Post by mhbruin on Jul 23, 2022 9:24:07 GMT -8
New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | New Hospitalizations 7-Day Average | |
Jul 22 | |||
Jul 21 | |||
Jul 20 | 125,827 | 347 | 6,298 |
Jul 19 | 126,018 | 353 | 6,184 |
Jul 18 | 123,639 | 352 | 6,184 |
Jul 17 | 122,639 | 336 | 6,085 |
Jul 16 | 124,348 | 340 | 5,658 |
Jul 15 | 126,515 | 333 | 5,972 |
Jul 14 | 126,023 | 348 | 6.017 |
Jul 13 | 124,048 | 351 | 5,918 |
Jul 12 | 123,365 | 342 | 5,851 |
Jul 11 | 118,026 | 306 | 5,775 |
Jul 10 | 103,907 | 281 | 5,619 |
Jul 9 | 104,052 | 283 | 5,135 |
Jul 8 | 105,644 | 289 | 5,398 |
Jul 7 | 106,021 | 277 | 5,326 |
Jul 6 | 106,549 | 273 | 5,203 |
Jul 5 | 106,178 | 267 | 5,080 |
Jul 4 | 94,345 | 295 | 5,118 |
Jul 3 | 103,466 | 326 | 4,376 |
Jul 2 | 106,663 | 330 | 4,695 |
Jul 1 | 109,922 | 336 | 4,993 |
Jun 30 | 110,206 | 329 | 5,020 |
Jun 29 | 109,930 | 317 | 4,951 |
Jun 28 | 108,505 | 321 | 4,890 |
Jun 27 | 113,100 | 307 | 4,916 |
Jun 26 | 100,674 | 290 | 4,776 |
Jun 25 | 101,378 | 299 | 4,200 |
Jun 24 | 102,250 | 287 | 4,453 |
Jun 23 | 97,548 | 283 | 4,467 |
Jun 22 | 97,430 | 255 | 4,404 |
Jun 21 | 99,365 | 248 | 4,375 |
Jun 20 | 89,102 | 239 | 4,352 |
Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
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Today's Worst Joke in the World
What do you call a pig with laryngitis?
Disgruntled.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
E. Bruce Harrison May Turn Out to Be the Worst Mass Killer in History
Thirty years ago, a bold plan was cooked up to spread doubt and persuade the public that climate change was not a problem. The little-known meeting - between some of America's biggest industrial players and a PR genius - forged a devastatingly successful strategy that endured for years, and the consequences of which are all around us.
On an early autumn day in 1992, E Bruce Harrison, a man widely acknowledged as the father of environmental PR, stood up in a room full of business leaders and delivered a pitch like no other.
At stake was a contract worth half a million dollars a year - about £850,000 in today's money. The prospective client, the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) - which represented the oil, coal, auto, utilities, steel, and rail industries - was looking for a communications partner to change the narrative on climate change.
The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change
They Should Also Be Arrested for Stupidity. Why Hide Training Manuals?
Officials in Greene County, Pennsylvania, filed charges against three men for allegedly concealing evidence that was subpoenaed in the investigation of a 911 dispatcher who allegedly refused to send emergency medical assistance to a woman who later died, according to police criminal complaints.
The three individuals – Gregory Clay Leathers, Richard Paul Policz, and Robert Jeffrey Rhodes – are all facing charges related to tampering with public records or information, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and obstruction, according to the complaints.
They are not charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the woman’s death. CNN has reached out to the three for comment.
The three were all members of the management team at Greene County’s Emergency Management Agency and allegedly agreed or conspired to “knowingly and purposefully conceal, withhold, omit, obstruct, or pervert” policy memo binders that were subject to search warrants that investigators served two years ago, according to affidavits of probable cause.
Those warrants had specified the release of “current training policy for dispatchers; any and all directives for standard operating procedures currently in place,” according to the affidavits.
She Was Out for 2 Years. He's Out Forever
A West Virginia man charged last week with brutally beating his sister, who awoke from a two-year coma and named him as her assailant, has died, according to officials.
Daniel Palmer, 55, was booked into South Central Regional Jail in Charleston on July 15, charged with attempted murder and malicious wounding for the June 2020 attack on his sister Wanda Palmer.
Palmer was “uncooperative while in custody and during booking procedures at the jail," the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security told NBC News in a statement.
