Post by mhbruin on Jan 23, 2022 9:16:59 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 534 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Jan 18)
We had a great December, but January has been pretty bad. There are no big storms in the 10-day forecast.
Reservoirs are still low, but they are filling up a bit.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
A silver Honda Accord zoomed past exit 150 on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey just before 3 a.m. The driver was an off-duty Newark police officer, Louis Santiago. His cousin Albert Guzman was in the passenger seat.
It was the night of Halloween 2021, and Santiago was drunk, according to Essex County prosecutors.
He was staring at a cellphone when his car allegedly drifted into the shoulder and struck a man who happened to be walking along the darkened stretch of highway, prosecutors say.
Santiago, 25, initially thought he may have hit an animal, according to his lawyer, Patrick Toscano Jr. The victim, Damian Dymka, 29, was still in the costume that he had worn out that night: a black mask with gold antlers and brown fur covering his shoulders.
Dymka would be pronounced dead at the scene — but not until more than two hours later.
In those two hours, Santiago drove home with Dymka’s body in the back seat and then returned to the crash site having never called 911 or attempted to render aid to the man, prosecutors say.
“Put that body back where you hit it,” Annette Santiago allegedly told her son when he showed up at their home, according to prosecutors.
He’s now facing 12 felony charges, including reckless vehicular homicide and endangering an injured victim. Guzman and Santiago’s mother were also charged with allegedly tampering with evidence and other offenses
...............
I Nominate the Judge
A Turkish court has detained well-known journalist Sedef Kabas for allegedly insulting the country's president.
Ms Kabas was arrested on Saturday in Istanbul and a court ordered her to be jailed ahead of a trial.
She is accused of targeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a proverb which she quoted on live television on an opposition-linked TV channel. She denies the charge.
The charge carries a prison sentence of between one and four years.
"There is a very famous proverb that says that a crowned head becomes wiser. But we see it is not true," she said on the Tele1 channel. "A bull does not become king just by entering the palace, but the palace becomes a barn."
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The Caliphate Strikes Back
Intense fighting is taking place in north-eastern Syria after Islamic State (IS) fighters tried to break inmates out of a Kurdish-run prison.
Kurdish-led forces backed by US air strikes have been battling militants in the city of Hasaka since Thursday.
The assault on Ghwayran prison is one of the group's most ambitious since its defeat in Syria nearly three years ago.
The overcrowded site houses 3,500 suspected IS members including some of its leaders, a monitoring group says.
Hundreds of jihadists have been recaptured since the breakout, but some are still on the run, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Kurdish security forces have surrounded the prison and are fighting for control of nearby neighbourhoods. Residents have been fleeing their homes.
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So Vladimir Putin is Really Rodney Dangerfield?
The head of the German navy has resigned over controversial comments he made over Ukraine.
Kay-Achim Schönbach said the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was nonsense. He added that all President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect.
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Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam! Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam.
Your email spam folder isn't all junk mail.
Laura Spears of Oakland County, Michigan, can attest to that, as she recently discovered a $3 million lottery prize sitting in hers.
The lucky winner had purchased a Mega Millions ticket on the Michigan Lottery website for the December 31, 2021, drawing. She matched five numbers to win $1 million, plus had the Megaplier to multiply her prize by three.
"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," Spears, 55, told Michigan Lottery officials. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account."
"That's when I saw an email from the Lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It's all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million!"
Spears, who claimed her prize at Lottery headquarters last week, said she plans to share her winnings with family and retire early.
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Just What Your Candy Needs: New Shoes
M&Ms' anthropomorphized chocolate characters are getting a makeover, the candy maker announced this week. Their most noticeable change: new shoes.
Bear with us here: Green has swapped her go-go boots for sneakers. Brown is sporting lower, more sensible heels. Red and Yellow's shoes now have laces. Orange's shoe laces are no longer untied. (Much safer now.) And Blue's shoes, while little changed, resemble what Anton Vincent, president of Mars Wrigley North America, described as "a bad version of Uggs."
Mars Wrigley, which owns M&Ms, is trying to make the characters — particularly the female ones — more "current" and "representative of our consumer," the company said.
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You Many Have to Change Your Valentine's Day Plans, If You Promised to Take Her to a Castle
Love at White Castle is getting canceled because of Omicron. The burger chain's restaurants in select markets have long held a special dining-in experience on February 14 for lovesick couples who want to remember their special day with $1 burgers and french fries.
But as the highly contagious variant surge continues, White Castle announced that it won't be doing the event at all this year. Rather, it's marking the date with a to-go celebration in a very pink "Love Cube" meal box for two. It includes eight cheese sliders, two small soft drinks and a choice of two shareable sides for about $15. And what says love better than that?
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You Many Have to Change Your Plans, If You Promised to Take Her to Carnival
Rio de Janeiro's world-famous Carnival festivities are being postponed as the number of coronavirus cases in Brazil rises.
The South American nation has been seeing an increase in Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the year due to the highly contagious omicron variant, prompting officials to reschedule Carnival parades to late April rather than the final weekend of February.
