First Lady Jill Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken were slammed Wednesday for presenting a biological male from Argentina with an award for women on International Women's Day.
[Epoch Times] The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed it is investigating a not-yet-determined outbreak on a Princess Cruises’ Ruby Princess ship that sickened more than 300 people in recent days.
The agency said that 284 passengers and 34 crew members—out of about 4,000 total people—were sickened onboard the cruise between Feb. 26 and March 5. Their primary symptoms were "vomiting and diarrhea," it said, adding that the "causative agent" is currently "unknown." At this point in the article, I guessed Norovirus, but that's not "science".
The ship ultimately docked in Galveston, Texas, where CDC investigators responded to the reports of illnesses and "collected stool specimens from gastrointestinal illness cases to send to the CDC lab for pathogenic identification."
"Onboard the Feb. 26 sailing of Ruby Princess, there were a number of cases of mild gastrointestinal illness among passengers, the cause likely being the common but contagious virus called Norovirus," the cruise operator told news outlets. The CDC has not confirmed whether the rash of illnesses was caused by norovirus or something else.
Described as highly contagious by federal health agencies, norovirus causes vomiting and diarrhea. It has often caused outbreaks on cruise ships in recent years and has been sometimes dubbed the "cruise ship virus" in media reports. I had it several times when I was working (on land) and the doctor called it 'Winter Vomiting Disease'. Sometimes, both symptoms present at the same time. No vaccine for it - yet
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/09/2023 07:28 ||
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#1
Cruise ships packed with thousands of strangers, I stay away from them, but that's just me.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/09/2023 6:52 Comments ||
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#2
When I was working with CSX in 2020 there was a de-railment in Virginia next to a river. I know the engineer and conductor. There were heavy rains a few days before the accident and there was a rockslide that covered the tracks. It was night and they didn't see the rocks until too late to stop. It was an ethanol train. The two engines were the only things that left the tracks. One went in the water but all 4 caught fire. The two crew, one of whom couldn't swim, had to go in the water. Luckily it was only a short distance to the river bank. The engineer never went back to work. It's not always the railroad's fault.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/09/2023 8:38 Comments ||
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#3
A not-uncommon occurrence in the mountains. In troublesome areas, the railroads will install 'slide detector fences'. When they are hit by a slide, the nearby signals go red, and the trains stop, averting disaster.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/09/2023 9:28 Comments ||
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[Yahoo] Some of the regions in California buried under several feet of snow are now bracing for rapid melting due to forecasts of higher temperatures and heavy rain.
Another round of atmospheric rivers will be slamming much of California with tropical moisture over the coming days, washing away the snowpack that has accumulated in recent weeks forecasts show.
Up to 8 inches of rain is expected to fall on top of the piles of snow in lower elevations, which could cause flash flooding and present the risk for mudslides and rockslides with debris flow as streams as rivers rise quickly and saturated slopes are unable to hold in the extra moisture. Not just California - Western Nevada has flood watch in effect also
likely that this storm will be followed by one or two more of the wet and not as cold variety over the following 10 days
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/09/2023 00:00 ||
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[7 views]
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So mudslide season begins.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/09/2023 10:19 Comments ||
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#2
It would be very nice if California had had the foresight to build dams, reservoirs, and other ways of keeping this water in store against the next drouth.
But I know they will just let it all run into the Pacific Ocean and then whine and moan when the next drouth hits.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/09/2023 12:43 Comments ||
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#3
^ Newsom believes that everyone in the whole wide world should come to live in California but he doesn't say how he'll provide water for them and he refuses to build new reservoirs. Maybe he thinks they'll all drink sewage while he drinks wine.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/09/2023 12:55 Comments ||
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#4
Sites Reservoir has been in the planning stage since the 1950s with a more formal set of studies in the 1990s to comply with environmental laws.
It is to be built on the north west side of the Sacramento Valley. With luck, construction would start in 2025 and be complete by 2030. If constructed to current plans it would have a storage capacity of about 1,800 K acre Feet which would be about half the capacity of the Oroville Reservoir. It would help but CA actually needs about another half dozen that size.
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/09/2023 14:17 Comments ||
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#5
new dam might hurt a fish....so cant do that. Better to release water into the Pacific and complain about a drought and climate change. Also, they have successfully changed the language again...atmospheric river. A new name in the last couple of years to describe the normal winter weather storm pattern. Kinda like a bomb cyclone, etc. etc.
