Post by mhbruin on Apr 8, 2022 11:30:55 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 562 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 5)
There was some rain in the Nor Cal. A little more in the ten-day.
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When Fauci Speaks, People Listen
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday that he thinks there will be an uptick in cases of Covid-19 over the next few weeks and that it is likely that there could be a surge in the fall.
"I think we should expect, David, that over the next couple of weeks, we are going to see an uptick in cases -- and hopefully there is enough background immunity so that we don't wind up with a lot of hospitalizations," Fauci said.
Fauci reiterated that the US often follows other countries, offering the UK, which also has the BA.2 variant, as an example. He said that as well as a pullback on many mask mandates and restrictions for indoor settings, there has been a waning of immunity.
What About Those of Us Who Have Never Been Infected?
Two COVID Variants Just Combined Into a ‘Frankenstein’ Virus (What's Next? A Dracula Virus? A Hitler Virus? A Previous Guy Virus?)
First identified in the U.K., the ultra-infectious “XE” subvariant could already be spreading undetected in America.
The first subvariant of Omicron, the latest major variant of the novel coronavirus, was bad. BA.1 drove record cases and hospitalizations in many countries starting last fall.
The second subvariant, BA.2, was worse in some countries—setting new records for daily cases across China and parts of Europe.
Now BA.1 and BA.2 have combined to create a third subvariant. XE, as it’s known, is a “recombinant”—the product of two viruses interacting “Frankenstein”-style in a single host…
But don’t panic just yet. The same mix of subvariants that produced XE might also protect us from it. Coming so quickly after the surge of BA.1 and BA.2 cases, XE is on track to hit a wall of natural immunity—the antibodies left over from past infection in hundreds of millions of people.
A Little Sanity Has Been Restored. I Think the Texas Judge Was Sniffing Ivermectin.
A U.S. appeals court panel on Thursday reinstated President Joe Biden's executive order mandating that federal civilian employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.
By a 2-1 vote, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction issued by a U.S. district judge in Texas in January that had blocked enforcement of the federal employee vaccine mandate. Biden said in September he would require about 3.5 million government workers to get vaccinated by Nov. 22, barring a religious or medical accommodation, or face discipline or firing.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
It IS a Witch Hunt. However, In This Case the Witches are Real.
New York's top lawyer has asked a state judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court, for allegedly failing to turn over files for an investigation into his business practices.
Attorney General Letitia James requested he be fined $10,000 (£7,650) per day until he complies.
A judge previously ordered Mr Trump to provide the files as part of Ms James's probe into the Trump Organization.
The former president's lawyer called the motion "frivolous".
The New York attorney general opened a civil inquiry in 2019 into claims that - before he took office - Mr Trump had inflated the value of his assets to banks when seeking loans.
Mr Trump and his family have denied wrongdoing and the former president has called the inquiry a "witch hunt".
Meanwhile Molasses Merrick is Screwing the House ... and All of Us Who Value the Truth
The House of Representatives on Wednesday held two more Donald Trump loyalists in contempt of the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the congressional effort to discover the facts is being thwarted by an overly cautious Justice Department.
By a vote of 220-203, the House held Peter K. Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., who was responsible for Trump’s social media strategy, in criminal contempt of Congress for stonewalling the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoenas. But that vote will be a futile gesture if the Justice Department refuses to prosecute Navarro and Scavino.
The timidity of Attorney General Merrick Garland has already undermined the committee’s ability to obtain the evidence of a key witness.
That’s not an idle concern. The timidity of Attorney General Merrick Garland has already undermined the committee’s ability to obtain the evidence of a key witness, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. More than 110 days ago, the House held Meadows in contempt of Congress and urged Garland to prosecute him criminally for interfering with its investigation.
Nothing has happened. Rather than aiding the congressional inquiry, the Justice Department seems to be missing in action. With the possibility that the Republicans will gain control of the House in the midterm elections, Garland’s delay may already be fatal.
I Thought Only Putin Enjoyed Watching Babies Suffer.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced Ruben Verastigui has been sentenced to 151 months in prison on a federal charge of receipt of child pornography.
A Washington, D.C., resident, 29-year-old Ruben Verastigui has spent his entire career in conservative circles, including as an aide to the Trump re-election campaign and stints as a digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference and the Republican National Committee.
Clarence Doesn't Care
The Headline Sums It Up
We Understand You Perfectly, Mitch. You have NO Morals. You Only Care About Power.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a telling nonanswer to a question about his moral boundaries that circulated widely on social media Thursday.
