Received this morning.
Spot the differences.



As said, who's paying for all this?

Reuters - The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said on Friday it was requiring U.S. operators of 143 Boeing Co (BA.N) 737 Classic series airplanes to check for possible wire failures stemming from an investigation into an Indonesia crash in January.

The 737 Classic is an older generation of planes more than two decades old. The FAA said the issue affected 1,041 737-300, -400 and -500 Classic series airplanes worldwide, but many are currently out of service, because of COVID-19 or other issues.

The FAA is issuing an airworthiness directive for operators to verify that the flap synchro wire, which plays a role in the operation of the aircraft’s auto-throttle system, is securely connected to a safety sensor.

The wire failure could go undetected by the auto-throttle computer on affected airplanes and pose a safety risk.

The FAA is requiring some speedier checks than had been suggested by Boeing, which said late on Friday that it was "engaged in ongoing efforts to introduce safety and performance improvements across the fleet."

The newer 737 MAX and 737 NG are unaffected by the directive.

Inspectors were conducting the first day of inspection of the Hernando de Soto Bridge when they spotted a crack in one of the beams that help keep that bridge standing.

The structural crack, as engineers call it, could have caused a disaster had it not been caught.

The beam helps to hold the span of the bridge together as 41,000 cars and trucks ride over the Hernando de Soto Bridge every day.

Can you armor your fiber so a idiot backhoe can't take it out? All important factors.

Make America Genuflect Again Trump Supporters

That's the whole point of the lights- if it's green you can go. If it's red then you don't.

But, I have two words to say on the earthing discussion: "Ground Loop"

A Black employee with the Department of Defense who was pulled over, handcuffed and arrested on charges of reckless driving, resisting arrest and eluding police should never have been stopped in the first place, a Virginia commonwealth's attorney says.

The Washington Post reported Monday that Fairfax Commonwealth’s Attorney Steve Descano dismissed all counts previously faced by Juanisha Brooks after she was pulled over by a Virginia State Police officer in early March.

During the incident, dashcam footage showed Trooper Robert Hindenlang refusing to tell Brooks why he initially pulled her over, apparently for a broken taillight, before eventually dragging her out of the vehicle and demanding she take a field sobriety test after she admitted to having one alcoholic beverage.

Shibani Balsaver parked the rented U-Haul in front of her new Hollywood apartment. It was moving day in February of 2020, and Balsaver was preparing to unload all of her belongings into her first solo apartment. She and a friend, Sheilanee Sen, would be done in a couple of hours, if everything went smoothly. Moments later, a swarm of police officers ordered the two women to exit the truck and lay on their stomachs in the middle of the street while officers searched the rental truck, according to court records.

Certainly not my favorite song, or my favorite song by Postmodern Jukebox, but a good performance nonetheless, and I certainly got the linkage.
And of course, you were pretty much limited to songs with a one word title.

Meow

For a bit of fun people can try PMJ's "All about that Bass"

Or, for even more fun, here is their youtube channel.

Certainly not my favorite song, or my favorite song by Postmodern Jukebox, but a good performance nonetheless, and I certainly got the linkage.
And of course, you were pretty much limited to songs with a one word title.

Meow

Last May, the Peoples Church and nine other Oregon churches sued the state in an attempt to override Gov. Kate Brown’s (D) “Stay Home, Save Lives” coronavirus order that capped statewide gatherings at 25 attendees. The measure did not exempt religious services. The group of churches argued that the restrictions violated their constitutional rights on freedom of religion.

Oregon has traced other coronavirus outbreaks to churches. Last June, at least 236 members of a Pentecostal church in eastern Oregon tested positive for the virus. Last month, the state’s Occupational Safety and Health agency received a complaint on an Apostolic church that allegedly failed to enforce masks and social distancing during services; at least 14 parishioners were infected, the Albany Democrat-Herald reported.

Menu from 1913 found during Liverpool cafe refurb

Alcohol killed more people in 2020 in England and Wales than in any of the previous 20 years, official data shows.

