[BREITBART] The Illinois Supreme Court on Friday refused to throw out charges against former "Empire" actor Jussie Smollett ...Cable TV actor whose primary talents seemed to be being black and being homosexual. In a bid for national attention, he paid a pair of Nigerian brothers to rough him up a little so he could claim that two large, white, MAGA hat-wearing men had shouted This is MAGA country! while thumping him at 2:30am on a bitter cold night in Chicago and throwing bleach on him, presumably to lighten him up. The story quickly unraveled, and he became a laughingstock and the poster boy for pretend victimization and attention whoredom... that accuse him of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself and rejected his effort to remove the special prosecutor in the case.
Smollett’s lawyers argued in an emergency petition that Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Toomin overstepped his authority and misinterpreted the law when he ordered the appointment of a special prosecutor. The court did not explain its decision to reject the arguments by Smollett’s lawyers.
Smollett. 37, was initially accused by Cook County prosecutors of falsely reporting to police that the alleged phony attack was real. Sixteen counts of disorderly conduct originally filed against him were dismissed and Toomin found Smollett’s first prosecution was invalid.
After another investigation by special prosecutor Dan Webb, six counts of the same charges we filed against Smollett, to which he pleaded not guilty "Wudn't me." last week.
#4
if he senses things are going south, he'll call on media allies to interview him while he cries and says he did it only because life is so hard for a gay black man. 'calling attention' to a 'larger truth' as it were.
the question is whether he has worn out his welcome with everyone or if there are still a few useful idiots around
Posted by: Bob Grorong1136 ||
03/09/2020 8:13 Comments ||
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#2
A film buff, possessed, of New Bedford,
Obsessed, lingers over his chessboard:
"A heckuva fight, black or white,
So good night...
Though it sucks that you missed Robert Redford."
[MAIL] Germany and France have been condemned by other EU members after blocking the export of medical supplies, raising the alarm among smaller countries hit by coronavirus.
Fearing a possible shortage in masks and protective equipment to fight the virus, top European Union officials are urging members to put solidarity above national interests as the disease spreads quickly across the continent.
Speaking Friday after an urgent meeting in Brussels of health ministers from the 27-country bloc, crisis management commissioner Janez Lenarcic said EU nations are entitled to restrict exports of medical equipment but warned that such decisions could compromise the EU's ability to manage the growing COVID-19 virus crisis.
[NBCNEWS] A 5.8-magnitude earthquake shook Northern California on Sunday night, jolting people just north of Sacramento all the way up to the Oregon border.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/09/2020 11:52 ||
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[Breitbart] A group of 31 women formed a topless human chain in London to protest against climate change on International Women’s Day. (Warning: explicit images.)
Members of the climate change alarmist group Extinction Rebellion (XR) took off their shirts on Waterloo Bridge, blocking traffic in an protest against the supposedly disparate impact that climate change has on women. The protestors painted slogans on their chests such as "climate rape" and "climate murder". At least it wasn't Climate Rape-Rape, right Whoopi?
A former teacher who took part in the protest, Sarah Mintram, explained the rationale behind the topless protest, saying: "It’s mainly women in poorer countries in the global south that are experiencing the increase in violence but this will be the reality for all women if the climate and ecological crisis continues to go unaddressed."
"We are here to raise the alarm about what is happening to our sisters around the world and to tell women in the UK the climate and ecological emergency is your issue ‐ it will affect you as a woman if we do not persuade our government to take urgent action starting now," Mintram told the Metro.
Extinction Rebellion cited a January 2020 report from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which claimed that climate change was responsible for violence against women in the Southern Hemisphere.
#5
Wiki - While the word hysteria originates from the Greek word for uterus, hystera (ὑστέρα), the word itself is not an ancient one, and the term "hysterical suffocation" – meaning a feeling of heat and inability to breathe, was instead used in ancient Greek medicine. The Greeks believed that the uterus moves through a woman's body, eventually strangling her and inducing disease.[3] This suggests an entirely physical cause for the symptoms but, by linking them to the uterus, suggests that the disorder can only be found in women.[4]
[NYPOST] Though coronavirus has only begun to show up in America, it’s already exposed the nation’s serious over-reliance on China for pharmaceutical production. As Washington looks to address that, it should consider killing two birds with one stone by using the issue as a chance to give Puerto Rico a leg up.
After all, the island was for decades a central hub of US drug manufacturing. It would do the commonwealth and the mainland a world of good to restore that preeminence.
About 90 percent of the active ingredients (manufactured “precursors”) used by US drugmakers now come from China. With that country’s factories largely shut down by the outbreak, America’s pharmaceutical supplies are at risk even as the virus hits here. The Food and Drug Administration fears a shortage of widely used generic drugs.