“You are known for playing a ruthless style of politics. Where do you draw your moral red lines?” Axios’ Jonathan Swan asked the Kentucky Republican in an interview.
McConnell joked that “my wife thinks I’m a really nice guy” and then said he was “shocked to hear such a comment.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable with the way I’ve conducted my political career,” he added when Swan pressed again, saying he’d be happy to respond to specific examples.
Swan then cited McConnell’s speech in February 2021 following the second impeachment vote over former President Donald Trump’s role in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“You said Donald Trump’s actions preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection were ‘a disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and that he was ‘practically and morally responsible’ ― your words ― ‘for provoking the events of that day,’” Swan told the senator.
“How do you go from saying that to, two weeks later, saying you’d absolutely support Donald Trump if he’s the Republican nominee in 2024?”
McConnell said it should not be surprising that he would support the nominee of his party and that he feels an obligation to do so.
Swan then wondered if there was anything a Republican nominee could do to lose McConnell’s support.
The senator avoided answering, responding only: “I say many things I’m sure many people don’t understand.”
Well, Recuse Me!
Like the other presidents before and after him, Bill Clinton appointed a number of judges to federal courts during his White House tenure. One of those was Donald Middlebrooks, who has been on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for more than two decades.
That fact is not a good enough reason for Middlebrooks to recuse himself from hearing Trump’s lawsuit against his 2016 presidential nemesis, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the judge said Wednesday.
Middlebrooks denied a motion Trump filed Monday in which he claimed that his role as a judge in the case “amounts to prejudice so virulent or pervasive as to constitute bias against a party.”
The judge also made note of Trump’s apparent attempt to file the civil suit in a court whose judge was one of his appointees: “I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020. Despite the odds, this case landed with me instead. And when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns.”
Who Goofed? I've Got to Know? Did This Person Learn to Be Stupid, Or Was He Born This Way?
One of several suspects arrested in the shooting of Lady Gaga's dogwalker and the theft of two of her French bulldogs last year in Hollywood has been mistakenly released from jail.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed early Friday morning that 19-year-old James Howard Jackson was mistakenly released from custody Wednesday because of a "clerical error."
Jackson is accused of shooting and wounding the dogwalker. He is charged with attempted murder in the shooting and robbery case.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
See Pink Floyd Play.
Pink Floyd have reunited to record their first new material in 28 years, a protest song against the Ukraine war.
Hey Hey, Rise Up! features David Gilmour and Nick Mason alongside long-time Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards.
But the song is built around a spine-tingling refrain from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band Boombox.
Gilmour says the song is a show of "anger at a superpower invading a peaceful nation".
But it is also intended as a morale booster for the people of Ukraine, and a call "for peace".
Come On Kids! Let's Say It All Together, "GAY!!"
Tiger Woods Clearly Still Has Game
Tiger Woods blurted out an F-word at the Masters on Thursday ― and it wasn’t “fore!”
The golf legend, returning to major competition for the first time since he nearly lost his leg in a car wreck last year, had a promising first round at Augusta. He shot a 71, one under par, to tie for 10th place, four strokes behind leader Sungjae Im. The tournament continues through Sunday.
Woods had his frustrating moments, too. After his shot on the ninth hole rolled off the green, Woods exclaimed on a hot mic: “Fuck off!”
Putting His Body on the Line.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Even Rand Paul Finally Sees the Light.
Senate Republicans apparently decided that while they can be on the wrong side of history when it comes to voting for the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, they need to shake off their growing reputation as the party of Putin. The stories and images that emerged this week of Ukrainian corpses in the streets, of mass graves, of executions and rampant destruction in Bucha increased pressure to finally force action.
After three weeks of obstruction, Republicans finally allowed a vote to revoke permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and Belarus and to codify the gas and oil bans President Joe Biden had already imposed. When they decided to let it happen, they did so unanimously.
The House then moved quickly to pass both. For three weeks, the Senate has been wrangling over Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) objections to the reauthorization and expansion of the Global Magnitsky Sanctions that were included in the bills.
The 2012 Magnitsky Act imposed sanctions on Russian officials believed to be responsible for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who exposed corruption among high-level government officials. Since then, the law has been expanded to allow the White House to impose visa bans and sanctions on individuals anywhere in the world it deems responsible for “gross” human rights violations and acts of significant corruption. The bill from the House expands sanctions and travel bans to individuals who are responsible for “serious” human rights violations, and that’s what caused Paul’s objections. He succeeded in getting the language changed back to the original. Mostly, he succeeded in creating a three-week delay.
