Mon - The Me Exception & Rest Easy About the North Pole

--------------
Today's Worst Joke in the World

Procrastination is a dish best served eventually.
--------------
--------------
Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

We Hate Them.  We Really, Really Hate Them

Multiple polls have now found Americans’ opinion of the Supreme Court plummeting in the wake of recent decisions expanding gun rights and overturning Roe v. Wade.

One of those polls was a survey conducted by the progressive consortium Navigator Research, which found the high court's net favorability plunging 26 points since February to 44% favorable, 47% unfavorable.

The net changes Navigator noted between February and late June among specific demographics are fascinating.

Liberal Democrats: -57
2020 Biden voters: -52
College women: -44
White-collar: -40
Suburban: -39
Service industry: -34
Women: -32
Independent women: -30
Ages 18-34: -30

Uncle Thomas Cites Dred Scott?

Ultimately, the majority opinion in NYSRPA v. Bruen is one of the most intellectually dishonest and poorly argued decisions in American judicial history. Indeed, with little sense of irony, Thomas even quotes Chief Justice Roger B. Taney’s infamous opinion in Dred Scott approvingly, not only treating it as good legal authority but suggesting that the author of the worst decision in American law understood the Second Amendment better than any other judicial figure in American history. Turning to Taney for judicial inspiration would have once ended a judge’s career, but the court’s new originalist majority appears most of the time to be making history by inventing it, instead of by interpreting the law.

Two Law Professors Say It is Time to Indict

Until Tuesday, we had both publicly stated that the Department of Justice had insufficient evidence to indict former President Trump for his conduct on Jan. 6. Our conclusion, which we each came to independently, was largely grounded in First Amendment concerns about criminalizing purely political speech.

But Tuesday’s explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, changed our minds. In particular, Hutchinson testified to hearing Trump order that the magnetometers (metal detectors) used to keep armed people away from the president be removed: “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons, they’re not here to hurt me. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags [magnetometers] away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here; let the people in and take the mags away.”

Cassidy Hutchinson’s Testimony Changed Our Minds About Indicting Donald Trump

Cassidy May Have Changed Other Minds As Well


Working For Previous Guy is Not Healthy for Children or Other Living Things.  It's Also Not Good For Rudy.


Shot in the Back 60 Times

Police in Akron, Ohio, released footage showing the moments that led up to the death of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black man who was fatally shot by eight police officers after he fled from an attempted traffic stop last Monday.

Authorities released the footage from two officers’ body cameras during a press conference on Sunday, while confirming that Walker was unarmed at the time he was shot.

Akron Police Chief Steve Mylett described the footage, which had Walker’s body blurred out, per his family’s request, as “difficult to watch” and “shocking.”

The body-camera footage, captured just after midnight on June 27, shows a police officer following Walker’s car on a high-speed chase. The police can be heard reporting a “sound of a gunshot” that came from the suspect’s car door. During the press conference, police also showed still images taken from surveillance cameras which they say show a flash coming from Walker’s car window during the chase.

The footage eventually shows the car slowing down until Walker jumps from the vehicle wearing what appears to be a ski mask. As seen in the footage, officers begin to chase Walker, who appears to look over his shoulder, and the officers open fire.

Mylett said that Walker had appeared to reach for his waistband and turned to the officers, which prompted them to open fire.

While authorities say Walker was unarmed when he was shot, police presented images of a handgun they said they found in Walker’s car, along with a loaded magazine and gold wedding band.

Autopsy records show that Walked had over 60 wounds on his body. Mylett said that the Bureau of Criminal Investigation is working to confirm how many shots were fired at the 25-year-old.


So Much For Zero COVID

During his first trip outside of mainland China since the beginning of the pandemic, Chinese President Xi Jinping was pictured with a pro-Beijing Hong Kong lawmaker who said he later tested positive for COVID-19.

