Post by mhbruin on Apr 10, 2022 9:07:58 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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I Tried Calling the Tinnitus Hotline. No Answer. It Kept Ringing
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Gee, Xi, You Want a Gold Medal For This?
China's President Xi Jinping has praised his country's handling of the Covid pandemic, even as Shanghai reported record case numbers.
Speaking at an event marking China's hosting of the Winter Olympics, Mr Xi said some athletes said China deserved a gold medal for its approach.
China's zero-Covid policy has come under strain with infections surging and signs of public anger.
Shanghai's 25 million residents remain under lockdown.
On Friday, the city - China's financial hub - announced a record 21,000 cases.
Shanghai residents have taken to social media to complain about food supplies.
People in the city are confined to their homes, and most have to order in food and water and wait for government drop-offs of vegetables, meat and eggs.
But the lockdown extension has overwhelmed delivery services, grocery shop websites and even the distribution of government supplies.
Political scientist Dali Yang of the University of Chicago suggested several million people in Shanghai were running low on supplies and many were restricted to eating one meal a day.
He warned that elderly Shanghainese, who were more likely to live alone and less likely to use smartphones, were among those most at risk.
Meanwhile, a video showing a worker in a hazmat costume beating a dog to death with a shovel has caused revulsion online.
The dog's owner had reportedly been taken to quarantine after testing positive for Covid and had left the pet outside in the hope that it would survive.
The Wicked Witch of the East Want to Make PA The NOT-Wonderful Land of Oz
Former President Donald Trump endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania's Senate GOP primary.
TucKKKer Wants Men to Beat Up Teachers. Really!
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): I don't understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teacher's pushing sex values on your third grader why don't you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else's values on your kid about sex, like where's the pushback?
Laws Are For Little People
Former President Donald Trump walked away from the White House last year without providing the State Department with a legally required accounting of the gifts he received from foreign governments in 2020, officials revealed in a report Friday.
The requirement was also ignored by former Vice President Mike Pence and other officials in the Trump administration, according to authorities.
The department made attempts to collect the missing information from the National Archives and Records Administration and the General Services Administration, but was told that “potentially relevant records are not available” to the protocol office “under applicable access rules for retired records,” the report stated.
Trump’s now predictable brazen flouting of procedure means that the State Department lacks basic information to determine if the gifts were somehow improper — such as so expensive that they could be construed as a bribe for special favors.
Federal law requires that each government department and agency must submit a list to the State Department of gifts over $415 officials received from foreign governments. The scrutiny is intended to ensure that foreign governments don’t gain undue influence over U.S. officials.
Do Insurrections Have Consequences?
A federal appeals court has revived a constitutional challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) right to run for reelection because of his support for insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered earlier this week that a hearing against an injunction halting the challenge obtained by Cawthorn be held May 3. The Republican primary in Cawthorn’s district is May 17.
Voters and the organization Free Speech for People have argued in court that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars lawmakers like Cawthorn from running again for office.
The clause bans those who, after previously taking an oath to “support the Constitution,” then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies.” The section was passed after the Civil War to prohibit lawmakers from representing a government they had worked to topple.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
I'm Not a Big Boris Johnson Fan, and It's Ultimately a Photo Op, But a Damned Nice Photo Op.
Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Cancer Grow? It's Not Growing. Building the Case For Hope.
At age 4, Mary, a rambunctious animal lover from Northglenn, Colorado, was given nine months to live. A devastating brain tumor was spreading its tentacles through her brain stem, the area that controls breathing, heartbeat and other essential functions.
The tumor, called a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma strikes 300-400 Americans each year, mostly children, and several thousand more worldwide.
The standard treatment for DIPG hasn't changed since it killed astronaut Neil Armstrong's 2-year-old daughter in 1962.
But Mary, patient No. 007 in a research trial at Stanford University, may be among the first to redefine the future of DIPG.
The trial already is changing the story of a type of cancer immunotherapy called CAR-T, which has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers, but so far hasn't been effective in 90% of cancers, like DIPG, that are considered solid tumors.
Scientific theory and a few isolated examples have suggested CAR-T should be able to fight solid tumors. But Stanford's latest results, presented this weekend at a cancer conference in New Orleans, are the first to show consistent effectiveness.
"It's an enormously hopeful moment," said Dr. Crystal Mackall, a Stanford immunologist who helps lead the work.
Some trial participants have seen their tumors shrunk by 95% or more – a dramatic achievement never before seen in DIPG. Though some have since died, most survived far longer than expected.
"It tells you you're on (right) the path, keep digging," said Dr. Nabil Ahmed, a CAR-T expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who is not involved in the study but is following it closely.
Dr. Marcela Maus, a CAR-T and brain tumor expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said the work has inspired the entire CAR-T field. "This is building up the case for hope," she said.
