[FOX] Jack Palladino, the private investigator hired by former President Bill Clinton during his 1992 campaign to help discredit women claiming extramarital affairs with him, was reportedly on life support after being robbed Thursday outside of his San Francisco home.
Palladino, whose celebrity clients have also included Harvey Weinstein, Don Johnson, Kevin Costner, Robin Williams, Huey Newton and Snoop Dogg, fell onto the pavement outside his home when the robber grabbed his new camera from around his neck, the San Francisco Police Department said,
“There ought ta be a law against taking other people’s stuff!”
“Fuggeddit, Bub, this is San Francisco.”
according to the San Francisco Chronicle. "Fell 37 times"
He suffered a traumatic brain injury in the fall and wasn’t expected to survive, his stepson told the newspaper.
[AEON] Solitude has become a topic of fascination in modern Western societies because we believe it is a lost art — often craved, yet so seldom found. It might seem as if we ought to walk away from society completely to find peaceful moments for ourselves. Yet there is a quote I really like from the book Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World (2017) by the Canadian journalist Michael Harris:
I don’t want to run away from the world — I want to rediscover myself within it. I want to know what happens if we again take doses of solitude from inside our crowded days, along our crowded streets.
Steadily, slowly, research interest in solitude has been increasing. Note, solitude — time alone — is not synonymous with loneliness, which is a subjective sense of unwanted social isolation that’s known to be harmful to mental and physical health. In contrast, in recent years, many observational studies have documented a correlation between greater wellbeing and a healthy motivation for solitude — that is, seeing solitude as something enjoyable and valuable. But, by itself, this doesn’t prove that seeking solitude is beneficial. In science, to make such a causal statement, we’d need to isolate ’solitude’ as the only variable, while holding other alternative explanations constant. That’s a difficult challenge. In daily life, we spend time alone while also doing other things, such as working, grocery shopping, commuting, taking a walk, learning a hobby or reading a book. Arguably, with so many variations in the ways that people spend time alone, it is difficult to make a definitive statement that it is solitude per se that enhances our wellbeing.
By conducting experimental studies — in which volunteers spent time in controlled conditions in solitude or with others — a team of researchers, led by the clinical psychologist Netta Weinstein, now at the University of Reading, and me, overcame the shortcomings of the correlational research, shedding light on what solitude is really good for.
[AP] An investigation into what sickened 11 soldiers who ingested an unauthorized substance shows they drank an industrial compound found in antifreeze believing it was alcohol following a 10-day field training exercise at Fort Bliss in Texas, U.S. Army officials said Friday.
Lt. Col. Allie Payne, public affairs officer for the 1st Armored Division and Fort Bliss, said during a press conference that initial laboratory reports indicate the soldiers consumed ethylene glycol, commonly found in automotive products including engine coolant and brake fluid.
The 11 soldiers —including two who were in serious condition— were being treated at William Beaumont Army Medical Center in the border city of El Paso, Texas, where they have been since Thursday afternoon, Fort Bliss said. Two soldiers had needed critical care, but their conditions were upgraded.
One of the soldiers had to be intubated but no longer needs breathing assistance, Payne said. Up to four soldiers were expected to be released from the hospital soon.
It’s unclear why the soldiers thought what they were drinking was alcohol.
Drinking alcohol is prohibited for Army personnel who are on duty, including while in a training environment, Payne said. It’s unclear what type of disciplinary action the soldiers might face if they did consume alcohol while on duty.
Ethylene glycol is a clear, colorless and viscous liquid at room temperature. When used in antifreeze, fluorescent coloring such as yellow or green is typically added. The effects of ingesting the compound can range from euphoria to headaches and nausea or organ failure.
#1
...Which tells me that these lads saw the FTX as an opportunity to get hammered instead of honing their skills.
Which, in turn, makes me wonder why they couldn't go a week and a half without a drink.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/30/2021 11:54 Comments ||
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#2
Drinkers of ethylene glycol who have survived told me it tastes pretty good. Usual ingesters are "street inebriates". Cats have been known to lap up the fluorescent green puddles under auto cooling systems, followed not long afterward by death.
#4
I would never drink anything that doesn't come from the liquor store or grocery store. Guess that me smarter than an average soldier or cow as the case may be.