Vlad the Invader Cares About As Much as Clarence
Death by Chernobyl
As If the World Needed Another Reason to Hate Vlad.
Prices for food commodities like grains and vegetable oils reached their highest levels ever last month because of Russia's war in Ukraine and the “massive supply disruptions” it is causing, the United Nations said Friday.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points last month, up 12.6% from February. As it is, the February index was the highest level since its inception in 1990.
FAO said the war in Ukraine was largely responsible for the 17.1% rise in grains, including wheat and others like oats, barley and corn. Russia and Ukraine together account for around 30% and 20% of global wheat and corn exports, respectively.
While predictable given February's steep rise, “this is really remarkable,” said Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of FAO's markets and trade division. “Clearly, these very high prices for food require urgent action.”
This Sandworm Doesn't Produce Spice. (If You Are Puzzled, You Aren't Familiar with Dune.)
The FBI removed malware from a network of hacked computers, which infected thousands of devices worldwide under the control of a Russian state-sponsored threat actor dubbed Sandworm.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday the court-authorized disruption of the so-called "botnet," a network of computers infected by malware and controlled by a hacker, in March.
"The court-authorized removal of malware deployed by the Russian GRU (foreign military intelligence agency) demonstrates the department's commitment to disrupt nation-state hacking using all of the legal tools at our disposal," Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, of the Justice Department's National Security Division, said in a statement.
"By working closely with WatchGuard and other government agencies in this country and the United Kingdom to analyze the malware and to develop detection and remediation tools, we are together showing the strength that public-private partnership brings to our country's cybersecurity. The department remains committed to confronting and disrupting nation-state hacking, in whatever form it takes."
Following the court order on March 18, the FBI was successful at copying and removing the malware from all remaining firewall devices that Sandworm used for command and control servers of the underlying network, which severed the devices from Sandworm's control.
Diamonds Are a Sadistic, Murderous, Dictator's Best Friend
The United States late Thursday announced additional sanctions against a shipbuilder and the world's largest diamond mining company, both Russian-state owned, as the Biden administration seeks to further punish Russian President Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine.
The U.S. State Department and Treasury identified United Shipbuilding Corporation, as well as 28 of its subsidiaries and eight of its board members, and Alrosa for sanctions under an executive order President Joe Biden signed in April of last year to freeze the assets of companies owned by Russia and acting or conducting various destabilizing activities on its behalf, such as violating the sovereign integrity of foreign states.
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Hello Dolly!
Researchers have rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman's skin cells so they are the equivalent of a 23-year-old's.
The scientists in Cambridge believe that they can do the same thing with other tissues in the body.
The eventual aim is to develop treatments for age-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and neurological disorders.
The technology is built on the techniques used to create Dolly the cloned sheep more than 25 years ago.
The head of the team, Prof Wolf Reik, of the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, told BBC News that he hoped that the technique could eventually be used to keep people healthier for longer as they grow older.
"We have been dreaming about this kind of thing. Many common diseases get worse with age and to think about helping people in this way is super exciting," he said.
Prof Reich stressed though that the work, which has been published in the journal eLife, was at a very early stage. He said that there were several scientific issues to overcome before it could move out of his lab and into the clinic. But he said that demonstrating for the first time that cell rejuvenation is possible was a critical step forward.
I Hope This Isn't the Woman After the Treatment
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Could Previous Guy Have Created a Real Estate Boom?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has proposed a two-year ban on some foreigners buying homes.
The measure comes as the country grapples with some of the worst housing affordability issues in the world.
Prices have jumped more than 20%, pushing the average home in Canada to nearly C$817,000 ($650,000; £495,000) - more than nine times household income.
But industry analysts say it's not clear a ban on foreign buyers will address the problem.
Data on purchases by foreign buyers in Canada is limited, but research suggests they amount for a small fraction of the market.
"I don't think it's going to have a huge impact," said Ben Myers, president of advisory firm Bullpenn Research & Consulting in Toronto, who found foreigners accounted for just 1% of purchases in 2020, down from 9% in 2015 and 2016.
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W Boson is Not a New COVID Variant or a Suburb of a Massachusetts City
Scientists just outside Chicago have found that the mass of a sub-atomic particle is not what it should be.
The measurement is the first conclusive experimental result that is at odds with one of the most important and successful theories of modern physics.
The team has found that the particle, known as a W boson, is more massive than the theories predicted.
The result has been described as "shocking" by Prof David Toback, who is the project co-spokesperson.
The discovery could lead to the development of a new, more complete theory of how the Universe works.