It's still early days and unclear what success with CAR-Ts might eventually look like, both in DIPG specifically and solid tumors more broadly.
But Mary is getting ready to celebrate her second birthday since diagnosis, which is almost unheard of with DIPG.
The University of Pennsylvania recently declared a leukemia patient "cured" more than a decade after he received CAR-T for the blood cancer.
Full Story
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Invasions Have Consequences
Europe Has the Power to Stop Putin. Do They Have the Nerve?
A "real embargo" on Russian energy by Western countries could stop war in Ukraine, President Putin's former chief economic adviser has suggested.
Dr Andrei Illarionov said Russia "did not take seriously" other countries' threats to reduce their energy usage.
Despite trying to reduce its reliance on Russian sources, Europe is continuing to buy oil and gas.
Last year, soaring prices meant oil and gas revenues accounted for 36% of Russia's government spending.
Much of that income comes from the European Union, which imports about 40% of its gas and 27% of its oil from Russia.
This week, its top diplomat Josep Borrell said "a billion [euros] is what we pay Putin every day for the energy he supplies us".
Actual Video of Ukrainians Fighting Russians
An Interview with a Russian Soldier
How Could the War Expand?
There are a number of potential scenarios which will doubtless be occupying minds in Western defence ministries.
Here are just three of them:
1. A Nato-supplied anti-ship missile fired by Ukrainian forces in Odesa hits and sinks a Russian warship offshore in the Black Sea with the loss of nearly 100 sailors and dozens of marines. A death toll of this magnitude in a single strike would be unprecedented and Putin would be under pressure to respond in some form.
2. A Russian strategic missile strike targets a supply convoy of military hardware crossing from a Nato country, like Poland or Slovakia, into Ukraine. If casualties were sustained on Nato's side of the border that could potentially trigger Article 5 of Nato's constitution, bringing the entire alliance to the defence of the country attacked.
3. Amidst fierce fighting in the Donbas an explosion occurs at an industrial facility resulting in the release of toxic chemical gases. While this has already occurred, there were no deaths reported. But were it to result in the sort of mass casualties seen in Syria's use of poison gas at Ghouta and if it were found to have been deliberately caused by Russian forces, then Nato would be obliged to respond.
It is perfectly possible that none of these scenarios will materialise.
What's Happened
Putin appoints new commander: Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov as theater commander of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, according to a US official and a European official, after the first phase of Moscow’s invasion saw Russian troops fail to capture territory in central Ukraine and ultimately retreat from the capital, Kyiv. Dvornikov, the first commander of Russia’s military operations in Syria, could bring a new level of coordination to an assault now expected to focus on Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, instead of multiple fronts.
Russia announces strikes in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions: Russian forces have carried out missile strikes in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Sunday. "During the night in the village of Zvonetske -- Dnipropetrovsk region -- high-precision sea-based missiles destroyed the headquarters and base of the Dnipro nationalist battalion, where reinforcements from foreign mercenaries arrived the other day," Russian defense ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. CNN could not immediately verify those claims.
Dnipro airport destroyed by Russian attack, Regional military governor says: Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said the airport in the east-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro had been destroyed in a Russian strike, without providing extensive details. "And one more attack on the airport in Dnipro," he said "There is nothing left of it already. The airport and the infrastructure nearby have been destroyed. But rockets keep flying." Reznichenko said information about casualties was being clarified. The airport was hit previously by Russian forces. Reznichenko said on March 15 that a Russian missile strike had put the runway out of use and damaged a terminal building.
Russian convoy: Satellite images collected and analyzed by Maxar Technologies show an eight-mile-long Russian military convoy to the east of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. On Friday, Ukraine's defense intelligence chief told CNN that Russian troops were regrouping across the border and plan to advance toward Kharkiv, in what could be a major assault.
What's Coming Next?
How will Russia attack Ukraine's new front lines?
Why They Are Unlikely to Succeed
"Given what we’ve seen from Russia, I’m skeptical.
1. Russia’s forces have been shredded, and will take time to reconstitute.
2. Russia’s forces have truly been shredded.
3. Russia can’t mass its troops for major, coordinated attacks
4. Russia is no longer fielding complete units
Reports say Russia is massing for massive Donbas attack, but can they really?
Stalin Would Be Proud
With President Vladimir V. Putin’s direct encouragement, Russians who support the war against Ukraine are starting to turn on the enemy within.
The episodes are not yet a mass phenomenon, but they illustrate the building paranoia and polarization in Russian society. Citizens are denouncing one another in an eerie echo of Stalin’s terror, spurred on by vicious official rhetoric from the state and enabled by far-reaching new laws that criminalize dissent.