Steve Ho, a member of Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, the city’s largest pro-China party, was part of a group photo taken with Xi during the Chinese president’s visit to Hong Kong on Thursday.

Xi visited the city to mark the 25-year anniversary of Hong Kong being returned to China.

Ho was pictured a few rows behind Xi and everyone in the photo wore a mask. While Ho tested negative Thursday, the lawmaker said he received an “uncertain” result the following day. Ho then tested positive on Saturday, according to Reuters.

Today's Non-Surprise.  There is Bad "Information" About Abortion Online

False and misleading information about abortion is spreading online, and researchers fear it will only get worse in the wake of the Supreme Court decision on Dobbs.

On TikTok, videos suggesting that people use herbs to self-manage an abortion have racked up thousands of views. Antiabortion activists have shared false information on Twitter about the supposed dangers of abortion. And the New York attorney general sent a letter to Google last week urging the company to point abortion seekers on Google Maps to valid health-care offices that offer the treatment, rather than to “crisis pregnancy centers,” which try to dissuade people from getting abortions.

Disinformation researchers, as well as reproductive rights advocates, are concerned that what abortion-seekers find online can sometimes leave them even more confused and point them toward options that may be misleading or even dangerous.

She Sounds Like She is Possessed by a Demon

Kristina Karamo, the Donald Trump-endorsed Republican nominee for Michigan’s secretary of state, has made preposterous claims about abortion and demonic possession, according to clips from a 2020 podcast episode unearthed by CNN’s KFILE.

“Abortion is really nothing new. The child sacrifice is a very satanic practice, and that’s precisely what abortion is. And we need to see it as such,” Karamo, a community college professor, said in an Oct. 2020 episode of her podcast.

She also called abortion “the greatest crime of our nation’s history.”

In another episode of the podcast, in Sept. 2020, she said that “demonic possession is real” and can be transmitted by “having intimate relationships with people who are demonically possessed or oppressed.”

Could There Be a Worse Judge Than Uncle Thomas?

Man who raped 12-year-old awarded joint custody of her child

A man who raped a 12-year-old has been awarded joint custody of her child despite being convicted of her rape and another sexual assault on a child.

The convicted rapist assaulted the girl nine years ago and she subsequently became pregnant.

A judge has given Christopher Mirasolo, 27, parenting time and joint legal custody of the eight-year-old boy after a paternity test found he was the father.

Since his conviction for the rape in 2008, Mirasolo, from Brown City, Michigan, has been convicted of another child sex assault, for which he served four years in prison.

And How About the Lawyer Who Represented Him

The Me Exception

A few days before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, a woman who described herself as an anti-abortion activist showed up in the waiting room of Dr. Marissa Lapedis, a family-medicine doctor who performs the procedure in Atlanta.

But she wasn’t there to protest—she had an appointment.

“She talked about being in marches, and said she had spent a lot of time volunteering in crisis pregnancy centers—you know, showing patients the ultrasound image and explaining what happens,” Lapedis, a fellow with the group Physicians for Reproductive Health, told The Daily Beast. “She said she had been anti-abortion her whole life, and that her whole family was like her—and yet she was so appreciative of the care she received from us. She literally was like, ‘I’m so grateful that I’m able to make this choice for myself.’”

Lapedis’ experience is remarkable in part because she resides in a state with a looming ban on the procedure after six weeks—though the law has so far been held up in court.

“You sometimes have anti people who are like, ‘Promise me no one’s going to find out, my boss cannot know,’ [because] they work in the Republican legislature or something. Which has happened—but this patient was so appreciative.”

Abortion providers across the country are reeling from the fall of Roe, and some face the prospect of legal reprisal from law enforcement in their own state or even other states where patients need help. Almost inevitably, they are reflecting on the many patients they’ve seen who came in for a service they claimed to fervently oppose—and in some cases actively protested against.