It's My Carnival, and I'll Postpone It If I Want To
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Apparently One of Previous Guy's Sheet-Hole Countries Is Better At Railroads Than We Are
The Governor of Lagos, Nigeria bought two trains built by the Spanish company Talgo that were originally meant for a high-speed railway in Wisconsin initially planned to connect Milwaukee and Madison. Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu was in Milwaukee on Tuesday for the purchase of the Series 8 trains, which will instead be used as part of Lagos’ Red Line, considered the first operational metro system in West Africa, according to a press release. Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson told Wisconsin Public Radio that the moment was “bittersweet.” “I'm sending my congratulations to the governor in Lagos State in Nigeria, but also a little disappointed that we missed out on the opportunity to have those trainsets operating here in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin.”
The saga to build a high-speed rail in Wisconsin spans a decade and spawned an acclaimed Wisconsin Public Radio podcast series titled “Derailed.” The podcast follows former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s announcement in 2009 to buy two 14-car Talgo trains for $47 million in order to use them on Amtrak’s Hiawatha Service that provides daily service to Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The high-speed rail hopes between Madison and Milwaukee were part of a multi-million dollar deal that included making improvements to the longer Chicago-Milwaukee route. After Doyle left office, then-Gov. Scott Walker returned $810 million of federal funds meant for the project in 2010, which not only put the railway plan on ice but hurt workers at the Talgo plant in Milwaukee who built the trainsets in the first place. A series of lawsuits followed and the planned $810 million went to California for its high-speed rail ambitions where the funds wait in limbo.
That's Not Mar-A-Lagos
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It's Their Party and They'll Lie If They Want To
For the first year of the Biden presidency, Republicans have been able to universally oppose the Biden agenda while escaping scrutiny to offer alternatives. It’s hardly surprising for a political party that didn’t even bother to write a party platform at their last political convention. But the media’s penchant for diving head-first into “Democrats in disarray” narratives while so casually accepting GOP obstructionism is a tremendous disservice to the American people.
You cannot chronicle the Biden administration’s perceived shortcomings addressing COVID-19 without first acknowledging the context that the Republican Party has done anything and everything possible to sabotage life-saving health care initiatives and promote misinformation.
You cannot report on efforts to protect voting rights in America without first talking about the 19 states that have enacted new voting restriction laws or the unanimous opposition from Republicans in Congress to measures that would shore up the right to vote.
You cannot chastise the president for not having enough news conferences or doing enough interviews without pointing out that “the former guy” told more than 30,000 lies in four years.
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Maybe They Should Combine It With Ivermectin and Bleach
Use of the newly ineffective treatments produced by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Co. is highest in a dozen states. They include several Southern states with some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, but also California, which ranks in the nation’s top 20 for fully vaccinated residents, a KHN analysis of federal data shows. Many hospitals and clinics are still infusing the costly treatments — often charging hundreds of dollars a session — that public health officials now say are almost certainly useless.
That’s because of the near-total dominance of omicron, which accounted for 99.5% of new covid infections in the U.S. during the week that ended Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Respectively, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Ohio, New York, and Mississippi used the most courses of the Regeneron and Lilly treatments from Jan. 5 through Jan. 18, KHN’s analysis showed.
In Florida, which used more than 5,200 courses of the outdated treatments during that two-week period, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he is not convinced that the Regeneron and Lilly products don’t work against omicron. In Florida, omicron accounted for 97% of cases as of Jan. 20; delta accounted for 3%.
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Noise Out of Boise
At the National Conservatism conference in Orlando, Florida, held from Oct. 31 – Nov. 2, a Boise State professor in the political department, Scott Yenor, stated that independent women are “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.” He also stated, “Our culture is steeped with feminism; it teaches young boys and girls that they are motivated by much the same things and want much the same things.” Most disturbingly he states “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade.”
BSU Student Ally Orr responded by creating a Go-Fund-Me to establish a scholarship for women in STEM fields. Boise technology company Micron kicked in a big amount, and the fund is now an endowed scholarship at BSU.
I Am Sure Yenor's Wife and Children Are Proud
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Who Won the Week?
Emily's List and NARAL, for pulling their support of backstabber Sen. Kyrsten Sinema…and Arizona Democrats, for giving her an 8% approval rating
DirecTV, for dropping the psycho right-wing propaganda network OANN, chopping their viewership and revenue off at the knees
New York Attorney General Letitia James, for compelling Donald Trump, Don Jr., and Ivanka to appear for sworn testimony as part of her fraud investigation
President Biden: Year 1 enters the history books with record 42 judges confirmed, record 6.4M job creation, end of Afghan War, and infrastructure plan. Bonus points for decency and integrity.
The House January 6 Committee, for going after Trump family phone records…subpoenaing Rudy, Eric and Guilfoyle … and getting Supreme Court OK on document dump
Australia, for booting anti-vax, anti-science tennis player Doofus Djokovic from their country so he wouldn't spread his deadly disease to innocent people
Mexican newscaster Leonardo Schwebel, for his viral on-air tirade against anti-vaxxers: "You gaggle of morons! Stop with your crap and at least put on a damn face mask!"