Moving to ensure some domestic capacity for future crises is a no-brainer. And boosting Puerto Rico, now struggling with a debt crisis plus hurricane and earthquake damage, should be one, too.
In the 1970s, Congress passed tax breaks for companies that set up shop in Puerto Rico. Drugmakers took advantage and soon made the island one of the world’s top pharma-production centers.
But President Bill Clinton signed a law to start phasing out the tax breaks in the 1990s. Once they expired fully in 2006, the industry began a major pullout from the island.
[Daily Mail, Where America Gets Its News] The man had coronavirus but showed no symptoms in Gamagori City, Japan
Sent home by medics and told to self-isolate and would later be taken to hospital
He told relative he was 'going to spread the virus' before taking a taxi to a bar
France records more than 1,000 coronavirus cases, death toll rises to 19
[EN.ZAMANALWSL.NET] French health authorities reported three new coronavirus deaths on Sunday, taking the country's corpse count from the outbreak to 19, as the number of reported infections also rose to 1,126 cases.
The spike in COVID-19 cases came as French President Emmanuel Macron was holding an emergency meeting Sunday to discuss the response to the outbreak.
La Belle La Belle France is currently at a coronavirus alert level 2 although officials have said it would inevitably rise to Stage 3.
On Saturday, the National Assembly announced a third coronavirus case in La Belle La Belle France’s lower house of parliament.
The National Assembly did not name the politician who recently caught the disease, but said the third case was a female parliamentarian.
A politician from the eastern Alsace region was hospitalised in intensive care on Thursday after contracting the disease and a snack bar worker in the National Assembly building had also caught the virus.
The jump in infections in La Belle La Belle France mirrored the global trend with the more than 100,000 cases worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In La Belle La Belle France, the virus has circulated with greater intensity in some areas, notably the northern Oise and the northeastern Haut-Rhin departments, where schools, nurseries and kindergartens will be shut for two weeks starting Monday.
#Italy has the second-highest #coronavirus toll in the world, after reporting a sharp jump in both deaths and number of infected people, according to an AFP count.https://t.co/X6ULsUYL7N
The number of confirmed cases of #coronavirus in the #UnitedKingdom has risen to 273, says the Department of Health and Social Care, up from 209 a day earlier, and the biggest one-day increase so far.#COVID_19https://t.co/BHM2iNFlSY
The scene outside Egypt's Ministry of Health's lab seeking coronavirus test. This situation is going to be a major stress on government's with fragile public health infrastructure. pic.twitter.com/foVUVV4eaE
Claudia Rosett: Why Is the CDC Lowballing Numbers for the Coronavirus?
[PJMedia] The CDC is America's lead agency for expertise and guidance on the Wuhan virus, so the CDC web site is where you'd look for up-to-the-minute data on this outbreak, right? Umm, nope, don't even think about it. As confirmed case numbers nation-wide soared over the weekend, the numbers posted Friday on the CDC web site didn't budge: 164 total cases, 11 deaths. No change. In CDC-world, the virus took a break over the weekend. Meantime, in the real world, the far more timely and accurate online dashboard provided by Johns Hopkins was reporting on the soaring case numbers for this virus, which by Sunday afternoon had topped 500 (more than triple the CDC's number) and 21 deaths (almost double the CDC figure).
Not exactly soaring numbers in the absolute, but definitely trending strongly upward.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/09/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
with respect to the CDC, they did a report on Friday 7 March which had numbers valid as of about noon that day
they didn't update the numbers on Saturday or Sunday because the report function is a M-F function
there was no low ball, just a lack of update
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/09/2020 2:03 Comments ||
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#11
Here's a collusion theory for you: What if the Chinese started this panic on purpose, in collusion with Democrats and the MSM, so that Trump will lose the election?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/09/2020 16:04 Comments ||
Top||
#12
I mean, who in the media would follow the story of how 80 percent of our pharmaceuticals ended up being produced in China? They'll just blame Trump.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
03/09/2020 16:07 Comments ||
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[ToloNews] Residents of the western province of Herat ...a venerable old Persian-speaking city in western Afghanistan, populated mostly by Tadjiks, which is why it's not as blood-soaked as areas controlled by Pashtuns... say they are increasingly worried by the outbreak of the coronavirus, which is affecting businesses in the province along with threatening the health of individuals.
Three positive cases of the virus have been reported by officials in Herat, and one out of the three infected persons beat feet from Herat's provincial hospital.
Officials of Herat's public health directorate said that efforts are underway to arrest the person soon.
