[Guardian] Egypt’s ousted former president Hosni Mubarak has died at the age of 91, weeks after undergoing surgery, state television has announced.
Mubarak ruled Egypt for 30 years until he was deposed following mass protests against his rule in 2011, during the Arab spring. He was jailed for years after the uprising, but was freed in 2017 after being acquitted of most charges.
His democratically elected successor, Mohamed Morsi, was overthrown in 2013 in a popularly backed military coup. Many see echoes of Mubarak’s style of leadership in Egypt’s current leader, the former general Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Al-Grauniad's Non-Preferred Authoritarian
Mubarak was the first of the leaders toppled in a wave of Arab uprisings to face trial. In scenes that captivated Egyptians, he appeared in a courtroom cage on a range of charges.
He was acquitted by Egypt’s highest appeals court in March 2017 of conspiring to kill protesters in the final verdict in a long-running case that originally resulted in him being sentenced to life in prison in 2012 over the deaths of 239 protesters. A separate corruption charge was overturned in January 2015.
Mubarak often appeared in a frail state during his court appearances, attending on a stretcher and wearing dark sunglasses.
[USA Today] Whitney Houston is about to appear on the concert stage again. Eight years after her death, a holographic Houston will embark on a European tour that starts in England on Tuesday. The "An Evening With Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour" includes most of her biggest hits ‐ "How Will I Know," "Saving All My Love For You" and "I Will Always Love You," along with some unexpected rarities, including a cover of Steve Winwood’s "Higher Love." Houston was found dead in 2012 in a hotel bathtub in Beverly Hills, just hours before music stars began to gather at the hotel for the annual Clive Davis pre-Grammy party.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) ‐ An Italian man suffering from frostbite and four other tourists were rescued in the Alaska wilderness after visiting an abandoned bus that has become a lure for adventurers since it was featured in the "Into the Wild" book and movie.
Alaska State Troopers say the five Italians were rescued Saturday from a camp they set up after visiting the dilapidated bus on the Stampede Trail near the interior town of Healy.
The hikers were found 13 miles from the trailhead, Trooper spokesman Tim DeSpain said. He didn’t know how far they were from the bus.
One of the hikers had frostbite to his feet and was transported to Fairbanks for treatment, DeSpain said. The hiker’s injuries are not considered life-threatening. The other four hikers were picked up by friends in Healy.
Rescuers were alerted by the hikers with a satellite-based emergency device that notified the International Emergency Response Coordination Center of a medical emergency, troopers said. That international group then notified rescuers, who reached the site by snowmobile, DeSpain said.
The rescue was the latest episode involving the bus, first made famous by Jon Krakauer’s book published in 1996 and then by Sean Penn’s 2007 film of the same name. Both fueled a lingering mystique about a young idealist, Christopher McCandless, who met his death from starvation in the bus, which is about 10 miles north of the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve.
Over the years, some hikers have been rescued and others have died while trying to retrace McCandless’ last steps.
#1
Late summer or fall hiking to the bus highly recommended. Dress accordingly, even in the summer the nights can get a bit nippy, or simply order the book from Amazon.
#5
People high in the personality trait Openness are entranced by the idiot Treadwell. To them he represents excitement and new experiences. To the rest of us he's a moron who got eaten by bears.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
02/25/2020 14:39 Comments ||
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#6
So they read the book, or seen the movie, and still went there unprepared?
Sounds like they are more Idiot that Italian.
I think I saw the movie. Not that good - the guy ate something that effectively shut down his digestive system. He could not get out because the ever or stream was too full.
In August 1992 I was flying my plane from Anchorage to NW Alaska. The weather was low and I could not fly west of Denali, so I flew up the Parks Highway and did a shortcut northwest and headed toward Tanana on the Yukon River. It was overcast and I must have been flying 700 feet above the ground. I saw the bus about 3/4 of a mile away to my right as I passed. Little did I know that McCandless was laying there in the bus, dying. That is not unusual in Alaska.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
02/25/2020 18:14 Comments ||
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[NYPOST] A Pennsylvania college student survived a roughly 80-foot plunge off a cliff near a site called Breakneck Bridge in a township called Slippery Rock, according to reports. Can't say she wasn't warned...
Jocie Van Kirk, 21, was walking with four other people when she fell Sunday afternoon near the Breakneck Bridge in McConnells Mill State Park in Lawrence County, WTAE reports.
Van Kirk was plucked from the bottom of the cliff in a rescue basket before being airlifted to a hospital in Pittsburgh. She was alert and conscious at the time, the station reports.
It’s unclear what immediately preceded Van Kirk’s fall, but the area is marked by many ledges and slippery areas, authorities told WPXI.