The USPS workers and technical elves behind COVIDTests.gov, as the free test-by-mail program goes live without a hitch
The Jamaican 4-man bobsled team, for making it into the Winter Olympics for the first time in 24 years
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The Man of Mar-A-Lago, Tilting At Windmills
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I'm Sure She Was So Upset That She Had to Call a Couple of Corporate Donors
The executive committee of the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) formally censured U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema over her vote against changing rules in the chamber to steer through voting rights legislation, the state party said on Saturday.
Sinema was one of two Democratic senators who joined with Republicans to vote against lowering the Senate's 60-vote threshold to 50 so that the Senate could pass voting rights bill without bipartisan support.
The censure is mostly a symbolic move, but it does highlight criticism that Sinema has faced from members of her own party, with polling indicating that Sinema is facing a rising amount of backlash from Democratic voters.
MOSTLY Symbolic?
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Que Sarah, Sarah
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has spent 4-1/2 years battling the New York Times over an editorial she said falsely linked her to a deadly Arizona mass shooting that left a U.S. congresswoman seriously wounded.
On Monday, Palin is poised to try to begin convincing jurors in a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court that the newspaper and its former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her.
The trial before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff marks a rare instance of a major media company defending its editorial practices before an American jury. Opening statements could take place as soon as Monday, following jury selection.
Palin bears the high burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence that there was "actual malice" involved in the newspaper's editorial writing process.
"This is a lawsuit over an editorial, essentially an opinion. This is a potentially dangerous area," said Roy Gutterman, a Syracuse University law and communications professor. "If we give public officials a green light to litigate on editorials they disagree with, where's the end?"
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This Pretty Much Captures the COVID Situation
New coronavirus cases have started to fall nationally, signaling that the Omicron-fueled spike that has infected tens of millions of Americans, packed hospitals and shattered records has finally begun to relent.
More and more states have passed a peak in new cases in recent days, as glimmers of progress have spread from a handful of eastern cities to much of the country. Through Friday, the country was averaging about 720,000 new cases a day, down from about 807,000 last week. New coronavirus hospital admissions have leveled off.
Even as hopeful data points emerge, the threat has by no means passed. The United States continues to identify far more infections a day than in any prior surge, and some states in the West, South and Great Plains are still seeing sharp increases. Many hospitals are full. And deaths continue to mount, with more than 2,100 announced most days.
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This Is the Weakest Link In the Supply Chain
Blue surgical masks and cotton balls. Car parts, pieces of tools and dozens of new toner cartridges for laser jet printers. Boxes from Macys, Bath and Body Works and Amazon – all empty with postmarks to addresses across the country.
The railroad tracks in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Lincoln Heights look as though a twister swept through, with thousands of boxes, bags and trash littering the rails for blocks. For months, residents in the area say they've watched the chaos unfold at all hours.
Men working as a team crack open large shipping containers on idle trains then load stolen goods into trucks and vans. Some, they say, continue their missions even when a train is moving – jumping on a train and climbing atop the containers with power tools or bolt cutters to crack open the large metal boxes.
"This must stop. This is not the wild wild west," said Christopher Tang, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains. "Back then, thieves would steal money but now they're stealing merchandise that actually affects people's lives."
One of the country's largest railroad companies, Union Pacific, said they'd seen about $5 million in damages and thefts and noted on average, more than 90 shipping containers are looted per day.
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Who Do You Trust?
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I Hope They Aren't Hiring the Oath Keepers or Hell's Angels
Thousands of anti-vaccine mandate activists are expected to attend the "Defeat the Mandates: American Homecoming" rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on Sunday.
According to the organizers, more than 24,000 people have said they're going to the demonstration. It starts in the morning at the Washington Monument and ends in the afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial.
Law enforcement officials have already beefed up security for the large-scale protest, per CNN, due to fears that it could attract extremist groups.
And it appears that the event organizers themselves are also nervous that the event, which is intended to be peaceful, could escalate into chaos akin to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
A statement published Thursday said the "Defeat the Mandates" organizers are hiring private security to work in unison with law enforcement officials to make sure the event remains non-violent. It added that it does not welcome extremist groups on "any side" or anyone who provokes violence.
The organizers also provide detailed instructions to attendees on how to stop the demonstration from getting "out of hand," according to safety protocol guidance sent via Telegram and seen by Insider.
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This Is Not Something to Monkey Around With
Residents of a Pennsylvania county were warned Saturday not to approach a monkey that was missing after a crash involving a pickup that was towing a trailer taking about 100 of the animals to a lab.
State police urged people not to look for or capture the cynomolgus macaque monkey following the Friday afternoon crash on a state highway near an Interstate 80 exit in Montour County.
“Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey. Please call 911 immediately,” troopers tweeted.
Trooper Lauren Lesher said the concern was “due to it not being a domesticated animal and them being in an unknown territory. It is hard to say how they would react to a human approaching them.”