There were 7,423 deaths from alcohol misuse last year - a rise of 20% from 2019, the Office for National Statistics says.

Deaths increased from March 2020 onwards when the UK's coronavirus epidemic forced the first national lockdown.

Most deaths were related to long-term drinking problems and dependency.

Dr. Torgrimson-Ojerio decided she would try to figure out whether these anecdotes were outliers or representative of a more common phenomenon. She surveyed around 2,200 adults who said they had been exposed to tear gas in Portland last summer. In a study published this week in the journal BMC Public Health, she reported that 899 of them — more than 54 percent of the respondents who potentially menstruate — said they had experienced abnormal menstrual cycles.

Suspicions about tear gas and menstruation first came up more than a decade ago, during the Arab Spring protests, Dr. Jordt noted.

In 2011, Chile also banned the use of tear gas after a study suggested that CS gas could cause miscarriages and harm young children. Three days later, the Chilean police lifted the ban, insisting that the type of tear gas they used was perfectly safe.

Geeze, if you're not interested, or willing, to drive your own car, then for the sake of God, take the bus, or the train, or a taxi.
Where in heavens name is this world heading? Just because it's possible to do something (technologically, medically, genetically, or otherwise),
that doesn't mean that you have to do it.

But by all means, also implant chips in your brain people, so you don't have to think for yourselves any longer. Is this kind of crap the direction to where this world is heading?
In that case, I'm glad that I'm not young any longer.

A malaria vaccine shown to be 77 per cent effective in trials – the highest level ever achieved – offers hope of controlling a disease that kills an estimated 400,000 people each year, many of them children.

Adrian Hill at the University of Oxford and his colleagues hope it can be approved for use within the next two years, building on the speed and lessons learned through the rapid development of covid-19 vaccines – the researchers also work on the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine.

“With the commitment by our commercial partner, the Serum Institute of India, to manufacture at least 200 million doses annually in the coming years, the vaccine has the potential to have a major public health impact if licensure is achieved,” he told the PA news agency.

Hill hopes the vaccine will be swiftly approved following final trial results, which he expects the team to report next year.

“Malaria killed at least four times as many more people in Africa last year as covid did,” he said. “Nobody for a moment questioned whether covid should have an emergency use review and authorisation in Africa – of course it did, very quickly. So why shouldn’t a disease that firstly kills children rather than older people, certainly killed an awful lot more, be prioritised for emergency use authorisation in Africa?”

It's an Italian surname, not Asian.

Logical.....
Supertramp, The Logical Song.

... and did I mention cobalt, copper, nickel and zinc are also in short supply unless a lot more dirty mining and smelting starts soon.

Which is where we have great riches in recycling the stuff we have already mined!...

Brilliant, dig up the dumps and release more methane!

recycling the stuff we have already mined!

Also, the Jab does not stop you getting Covid.

Meanwhile, Arecibo's yearly budget had been slashed to the total insulting joke of less than just 1% of just that one 'policy' item on the past presidential ticket list...

The defence budget is more important than any NSF funded project.

It was me.
Sorry.

A report in the Telegraph says that the chances of getting blood clots (cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT)) from Covd-19 is eight times likely that getting them from a vaccination.

I gather from what is said that some deaths from Covid-19 are due to blood clots in the brain and these are of a much greater than deaths that might be due to those caused by the vaccines.

US health authorities are calling for a pause in the use of the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine, after reports of extremely rare blood clotting cases.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said it was acting "out of an abundance of caution".

It said six cases of severe blood clotting had been detected in more than 6.8 million doses of the vaccine.

The recommendation follows similar rare cases in the AstraZeneca vaccine, which has prompted some curbs in its use.

In a series of tweets, the FDA said it and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were reviewing "six reported US cases of a rare & severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the vaccine. Right now, these adverse events appear to be extremely rare".

"We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution," it said.