I was asked by TW to share a few thoughts on the COVID vaccine since that is a topic of intense interest both in American society and here on the Burg.
1. The current COVID vaccines are excellent. To ensure we're on the same page, a reminder that a vaccine is a way to provide protection from select viruses and bacteria. The concept is simple: we introduce an 'antigen', a snippet of protein (or protein+sugar) that cells in our immune system (known as 'antigen presenting cells') sense as 'foreign' and 'bad'. These APCs then teach our B cells (a type of lymphocyte and part of our immune system) to make antibodies when provoked in the future, and our T cells (another type of lymphocyte) to respond to that antigen in the future. If after vaccination (say to influenza) the virus then is found in our body (for example, in the lungs) our B cells make antibodies and our T cells react and enlist other parts of our immune system. That's the simplest explanation.
An antigen then is just a small portion of a protein in the virus or bacteria, what we call an 'epitope'. The more specific the epitope the better, and there are certain things about the epitope that provoke a better and more specific reaction. So it's all about generating an excellent antigen. Past efforts for every vaccine we've ever had from smallpox to today have revolved around getting that excellent antigen. We could use part of a virus or bacteria, we could use a dead virus or bacteria, or we could use a 'live attenuated', or weakened, virus, depending on what it takes to get a proper immune response. It's a time-consuming and expensive process because you don't want to generate a vaccine with an antigen that either doesn't work, or that provokes adverse reactions.
As many have read, the COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are a new type of vaccine based on 'mRNA': messenger RNA. Going back to Biology 101; DNA in our genetic code is translated into mRNA in a cell nucleus; that mRNA then goes to a ribosome where it is translated so that the ribosome builds a protein. This is how we go from genes to proteins. All the mRNA in the vaccine does is code for the antigen of interest. Cells in the body take in the mRNA and send it to ribosomes, where it encodes the translation of the antigen. Our immune system then reacts as usual. In this case the epitope is part of the 'spike protein' on coronavirus that does the work of binding a receptor on our cells. It's specific, always there, less likely to mutate in ways that wreck our vaccine, and absolutely necessary for the virus. Bingo.
One good thing about a mRNA vaccine is that the mRNA doesn't stay around long after it's been taken up by the cells. Over a couple weeks it elicits the generation of enough protein antigen to teach our immune system. Then it is degraded and generation of antigen ceases. This means that it isn't sticking around to cause problems for the future.
In addition, because we're creating a more specific antigen there is less risk of adverse reactions. Remember that a traditional vaccine (e.g., influenza, pneumococcus) uses a collected antigen (attenuated live virus, dead virus, etc.) so there's always the risk that we'll react to some part of that virus that isn't the epitope -- that is, the specific part of the virus/bacteria to which you want the immune system to react.
So a mRNA vaccine is a great idea. This is also the proof-of-concept that mRNA vaccines work. There's lots of possibilities in the future, and indeed a fair bit of the research that went into mRNA vaccines the last couple of decades came from DARPA and DoD, which wanted ways to immunize our military more quickly to various things (any veteran knows the numbers of injections they took prior to any deployment). It's also much quicker -- you can generate mRNA sequences in a day and test them in vitro in a laboratory in a week.
2. It's a well-tested vaccine. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccine phase III trials were well-run and published in high end medical journals (such as the New England Journal of Medicine) that are traditionally rigorous and good (not perfect) with their scrutiny. The numbers of patients in these trials are close to what one ordinarily does in any vaccine trial. The adverse event numbers were low and manageable. And the response is superb: > 90% protection (after two doses) from future infection is truly outstanding (for influenza vaccines, that varies from 50 to 70% year to year). That the trials were done quickly was because it was easy to generate the vaccine, and because Mr. Trump forced the FDA to move quickly (no one, no one has ever been fired at FDA for being too cautious). Recall that last May, people said we wouldn't have a vaccine until perhaps 2022 or 2023. We have it now because the vaccine makers had the incentive and the FDA got religion.
Both mRNA vaccines are two-dose vaccines. A single dose provided only 50-60% protection which was deemed insufficient for full immunity -- remember, the mRNA goes away in a couple of weeks, and for some of us that isn't enough to train our immune system. The 2nd dose fixes this problem. You'll have read that some advocates propose immunizing as many people as possible with just one dose, thus stretching the supply. While not providing as much individual protection, this strategy would get the U.S. to 'herd immunity' more quickly. It's an on-going discussion.