"If the results are verified by other experiments, the world is going to look different." he told BBC News. "There has to be a paradigm shift. The hope is that maybe this result is going to be the one that breaks the dam.
"The famous astronomer Carl Sagan said 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. We believe we have that."
The scientists at the Fermilab Collider Detector (CDF) in Illinois have found only a tiny difference in the mass of the W Boson compared with what the theory says it should be - just 0.1%. But if confirmed by other experiments, the implications are enormous. The so-called Standard Model of particle physics has predicted the behaviour and properties of sub-atomic particles with no discrepancies whatsoever for fifty years. Until now.
Physicists have known for some time that the theory needs to be updated. It can't explain the presence of invisible material in space, called Dark Matter, nor the continued accelerating expansion of the Universe by a force called Dark Energy. Nor can it explain gravity.
Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, who works at the LHC, believes that if the Fermilab result is confirmed, it could be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest shift in our understanding of the Universe since Einstein's theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.
Here Is Video of Scientists Reacting
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Elections Matter
A day after a historic vote confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will launch a hypertargeted digital ad campaign aimed at Black potential voters in five battleground states.
The ads, which are set to begin Friday in Black media in states with competitive Senate races, advocate for Democrats to maintain Senate control. The messaging hits Republicans for trying to block Jackson’s confirmation.
“Senate Republicans tried to stop her. We must defend the Democratic Senate,” reads the ad, first provided to NBC News.
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Taking Waterfront Dining Too Far
A Thursday night dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in Hawthorne, New Jersey, turned into a rescue mission when fast-moving floodwaters trapped patrons inside.
Nearly 200 people were at Bottagra Restaurant when the Passaic River began to overflow during an evening storm that slammed the tri-state area with more than 3 inches of rain within 24 hours.
Hawthorne fire Chief Joseph Speranza said firefighters began removing people from inside the eatery around 9:15 p.m. The building wasn't cleared until 1 a.m.
Video showed diners sloshing through ankle-deep water as they left the restaurant.
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They're Locking Down the Dogs in Shanghai
The citywide lockdown in Shanghai, the site of China’s worst coronavirus outbreak in two years, is so strict that even some dogs can’t go out. So their owners are bringing the outdoors to them.
For Anjo, a 2-year-old Pomeranian mix, that means a little patch of leaves and grass that Dani Chapman has cobbled together on her balcony while she watches the dog for a friend who’s in quarantine.
“We’ve had to come up with really creative ways to encourage the dogs to use the bathroom inside,” said Chapman, 32, an English teacher from Ireland who also volunteers with animal rescue groups.
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Don't They Study Geography in Rapper School?
BTS fans are calling out rapper and media personality Joe Budden, who on a recent episode of his podcast referred to the K-pop band as being from China.
“I know they big, I know it’s China, I don’t wanna see it,” Budden said while ranting about the band, whose members are South Korean.
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What Are the Odds This Ever Gets Reported on Fox "News"?
Slim Just Left Town
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I Don't Watch Either of Them, But I Believe This.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Apr 7 | 26,286 | 471 |
| Apr 6 | 26,595 | 496 |
| Apr 5 | 26,845 | 533 |
| Apr 4 | 25,537 | 537 |
| Apr 3 | 25,074 | 572 |
| Apr 2 | 25,787 | 576 |
| Apr 1 | 26,106 | 584 |
| Mar 31 | 25,980 | 605 |
| Mar 30 | 25,732 | 626 |
| Mar 29 | 25,218 | 644 |
| Mar 28 | 26,190 | 700 |
| Mar 27 | 26,487 | 690 |
| Mar 26 | 26,593 | 697 |
| Mar 25 | 26,874 | 705 |
| Mar 24 | 27,235 | 732 |
| Mar 23 | 27,134 | 753 |
| Mar 22 | 27,545 | 787 |
| Mar 21 | 28,657 | 861 |
| Mar 20 | 27,786 | 901 |
| Mar 19 | 27,747 | 909 |
| Mar 18 | 28,274 | 972 |
| Mar 17 | 29,317 | 1,035 |
| Mar 16 | 30,040 | 1,052 |
| Mar 15 | 30,934 | 1,107 |
| Mar 14 | 32,458 | 1,186 |
| Mar 13 | 34,113 | 1,187 |
| Mar 12 | 34,253 | 1,210 |
| Mar 11 | 34,805 | 1,198 |
| Mar 10 | 35,269 | 1,197 |
| Mar 9 | 37,146 | 1,179 |
| Mar 8 | 37,879 | 1,161 |
| Mar 7 | 40,433 | 1,208 |
| Mar 6 | 42,204 | 1,259 |
| Mar 5 | 43,665 | 1,281 |
| Mar 4 | 45,555 | 1,319 |
| Mar 3 | 49,888 | 1,413 |
| Mar 2 | 53,016 | 1,558 |
| Mar 1 | 56,253 | 1,674 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 76.9% | 65.5% | 44.8% |
| % of Population 5+ | 81.7% | 69.6% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 86.5% | 73.9% | 46.4% |
| % of Population 18+ | 88.3% | 75.4% | 48.2% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 89.0% | 67.2% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday April 5)
There was some rain in the Nor Cal. A little more in the ten-day.