“All of us who do abortions see patients quite regularly who tell us, ‘I’m not pro-choice, but I just can’t continue this pregnancy,’” said Dr. Sarah Prager, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington. “We’ve even seen people coming into the clinic off the protester lines to get their abortion, then return to protesting outside the clinic.” And to be clear, she added, “These are not people who turn anti-choice after having an abortion, but who simply access this essential service when they need it in spite of their personal beliefs about abortion in general.”

According to Prager, the phenomenon is so common that abortion providers have a name for it: the Me Exception.

The Women Who Leave Anti-Abortion Picket Lines to Get Abortions
--------------
Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

This is a Whopper of a Story

54- year- old Kevin Ford is the man that you want working for you.

He’s the man that I would gratefully hire in a New York minute.  Why?

Kevin is a cook and cashier at Burger King’s Las Vegas International Airport location, and has been for 27 years.

And in all that time, he has not missed his shift one. single. time.  That’s why.

He took the job once he found out his then girlfriend and now wife was pregnant with their first child.

His dreams of a higher education was dashed by responsibilities and sacrifice.

And he kept the job as his family grew, now with four children.

And he was able provide for his family and to send and put all four daughters through college on his, to many, meager wages.  That’s why.

He kept the job because that location was and is unionized, and provided the health insurance his family needed.

On his anniversary, his 27th, Burger King decided to thank him with gifts that they thought commensurate with such loyalty.

A goody bag of thanks.

He decided to open the bag on his TikTok account, in disbelief at the callous injustice.

You see, Kevin was given …. sigh…. a Starbucks reusable tumbler, a bag of Reese’s candy, a couple of disposable pens and two rolls of Lifesavers.

Oh, and a single movie ticket.



We Over-Use the Word "Hero". These Volunteers Really Deserve To Be Called Heroes.

A democracy came under attack. The United States saw a threat to an ally and also to the entire world order, but it feared that sending troops could spark a nuclear war. So, instead, it supplied weapons. And a small number of American Special Operations trainers started quietly working with the local military.

That was the situation in South Vietnam in 1961, a few years before full-blown U.S. military involvement, when the American presence was limited to a military “advisory group.”

It is also the situation in Ukraine today. As a bloody conflict churns on, small teams of American Special Operations veterans are training Ukrainian soldiers near the front lines and, in some cases, helping to plan combat missions.

There is a notable difference, though. In Vietnam, the trainers were active-duty troops under the control of the Pentagon. In Ukraine, where the United States has avoided sending any troops, the trainers are civilian volunteers, supported by online donations and operating entirely on their own.

“This is why I became a Green Beret,” said Perry Blackburn Jr., a retired Army Special Forces lieutenant colonel who spent 34 years in uniform in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Somalia and Jordan. He is now in Ukraine as a civilian doing what he once did in the military: training local forces to fight a common enemy.

“To not use my talents in a real time of need would be a waste,” said Mr. Blackburn, 60, who was one of a handful of Special Forces soldiers who rode into Afghanistan on horseback at the start of the U.S. invasion in 2001 and is funding similar efforts now through thousands of small online donations from the public.

“At my age, I’ve seen enough death and I want to try to stop the bloodshed,” he said. “We need to give people the means to defend themselves.”

Whether this new type of crowdfunded military support is wise is up for debate. Some experts caution that the presence of American volunteers could lead to some kind of tragic mishap that entangles the United States in a Vietnam-style escalation. Russia says that it would treat volunteer fighters as mercenaries and that they could be executed if captured. The United States discourages Americans from participating in the conflict. It pulled out its 150 military trainers before the war began and now relies on a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries to coordinate the flow of weapons inside Ukraine.

But the volunteers dismiss the idea that they might be stoking a larger war. Instead, they say, they are working to prevent one, by training Ukrainian fighters to put up better resistance against the Russians and deter further aggression.

Either way, Americans are in Ukraine. An unknown number are fighting on the front lines. Others volunteer to be members of casualty evacuation teams, bomb disposal specialists, logistics experts and trainers. At least 21 Americans have been wounded in combat since the war started, according to a nonprofit organization that evacuates them. Two have been killed, two have been captured and one is missing in action.