From the movie of the same name. Good Morning Vietnam

Technology in many respects has made our lives easier.
Unfortunately, it will always have a major flaw - human error.

Boeing Co. grounded dozens of 737 Max jets to repair an electrical flaw that emerged in recently delivered models, forcing airlines to cancel flights and line up replacement aircraft.

U.S. carriers including Southwest Airlines Co., American Airlines Group Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. parked a combined 67 of the workhorse planes Friday, about a third of the Max jets in service worldwide. The manufacturing glitch affects a subset of aircraft at 16 airlines, not the entire Max fleet, Boeing said in a statement

The UK has chosen to extend to the max the gap between the 1st and 2nd jabs. This gives the max possible number of people that have some protection, and it looks like it is working so far, as new cases are down to ~3,000/day from 60,000/day in early Jan and below 50 deaths/day from 1,200+/day in late Jan. (7 day averages)

can you quantify how much of the reduction was due solely to vaccination and not just from immunity gained from prior infection?

the numbers were already in freefall right when vaccination started, and continued to fall well before the effects of the "first jab" vaccination could be seen. if you believe the herd immunity myth from first jabs, you'd only JUST start seeing some traction recently, but it's been diving naturally for quite some time now. the UKs numbers peaked around Jan 9th, and at that time only 3% of the population had received the at least the first dose, not enough to account for the sudden drop in cases.

– December 19: The Prime Minister cancels Christmas for almost 18 million people across London and eastern and south-east England by moving them into a newly created Tier 4 for two weeks – effectively returning to the lockdown rules of November – after scientists warn of the rapid spread of the new variant VUI 202012/01.

15 February - British and Irish citizens arriving in the UK after 4.00am are required to quarantine at a government designated hotel for ten days

my only argument was against the comment that "only 1 country" could do wrong. if even ONE other country is handling things poorly, the whole argument is false. certainly more than the one country he doesn't like is having leadership/management issues regarding the pandemic. and such a comment shows clear bias. this whole thread has basically devolved into a "US bad, everyone else good" echo chamber with key players just feeding off each other LOL.

The number of newly minted and reissued billionaires soared last year, Forbes reported Tuesday in its annual ranking, a staggering accumulation of individual wealth that stands in sharp contrast to the widespread economic struggles unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual ranking swelled by 660 to 2,755 — a roughly 30 percent jump from a year ago — and 493 of them are first timers. And a staggering 7 of 8 of them are richer than they were before the pandemic. Forbes calculates net worth by using stock prices and exchange rates from March 5.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, with an estimated fortune of $177 billion, topped the list for the fourth year running. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk came in at No. 2 at $151 billion. The shares of both companies soared last year, largely contributing to both men’s net worth and causing them to toggle for the richest man title on various lists.

As a class, billionaires added about $8 trillion to their total net worth from last year, totaling $13.1 trillion. The United States had the most billionaires, at 724, extending a rapid rise in wealth that hasn’t happened since the Rockefellers and the Carnegies roughly a century ago. China, including Hong Kong and Macao, had the second highest number of billionaires: 698.

More follow up

Seven people have died from unusual blood clots after getting the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK, the medicines regulator has confirmed to the BBC.

At least, seven have been acknowledged so far.

... Just a little teaser as what is new:
* All-new F-150 Police Responder now offers enhanced top speed of 120 mph...
* New automatic four-wheel-drive mode and torque-on-demand transfer case constantly adjusts torque to front and rear wheels as needed to improve performance and handling on dry pavement, while increasing traction on wet, slick and less stable surfaces for a [b]more seamless transition between on- and off-road driving[b].

Is this:

• Starsky and Hutch?
  
• Dukes of Hazzard??
  
• Blues Brothers?
  
• Or just USA Downtown?
  

Here in the UK, we went over to using helicopters to avoid risking police officers and innocent bystanders alike from silly TV-esq car chases.

You forget 9 out of 10 chases involve gun play over here.