Droughts in California are a cyclical phenomenon. Water shortages for human beings is a CHOICE. There would be plenty with proper storage. But wasting money on woke issues is much batter I guess than building water storage.
#6
The naming of the atmospheric river wasn't arbitrary.
It was the result of better satellite imagery that allows the quantification of water vapor in a vertical column of atmosphere. When people looked at how much vapor was moving along they compared it to the amount of water in, say, the Sacramento or San Joaquin Rivers.
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/09/2023 16:49 Comments ||
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[FoxNews] Ihatehersheys.com launched after Hershey's used a transgender woman as the face of their Women's Day ad.
HeHim is milk chocolate with nuts, SheHer is milk chocolate “nutless”. Manufactured for the nice anti-woke people at the Daily Wire, who previously got into shaving supplies when Harry’s pulled similar nonsense.
#3
Since I don't watch television, I don't know if their ads feature a man pretending to be a woman or not; but that would be another reason to boycott them.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/09/2023 12:44 Comments ||
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[DW] M23 front man Lawrence Kanukya said the cease-fire agreement had come into effect as of 12 p.m. (1100 UTC). Both sides accused the other of causing the festivities.
M23 rebels
...M23 stands for March 23 Movement, also known as the Congolese Revolutionary Army. The Tutsi group was founded in 2012 as a Rwandan sock puppet, which no doubt seemed a good idea at the time, but in less than a year the Congolese army defeated them, and then Rwanda publicly stepped back in response to international pressure. M23 started acting up again in late 2021, reportedly again at Rwandan instigation...
clashed with government soldiers in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo ...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka Republic of Congo, which is much smaller and much more (for Africa) stable. DRC gave the world Patrice Lumumba and Joseph Mobutu, followed by years of tedious civil war. Its principle industry seems to be the production of corpses. With a population of about 74 million it has lots of raw material... on Tuesday, despite a cease-fire due to take effect.
Both sides accused the other of triggering the festivities.
M23 front man Lawrence Kanukya said the cease-fire agreement had come into effect as of 12 p.m. local time (1100 UTC) and that it would "open the way for direct dialogue with the Kinshasa government."
UN Secretary-General António Guterres ...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years... called on the leaders of M23 to respect the agreement.
WHAT ELSE DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE FESTIVITIES?
M23 front man Willy Ngoma told the AFP news agency that the group was defending itself after an attack from the army.
Fighting erupted on Monday in the province of North Kivu. According to hospital sources and aid workers, several civilians were left dead and injured in the violence.
Army front man Guillaume Ndjike said late on Monday that the M23 "and their sponsors from the Rwanda Defence Force" had attacked a Burundian contingent of an East African regional military force.
Ndjike said M23 had targeted a camp for displaced people and the area of Mubambairo, causing "huge damage."
WHAT IS THE M23 REBEL GROUP?
More than 600,000 people have reportedly been displaced in eastern Congo in recent months during M23's territorial advances.
Kinshasa has long accused Rwanda of providing the rebel group with support. The assessment has been shared by independent UN experts and the United States.
The M23 have captured swaths of territory in Congo since late 2021. The Tutsi-dominated rebel group had been inactive for over a decade.
In March 2022, the Angolan presidency of the African Union ...a union consisting of 53 African states, most run by dictators of one flavor or another. The only all-African state not in the AU is Morocco. Established in 2002, the AU is the successor to the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), which was even less successful... announced a new timetable for the cessation of hostilities.
#2
CEO Mary Barra. Another Bath House Barry brown-noser.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/09/2023 11:49 Comments ||
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#3
We are likely paying for the VSP.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/09/2023 12:22 Comments ||
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#4
So all the EV hype didn't save their sales. What a surprise!
Also, the latest female executive to run a company straight into the ground (Yahoo, IBM, Citicorp, etc.)
Posted by: Tom ||
03/09/2023 12:45 Comments ||
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#5
General Motors’ South Korea division will offer a similar VSP package, but workers in Canada, Mexico, Europe, and China will not, according to the memo. Whether Barra plans similarly drastic job cuts in those countries is unclear.