There are reports of students turning in teachers and people telling on their neighbors and even the diners at the next table. In a mall in western Moscow, it was the “no to war” text displayed in a computer repair store and reported by a passer-by that got the store’s owner, Marat Grachev, detained by the police. In St. Petersburg, a local news outlet documented the furor over suspected pro-Western sympathies at the public library; it erupted after a library official mistook the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for that of Mark Twain.
"Selective Default"
The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling rising prospects that Moscow will soon default on external loans for the first time in more than a century.
S&P Global Ratings issued the downgrade to “selective default” late Friday after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles on Monday when they were due in dollars. It said it didn’t expect Russia to be able to convert the rubles into dollars within the 30-day grace period allowed.
S&P said in a statement that its decision was based partly on its opinion that sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine “are likely to be further increased in the coming weeks, hampering Russia’s willingness and technical abilities to honor the terms and conditions of its obligations to foreign debtholders.”
An S&P spokesperson said a selective default rating is when a lender defaults on a specific payment but makes others on time.
While Russia has signaled that it remains willing to pay its debts, the Kremlin also has warned that it would do so in rubles if its overseas accounts in foreign currencies remain frozen.
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Everybody was Vaccinated. A Good Argument to Keep Using Your Mask.
Sixty-seven attendees have tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the Gridiron Dinner in Washington last weekend, including members of the Biden administration and reporters, according to Gridiron Club President Tom DeFrank.
Don't Let The Case Numbers Fool You.
At first glance, U.S. Covid cases appear to have plateaued over the last two weeks, with a consistent average of around 30,000 per day, according to NBC News' tally.
But disease experts say incomplete data likely masks an upward trend.
"I do think we are in the middle of a surge, the magnitude of which I can’t tell you," Zeke Emanuel, vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said.
The BA.2 omicron subvariant, which now accounts for about 72 percent of U.S. cases and is more contagious than the original omicron variant, is fueling that spread, Emanuel added.
"It’s much more transmissible. It’s around. We just don’t have a lot of case counts," he said.
Emanuel and other experts cite a lack of testing as the primary reason cases are underreported. At the height of the omicron wave in January, the U.S. was administering more than 2 million tests per day. That had dropped to an average of about 530,000 as of Monday, the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The milder symptoms become, the less likely people are to test or show up in official case counts," said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
More people also now have access to at-home rapid tests that are free or covered by insurance, and most of those test results don't get reported to state health departments or the CDC.
"Case counts and testing are progressively becoming shaky indicators because we’re not catching everyone in the system," said Dr. Jonathan Quick, an adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute.
Some local data, however, does reveal recent spikes. Average Covid cases have risen nearly 80 percent in Nebraska, 75 percent in Arizona, 58 percent in New York and 55 percent in Massachusetts over the last two weeks. Wastewater surveillance similarly suggests that infections are rising in Colorado, Ohio and Washington, among other states.
But some experts think it's no longer be crucial to track every case now that infections are mostly mild for vaccinated people. Moving forward, Dowdy said, it makes more sense for both health officials and careful citizens to pay attention to hospitalizations. The CDC's revised masking guidance already relies on county-level hospitalization rates and capacity.
"We certainly don’t try to track the number of cases of the flu or the common cold," he said. "So if we’re seeing an increase in cases, but not an increase in severe cases, I think it’s a very valid question of does that matter?"
Quick said that when traveling, he monitors local vaccination rates and hospitalization numbers to assess his own risk. Hospitalizations, though, lag behind infections.
"Once we see hospitalizations going up, that’s already the back half of the train," said Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "At that point, it takes time to slow things down."
The people most at risk because of the U.S.' artificially low case counts are the immunocompromised and children under 5, who are not yet eligible for vaccines. Experts said those groups — or their caregivers — should still have a way to accurately gauge transmission in their communities.
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No SAT? No Problem!
When the health crisis closed testing sites in 2020, four of Cornell’s undergraduate colleges decided to go test optional, meaning students could submit a test score if they thought it would help them, but didn’t have to. Three of Cornell’s colleges adopted test-blind policies, meaning admissions officers wouldn’t look at any student’s scores.
The effects were immediate, Burdick said. Like many other colleges and universities, Cornell was inundated with applications — roughly 71,000 compared to 50,000 in a typical year.
And the new applications — particularly those that arrived without test scores attached — were far more likely to come from “students that have felt historically excluded,” Burdick said.
The university had always looked at many factors in making admissions decisions, and low test scores were never singularly disqualifying, Burdick said. But it became clear that students had been self-rejecting, deciding not to apply to places like Cornell because they thought their lower SAT scores meant they couldn’t get in, he said.
Other colleges also saw a similar surge in applications.
“If I had to include my score, I wouldn’t have applied to the schools I applied to,” said Kate Hidalgo, 19, who said her immigrant family in Elmsford, New York, also in Westchester, didn’t know that she could start taking and preparing for the SAT in the ninth grade to boost her score. “I knew I had the potential, but I didn’t have the resources that other people had.”
