Post by mhbruin on May 6, 2022 9:21:23 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 578 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday May 3)
We had some rain up north this week.
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If a Parsley Farmer is Sued, Can They Garnish His Wages?
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Today's Worst Sex Tape in the World
The United States' youngest congressman has said he won't "back down" after a naked video of him in bed was leaked.
Madison Cawthorn, 26, said the video showed him "being crass with a friend, trying to be funny".
"We were acting foolish, and joking. That's it," he said. "I'm NOT backing down...blackmail won't win."
The former real estate investor and motivational speaker faced backlash from his own party after claiming in a March interview that fellow lawmakers had invited him to orgies, and he had seen them taking cocaine.
He was also accused of denying medical and family leave to a former congressional staff member before firing her - which he denied.
Mr Cawthorn also faced rebuke after a video surfaced of him calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "thug" and the Ukrainian government "incredibly evil".
And last month, Mr Cawthorn was cited for bringing a loaded handgun through airport security at a North Carolina airport.
In this most recent episode, leaked video appears to show Mr Cawthorn naked in bed and making thrusting motions on top of an unidentified person.
The leak comes just days before the 17 May primary election for his congressional seat in North Carolina, where he faces several Republican challengers. Early voting is already underway.
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In the video, he apparently thrusts his penis repeatedly in his cousin’s face. It’s unclear if his cousin is giving him oral sex or not, and really I don’t think anyone here cares about that distinction.
Today's Worst Candidate in the World
An Indiana man who is accused of killing his cancer-stricken wife as she was seeking a divorce won his GOP primary this week from jail and will be on the ballot in November — if he has not been convicted.
Andrew Wilhoite was charged in March with killing his wife, Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite, 41. She had completed her last chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer and was seeking a divorce after she found out her husband had been having an affair, according to the Lebanon Reporter.
When the Lebanon, Ind., couple got into a domestic dispute in late March, Wilhoite “allegedly struck her in the head” with a cement, gallon-sized flower pot, placed her in his car and dumped her body in a nearby creek, according to the Indiana State Police.
Despite the circumstances surrounding his wife’s killing, Wilhoite — who initially lied about her whereabouts but later admitted to killing her after she attacked him, according to prosecutors — won his Republican primary on Tuesday for one of the three open seats on the Clinton Township Board.
Election data shows that Wilhoite received 60 votes, while two other Republican candidates for the three seats received 106 and 100 votes. No Democratic candidates were on the ballot in the Clinton Township Board primary, but non-Republican candidates still could make the ballot by November, WXIN-FOX59 reported.
This Officer Did Not Have the Wright Stuff
Katie Wright, the mother of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, is calling for the firing of a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer who she says tried to arrest her for filming a traffic stop.
Daunte Wright was shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter in April 2021 during a traffic stop. Potter was convicted of first and second-degree manslaughter in Wright's killing and sentenced in February to two years in prison.
Less than three months after the sentence, Katie Wright says she saw a "high police presence" for a vehicle on Wednesday that was pulled over with at least one person in it. She estimated the person to be 20 or 25 years old. So she pulled onto the highway shoulder and began to film on her cell phone.
According to the ACLU of Minnesota, "You have the right to record police actions as long as you do not interfere with their activities and are not breaking any other law."
"All I was doing was my civic duty to pull over and make sure that those babies got home safe to their families because I don't want what happened to me to happen to any other families," Wright said during a press conference on Thursday.
The body camera video shows an officer helping arrest a suspect and place them into a police vehicle. Then the officer turns his attention across the street toward Wright and is heard saying "she's getting a ticket" as another officer says, "Nah, don't worry about it. Come on!"
The officer continues toward Wright across multiple lanes of traffic and asks for her driver's license.
"You're going to give me your driver's license or I'm going to take you to jail for obstruction," the officer says to Wright, who at this point is sitting in the driver's side of her car with the door open filming the officer with her cell phone.
The officer then puts his hand on Wright's wrist to pull her up and then takes the cell phone out of her hands.
He begins to lead Wright away from the car before she says, "You know who I am right?"
"You guys killed my son and I'm gonna videotape it," she says and points in the direction of the traffic stop. "And if you take me to jail, I'm going to sue you."
"You can't sit on the side of the road!" the officer tells Wright.
"Do not ever touch me again," she responds.
"I'll send you a ticket in the mail," the officer eventually says, to which Wright responds, "then send me a ticket."
Another Previous Guy Guy is Writing a Book Telling Us Stuff He Should Have Revealed at the Time.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he personally killed a "ridiculous" plan from White House adviser Stephen Miller to deploy 250,000 troops to the southern border as a migrant caravan approached.
Just Fire Some Anonymous Patriot Missiles
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says in his new book that then-President Donald Trump asked him in 2020 about launching missiles into Mexico to "destroy the drug labs" and kill cartels, The New York Times reported Thursday.
"We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly," Trump suggested, according to the upcoming book "A Sacred Oath," the Times reported. The former President reasoned that Mexico didn't "have control" over its own country and that "no one would know it was us," Esper -- who objected at the time -- recounted, according to the Times.
The exchange is one of several stunning discussions detailed in Esper's book, which will be published on Tuesday, the newspaper reported. While Esper writes that Trump's behavior never became erratic enough to justify an invocation of the 25th Amendment (this isn't erratic enough?) , the book describes a chaotic White House focused almost entirely on Trump's reelection bid.
Groveling Lindsey
Whoopee! Congress Pays More than McDonalds
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will set a minimum annual pay for its staff at $45,000, months after a non-profit report found that over 12% of congressional staffers did not have a living wage.