Bear in mind that coronavirus can mutate, and mutate quickly. It's an RNA virus; its genetic code is in a single strand of RNA as opposed to the double strand of DNA in human cells, bacteria, and some other viruses. Influenza is also a single-strand RNA virus and is well known to mutate frequently. If the RNA coding for the spike protein mutates sufficiently the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines (and any other vaccine based on the spike protein) won't work anymore -- we will have taught our immune system to watch for something that won't be there.
3. It's a well-manufactured vaccine. Because it's an mRNA, the solvent, stabilizing agents, etc. in the vial are somewhat different than for a protein antigen vaccine. It was easier to formulate, though as we've seen, it has to be kept frozen. RNA is susceptible to breakdown at room temperature. But the manufacturing process otherwise is simpler, and that led to it being available more quickly (and the vendors were subsidized to get this 'process chemistry' going up-front).
4. The anti-vaxxers will have their usual concerns; they are as wrong here as they are in general. I won't get into their neurotic arguments. Experience to date shows that the vaccine has about the same safety profile as (say) influenza vaccine. As with any vaccine, some number of people will have modest reactions (arm pain, low-grade fever, fatigue) and a very few will have a severe adverse reaction. Fortunately the two vaccines for COVID have had very few severe adverse events to date.
There is a cautionary note for both vaccines that relates to the reports of people with multiple allergies having some increased risk of an anaphylactic reaction to the COVID vaccine; this is not unexpected. There's also a concern of receiving the vaccine for people who've had COVID infection in the past, and the emerging recommendation is to wait 90 days after infection before receiving the vaccine.
5. You'll have seen in the news that other vaccines are coming. These are different from the Pfizer/Moderna mRNA vaccines. Johnson & Johnson has a vaccine nearing FDA approval that requires a single dose and does not require freezing. It's effectiveness is in the 66-75% range. That's equal in efficacy to the yearly influenza vaccine, and is adequate to help us respond to the pandemic. This vaccine uses a modified cold virus variant to deliver the mRNA for the spike protein; the virus infects cells and delivers the mRNA. It too is susceptible to COVID mutations. As a side note, this same technology was originally developed to deliver a HIV vaccine (that isn't out yet), but the technology was then used to develop a vaccine for Zika virus and now for COVID. This technology also will be around to generate new vaccines to benefit society.
6. In short: I've had the Pfizer vaccine, my family is getting the vaccine when eligible to do so, and I strongly encourage all my patients to receive the vaccine. I encourage the public at large to do so when available. You should talk with your primary care doctor about any concerns you might have, what your risks are to both the vaccine and COVID infection, and about how your overall health may influence your risks.
Full disclosure: I am a pulmonary specialist and teach medicine at the University of Chicago. My opinions here are my own.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/30/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
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#2
A lot to read, but very well done. I'll share it with my family, since you have addressed some of their concerns and pointed out cautions I of which I was unaware.
Bravo!
Posted by: Bobby ||
01/30/2021 8:31 Comments ||
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#3
"There's also a concern of receiving the vaccine for people who've had COVID infection in the past, and the emerging recommendation is to wait 90 days after infection before receiving the vaccine." I have found no evidence published supporting this recommendation. My sister, 78, came down with a mild case of COVID 27 Nov. She received dose #1 of Pfizer immunization 7 Jan. and had a sore arm for a day or so, no other ill effects. Her physician is a geriatrician with a teaching appointment at a university medical center. Her PCP's recommendation at the time was that if the patient has no ongoing symptoms of COVID, the shot is not contraindicated. Sis is on the schedule to get shot #2 within the next week or so, about 62 days after she got COVID.
#4
"There's also a concern of receiving the vaccine for people who've had COVID infection in the past
If this is a serious concern should people be tested before receiving the vaccine? It seems like mild cases would easily be overlooked or ignored without ever learning they were COVID. Or is it only severe previous infections that provoke concern?
#10
Thank you Steve W. One of the sad things these days is the utter lack of credibility doctors and scientists have these days due to the abuses of a few (Climate Change, Covid-19, etc...)
Good to have advise from someone I consider 'credible'.
