The Ledes

Monday, October 7, 2024

Weather Channel: “H​urricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 3 and hurricane and storm surge watches are now posted along Florida's western Gulf Coast, where the storm poses threats of life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds and flooding rainfall by midweek. 'Milton will be a historic storm for the west coast of Florida,' the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay said in a briefing Monday morning.” ~~~

     ~~~ New York Times live updates are here for what is now a Cat 5 hurricane. 

CNN: “This year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine has been awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun for their work on the discovery of microRNA, a fundamental principle governing how gene activity is regulated. Their research revealed how genes give rise to different cells within the human body, a process known as gene regulation. Gene regulation by microRNA – a family of molecules that helps cells control the sort of proteins they make – ... was first revealed by Ambros and Ruvkun. The Nobel Prize committee announced the prestigious honor ... in Sweden on Monday.... Ambros, a professor of natural science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, conducted the research that earned him the prize at Harvard University. Ruvkun conducted his research at Massachusetts General Hospital, and is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School.”

The Wires
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The Ledes

Sunday, October 6, 2024

New York Times: “Two boys have been arrested and charged in a street attack on David A. Paterson, a former governor of New York, and his stepson, the police said. One boy, who is 12, was charged with second-degree gang assault, and the other, a 13-year-old, was charged with third-degree gang assault, the police said on Saturday night. Both boys, accompanied by their parents, turned themselves in to the police, according to Sean Darcy, a spokesman for Mr. Paterson. A third person, also a minor, went to the police but was not charged in the Friday night attack in Manhattan, according to an internal police report.... Two other people, both adults, were involved in the attack, according to the police. They fled on foot and have not been caught, the police said. The former governor was not believed to have been targeted in the assault....”

Weather Channel: “Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region. The National Hurricane Center says that 'there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.'”

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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Jun282013

The Commentariat -- June 29, 2013

Declan Walsh, et al., of the New York Times: " President Obama arrived in South Africa on Friday evening, saying he was bearing a message of 'profound gratitude' to Nelson Mandela, the stricken former leader, and that he would defer to Mr. Mandela's family on whether to visit him. After an eight-hour flight, Air Force One landed at Waterkloof Air Base, just a few miles from the Pretoria hospital where Mr. Mandela has been under intensive care with a serious lung infection for nearly three weeks, as concerns about his health have intensified in recent days despite government assurances that Mr. Mandela's condition had stabilized." ...

     ... Update: "President Obama will meet privately with members of Nelson Mandela's family Saturday afternoon.... [Obama] still plans to salute Mr. Mandela's life with a visit on Sunday to Robben Island, the prison where the iconic South African leader spent 18 years in a tiny cell."

The President's Weekly Address:

     ... The transcript is here. ...

... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "The best television coverage of President Obama's climate speech Tuesday wasn't on Fox, CNN, or even MSNBC. It was on the Weather Channel, the only network to carry the address live and to treat it as the major development that it was. Before Obama spoke, the network carried a special, 'The Science Behind Climate Change.' After the speech, the network ran more analysis, including a discussion of ways to reduce carbon emissions." This was all lost on Republicans. ...

... Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone: "By century's end, rising sea levels will turn [Miami,] the nation's urban fantasyland, into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin."

(Camille Dodero of Gawker has the backstory on the New Yorker cover.)

Ah, Love. Maura Dolan, et al., of the Los Angeles Times: "Same-sex marriages in California resumed Friday when a federal appeals court lifted a hold on a 2010 injunction, sparking jubilation among gays and cries of lawlessness from the supporters of Proposition 8. In a surprise action, a federal appeals court cleared the way, bypassing a normal waiting period and lifting a hold on a trial judge's order that declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional. The news came in a single, legalistic sentence Friday afternoon from the appeals court. 'The stay in the above matter is dissolved immediately,' the three-judge panel wrote. Gov. Jerry Brown told county clerks that they could begin marrying same-sex couples immediately...." ...