He Doesn't Want Us to Replace Racists With Caring People
Last month, Brandon Judd, who is a Border Patrol agent and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 18,000 border patrol agents, sat for an interview with Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer.
Wearing a black polo shirt bearing the crest of his union, the shaven-headed Judd stared intently into the camera as Hemmer asked him why he thinks President Joe Biden has allowed “Virtually an open border.” With a shake of his head, Judd responded:
"I believe that they're trying to change the demographics of the electorate, that's what I believe they’re doing." As he spoke, the split-screen broadcast zoomed in on footage of people of color apparently crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and Judd continued: "They want to stay in power, and the only way to stay in power is to continue to stay elected."
Judd’s unfounded claim the Biden Administration is actively working to weaken the nation’s southern border to allow in more immigrants and “change the demographics” of the nation is hardly new. The conspiracy theory that white Americans are being systematically “replaced” by immigrants from majority non-white countries has been a trope of American white supremacists and other racist extremists for decades.
There is Nothing Bella About Belarus
Sofia Sapega, a Russian law student arrested with her Belarusian dissident boyfriend last year when Belarus forced a Ryanair airliner to land, was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for inciting social hatred, Russian state news agency TASS reports.
"The court finds Sapega guilty on charges of 'deliberate acts aimed at inciting social enmity and discord on the basis of social affiliation committed by a group of persons, which had grave consequences,'" said the verdict issued at Grodnensky District Court in Belarus.
The court on Friday also said Sapega was found guilty of illegally collecting and distributing personal data. She was sentenced to a month-long incarceration for this crime, and she also had to pay damages amounting to 167,500 Belarusian rubles (or roughly $65,000). The verdict can be appealed within a period of 10 days.
Last May, Belarusian authorities took the extraordinary measure of diverting to Minsk a Ryanair flight from Athens, Greece heading to Vilnius, Lithuania, claiming there was a bomb threat.
On the flight was Sapega and her partner Roman Protasevich, the founder of the Telegram channel Nexta. They were both arrested in Minsk and were placed under house arrest in late June 2021, according to TASS.
The Wonderful World of Crypto
The Treasury Department on Friday issued its first-ever sanctions against a cryptocurrency “mixer,” a service that pools digital assets to obscure their owners, as it continues its pursuit of more than $600 million that North Korean hackers stole from the Axie Infinity video game.
The move targets a mixer called Blender.io. The hackers have used it to process more than $20.5 million of their haul since their March attack on the game, Treasury said.
The cybercriminal gang — known as the Lazarus Group, which U.N. investigators have said is a key funding source for North Korea’s weapons programs — had laundered nearly $100 million as of late last month, The Post reported, citing data from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Using another mixer called Tornado Cash, the hackers continued to process batches of their stolen crypto even after it was known they were the thieves, highlighting the challenge U.S. authorities confront in keeping pace with cybercriminals rapidly moving millions of dollars across the globe with mere keystrokes.
“Virtual currency mixers that assist illicit transactions pose a threat to U.S. national security interests,” Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in a statement. “We are taking action against illicit financial activity by the DPRK and will not allow state-sponsored thievery and its money-laundering enablers to go unanswered.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Do Mom's Always Qualify As Best Persons in the World?
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Invasions Have Consequences
What's Happening?
Russian forces continued ineffectual offensive operations in southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts without securing any significant territorial gains in the past 24 hours.
Ukrainian officials and military officers confirmed that Russian forces have breached the Azovstal facility itself and confirmed that Ukrainian forces are losing ground. Russian forces will likely capture the facility in the coming days.
Ukrainian offensive operations around Kharkiv likely intend to push Russian forces out of artillery range of Kharkiv city, force Russian units to redeploy from the Izyum axis, and potentially threaten Russian lines of communication.
Russian forces conducted limited offensive operations toward Zaporizhia City but did not conduct any attacks in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts in the last 24 hours. Ukrainian forces claimed to recapture additional territory west of Kherson, but ISW cannot independently confirm any advances.
What Could Be Next?
Russian forces will likely continue to merge offensive efforts southward of Izyum with westward advances from Donetsk in order to encircle Ukrainian troops in southern Kharkiv Oblast and Western Donetsk.
Russia may change the status of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, possibly by merging them into a single “Donbas Republic” and/or by annexing them directly to Russia.
Russian forces have apparently decided to seize the Azovstal plant through ground assault and will likely continue operations accordingly.
Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kharkiv City may unhinge Russian positions northeast of the city, possibly forcing the Russians to choose between reinforcing those positions or abandoning them if the Ukrainians continue to press their counterattack.
Russian forces may be preparing to conduct renewed offensive operations to capture the entirety of Kherson Oblast in the coming days.
The Russians Are Welcome to Stay
Russia is busy in Kherson putting up Russian-language signs, blocking the entry or exit of anyone from the city, and making declarations like this:
Meanwhile Ukrainian soldiers in the area are trying to get messages to those in the city that they are working to drive Russia out of the area.
This Polka Won't Be Followed By the Lovely Lennon Sisters
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More Deadbeat Dads
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We All Knew There Were Fake Reviews, But Not on This Scale
Amazon is taking legal action against four companies it has accused of deliberately flooding its shopping platform with fake reviews.
Three of the firms had nearly 350,000 reviewers on their books.
The companies act as unofficial brokers between Amazon sellers and individuals who write reviews, the tech giant says.
The reviewers get free products and a small fee in return for each review, and the firm charges the seller a fee for boosting its ratings on Amazon.
The sellers are not necessarily aware that this is being done by using fake reviews, Amazon said.