Mr. Blackburn and a small group of volunteers work directly with the Ukrainian military, teaching marksmanship, maneuvering, combat first aid and other basic skills while constantly shifting locations of training camps to avoid Russian rocket attacks.
--------------
Invasions Have Consequences

Day 131

Fighting

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged that Ukrainian forces have withdrawn from Lysychansk and pledged to retake lost territory after Russia claimed full control of the eastern Luhansk region.

At least six people have been killed and 20 wounded in Sloviansk after the eastern city was hit by Russian shelling from multiple rocket launchers, officials said.

Russia has accused Ukraine of firing missiles on the border city of Belgorod. At least three people were killed and dozens of residential buildings were damaged in the attacks.

Ukrainian forces hit a Russian military logistics base with at least 30 strikes in the occupied southern city of Melitopol, the city’s exiled mayor said. A Russian-installed official confirmed that raids had hit the city.

Diplomacy

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged to send Ukraine 14 more armoured personnel carriers and 20 Bushmaster vehicles after visiting Kyiv.

The president of Belarus – Vladimir Putin’s closest ally – said on Sunday his ex-Soviet state stood fully behind Russia in its military drive in Ukraine as part of its longstanding commitment to a “union state” with Moscow.

Delegations from Ukraine, donor countries and civil society groups are gathering in Lugano, Switzerland for the Ukraine Recovery Conference (URC2022) where discussions will focus on how to rebuild the war-torn country.

British foreign secretary Liz Truss said the United Kingdom wants to follow the example of Canada and seize the assets of Russians in the country and redistribute them to victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Economy

Turkish customs authorities seized a Russian cargo ship carrying grain that Ukraine says is stolen, Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey said.

The European Investment Bank is proposing a funding structure previously used during the COVID-19 pandemic to help rebuild Ukraine with up to 100 billion euros ($104.3bn) of investment, Reuters reported.

Russia may continue to suspend gas flows through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline beyond a planned maintenance shutdown this month, said German economy minister Robert Habeck.

Why Does Kherson Matter?

Ukraine wants to push Russia out from around Kharkiv in the north in order to spare the city incessant rocket and artillery attacks. Putting the Russian city of Belgorod, a military logistical hub, within artillery range would be a bonus.

Ukraine wants to stop Russian advances in the Donbas, because every inch of territory lost is an inch that will later have to be retaken, with a heavy cost in blood.

But the south? That’s the region that will make or break Ukraine.



Russia has held the Crimea and half of Donetsk Oblast since 2014, while it captured a swatch from Kherson to Mariupol in the early days and months of the war. A limited Ukrainian counteroffensive over the last couple of months has rolled back Russian advances around Mykolaiv and Kryvyi Rih, and are within 15 kilometers of Kherson city itself. A second limited counteroffensive has clawed back some territory on that eastern chunk of land, north of Berdiansk. While Ukraine would love to retake Crimea and all of the Donbas, its more immediate wish would be to liberate the cities of Berdiansk, Kherson, Mariupol, and Melitopol.

That desire isn’t just a matter of wounded national pride, however. The very economic lifeblood of Ukraine flows through those cities—all but Melitopol important ports. The last two remaining port cities under Ukrainian control, Odesa and Mykolaiv, are effectively blockaded by the major Russian naval presence in Sevastopol. Ukraine needs all of these cities to export the mass of agricultural products that feed millions in Africa and the Middle East.

Rail can’t transport Ukraine’s harvest to its international customers. The country and its European partners are working on hacks to gets some out via rail, but that offers only a fraction of the capacity of ocean freight at much greater cost. Ukraine needs those ports back for the same reason Russia prioritized their capture—whoever controls those ports controls Ukraine’s economic destiny.