When disappointing SAT scores arrived, she started revising her list of schools, until her adviser from Latino U College Access, which helps first-generation Latinos access college, told her test scores wouldn’t be required.
She ended up getting into many top schools, ultimately choosing a full-ride scholarship to the University of Rochester (which shifted to test-optional admissions in 2019). She’s involved in student government and is enjoying her classes.
OTOH, My Alma Mater Went a Different Way
MIT made headlines recently when it announced that it will again start requiring applicants to submit their scores — in part because MIT’s leaders believe tests can help identify talented students whose circumstances in high school affected their grades.
Hundreds of other institutions, such as the University of California and California State University campuses, have gone the other way, adopting test-optional or test-blind policies permanently.
Perhaps You Don't Need the Smartest Young People. Only Young People Who Are Smart Enough.
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Unlucky Charms
The Food and Drug Administration said it was looking into reports of stomach illness possibly linked to Lucky Charms cereal.
Though the agency has not issued a formal alert, many people have reported feeling sick after eating the breakfast cereal in posts on the consumer safety website iwaspoisoned.com.
Since April 1, more than 1,000 people across the U.S. have posted about gastrointestinal symptoms that they believe are linked to Lucky Charms, according to Patrick Quade, the website's founder and CEO. Quade said it was the biggest surge of reports related to any single product that he has seen on the site.
Many of the reports mention related symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and green stools.
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Who Won the Week?
Colorado's legislature and Gov. Jared Polis for signing into law the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codifies abortion rights
The House, for passing a bill decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level, and also holding Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for blowing off the Jan. 6 committee
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, confirmed by the Senate as our newest justice on the Supreme Court and the first Black woman to take a seat there
The nerds at NASA, as the Hubble Telescope detects its farthest star ever, the light of which appears to us as it did when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age
President Biden: White House event with Obama to strengthen the Affordable Care Act; extends pause on federal student loan payments; okays new aid for Ukraine; signs the Postal Service Reform Act into law
The intelligence agencies and amateur sleuths around the world who are using satellite imagery, radio chatter, and cellphone data to document Putin's atrocities in Ukraine
Cavalier Johnson, who was elected the first Black mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in its 176 year history
The Senate, for voting to revoke Russia's favored-nation status, and the U.N. for yanking Russia off the Human Rights Council
America's cocaine-orgy organizers, for getting an unexpected boost via endless promotion from Congressman Madison Cawthorn and the Republican party
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Molasses Merrick Seems Determined to Help Him
While power and ego are typically enough to drive most would-be presidents, Donald Trump could soon have a far more compelling motive to want his old job back: staying out of prison.
With a grand jury in Atlanta convening next month to focus on Trump’s attempted coercion of Georgia officials and federal prosecutors in Washington appearing to build a conspiracy case around the attempt to block the election certification on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump may have more reason than ever to seek the protection against prosecution enjoyed by an incumbent president.
“He views the office as a shield to protect himself,” said George Conway, an expert on the laws governing presidential exposure to legal challenges. He said that seeking the presidency to avoid jail, while brazen for most, for Trump would be the next logical step. “It’s sort of like a Ponzi scheme. You’ve got to keep going, otherwise it will collapse.”
Which means that a man who made history by openly soliciting and accepting help from a foreign adversary to win power, then a second time by trying to overthrow the American republic in order retain that power, could do so yet again by running for the presidency while under an active criminal prosecution.
“No qualification in the Constitution says that you’ve got to be unindicted,” said John Ryder, a former Republican National Committee member well versed in presidential nominating rules and laws.
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What Are We Thinking?
We Are All Playing the Price and We Don't Like It
This week's positive jobs report and the stronger employment rate aren't entirely lost on Americans — just outweighed when they rate the economy.
Many do say the job market is good and that jobs have increased over the last year – but it's still inflation driving views, and even those who say the job market is ok still don't rate the economy well. Americans are basing this on personal experience: two-thirds say higher prices have been difficult or even a hardship, and now forcing many to make cutbacks.
As politicians spar over who's to blame for recent increases in gas prices, a large majority of Americans say oil companies and Russian President Vladimir Putin are major culprits, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.
Along party lines, Americans are more likely to blame Democrats for the increase in gas prices than Republicans, according to the poll, which also found much greater enthusiasm about voting in this November's elections among Republicans than among Democrats.
In the ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, more than two-thirds of Americans blamed Putin (71%) and oil companies (68%) a "great deal" or a "good amount" for the increases in gas prices.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Apr 9 | ||
| Apr 8 | 28,169 | 516 |
| 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 |
| 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% |
I Tried Calling the Tinnitus Hotline. No Answer. It Kept Ringing
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Gee, Xi, You Want a Gold Medal For This?