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My, My, My, Flurona
The word “flurona,” which has circulated on social media and refers to someone infected with both Covid and the flu, isn’t popular with scientists.
“The contractions like ‘flurona,’ I think they’re very misleading to people. It presents the idea two viruses have somehow merged into one, which is not at all the case,” said Dr. Ellen Foxman, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine. “Somebody got a coinfection. People get coinfections all the time.”
But these coinfections are rather interesting to researchers. When someone is infected with two viruses, there are three options for how it could play out.
The interaction could cause little or no effect, researchers said. Or the viruses could attack simultaneously, causing more damage than they would on their own.
Coinfection could “lead to increased viral replication and increased severity,” said Dr. Guy Boivin, a clinical virologist at Laval University in Quebec City, who co-authored a review of viral interference published this month in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the journal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s a third option — which seems counterintuitive — that is perhaps most intriguing. If infections are closely spaced in time, it’s possible for one infection to block another, researchers say.
....
The study is small and limited. It captures just 14 cases of simultaneous infection. Patients with more than one infection were actually faring better, their data suggest.
However, I Wouldn't Suggest Trying to Catch the Flu If You Test Positive
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They Didn't Catch COVID On Their Cruise, But ...
A Crystal Cruises ship with hundreds of passengers and crew onboard has diverted from its scheduled stop in Miami after an arrest warrant was issued, multiple outlets reported.
The Crystal Symphony was due to return to Miami on Saturday, following a 14-day Caribbean voyage, but instead traveled to Bimini in the Bahamas, per The Daily Mail.
According to Bloomberg, if the ship docks in Miami, the terms of the warrant would allow it to be seized to repay a $1.2 million unpaid fuel bill, which is apparently owed by its operator, Genting Hong Kong Ltd.
The warrant resulted from a lawsuit filed by Peninsula Petroleum Far East Wednesday against Crystal Cruises and Star Cruises Limited, per USA Today.
One passenger tweeted to travel agent Mundy Cruising: "Can you help me change my flight to Heathrow from Miami as we are stuck on Crystal Symphony which has changed route and is now heading for Bahamas instead of Miami."
Elio Pace, a musician performing aboard the ship, told the Daily Mail that "every one of these people are trying to reschedule their flights." But he noted that "there's no panic, there's no tantrums going on."
And You Thought You Were Spending a Lot on Fuel
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CDC doesn't do a good job of reporting around holidays.
Doses Administered 7-Day Average | Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses | Number of People 2 or More Doses | New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Jan 23 | |||||
| Jan 22 | 1,002,322 | 250,568,431 | 210,229,586 | ||
| Jan 21 | 1,035,111 | 250,262,153 | 210,021,766 | 716,829 | 1,974 |
| Jan 20 | 1,094,988 | 250,028,635 | 209,842,610 | 726,870 | 1,843 |
| Jan 19 | 1,135,453 | 249,702,939 | 209,509,297 | 744,615 | 1,749 |
| Jan 18 | 1,158,537 | 249,393,487 | 209,312,770 | 755,095 | 1,669 |
| Jan 17 | No Data | 736,350 | 1,746 | ||
| Jan 16 | No Data | 771,131 | 1,851 | ||
| Jan 15 | 1,268,202 | 248,707,432 | 208,995,438 | 788,628 | 1,858 |
| Jan 14 | 1,286,773 | 248,338,448 | 208,791,862 | 798,335 | 1,784 |
| Jan 13 | 1,291,013 | 247,987,225 | 208,564,894 | 794,587 | 1,730 |
| Jan 12 | 1,234,672 | 247,695,845 | 208,182,657 | 782,765 | 1,729 |
| Jan 11 | 1,213,113 | 247,321,023 | 207,954,605 | 761,535 | 1,656 |
| Jan 10 | 1,307,445 | 247,051,363 | 207,796,335 | 750,996 | 1,633 |
| Jan 9 | 1,331,635 | 246,812,939 | 207,662,071 | 674,406 | 1,552 |
| Jan 8 | 1,286,783 | 246,447,823 | 207,452,448 | 680,330 | 1,544 |
| Jan 7 | 1,226,151 | 246,050,320 | 207,229,983 | 668,497 | 1,513 |
| Jan 6 | 1,164,127 | 245,653,518 | 207,016,514 | 614,552 | 1,350 |
| Jan 5 | 1,117,999 | 245,278,020 | 206,797,799 | 586,391 | 1,245 |
| Jan 4 | 1,093,005 | 244,947,293 | 206,581,659 | 554,328 | 1,238 |
| Jan 3 | No Data | 491,652 | 1,165 | ||
| Jan 2 | No Data | 438,082 | 1,174 | ||
| Jan 1 | No Data | 411,871 | 1,151 | ||
| Dec 31 | No Data | 391,098 | 1,135 | ||
| Dec 30 | 1,234,917 | 243,527,564 | 205,811,394 | 360,276 | 1,144 |
| Dec 29 | 1,042,911 | 243,182,423 | 205,638,307 | 316,277 | 1,100 |
| Dec 28 | 1,091,279 | 242,813,374 | 205,420,745 | 277,241 | 1,085 |
| Dec 27 | 1,034,442 | 242,433,620 | 205,196,973 | 240,408 | 1,096 |
| Dec 26 | No Data | 206,577 | 1,041 | ||
| Dec 25 | No Data | 196,511 | 1,053 | ||
| Dec 24 | No Data | 195,713 | 1,108 | ||
| Dec 23 | 1,189,954 | 241,520,561 | 204,740,321 | 192,453 | 1,199 |
| Dec 22 | 1,283,244 | 241,583,543 | 204,818,717 | 176,097 | 1,213 |