| Percent of Average for this Date | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 74% (62% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 66% (55%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 62% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 46% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 55% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 52% |
When Fauci Speaks, People Listen
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on Wednesday that he thinks there will be an uptick in cases of Covid-19 over the next few weeks and that it is likely that there could be a surge in the fall.
"I think we should expect, David, that over the next couple of weeks, we are going to see an uptick in cases -- and hopefully there is enough background immunity so that we don't wind up with a lot of hospitalizations," Fauci said.
Fauci reiterated that the US often follows other countries, offering the UK, which also has the BA.2 variant, as an example. He said that as well as a pullback on many mask mandates and restrictions for indoor settings, there has been a waning of immunity.
What About Those of Us Who Have Never Been Infected?
Two COVID Variants Just Combined Into a ‘Frankenstein’ Virus (What's Next? A Dracula Virus? A Hitler Virus? A Previous Guy Virus?)
First identified in the U.K., the ultra-infectious “XE” subvariant could already be spreading undetected in America.
The first subvariant of Omicron, the latest major variant of the novel coronavirus, was bad. BA.1 drove record cases and hospitalizations in many countries starting last fall.
The second subvariant, BA.2, was worse in some countries—setting new records for daily cases across China and parts of Europe.
Now BA.1 and BA.2 have combined to create a third subvariant. XE, as it’s known, is a “recombinant”—the product of two viruses interacting “Frankenstein”-style in a single host…
But don’t panic just yet. The same mix of subvariants that produced XE might also protect us from it. Coming so quickly after the surge of BA.1 and BA.2 cases, XE is on track to hit a wall of natural immunity—the antibodies left over from past infection in hundreds of millions of people.
A Little Sanity Has Been Restored. I Think the Texas Judge Was Sniffing Ivermectin.
A U.S. appeals court panel on Thursday reinstated President Joe Biden's executive order mandating that federal civilian employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.
By a 2-1 vote, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted an injunction issued by a U.S. district judge in Texas in January that had blocked enforcement of the federal employee vaccine mandate. Biden said in September he would require about 3.5 million government workers to get vaccinated by Nov. 22, barring a religious or medical accommodation, or face discipline or firing.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
It IS a Witch Hunt. However, In This Case the Witches are Real.
New York's top lawyer has asked a state judge to hold Donald Trump in contempt of court, for allegedly failing to turn over files for an investigation into his business practices.
Attorney General Letitia James requested he be fined $10,000 (£7,650) per day until he complies.
A judge previously ordered Mr Trump to provide the files as part of Ms James's probe into the Trump Organization.
The former president's lawyer called the motion "frivolous".
The New York attorney general opened a civil inquiry in 2019 into claims that - before he took office - Mr Trump had inflated the value of his assets to banks when seeking loans.
Mr Trump and his family have denied wrongdoing and the former president has called the inquiry a "witch hunt".
Meanwhile Molasses Merrick is Screwing the House ... and All of Us Who Value the Truth
The House of Representatives on Wednesday held two more Donald Trump loyalists in contempt of the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the congressional effort to discover the facts is being thwarted by an overly cautious Justice Department.
By a vote of 220-203, the House held Peter K. Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser, and Dan Scavino Jr., who was responsible for Trump’s social media strategy, in criminal contempt of Congress for stonewalling the Jan. 6 committee’s subpoenas. But that vote will be a futile gesture if the Justice Department refuses to prosecute Navarro and Scavino.
The timidity of Attorney General Merrick Garland has already undermined the committee’s ability to obtain the evidence of a key witness.
That’s not an idle concern. The timidity of Attorney General Merrick Garland has already undermined the committee’s ability to obtain the evidence of a key witness, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. More than 110 days ago, the House held Meadows in contempt of Congress and urged Garland to prosecute him criminally for interfering with its investigation.