Italian elite unit found millions of AstraZeneca doses thought to be meant for the UK - but their destination was the EU itself

It was an extraordinary story – the European Commission had turned detective to find AstraZeneca's secret stockpile of vaccines reserved for Britain.

During a surprise raid over the weekend, an elite unit of Italian military police acting on EU orders discovered 29 million jab doses hoarded at a factory near Rome.

The discovery appeared to confirm the EU's long-held suspicion that AstraZeneca was giving the UK special treatment, secretly exporting doses to its home country while failing to deliver on contracts agreed with Brussels.

Yet, as EU officials admitted on Wednesday, the allegation, briefed to the Continental press, simply wasn't true.

In fact, most of the doses discovered in the Italian factory were destined for the EU itself, with the remainder headed for poorer countries across the world.

One former Europe minister called it possibly the "most embarrassing day in the EU's history".

Without announcement, Virtuoso Travel no longer carries Trump-branded accommodations.

A major booking agency catering to the luxury travel market has dropped all Trump-branded hotels and resorts from its elite services.

Virtuoso Travel didn’t publicly announce its change in policy, which affects all 10 hotels and resorts operated by the former U.S. president’s company. The change occurred the week of March 8.

“As of March 8, 2021, Trump Hotels are no longer part of the Virtuoso network,” said Misty Ewing Belles, managing director of global public relations for the agency. Belles did not comment on why the decision was reached.

Trump hotels were still listed on the Virtuoso website on March 9, but have since been removed.

“Virtuoso considers many variables when reviewing both existing and new network participation. Out of respect for all involved parties, and as a general policy, we do not share comments regarding our non-renewal and exit decisions,” Belles said.

The decision came 60 days after Americans watched a mob of rioters attack the U.S. Capitol in Washington, with some of them saying Trump inspired them.

My understanding is that they are supposed to request refugee status at the border or point of entry, not just illegally force their way into this country and then get around to asking.

Neither group has the right to cross our border illegally. Period.

The real border problem

He wants more more more illegals to turn into democrat voters

Doctors say in some cases, Chinese shot isn’t generating adequate antibody response

DUBAI—Health authorities in the United Arab Emirates have begun administering a third dose of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine to at least some residents, as doctors say the Chinese-made shots in some cases haven’t generated enough protective antibodies.

The U.A.E. has served as one of the primary testing grounds for the vaccine, which is manufactured by a Chinese state-owned pharmaceutical company and is a mainstay of the Gulf monarchy’s rapid immunization campaign. The vaccine is also used in Hungary, Serbia, Pakistan and elsewhere.

G42 Healthcare, the company that coordinated Sinopharm’s Phase 3 clinical trials in the U.A.E. and elsewhere in the Middle East said a “select group of people are being administered a third shot to observe the immune system response” as part of a scientific study.

It declined to say how many people are affected and why, referring reporters to the U.A.E. health authorities, who didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Can we quickly* get the COVID vaccines to all around the world?

A year into the pandemic, the virus this team are battling is familiar, but their careful daily routine is a reminder of the risk - it was last autumn that Covid-19 struck hardest in Perm, on its sweep from Moscow across the regions, and the number of sick and dead shot up.

But there is very little talk in Russia of the death toll from Covid. The full data revealed by excess mortality is not secret, but it's never highlighted, and the preliminary tally published each day by the government significantly underplays the impact.

Donald Trump's net worth dropped by about $700m to $2.3bn (£1.65bn) during his time as president, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The Covid-19 pandemic hit his fortunes hard, with Mr Trump's office buildings, branded hotels and resorts losing revenue and falling in value.

His fleet of planes and golf courses have also seen drops in their value.

Mr Trump is currently under a criminal investigation into his financial affairs and his family business.

How do we do better?

Dare I say it?
Beter late than never
Yes.

Put simply, Boris (just like Donny) dropped the ball on his watch. ;-)

A new approach to making jet fuel from food waste has the potential to massively reduce carbon emissions from flying, scientists say.