#13
If we've already had a mild case of the virus (and don't know it), what are the affects of piling on with the vaccine? What is Dr. Steve's take on Hydroxychloroquine (marlaria meds)? I have taken that stuff numerous times without side effects. Took it for periods of a year overseas twice, shorter tours as well.
#15
I know better! I watch Youtube and I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express last year.
OK, maybe you should believe a real Doctor
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2021 16:58 Comments ||
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#16
I'm glad these vaccines exist, and appreciate the thoughtful and well informed commentary. Personally, I won't be getting vaccinated. At least for several years.
1. I have already had and cleared the disease. Not only do I believe that has left me naturally vaccinated, but I haven't seen any studies on the safety and efficacy of the vaccines in people who have already had the disease. That's because those studies do not exist. I don't mind waiting.
2. The risks of the disease have been grossly exaggerated. In my age group the survival rate is 99.98%. And treatment options continue to improve. That has to go into my own personal risk/reward analysis.
3. The track record of the experts has been dismal. I point to, for example, the 2 retracted hit job studies on HCL. I also point to the WHO admitting their CT guidelines for testing were producing false positives ONE HOUR after Biden was inaugurated. So, yeah, Credibility of those telling me to get vaccinated is pretty low right now. Remember when we were all going to die because there weren't enough ventilators?
4. These are still experimental agents. There are no 5 year safety studies. Not even published animal studies. Again, I'm happy to wait.
For those who are at high risk or frightened, I am thankful you now have this option.
#17
Dr Steve, you left one thing out: the mRNA vaccine is pretty specific to one set of proteins on the spike, and you did mention that, and the fact that if the virus mutates away from that protein the immunity will not be there. What you left out is: the people making the mRNA pick a protein that is vital for the virus to have in order to attach to the ACE-2 receptors, so if the virus mutates away from that protein it may no longer be viable to infect via the current route. In shor English: if it mutates to where the vaccine will not be effective, that same mutation may make the virus unable to infect humans.
[KhaamaPress] Transparency International’s 2020 Corruption Perception Index in an analytical report indicated that Afghanistan has been ranked 165 out of 180 countries on Thursday.
Afghanistan was ranked with a score of 19 out of 100 points in regards to corruption prevention, CPI ranked 180 countries by their levels of public sector corruption, According to Transparency organization.
"The index, which ranks 180 countries and territories by their perceived levels of public sector corruption according to experts and businesspeople, uses a scale of zero to 100, where zero is highly corrupt and 100 is very clean", according to the report.
"The top countries on the CPI are Denmark and New Zealand, with scores of 88, followed by Finland, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland ...home of the Helvetians, famous for cheese, watches, yodeling, and William Tell... , with scores of 85 each.
"The bottom countries are South Sudan and Somalia, with scores of 12 each, followed by Syria (14), Yemen ...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of... (15) and Venezuela ...a country in Central America that sits on an enormous pool of oil. Formerly the most prospereous country in the region, it became infested with Commies sniffing almost unlimited wealth. It turned out the wealth wasn't unlimited, the economy collapsed under the clownish Hugo Chavez, the murder rate exceeded places like Honduras and El Salvador. A significant proportion of the populace refugeed to Colombia and points south... (15)".
Welp, can't argue with those scores...
"Since 2012, 26 countries improved their CPI scores, including Greece, Myanmar and Ecuador. In the same period, 22 countries decreased their scores, including Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... , Malawi and Bosnia & Herzegovina*Twenty-two countries significantly decreased their scores, including Bosnia and Herzegovina (35), Guatemala (25), Lebanon (25), Malawi (30), Malta (53) and Poland (56)".
The watchdog reported, half of the countries have been stagnant on the index for almost a decade, and that stalled government efforts to tackle corruption.
More than two-thirds of countries have scored below 50, Transparency international highlighted integrity challenges among the highest-scoring countries in the previous year, showing that no nation is free of corruption.
The index shows that anti-corruption efforts in Afghanistan have improved somewhat since 2019. Afghanistan scored 15 out 100 in 2017 followed by 16 in 2018 and 2019 and improved its score to 19 in 2020. This improved Afghanistan’s ranking to 165 among 179 countries.