Nothing has happened. Rather than aiding the congressional inquiry, the Justice Department seems to be missing in action. With the possibility that the Republicans will gain control of the House in the midterm elections, Garland’s delay may already be fatal.
I Thought Only Putin Enjoyed Watching Babies Suffer.
On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced Ruben Verastigui has been sentenced to 151 months in prison on a federal charge of receipt of child pornography.
A Washington, D.C., resident, 29-year-old Ruben Verastigui has spent his entire career in conservative circles, including as an aide to the Trump re-election campaign and stints as a digital strategist for the Senate Republican Conference and the Republican National Committee.
Clarence Doesn't Care
The Headline Sums It Up
We Understand You Perfectly, Mitch. You have NO Morals. You Only Care About Power.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave a telling nonanswer to a question about his moral boundaries that circulated widely on social media Thursday.
“You are known for playing a ruthless style of politics. Where do you draw your moral red lines?” Axios’ Jonathan Swan asked the Kentucky Republican in an interview.
McConnell joked that “my wife thinks I’m a really nice guy” and then said he was “shocked to hear such a comment.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable with the way I’ve conducted my political career,” he added when Swan pressed again, saying he’d be happy to respond to specific examples.
Swan then cited McConnell’s speech in February 2021 following the second impeachment vote over former President Donald Trump’s role in the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“You said Donald Trump’s actions preceding the Jan. 6 insurrection were ‘a disgraceful dereliction of duty’ and that he was ‘practically and morally responsible’ ― your words ― ‘for provoking the events of that day,’” Swan told the senator.
“How do you go from saying that to, two weeks later, saying you’d absolutely support Donald Trump if he’s the Republican nominee in 2024?”
McConnell said it should not be surprising that he would support the nominee of his party and that he feels an obligation to do so.
Swan then wondered if there was anything a Republican nominee could do to lose McConnell’s support.
The senator avoided answering, responding only: “I say many things I’m sure many people don’t understand.”
Well, Recuse Me!
Like the other presidents before and after him, Bill Clinton appointed a number of judges to federal courts during his White House tenure. One of those was Donald Middlebrooks, who has been on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for more than two decades.
That fact is not a good enough reason for Middlebrooks to recuse himself from hearing Trump’s lawsuit against his 2016 presidential nemesis, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the judge said Wednesday.
Middlebrooks denied a motion Trump filed Monday in which he claimed that his role as a judge in the case “amounts to prejudice so virulent or pervasive as to constitute bias against a party.”
The judge also made note of Trump’s apparent attempt to file the civil suit in a court whose judge was one of his appointees: “I note that Plaintiff filed this lawsuit in the Fort Pierce division of this District, where only one federal judge sits: Judge Aileen Cannon, who Plaintiff appointed in 2020. Despite the odds, this case landed with me instead. And when Plaintiff is a litigant before a judge that he himself appointed, he does not tend to advance these same sorts of bias concerns.”
Who Goofed? I've Got to Know? Did This Person Learn to Be Stupid, Or Was He Born This Way?
One of several suspects arrested in the shooting of Lady Gaga's dogwalker and the theft of two of her French bulldogs last year in Hollywood has been mistakenly released from jail.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department confirmed early Friday morning that 19-year-old James Howard Jackson was mistakenly released from custody Wednesday because of a "clerical error."
Jackson is accused of shooting and wounding the dogwalker. He is charged with attempted murder in the shooting and robbery case.
--------------
Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
See Pink Floyd Play.
Pink Floyd have reunited to record their first new material in 28 years, a protest song against the Ukraine war.
Hey Hey, Rise Up! features David Gilmour and Nick Mason alongside long-time Floyd bassist Guy Pratt and Nitin Sawhney on keyboards.
But the song is built around a spine-tingling refrain from Ukrainian singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk of the band Boombox.
Gilmour says the song is a show of "anger at a superpower invading a peaceful nation".
But it is also intended as a morale booster for the people of Ukraine, and a call "for peace".
Come On Kids! Let's Say It All Together, "GAY!!"
Tiger Woods Clearly Still Has Game
Tiger Woods blurted out an F-word at the Masters on Thursday ― and it wasn’t “fore!”
The golf legend, returning to major competition for the first time since he nearly lost his leg in a car wreck last year, had a promising first round at Augusta. He shot a 71, one under par, to tie for 10th place, four strokes behind leader Sungjae Im. The tournament continues through Sunday.
Woods had his frustrating moments, too. After his shot on the ninth hole rolled off the green, Woods exclaimed on a hot mic: “Fuck off!”