Just in case you are contemplating the purchase of a GM car, which I would not advise, check the sticker to see where it was made. Are you furthering the employment of a Chinaman while your fellow Americans get laid off?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/09/2023 13:02 Comments ||
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#6
Also, the latest female executive to run a company straight into the ground (Yahoo, IBM, Citicorp, etc.)
Don't forget Carlie Fiorina and Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/09/2023 13:03 Comments ||
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#7
I want to tie my HP LaserJet Pro 400 to my back bumper, then go on a road trip. Then again, it'd probably fall apart three blocks away.
The biggest wealth transfer in history isn't the Great Society or any of that stuff; it's the price those c*cksuckers at HP charge for printer cartridges.
#10
To be scrupulously fair, many a man has run the company he was given into the ground. Considerably more than women, if only because considerably more men have been given the opportunity. Thqt said, it is an unfortunate side effect of reverse discrimination that too many of those promoted only got pushed up the ladder because of merely physical factors, just as in the old days others got pushed up up for the same reason with equally dismal results.
A pox on all who judge by anything other than ability!
[DW] Canadian media had reported that China preferred to see Justin Trudeau ...hereditary prime minister of the same country that once produced McKenzie King... 's Liberal Party retain power leading Beijing to work against the Conservative Party in federal elections.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday announced the appointment of an independent special investigator who will investigate the alleged Chinese interference in Canadian elections.
Trudeau's announcement came after Canadian media, citing unidentified intelligence sources, reported on Beijing's alleged attempts to meddle in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections.
China has denied all allegations calling it "defamatory" and said that it has no interest in becoming involved with Canada's internal affairs.
The opposition Conservatives have called for an independent public inquiry into the matter, however, turning down the demand Trudeau said, "We will ask the independent special rapporteur, as one of the first tasks of their mandate, to provide the government with a recommendation as to what the appropriate next step be — whether it be an inquiry, an investigation or a judicial review — and what the scope of that work may be."
Trudeau added: "All politicians agree that the election outcomes in 2019, and in 2021, were not impacted by foreign interference. But even if it didn't change the results of our elections, any interference attempt, by any foreign actor, is troubling and serious."
Besides appointing a special investigator, Trudeau has also appointed two committees to probe potential foreign interference.
Canada's National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) will investigate and report its findings to the parliament.
TRUDEAU UNDER SCANNER
Last month, The Globe and Mail reported that China preferred Trudeau's Liberal Party stay in power rather than the Conservative Party, which is considered hostile to Beijing.
Trudeau has been under pressure after reports of China's alleged interference in elections were made public. Recent surveys have indicated that citizens expect him to respond more forcefully to alleged election interference by China.
Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has criticized the idea of a parliamentary committee being involved. He said that officials will present opposition politicians with "some information and then swear them to secrecy so they could never speak about it again."
[Daily Skeptic] Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has written to President Joe Biden to ask him to end the "absurd" ban on tennis number one Novak Djokovic from entering the United States to play at the Miami Open due to his vaccination status. Here is the letter in full.
March 7th 2023
The Honorable Joseph R. Biden
President of the United States
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Northwest Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Biden:
It has been reported that Novak Djokovic has formally applied and been denied permission from your administration to enter the United States so that he may compete at the upcoming Miami Open tennis tournament. This denial is unfair, unscientific and unacceptable. I urge you to reconsider. It’s time to put pandemic politics aside and give the American people what they want — let him play.
While Mr. Djokovic is surely a supreme competitive threat to his fellow tennis professionals, his presence in our country poses no meaningful health or public safety risk. I note that since the onset of COVID-19, Mr. Djokovic has visited the United States at least twice — including once during your presidency — without any apparent health incident. It is also not clear to me why, even by the terms of your own proclamation, Mr. Djokovic could not legally enter this country via boat. Please confirm no later than Friday March 10th 2023 that this method of travel into Florida would be permissible.
Furthermore, even as you enacted the Proclamation on air travel that remains in force to this day, your administration pointedly allowed thousands of unvaccinated migrants to enter our country through the southern border. In sum, the current ’travel ban’ as applied to Mr. Djokovic and presumably millions of other potential unvaccinated foreign visitors seems completely ungrounded in logic, common sense, or any genuine concern for the health and welfare of the American people.