[IsraelTimes] New book interviewing Yuri Shvets and many other sources alleges Moscow rescued Trump’s businesses with laundered funds, directly tying this to ex-president’s affinity for Putin.
Trying to stir the pot even more. I mean, would you believe Russian spy, dear Reader?
Well I guess Russia FAIL 100% at that claimed goal.
Given all the things Trump accomplished that actually negatively impacted Russia in 4 years.
OPERATION MEDIA SMEAR MAGA CAMPAIGN 2021
Well it looks like the SD's and Media are "selling it" again. I guess, we should expect to see a lot of these Phony planted Anti-Trump articles leading up to the Unconstitutional Impeachment trial set in Early Feb.
The goal now is to reduce Trump's extremely high public support numbers as much as possible. In order to make the
(SD's & RINO's) congress feel safer in its continued Political Coup against Trump from making any more Anti-Deep State waves again.
#8
January 7, 1996:Jeff Stein THE BALTIMORE SUN
Yuri Shvets stepped out of his compact car onto the blacktop in front of the suburban Taco Bell restaurant somewhere in Virginia and announced with fatherly pride: "I wanted to come here because my son works here. He's saving money for a trip back home." "Home," though, isn't quite the right word for the former Russian spy. Because a year after Mr. Shvets, 42, published his acid tale of Moscow's espionage in Washington, he's no longer welcome in Russia.
[France24] China on Friday executed a former top banker accused of taking $260 million worth of bribes, other forms of corruption and bigamy, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
Lai Xiaomin, the former chairman of Huarong -- one of China's largest state-controlled asset management firms -- was put to death by a court in the northern city of Tianjin, CCTV said.
"The amount of bribes received by Lai Xiaomin was extremely large, the crime's circumstances were particularly serious and the social impact was particularly severe," CCTV quoted the Chinese Supreme People's Court, which reviewed and approved the execution order, as saying.
The report did not specify how Lai was executed, but said he was allowed to meet with close relatives before his death.
Chinese courts have a conviction rate of over 99 percent, and it is extremely rare for a death sentence to be overturned. The number of executions carried out annually is considered a state secret.
Rights group Amnesty International estimates the country is the top executioner globally, with thousands executed and sentenced to death each year.
Lai was convicted and sentenced earlier this month. The Tianjin court ruled that he had shown "extreme malicious intent" and abused his position to obtain the vast sum.
#1
Certainly is one method of culling the privileged oligarchy. Was he a friend or business associate of Hunter Biden by chance? Did Plugs instruct the Chinese to...."fire the SOB?"
#2
Just think if the USA had the PRC's court sentencing reg's...
A person could only wonder how many US Politicians, Social Media CEO's and etc.. that are in $$$bed$$$ with the PRC, would be buried by them. Once the PRC no longer has need of them.
#7
Off the pile (factcheck fail, BIDU being out of that bidness, iirc)...
Confucius say, "Biden ask, 'Why do
You Chinese all call me "Joe Baidu?"'
Xi say, 'We place order
From over your border,
And then you fulfill it... or try to.'"
[KhaleejTimes] China says it will no longer recognise the British National Overseas passport as a valid travel document or form of identification amid a bitter feud with London over a plan to allow millions of Hong Kong residents a route to residency and eventual citizenship.
The announcement by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Friday throws up new uncertainty around the plan just hours after the UK said it would begin taking applications for what are called BNO visas beginning late Sunday.
Under the plan, as many as 5.4 million Hong Kong residents could be eligible to live and work in the UK for five years then apply for citizenship. Demand soared after Beijing last year imposed a sweeping new national security law on the former British colony following months of pro-democracy protests.
An international team of World Health Organization experts has visited a hospital in Wuhan, China, that saw some of the first cases of Covid in December 2019, as part of an on-the-ground investigation into the origins of the virus that caused the pandemic.
They are also expected to visit a food market linked to one of the first cluster of cases, the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research facility with a large archive of bat coronaviruses, and the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control.
It would seem that the cat is out of the bag.
US officials in the Trump administration had suggested, without offering evidence, that the virus could have escaped from the institute.
We were never given a reason to think otherwise and it did seem to be the most logical conclusion. That the WHO is finally allowed in Wuhan might lead a cynic to think that the Chinese have sufficiently scoured the place, the building, its records, and the brains of its scientists.
