Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Superstition Galleries

Michael Stephen Wills Photography

….continued from the chapter “Reavis Ranch Autumn Sweep”

These are three galleries of photographs from my Superstition Wilderness postings. You can click on any gallery and page through the photographs.

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Cancanuri

Cannes Film Festival, 2021

ore de drum

Cannes, 2021

Doamne și domni cu papion, rochie lungă și ecuson se îndreaptă hotărâți într-o singură direcție, spre Palat. Soarele încă n-a apus, dar simți briza înserării. Așa începe scurtul moment pe care l-am petrecut în tumultul festivalului de film care anul acesta a fost aerisit, deși canicular.

M-am plimbat pe străzi, m-am fofilat până la covorul roșu,

am admirat ținute vestimentare și am vânat rumori.

Am privit la curioșii care așteptau răbdători dincolo de gardurile de protecție din preajma hotelurilor unde sunt cazate starurile,

în speranta de a ochi vreuna în hol,

pe terasă ori la ieșire.

Pe firul apei erau improvizate săli de protocol sau ateliere

și, nu doar pentru festival, ci pe toată durata verii,

o bibliotecă gratuită pentru însetații de lectură.

Șarmantul și lăudabilul muzeu de artă al urbei, gazda primelor ediții festivaliere, fusese rechiziționat pentru una din secțiuni.

Perfect integrată pe orizontul maritim, a poposit…

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Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds – Yale E360 – (Me: Grotesque and greedy gutting on the earth)

Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.

Explicit subsidies accounted for only 8 percent of the total. The remaining 92 percent were implicit subsidies, which took the form of tax breaks or, to a much larger degree, the fact that health and environmental damages that were largely not priced into the cost of fossil fuels, according to the analysis.

“Underpricing leads to overconsumption of fossil fuels, which accelerates global warming and exacerbates domestic environmental problems including losses to human life from local air pollution and excessive and road congestion and accidents,” authors wrote. “This has long been recognized, but globally countries are still a long way from getting energy prices right.”

The report found that 47 percent of natural gas and 99 percent of coal is priced at less than half its true cost, and that just five countries — China, the United States, Russia, India, and Japan — account for two-thirds of subsidies globally. All five countries belong to the G20, which in 2009 agreed to phase out “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies “over the medium term.”

Source: Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds – Yale E360

Do I Still Need a Pulse Oximeter at Home to Monitor Covid-19? – The New York Times

Ned Hamson's Second Line View of the News

New research from South Africa shows that using a pulse oximeter to check oxygen levels after a Covid diagnosis really does save lives. For the study, 8,115 high-risk patients were given a pulse oximeter to use at home after Covid-19 was diagnosed. The study focused on the highest-risk patients, including older people, those who were pregnant or those with chronic illnesses like heart disease, hypertension or diabetes.

After a Covid diagnosis, the patients were given a pulse oximeter and received a follow-up call to make sure they were using it correctly. They were asked to record their oxygen saturation and heart rate twice a day, and instructed to call a doctor if the reading started to drop below 95 percent.

If the reading fell below 90 percent, they were instructed to go to the emergency room. And all the patients were told to seek emergency care if they had difficulty…

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Do I Still Need a Pulse Oximeter at Home to Monitor Covid-19? – The New York Times

New research from South Africa shows that using a pulse oximeter to check oxygen levels after a Covid diagnosis really does save lives. For the study, 8,115 high-risk patients were given a pulse oximeter to use at home after Covid-19 was diagnosed. The study focused on the highest-risk patients, including older people, those who were pregnant or those with chronic illnesses like heart disease, hypertension or diabetes.

After a Covid diagnosis, the patients were given a pulse oximeter and received a follow-up call to make sure they were using it correctly. They were asked to record their oxygen saturation and heart rate twice a day, and instructed to call a doctor if the reading started to drop below 95 percent.

If the reading fell below 90 percent, they were instructed to go to the emergency room. And all the patients were told to seek emergency care if they had difficulty breathing, regardless of the number on the device.

The study group was then compared with about 30,000 patients in the general population who were seen by doctors across the country between March and October of 2020. During the study period, 544 people (out of 38,660 patients) died from Covid-19, including 49 in the study group.

But the risk of dying was 52 percent lower among the patients who had been instructed to monitor their oxygen at home. Based on the overall mortality rate, it was expected that 95 people in the study group would have died. But using a pulse oximeter appears to have saved the lives of 46 people.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Biden changes student loans program

The Education Department on Wednesday announced a sweeping overhaul to the loan forgiveness program that will immediately erase the debt of 22,000 borrowers to the tune of $1.7 billion. The government estimated another 27,000 borrowers could see about $2.8 billion in debts forgiven if they prove they were employed in an eligible job.  

The changes are designed to let borrowers correct errors and count payments they were trying to make toward the program. That should shorten the amount of time more than 550,000 borrowers – those who have already consolidated their loans – are required to make payments to qualify for forgiveness, the government said.

The redesign of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program is President Joe Biden’s latest effort to address the nation’s growing $1.7 trillion in student loan debt and ease the burden of struggling borrowers.

Source: Public Service Loan Forgiveness: Biden changes student loans program

Michael Holding says people must ‘call out’ and ’embarrass’ racists – BBC Sport

Holding said: “It is no longer good enough to say ‘I am fine, I am not racist’.

“You have now got to be anti-racist. You have got to call out the racists and you have got to embarrass the racists.

“Don’t just be silent and say to yourself ‘I am not like him or her’. You have got to be anti.” 

Source: Michael Holding says people must ‘call out’ and ’embarrass’ racists – BBC Sport

Fire and brimstone: Sodom and Gomorrah perhaps destroyed by ‘cosmic fireball,’ evidence shows – Study Finds

The high-salinity soil is believed to have triggered the “Late Bronze Age Gap” in which local cities were abandoned. Populations dropped from tens of thousands to maybe a few hundred nomads. Nothing could grow in these formerly fertile grounds, forcing people to leave the area for hundreds of years. Evidence for resettlement of Tall el-Hammam and nearby communities appears again in the Iron Age, roughly 600 years after the cities’ sudden devastation.

“All the observations stated in Genesis are consistent with a cosmic fireball. But there is no scientific proof this destroyed city is indeed the Sodom of the Old Testament,” says Kennett. The space rock hurtled through the atmosphere and exploded over the ancient city, he explained.

The researchers believe the disaster generated an oral tradition that inspired the written account in the Book of Genesis. It may also have led to the story of the burning of Jericho in the Old Testament’s Book of Joshua. “It is an incredibly culturally important area. It is where much early cultural complexity of humans developed,” adds Kennett.

The findings are published in the journal Scientific Reports.

 

Source: Fire and brimstone: Sodom and Gomorrah perhaps destroyed by ‘cosmic fireball,’ evidence shows – Study Finds