China's President Xi Jinping has praised his country's handling of the Covid pandemic, even as Shanghai reported record case numbers.
Speaking at an event marking China's hosting of the Winter Olympics, Mr Xi said some athletes said China deserved a gold medal for its approach.
China's zero-Covid policy has come under strain with infections surging and signs of public anger.
Shanghai's 25 million residents remain under lockdown.
On Friday, the city - China's financial hub - announced a record 21,000 cases.
Shanghai residents have taken to social media to complain about food supplies.
People in the city are confined to their homes, and most have to order in food and water and wait for government drop-offs of vegetables, meat and eggs.
But the lockdown extension has overwhelmed delivery services, grocery shop websites and even the distribution of government supplies.
Political scientist Dali Yang of the University of Chicago suggested several million people in Shanghai were running low on supplies and many were restricted to eating one meal a day.
He warned that elderly Shanghainese, who were more likely to live alone and less likely to use smartphones, were among those most at risk.
Meanwhile, a video showing a worker in a hazmat costume beating a dog to death with a shovel has caused revulsion online.
The dog's owner had reportedly been taken to quarantine after testing positive for Covid and had left the pet outside in the hope that it would survive.
The Wicked Witch of the East Want to Make PA The NOT-Wonderful Land of Oz
Former President Donald Trump endorsed Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania's Senate GOP primary.
TucKKKer Wants Men to Beat Up Teachers. Really!
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): I don't understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teacher's pushing sex values on your third grader why don't you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else's values on your kid about sex, like where's the pushback?
Laws Are For Little People
Former President Donald Trump walked away from the White House last year without providing the State Department with a legally required accounting of the gifts he received from foreign governments in 2020, officials revealed in a report Friday.
The requirement was also ignored by former Vice President Mike Pence and other officials in the Trump administration, according to authorities.
The department made attempts to collect the missing information from the National Archives and Records Administration and the General Services Administration, but was told that “potentially relevant records are not available” to the protocol office “under applicable access rules for retired records,” the report stated.
Trump’s now predictable brazen flouting of procedure means that the State Department lacks basic information to determine if the gifts were somehow improper — such as so expensive that they could be construed as a bribe for special favors.
Federal law requires that each government department and agency must submit a list to the State Department of gifts over $415 officials received from foreign governments. The scrutiny is intended to ensure that foreign governments don’t gain undue influence over U.S. officials.
Do Insurrections Have Consequences?
A federal appeals court has revived a constitutional challenge to Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-N.C.) right to run for reelection because of his support for insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered earlier this week that a hearing against an injunction halting the challenge obtained by Cawthorn be held May 3. The Republican primary in Cawthorn’s district is May 17.
Voters and the organization Free Speech for People have argued in court that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars lawmakers like Cawthorn from running again for office.
The clause bans those who, after previously taking an oath to “support the Constitution,” then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies.” The section was passed after the Civil War to prohibit lawmakers from representing a government they had worked to topple.
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
I'm Not a Big Boris Johnson Fan, and It's Ultimately a Photo Op, But a Damned Nice Photo Op.
Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, How Does Your Cancer Grow? It's Not Growing. Building the Case For Hope.
At age 4, Mary, a rambunctious animal lover from Northglenn, Colorado, was given nine months to live. A devastating brain tumor was spreading its tentacles through her brain stem, the area that controls breathing, heartbeat and other essential functions.
The tumor, called a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma strikes 300-400 Americans each year, mostly children, and several thousand more worldwide.
The standard treatment for DIPG hasn't changed since it killed astronaut Neil Armstrong's 2-year-old daughter in 1962.
But Mary, patient No. 007 in a research trial at Stanford University, may be among the first to redefine the future of DIPG.
The trial already is changing the story of a type of cancer immunotherapy called CAR-T, which has revolutionized the treatment of blood cancers, but so far hasn't been effective in 90% of cancers, like DIPG, that are considered solid tumors.
Scientific theory and a few isolated examples have suggested CAR-T should be able to fight solid tumors. But Stanford's latest results, presented this weekend at a cancer conference in New Orleans, are the first to show consistent effectiveness.
"It's an enormously hopeful moment," said Dr. Crystal Mackall, a Stanford immunologist who helps lead the work.
Some trial participants have seen their tumors shrunk by 95% or more – a dramatic achievement never before seen in DIPG. Though some have since died, most survived far longer than expected.
"It tells you you're on (right) the path, keep digging," said Dr. Nabil Ahmed, a CAR-T expert at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, who is not involved in the study but is following it closely.
Dr. Marcela Maus, a CAR-T and brain tumor expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, said the work has inspired the entire CAR-T field. "This is building up the case for hope," she said.
It's still early days and unclear what success with CAR-Ts might eventually look like, both in DIPG specifically and solid tumors more broadly.
But Mary is getting ready to celebrate her second birthday since diagnosis, which is almost unheard of with DIPG.