Several of them died when things were most challenging over there...
Experts have said that was unlikely, and also overwhelmingly agreed that analysis of the new coronavirus’s genome ruled out the possibility that it was engineered by humans. Maybe St. Fauci could lead them on a guided tour. He seems to have a more than passing familiarity with the lab
China has strongly opposed an independent investigation it could not fully control, and on Friday the foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, insisted that the delegation was not a probe. “It is part of global research, not an investigation,” he said in Beijing.
The WHO wrote on Twitter that the team had already requested “detailed underlying data” during online meetings held during a 14-day quarantine, and in their site visits expected to interview “early responders and some of the first Covid-19 patients”.
One member of the investigating team, Peter Daszak, said those meetings had begun at the hospital on Friday.
Zhang Jixian, the director of its department of respiratory and critical care, has been cited by Chinese state media as the first to report the novel coronavirus, after treating an elderly couple whose CT scans showed differences from typical pneumonia.
“Extremely important first site visit,” Daszak wrote on Twitter. “We are in the hospital that treated some of the first known cases of Covid-19, meeting with the actual clinicians and staff who did this work, having open discussion about the details of their work.”
The group are not able to go out freely in Wuhan, and will only be able to meet people on an itinerary set by their hosts.
China is, after all, a communist country.
“The team will go out but they will be bussed to wherever, so they won’t have any contact with the community,” the WHO spokeswoman, Margaret Harris, told a briefing in Geneva on Friday. “They will only have contact with various individuals that are being organised as part of the study.”
#2
Showing up after a crime scene clean up and expecting to find something. Is like expecting the DOJ to actually investigate Atlanta, PA, AZ, etc... Voter Fraud 4 months later with any serious legal intent.
I feel, at this point the W.H.O. is only doing a Political CYA report for future funding ($$$).
Btw: I wonder if the next WHO head honcho is going to be our very own Dr. F. nominated using a little of with Mr. Joe's Taxpayer $$$$ and Mr. Bill's pocket change $$$$?
This is why Mr. Trump correctly insisted that in return for up-front funding, the vaccine makers would guarantee that the U.S. would get its shipments first, and that we'd receive vaccine in specific amounts and intervals. Mr. Trump knew what the EU would do to the vaccine makers there.
The Anglo-Swedish firm unexpectedly announced cuts in supplies to the EU last week, citing production problems at a Belgian factory, triggering a furious response from the bloc
AstraZeneca offered eight million more doses of its COVID-19 vaccine to the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... to try to defuse a row over supplies, but the bloc said that was too far short of what was originally promised, an EU official told Rooters.
The Anglo-Swedish firm unexpectedly announced cuts in supplies to the EU last week, citing production problems at a Belgian factory, triggering a furious response from the bloc.
EU officials said that meant a 60% cut to 31 million doses in the period to the end of March, a major blow for its 27-member countries which are already lagging vaccination campaigns in Israel, Britannia and the United States.
The EU official directly involved in the talks said AstraZeneca offered earlier this week to increase deliveries to possibly 39 million doses in the first quarter, but that was deemed inadequate. The size of the AstraZeneca’s offer has not previously been reported.
Under a contract agreed in August, the company should have supplied at least 80 million doses to the EU in that period, the official said, and possibly even 120 million "depending on how you read the contract".
A second EU official said in a media briefing on Wednesday that the company had proposed to supply a quarter of the agreed volume of doses through March, which in the contract amounted to a "three-digit" figure - consistent with nearly 40 million out of a total of 120 million mentioned by the first source.
AstraZeneca’s chief executive Pascal Soriot told newspapers on Tuesday the company had no legal requirement to deliver to the EU on a precise timetable, because it had only committed to supplying vaccines under a "best-effort" clause.
At a meeting with EU officials on Wednesday, Soriot repeated this and made no new offer of extra doses from the 39 millions pledged earlier in the week, the first EU official said.
NO UK DOSES
“You die so that we may live.”
To make up for the shortfall caused by problems at a factory in Belgium, EU officials asked AstraZeneca to re-route to the bloc some of the doses it manufactures in Britannia.
But Soriot said at Wednesday’s meeting that AstraZeneca had contractual arrangements with Britannia that prevented the company from diverting doses produced there to the EU, two EU officials said.