On Wednesday he was transported to Charleston Area Medical Center General Hospital after an evaluation by jail medical staff, according to officials.
He was pronounced dead Thursday, the statement said.
The West Virginia Dept. of Homeland Security ruled out suicide as a cause of death but no further details of his death were given.
Previous Guy Wants to Gut the Government. The First Purge?
Donald Trump would fire tens of thousands of civil servants and bring his key Jan. 6 allies to the White House and Cabinet in a move that would fundamentally redesign the government to suit his agenda if he is elected to a second term, according to a new report.
After speaking with close allies of the former president, Axios reports Trump would purge staff at the Justice Department, State Department, and Pentagon in his early days back in the Oval Office in 2025. The outlet’s investigation says the plan would be based around an executive order called “Schedule F,” which was secretly developed and then publicly launched in October 2020 before being rescinded by President Biden.
Russ Vought, the former boss of Trump’s Office of Management and Budget, has also reportedly been working on plans that would benefit from Schedule F through the organization he founded, the Center for Renewing America (CRA). Vought is reportedly planning to recommend changes to the security clearance system to make it easier to appoint officials in future. “We are consciously bringing on the toughest and most courageous fighters with the know-how and credibility to crush the deep state,” Vought told Axios.
“Schedule F” targets thousands upon thousands of nonpartisan career Federal Employees, and arbitrarily reclassifies them, in effect as ‘Temp Workers’ — subject to whatever whims and the ravings that Traitor Trump, might be channeling that day. That “deep state” could be anywhere — anywhere that likes of Bannon and Giuliani and Eastman, say that it is. On any given day ...
Trump, in theory, could fire tens of thousands of career government officials with no recourse for appeals. He could replace them with people he believes are more loyal to him and to his “America First” agenda.
Even if Trump did not deploy Schedule F to this extent, the very fact that such power exists could create a significant chilling effect on government employees.
Such pendulum swings and politicization could threaten the continuity and quality of service to taxpayers, the regulatory protections, the checks on executive power, and other aspects of American democracy.
‘Trump 2025’ Plan Would Bring in Jan. 6 Allies, Gut Everyone Else if He Is Re-Elected, Axios Reports
He must be a Terrible Shot. 119 Times? He's a Terrible Liar, Too.
A small Mississippi city has a new police chief after its last was secretly recorded bragging about shooting and killing people in the line of duty — including a Black man who he claimed to have shot more than 100 times — in a racist and homophobic rant.
Former Lexington Police Department Chief Sam Dobbins was fired Wednesday after the city's board of aldermen voted to oust him in a session that lasted more than an hour, WLBT reported.
The vote came after a former officer leaked a recording of a conversation he had with the chief in April. The officer, Robert Lee Hooker, gave the secretly recorded audio to JULIAN, a civil rights and international human rights organization, which released it to the media — riling up the small city of 1,600 about 60 miles north of Jackson. About 80% of the city, nearly 1,300 people, are Black, census data shows.
In the audio, Dobbins can be heard bragging he shot and killed 13 people in the line of duty, including a Black man who he says he shot 119 times, according to a copy of the 16-minute recording obtained by USA TODAY.
During the conversation, which was first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, Dobbins can be heard saying he would smash suspects through a window if they "got out of line."
Dobbins, who is white, can be heard using multiple racist and homophobic slurs as he claims he would defend Hooker on the job. When contacted by the news outlet, Dobbins denied using slurs and talking about the number of people he'd shot or killed.
“I don’t talk like that,” he told the outlet.
The Running Man Needs New Running Shoes
The U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol showed a video Thursday night of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley fleeing the Senate chamber that spread rapidly through the internet, was set to theme music and mocked on late night television.
Missouri’s junior senator used it the same way he’s used all of his actions surrounding the insurrection — as an opportunity to raise money for his campaign.
The QOP Wants to Party Like It's 1959
Hang In There, Mike Pence
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
This is REAL Pyramid Power
While photovoltaic panels hold great potential for supplying clean power, that potential is only realized when sunlight hits the cells directly. Solar installations often use tracking motors to move the panels as close to perpendicular to the sun as possible. Being more complex than just panels on a roof, those systems are consequently more subject to breakdowns.
Stanford University’s Nina Vaidya and Olav Solgaard set out to solve the “tracking” problem with no moving parts and, serendipitously, solved a second solar challenge: clouds.