Ukraine’s key priority seems obvious—liberate the port cities, and perhaps even make a move on Crimea (and the Russian naval presence supporting its economic blockade of Ukrainian sea trade), before looking toward a Donbas region that serves little strategic or economic purpose—particularly since many of those cities are rubble or impoverished from eight years of Russian occupation.

Vladimir Putin gets a big propaganda victory out of the Donbas developments, but it has zero effect on the broader strategic picture. Even Russian sources admit that they were unable to trap any significant number of Ukrainian forces—failing to deal Ukraine a strategic defeat. Losing any territory sucks, but this one is of little real value. The soldiers and their equipment? That would’ve been irreplaceable.

Raise the Flag


76 Days in the Donbas - No, It's Not An Offering By a Tour Company.

It has now been 76 days since the Russians launched the Battle of the Dohnbas. This would make it one of the longest major battles in the 20th and 21st centuries. Many times longer than Kursk,e Bagration Normandy, Bulge, etc. Its much closer to WWI (Somme, Passchendale, Verdun)

And what has happened in the 2.5 months so far. Best to start with this map. Basically the Russians have dialled back enormously on their expectations (and frankly the expectations of others) that they would take a big chunk of Ukrainian territory.

Instead after 11 weeks of combat, major losses and command changes, desperate attempts to raise forces and concentrating their firepower in a very small area, the Russians have compelled to Ukrainians to withdraw from Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

Even that phrase needs to be emphasized--the Ukrainians have withdrawn in good order, as the Russians have never cut their communications. The map above (and indeed modern combined arms and Russian doctrine) would have had as a basic task an encirclement of Ukrainian forces

However the Russian Army is incapable of fulfilling the basic tasks of modern war. Instead its does incremental, slow advances, a kilometer at a time. It can’t break through, it can’t exploit, it can’t encircle. This is not a sign of an advanced military.
--------------
The Fake Son (No, That's Not Included in a Typical Seder.)

A court in India has sent to prison a man who was found guilty of posing as the son of a wealthy landlord for 41 years. The BBC's Soutik Biswas pieces together a gripping tale of deceit and delay in justice.

In February 1977, a teenage boy disappeared on his way home from school in the eastern state of Bihar.

Kanhaiya Singh, the only son of an affluent and influential zamindar (landlord) in Nalanda district, was returning from a second day of exams. His family lodged a missing person report with the police.

Efforts to find Kanhaiya came to naught. His ageing father slid into depression and began visiting quacks. A village shaman told him his son was alive and would "appear" soon.

In September 1981, a man in his early 20s arrived in a village, barely 15km (9 miles) from where Kanhaiya lived.

He was dressed in saffron and said he sang songs and begged for a living. He told the locals that he was the "son of a prominent person" of Murgawan, the missing boy's village.

What happened next is not entirely clear. But what is known is that when rumours that his missing son had returned reached Kameshwar Singh, he travelled to the village to see for himself.

Some of his neighbours who had accompanied Singh told him that the man was indeed his son and he took him home.

"My eyes are failing and I can't see him properly. If you say he is my son, I will keep him," Singh told the men, according to police records.

Four days later, news of her son's return reached Singh's wife, Ramsakhi Devi, who was visiting the state capital, Patna, with her daughter, Vidya. She rushed back to the village and, on arrival, realised that the man was not her son.

Kanhaiya, she said, had a "cut mark on the left side of his head", which was missing in this man. He also failed to recognise a teacher from the boy's school. But Singh was convinced that the man was their son.

Days after the incident, Ramsakhi Devi filed a case of impersonation and the man was arrested briefly and spent a month in jail before securing bail.

What happened over the next four decades is a chilling tale of deception in which a man pretended to be the missing son of the landlord and inveigled himself into his house.

Even as he was on bail, he assumed a new identity, went to college, got married, raised a family and secured multiple fake identities.

Using these IDs, he voted, paid taxes, gave biometrics for a national identity card, got a gun licence and sold 37 acres of Singh's property.