| Dec 21 | 1,542,936 | 241,132,288 | 204,578,725 | 161,261 | 1,223 |
| Dec 20 | 1,554,261 | 241,881,712 | 204,098,982 | 149,331 | 1,188 |
| Dec 19 | 1,558,720 | 241,571,084 | 203,926,479 | 132,659 | 1,169 |
| Dec 18 | 1,562,366 | 241,205,528 | 203,727,446 | 127,445 | 1,182 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 75.4% | 64.3% | 39.5% |
| % of Population 5+ | 80.1% | 67.3% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 85.3% | 72.1% | 42.6% |
| % of Population 18+ | 87.3% | 73.8% | 54.1% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.2% | 62.7% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday Jan 18)
We had a great December, but January has been pretty bad. There are no big storms in the 10-day forecast.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 134% | 149% | 158% | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 121% | 138% | 156% | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 112% | 127% | 145% | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 117% | 128% | 135% | 134% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 114% | 129% | 148% | 148% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 121% | 135% | 160% | 158% |
Reservoirs are still low, but they are filling up a bit.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
A silver Honda Accord zoomed past exit 150 on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey just before 3 a.m. The driver was an off-duty Newark police officer, Louis Santiago. His cousin Albert Guzman was in the passenger seat.
It was the night of Halloween 2021, and Santiago was drunk, according to Essex County prosecutors.
He was staring at a cellphone when his car allegedly drifted into the shoulder and struck a man who happened to be walking along the darkened stretch of highway, prosecutors say.
Santiago, 25, initially thought he may have hit an animal, according to his lawyer, Patrick Toscano Jr. The victim, Damian Dymka, 29, was still in the costume that he had worn out that night: a black mask with gold antlers and brown fur covering his shoulders.
Dymka would be pronounced dead at the scene — but not until more than two hours later.
In those two hours, Santiago drove home with Dymka’s body in the back seat and then returned to the crash site having never called 911 or attempted to render aid to the man, prosecutors say.
“Put that body back where you hit it,” Annette Santiago allegedly told her son when he showed up at their home, according to prosecutors.
He’s now facing 12 felony charges, including reckless vehicular homicide and endangering an injured victim. Guzman and Santiago’s mother were also charged with allegedly tampering with evidence and other offenses
...............
I Nominate the Judge
A Turkish court has detained well-known journalist Sedef Kabas for allegedly insulting the country's president.
Ms Kabas was arrested on Saturday in Istanbul and a court ordered her to be jailed ahead of a trial.
She is accused of targeting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with a proverb which she quoted on live television on an opposition-linked TV channel. She denies the charge.
The charge carries a prison sentence of between one and four years.
"There is a very famous proverb that says that a crowned head becomes wiser. But we see it is not true," she said on the Tele1 channel. "A bull does not become king just by entering the palace, but the palace becomes a barn."
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The Caliphate Strikes Back
Intense fighting is taking place in north-eastern Syria after Islamic State (IS) fighters tried to break inmates out of a Kurdish-run prison.
Kurdish-led forces backed by US air strikes have been battling militants in the city of Hasaka since Thursday.
The assault on Ghwayran prison is one of the group's most ambitious since its defeat in Syria nearly three years ago.
The overcrowded site houses 3,500 suspected IS members including some of its leaders, a monitoring group says.
Hundreds of jihadists have been recaptured since the breakout, but some are still on the run, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Kurdish security forces have surrounded the prison and are fighting for control of nearby neighbourhoods. Residents have been fleeing their homes.
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So Vladimir Putin is Really Rodney Dangerfield?
The head of the German navy has resigned over controversial comments he made over Ukraine.
Kay-Achim Schönbach said the idea that Russia wanted to invade Ukraine was nonsense. He added that all President Vladimir Putin wanted was respect.
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Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam! Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam.
Your email spam folder isn't all junk mail.
Laura Spears of Oakland County, Michigan, can attest to that, as she recently discovered a $3 million lottery prize sitting in hers.
The lucky winner had purchased a Mega Millions ticket on the Michigan Lottery website for the December 31, 2021, drawing. She matched five numbers to win $1 million, plus had the Megaplier to multiply her prize by three.