The firms it has threatened legal action against are accused of collectively targeting its platforms in the US, UK, Europe, Japan and Canada. It targeted three of them earlier this year, and has now confronted another.
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WHO Says We Are Not On First
The US is approaching one million Covid deaths - the highest total officially recorded anywhere in the world.
But a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows several other countries recorded more deaths above their normal levels than the US over the last two years.
The report concludes that, although the US was not the worst hit country in the world by this measure, it remained in the top five in terms of overall numbers of deaths.
According to the WHO, in 2020 and 2021 the US recorded more than 930,000 excess deaths, behind India (4.7m), Russia (1.1m) and Indonesia (1m).
The WHO's numbers are largely consistent with statistics from the Economist which run into 2022, as well as other excess death studies.
When adjusted for population size, the US slips down the rankings with 140 excess deaths per 100,000 people. But it remains a long way above the global average of 96 per 100,000 - and it's also one of the worst performing among the most developed nations.
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We Don't Know How COVID Affects Kids Whose Bodies Are Still Developing
t's not clear how many children go on to develop long Covid, because there's not enough research on it in this age group, some experts say.
Almost 13 million children have tested positive for Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Studies suggest that between 2% and 10% of those children will develop long Covid, but the number may be larger. Many parents may not know their child has long Covid, or the child's pediatrician hasn't recognized it as such.
In adults, some research puts the number around 30% of cases.
"I personally believe that this is a very much an undiagnosed issue," said Dr. Sara Kristen Sexson Tejtel, who helps lead a long Covid pediatric clinic at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.
Many doctors treating children at long Covid clinics across the country say they have long waits for appointments. Some are booked through September.
There are no specific tests for long Covid. It's not clear which children will have it, as it can happen even when a child has a mild case of Covid-19.
"It's startling how many of these children present and have a range of symptoms that we haven't fully appreciated. Some are coming in with heart failure after asymptomatic Covid infections," said Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "What's striking to me is that it usually occurs about four weeks after infection, and infection can be really asymptomatic, which is really startling."
Even when kids with long Covid are tested for ailments that might cause these symptoms, it's possible nothing will show up.
"The tested me, and it looked like nothing was wrong with me, but they tried their best to find something," Jack Ford said.
His pulmonary function test and EKG came back normal. "The Covid clinic said this is very common in kids with long Covid. Sometimes, all the tests come back normal," Kim Ford said.
Dr. Amy Edwards, who runs the pediatric long Covid clinic at UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, agreed that it happens a lot.
"We also scoped them, and their GI tracts are normal. I do a big immune workup, and their immune system appears normal. Everything 'looks normal,' but the kids aren't functioning like normal," Edwards said. "I tell the families, 'you have to remember, there are limits to what medical science understands and can test for.' Sometimes, we're just not smart enough to know where to look for it."
Adults' problems tend to be more obvious, Edwards said, because they are more likely to have organ dysfunction that shows up on tests.
Doctors are still trying to understand why long Covid happens this way in children. They are also figuring out what symptoms define long Covid in children. Some studies in adults show a range of 200 symptoms, but there is no universal clinical case definition.
At Sexson Tejte's clinic in Texas, children tend to fall into a few categories. Some have fatigue, brain fog and severe headaches, "to the point where the some kids aren't able to go to school, grades are failing, those types of issues," she said.
Another group has cardiac issues like heart palpitations, chest pains and dizziness, especially when they go back to their regular activities.
Another group has stomach problems. A lot of these kids also have a change in their sense of taste and smell.
Sexson Tejte said it isn't totally different from the symptoms adults have, "but it's not the mixed bag of different organ system involvement with adults."
If I Had Young Kids or Grandkids, I Would Want Them Vaccinated.
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Taking the Long View
Biden administration taking new steps to prevent, detect and treat long Covid
US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra unveiled a new push by the Biden administration Tuesday to accelerate its efforts to prevent, detect and treat long Covid.
Long Covid is associated with a host of lingering symptoms from Covid-19 involving multiple body systems. Estimates of the frequency of long-term symptoms and conditions following an acute Covid-19 infection range from 5% to 80%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization's estimates range from 10% to 20%.
President Joe Biden is issuing a presidential memorandum Tuesday directing Becerra to "coordinate a new effort across the federal government to develop and issue the first-ever interagency national research action plan on Long Covid."
"HHS will lead a government-wide interagency coordinating council, which will involve experts from the Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, the Labor Department and many entities across government to coordinate both public and private sector work to advance our understanding of long Covid, and to accelerate efforts to prevent, detect and treat it," Becerra said at Tuesday's Covid response team briefing.
He continued, "In real time, we will share lessons on how to prevent, detect and treat long Covid. And this coordinated effort will help ensure our research is being directed toward the people who need care the most."
Becerra also announced other actions to deliver high-quality care for Americans experiencing long Covid, making services and support available for those individuals and advancing the nation's understanding of long Covid.
The actions will include a $20 million investment through the President's fiscal year 2023 budget to "investigate how health care systems can best organize and deliver care for people with long Covid, provide telementoring and expert consultation for primary care practices, and advance the development of multispecialty clinics to provide complex care," a fact sheet from the White House said. The effort will expand and strengthen clinics, promote provider education and bolster health insurance coverage for long Covid care.
The administration is also working to raise awareness of long Covid "as a potential cause of disability" and will ensure that people will have access to call centers that can provide information and support.
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Buying This Bust Wasn't a Bust
Laura Young, a Texas antiques dealer, thought she had found a steal when she came across a stunning statue at a Goodwill store in 2018 for just under $35. And while she suspected she had come across something "very special," little did she know the piece would turn out to be a priceless Roman bust dating back to 2,000 years.