Affectionately known as ’Tennis’s Fifth Grand Slam’, the Miami Open is the second most popular tennis event in the United States and routinely attracts hundreds of thousands of fans as well as premier tennis professionals from around the world. Novak Djokovic, as you surely know, is the most accomplished tennis player in history and the reigning top-ranked player in his sport. As a result of his illustrious career and philanthropic efforts, he has a strong following of loyal fans in the United States. There can be no question that his inclusion in the Miami Open would be a tremendous boon both for this treasured tournament and the tennis community at large.
The only thing keeping Mr. Djokovic from participating in this tournament is your administration’s continued enforcement of a misguided, unscientific, and out-of-date COVID-19 vaccination requirement for foreign guests seeking to visit our great country. American tennis legend John McEnroe recently termed this restriction "absurd". He was quite right to say so.
We are now three years since the onset of COVID-19, and we have learned many valuable — and often painful — lessons during that time. For one thing, it is now clear that the COVID-19 vaccines are not as effective as initially advertised. A new study in the Lancet has found that natural immunity is at least as effective as the Covid vaccines. ("Our analysis of the available data suggests that the level of protection afforded by previous infection is at least as high, if not higher than that provided by two-dose vaccination using high-quality mRNA vaccines.") Furthermore, data also suggest that exposure to COVID-19 is now significantly less likely to result in hospitalisation or fatality. Finally, not only is the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccine now in question, but recent scientific studies have identified serious potential health risks from the vaccine. Florida’s Surgeon General has issued guidance recommending against the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for males ages 18-39 years old — precisely the cohort of Mr. Djokovic.
Here in Florida, we took a leadership role in rejecting vaccination mandates. Since November 2021, it has been illegal for businesses to require their patrons to be vaccinated against COVID-19. I am proud of these efforts, which unquestionably promoted personal liberty and economic growth without exposing our citizens to any substantiated harm. Although it has taken some time, most of the rest of the world has now come to recognise COVID-19 vaccination requirements as obsolete. At present, it appears that the United States is one of only a handful of countries that requires foreign visitors to have received a COVID-19 vaccination. Indeed, in an interview on September 18th 2022, you personally declared that "the pandemic is over", and your administration has already communicated to Congress that the COVID-19 emergency will formally end on May 11th. The time has come to give up the fiction that Covid vaccines remain a necessary tool to promote public health.
Mr. Djokovic is an extraordinary tennis player who should have every right to compete in this year’s Miami Open, which will commence on March 20th. I respectfully ask you to grant his requested exemption so that he may delight and inspire tennis fans in Florida and around the Nation.
#3
But hundreds of thousands of people can cross the southern border un-vaxed. Maybe he should go to Mexico and cross.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/09/2023 8:58 Comments ||
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#4
I quit reading at the honorable
Posted by: Chris ||
03/09/2023 9:23 Comments ||
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#5
Loving all the "nobody but Trump" droolers (looking at you, CONservative treehouse) who are convinced DeSantis is an Exalted Cyclops of the Deep State.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
03/09/2023 9:28 Comments ||
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#6
I would like to see Congressional hearings on the restrictions that are still in place. Call Mayorkas back up to defend this ban. Based on the mask science reports, have Buttigieg defend the ability to mandate masks.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
03/09/2023 12:19 Comments ||
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#7
#3 Deacon Blues nails it. Unfortunately.
Posted by: Tom ||
03/09/2023 12:46 Comments ||
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[The Blaze] A Federation for American Immigration Reform study recently found that illegal immigration costs American taxpayers $151 billion annually, a 30% increase since 2017.
The study, titled "The Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2023," discovered that illegal immigrant services and benefits cost $182 billion a year. However, FAIR claimed approximately $31 billion is collected in taxes from 15.5 million illegal immigrants residing in the United States, offsetting some overall costs.
In 2017, FAIR reported that illegal immigration services placed a $116-billion burden on taxpayers per year.
The study considered education and food assistance programs that U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants are eligible to receive. It also estimated the costs of state-level programs.
According to FAIR, the most significant expense is K-12 education for migrant children, which it estimates costs taxpayers $78 billion annually. In addition, the study found that healthcare expenses, including uncompensated hospital bills, Medicaid fraud, and Medicaid for children, cost roughly $42.7 billion annually.
#1
The problem with the medicaid proposal is that it would have effectively kept me from having health care during the time period when I was only semi-employed.
