player. The pattern is all too familiar. France's national team player Kingsley Coman has been berated in the worst possible way on social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram since France lost the World Cup final. In the comments on his Instagram channel, the whole racist portfolio is there for all to see. Misguided users even wanted to "send him back to Africa." — So many hateful people on this planet.

French federation to go after abusers of World Cup players. The French soccer federation wants to go after social media users who targeted some of the national team’s players with racist comments following France’s loss to Argentina in the World Cup final. The federation said Tuesday that some players were hit by “unacceptable racist and hateful comments on social networks” and that it planned to file a complaint against those that posted abuse.

German court convicts 97-year-old ex-secretary at Nazi camp. A German court on Tuesday convicted a 97-year-old woman of being an accessory to more than 10,000 murders for her role as a secretary to the SS commander of the Nazis' Stutthof concentration camp during World War II.

Musk says he’ll be Twitter CEO until a replacement is found. Elon Musk said Tuesday that he plans on remaining as Twitter’s CEO until he can find someone willing to replace him in the job. -- He does all this stupid shit just to get attention.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Monday, December 19, 2022

And another day of temporary blocks, guilty verdicts, power companies attacking critics, teens targeted by online ‘sextortion,’ and we are already a country divided so let’s get to charging Trump for his crimes comes to a close:

“No amount of evidence will ever persuade an idiot” — Mark Twain

Covid Deaths

US: 1,113,307

World: 6,673,416

Covid Cases

US: 101,825,079

World: 658,223,769

Jan. 6 panel urges Trump prosecution with criminal referral. The House Jan. 6 committee urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump for the violent 2021 Capitol insurrection, calling for accountability for the former president and “a time of reflection and reckoning.”

Read the full text of the Jan. 6 committee's report summary. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol released a 154-page summary of its findings Monday, the culmination of nearly 18 months of work.

January 6 Report Presents a Devastating Case Against Trump. “The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.” The committee cited this conclusion in a 161-page introduction to its forthcoming final report that was released on Monday.

McConnell on Jan. 6 criminal referral of Trump: ‘Entire nation knows who is responsible for that day’. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Monday issued a terse response to the House Jan. 6 select committee’s decision to refer criminal charges against former President Trump to the Justice Department. “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations,” McConnell said in a statement reacting to the House panel voting to refer four criminal charges against Trump to prosecutors in connection to his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Chief justice temporarily blocks end of Trump-era immigration policy. Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday placed a temporary hold on a lower court ruling that would end a Trump-era immigration policy implemented during the pandemic to allow asylum-seekers to be quickly turned away at the border. The brief order came after Republican-led states asked the Supreme Court to keep the policy in place. Roberts ordered that the federal district court ruling, which was due to go into effect Wednesday, be put on hold until the Supreme Court acts. He asked the Biden administration and groups challenging the policy to file a response to the states' request by Tuesday afternoon.

Harvey Weinstein found guilty of rape in Los Angeles trial. Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape at a Los Angeles trial in another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement. After deliberating for nine days spanning more than two weeks, the jury of eight men and four women reached the verdict at the second criminal trial of the 70-year-old onetime powerful movie mogul, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York.

In the Southeast, power company money flows to news sites that attack their critics. A tally of the five still-functioning sites show they have a collective audience of 1.3 million unique monthly visitors. Many of their consumers are political professionals, business leaders and journalists — people who help set the agenda for lawmakers and talk radio shows in both states. These readers have been unknowingly immersing themselves in an echo chamber of questionable coverage for years..."If you are paid for copy, then you can't be fair," says Chuck Strouse, the former editor in chief of Miami New Times. "You have to acknowledge and be upfront with your reader about what exactly is happening. I mean, that's just a cardinal rule of journalism." The editors operating the Matrix-linked sites do not appear to be following those rules.

Children’s medicine shortage hits as flu season starts fast. Caring for sick children has become extra stressful recently for many U.S. parents due to shortages of Children’s Tylenol and other medicines. Doctors and other experts say the problem could persist through the winter cold-and-flu season but should not last as long as other recent shortages of baby formula or prescription drugs. They also say parents have alternatives if they encounter empty store shelves.

FBI: Steep climb in teens targeted by online ‘sextortion’. The FBI sounded the alarm Monday about an explosive increase in teenage boys being targeted online and extorted for money after being tricked into sending sexually explicit pictures. At least 3,000 children, mostly teenage boys, have been victims of the schemes that are connected to more than a dozen suicides this year, a scale that U.S. authorities have not seen before, Justice Department officials said. Many think they are chatting online with kids around their own age but are quickly manipulated into sending explicit pictures and then blackmailed for money with threats to release the images, the FBI said. Most victims are between 14 and 17, but kids as young as 10 have been targeted.

High-impact storm to wreak havoc on holiday week travel. Blizzard conditions, wind gusts to 60 mph and torrential rainfall are likely to bring travel to a standstill Thursday and Friday as a huge storm affects millions.

Poachers target hippos for giant teeth in place of ivory. Deepening restrictions on ivory trafficking have led to an increase of the trade in hippopotamus teeth, wildlife campaigners are warning, with potentially serious effects for a species already listed as "vulnerable to extinction".