Currently, most of the food scraps that are used for energy around the world are converted into methane gas.

But researchers in the US have found a way of turning this waste into a type of paraffin that works in jet engines.

The authors of the new study say the fuel cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 165% compared to fossil energy.

This figure comes from the reduction in carbon emitted from airplanes plus the emissions that are avoided when food waste is diverted from landfill.

VTE can affect anyone regardless of age, gender, race or ethnicity

Did you know…

In the UK and worldwide, VTE is a leading cause of death and disability
Up to 20% of cancer patients develop blood clots
Globally up to 60% of blood clots occur within 90 days of hospital discharge
More people die from blood clots each year than the total number of people who lose their lives annually due to AIDS, breast cancer, and motor vehicle crashes combined.

Jesus-----terrorist?
WTF???

Come on surge! Its great for the bank account.

New audio obtained by The Wall Street Journal shows then-President Trump pressuring the lead investigator in last year's Georgia mail-in ballot audit to find fraud during a December phone call.

No, the forward momentum of the satellite is the stronger force, with gravity as the weaker force causing it to drop slightly...

The earth's gravity, for our example, acts to change the direction of travel of the satellite. Otherwise, the satellite would continue onwards on a straight line path and would no longer be a satellite.

Note that the 'change in direction' is the act of the satellite enjoying a freefall acceleration towards the earth.

As Douglas Adams beautifully explains, the trick is to enjoy that freefall but to always miss the ground...

A satellite always misses the ground due to enjoying enough orbital velocity such that as it accelerates towards the earth, it has enough perpendicular orbital motion such that the earth always remains perpendicular to that orbital motion despite the continual freefall acceleration towards the earth.

This all works beautifully for a round sphere for the earth.

A flat earth would be somewhat problematic for orbits!

Exactly.

So for example, our various artificial satellites are always falling back towards earth... Except... They have enough orbital velocity that by the time they have fallen down to earth, they are another quarter away round their merry freefall...

Cue Douglas Adams quote!

Message 2070299: With the clever trick of always missing! ;-)

The logic behind selling potatoes with soil is it helps to block out light and slow down decay and could extend usability dates from five days to 11.

I do not understand the rejection of the win-win option.

Tribalism easily could explain.

Republicans don't want you to have money to spend in stores and generate profits for small business!

Senate passes $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, including $1,400 stimulus checks, with no Republican support

Half my life's in books, written pages
Live and learn from fools and from sages

A farm in Lancashire has earned £50,000 by hiring out goats for Zoom meetings during lockdown.

Both sides are at it. Companies are selling more than they can produce, and countries (notably ours) are buying more than they need. Lots of so called "contracts" are going to be argued over by lawyers for decades to come.

The amount the government has to spend on state pensions will fall by £1.5bn by 2022, partly because of over-65s dying of Covid, forecasts suggest.
The government will also receive an extra £0.9bn from inheritance tax, partly due to Covid-related deaths.
The figures have been published by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) - the government's fiscal watchdog.
It said it had "revised up our assumption for excess deaths this year and next relative to November".
More than 144,000 deaths involving Covid-19 have occurred in the UK since the start of the pandemic, figures published by the UK's statistics agencies show.
The majority of coronavirus deaths have been among people aged over 65, many of whom will have been receiving the state pension.

"With virus-related deaths rising sharply again in recent months, we have revised up the number of excess pensioner-age deaths in 2020-21 from 90,000 in our November forecast to around 100,000 in this one," the OBR said in its Economic And Fiscal Outlook, which is published alongside the Budget.

Dark side is two words, and that the moon has one is a misnomer.

Pink Floyd album. ;-)

Cheers.

Anyone with a modicum of culture knows where it came from ;-)

I have these pedant moments, that have to be expressed.

Hey I didn't know until I started playing guitar in the 60's. Not 1960's, My 60's.

Dark side is two words, and that the moon has one is a misnomer.

Pink Floyd album. ;-)

Cheers.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur, Sudan

Add ongoing: Syria...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — “Trump needs you,” one fundraising email implored.