When she first came across the bust, scouring for antique treasures in the Goodwill store, one of Young's first thoughts was: "He looked Roman. He looked old." And once she purchased the statue, she told the San Antonio Express-News, "in the sunlight, it looked like something that could be very, very special."
Special, indeed. A Sotheby's consultant eventually determined that the $35 sculpture was in fact a marble Julio-Claudian-era Roman bust.
It had taken years to determine the authenticity of the bust. However, after consulting a range of experts, Young was able to notify the German government of the finding and made arrangements to return it to the Bavarian Administration of State-owned Palaces, the newspaper reported. But first, she said she wanted it to be put on display in her home state and an agreement was eventually made to allow the sculpture to be put on exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
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It's Not Two Girls For Every Boy, But ...
Employers added 428,000 new jobs in April, on par with growth in March. The unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 3.6%.
The report "shows a job market making steady progress," Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, said on Twitter. At the current pace of employment growth, the economy is set to recover all of the jobs lost in the pandemic by this summer.
Gains in leisure and hospitality, manufacturing and transportation and warehousing led the increases. Average hourly wages increased a robust 5.5% over the last 12 months, although that is well below the rate of inflation.
By other measures, the job market remains unusually tight. The Labor Department reported this week that only 1.38 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits, the fewest since 1970. Employers posted a record-high 11.5 million job openings in March, with layoffs remaining below pre-pandemic levels.
The economy now has an average of two available jobs for every unemployed person — the highest such proportion on record. In another sign that workers are enjoying unusual leverage in the labor market, a record 4.5 million people quit their jobs in March, evidently confident that they could find a better opportunity elsewhere.
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You Gotta' Have Heart. All You Really Need is Heart ... Without Pig Virus
Researchers trying to learn what killed the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig have discovered the organ harbored an animal virus but cannot yet say if it played any role in the man’s death.
A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr., died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found an unwelcome surprise — viral DNA inside the pig heart. They did not find signs that this bug, called porcine cytomegalovirus, was causing an active infection.
But a major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that it could introduce new kinds of infections to people.
Because some viruses are “latent,” meaning they lurk without causing disease, “it could be a hitchhiker,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed Bennett’s transplant, told The Associated Press.
Still, development is under way of more sophisticated tests to “make sure that we don’t miss these kinds of viruses,” added Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the university’s xenotransplant program.
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They Aren't Vaping. They are VPNing.
When Russian authorities blocked hundreds of Internet sites in March, Konstantin decided to act. The 52-year-old company manager in Moscow tore a hole in the Digital Iron Curtain, which had been erected to control the narrative of the Ukraine war, with a tool that lets him surf blocked sites and eyeball taboo news.
Konstantin turned to a virtual private network, an encrypted digital tunnel more commonly known as a VPN. Since the war began in February, VPNs have been downloaded in Russia by the hundreds of thousands a day — a massive surge in demand that represents a direct challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to seal Russians off from the wider world. By protecting the locations and identities of users, VPNs are now granting millions of Russians access to blocked material.
Downloading one in his Moscow apartment, Konstantin said, brought back memories of the 1980s in the Soviet Union — when he used a shortwave radio to hear forbidden news of dissident arrests on U.S.-funded Radio Liberty.
“We didn’t know what was going on around us, and that’s true again now,” said Konstantin, who, like other Russian VPN users, spoke on the condition that his last name be withheld for fear of government retribution. “Many people in Russia simply watch TV and eat whatever the government is feeding them. I wanted to find out what was really happening.”
Daily downloads in Russia of the 10 most popular VPNs jumped from below 15,000 just before the war to as many as 475,000 in March. As of this week, downloads were continuing at a rate of nearly 300,000 a day, according to data compiled for the Washington Post by the analytics firm Apptopia, which relies on information from apps, publicly available data and an algorithm to come up with estimates.
Russian clients typically download multiple VPNs, but the data suggests millions of new users per month. In early April, Russian telecom operator Yota reported that the number of VPN users was 53.5 times as high as in January, according to the Tass state news service.
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New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
| May 5 | 67,263 | 341 | |
| May 4 | 64,780 | 334 | 2,267 |
| May 3 | 61,712 | 325 | 2,219 |
| May 2 | 60,410 | 318 | 2.214 |
| May 1 | 57,020 | 307 | 2,072 |
| Apr 30 | 56,581 | 310 | 1,882 |
| Apr 29 | 56,166 | 308 | 1,946 |
| Apr 28 | 54,696 | 311 | 1,955 |
| Apr 27 | 53,133 | 334 | 1,941 |
| Apr 26 | 48,692 | 299 | 1,889 |
| Apr 25 | 47,407 | 330 | 1,840 |
| Apr 24 | 44,416 | 314 | 1,779 |
| Apr 23 | 45,413 | 315 | 1,629 |
| Apr 22 | 44,308 | 311 | 1,642 |
| Apr 21 | 40,744 | 346 | 1,647 |
| Apr 20 | 42,604 | 375 | 1,609 |
| Apr 19 | 40,985 | 385 | 1,582 |
| Apr 18 | 37,132 | 380 | 1,564 |
| Apr 17 | 35,212 | 373 | 1,542 |
| Apr 16 | 34,972 | 379 | 1,532 |
| Apr 15 | 34,778 | 399 | 1,510 |
| Apr 14 | 35,475 | 446 | 1,490 |
| Apr 13 | 31,391 | 409 | 1,477 |
| Apr 12 | 29,401 | 452 | 1,463 |
| Apr 11 | 30,208 | 483 | 1.447 |
| Apr 10 | 28,927 | 500 | 1,443 |
| Apr 9 | 28,339 | 509 | |
| 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 | |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 77.7% | 66.3% | 45.9% |
| % of Population 5+ | 82.6% | 70.4% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 87.4% | 74.7% | 47.7% |
| % of Population 18+ | 89.1% | 76.2% | 49.5% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 90.4% | 68.8% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday May 3)
We had some rain up north this week.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks Ago | 3 Weeks Ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 80% (74%) | 81% (74%) | 79% (70%) | 73% (63% of full season average) |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 66% (61%) | 67% (61%) | 65% (58%) | 65% (57%) |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 61% (57%) | 62% (57%) | 60% (54%) | 61% (53%) |
| Snow Water Content - North | 20% | 29% | 15% | |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 27% | 33% | 27% | |
| Snow Water Content - South | 17% | 23% | 24% |
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If a Parsley Farmer is Sued, Can They Garnish His Wages?