"If you’re not familiar with the area, you could slip and fall off a ledge or if you get too close to a ledge trying to take pictures and things like that," Slippery Rock Township Volunteer Fire Department Chief Bill Lunn told the station. "Try to pay attention to where you’re at and when in doubt, stay back a little bit." Breakneck Bridge near Slipper Rock....? "Keep your dogs on leash and do not leave the designated hiking trails." Were there danger signs as well ?
Posted by: Fred ||
02/25/2020 00:00 ||
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#5
Empowerment! Curses and purses,
Cute pictures on crags and traverses!
"Dude, spare us the sermon.
Why'd Gaya made firemen
And copters and CAT scans and surgeons?"
Little poetastic license there in the interest of, um, scansion.
A top Iranian health official has been diagnosed with coronavirus in another sign the disease may be spiraling out of control in the country. Iraj Harirchi, a deputy health minister who has been the face of the government’s campaign against the virus, said he tested positive for it late Monday, the day he gave a press briefing on efforts to combat the outbreak.
Separately, Tehran lawmaker Mahmoud Sadeghi tweeted that he had tested positive. Sadeghi is a prominent reformist who was barred from participating in the latest parliamentary elections.
Posted by: Frank G ||
02/25/2020 10:16 Comments ||
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#Pakistan begins quarantining at least 200 people near the Iranian border, officials say, as fears spiraled over the growing toll from the #coronavirus in the region amid allegations of a cover-up in #Iran.https://t.co/M2sEHG7E49
First Coronavirus Case Reported in Afghanistan
[ToloNews] Ferozuddin Feroz, minister of public health, on Monday during a press conference in Kabul confirmed the first coronavirus case in western Herat province, which borders Iran.
No wonder President Trump was furious that the State Department functionaries had deliberately and with intent flouted his direct order on the subject. One hopes they were all fired, or something nearly as attention getting, immediately thereafter — seconded to the nursing staff, perhaps.
We won’t know until we can look back after it’s all over, so all we can do is look at the definition and remember for later.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/25/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
actually over 80k as of a few hours ago
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/25/2020 0:16 Comments ||
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#2
The good news is that most reports only mention confirmed cases. Many of these (except in Wuhan and now outside of China) are now recovered. For example: Chongqing, Mainland China
Confirmed: 576
Deaths: 6
Recovered: 349
Existing: 221
Most people recover from it if they seek care.
In Iran there were 61 infections and 15 deaths as of early today (their time). We had some speculation yesterday on this. Grom thought medicine and care was being reserved for VIPs. I speculated that either the strain of the virus in Iran is particularly lethal or the population infected had a lot of people with pre-existing problems or heavy smokers or people taking drugs intravenously.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/25/2020 7:43 Comments ||
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#4
@garth, exactly right. China got little lucky in the the infections happened in big cities with at least some resources. If this becomes a rural/stone age area disease, it will be a mess. But then, that cruise ship is an unholy mess, and it's not exactly third world.
but I'm pretty sure the Diamond Princess had a lot of people in their 70s and 80s based on the typical demographics of expensive cruises and the older you are the more likely you have some sort of condition that makes you vulnerable
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/25/2020 9:23 Comments ||
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#6
Seems like something around 2% fatality (deaths vs recovered); Projects to around 30 million ultimate deaths, given 40-50% eventually catch it. Something like 1000 times more than the flu (despite what Rush Limbaugh said.) (Maybe less if report of Asians being twice as susceptible as Westerners is correct.)
Not sure how much treatment will help - I doubt a whole lot of specialty anti-viral drugs are being used, even in Chinese urban centers.
Reports from several places of vaccines having been developed, despite initial reports such would not even be possible (did not hear/do not recall why not.) Given speed of mutation of similar viruses vaccine probably would not maintain effectiveness for long (mutations might be less bad, or worse...) Scary reports that recovery does not generate immunity - wonder if that's because the re-infection is a different mutation?
#7
Maybe you all are correct that the sky is falling, but when I see simple extrapolations like the above calculations -- one-two-three ... and there-you-have-it, a gazillion! -- I tend to think of internet startup pitchmen and their billion-dollar ideas.
Maybe. Most likely not.
Case in point: the 30 million deaths calculation above using a 2% mortality rate assumption also takes as "given [that] 40-50% [will] eventually catch it."
You mean to say that 3 billion people will be exposed to this virus? 3 BILLION? Really?
#8
There is a reason they have the term cold & flu season and everything about Coronavirus fits the cold & flu pattern of spreading and such. Any extrapolated numbers that carry this into the spring are questionable.