... Lisa Leff of the AP: "The lead plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned California's same-sex marriage ban tied the knot at San Francisco City Hall on Friday, about an hour after a federal appeals court freed gay couples to obtain marriage licenses for the first time in 4 1/2 years. State Attorney General Kamala Harris presided at the wedding of Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, of Berkeley, as hundreds of supporters looked on and cheered." ...

... Dorothy Wickenden of the New Yorker speaks with Jeff Toobin & Ariel Levy about this week's Supreme Court decisions. Justice Anthony Kennedy is "actually rather extreme in his views; he just has eccentric enthusiasms. Fortunately for the world, I think, one of his enthusiasms is gay rights," Toobin says:

Rick Hertzberg explains what treason is. He gets too het up about Kerry's use of the word "traitor," which I find appropriate. Webster defines traitor as "one who betrays another's trust or is false to an obligation or duty," which is exactly what Snowden did. Webster's second definition is "one who commits treason." But that aside, it's good to remember what "treason" is as others foolishly throw the term around. ...

... Dan Roberts of the Guardian: "A bipartisan group of 26 US senators has written to intelligence chiefs to complain that the administration is relying on a 'secret body of law' to collect massive amounts of data on US citizens. The senators accuse officials of making misleading statements and demand that the director of national intelligence James Clapper answer a series of specific questions on the scale of domestic surveillance as well as the legal justification for it." A facsimile of the letter is here. Good luck reading the names of some of the signers. Looks as if Tom Hanks has become a U.S. Senator.

GOP Intimidates NFL. Sandhya Somashekhar & Lenny Bernstein of the Washington Post: "Earlier this week, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius disclosed that the Obama administration was in talks with the [NFL] to help promote [ObamaCare], which enters a new phase as advocates prepare to begin enrolling millions of Americans in health insurance this fall. On Friday, Republican leaders in the Senate issued a stern warning to sports organizations not to partner with the White House on an issue marked by such 'divisiveness and persistent unpopularity.' ... NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said [in an e-mail], 'We have responded to the letters we received from members of Congress to inform them we currently have no plans to engage in this area and have had no substantive contact with the administration about [the health-care law's] implementation.'"

Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "No one will ever be able to say John Kerry didn't try hard enough. Whether he brings the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table or ultimately fails where so many have failed before him, Kerry seems a man obsessed. Currently on his fifth trip to the region since becoming secretary of state in February, he met Friday afternoon with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, just 15 hours after the two had ended marathon talks that extended well past midnight."

Dana Milbank. This guy "is full of [sh]it." Milbank runs down Darrell's fanciful efforts to bring down President Obama & members of his administration with a series of fake "scandals." Definitely worth a read.

Julia Moskin of the New York Times: "Paula Deen's ... new cookbook hit No. 1 on the best-seller list at Amazon.com, as thousands of fans ... ordered the book months before its October release. But on Friday, its publisher, Random House, said it would not publish the cookbook, and would cancel a five-book contract it signed with Ms. Deen last year.... Its cancellation came on a day when Sears, Kmart and J. C. Penney announced that they would stop selling products, including cookbooks, branded with her name. Since last week, the Food Network, Smithfield Foods, Walmart, Target, Caesars Entertainment, QVC and the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk have decided to suspend or sever ties with Ms. Deen after her admission in a legal deposition that she had used racist language in the past and allowed racist, sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic jokes in one of her restaurants."

Gail Collins: Texas Gov. Rick "Perry claimed that, in fighting for abortion rights, [State Senator Wendy] Davis, the daughter of a single mother and herself a single mother at 19 who got herself through college and Harvard Law, 'hasn't learned from her own example.' You will not be stunned to hear that Davis takes a different lesson from her story. 'The Planned Parenthood clinic on Henderson Street in Fort Worth was my sole source of health care for four to five years when I was a young adult,' she said. 'Consider a 19-year-old single mom who wants to be smarter about her family planning so she can go to school and move forward with her career. Had I not had those services available to me, I would not be standing where I am today.'" Collins illuminates what usually get short shrift in this story -- the bill was not just about curtailing abortions; it would have (or will) shut down most of the state's women's health clinics.