Putting His Body on the Line.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Even Rand Paul Finally Sees the Light.
Senate Republicans apparently decided that while they can be on the wrong side of history when it comes to voting for the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, they need to shake off their growing reputation as the party of Putin. The stories and images that emerged this week of Ukrainian corpses in the streets, of mass graves, of executions and rampant destruction in Bucha increased pressure to finally force action.
After three weeks of obstruction, Republicans finally allowed a vote to revoke permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) with Russia and Belarus and to codify the gas and oil bans President Joe Biden had already imposed. When they decided to let it happen, they did so unanimously.
The House then moved quickly to pass both. For three weeks, the Senate has been wrangling over Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) objections to the reauthorization and expansion of the Global Magnitsky Sanctions that were included in the bills.
The 2012 Magnitsky Act imposed sanctions on Russian officials believed to be responsible for the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who exposed corruption among high-level government officials. Since then, the law has been expanded to allow the White House to impose visa bans and sanctions on individuals anywhere in the world it deems responsible for “gross” human rights violations and acts of significant corruption. The bill from the House expands sanctions and travel bans to individuals who are responsible for “serious” human rights violations, and that’s what caused Paul’s objections. He succeeded in getting the language changed back to the original. Mostly, he succeeded in creating a three-week delay.
Vlad the Invader Cares About As Much as Clarence
Death by Chernobyl
As If the World Needed Another Reason to Hate Vlad.
Prices for food commodities like grains and vegetable oils reached their highest levels ever last month because of Russia's war in Ukraine and the “massive supply disruptions” it is causing, the United Nations said Friday.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points last month, up 12.6% from February. As it is, the February index was the highest level since its inception in 1990.
FAO said the war in Ukraine was largely responsible for the 17.1% rise in grains, including wheat and others like oats, barley and corn. Russia and Ukraine together account for around 30% and 20% of global wheat and corn exports, respectively.
While predictable given February's steep rise, “this is really remarkable,” said Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of FAO's markets and trade division. “Clearly, these very high prices for food require urgent action.”
This Sandworm Doesn't Produce Spice. (If You Are Puzzled, You Aren't Familiar with Dune.)
The FBI removed malware from a network of hacked computers, which infected thousands of devices worldwide under the control of a Russian state-sponsored threat actor dubbed Sandworm.
The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Wednesday the court-authorized disruption of the so-called "botnet," a network of computers infected by malware and controlled by a hacker, in March.
"The court-authorized removal of malware deployed by the Russian GRU (foreign military intelligence agency) demonstrates the department's commitment to disrupt nation-state hacking using all of the legal tools at our disposal," Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen, of the Justice Department's National Security Division, said in a statement.
"By working closely with WatchGuard and other government agencies in this country and the United Kingdom to analyze the malware and to develop detection and remediation tools, we are together showing the strength that public-private partnership brings to our country's cybersecurity. The department remains committed to confronting and disrupting nation-state hacking, in whatever form it takes."
Following the court order on March 18, the FBI was successful at copying and removing the malware from all remaining firewall devices that Sandworm used for command and control servers of the underlying network, which severed the devices from Sandworm's control.
Diamonds Are a Sadistic, Murderous, Dictator's Best Friend
The United States late Thursday announced additional sanctions against a shipbuilder and the world's largest diamond mining company, both Russian-state owned, as the Biden administration seeks to further punish Russian President Vladimir Putin over his war in Ukraine.
The U.S. State Department and Treasury identified United Shipbuilding Corporation, as well as 28 of its subsidiaries and eight of its board members, and Alrosa for sanctions under an executive order President Joe Biden signed in April of last year to freeze the assets of companies owned by Russia and acting or conducting various destabilizing activities on its behalf, such as violating the sovereign integrity of foreign states.
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Hello Dolly!
Researchers have rejuvenated a 53-year-old woman's skin cells so they are the equivalent of a 23-year-old's.
The scientists in Cambridge believe that they can do the same thing with other tissues in the body.
The eventual aim is to develop treatments for age-related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and neurological disorders.
The technology is built on the techniques used to create Dolly the cloned sheep more than 25 years ago.
The head of the team, Prof Wolf Reik, of the Babraham Institute in Cambridge, told BBC News that he hoped that the technique could eventually be used to keep people healthier for longer as they grow older.
"We have been dreaming about this kind of thing. Many common diseases get worse with age and to think about helping people in this way is super exciting," he said.