SARS died out as warmer weather came in 2003 and it is closely related to COVID-19 but unfortunately we don't actually know why SARS died out in the warmer weather because we don't really understand this stuff. We can hope, although the spread of the infection to places in the tropics is not a good sign.
Posted by: lord garth ||
02/25/2020 12:46 Comments ||
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#10
I'm with Lex and RJS on this.
#FakeNews peddles fear. Fear sells media consumption and hinders the ability to draw conclusions without prejudice. Fear helps control.
#11
Lex, best analogue to me seems to be the 1918 influenza, which supposedly infected 1/3 of the world and had a 2.5% mortality rate. This seems to have a longer pre-symptomatic contagious period and in our far more mobile society could easily infect more than the 33% of that influenza. It's been a while since I read Barry's book on that - probably worth a re-read now.
[NYPOST] A trail runner crawled for almost 11 hours in freezing temperatures while wearing just shorts and a light shirt after breaking a leg in a remote national park in Washington.
Joseph Oldendorf told KIRO-TV that he had already run 12 miles through a snowy trail in Olympic National Forest when he slipped on ice and his tibia "completely snapped off."
"I didn’t want my family to hear I died in the wilderness. I think it’d be unbearable," Oldendorf said as he showed off gruesome wounds to his knees from his hospital bed in Seattle.
"I just figured this is my only chance ‐ I’m going to crawl all the way there."
Wearing only light running gear ‐ despite below-freezing temperatures ‐ Oldendorf crawled for almost seven hours before getting cellphone service ‐ and then another four hours to finally reach rescuers.
"I had to crawl on all fours ... after a while my knees were just raw," he said of the "rocky, snowy, dirty, wet trail."
They got so bad, he even tried putting his shoes on his knees as he crawled to "at least have some traction and a little bit of protection."
"But they’re still really messed up," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/25/2020 00:00 ||
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Wuhan University of Technology (WUT)? Yes, but probably little more than a coincidence.
[Department of Justice] The Department of Justice announced today that the Chair of Harvard University’s Chemistry and Chemical Biology Department and two Chinese nationals have been charged in connection with aiding the People’s Republic of China.
Dr. Charles Lieber, 60, Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, was arrested this morning and charged by criminal complaint with one count of making a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement. Lieber will appear this afternoon before Magistrate Judge Marianne B. Bowler in federal court in Boston, Massachusetts.
Yanqing Ye, 29, a Chinese national, was charged in an indictment today with one count each of visa fraud, making false statements, acting as an agent of a foreign government and conspiracy. Ye is currently in China.
Zaosong Zheng, 30, a Chinese national, was arrested on Dec. 10, 2019, at Boston’s Logan International Airport and charged by criminal complaint with attempting to smuggle 21 vials of biological research to China. On Jan. 21, 2020, Zheng was indicted on one count of smuggling goods from the United States and one count of making false, fictitious or fraudulent statements. He has been detained since Dec. 30, 2019.
[TheStreet] Working with health authorities in China, Gilead Sciences has initiated two clinical trials of coronavirus.
One of the studies is evaluating remdesivir in patients with confirmed disease who have developed more severe clinical complications like a requirement for supplemental oxygen. The other study is evaluating the drug in coronavirus patients who have been hospitalized but are not displaying significant manifestations of the disease.
The drug is available to patients through compassionate use requests that must be submitted by the patient's treating physician.
Gilead Sciences, Inc., is an American biotechnology company that researches, develops and commercializes drugs. The company focuses primarily on antiviral drugs used in the treatment of HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and influenza, including Harvoni and Sovaldi. Wikipedia Stock price: GILD (NASDAQ) $72.90 +3.20 (+4.59%)
Feb 24, 4:00 PM EST - Disclaimer
CEO: Daniel O'Day (Mar 1, 2019–)
Headquarters: Foster City, CA
Revenue: 22.13 billion USD (2018)
Subsidiaries: Kite Pharma, Gilead Sciences International Ltd, MORE
#3
Nothing new
Doctors in Thailand stated weeks ago they using HIV meds successfully
Remember last week they found this virus was manipulated with HIV proteins
#4
Article dedicated half (if not over half) to listing the 'mass shootings' by AR-15 style (which I take to mean scary-looking) guns. Which is both unrelatred and fails to note that all those shootings occurred in Gun Free Zones.
75 years today, AP photographer Joe Rosenthal captured what may be the most famous photograph of World War II: an image of six U.S. Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. https://t.co/KAttd29gXxpic.twitter.com/IWstrQh7Mn
#1
...SecNav James Forrestal, aboard one of the command ships offshore with the USMC leadership, watched the flag going up through binoculars. According to legend, he said, "Gentlemen, that flag means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years."