Mohammad Asif Kabir, deputy head of Herat's public health directorate, said that the return of hundreds of Afghans from neighboring Iran ...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan, the abbreviation IRGC is a cognate form of Stürmabteilung (or SA), the term Supreme Guide is a cognate form of either Shah or Führer or maybe both, and they hate JewsZionists Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol... has also increased their concerns.
"The open border caused the transfer of the virus to Afghanistan. Many people live in Iran, and when the cases were less in Iran, we also (in Afghanistan) registered less suspected cases, and vice versa," said Kabir.
People suspected of being infected by the virus were admitted to Herat's provincial hospital.
Meanwhile, ...back at the shootout, Butch shot Black Bart's other gun out of his other hand...... Abdul Qayum Rahimi, governor of Herat province, said that they have taken serious measures to fight the virus.
"Educational centers have not opened for school yet, and will not start. Wedding halls, bathhouses, saunas--and we even told religious scholars to shut down mosques also," said Rahimi.
The outbreak of the virus also affected the local bazaars.
"When the virus came to Herat, and rumors increased, our selling decreased by 50 percent, because people were avoiding going out," said Wahid Ahmad Rasouli, a shopkeeper in Herat.
"90 percent of people are concerned about the virus. We are very concerned," said Shah Wali, a resident of Herat.
Moreover, the people implement special measures--like wearing masks and gloves-- to avoid the virus while moving around the city.
#Tunisia will seek a new loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, says its prime minister, after slashing the country’s economic growth forecast for this year due in part to the impact of the #coronavirus crisis on tourism.https://t.co/NiJFFnz1jn
S-125 Air Defense system has been deployed next to the Amuay refinery in Falcon. This is from 192GMDAA which is located about 3 miles from where they’ve been deployed. #Venezuelapic.twitter.com/lHvoJZAHPd
Top brands accused of using Chinese forced labour.
Thousands of Uighur detainees are being used in factories that supply some of the world's leading brands, such as Apple, Gap, Huawei, Nike and Sony, Australian think tank sayshttps://t.co/CUextGmjfapic.twitter.com/cfMf50BYvq
Recent satellite images from Hudong–Zhonghua Shipyard, #Shanghai, #China show the bridge & upper deck progress on the PLAN type 075 landing helicopter dock amphibious assault vessel pic.twitter.com/XK7oUmqKsC
#2
Are naval vessels becoming useless in modern warfare? If the US navy used a single building in the Washington D.C. suburbs to keep track of the location of every Soviet sub, wouldn't the developments in satellite tracking and missile development make the activity of warships in this age suspect? As we can visualize a drone air force, isn't it possible that the days of the ship-borne squid are numbered?
Given 45 days, the USPS cannot even track and provide status of book being sent to an international address. Hits the USPS international overseas office, then dead-ends in NJ.
We attempted to deliver your package at 5:43 pm on February 1, 2020 in EDISON, NJ 08837 but could not access the delivery location. We will redeliver on the next business day.
Arrived at USPS Regional FacilityJAMAICA NY INTERNATIONAL DISTRIBUTION CENTER on February 1, 2020
Local post office: "You will get your package back." $40. Refund? "No."
#4
You are confusing the postal service which has done little right in forty years with aspects of the US military which occasionally gets things right on a daily basis.
Posted by: b ||
03/09/2020 11:19 Comments ||
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#5
Good point b. I generally stay confused. Saves a lot 'spin up' time to GET confused.
[AnNahar] A "bomb-making factory" in Hong Kong with 2.6 tonnes of chemicals was raided by police on Sunday and 17 people arrested over a plot to force the city's government to close its border with mainland China.
Twenty-two properties across the Chinese territory were raided in an operation linked to the detonation of an bomb in January.
Two Hong Kong groups grabbed credit at the time, saying a shutdown of boundary crossings was needed to curb the spread of the deadly new coronavirus to the city.
Three half-built makeshift bombs each containing 1.5 kilograms (three pounds) of explosives were found on Sunday, according to Li Kwai-wah, a senior superintendent with the police's organised crime and triad bureau.
A small bomb exploded on January 27 inside a public toilet at a hospital in Hong Kong's working-class district of Sham Shui Po, and attempts were made at border checkpoints in the city's north to set off two other devices in the following week.
Li said the midnight raids ensnared what police called a "bomb-making factory" at a commercial building in Kowloon and netted 2.6 tonnes of nitrate mixture, sulfur, magnesium, sodium and other chemicals, along with six bottles of drain cleaner.
Police bomb disposal expert Alick McWhirter said officers also seized electrical circuits.