Mystery Nevada fossil site could be ancient maternity ward. Scientists have uncovered new clues about a curious fossil site in Nevada, a graveyard for dozens of giant marine reptiles. Instead of the site of a massive die-off as suspected, it might have been an ancient maternity ward where the creatures came to give birth. The site is famous for its fossils from giant ichthyosaurs — reptiles that dominated the ancient seas and could grow up to the size of a school bus. The creatures — the name means fish lizard — were underwater predators with large paddle-shaped flippers and long jaws full of teeth.

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.

Sunday, December 18, 2022

And another day of being contagious, pregnancy and childbirth killing Black women in TX, Twitter bans linking to major competitors, children with disabilities arrested at school, OSHA, and the spectacular World Cup final comes to a close:

“After all, tomorrow is another day.” -- Margaret Mitchell

Covid Deaths

US: 1,112,970

World: 6,671,886

Covid Cases

US: 101,760,149

World: 657,820,247

What to watch as Jan. 6 panel cites Trump’s ‘attempted coup’. The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will make its final public presentation Monday about the unprecedented effort by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election he lost in 2020. The committee has called it an “attempted coup” that warrants criminal prosecution from the Justice Department.

'Tripledemic' viruses still spreading. What science shows about being contagious. It’s a good time to brush up on what scientists know, and still don’t know, about how long people remain infectious with viral diseases — Covid, influenza, RSV — that are spreading across the U.S.

Why are pregnancy and childbirth killing so many Black women in Texas? A decade ago, Black women in Texas were twice as likely as white women to die from pregnancy and childbirth. Today, not much has changed.

The student loan company that could topple Biden’s debt relief plan. The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a state-created loan company known as MOHELA, is at the center of a legal challenge from six Republican states trying to stop Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt for more than 40 million Americans…All of the loan servicers hired by the Education Department decided against suing over the debt relief plan. MOHELA presented a different situation, Kerpen noted, because of the company's relationship to a state with a Republican attorney general who could take action on its behalf.

Twitter no longer allows links to major competitors like Facebook, Mastodon. Elon Musk has updated Twitter's rules once again, this time formally banning links to several competing social media sites. Critics say the updated rules fly in the face of Musk's promise to develop Twitter as a bastion of free speech. "Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post," Twitter's Support account on the platform tweeted.

Oregon's LGBTQ community worries that a new law will keep them from obtaining guns. The law, Measure 114, grants county sheriffs and police chiefs discretion to determine who qualifies to purchase a firearm under a new permit-to-purchase program. But Measure 114 lacks criteria clearly defining what disqualifies applicants, details on what makes someone a threat and what data can be used by law enforcement in making that decision. That's a problem for activists who have critiqued law enforcement, particularly in the racial justice protests that took place over the past two years.

The Price Kids Pay: School for children with disabilities calls police on its students every other day. Administrators at the Garrison School call the police to report student misbehavior every other school day, on average. And because staff members regularly press charges against the children — some as young as 9 — officers have arrested students more than 100 times in the last five school years, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica found. That is an astounding number given that Garrison, the only school that is part of the Four Rivers Special Education District, has fewer than 65 students in most years. No other school district — not just in Illinois, but in the entire country — had a higher student arrest rate than Four Rivers the last time data was collected nationwide. That school year, 2017-18, more than half of all Garrison students were arrested. Officers typically handcuff students and take them to the police station, where they are fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a holding room. For at least a decade, the local newspaper has included the arrests in its daily police blotter for all to see. The students enrolled each year at Garrison have severe emotional or behavioral disabilities that kept them from succeeding at previous schools. Some also have been diagnosed with autism, ADHD or other disorders. Many have experienced horrifying trauma, including sexual abuse, the death of parents and incarceration of family members, according to interviews with families and school employees…The reports, written by school staff and obtained through public records requests, describe in detail what happened up until the moment police were called. These narratives, along with recordings of 911 calls, show that school workers often summon police not amid an emergency but because someone at the school wants police to hold the child responsible for their behavior…Police arrested them all. — This entire story is disgusting. Locking kids in concrete “seclusion rooms,” thinking of the kids as delinquents instead of disabled, calling police over minor things, like throwing a piece of paper, and failing to help children who so desperately need it.

As Workers Battle Cancer, The Government Admits Its Limit for a Deadly Chemical Is Too High. The U.S. agency that is supposed to safeguard worker health has all but given up on setting limits to protect them from dangerous chemicals. Meanwhile, workers are dying…Paralyzed by industry lawsuits from decades ago, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has all but given up on trying to set a truly protective threshold for ortho-toluidine and thousands of other chemicals. The agency has only updated standards for three chemicals in the past 25 years; each took more than a decade to complete.

Arctic air will blast much of US just before Christmas. Forecasters are warning of treacherous holiday travel and life-threatening cold for much of the nation as an arctic air mass blows into the already-frigid southern United States.

Messi wins World Cup, Argentina beats France on penalties. In probably the wildest final in the tournament’s 92-year history, Argentina won its third World Cup title by beating France 4-2 in a penalty shootout after a 3-3 draw featuring two goals from the 35-year-old Messi and a hat trick by his heir apparent, France forward Kylian Mbappé. -- It was a fantastic game!

Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.

Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.