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Today's Worst Sex Tape in the World
The United States' youngest congressman has said he won't "back down" after a naked video of him in bed was leaked.
Madison Cawthorn, 26, said the video showed him "being crass with a friend, trying to be funny".
"We were acting foolish, and joking. That's it," he said. "I'm NOT backing down...blackmail won't win."
The former real estate investor and motivational speaker faced backlash from his own party after claiming in a March interview that fellow lawmakers had invited him to orgies, and he had seen them taking cocaine.
He was also accused of denying medical and family leave to a former congressional staff member before firing her - which he denied.
Mr Cawthorn also faced rebuke after a video surfaced of him calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky a "thug" and the Ukrainian government "incredibly evil".
And last month, Mr Cawthorn was cited for bringing a loaded handgun through airport security at a North Carolina airport.
In this most recent episode, leaked video appears to show Mr Cawthorn naked in bed and making thrusting motions on top of an unidentified person.
The leak comes just days before the 17 May primary election for his congressional seat in North Carolina, where he faces several Republican challengers. Early voting is already underway.
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In the video, he apparently thrusts his penis repeatedly in his cousin’s face. It’s unclear if his cousin is giving him oral sex or not, and really I don’t think anyone here cares about that distinction.
Today's Worst Candidate in the World
An Indiana man who is accused of killing his cancer-stricken wife as she was seeking a divorce won his GOP primary this week from jail and will be on the ballot in November — if he has not been convicted.
Andrew Wilhoite was charged in March with killing his wife, Elizabeth “Nikki” Wilhoite, 41. She had completed her last chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer and was seeking a divorce after she found out her husband had been having an affair, according to the Lebanon Reporter.
When the Lebanon, Ind., couple got into a domestic dispute in late March, Wilhoite “allegedly struck her in the head” with a cement, gallon-sized flower pot, placed her in his car and dumped her body in a nearby creek, according to the Indiana State Police.
Despite the circumstances surrounding his wife’s killing, Wilhoite — who initially lied about her whereabouts but later admitted to killing her after she attacked him, according to prosecutors — won his Republican primary on Tuesday for one of the three open seats on the Clinton Township Board.
Election data shows that Wilhoite received 60 votes, while two other Republican candidates for the three seats received 106 and 100 votes. No Democratic candidates were on the ballot in the Clinton Township Board primary, but non-Republican candidates still could make the ballot by November, WXIN-FOX59 reported.
This Officer Did Not Have the Wright Stuff
Katie Wright, the mother of 20-year-old Daunte Wright, is calling for the firing of a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, police officer who she says tried to arrest her for filming a traffic stop.
Daunte Wright was shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter in April 2021 during a traffic stop. Potter was convicted of first and second-degree manslaughter in Wright's killing and sentenced in February to two years in prison.
Less than three months after the sentence, Katie Wright says she saw a "high police presence" for a vehicle on Wednesday that was pulled over with at least one person in it. She estimated the person to be 20 or 25 years old. So she pulled onto the highway shoulder and began to film on her cell phone.
According to the ACLU of Minnesota, "You have the right to record police actions as long as you do not interfere with their activities and are not breaking any other law."
"All I was doing was my civic duty to pull over and make sure that those babies got home safe to their families because I don't want what happened to me to happen to any other families," Wright said during a press conference on Thursday.
The body camera video shows an officer helping arrest a suspect and place them into a police vehicle. Then the officer turns his attention across the street toward Wright and is heard saying "she's getting a ticket" as another officer says, "Nah, don't worry about it. Come on!"
The officer continues toward Wright across multiple lanes of traffic and asks for her driver's license.
"You're going to give me your driver's license or I'm going to take you to jail for obstruction," the officer says to Wright, who at this point is sitting in the driver's side of her car with the door open filming the officer with her cell phone.
The officer then puts his hand on Wright's wrist to pull her up and then takes the cell phone out of her hands.
He begins to lead Wright away from the car before she says, "You know who I am right?"
"You guys killed my son and I'm gonna videotape it," she says and points in the direction of the traffic stop. "And if you take me to jail, I'm going to sue you."
"You can't sit on the side of the road!" the officer tells Wright.
"Do not ever touch me again," she responds.
"I'll send you a ticket in the mail," the officer eventually says, to which Wright responds, "then send me a ticket."
Another Previous Guy Guy is Writing a Book Telling Us Stuff He Should Have Revealed at the Time.
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says he personally killed a "ridiculous" plan from White House adviser Stephen Miller to deploy 250,000 troops to the southern border as a migrant caravan approached.