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
02/25/2020 4:25 Comments ||
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#1
I'm not an expert but I had a recent discussion with a well informed person that works in a hospital with my wife.
From what I understand the virus looks like the flu until the day before it kills you which makes it very difficult to diagnose or contain.
So someone with the virus gets on a plane and there is a chance a bunch of people onboard catch it and spread it before they even know they had anything. That is why you get these sudden bursts of infected in Italy, Iran, South Korea, etc.
So we need to:
* Find a way to recognize Cornoa vs flu so we can deal with it earlier
* Restrict/Adjust travel by plane and ship (could be everyone where masks, could be fewer on a plane, who knows)
* Wait until the spring when these sort of things tend to die off, at least until the end of fall.
[Washington Examiner] A Republican senator says it's time for the Chinese Communist Party to reveal what it knows about the new coronavirus after the country's state-run newspaper reported that the mystery illness may not have originated from a seafood market in Wuhan.
On Saturday, Sen. Tom Cotton demanded "answers" while sharing a report from the Global Times, a Chinese daily newspaper operated by the CCP, citing new research that claims the virus is transmitted from human to human and didn't originate from animals at the seafood market. Although early reports claimed the illness was spread through food such as bat soup, snakes, or pangolins, researchers now believe "patient zero," the original person with the infection, brought the disease to the Wuhan market from "another location."
The English-language Global Times confirmed the data show the infection was "introduced" to the market, adding fuel to skeptics who believe the CCP is failing to explain the full scope of the epidemic. The study was done by ChinaXiv, an "open repository for scientific researchers" who believe one infected person accelerated the virus's spread during a visit to the market.
Cotton has repeatedly challenged the prevailing narrative surrounding the coronavirus outbreak as it has infected and killed patients in countries as widespread as Iran, Italy, and Japan.
In January, the Washington Times reported that Wuhan is home to China's most advanced virus research laboratory, the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The New York Post reported Saturday that Chinese Maj. Gen. Chen Wei, the country's top expert in biological warfare, was sent to Wuhan last month to deal with the crisis.
More than 2,000 people have died, and over 75,000 have been infected since the outbreak began earlier this year. However, it is difficult to ascertain the full size and scope of the illness.
Cotton has noted on several occasions that Wuhan contains the only biosafety level 4 superlaboratory in China that deals with serious infectious diseases. The Arkansas senator has led calls to ban travel with China and on Friday told Fox News's Laura Ingraham the country's leaders were "lying to the world."
"The Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda rag finally admits what I’ve said for a month: coronavirus didn’t start in Wuhan food market. So where did it originate? Time for answers from CCP," Cotton tweeted late on Saturday.
[Reuters] With virus cases rising in Italy and several Middle Eastern countries dealing with their first infections, fears of a global pandemic sent markets into a tailspin, even as China eased curbs with no new cases reported in Beijing and other cities.
Clorox Co, a supplier of bleach and other cleaning products, was one of the top percentage gainers in the S&P 500 and one of two stocks in positive territory in the consumer staples sector, which tends to be seen as a relatively safe bet even in a weak economy.
Other outperformers in the staples sector included tissue maker Kimberly-Clark and food suppliers such as Hormel Foods, and Campbell Soup Co as investors bet on rising demand in the event consumers have to prepare to stay at home if the virus keeps spreading.
"These products are going to be more in use than others in the group given the spreading of the virus. It’s a knee-jerk reaction," said Paul Nolte, portfolio manager at Kingsview Investment Management in Chicago though he said it was too early to say whether consumers would end up stockpiling anything.
[DAWN] The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday accepted for hearing a petition to stop the Aurat March 2020, scheduled to be held on March 8, and summoned Additional Director Cybercrime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency and Deputy Inspector General Operations on February 27. Aurat March is part of the International Women's Day festivities.
The petition, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, filed by Judicial Activism Council Chairman Azhar Siddique said that "there are various anti-state parties present who are funding this Aurat March with the sole purpose of spreading anarchy amongst the masses". The lede from Dawn's coverage of last year's march read:
Passionate cries for freedom and demands for an end to patriarchy resounded through the main roads of downtown Lahore, as hundreds of women, men and transgender people marched towards Alhamra Arts Council from the Lahore Press Club to mark International Women’s Day.
The petition also termed the march "against the very norms of Islam" and that its hidden agenda is to spread "anarchy, vulgarity and hatred". Definitely un-Pakistani sentiments.
"During last year's Aurat March, women were holding placards that had objectionable messages," said Siddique.
The petition mentions that Siddique had previously submitted an application to the Capital City Police Office (CCPO) Lahore to register a first information report against the "women holding objectionable placards at the march" but police did not take any action.