The really big problem is that the democrats destroy entire industries partly to make the population that used to work in those industries easier to blackmail into voting for democrats.
You all should perhaps be working on a way to make it easier for the democrats' unwilling clients to escape the blackmail.
[Garowe] Kenya’s Ministry of Health has announced that it will expand the use of the world’s first malaria vaccine, RTS,S/AS01 (or RTS,S), in the country.
The decision to expand the use of the vaccine was announced during a stakeholder forum attended by the CS Health representative, Dr. Andrew Mulwa, in Nairobi today.
The expansion follows a recommendation from the Kenya National Immunization Technical Advisory Group (KENITAG) for use within Kenya’s lake-endemic region and the 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) recommendation for broader use of the vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high P. falciparum malaria transmission.
Kenya is one of three countries, alongside Ghana and Malawi, where the RTS, S malaria vaccine is already in use, following the 2019 start of pilot or phased introduction in parts of the country. Since then, Kenya has provided more than one million doses of the four-dose malaria vaccine to children across eight counties, and close to 400,000 children have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
"We are thrilled to announce today that more children in Kenya will be able to benefit from the life-saving protection offered by the world’s first malaria vaccine," said Susan Nakhumicha Wafula, Cabinet Secretary for Health, Kenya.
Since September 2019, Kenya’s National Vaccines, and Immunization Programme (NVIP) working collaboratively with the Division of National Malaria Program (DNMP) has provided the malaria vaccine as part of routine immunization in 26 sub-counties across eight counties in Western Kenya, namely Homabay, Kisumu, Migori, Siaya, Busia, Bungoma, Vihiga, and Kakamega.
To reach more children with the vaccine, the Ministry of Health is scaling up malaria vaccination in an additional 25 sub-counties within the eight lake-endemic counties. This has been made possible by funding from the US-based Open Philanthropy to PATH for initial expansion of vaccine use in the pilot areas of Kenya, Ghana, and Malawi through 2023, using vaccine doses donated by GSK, the manufacturer.
"In the coming years, our objective is to continue to expand malaria vaccination to other parts of the country, as more supplies of the vaccine become available," said Dr Lucy Mecca, Head of the National Vaccines and Immunisation Program (NVIP).
Phased introduction in additional countries will begin as early as late 2023. Some 12 countries in Africa have already applied for funding from Gavi to introduce the vaccine into their routine immunization programs, with more expected to follow.
The use of the RTS,S malaria vaccine has the potential to prevent millions of cases of malaria, particularly among young children in sub-Saharan Africa, where the burden of the disease is highest. Malaria is a leading cause of death among children under five in the region.
The expansion of the vaccine’s use in Kenya is a significant step forward in the fight against malaria and underscores the country’s commitment to achieving the WHO’s goal of reducing malaria cases and deaths by at least 90% by 2030.
As the world continues to grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential to remember that other diseases, like malaria, continue to pose a significant threat to global health. The expansion of the use of the RTS, S vaccine in Kenya is a reminder that, even in challenging times, progress can still be made in the fight against preventable diseases.
#4
Forget the dog to camel conversion ratio, how many Abrams to camels is what should be discussed (since previous Rantburg mass/ volume math sessions have used the ‘Abrams lump’ as a standard).
#11
I'm just saying that's pretty vague for such modern times.
Is it a ball of camels, or an asteroid 112 camels nose to tail across?
Dromedary or Bactrian? How long since they last drank?
For those of us who have been to the moon and prefer the more accurate American units, please provide the translation into Llamas, or Incan Imperial Alpaca.
Sad really.
Entire knowledge of human civilization available on our phone, and instead of learning about this, we are instead using them for numerical equation puns and memorizing pi to a thousand place.
#12
"The Bactrian camel is 10 to 11.5 feet long, 5.2 to 5.9 feet tall at shoulder height, and weighs 990 to 1,100 pounds. Meanwhile, the dromedary camel is 7.2 to 11.2 feet long, 5.9 to 6.6 feet tall at the shoulder height, and weighs 880 to 1,320 pounds."