Just Fire Some Anonymous Patriot Missiles
Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper says in his new book that then-President Donald Trump asked him in 2020 about launching missiles into Mexico to "destroy the drug labs" and kill cartels, The New York Times reported Thursday.
"We could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly," Trump suggested, according to the upcoming book "A Sacred Oath," the Times reported. The former President reasoned that Mexico didn't "have control" over its own country and that "no one would know it was us," Esper -- who objected at the time -- recounted, according to the Times.
The exchange is one of several stunning discussions detailed in Esper's book, which will be published on Tuesday, the newspaper reported. While Esper writes that Trump's behavior never became erratic enough to justify an invocation of the 25th Amendment (this isn't erratic enough?) , the book describes a chaotic White House focused almost entirely on Trump's reelection bid.
Groveling Lindsey
Whoopee! Congress Pays More than McDonalds
U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will set a minimum annual pay for its staff at $45,000, months after a non-profit report found that over 12% of congressional staffers did not have a living wage.
He Doesn't Want Us to Replace Racists With Caring People
Last month, Brandon Judd, who is a Border Patrol agent and the president of the National Border Patrol Council, a union representing more than 18,000 border patrol agents, sat for an interview with Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer.
Wearing a black polo shirt bearing the crest of his union, the shaven-headed Judd stared intently into the camera as Hemmer asked him why he thinks President Joe Biden has allowed “Virtually an open border.” With a shake of his head, Judd responded:
"I believe that they're trying to change the demographics of the electorate, that's what I believe they’re doing." As he spoke, the split-screen broadcast zoomed in on footage of people of color apparently crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, and Judd continued: "They want to stay in power, and the only way to stay in power is to continue to stay elected."
Judd’s unfounded claim the Biden Administration is actively working to weaken the nation’s southern border to allow in more immigrants and “change the demographics” of the nation is hardly new. The conspiracy theory that white Americans are being systematically “replaced” by immigrants from majority non-white countries has been a trope of American white supremacists and other racist extremists for decades.
There is Nothing Bella About Belarus
Sofia Sapega, a Russian law student arrested with her Belarusian dissident boyfriend last year when Belarus forced a Ryanair airliner to land, was sentenced Friday to six years in prison for inciting social hatred, Russian state news agency TASS reports.
"The court finds Sapega guilty on charges of 'deliberate acts aimed at inciting social enmity and discord on the basis of social affiliation committed by a group of persons, which had grave consequences,'" said the verdict issued at Grodnensky District Court in Belarus.
The court on Friday also said Sapega was found guilty of illegally collecting and distributing personal data. She was sentenced to a month-long incarceration for this crime, and she also had to pay damages amounting to 167,500 Belarusian rubles (or roughly $65,000). The verdict can be appealed within a period of 10 days.
Last May, Belarusian authorities took the extraordinary measure of diverting to Minsk a Ryanair flight from Athens, Greece heading to Vilnius, Lithuania, claiming there was a bomb threat.
On the flight was Sapega and her partner Roman Protasevich, the founder of the Telegram channel Nexta. They were both arrested in Minsk and were placed under house arrest in late June 2021, according to TASS.
The Wonderful World of Crypto
The Treasury Department on Friday issued its first-ever sanctions against a cryptocurrency “mixer,” a service that pools digital assets to obscure their owners, as it continues its pursuit of more than $600 million that North Korean hackers stole from the Axie Infinity video game.
The move targets a mixer called Blender.io. The hackers have used it to process more than $20.5 million of their haul since their March attack on the game, Treasury said.
The cybercriminal gang — known as the Lazarus Group, which U.N. investigators have said is a key funding source for North Korea’s weapons programs — had laundered nearly $100 million as of late last month, The Post reported, citing data from blockchain analytics firm Elliptic.
Using another mixer called Tornado Cash, the hackers continued to process batches of their stolen crypto even after it was known they were the thieves, highlighting the challenge U.S. authorities confront in keeping pace with cybercriminals rapidly moving millions of dollars across the globe with mere keystrokes.
“Virtual currency mixers that assist illicit transactions pose a threat to U.S. national security interests,” Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in a statement. “We are taking action against illicit financial activity by the DPRK and will not allow state-sponsored thievery and its money-laundering enablers to go unanswered.”
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Do Mom's Always Qualify As Best Persons in the World?
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Invasions Have Consequences
What's Happening?
Russian forces continued ineffectual offensive operations in southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts without securing any significant territorial gains in the past 24 hours.
Ukrainian officials and military officers confirmed that Russian forces have breached the Azovstal facility itself and confirmed that Ukrainian forces are losing ground. Russian forces will likely capture the facility in the coming days.
Ukrainian offensive operations around Kharkiv likely intend to push Russian forces out of artillery range of Kharkiv city, force Russian units to redeploy from the Izyum axis, and potentially threaten Russian lines of communication.
Russian forces conducted limited offensive operations toward Zaporizhia City but did not conduct any attacks in Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts in the last 24 hours. Ukrainian forces claimed to recapture additional territory west of Kherson, but ISW cannot independently confirm any advances.
What Could Be Next?
Russian forces will likely continue to merge offensive efforts southward of Izyum with westward advances from Donetsk in order to encircle Ukrainian troops in southern Kharkiv Oblast and Western Donetsk.
Russia may change the status of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, possibly by merging them into a single “Donbas Republic” and/or by annexing them directly to Russia.
Russian forces have apparently decided to seize the Azovstal plant through ground assault and will likely continue operations accordingly.