AstraZeneca did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
On Friday, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen reiterated that AstraZeneca had binding obligations and could not to make commitments with other buyers that would trump the EU’s deal.
Britannia has a contract with AstraZeneca for 100 million doses that was signed before the EU deal for at least 300 million shots.
Two officials said the EU’s contract committed it to paying 336 million euros ($406 million) to AstraZeneca, mostly to finance production of vaccines at four named factories. Two of these, run by Oxford Biomedica and Cobra Biologics, are in Britannia, while the others are in Germany and Belgium.
"Part of the money went to the UK," one of the officials said.
Asked about the EU requests, Britannia said the EU had established its own supply chains, and declined to comment on its own or the EU’s contracts with AstraZeneca.
The European Commission declined to comment.
The EU has not yet approved the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is already being used in Britannia. A decision is scheduled later on Friday.
[Defense One] Northrop Grumman said Thursday that it would walk away from a U.S. government cluster bomb contract as the company moves to distance itself from the deadly weapons commonly associated with civilian casualties. Uh huh. The sea among which the predator fish freely swim
The contract involves the "testing of cluster munition components" and is "structured to help remove cluster munitions safely," Northrop CEO Kathy Warden said on her company's quarterly earnings call on Thursday.
The company does not make cluster munitions, which are air or ground-launched bombs that contain submunitions that spread indiscriminately over a wide area. Unexploded weapons from wars decades ago are still killing civilians.
"We recognize that even supporting an area like cluster munitions for investors is of concern, because safe removal implies that at one point there was an embracing of the use of these products," she said. "When we look at our portfolio, we are going to continue to recognize, we support our government and our allies in the important work of enabling our troops to do their work, but at the same time, be thoughtful about potential human rights implications, and how these technologies may be used in the future and provides equal consideration to safeguards associated with them."
With Democrats now controlling the White House and Congress, Warden used the earnings call to tout the company’s environment, sustainability, and workforce-diversification efforts.
#1
Probably told by their gov't liaison people that a cancellation from the Administration was coming. Waive the contract termination dollars and donate them to the party.
#2
....Clearly, Ms. Warden would have NG move into means of killing the enemy in a peaceful manner.
And I would note she makes no mention of refunding all that sweet, sweet taxpayer money her company is getting on the B-21 Raider project, which will eventually be the only bomber we have specifically intended for nuclear delivery.
Just sayin'.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/30/2021 9:17 Comments ||
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#3
Woke Weapons of War guaranteed to not hurt anyone but will destroy a baby milk factory every now and then. Suggest NG hammer their remaining aluminum supplies into foil hats.
Posted by: james ||
01/30/2021 11:09 Comments ||
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#7
NG doesn't make cluster bombs; the last maker was Textron and they quit several years back.
"structured to help remove cluster munitions safely"
Sounds like they were concerned about liability claims if they didn't do their job right.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
01/30/2021 12:06 Comments ||
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#8
...means of killing the enemy in a peaceful manner.
"Lightly killed," as the Monty Pythom sketch put it.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/30/2021 12:12 Comments ||
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#9
Precisely what the soldier in the field is concerned with when employing a weapon: is my weapon compliant with "environment, sustainability, and workforce-diversification".
[National Review] The Republican Jewish Coalition on Friday once again denounced Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), calling her newly surfaced anti-Semitic conspiracy theory comments "indefensible and unacceptable."
#JewishSpaceLasers began trending on Twitter on Thursday after Media Matters unearthed a 2018 Facebook post in which Greene made unfounded claims about the cause of California’s wildfires. She alleged that the Rothschilds, a wealthy Jewish banking family that is frequently the subject of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, may have used a laser beam from space to spark a forest fire in order to profit from it.
"We rightly opposed Marjorie Taylor Greene in her primary election for Congress and proudly supported her GOP opponent, Dr. John Cowan," RJC director Matt Brooks said, according to the Times of Israel.
When RJC endorsed Cowan, Greene had already taken on a controversial reputation over her belief in the QAnon movement, which claims, among other things, that former President Donald Trump and his allies are secretly working to expose a deep-state ring of child sex traffickers. Many of the movement’s theories have anti-Semitic themes.