I guess ERCOT wasn't enough.
It's Texas Smart!

Criminally BONKERS!

Have Texas not killed enough people already?!


Stay safe folks!
Martin

Here is another following in the tire tracks of Elon Musk and Tesla:


Volvo Cars to go fully electric by 2030


If Sweden can do that, why not the rest of the world?


All on our only one planet,
Martin

(Reuters) - United Airlines Holdings Inc has ordered 25 new Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to receive in 2023 and moved up the delivery of others as it prepares to replace aging jets and meet expected post-pandemic growth in demand, the company said on Monday.

How?!

I'm referring to ANY politician. I didn't like Trump and didn't vote for him the first time around. I am also in that group of people, over 70, that are at greater risk to developing a reaction to the vaccine. The development time has been too short and IMHO too many corners were cut to get it out. I think my course of action is safest for me. If I had to go out and make a living and be in contact with the general population I might have a different opinion.

The real Covid-19 news.
I've just had my first vaccination.

Now I am really worried. Joe has promised that the vaccines are 100% safe. NOTHING is 100% safe. If, by this time next year, there have been no major side effects from taking the vaccines I may decide to get vaccinated. Meanwhile I will just stay home 90% of the time like I have done for the last 10 years. Not one outbreak of the flu in my house in over 10 years.

As of 14 February 2021, for the UK

26,823 Yellow Cards have been reported for the Pfizer/BioNTech
31,427 have been reported for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine
177 have been reported where the brand of the vaccine was not specified

Events with a fatal outcome
The MHRA has received 197 UK reports of suspected ADRs to the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in which the patient died shortly after vaccination, 205 reports for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine and 4 where the brand of vaccine was unspecified. The majority of these reports were in elderly people or people with underlying illness. Usage of the AstraZeneca has increased rapidly and as such, so has reporting of fatal events with a temporal association with vaccination however, this does not indicate a link between vaccination and the fatalities reported. Review of individual reports and patterns of reporting does not suggest the vaccine played a role in the death.

Maybe so, but what about common sense?

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has taken possession of former president Donald Trump’s tax returns and a wealth of other financial data deemed central to prosecutors’ ongoing criminal case, officials confirmed Thursday. The transfer occurred Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the former president’s last-ditch bid to shield the disclosure.

Empty spaces, what are we living for?
Abandoned places, I guess we know the score,

The World Health Organization (WHO) has called it “vaccine nationalism”, but what it really is is vaccine capitalism. Countries are rushing to outbid each other on vaccines because there is an inadequate supply, and there is inadequate supply because pharmaceutical companies are allowed not to share their inventions with the world

I suggest you read the post you refer to carefully - stay within the bounds of honouring Rush's life and works, don't divert into other areas.
There is a lot in his life that can be explored, but keep to HIS politics. If you don't agree with HIS politics you are welcome to state that you don't agree with what he said, but DON'T dive into an opposing field, just state your opposition.

This last comment has nothing to do with the late Rush Limbaugh.

We do not want this thread to degenerate into a flame war, incited by either "side". Let us respect the dead, pay tribute to him by all means giving the dead the honour they deserve and not use the thread for one's own political ends.

It hits the fan today

In response to the incident, Japan has asked all airlines using Boeing 777s with the same Pratt & Whitney 4000 engine to avoid its airspace.

Boeing said it supported Japan's decision and has recommended suspending operations of all 777s with the same engine while an investigation into the incident continues. The manufacturer says there are 69 Boeing 777s currently in service worldwide with this engine.

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), United is the only US airline flying such planes, with the others being in Japan and South Korea.

"Based on the initial information, we concluded that the inspection interval should be stepped up for the hollow fan blades that are unique to this model of engine, used solely on Boeing 777 airplanes."

The FAA is meeting representatives from the engine firm and Boeing.