Using lenses with layers of decreasing size the researchers were able to increase the effectiveness of solar cells under angled light and the diffused light of a cloudy day.
Their Axially Graded Index Lens, or AGILE, uses diffraction to concentrate light, not unlike the Fresnel lens of a lighthouse lamp. While the graded lenses do reduce direct, perpendicular light by 10%, they increase angled and diffuse light sufficiently to triple the effectiveness of solar cells.
The AGILE concept is a revolution in photovoltaics that will lead to smaller, cheaper and vastly more efficient installations at every scale while reducing the industry’s ecological footprint.
Story
College Football and a New Booster. Is It September Yet?
Second booster shots of the coronavirus vaccine for people younger than 50 are on hold as the Biden administration tries to accelerate a fall vaccination campaign using reformulated shots that target the now-dominant omicron subvariants, according to federal health officials.
Officials are hoping vaccine makers — Moderna and Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech — are able to make the updated shots available as soon as early to mid-September instead of later in the fall, said three officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the issue.
The retooled boosters will contain components from the omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 as well as the original formula, which was based on the version of the virus that spread globally in early 2020. The hope is that the redesigned boosters will be more effective in dealing with an evolving virus.
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Invasions Have Consequences
Day 150
Fighting
Russian missiles have hit infrastructure in Ukraine’s port of Odesa, a day after Russia and Ukraine signed a deal to reopen Black Sea ports to resume grain exports, the Ukrainian military said. (Has Russia kept their word about anything?)
Thirteen Russian air attacks on railway infrastructure and a military airfield in Ukraine’s central Kirovohrad region have killed at least three people, according to the regional governor.
Heavy fighting has taken place in the last 48 hours as Ukrainian forces continue their offensive against Russia in Kherson province, west of the Dnieper river, Britain’s military intelligence said.
Diplomacy
The US ambassador to Kyiv said Moscow should be held to account for an “outrageous” strike on the port city of Odesa.
Ukraine has called on the United Nations and Turkey to ensure that Russia fulfils its commitments under the agreement for a safe corridor for grain exports from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the European Union needs a new strategy on the war in Ukraine as sanctions against Moscow have not worked.
The African Union has hailed a landmark deal between Ukraine and Russia that will allow Kyiv to resume exports of grain through the Black Sea and relieve a global food crisis.
The United States has promised another $270m in military support for Ukraine, including drones.
Economy
Credit rating firms Fitch and Scope have downgraded Ukraine two days after the war-ravaged country requested a debt payment freeze.
From British Intelligence
The Right Stuff
The White House has announced that the United States will send an additional $270m in security assistance to Ukraine, a package that will include more medium-range rocket systems and tactical drones.
The announcement on Friday brings the total US security assistance committed to Ukraine by the administration of US President Joe Biden to $8.2bn, and is being paid for through $40bn in economic and security aid for Ukraine approved by Congress in May.
The new package includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS and will allow Kyiv to acquire up to 580 Phoenix Ghost drones, both crucial weapon systems that have allowed the Ukrainians to stay in the fight despite Russian artillery supremacy, according to John Kirby, the White House National Security Council’s coordinator for strategic communications. The latest assistance also includes some 36,000 rounds of artillery ammunition and additional ammunition for the HIMARS.
The Wrong Stuff
At this point photographically verified data shows Russia has lost over 4,750 vehicles. That includes 873 tanks. Those tanks now range from a T-62 manufactured somewhere in the mid 1960s, to a pair of T-90M tanks that were manufactured after 2016.
This particular T-34 doesn’t really seem to be a World War II veteran. It looks more like early an Korean War version. Thoroughly modern!
Daryivskyi Bridge is Falling Down, Falling Down, Falling Down
Ukraine struck a bridge in the occupied Black Sea region of Kherson on Saturday, targeting a Russian supply route as Kyiv prepares for a major counter-offensive, a Ukrainian regional official said.
The strike hit the Daryivskyi bridge across the Ingulets river used for supplies by Russian troops, days after a key bridge over the nearby Dnieper was hit, said an adviser to the region's governor who is on Ukrainian-held territory.
"Every bridge is a weak point for logistics and our armed forces are skilfully destroying the enemy system. This is not yet the liberation of Kherson, but a serious preparatory step in that direction," the official, Serhiy Khlan, wrote on Facebook.