The University of Pennsylvania recently declared a leukemia patient "cured" more than a decade after he received CAR-T for the blood cancer.
Full Story
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Invasions Have Consequences
Europe Has the Power to Stop Putin. Do They Have the Nerve?
A "real embargo" on Russian energy by Western countries could stop war in Ukraine, President Putin's former chief economic adviser has suggested.
Dr Andrei Illarionov said Russia "did not take seriously" other countries' threats to reduce their energy usage.
Despite trying to reduce its reliance on Russian sources, Europe is continuing to buy oil and gas.
Last year, soaring prices meant oil and gas revenues accounted for 36% of Russia's government spending.
Much of that income comes from the European Union, which imports about 40% of its gas and 27% of its oil from Russia.
This week, its top diplomat Josep Borrell said "a billion [euros] is what we pay Putin every day for the energy he supplies us".
Actual Video of Ukrainians Fighting Russians
An Interview with a Russian Soldier
How Could the War Expand?
There are a number of potential scenarios which will doubtless be occupying minds in Western defence ministries.
Here are just three of them:
1. A Nato-supplied anti-ship missile fired by Ukrainian forces in Odesa hits and sinks a Russian warship offshore in the Black Sea with the loss of nearly 100 sailors and dozens of marines. A death toll of this magnitude in a single strike would be unprecedented and Putin would be under pressure to respond in some form.
2. A Russian strategic missile strike targets a supply convoy of military hardware crossing from a Nato country, like Poland or Slovakia, into Ukraine. If casualties were sustained on Nato's side of the border that could potentially trigger Article 5 of Nato's constitution, bringing the entire alliance to the defence of the country attacked.
3. Amidst fierce fighting in the Donbas an explosion occurs at an industrial facility resulting in the release of toxic chemical gases. While this has already occurred, there were no deaths reported. But were it to result in the sort of mass casualties seen in Syria's use of poison gas at Ghouta and if it were found to have been deliberately caused by Russian forces, then Nato would be obliged to respond.
It is perfectly possible that none of these scenarios will materialise.
What's Happened
Putin appoints new commander: Russian President Vladimir Putin appointed Army Gen. Alexander Dvornikov as theater commander of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, according to a US official and a European official, after the first phase of Moscow’s invasion saw Russian troops fail to capture territory in central Ukraine and ultimately retreat from the capital, Kyiv. Dvornikov, the first commander of Russia’s military operations in Syria, could bring a new level of coordination to an assault now expected to focus on Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, instead of multiple fronts.
Russia announces strikes in Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions: Russian forces have carried out missile strikes in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions, the Russian Ministry of Defense said Sunday. "During the night in the village of Zvonetske -- Dnipropetrovsk region -- high-precision sea-based missiles destroyed the headquarters and base of the Dnipro nationalist battalion, where reinforcements from foreign mercenaries arrived the other day," Russian defense ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said in a statement. CNN could not immediately verify those claims.
Dnipro airport destroyed by Russian attack, Regional military governor says: Valentyn Reznichenko, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, said the airport in the east-central Ukrainian city of Dnipro had been destroyed in a Russian strike, without providing extensive details. "And one more attack on the airport in Dnipro," he said "There is nothing left of it already. The airport and the infrastructure nearby have been destroyed. But rockets keep flying." Reznichenko said information about casualties was being clarified. The airport was hit previously by Russian forces. Reznichenko said on March 15 that a Russian missile strike had put the runway out of use and damaged a terminal building.
Russian convoy: Satellite images collected and analyzed by Maxar Technologies show an eight-mile-long Russian military convoy to the east of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine. On Friday, Ukraine's defense intelligence chief told CNN that Russian troops were regrouping across the border and plan to advance toward Kharkiv, in what could be a major assault.
What's Coming Next?
How will Russia attack Ukraine's new front lines?
Why They Are Unlikely to Succeed
"Given what we’ve seen from Russia, I’m skeptical.
1. Russia’s forces have been shredded, and will take time to reconstitute.
2. Russia’s forces have truly been shredded.
3. Russia can’t mass its troops for major, coordinated attacks
4. Russia is no longer fielding complete units
Reports say Russia is massing for massive Donbas attack, but can they really?
Stalin Would Be Proud
With President Vladimir V. Putin’s direct encouragement, Russians who support the war against Ukraine are starting to turn on the enemy within.
The episodes are not yet a mass phenomenon, but they illustrate the building paranoia and polarization in Russian society. Citizens are denouncing one another in an eerie echo of Stalin’s terror, spurred on by vicious official rhetoric from the state and enabled by far-reaching new laws that criminalize dissent.