Ukrainian counteroffensives around Kharkiv City may unhinge Russian positions northeast of the city, possibly forcing the Russians to choose between reinforcing those positions or abandoning them if the Ukrainians continue to press their counterattack.
Russian forces may be preparing to conduct renewed offensive operations to capture the entirety of Kherson Oblast in the coming days.
The Russians Are Welcome to Stay
Russia is busy in Kherson putting up Russian-language signs, blocking the entry or exit of anyone from the city, and making declarations like this:
Meanwhile Ukrainian soldiers in the area are trying to get messages to those in the city that they are working to drive Russia out of the area.
This Polka Won't Be Followed By the Lovely Lennon Sisters
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More Deadbeat Dads
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We All Knew There Were Fake Reviews, But Not on This Scale
Amazon is taking legal action against four companies it has accused of deliberately flooding its shopping platform with fake reviews.
Three of the firms had nearly 350,000 reviewers on their books.
The companies act as unofficial brokers between Amazon sellers and individuals who write reviews, the tech giant says.
The reviewers get free products and a small fee in return for each review, and the firm charges the seller a fee for boosting its ratings on Amazon.
The sellers are not necessarily aware that this is being done by using fake reviews, Amazon said.
The firms it has threatened legal action against are accused of collectively targeting its platforms in the US, UK, Europe, Japan and Canada. It targeted three of them earlier this year, and has now confronted another.
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WHO Says We Are Not On First
The US is approaching one million Covid deaths - the highest total officially recorded anywhere in the world.
But a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO) shows several other countries recorded more deaths above their normal levels than the US over the last two years.
The report concludes that, although the US was not the worst hit country in the world by this measure, it remained in the top five in terms of overall numbers of deaths.
According to the WHO, in 2020 and 2021 the US recorded more than 930,000 excess deaths, behind India (4.7m), Russia (1.1m) and Indonesia (1m).
The WHO's numbers are largely consistent with statistics from the Economist which run into 2022, as well as other excess death studies.
When adjusted for population size, the US slips down the rankings with 140 excess deaths per 100,000 people. But it remains a long way above the global average of 96 per 100,000 - and it's also one of the worst performing among the most developed nations.
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We Don't Know How COVID Affects Kids Whose Bodies Are Still Developing
t's not clear how many children go on to develop long Covid, because there's not enough research on it in this age group, some experts say.
Almost 13 million children have tested positive for Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Studies suggest that between 2% and 10% of those children will develop long Covid, but the number may be larger. Many parents may not know their child has long Covid, or the child's pediatrician hasn't recognized it as such.
In adults, some research puts the number around 30% of cases.
"I personally believe that this is a very much an undiagnosed issue," said Dr. Sara Kristen Sexson Tejtel, who helps lead a long Covid pediatric clinic at Texas Children's Hospital in Houston.
Many doctors treating children at long Covid clinics across the country say they have long waits for appointments. Some are booked through September.
There are no specific tests for long Covid. It's not clear which children will have it, as it can happen even when a child has a mild case of Covid-19.
"It's startling how many of these children present and have a range of symptoms that we haven't fully appreciated. Some are coming in with heart failure after asymptomatic Covid infections," said Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, chief of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Disease at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "What's striking to me is that it usually occurs about four weeks after infection, and infection can be really asymptomatic, which is really startling."
Even when kids with long Covid are tested for ailments that might cause these symptoms, it's possible nothing will show up.
"The tested me, and it looked like nothing was wrong with me, but they tried their best to find something," Jack Ford said.
His pulmonary function test and EKG came back normal. "The Covid clinic said this is very common in kids with long Covid. Sometimes, all the tests come back normal," Kim Ford said.
Dr. Amy Edwards, who runs the pediatric long Covid clinic at UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland, agreed that it happens a lot.
"We also scoped them, and their GI tracts are normal. I do a big immune workup, and their immune system appears normal. Everything 'looks normal,' but the kids aren't functioning like normal," Edwards said. "I tell the families, 'you have to remember, there are limits to what medical science understands and can test for.' Sometimes, we're just not smart enough to know where to look for it."
Adults' problems tend to be more obvious, Edwards said, because they are more likely to have organ dysfunction that shows up on tests.
Doctors are still trying to understand why long Covid happens this way in children. They are also figuring out what symptoms define long Covid in children. Some studies in adults show a range of 200 symptoms, but there is no universal clinical case definition.
At Sexson Tejte's clinic in Texas, children tend to fall into a few categories. Some have fatigue, brain fog and severe headaches, "to the point where the some kids aren't able to go to school, grades are failing, those types of issues," she said.
Another group has cardiac issues like heart palpitations, chest pains and dizziness, especially when they go back to their regular activities.
Another group has stomach problems. A lot of these kids also have a change in their sense of taste and smell.
Sexson Tejte said it isn't totally different from the symptoms adults have, "but it's not the mixed bag of different organ system involvement with adults."
If I Had Young Kids or Grandkids, I Would Want Them Vaccinated.
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Taking the Long View
Biden administration taking new steps to prevent, detect and treat long Covid
US Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra unveiled a new push by the Biden administration Tuesday to accelerate its efforts to prevent, detect and treat long Covid.
Long Covid is associated with a host of lingering symptoms from Covid-19 involving multiple body systems. Estimates of the frequency of long-term symptoms and conditions following an acute Covid-19 infection range from 5% to 80%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The World Health Organization's estimates range from 10% to 20%.
President Joe Biden is issuing a presidential memorandum Tuesday directing Becerra to "coordinate a new effort across the federal government to develop and issue the first-ever interagency national research action plan on Long Covid."