"It's not for me to speculate. However, death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate... we can say that it appears, potentially, a tragedy has been averted," McWhirter said.
Just take a pebble and cast it to the sea,
Then watch the ripples that unfold into me
My face spills so gently into your eyes
Disturbing the waters of our lives
Shreds of our memories are lying on your grass
Wounded words of laughter are graveyards of the past
Photographs are grey and torn, scattered in your fields
Letters of your memories are not real
Wear sadness on your shoulders like a worn-out overcoat
In pockets creased and tattered hang the rags of your hopes
The daybreak is your midnight, the colours have all died
Disturbing the waters of our lives,
Of our lives, of our lives, lives, lives, lives
Of our lives
#breaking From source on North Korea evacuation flight: Many nationalities onboard. Germans, French & Swiss are only ones closing down completely but most organizations & embassies have someone on the flight. Russians, Pakistanis, Cambodians, Mongolians, Egyptians, Nigerians etc.
[Business Insider] Airlines have wasted thousands of gallons of fuel running empty "ghost" flights during the coronavirus outbreak because of European rules saying operators can lose their flight slots if they keep their planes on the ground.
Demand for flights has collapsed across the globe amid growing fears about the outbreak.
Under Europe's rules, airlines operating out of the continent must continue to run 80% of their allocated slots or risk losing them to a competitor.
This has led to some operators flying empty planes into and out of European countries at huge costs, The Times of London reported.
On Thursday, UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps wrote to Airport Coordination Limited asking for the rules to be suspended during the outbreak to prevent further environmental and economic damage.
"I am particularly concerned that, in order to satisfy the 80/20 rule, airlines may be forced to fly aircraft at very low load factors, or even empty, in order to retain their slots," Shapps wrote.
"Such a scenario is not acceptable. It is not in the industry's, the passengers' or the environment's interest and must be avoided."
ACL has already suspended the rules for flights to and from Hong Kong and mainland China. However, they remain for all other flights.
h/t Instapundit
[Seattle Times] - Testing for the novel coronavirus in the Seattle area will get a huge boost in the coming weeks as a project funded by Bill Gates and his foundation begins offering home-testing kits that will allow people who fear they may be infected to swab their noses and send the samples back for analysis.
Results, which should be available in one to two days, will be shared with local health officials who will notify those who test positive. Via online forms, infected people can answer questions about their movements and contacts, making it easier for health officials to locate others who may need to be tested or quarantined, as well as to track the virus’ spread and identify possible hot spots.
Another to add to this list. We’ll see, but the ferment among researchers is certainly exciting.
[Hamodia] A group of researchers in northern Israel said Thursday they had achieved a "scientific breakthrough" in treating coronavirus. At a presser, researchers of the Migal Galilee Research Institute said that the breakthrough had come while they were doing research on coronavirus in birds. A treatment had been discovered which cured the birds infected with coronavirus, and clinical trials at Israel’s Volcani Agricultural Research Institute had confirmed the treatment’s viability.
The basic coronavirus in birds is very similar in patterns of infection and effect of the virus in humans, and the genetic structure of the virus in both humans and birds is very similar, the researchers said. As a result, the treatment developed for birds could be applicable to humans ‐ and they believed that an effective treatment could be developed for humans within three months, they said.
David Zigdon, Chief Operating Officer of the Institute, said that "there is a great need for an immediate solution to human infection of coronavirus, and we have been working to do that nonstop. The solution we are developing against COVID-19 virus has proven effective, and we believe a version for human treatment can be ready within eight to 10 weeks. That would be followed by a 90-day test period to ensure safety. The treatment we developed for birds is given orally, and the treatment we are developing for humans will also be given orally."
Director of the Institute Professor Dan Levanon said the speed with which the treatment could be used would depend on regulatory approval. "Under the current conditions in which the disease is causing terrible losses, I believe that state regulators would be very lenient in the various stages that the treatment must pass before it is approved, of course ensuring that it will do no harm via side effects and the like. Under normal conditions, approval of a treatment like this would likely take several years," he said.
[AmCouncilOfScienceAndHealth] Scientists discovered that a single mutation (i.e., a single letter change in our 3-billion-letter genome) may have doubled a person's risk of becoming infected with the 2009 pandemic strain of influenza. In other words, an individual's genetics -- particularly when it comes to genes involved with the immune system (as was the case in the flu research) -- may be just as much to blame as the microbe's genetics.
HOW AN ARTHRITIS DRUG COULD TREAT CORONAVIRUS INFECTIONS
An effective immune response must be of the proper strength and directed at an appropriate target. If these two criteria aren't met, bad things can happen, such as autoimmune disease or a lethal over-reaction to a peanut. The same is true when the immune system targets a dangerous microbe. The response must not be too weak or too strong. If it's too weak, the microbe will overcome the body; if it's too strong, the body can suffer from collateral damage.