He steadfastly refused to provide a DNA sample to match with the landlord's daughter to prove that they were siblings. And in a move that stunned the court, he even tried to "kill" his original identity with a fake death certificate.

The imposter's tale is a grim commentary on official incompetence and India's snail-paced judiciary: nearly 50 million cases are pending in the country's courts and more than 180,000 of them have been pending for more than 30 years.

Is there a movie deal in the works?
--------------
Sri Lanka:  Home of the Gasoline Riot

Sri Lanka has less than a day’s worth of fuel left, the energy minister says, with public transport grinding to a halt as the country’s economic crisis deepens.

Power and energy minister Kanchana Wijesekera on Sunday said petrol reserves were about 4,000 tonnes, just below one day’s worth of consumption, as queues snaked through the main city of Colombo for kilometres.

The cash-strapped nation on Sunday extended school closures because there is not enough fuel for teachers and parents to get children to classrooms, with most pumping stations being without fuel for days.

Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said the main problem is the lack of dollars and appealed to some two million Sri Lankans working abroad to send their foreign exchange earnings home through banks instead of informal channels. He said workers’ remittances, which usually stood at $600m per month, had declined to $318m in June.

“Finding money is a challenge. It’s a huge challenge,” he said.

Last week, Sri Lanka announced a two-week halt to all fuel sales except for essential services to save petrol and diesel for emergencies.

Local media reported there had been sporadic clashes outside fuel stations. Last week, troops opened fire to disperse a mob protesting against the military jumping the queue.

The economic meltdown has triggered a political crisis with widespread anti-government protests erupting across the country. Protesters have blocked main roads to demand gas and fuel, and television stations showed people in some areas fighting over limited stocks.

In Colombo, protesters have been occupying the entrance to the president’s office for more than two months to demand President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation.

They accuse him and his powerful family, including several siblings who hold top government positions, of plunging the country into the crisis through corruption and misrule.
--------------
We Can All Rest a Little Easier.  The North Pole is Still North.

The Earth’s geomagnetic field, which scientists have been warning about for hundreds of years, isn’t about to suddenly flip over after all, according to a new study.

It now looks like the magnetic North Pole will remain in the north and the magnetic South Pole will stay in the south — at least for a few thousand years or so.

“In the geologic time perspective we are currently in a period of very strong geomagnetic field,” geoscientist Andreas Nilsson of Sweden’s Lund University said in an email. “So there is a long way to go before a polarity reversal.”

Nilsson is the lead author of research published this month by the National Academy of Sciences that studied a large weakness in the geomagnetic field known as the South Atlantic Anomaly, or SAA.

The study notes that the Earth’s magnetic field has been getting steadily weaker since the first geomagnetic observatories were established in the 1840s, while the SAA weakness has grown larger over that time.

That’s led some scientists to theorize that the geomagnetic field is decreasing in strength just before it completely reverses direction — something it has done several times in the past, according to layers of rock laid down over millions of years that show previous reversals.

But the new research has found that large geomagnetic anomalies have happened before, and relatively recently in geological time, without causing a field reversal.

These anomalies typically fade away a few hundred years later — and there’s no sign that the SAA will be any different, Nilsson said.

But Don't Rest Easy About the North Pole Melting.
--------------
US Says The Israelis Did It (In the Library With the Candlestick).  

U.S. officials have concluded that gunfire from Israeli positions likely killed Al-Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh but that there was “no reason to believe” her shooting was intentional, the State Department said Monday.

The finding, in a statement from State Department spokesman Ned Price, came after what the U.S. said were inconclusive tests under U.S. oversight of the bullet recovered from Abu Akleh’s body. It said “independent, third-party examiners” had conducted an “extremely detailed forensic analysis.”

“Ballistic experts determined the bullet was badly damaged, which prevented a clear conclusion” as to who fired the shot, Price said in the statement.