Ask Previous Guy: "Some others saying they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin, he just said it’s not Russia... I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
Turkey's defence minister said on Saturday Russian officials had told Ankara that Moscow had "nothing to do" with strikes on Ukraine's Odesa port.
"In our contact with Russia, the Russians told us that they had absolutely nothing to do with this attack, and that they were examining the issue very closely and in detail," Defence Minister Hulusai Akar said in a statement.
"The fact that such an incident took place right after the agreement we made yesterday really worried us," he added.
6,000 Per Day Is Still High, But ...
No Exit
However you define encirclement, what’s happening in Vysokopillya looks like a huge loss for Russia. This is Ukraine taking a significant target, against significant opposition, in an area where Russia has been dug in for months. Russia has even transported pillbox structures to Vysokopillya to provide hardened firing points.
Is the Liberation of Kherson Coming?
This is a Russian convoy traveling over the bridge near Nova Kakhovka. They are going east. Out of Kherson oblast.
This is not the only report of Russian positions in Kherson being abandoned. In both the city and in surrounding villages, long-held Russian checkpoints are reportedly suddenly empty.
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PIPPIN: "I didn't think it would end this way." GANDALF: "End? No, the journey doesn't end here."
"We wanted to find a huge, Tolkienian mega epic!"
That's how showrunner Patrick McKay described his mission for The Rings of Power - Amazon Prime's hotly anticipated Lord of the Rings TV spin-off, as he unveiled a new trailer and unseen footage at San Diego Comic-Con on Thursday.
In his armoury: a huge cast of comely elves, a rare female dwarf, the Hobbits' ancestors, a seriously impressive CGI city, a mystery menace, an entwife and a surprise Balrog.
The Rings of Power is the most expensive show ever made, at $1bn (£832m) for five seasons - and this is fans' best guide to how it will look, sound and feel.
"Comely" is a Nice Word
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BREXIT: The Gift That Keeps on Giving
Brexit has contributed to travelers being stuck in gridlock at the start of the summer holidays at the port of Dover, French and UK officials have said, as a war of words escalates between the two countries over hours-long delays at the border.
Holidaymakers and heavy goods vehicles were left stationary in traffic jams en route to the port in Kent, southern England on Saturday, with the port admitting that “today is going to be very busy” and travelers being warned of four-hour waits.
The UK and France have been locked in a round of finger-pointing over the cause of the gridlock, with British lawmakers laying blame on staffing on the French side, and French officials nodding to increased post-Brexit customs checks.
“The British are right to complain, because there are traffic jams. But it’s not the fault of the French, it’s the fault of the Brexit,” French MP for Calais Pierre-Henri Dumont told French public radio France Info.
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Old People Watched. Old People Vote.
An estimated 17.7 million viewers watched Thursday night's hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Nielsen Company said that is second to the 20 million who saw the first committee hearing on June 9, the only other one of the eight sessions held in prime time.
Ten networks aired this past week's hearing live, down from the 11 that showed the June 9 session. The conservative network Newsmax dropped out this time.
The six daytime hearings average 11.2 million viewers, with a peak audience of 13.2 million on June 28, when ex-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified about former President Donald Trump's behavior.
An estimated 13.6 million of Thursday's viewers, or 77 percent, were age 55 and older, Nielsen said. Only 705,000 viewers were 18 to 34.
MSNBC said the 4.7 million people who watched its coverage represented the network's biggest prime-time audience since the night of the event that the committee is investigating.
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The Other Running Man: Gavin Newsome
California Gov. Gavin Newsom doubled down on his attacks of Republican governors Friday morning, this time targeting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with full-page ads in Texas newspapers criticizing the Lone Star State’s abortion ban.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom launches more ads attacking Republicans — this time in Texas
The ads take a quote from Abbott — “Our creator endowed us with the right to life. And yet … children lose their right to life every year because of abortion. In Texas, we work to save those lives.” — but crosses out the words “abortion” and “Texas” and replaces them with “gun violence” and “California.”
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Want to Gamble? Chances of Winning: 1 in 302,575,350
The Mega Millions jackpot has reached $790 million after no lottery ticket matched the winning six numbers drawn Friday night.
If You Buy 20 Tickets a Day, You Will Win on Average, Once Every 41,000 Years. Also a $790M Jackpot Gets You Less Than $300M In a Lump Sum After Taxes.
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The QOP Seems Determined to Lose Winnable Elections
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