There are reports of students turning in teachers and people telling on their neighbors and even the diners at the next table. In a mall in western Moscow, it was the “no to war” text displayed in a computer repair store and reported by a passer-by that got the store’s owner, Marat Grachev, detained by the police. In St. Petersburg, a local news outlet documented the furor over suspected pro-Western sympathies at the public library; it erupted after a library official mistook the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for that of Mark Twain.
"Selective Default"
The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling rising prospects that Moscow will soon default on external loans for the first time in more than a century.
S&P Global Ratings issued the downgrade to “selective default” late Friday after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles on Monday when they were due in dollars. It said it didn’t expect Russia to be able to convert the rubles into dollars within the 30-day grace period allowed.
S&P said in a statement that its decision was based partly on its opinion that sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine “are likely to be further increased in the coming weeks, hampering Russia’s willingness and technical abilities to honor the terms and conditions of its obligations to foreign debtholders.”
An S&P spokesperson said a selective default rating is when a lender defaults on a specific payment but makes others on time.
While Russia has signaled that it remains willing to pay its debts, the Kremlin also has warned that it would do so in rubles if its overseas accounts in foreign currencies remain frozen.
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Everybody was Vaccinated. A Good Argument to Keep Using Your Mask.
Sixty-seven attendees have tested positive for Covid-19 after attending the Gridiron Dinner in Washington last weekend, including members of the Biden administration and reporters, according to Gridiron Club President Tom DeFrank.
Don't Let The Case Numbers Fool You.
At first glance, U.S. Covid cases appear to have plateaued over the last two weeks, with a consistent average of around 30,000 per day, according to NBC News' tally.
But disease experts say incomplete data likely masks an upward trend.
"I do think we are in the middle of a surge, the magnitude of which I can’t tell you," Zeke Emanuel, vice provost of global initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said.
The BA.2 omicron subvariant, which now accounts for about 72 percent of U.S. cases and is more contagious than the original omicron variant, is fueling that spread, Emanuel added.
"It’s much more transmissible. It’s around. We just don’t have a lot of case counts," he said.
Emanuel and other experts cite a lack of testing as the primary reason cases are underreported. At the height of the omicron wave in January, the U.S. was administering more than 2 million tests per day. That had dropped to an average of about 530,000 as of Monday, the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"The milder symptoms become, the less likely people are to test or show up in official case counts," said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
More people also now have access to at-home rapid tests that are free or covered by insurance, and most of those test results don't get reported to state health departments or the CDC.
"Case counts and testing are progressively becoming shaky indicators because we’re not catching everyone in the system," said Dr. Jonathan Quick, an adjunct professor at the Duke Global Health Institute.
Some local data, however, does reveal recent spikes. Average Covid cases have risen nearly 80 percent in Nebraska, 75 percent in Arizona, 58 percent in New York and 55 percent in Massachusetts over the last two weeks. Wastewater surveillance similarly suggests that infections are rising in Colorado, Ohio and Washington, among other states.
But some experts think it's no longer be crucial to track every case now that infections are mostly mild for vaccinated people. Moving forward, Dowdy said, it makes more sense for both health officials and careful citizens to pay attention to hospitalizations. The CDC's revised masking guidance already relies on county-level hospitalization rates and capacity.
"We certainly don’t try to track the number of cases of the flu or the common cold," he said. "So if we’re seeing an increase in cases, but not an increase in severe cases, I think it’s a very valid question of does that matter?"
Quick said that when traveling, he monitors local vaccination rates and hospitalization numbers to assess his own risk. Hospitalizations, though, lag behind infections.
"Once we see hospitalizations going up, that’s already the back half of the train," said Keri Althoff, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. "At that point, it takes time to slow things down."
The people most at risk because of the U.S.' artificially low case counts are the immunocompromised and children under 5, who are not yet eligible for vaccines. Experts said those groups — or their caregivers — should still have a way to accurately gauge transmission in their communities.
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No SAT? No Problem!
When the health crisis closed testing sites in 2020, four of Cornell’s undergraduate colleges decided to go test optional, meaning students could submit a test score if they thought it would help them, but didn’t have to. Three of Cornell’s colleges adopted test-blind policies, meaning admissions officers wouldn’t look at any student’s scores.
The effects were immediate, Burdick said. Like many other colleges and universities, Cornell was inundated with applications — roughly 71,000 compared to 50,000 in a typical year.
And the new applications — particularly those that arrived without test scores attached — were far more likely to come from “students that have felt historically excluded,” Burdick said.
The university had always looked at many factors in making admissions decisions, and low test scores were never singularly disqualifying, Burdick said. But it became clear that students had been self-rejecting, deciding not to apply to places like Cornell because they thought their lower SAT scores meant they couldn’t get in, he said.
Other colleges also saw a similar surge in applications.
“If I had to include my score, I wouldn’t have applied to the schools I applied to,” said Kate Hidalgo, 19, who said her immigrant family in Elmsford, New York, also in Westchester, didn’t know that she could start taking and preparing for the SAT in the ninth grade to boost her score. “I knew I had the potential, but I didn’t have the resources that other people had.”