"I saw an ad on Facebook that the Mega Millions jackpot was getting pretty high, so I got on my account and bought a ticket," Spears, 55, told Michigan Lottery officials. "A few days later, I was looking for a missing email from someone, so I checked the spam folder in my email account."
"That's when I saw an email from the Lottery saying I had won a prize. I couldn't believe what I was reading, so I logged in to my Lottery account to confirm the message in the email. It's all still so shocking to me that I really won $3 million!"
Spears, who claimed her prize at Lottery headquarters last week, said she plans to share her winnings with family and retire early.
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Just What Your Candy Needs: New Shoes
M&Ms' anthropomorphized chocolate characters are getting a makeover, the candy maker announced this week. Their most noticeable change: new shoes.
Bear with us here: Green has swapped her go-go boots for sneakers. Brown is sporting lower, more sensible heels. Red and Yellow's shoes now have laces. Orange's shoe laces are no longer untied. (Much safer now.) And Blue's shoes, while little changed, resemble what Anton Vincent, president of Mars Wrigley North America, described as "a bad version of Uggs."
Mars Wrigley, which owns M&Ms, is trying to make the characters — particularly the female ones — more "current" and "representative of our consumer," the company said.
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You Many Have to Change Your Valentine's Day Plans, If You Promised to Take Her to a Castle
Love at White Castle is getting canceled because of Omicron. The burger chain's restaurants in select markets have long held a special dining-in experience on February 14 for lovesick couples who want to remember their special day with $1 burgers and french fries.
But as the highly contagious variant surge continues, White Castle announced that it won't be doing the event at all this year. Rather, it's marking the date with a to-go celebration in a very pink "Love Cube" meal box for two. It includes eight cheese sliders, two small soft drinks and a choice of two shareable sides for about $15. And what says love better than that?
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You Many Have to Change Your Plans, If You Promised to Take Her to Carnival
Rio de Janeiro's world-famous Carnival festivities are being postponed as the number of coronavirus cases in Brazil rises.
The South American nation has been seeing an increase in Covid-19 cases since the beginning of the year due to the highly contagious omicron variant, prompting officials to reschedule Carnival parades to late April rather than the final weekend of February.
It's My Carnival, and I'll Postpone It If I Want To
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Apparently One of Previous Guy's Sheet-Hole Countries Is Better At Railroads Than We Are
The Governor of Lagos, Nigeria bought two trains built by the Spanish company Talgo that were originally meant for a high-speed railway in Wisconsin initially planned to connect Milwaukee and Madison. Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu was in Milwaukee on Tuesday for the purchase of the Series 8 trains, which will instead be used as part of Lagos’ Red Line, considered the first operational metro system in West Africa, according to a press release. Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson told Wisconsin Public Radio that the moment was “bittersweet.” “I'm sending my congratulations to the governor in Lagos State in Nigeria, but also a little disappointed that we missed out on the opportunity to have those trainsets operating here in Milwaukee and in Wisconsin.”
The saga to build a high-speed rail in Wisconsin spans a decade and spawned an acclaimed Wisconsin Public Radio podcast series titled “Derailed.” The podcast follows former Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle’s announcement in 2009 to buy two 14-car Talgo trains for $47 million in order to use them on Amtrak’s Hiawatha Service that provides daily service to Chicago, Illinois, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The high-speed rail hopes between Madison and Milwaukee were part of a multi-million dollar deal that included making improvements to the longer Chicago-Milwaukee route. After Doyle left office, then-Gov. Scott Walker returned $810 million of federal funds meant for the project in 2010, which not only put the railway plan on ice but hurt workers at the Talgo plant in Milwaukee who built the trainsets in the first place. A series of lawsuits followed and the planned $810 million went to California for its high-speed rail ambitions where the funds wait in limbo.
That's Not Mar-A-Lagos
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It's Their Party and They'll Lie If They Want To
For the first year of the Biden presidency, Republicans have been able to universally oppose the Biden agenda while escaping scrutiny to offer alternatives. It’s hardly surprising for a political party that didn’t even bother to write a party platform at their last political convention. But the media’s penchant for diving head-first into “Democrats in disarray” narratives while so casually accepting GOP obstructionism is a tremendous disservice to the American people.
You cannot chronicle the Biden administration’s perceived shortcomings addressing COVID-19 without first acknowledging the context that the Republican Party has done anything and everything possible to sabotage life-saving health care initiatives and promote misinformation.
You cannot report on efforts to protect voting rights in America without first talking about the 19 states that have enacted new voting restriction laws or the unanimous opposition from Republicans in Congress to measures that would shore up the right to vote.
You cannot chastise the president for not having enough news conferences or doing enough interviews without pointing out that “the former guy” told more than 30,000 lies in four years.
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Maybe They Should Combine It With Ivermectin and Bleach
Use of the newly ineffective treatments produced by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and Eli Lilly and Co. is highest in a dozen states. They include several Southern states with some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates, but also California, which ranks in the nation’s top 20 for fully vaccinated residents, a KHN analysis of federal data shows. Many hospitals and clinics are still infusing the costly treatments — often charging hundreds of dollars a session — that public health officials now say are almost certainly useless.