"HHS will lead a government-wide interagency coordinating council, which will involve experts from the Department of Defense, Veterans Administration, the Labor Department and many entities across government to coordinate both public and private sector work to advance our understanding of long Covid, and to accelerate efforts to prevent, detect and treat it," Becerra said at Tuesday's Covid response team briefing.
He continued, "In real time, we will share lessons on how to prevent, detect and treat long Covid. And this coordinated effort will help ensure our research is being directed toward the people who need care the most."
Becerra also announced other actions to deliver high-quality care for Americans experiencing long Covid, making services and support available for those individuals and advancing the nation's understanding of long Covid.
The actions will include a $20 million investment through the President's fiscal year 2023 budget to "investigate how health care systems can best organize and deliver care for people with long Covid, provide telementoring and expert consultation for primary care practices, and advance the development of multispecialty clinics to provide complex care," a fact sheet from the White House said. The effort will expand and strengthen clinics, promote provider education and bolster health insurance coverage for long Covid care.
The administration is also working to raise awareness of long Covid "as a potential cause of disability" and will ensure that people will have access to call centers that can provide information and support.
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Buying This Bust Wasn't a Bust
Laura Young, a Texas antiques dealer, thought she had found a steal when she came across a stunning statue at a Goodwill store in 2018 for just under $35. And while she suspected she had come across something "very special," little did she know the piece would turn out to be a priceless Roman bust dating back to 2,000 years.
When she first came across the bust, scouring for antique treasures in the Goodwill store, one of Young's first thoughts was: "He looked Roman. He looked old." And once she purchased the statue, she told the San Antonio Express-News, "in the sunlight, it looked like something that could be very, very special."
Special, indeed. A Sotheby's consultant eventually determined that the $35 sculpture was in fact a marble Julio-Claudian-era Roman bust.
It had taken years to determine the authenticity of the bust. However, after consulting a range of experts, Young was able to notify the German government of the finding and made arrangements to return it to the Bavarian Administration of State-owned Palaces, the newspaper reported. But first, she said she wanted it to be put on display in her home state and an agreement was eventually made to allow the sculpture to be put on exhibit at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
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It's Not Two Girls For Every Boy, But ...
Employers added 428,000 new jobs in April, on par with growth in March. The unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 3.6%.
The report "shows a job market making steady progress," Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, said on Twitter. At the current pace of employment growth, the economy is set to recover all of the jobs lost in the pandemic by this summer.
Gains in leisure and hospitality, manufacturing and transportation and warehousing led the increases. Average hourly wages increased a robust 5.5% over the last 12 months, although that is well below the rate of inflation.
By other measures, the job market remains unusually tight. The Labor Department reported this week that only 1.38 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment benefits, the fewest since 1970. Employers posted a record-high 11.5 million job openings in March, with layoffs remaining below pre-pandemic levels.
The economy now has an average of two available jobs for every unemployed person — the highest such proportion on record. In another sign that workers are enjoying unusual leverage in the labor market, a record 4.5 million people quit their jobs in March, evidently confident that they could find a better opportunity elsewhere.
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You Gotta' Have Heart. All You Really Need is Heart ... Without Pig Virus
Researchers trying to learn what killed the first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig have discovered the organ harbored an animal virus but cannot yet say if it played any role in the man’s death.
A Maryland man, 57-year-old David Bennett Sr., died in March, two months after the groundbreaking experimental transplant. University of Maryland doctors said Thursday they found an unwelcome surprise — viral DNA inside the pig heart. They did not find signs that this bug, called porcine cytomegalovirus, was causing an active infection.
But a major worry about animal-to-human transplants is the risk that it could introduce new kinds of infections to people.
Because some viruses are “latent,” meaning they lurk without causing disease, “it could be a hitchhiker,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed Bennett’s transplant, told The Associated Press.
Still, development is under way of more sophisticated tests to “make sure that we don’t miss these kinds of viruses,” added Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the university’s xenotransplant program.
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They Aren't Vaping. They are VPNing.
When Russian authorities blocked hundreds of Internet sites in March, Konstantin decided to act. The 52-year-old company manager in Moscow tore a hole in the Digital Iron Curtain, which had been erected to control the narrative of the Ukraine war, with a tool that lets him surf blocked sites and eyeball taboo news.
Konstantin turned to a virtual private network, an encrypted digital tunnel more commonly known as a VPN. Since the war began in February, VPNs have been downloaded in Russia by the hundreds of thousands a day — a massive surge in demand that represents a direct challenge to President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to seal Russians off from the wider world. By protecting the locations and identities of users, VPNs are now granting millions of Russians access to blocked material.
Downloading one in his Moscow apartment, Konstantin said, brought back memories of the 1980s in the Soviet Union — when he used a shortwave radio to hear forbidden news of dissident arrests on U.S.-funded Radio Liberty.
“We didn’t know what was going on around us, and that’s true again now,” said Konstantin, who, like other Russian VPN users, spoke on the condition that his last name be withheld for fear of government retribution. “Many people in Russia simply watch TV and eat whatever the government is feeding them. I wanted to find out what was really happening.”
Daily downloads in Russia of the 10 most popular VPNs jumped from below 15,000 just before the war to as many as 475,000 in March. As of this week, downloads were continuing at a rate of nearly 300,000 a day, according to data compiled for the Washington Post by the analytics firm Apptopia, which relies on information from apps, publicly available data and an algorithm to come up with estimates.
Russian clients typically download multiple VPNs, but the data suggests millions of new users per month. In early April, Russian telecom operator Yota reported that the number of VPN users was 53.5 times as high as in January, according to the Tass state news service.
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