He also submitted another application to enforce the Pakistain Electronic Crimes Act, 2016 and Citizen Protection (Against Online Harm) Rules, 2020 to "stop the promotion of anti-state activities such as Aurat March on social media" and another application for the promulgation of the Punjab 1.) Little Orphan Annie's bodyguard
2.) A province of Pakistain ruled by one of the Sharif brothers
3.) A province of India. It is majority (60 percent) Sikh and Hindoo (37 percent), which means it has relatively few Moslem riots.... Red Zone (Establishment and Security) Act, 2018 throughout not only Lahore but also the rest of Punjab but no action has been taken yet.
The petition requested the court to effectively promulgate the Acts mentioned in the petition to "silence the advertisement of Aurat March on social media and to regulate protests such as the Aurat March".
The LHC directed the federal government lawyer to ask for instructions from the Ministry of Interior and inform the court.
On March 8 of last year, women across Pakistain came together to participate in the Aurat March 2019.
However, some men learn by reading. A few learn by observation. The rest have to pee on the electric fence for themselves... the backlash against the march and its organisers was swift. The backlash began with a trickle of comments on Twitter and Facebook, then escalated as people began faking and doctoring images of posters to circulate them on social media and stir up further controversy.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/25/2020 00:00 ||
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#2
Butchery by any license.
Guess Wiki is ill-informed. Many mohalim are doctors or rabbis (and some are both) or cantors and are required to receive appropriate training both from the religious and medical fields.
#1
Meat is still the best energy concentrated food out there. Always will be until someone can lab make something. There is a reason our ancestors moved to a omnivore diet.
#5
Pesticides, Nicanoids, Varroa destructor (Varroa mite) and carried viruses. Unmanaged hive mite load will collapse a colony with ease.
One species of trees accounts to a blip on the global scale.
#6
All the logic in that article is that the UK doesn't grow anything there so needs to import! Import requires fuel so obviously bad...
Well a lot of my high school buddies in central Nebraska grow millions of bushels of soybeans and are quite happy to sell it to you! Seriously!
You would love their 1000 feet deep wells into the Ogallala Aquifer. They do giant Caterpillar engine generators that run on natural gas. Then they have multiple electric pumps that pump the water. It's all carefully monitored with digital controls and moistness sensors. Currently even one day of water can be very expensive, in terms of natural gas, on the huge farms. $70,000 or $80,000 per day is not uncommon. One friend is considering digging his own gas wells as natural gas is pumped only 4 miles away from his home. If he does he gets a $70,000 per watering day advantage over his competitors for your food business! That should let him buy a few thousand more acres of land...
#7
They used to do it non-electric with Chrysler Hemis modified to run on natural gas at each well and the radiators replaced with a divertor so that the well sream waters directly cooled the Hemis.
This was abandoned due to vandalism by auto geeks wanting Hemi parts... so it was easier to just put all the cat diesels in a secure place (behind barb wire) and run out electric power to big electric pumps that vandals didn't care about.
Welfare use drops to 58 percent for non-citizen households and 30 percent for native households if cash payments from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are not counted as welfare. EITC recipients pay no federal income tax. Like other welfare, the EITC is a means-tested, anti-poverty program, but unlike other programs one has to work to receive it.
Compared to native households, non-citizen households have much higher use of food programs (45 percent vs. 21 percent for natives) and Medicaid (50 percent vs. 23 percent for natives).
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.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) ‐ An Italian man suffering from frostbite and four other tourists were rescued in the Alaska wilderness after visiting an abandoned bus that has become a lure for adventurers since it was featured in the "Into the Wild" book and movie.
Late summer or fall hiking to the bus highly recommended. Dress accordingly, even in the summer the nights can get a bit nippy, or simply order the book from Amazon. 
[NYPOST] A Pennsylvania college student survived a roughly 80-foot plunge off a cliff near a site called Breakneck Bridge in a township called Slippery Rock, according to reports.
[Washington Examiner] A Republican senator says it's time for the Chinese Communist Party to reveal what it knows about the new coronavirus after the country's state-run newspaper reported that the mystery illness may not have originated from a seafood market in Wuhan.
[Reuters] With virus cases rising in Italy and several Middle Eastern countries dealing with their first infections, fears of a global pandemic sent markets into a tailspin, even as China eased curbs with no new cases reported in Beijing and other cities.
[DAWN] The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Monday accepted for hearing a petition to stop the Aurat March 2020, scheduled to be held on March 8, and summoned Additional Director Cybercrime Wing of the Federal Investigation Agency and Deputy Inspector General Operations on February 27.