That’s because of the near-total dominance of omicron, which accounted for 99.5% of new covid infections in the U.S. during the week that ended Jan. 15, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Respectively, Michigan, Florida, Indiana, Missouri, Louisiana, California, Oklahoma, Kansas, Georgia, Ohio, New York, and Mississippi used the most courses of the Regeneron and Lilly treatments from Jan. 5 through Jan. 18, KHN’s analysis showed.
In Florida, which used more than 5,200 courses of the outdated treatments during that two-week period, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has said he is not convinced that the Regeneron and Lilly products don’t work against omicron. In Florida, omicron accounted for 97% of cases as of Jan. 20; delta accounted for 3%.
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Noise Out of Boise
At the National Conservatism conference in Orlando, Florida, held from Oct. 31 – Nov. 2, a Boise State professor in the political department, Scott Yenor, stated that independent women are “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome.” He also stated, “Our culture is steeped with feminism; it teaches young boys and girls that they are motivated by much the same things and want much the same things.” Most disturbingly he states “Every effort must be made not to recruit women into engineering, but rather to recruit and demand more of men who become engineers. Ditto for med school, and the law, and every trade.”
BSU Student Ally Orr responded by creating a Go-Fund-Me to establish a scholarship for women in STEM fields. Boise technology company Micron kicked in a big amount, and the fund is now an endowed scholarship at BSU.
I Am Sure Yenor's Wife and Children Are Proud
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Who Won the Week?
Emily's List and NARAL, for pulling their support of backstabber Sen. Kyrsten Sinema…and Arizona Democrats, for giving her an 8% approval rating
DirecTV, for dropping the psycho right-wing propaganda network OANN, chopping their viewership and revenue off at the knees
New York Attorney General Letitia James, for compelling Donald Trump, Don Jr., and Ivanka to appear for sworn testimony as part of her fraud investigation
President Biden: Year 1 enters the history books with record 42 judges confirmed, record 6.4M job creation, end of Afghan War, and infrastructure plan. Bonus points for decency and integrity.
The House January 6 Committee, for going after Trump family phone records…subpoenaing Rudy, Eric and Guilfoyle … and getting Supreme Court OK on document dump
Australia, for booting anti-vax, anti-science tennis player Doofus Djokovic from their country so he wouldn't spread his deadly disease to innocent people
Mexican newscaster Leonardo Schwebel, for his viral on-air tirade against anti-vaxxers: "You gaggle of morons! Stop with your crap and at least put on a damn face mask!"
The USPS workers and technical elves behind COVIDTests.gov, as the free test-by-mail program goes live without a hitch
The Jamaican 4-man bobsled team, for making it into the Winter Olympics for the first time in 24 years
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The Man of Mar-A-Lago, Tilting At Windmills
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I'm Sure She Was So Upset That She Had to Call a Couple of Corporate Donors
The executive committee of the Arizona Democratic Party (ADP) formally censured U.S. Senator Kyrsten Sinema over her vote against changing rules in the chamber to steer through voting rights legislation, the state party said on Saturday.
Sinema was one of two Democratic senators who joined with Republicans to vote against lowering the Senate's 60-vote threshold to 50 so that the Senate could pass voting rights bill without bipartisan support.
The censure is mostly a symbolic move, but it does highlight criticism that Sinema has faced from members of her own party, with polling indicating that Sinema is facing a rising amount of backlash from Democratic voters.
MOSTLY Symbolic?
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Que Sarah, Sarah
Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, has spent 4-1/2 years battling the New York Times over an editorial she said falsely linked her to a deadly Arizona mass shooting that left a U.S. congresswoman seriously wounded.
On Monday, Palin is poised to try to begin convincing jurors in a lawsuit in Manhattan federal court that the newspaper and its former editorial page editor James Bennet defamed her.
The trial before U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff marks a rare instance of a major media company defending its editorial practices before an American jury. Opening statements could take place as soon as Monday, following jury selection.
Palin bears the high burden of showing by clear and convincing evidence that there was "actual malice" involved in the newspaper's editorial writing process.
"This is a lawsuit over an editorial, essentially an opinion. This is a potentially dangerous area," said Roy Gutterman, a Syracuse University law and communications professor. "If we give public officials a green light to litigate on editorials they disagree with, where's the end?"
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This Pretty Much Captures the COVID Situation
New coronavirus cases have started to fall nationally, signaling that the Omicron-fueled spike that has infected tens of millions of Americans, packed hospitals and shattered records has finally begun to relent.
More and more states have passed a peak in new cases in recent days, as glimmers of progress have spread from a handful of eastern cities to much of the country. Through Friday, the country was averaging about 720,000 new cases a day, down from about 807,000 last week. New coronavirus hospital admissions have leveled off.
Even as hopeful data points emerge, the threat has by no means passed. The United States continues to identify far more infections a day than in any prior surge, and some states in the West, South and Great Plains are still seeing sharp increases. Many hospitals are full. And deaths continue to mount, with more than 2,100 announced most days.
