A study on COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness has finally been published after being blocked from a government health journal. The vaccine was found to be about 55% effective against COVID-19-associated hospitalizations, and reduced COVID-19-related trips to emergency departments and urgent care clinics by 50%, according to the study published Tuesday by JAMA Network Open.
The North Korean leader proclaimed a new era of naval power that will project his reclusive regime's nuclear capabilities Tuesday as he commissioned a 5,000-ton destroyer.
The Army, Navy, and Air Force are once again requiring basic trainees to get vaccinated against influenza after the virus quickly swept through an Air Force base in Texas, sickening at least 222 recruits and hospitalizing four. The outbreak flared just two months after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth abandoned a decades-long requirement for flu shots.
"It put them into a full-blown panic," [Republican Rep. Thomas] Massie said, referring to his push for the [Epstein] files. "If you look at the timeline, that meeting in the Situation Room was two days after I introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act ... This would have never been an issue for the White House, number one, if they had just done what they campaigned on, but number two, if I hadn't introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and that's frankly, one of the reasons they spent $30 million to take me out is because they don't want transparency over there." read more
President Donald Trump canceled his plan to sign a bipartisan affordable housing bill on Wednesday in an effort to pressure his fellow Republicans to pass a long-stalled package of U.S. national voting restrictions that has aggravated party fissures and shown the limits of his power.
Internal White House documents undercut Trump's Reflecting Pool vandalism claims
www.msn.com
... Internal White House documents about the issues at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool seem to undercut President Donald Trump's claims that the pool had been vandalized, according to a new report.
Trump blamed alleged "vandals" for damaging the pool after crews recently completed a more than $16 million renovation. Video of the bottom layer of paint peeling off in the pool and of green algae taking over nearly the entire structure has circulated online for several days, and some political experts have said the pool itself has become a "symbol" of the Trump administration's incompetence.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration has been aware of the issues the pool faces for a while. Instead of admitting to the issues, the government has sought to blame alleged vandals instead, according to the report.
"Government documents obtained by The New York Times show that while National Park Service workers found two cuts in sections of foam between the pool's expansion joints, those were not directly related to the 'American flag blue' coating that is now peeling, or to the algae that has turned the pool a bright shade of green," the NYT reported.
"Even as the documents show workers were attempting to address deteriorating conditions, Trump administration officials were insisting publicly that the pool was pristine," the outlet added. ...
Related ...
Tillis: Pirro can't be taken 'seriously' for prosecuting alleged reflecting pool vandalism thehill.com
... Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is blasting U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro for threatening to prosecute people accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool to the fullest extent of the law after President Trump granted blanket pardons last year to people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.[emphasis mine]
"I don't know what's worse to you, vandalizing a pool or assaulting a police officer?" he said. "Now we got somebody, let's say they took a pen knife to a damn pool liner, you're going to prosecute them for 10 years?"
"And you've let people that admitted to assaulting a police officer go and think I can take that person seriously? Nah uh," Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said. ...
Related ...
Trump's Voter Citizenship Mandate Struck Down as Unconstitutional'
www.newsweek.com
... President Donald Trump's plan to implement citizenship requirements for registering to vote was ruled unconstitutional on Wednesday, as the president once again pressured lawmakers to pass a bill on voter ID.
U.S. District Judge Denise Casper, an Obama appointee, said that the U.S. Constitution does not give Trump or any president specific powers over how elections are administered, despite arguments from the current administration over alleged election fraud.
Casper struck down key aspects of one of Trump's executive orders from the early days of his second term, including a requirement to prove citizenship when registering to vote, after arguments from multiple state attorneys general, including California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, that Trump did not have the power to make changes to elections. ...
Third Australian H5 bird flu case confirmed in SA, another suspected WA case
www.abc.net.au
... A third confirmed case of H5 bird flu has been found in a migratory bird on Australia's southern coast, with a giant petrel testing positive in SA.
Authorities say there's no indication it spread from the two birds already confirmed to have been stricken with the virus in WA.
Meanwhile, another bird tested positive for the virus near the WA tourist town of Dunsborough, with the result being assessed by the CSIRO. ...
Why is the paint peeling off the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool? An investigation
www.scientificamerican.com
... Poor preparation and a failure to properly apply the coating may be just a few of the reasons why the Reflecting Pool's new paint job appears to be peeling off
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool's makeover was supposed to inspire patriotism, but chunks of material peeling off the pool's surface have instead garnered more puzzlement and speculation.
President Donald Trump ordered the pool's renovation in April, and that order included painting its floor and walls blue. Yet within weeks of the work's completion, photographs and videos of floating chunks of a cerulean material that appears to have detached from the pool's walls have gone viral. This material is polyurea coating"a fast-curing and durable surface membrane that can seal in water and is often used to coat swimming pools.
We spoke to engineering and pool experts to find out what could be going wrong at the beleaguered monument.
For one, the blue material likely has no direct relation to the large algal blooms that are also plaguing the monument, according to Tim Auerhahn, chairman of the Aquatic Council. Nor is it merely a reaction to the hydrogen peroxide that the National Park Service (NPS) dumped into the water in an apparent effort to kill the algae"although that likely didn't help, either.
At this point, pinning the blame for the floating coating on any one factor would be premature, says David McFayden, CEO of the paint and coating inspection company KTA-Tator.
Auerhahn agrees: "The failure of the adhesion to the substrate of that product probably could have been caused by many factors," he says. Still, based on the videos of workers dumping hydrogen peroxide from the edges of the pool, he says that "it could have contributed to the issue, but it's probably not the only cause." The Department of the Interior, which oversees the NPS, did not respond to a request for comment.
Hydrogen peroxide can be used as a paint stripper, but the water in the pool would likely dilute it to the point that it couldn't cause the current level of damage, he adds. ...
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Ohio (1970)
www.youtube.com
A comment from the video...
... 50 years ago today. RIP Jeffrey Glenn Miller, Allison B. Krause, William Knox Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheuer. ...
Lyrics excerpt ...
...
"Ohio" is a 1970 protest song composed by Neil Young in reaction to the Kent State shootings, and performed by the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young quartet.
The incident took place on May 4, 1970 and became a sociopolitical symbolization during the Vietnam War. The sequence of events led to a nationwide anti-establishment student strike, forcing hundreds of colleges and universities to close.
The song was recorded a mere 17 days after the incident and, according to the recording engineer Bill Halverson, was done in (at most) 3 takes "with live vocal and live harmonies and everybody chiming in".
Side Note: Due to its "anti-war" and "anti-establishment" sentiments, the song was banned from some AM playlists in the United States.
[Chorus]
Tin soldiers and Nixon's comin'
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drummin'
Four dead in Ohio
[Verse]
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
...
@#12 ... Which reminds me of an ancient and quite demented family member, who kept calling the police to insist that people were sitting in the trees staring at her through her window.
I don't see a fingernail's worth of difference between this and Trump's conviction that teams of ninja vandals are sneaking in to create enormous cuts in the reflecting pool no one can actually see the next morning. ...
The difference being that with Pres Trump, he can tell the DoJ to go after those apparent vandals.