The National Transportation Safety Board's initial finding is that most of the damage occurred in the right engine, where two fan blades were fractured and other blades also impacted. The main body of the aeroplane suffered only minor damage.

In 2018, the right engine of a United Airlines plane broke shortly before it landed in Honolulu. Following an investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board said the incident was caused by a full-length fan blade fracture.

United Airlines Flight 328 experienced “a right-engine failure” shortly after takeoff from Denver, the F.A.A. said on Saturday.Credit...Hayden Smith

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — As frozen Texas reels under one of the worst electricity outages in U.S. history, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has blamed grid operators and iced-over wind turbines but gone easier on another culprit: an oil and gas industry that is the state’s dominant business and his biggest political contributor.

Oil and gas built and enriched Texas, and with that its politicians, including those who became president. But none has reaped campaign contributions on the scale of Abbott, who in six years in office has raised more than $150 million from donors, more than any governor in U.S. history.

Texas’ energy interests are the biggest backers of his political rise, and he has not ruled out a White House run in 2024. More than $26 million of his contributions have come from the oil and gas industry, more than any other economic sector, according to an analysis by the National Institute on Money in Politics.

Girding power generators against fierce winter weather is essential in colder climates. In Iowa, where wind farms supply 40% of the state’s electricity, windmills have been turning all week despite temperatures that dropped to minus 17 degrees (minus 27 degrees Celsius) in Des Moines. In Texas, grid officials say they can’t speak for why power generators here don’t do the same.

A decade ago, the report on the last Texas failure listed a number of ways to winterize an oil well or a natural gas device and the estimated costs: installing a cold-weather production unit ($23,000), collecting gas vented from an injection pump to supply a heater ($675), or building a fiberglass hut to enclose the production equipment ($1,500).

Winterizing 50,000 wells — just under a third of the number of total natural gas wells active in Texas — was estimated in 2011 to cost as much as $1.75 billion, a figure that would almost certainly be higher today due to inflation. By comparison, the Texas oil and natural gas industry paid $13.9 billion in taxes and royalties last year alone, according to figures from the Texas Oil & Gas Association.

Acuitas, a tiny biotechnology firm in Vancouver, B.C., has just 30 employees and leases its labs from the University of British Columbia. The company doesn’t even have a sign on its building. Until last year, it outsourced production of only small volumes of lipid nanoparticles, fat droplets used to deliver RNA into cells, for research and a single approved treatment for a rare disease.

But now, one of Acuitas’s discoveries has become a precious commodity. A proprietary molecule called ionizable cationic lipid is a crucial piece of the mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and it is in urgent demand to produce billions of vaccine doses worldwide.

Scaling up production of formerly niche substances such as lipid nanoparticles for a global vaccine drive has been among the most complex challenges facing the Biden administration as it aims to ramp up the frustratingly slow provision of shots across the country, according to interviews with company officials and outside scientists and government reports.

On Jan. 21, the new president’s second day in office, the Biden administration issued a report that cited shortages of lipid nanoparticles among “urgent gaps” in the vaccine supply chain.

“It’s on a scale that hasn’t been done before,” said Pieter Cullis, the Canadian scientist and Acuitas chairman who is considered a godfather of lipid nanoparticle technology.

As the Manhattan district attorney’s office steps up the criminal investigation of Donald J. Trump, it has reached outside its ranks to enlist a prominent former federal prosecutor to help scrutinize financial dealings at the former president’s company, according to several people with knowledge of the matter.

The former prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, has deep experience investigating and defending white-collar and organized crime cases, bolstering the team under District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. that is examining Mr. Trump and his family business, the Trump Organization.

The investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, is focused on possible tax and bank-related fraud, including whether the Trump Organization misled its lenders or local tax authorities about the value of his properties to obtain loans and tax benefits, the people with knowledge of the matter said, requesting anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigation. Mr. Trump has maintained he did nothing improper and has long railed against the inquiry, calling it a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

(Reuters) - A laboratory study suggests that the South African variant of the coronavirus may reduce antibody protection from the Pfizer Inc/BioNTech SE vaccine by two-thirds, and it is not clear if the shot will be effective against the mutation, the companies said on Wednesday.