Abu Akleh, a veteran Palestinian-American correspondent who was well known throughout the Arab world, was shot and killed while covering an Israeli military raid on May 11 in the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian eyewitnesses, including her crew, say Israeli troops killed her and that there were no militants in the immediate vicinity.

Israel says she was killed during a complex battle with Palestinian militants and that only a forensic analysis of the bullet would confirm whether it was fired by an Israeli soldier or a Palestinian militant. It has strongly denied she was deliberately targeted, but says an Israeli soldier may have hit her by mistake during an exchange of fire with a militant.

U.S. security officials had examined the results of separate Palestinian and Israeli investigations and “concluded that gunfire from IDF positions was likely responsible for the death of Shireen Abu Akleh,” Price said.
--------------
British Botanists Must Be Partying

An enormous waterlily in London’s Royal Botanic Gardens has been discovered to belong to an entirely new species, after 177 years in the gardens’ herbarium.

Victoria boliviana is the world’s biggest known waterlily species, with leaves growing to nearly 10 feet wide in the wild, according to a press release from the gardens in Kew, west London. The largest specimen of the species can be found in La Rinconada Gardens in Bolivia, with leaves of up to 10.5 feet in width.

The leaf of the giant waterlily, which belongs to one of three species in the Victoria genus, can support a weight of at least 176 pounds.

“Having this new data for Victoria and identifying a new species in the genus is an incredible achievement in botany — properly identifying and documenting plant diversity is crucial to protecting it and sustainably benefiting from it,” said Alex Monro, a taxonomist, systematist and field botanist at Kew and a senior author of the study published Monday in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, in the press release.


--------------
I Almost Forgot.  The Story About Kevin From Burger King Doesn't End There.  Everyone Loves Kevin (Except Burger King).

The video went viral.

And those that saw the video were outraged, shocked and dismayed.

His daughter Seryna started a gofundme page to help her father, who was always there for her and her siblings, again, at great sacrifice.

The goal was to raise $200 for a trip…. an economy round trip to New York... for Kevin to see his grandchildren, whom he couldn’t afford to see for four years.

Remember, that almost fully 50% of American families cannot afford a single $500 emergency.

"Hi, My name is Seryna. The man in that video is my father. He has worked at his job for 27 years and yes, he has never missed a day of work. He originally began working at this job as a single father when he gained custody of me and my older sister 27 years ago. Then as our family grew and he remarried, he continued to work there because of the amazing health insurance that was provided through this employer because it was unionized. This got all four of his daughters through high school and college with full healthcare coverage."

My dad continues to work there, because though he does look young, he is coming up on retirement age and leaving would cost him his retirement. In no way are we asking for money or is he expecting any money but if anyone feels like blessing him he would love to visit his grandchildren.

As of this posting, that gofundme has raised $327,000.

And has thousands sending kudos and admiration to Kevin.

And scorn to Burger King, to HMSHost, a food service company for restaurants like Burger King that contracts employees like Kevin out to, and a system that is allowed to enact such despicable and callous disregard towards their employees.

David Spade reached out after donating $5,000 with, “Keep up the good work.”

Kevin replied, “I love you my brother! Much love and God bless…I think I might be able to take a day off.”

“I’ve been crying for about two days now. It’s just incredible. I just go to work and try to have fun and laugh and make other people’s day good. It’s like I’ve been in a dream for almost two days now. It’s just so beautiful and awesome. It really is.

For all those years, you feel unappreciated, but you get up just like everybody else. You do your job, and for somebody to show this appreciation is just overwhelming.”

His wish to see his grandchildren came true when he was flown out to NYC to appear on the Today show and was reunited with his grandchildren.

“I haven’t seen my grandkids in over four years, until the other day when ‘The Today Show’ flew me out to New York and I got to see them live on TV.

I’ve been crying for all these days as it is and of course I’m crying live on TV again seeing my grandbabies.”



And no one is surprised that he, with some of the money, has already started a college fund for each of his grandbabies.
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------