Brooks said he could not yet say whether the RJC would once again support whoever runs against Greene in a future primary election, as no one has announced plans to run against the freshman congresswoman who is popular in her district.
He also would not say if the group plans to call for Greene to be ousted from House committees; Earlier this week House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy named Greene to the Education Committee.
#1
Putting President Trump over the top in "Key Battleground States" didn't pan out so well. Perhaps they'll find more success in destroying a fellow Republican.
The concept of "Separation of Church and State" went where again ?
"My tribe!
NO, my TRIBE!
NOOO! MY TRIBE!"
~ Tucker Carlson
Jordan’s King Abdullah II stated on Thursday that Israel not providing vaccines to Palestinians in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip was counterproductive for the Jewish state, AFP reported.
“The Israelis have had a very successful rollout of the vaccine, however the Palestinians have not,” Abdullah told the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“You cannot vaccinate one part of your society and not the other and think that you are going to be safe,” he said via videoconference. “That is the number one lesson that COVID-19 taught us,” adding that the novel coronavirus “does not care about borders, the rich or the poor or whoever.”
“We have got to look at the practicalities and the challenges that are ahead of us, to be able to communicate with each other and realize that we are one world, one small village,” he said.
Your country could vaccinate the Paleos, your Highness...
Israel, that has already administered 4.6 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine since the start of the pandemic, has been criticized for not directly providing vaccines to the Palestinians living under PA auspices, a move that would appear to violate the principle of PA self-governance set up under the 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords.
The PA itself has made contradictory statements blasting Israel for not providing vaccines while at the same time insisting that it plans to purchase the vaccines on its own. It has signed contracts for vaccines, including from Russia, but none have arrived.
PA Foreign Minister Riad Malki told the UNSC on Tuesday that “the occupying power has not provided any vaccine to the Palestinian people under occupation to this day, insisting that it is under no obligation to do so.”
That's unclear -- who is under 'no obligation' here? If the PA wants to be treated as a state then start acting like one, and take care of your citizens yourselves.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/30/2021 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
You vaccinate the murdering b@stards, Abbey-baby. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara ||
01/30/2021 16:11 Comments ||
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#2
I thought West Bank and Gaza wrre administered by the Palestinians.
Posted by: Rambler in Virginia ||
01/30/2021 16:34 Comments ||
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#3
Under the Jooo-Grievance System™, however, they are never responsible for their own actions
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/30/2021 17:29 Comments ||
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#4
Of course the Vaccine will cause your body to generate jewish antibodies...
[California Globe] California's voters are no longer the predictable bloc that government unions have relied on for the past 2-3 decades
In the November 2020 election, California's powerful teacher's unions spent over $20 million promoting Prop. 15, which would have increased taxes on commercial properties. Other unions, mostly in the public sector, spent another $17 million to promote Prop. 15. But voters were not buying it. Prop. 15 failed.
Overall, in November 2020, California's government unions spent nearly $70 million to promote or oppose state ballot initiatives, and almost all of that spending was unsuccessful.
But it was good of them to donate such a large chunk of their members’ savings to the state economy, from there to trickle down the ordinary folks, so we should encourage them to do more or of this.
While a couple of union supported ballot propositions were approved by voters, they weren't high priorities, attracting only around $200,000 in union spending.
This result presents a paradox. Why is it that public sector unions, which collect and spend nearly $1.0 billion per year in revenue, mostly from dues, and use that money to make or break the political campaigns of nearly every member of the California State Legislature, and which in similar manner control nearly every city council, county board of supervisors, school board, and governing board of transit districts and fire districts and transportation districts; you get the picture why couldnt they impose their will on California's electorate when it came to ballot propositions in 2020?
#2
Don't have kids if you don't believe you can support their physical needs and also take the time to educate them if/when the government schools go away.
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.
[FOX] Jack Palladino, the private investigator hired by former President Bill Clinton during his 1992 campaign to help discredit women claiming extramarital affairs with him, was reportedly on life support after being robbed Thursday outside of his San Francisco home.
[AEON] Solitude has become a topic of fascination in modern Western societies because we believe it is a lost art — often craved, yet so seldom found. It might seem as if we ought to walk away from society completely to find peaceful moments for ourselves. Yet there is a quote I really like from the book Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World (2017) by the Canadian journalist Michael Harris:
by Steve White
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