Be very wary of where Green Joe is leading you all.................
The great Texas climate catastrophe is heading your way.

Green energy means a less reliable power grid. Why do our leaders deny that?

In summary:

Going green is fine and good for our planet and for the health of all of us.

It is the greedy practices of the old GOP politics that poisons the wells!


Here's wishing for the people of Texas the best and the best recovery possible under the circumstances.

Stay safe folks!
Martin

Yes, that is true, it was an extraordinary weather event.
(Unless you believe that this "normally expected weather", as one poster here opined in another thread.)

But the energy sources most affected were solar and wind power, both of which were practically useless.

But the energy sources most affected were solar and wind power, both of which were practically useless.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s power grid. His indignation struck a much different tone than just a day earlier, when he told Texans that ERCOT was prioritizing residential customers and that power was getting restored to hundreds of thousands of homes.

But hours after those assurances, the number of outages in Texas only rose, at one point exceeding 4 million customers.

“This is unacceptable,” Abbott said.

By late Tuesday afternoon, ERCOT officials said some power had been restored, but they warned that even those gains were fragile and more outages were possible.

The grid began preparing for the storm a week ahead of time, but it reached a breaking point early Monday as conditions worsened and knocked power plants offline, ERCOT president Bill Magness said. Some wind turbine generators were iced, but nearly twice as much power was wiped out at natural gas and coal plants. Forcing controlled outages was the only way to avert an even more dire blackout in Texas, Magness said.

“What we’re protecting against is worse,” he said.

Still, Magness said ERCOT could not offer a firm timetable for when power might be fully restored. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Texas had requested 60 generators and that hospitals and nursing homes would get priority.

Be very wary of where Green Joe is leading you all.................
The great Texas climate catastrophe is heading your way.

Green energy means a less reliable power grid. Why do our leaders deny that?

Some of the energy sources powering the grid were knocked out by the inclement weather, most of which were facilities run by gas, coal or nuclear energy.

A Scottish care worker has revealed how she caught Covid twice within seven months.
Michelle Lamont, from Ardrossan in North Ayrshire, tested positive for the virus in April 2020.
But the 50-year-old was "stunned" when routine testing picked up the infection again in November.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/15/uk-study-finds-kent-variant-may-be-70-more-deadly

The findings from the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG), published on Friday on the government’s website, underscored concerns about how mutations may change the characteristics of SARS-CoV2 – the virus that causes COVID-19 – and alter the course of the pandemic.

NERVTAG’s report was based on a dozen studies that found the so-called Kent variant, named after the county where it was first identified, is likely 30 percent to 70 percent more deadly than other versions of the novel coronavirus in circulation.

Those studies compared hospitalisation and death rates among people infected with the B.1.1.7 variant and those infected with other strains.

Another coronavirus variant with a potentially worrying set of mutations has been detected in the UK and should be targeted in surge testing, experts have said.

The variant, known as B1525, is the subject of a report by researchers at the University of Edinburgh, who say it has been detected through genome sequencing in 10 countries including Denmark, the US and Australia, with 32 cases found in the UK so far. The earliest sequences were dated to December and cropped up in the UK and Nigeria.

The experiments Dr. Hughes-Fulford conducted on the shuttle were only the start of her yearslong examination into the effects of weightlessness on the body’s immune system and bone mass.
In addition to her work over nine days aboard the Columbia, which carried the Spacelab laboratory, she oversaw experiments on five shuttle flights (four to the Russian Space Station Mir and one to the International Space Station) and on a Russian Soyuz and two SpaceX missions (all to the international station).
Fifteen of the 29 Apollo astronauts had infections in space or soon after they returned. In her experiments, Dr. Hughes-Fulford examined how microgravity, or weightlessness, caused the suppression of T cells, the white blood cells that lead the immunological fight against disease.