Local News

Kevin Murphy of Reuters: "A Kansas judge on Friday issued a temporary injunction on two parts of the state's new anti-abortion law, while upholding the majority of far-reaching measure that goes into effect Monday. Shawnee County District Judge Rebecca Crotty struck down a part of the law that forbids a waiver of the required 24-hour waiting period to be granted based on the woman's mental health. Crotty also struck down a part of the law requiring abortion providers on their websites to vouch for the accuracy and independence of the state's health department material on abortions." ...

... CW: not much of a victory for women and their healthcare providers. Pause, if you will, to think about the Kansas law. The mullahs of Brownbackistan scream freeeedom! for themselves, but they have no compunction about denying free speech rights to medical personnel. They don't want to just probe lady parts; they want to muzzle the professionals who do so honorably as part of their jobs. No matter how charitable you may try to be, it is simply impossible not to see these petty despots as dangerous, sick fucks.

News Ledes

New York Times: " Secretary of State John Kerry extended his trip to Israel a day on Saturday amid speculation that he was closing in on a deal to revive the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace talks."

AP: Hasan Rouhani, "Iran's president-elect, called his win in national elections this month a vote for change and vowed Saturday to remain committed to his campaign promises of moderation and constructive interaction with the outside world."

Comments Off

Reader Comments (3)

Another post in the maybe I'm missing something department:

There's not much to be said about the Right's rigid anti-abortion stance that has not been said before, but one thought many others have had, which I discovered to my disappointment some years ago was not original with me, is its intellectual laziness and the easy convenience of the moral cover it provides to a party that has no other moral center at all.

To hear them talk, the Right's current fundaments are supposed to be an overweening support for individual rights and a blind faith in an ideal free market, but even a cursory look shows how both beliefs are bathed and nurtured in a noxious stew of racism, self-righteousness and, one would have to conclude, sheer simple-mindedness.

Oddly enough, despite their avowed beliefs, the Right is unwilling to extend their loud support of individual rights to reproductive issues, to voting, or to a union's ability to organize. In short, government should never be intrusive except when it should be used to limit reproductive choice, voting rights or the power of people to associate freely and express themselves. Apparently, in the mind of the Right, no contradictions here.

As for faith in a "market" that seems to represent the closest the Right can imagine to a Just and Wise God--the Deus ex Machina--operating in our imperfect world, it would seem the Right would be pleased to allow market principles--the choices of multitudes of rational men and women--to operate in the reproductive sphere as well. After all, isn't the market supposed to solve all our problems? Can't its magic mechanism produce the right number of the right people without any interference from the state? But no, when it comes to human reproduction the Right wants no choice at all.

The part I'm missing is how a stance adopted and maintained in the face of all its obvious and silly contradictions could satisfy so many. I know it's attractive because it is so easy, but can't be the whole of it, can it?

No, I just don't understand it. I think and think and I still don't know what is the matter with Kansas...and Texas...and Ohio...and Wisconsin...and....maybe coming to a neighborhood hear you and me.

June 29, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterKen Winkes

@ Ken Winkes: ah yes the questions that elude comprehension.

Like; How can a judge sit with a pot of fetid stew of a law in her lap and decide that the carrots offend the freedom of speech? But the rotten meat and fungus and etc are perfectly acceptable?

Or; why do people question the security of a country being outsourced to private companies when the government itself has been outsourced to private special interests?

Or; why bother?

June 29, 2013 | Unregistered Commentercowichan's opinion

@Ken. Although the moral argument has always been the cornerstone of anti-choice groups and the intensity of purpose has been the rule, The groups may have been loud, but generally they weren't organized beyond small pockets in their local areas. The current focus on legislation is relentless. I think we have to answer the question why now? Anti-choice policies are currently widespread, formalized via legislation in the states and creeping into national legislation, and the process is organized. That kind of structure has developed in under a decade. If we look at those most invested in anti-choice policies / legislation, characteristics that define participants are majority male, white and at least middle aged. I think its an expression of desperation around the loss of power and potency, conscience or not. Ironic that their policies may actually hasten the increase of the non-white population. Ignorance or natural selection at work? Who knows. Demographics will eventually prevail.

June 29, 2013 | Unregistered CommenterDiane
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