Biden administration stops half-million-acre Wyo oil and gas sale | WyoFile

President Joe Biden’s Jan. 27 order to pause oil and gas leasing on federal lands hit Wyoming on Friday as the BLM postponed the auction of 383 parcels covering almost half a million acres.

The leasing pause will enable a review that’s part of an all-government fight against “a profound climate crisis” exacerbated by the burning of fossil fuels, Biden’s order states. The BLM had scheduled the first-quarter 2021 sale of development rights on 476,506 acres for March 15 after deciding the sale would not “significantly affect the rate of change” in the environment. The agency did not say when a lease sale might be rescheduled.

The BLM’s first quarter sale last year brought in $3.4 million after energy companies leased 75 parcels covering 71,689 acres. Wyoming received about half the sale’s proceeds and will also get a share of future production royalties, if production ever occurs. The auction last year sold less than a sixth of the acreage that had been proposed for sale this March.

Source: Biden administration stops half-million-acre Wyo oil and gas sale | WyoFile

Erdoğan vows to expand fight against PKK after deaths of 13 hostages

Any excuse to gear up Turkish Genocide 2.0 again…

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More than 700 alleged supporters of Kurdish militants held following failed attempt to rescue Turkish soldiers and police

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has vowed to expand operations against the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) as the fallout from the deaths of 13 Turkish soldiers and police officers abducted by the militant group continued to reverberate at home and abroad.

The bodies of 13 victims, 12 shot in the head and one who died of a bullet wound to his shoulder, were discovered in a cave complex in Gare in Kurdish-run northern Iraq during a Turkish military operation designed to free them, officials said on Sunday. The PKK said the hostages had been killed in Turkish airstrikes.

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Where Did The Flu Go? Homebound Kids Shape A Mild Season : NPR (shift from summer vacation to winter vacation and good bye thousands of flu deaths each year)

During the 2019-2020 flu season, some 400,000 people were hospitalized for the flu, with 22,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week — just ahead of the season’s usual peak — the CDC had recorded just 165 flu-related hospitalizations since October.

“Flu has been essentially nonexistent,” Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University, said in an interview with Weekend Edition.

The mild season has benefitted from measures like masks and social distancing, he said. It helps too that, last year, a record number of people got a flu shot.

But Schaffner says there’s more to it: Kids — habitual superspreaders — are staying home.

“Children are generally thought of as having the distribution franchise for the influenza virus,” Schaffner said. “They produce much more virus, they shed more virus for longer periods of time.”

But over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, as schools went virtual and children interacted less, the chances of spreading the flu narrowed.

Source: Where Did The Flu Go? Homebound Kids Shape A Mild Season : NPR

16th Day of February – Fatcowco – (1923 – King Tutankhamun’s tomb opened)

1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun

Howard Carter (9 May 1874 – 2 March 1939) was an English archaeologist and Egyptologist.

He became world-famous after discovering the intact tomb of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh, Tutankhamun in November 1922.

1923 – Howard Carter unseals the burial chamber of Pharaoh Tutankhamun

On 16 February 1923, Carter opened the sealed doorway and confirmed it led to a burial chamber, containing the sarcophagus of Tutankhamun.

Tutankhamun’s tomb is famous because of the treasures it held intact for over three thousand years, it is the best-preserved pharaonic tomb found in the Valley of the Kings.

Source: 16th Day of February – Fatcowco