The best research on her says she is a hair under 5’3″ and 254 lbs. but can go as high as 285 lbs. after a holiday eating binge. So, 4 to 6 Abrahms per camel depending on the Holiday season. equals between 448 and 672 camels.... thata a big asteroid
#15
"Asteroid 2023 DQ could be as wide as 270 meters, which is the combined height of over 112 Dromedary camels. NASA says it will pass Earth on Shushan Purim." J Post
#16
"Asteroid 2023 DQ could be as wide as 270 meters, which is the combined height of over 112 Dromedary camels. NASA says it will pass Earth on Shushan Purim." J Post very funny article
#19
a meteor around the size of a Pembroke Welsh Corgi and the total weight of four baby elephants struck the Earth in Texas.
Everything is bigger in Texas. Well, nearly everything.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/09/2023 15:07 Comments ||
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#20
re#19:
That implies a very high density, does it not?
(Four baby elephants in a corgi volume?)
I think this whole thing depends on the velocity of a fully laden european swallow vs an african one.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
03/09/2023 17:16 Comments ||
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#21
Questions from moonlit caravanserai...
"O Allah, what part is one camel
(or similar quadruped mammal)
Of a caravan, please?
Does the dog include fleas?
Will this system our empire entrammel?"
Posted by: Herb Panda2732 ||
03/09/2023 18:53 Comments ||
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#22
#17 for late SOTD!
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/09/2023 19:01 Comments ||
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[NPASyria] Two weeks after permitting Syrians to return to their country from The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor... , the number of arrivalshave reached 44.000 through four border crossings following the Feb. 6 earthquake.
Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey north of Idlib revealed the number of the Syrian returnees to northwest Syria from disastrous Ottoman Turkish areas through the crossing has surged to 16.685, 305 of which after obtaining a travel permit from the Ottoman Turkish authorities arrived on the day 21 after the earthquake.
The number of the Syrian arrivals who accessed northwest Syria through Bab al-Salameh border crossing up to Tuesday has reached 10.829, while 13.000 others have arrived through Jarablus crossing northeast of Aleppo, according to statistics by the crossings’ managements.
Tel Abyad crossing north of Raqqa, north Syria, said 12.000 Syrians have entered the country over the course of 23 days.
Only Syrians who live in the quake-hit provinces of Gaziantep, Kilis, Kahramanmaras, Hatay, Osmaniye, Adiyaman, Sanliurfa, Diyarbakir, Malatya, Adana, Elazig and hold the temporary protection card (Kimlik) are allowed to enter Syria.
The permit lasts at least three months and a maximum of six months. Syrian activist muppets have expressed concern that Turkey will not allow their return.
The Syrians crossing the border after the earthquake are not convinced of Turkey’s assurances. Many have made a life in Turkey for over a decade. Turkey hosts 3.7 million Syrians; over half live in the 10 quake-affected provinces close to the Syrian border.
In the homestretch before general and presidential elections this year, the Ottoman Turkish government and opposition parties have entered a race to the bottom, promising to expel ever-growing numbers of Syrians. Many refugees have ample reason to doubt that the government will make good on its promises.
Yet most Syrians have no choice but to return. Many of their homes have been destroyed, emergency shelters are overflowing, and rents elsewhere in Turkey have skyrocketed.
Many Syrians also have dead relatives to enter; at least 1.528 bodies have already been returned to Syria. "We have no other choice but to go to Syria," a man in the queue at Bab al-Hawa told the New York Times
... which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... , "but of course there is a fear that Turkey won’t allow us to return. We can’t guarantee it."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
The agency said that 284 passengers and 34 crew members—out of about 4,000 total people—were sickened onboard the cruise between Feb. 26 and March 5. Their primary symptoms were "vomiting and diarrhea," it said, adding that the "causative agent" is currently "unknown."
[Yahoo] Some of the regions in California buried under several feet of snow are now bracing for rapid melting due to forecasts of higher temperatures and heavy rain.
...formerly the Congo Free State, Belgian Congo, Zaire, and who knows what else, not to be confused with the Brazzaville Congo aka 
...Portuguese politician and diplomat, ninth Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously, he was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees between 2005 and 2015. He was the Prime Minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002 and was the Secretary-General of the Socialist Party from 1992 to 2002. He served as President of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005. In both a 2012 and 2014 poll, the Portuguese public ranked him as the best Prime Minister of the previous 30 years...
...hereditary prime minister of the same country that once produced McKenzie King...
...the occupiers of Greek Asia Minor...
