Category Archives: News to use

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

Flouting CDC Guidance, Some Schools Are Lifting Mask Mandates – Mother Jones (Me: buy more coffins – people are going stupid again over pandemic)

Another district following suit is Cobb County, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. Last Thursday, just hours after the CDC made its initial statement on vaccinated people no longer needing to wear masks, Cobb County superintendent Chris Ragsdale issued an announcement: “In accordance with the new guidance, Cobb Schools will no longer require fully vaccinated individuals to wear a mask,” he wrote. The district doesn’t plan to verify vaccination status—the new rules will work on an honor system.  Source: Flouting CDC Guidance, Some Schools Are Lifting Mask Mandates – Mother Jones

The GOP Is Turning the January 6 Insurrection Into a New Lost Cause – Mother Jones

They looted congressional offices, vandalized the building, and assaulted hundreds of law enforcement officials. The insurrection left five dead—including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick—and marked a dark day in the history of the United States. Among the countless photos that went viral was one of a man flying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol. That such a symbol was still proudly waved in America only foreshadowed the egregious whitewashing to come. Source: The GOP Is Turning the January 6 Insurrection Into a New Lost Cause – Mother Jones

SARS-CoV-2 variants dashboard

This dashboard provides an overview of the proportion of variants of concern and variants of interest in EU/EEA Member States together with sequencing volumes and complements the ECDC country overview report. Data are sourced from TESSy or the GISAID EpiCoV database. Where data are available from more than one source for a country, the source used is the one with the highest number of sequences in the last two weeks.

The dashboard is updated every Thursday afternoon. Data behind the dashboard are available for download.

Source: SARS-CoV-2 variants dashboard

Oregon counties vote to secede to Idaho | TheHill 

Voters in five rural Oregon counties approved measures on Tuesday to consider joining the state of Idaho, a part of a long-shot grassroots movement to break with a state dominated by liberal voters west of the Cascade Mountains…

Actually moving the lines would require a vote from the Oregon legislature, which is firmly controlled by Democrats. Oregon and Idaho would have to strike a formal deal, which would then need to be ratified by the U.S. Congress.

Congress has only approved measures to change state lines on three occasions: Kentucky was carved out of territory previously owned by Virginia in 1792. Maine was carved out of Massachusetts in 1820. And West Virginia was admitted to the union in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, as Union counties separated themselves from the Confederacy.

Source: Oregon counties vote to secede to Idaho | TheHill

Brazilian police target environment minister in wood smuggling probe | Reuters

Brazilian police on Wednesday targeted Environment Minister Ricardo Salles and other officials in a probe of an alleged wood smuggling ring, according to court documents, throwing a harsh spotlight on a key figure in U.S.-Brazil environmental talks.

Salles has been leading negotiations with President Joe Biden’s administration in a push to get international funding of Brazilian efforts to protect the Amazon jungle, the world’s largest tropical rainforest.

However, as minister, Salles has presided over a surge in Amazon deforestation to a 12-year high in 2020 as the government rolls back environmental enforcement.

Supreme Court Justice Alexandre Moraes authorized search warrants and access to the minister’s bank and tax records as part of the police investigation into alleged corruption and contraband, according to a ruling seen by Reuters.

Source: Brazilian police target environment minister in wood smuggling probe | Reuters

Two Meetings

Michael Stephen Wills Photography

Continued from the chapter “A Dry Piece of Paradise.”

Imagine a bowl with steep sides, rough and sharp in places.

Look along the bottom and see a silver stream, sparkling and singing through rocks.

A figure is clinging to the upper side, almost to the rim.

The figure is me in the setting of my blog, “A Dry Piece of Paradise”. Here is my view from that spot.

View from the rim of Nameless Canyon

Hiking along this bowl rim I came to a clearing in the juniper and Manzanita bushes, with a fire ring and pile of roughly broken wood with outstanding views on all sides. This tradition of leaving wood is a welcome intrusion of human kindness and sympathy in this wilderness. We gather wood for total strangers, people we will never meet, to potentially save them in a rainy, cold darkness.

At noon Pine Creek was two…

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