When disappointing SAT scores arrived, she started revising her list of schools, until her adviser from Latino U College Access, which helps first-generation Latinos access college, told her test scores wouldn’t be required.
She ended up getting into many top schools, ultimately choosing a full-ride scholarship to the University of Rochester (which shifted to test-optional admissions in 2019). She’s involved in student government and is enjoying her classes.
OTOH, My Alma Mater Went a Different Way
MIT made headlines recently when it announced that it will again start requiring applicants to submit their scores — in part because MIT’s leaders believe tests can help identify talented students whose circumstances in high school affected their grades.
Hundreds of other institutions, such as the University of California and California State University campuses, have gone the other way, adopting test-optional or test-blind policies permanently.
Perhaps You Don't Need the Smartest Young People. Only Young People Who Are Smart Enough.
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Unlucky Charms
The Food and Drug Administration said it was looking into reports of stomach illness possibly linked to Lucky Charms cereal.
Though the agency has not issued a formal alert, many people have reported feeling sick after eating the breakfast cereal in posts on the consumer safety website iwaspoisoned.com.
Since April 1, more than 1,000 people across the U.S. have posted about gastrointestinal symptoms that they believe are linked to Lucky Charms, according to Patrick Quade, the website's founder and CEO. Quade said it was the biggest surge of reports related to any single product that he has seen on the site.
Many of the reports mention related symptoms, including vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps and green stools.
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Who Won the Week?
Colorado's legislature and Gov. Jared Polis for signing into law the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which codifies abortion rights
The House, for passing a bill decriminalizing marijuana at the federal level, and also holding Peter Navarro and Dan Scavino in contempt for blowing off the Jan. 6 committee
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, confirmed by the Senate as our newest justice on the Supreme Court and the first Black woman to take a seat there
The nerds at NASA, as the Hubble Telescope detects its farthest star ever, the light of which appears to us as it did when the universe was only 7 percent of its current age
President Biden: White House event with Obama to strengthen the Affordable Care Act; extends pause on federal student loan payments; okays new aid for Ukraine; signs the Postal Service Reform Act into law
The intelligence agencies and amateur sleuths around the world who are using satellite imagery, radio chatter, and cellphone data to document Putin's atrocities in Ukraine
Cavalier Johnson, who was elected the first Black mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in its 176 year history
The Senate, for voting to revoke Russia's favored-nation status, and the U.N. for yanking Russia off the Human Rights Council
America's cocaine-orgy organizers, for getting an unexpected boost via endless promotion from Congressman Madison Cawthorn and the Republican party
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Molasses Merrick Seems Determined to Help Him
While power and ego are typically enough to drive most would-be presidents, Donald Trump could soon have a far more compelling motive to want his old job back: staying out of prison.
With a grand jury in Atlanta convening next month to focus on Trump’s attempted coercion of Georgia officials and federal prosecutors in Washington appearing to build a conspiracy case around the attempt to block the election certification on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump may have more reason than ever to seek the protection against prosecution enjoyed by an incumbent president.
“He views the office as a shield to protect himself,” said George Conway, an expert on the laws governing presidential exposure to legal challenges. He said that seeking the presidency to avoid jail, while brazen for most, for Trump would be the next logical step. “It’s sort of like a Ponzi scheme. You’ve got to keep going, otherwise it will collapse.”
Which means that a man who made history by openly soliciting and accepting help from a foreign adversary to win power, then a second time by trying to overthrow the American republic in order retain that power, could do so yet again by running for the presidency while under an active criminal prosecution.
“No qualification in the Constitution says that you’ve got to be unindicted,” said John Ryder, a former Republican National Committee member well versed in presidential nominating rules and laws.
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What Are We Thinking?
We Are All Playing the Price and We Don't Like It
This week's positive jobs report and the stronger employment rate aren't entirely lost on Americans — just outweighed when they rate the economy.
Many do say the job market is good and that jobs have increased over the last year – but it's still inflation driving views, and even those who say the job market is ok still don't rate the economy well. Americans are basing this on personal experience: two-thirds say higher prices have been difficult or even a hardship, and now forcing many to make cutbacks.
As politicians spar over who's to blame for recent increases in gas prices, a large majority of Americans say oil companies and Russian President Vladimir Putin are major culprits, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds.
Along party lines, Americans are more likely to blame Democrats for the increase in gas prices than Republicans, according to the poll, which also found much greater enthusiasm about voting in this November's elections among Republicans than among Democrats.
In the ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted by Ipsos in partnership with ABC News using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel, more than two-thirds of Americans blamed Putin (71%) and oil companies (68%) a "great deal" or a "good amount" for the increases in gas prices.
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