Prof Reich stressed though that the work, which has been published in the journal eLife, was at a very early stage. He said that there were several scientific issues to overcome before it could move out of his lab and into the clinic. But he said that demonstrating for the first time that cell rejuvenation is possible was a critical step forward.
I Hope This Isn't the Woman After the Treatment
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Could Previous Guy Have Created a Real Estate Boom?
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has proposed a two-year ban on some foreigners buying homes.
The measure comes as the country grapples with some of the worst housing affordability issues in the world.
Prices have jumped more than 20%, pushing the average home in Canada to nearly C$817,000 ($650,000; £495,000) - more than nine times household income.
But industry analysts say it's not clear a ban on foreign buyers will address the problem.
Data on purchases by foreign buyers in Canada is limited, but research suggests they amount for a small fraction of the market.
"I don't think it's going to have a huge impact," said Ben Myers, president of advisory firm Bullpenn Research & Consulting in Toronto, who found foreigners accounted for just 1% of purchases in 2020, down from 9% in 2015 and 2016.
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W Boson is Not a New COVID Variant or a Suburb of a Massachusetts City
Scientists just outside Chicago have found that the mass of a sub-atomic particle is not what it should be.
The measurement is the first conclusive experimental result that is at odds with one of the most important and successful theories of modern physics.
The team has found that the particle, known as a W boson, is more massive than the theories predicted.
The result has been described as "shocking" by Prof David Toback, who is the project co-spokesperson.
The discovery could lead to the development of a new, more complete theory of how the Universe works.
"If the results are verified by other experiments, the world is going to look different." he told BBC News. "There has to be a paradigm shift. The hope is that maybe this result is going to be the one that breaks the dam.
"The famous astronomer Carl Sagan said 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. We believe we have that."
The scientists at the Fermilab Collider Detector (CDF) in Illinois have found only a tiny difference in the mass of the W Boson compared with what the theory says it should be - just 0.1%. But if confirmed by other experiments, the implications are enormous. The so-called Standard Model of particle physics has predicted the behaviour and properties of sub-atomic particles with no discrepancies whatsoever for fifty years. Until now.
Physicists have known for some time that the theory needs to be updated. It can't explain the presence of invisible material in space, called Dark Matter, nor the continued accelerating expansion of the Universe by a force called Dark Energy. Nor can it explain gravity.
Dr Mitesh Patel of Imperial College, who works at the LHC, believes that if the Fermilab result is confirmed, it could be the first of many new results that could herald the biggest shift in our understanding of the Universe since Einstein's theories of relativity more than a hundred years ago.
Here Is Video of Scientists Reacting
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Elections Matter
A day after a historic vote confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will launch a hypertargeted digital ad campaign aimed at Black potential voters in five battleground states.
The ads, which are set to begin Friday in Black media in states with competitive Senate races, advocate for Democrats to maintain Senate control. The messaging hits Republicans for trying to block Jackson’s confirmation.
“Senate Republicans tried to stop her. We must defend the Democratic Senate,” reads the ad, first provided to NBC News.
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Taking Waterfront Dining Too Far
A Thursday night dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in Hawthorne, New Jersey, turned into a rescue mission when fast-moving floodwaters trapped patrons inside.
Nearly 200 people were at Bottagra Restaurant when the Passaic River began to overflow during an evening storm that slammed the tri-state area with more than 3 inches of rain within 24 hours.
Hawthorne fire Chief Joseph Speranza said firefighters began removing people from inside the eatery around 9:15 p.m. The building wasn't cleared until 1 a.m.
Video showed diners sloshing through ankle-deep water as they left the restaurant.
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They're Locking Down the Dogs in Shanghai
The citywide lockdown in Shanghai, the site of China’s worst coronavirus outbreak in two years, is so strict that even some dogs can’t go out. So their owners are bringing the outdoors to them.
For Anjo, a 2-year-old Pomeranian mix, that means a little patch of leaves and grass that Dani Chapman has cobbled together on her balcony while she watches the dog for a friend who’s in quarantine.
“We’ve had to come up with really creative ways to encourage the dogs to use the bathroom inside,” said Chapman, 32, an English teacher from Ireland who also volunteers with animal rescue groups.
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Don't They Study Geography in Rapper School?
BTS fans are calling out rapper and media personality Joe Budden, who on a recent episode of his podcast referred to the K-pop band as being from China.
“I know they big, I know it’s China, I don’t wanna see it,” Budden said while ranting about the band, whose members are South Korean.
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What Are the Odds This Ever Gets Reported on Fox "News"?
Slim Just Left Town
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I Don't Watch Either of Them, But I Believe This.
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