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This Is the Weakest Link In the Supply Chain
Blue surgical masks and cotton balls. Car parts, pieces of tools and dozens of new toner cartridges for laser jet printers. Boxes from Macys, Bath and Body Works and Amazon – all empty with postmarks to addresses across the country.
The railroad tracks in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Lincoln Heights look as though a twister swept through, with thousands of boxes, bags and trash littering the rails for blocks. For months, residents in the area say they've watched the chaos unfold at all hours.
Men working as a team crack open large shipping containers on idle trains then load stolen goods into trucks and vans. Some, they say, continue their missions even when a train is moving – jumping on a train and climbing atop the containers with power tools or bolt cutters to crack open the large metal boxes.
"This must stop. This is not the wild wild west," said Christopher Tang, a professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management who studies supply chains. "Back then, thieves would steal money but now they're stealing merchandise that actually affects people's lives."
One of the country's largest railroad companies, Union Pacific, said they'd seen about $5 million in damages and thefts and noted on average, more than 90 shipping containers are looted per day.
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Who Do You Trust?
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I Hope They Aren't Hiring the Oath Keepers or Hell's Angels
Thousands of anti-vaccine mandate activists are expected to attend the "Defeat the Mandates: American Homecoming" rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC, on Sunday.
According to the organizers, more than 24,000 people have said they're going to the demonstration. It starts in the morning at the Washington Monument and ends in the afternoon at the Lincoln Memorial.
Law enforcement officials have already beefed up security for the large-scale protest, per CNN, due to fears that it could attract extremist groups.
And it appears that the event organizers themselves are also nervous that the event, which is intended to be peaceful, could escalate into chaos akin to the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
A statement published Thursday said the "Defeat the Mandates" organizers are hiring private security to work in unison with law enforcement officials to make sure the event remains non-violent. It added that it does not welcome extremist groups on "any side" or anyone who provokes violence.
The organizers also provide detailed instructions to attendees on how to stop the demonstration from getting "out of hand," according to safety protocol guidance sent via Telegram and seen by Insider.
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This Is Not Something to Monkey Around With
Residents of a Pennsylvania county were warned Saturday not to approach a monkey that was missing after a crash involving a pickup that was towing a trailer taking about 100 of the animals to a lab.
State police urged people not to look for or capture the cynomolgus macaque monkey following the Friday afternoon crash on a state highway near an Interstate 80 exit in Montour County.
“Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey. Please call 911 immediately,” troopers tweeted.
Trooper Lauren Lesher said the concern was “due to it not being a domesticated animal and them being in an unknown territory. It is hard to say how they would react to a human approaching them.”
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My, My, My, Flurona
The word “flurona,” which has circulated on social media and refers to someone infected with both Covid and the flu, isn’t popular with scientists.
“The contractions like ‘flurona,’ I think they’re very misleading to people. It presents the idea two viruses have somehow merged into one, which is not at all the case,” said Dr. Ellen Foxman, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine. “Somebody got a coinfection. People get coinfections all the time.”
But these coinfections are rather interesting to researchers. When someone is infected with two viruses, there are three options for how it could play out.
The interaction could cause little or no effect, researchers said. Or the viruses could attack simultaneously, causing more damage than they would on their own.
Coinfection could “lead to increased viral replication and increased severity,” said Dr. Guy Boivin, a clinical virologist at Laval University in Quebec City, who co-authored a review of viral interference published this month in Emerging Infectious Diseases, the journal of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s a third option — which seems counterintuitive — that is perhaps most intriguing. If infections are closely spaced in time, it’s possible for one infection to block another, researchers say.
....
The study is small and limited. It captures just 14 cases of simultaneous infection. Patients with more than one infection were actually faring better, their data suggest.
However, I Wouldn't Suggest Trying to Catch the Flu If You Test Positive
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They Didn't Catch COVID On Their Cruise, But ...
A Crystal Cruises ship with hundreds of passengers and crew onboard has diverted from its scheduled stop in Miami after an arrest warrant was issued, multiple outlets reported.
The Crystal Symphony was due to return to Miami on Saturday, following a 14-day Caribbean voyage, but instead traveled to Bimini in the Bahamas, per The Daily Mail.
According to Bloomberg, if the ship docks in Miami, the terms of the warrant would allow it to be seized to repay a $1.2 million unpaid fuel bill, which is apparently owed by its operator, Genting Hong Kong Ltd.
The warrant resulted from a lawsuit filed by Peninsula Petroleum Far East Wednesday against Crystal Cruises and Star Cruises Limited, per USA Today.
One passenger tweeted to travel agent Mundy Cruising: "Can you help me change my flight to Heathrow from Miami as we are stuck on Crystal Symphony which has changed route and is now heading for Bahamas instead of Miami."
Elio Pace, a musician performing aboard the ship, told the Daily Mail that "every one of these people are trying to reschedule their flights." But he noted that "there's no panic, there's no tantrums going on."
And You Thought You Were Spending a Lot on Fuel
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