One way collateral damage can occur is when the immune system sends out too many pro-inflammatory signals. The immune system is constantly "talking" to other parts of the immune system using chemical messengers known as cytokines. Some encourage inflammation, others discourage it. If too many pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as one called interleukin-6 (IL-6) are released, a "cytokine storm" is said to have developed.
Typically, IL-6 is deployed in order to elicit a quick response to infection and tissue injury. But if too much is produced, the entire body can undergo an inflammatory response, which can be lethal if it leads to multiple organ failure. Ultimately, it's this sort of system-wide immunological overreaction that causes people to die from septic shock. It may also be responsible for some of the deaths due to influenza and SARS.
Something similar may be happening with people who become infected with the Wuhan coronavirus and develop the disease now known as COVID-19. Perhaps they have an immunogenetic profile that, for some reason, overreacts to the virus. Thus, a drug that targets IL-6 could, in theory, help block an overreactive immune response.
And that's precisely what China has just discovered. An antibody drug that blocks IL-6 receptors (called Actemra or tocilizumab) has shown promise in treating patients in Chinese clinics. FiercePharma explains that this drug was approved by the FDA in 2017 to treat cytokine storms and in 2010 to treat rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune condition. What causes that? You guessed it: Too much IL-6.
However, it is reasonable and plausible to say cytokine dysregulation might be involved in some virulent influenza infections. In desperation, clinicians have treated patients with potent anti-inflammatory drugs, usually steroids. There is no evidence that this helps. A “cytokine storm” of a more limited nature is sometimes seen in cancer chemotherapy patients, where it is treated in its earliest stages by iv. benadryl and steroids, with some success. However in these cases, there is no infectious agent involved; even if steroids worked for influenza-induced cytokine storm, they cause a general downshift of the immune system which might allow the virus to run rampant and kill the patient via ordinary viral pneumonia. In ordinary infection-related sepsis, steroids are shown to slightly increase mortality (Crit Care Med. 1995 Aug;23(8):1430–9.) This is but one of the complicating considerations that clinicians will have to navigate during an outbreak. An isolated study showed that in children with central nervous system (brain) symptoms—an early sign of cytokine storm—due to (human, not H5N1) influenza infection, mild and controlled reduction in body core temperature (hypothermia) seems to reduce damage to brain cells as well as reducing the progression to a full-blown cytokine storm and multi-organ failure. (Pediatrics International Volume 42 Issue 2 Page 197 - April 2000.)
[DAWN] Malaysia’s palace on Sunday denied allegations of a "royal coup" in appointing the country’s prime minister after veteran leader Mahathir Mohamad resigned, saying the king used his discretionary powers prescribed in the constitution.The palace was responding to an editorial in the UK daily The Guardian this week that said Malaysia’s king, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah had overturned a democratic election result by naming Muhyiddin Yassin as prime minister despite the opposite camp claiming a majority.
Muhyiddin was sworn in last Sunday as the head of a government formed with the support of a corruption-tarnished party that was defeated in the last general election in 2018 by a multi-ethnic group.
The palace said it went beyond its "call of obligation" by meeting all politicians and the leaders of various political parties before the king arrived at his decision that Muhyiddin was the person likely to command a majority in parliament.
"It was only after this rigorous and open process of consultation, fully in accordance with the federal constitution, that his majesty exercised his discretion under the federal constitution to appoint a new prime minister," the palace, Istana Negara, said in a statement.
"Hence, by no means can this process be regarded as a "royal coup" as questionably asserted by The Guardian."
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.
...Cable TV actor whose primary talents seemed to be being black and being homosexual. In a bid for national attention, he paid a pair of Nigerian brothers to rough him up a little so he could claim that two large, white, MAGA hat-wearing men had shouted 
[NYPOST] Though coronavirus has only begun to show up in America, it’s already exposed the nation’s serious over-reliance on China for pharmaceutical production. As Washington looks to address that, it should consider killing two birds with one stone by using the issue as a chance to give Puerto Rico a leg up.
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for 
[AnNahar] A "bomb-making factory" in Hong Kong with 2.6 tonnes of chemicals was raided by police on Sunday and 17 people arrested over a plot to force the city's government to close its border with mainland China.
[Business Insider] Airlines have wasted thousands of gallons of fuel running empty "ghost" flights during the coronavirus outbreak because of European rules saying operators can lose their flight slots if they keep their planes on the ground.
