Only recently did I see a report of the murder suicide that occurred right before Christmas outside a W. Va. hotel while my son was on desk duty there. He heard the shots, came outside, saw the bodies, then called police. He also later accompanied the couple’s 18-year-old daughter to her parents’ funeral and burial. She reportedly lives now with her maternal grandparents. But my son kept the whole matter secret from me while I was with him during the holidays, enlisting his friends and coworkers to stay mum.
BERKELEY SPRINGS, W.Va. — We
now know the identities of the Maryland man and woman who died Friday night in
what police have termed a murder-suicide. Morgan County Sheriff KC Bohrer tells
the Panhandle News Network the victim was Jessica Craver, 41. The shooter has
been identified as August Schillinger, 48. The incident happened Friday night
in the parking lot of Coolfont Resort in Berkeley Springs.
Morgan County Sheriff KC Bohrer
said the man was waiting on the woman to leave the resort at about 9 p.m. Bohrer
said when she saw him, she began running through the parking lot and he shot
her several times–using two different handguns. Bohrer said the man then shot
and killed himself. Sheriff Bohrer said the shootings were captured on the
resort’s video system.
According to neighborhood websites, nighttime theft of car tires and wheels has become rampant here
On Feb. 7, I heard President Biden’s entire State of the Union speech, which could have been a tad shorter. It included a laudable laundry list of his accomplishments, such as bringing unemployment to a nearly 54-year-low, certainly a plus, though not due entirely to his efforts. He appealed for bipartisanship but offered little, in my opinion, to either sway or turn off most voters.
I did not wait to hear Gov. Sarah H. Sanders’ rebuttal, but in a re-play the next morning, her speech sounded rather trite and scripted, consisting of the usual Republican talking points. Of course, nearly all political speeches are scripted, but Biden had managed to inject some clever adlibs into his own presentation. His phrase “Lots of luck in your senior year” evoked considerable speculation about its intended meaning, such as whether Republicans can have any true impact in the allotted time. According to the NY Times, “the phrase has been used by seasoned veterans to signal to the inexperienced that they’re running out of time to learn the ropes.”
Fortune, Biden wants to bring back the expanded Child Tax
Credit, a monthly check to families with children
Mr. Biden certainly has the right idea to try to incentivize
having children to reverse the threat of population decline. The US should seek
to avoid the position of Europe and much of Asia, which are seeing too few workers
now having to support a growing number of retirees. A steady or very slightly rising
overall national population is ideal. Sweden, which offers strong incentives
for childbearing and childrearing, still saw a small population dip recently,
but less than before the incentives were introduced.
Meanwhile, balloons and other high-flying objects have captured
public attention.
Wash. Post, Chinese
spy balloon was capable of collecting communications, U.S. says
High-resolution
imagery captured during flybys by U.S. U-2 spy planes revealed that China’s
high-altitude balloon was capable of signals intelligence operations beyond the
abilities of a weather balloon, declassified information says.
Wash. Post, Chinese balloon part of vast aerial surveillance program, U.S. says
A fter a Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down off
the South Carolina coast, a similar balloon was spotted over Costa Rica and
Colombia
Globos espía chinos ponen a prueba a América
Latina
Recientemente otro globo chino
fue detectado sobrevolando Colombia y Costa Rica. Más allá del cálculo
realizado para gestionar un asunto tan sensible para China, en la reacción de
Bogotá y San José anidan algunas de las claves que definen la relación de
América Latina con el gigante asiático.
Por Juan Pablo Cardenal,
editor del proyecto «Análisis Sínico» de CADAL Fuente: El
Pitazo
Then some other unknown objects were shot down near Alaska and over Canada.
We now live in an increasingly interconnected world with instant
communications, where events anywhere have impacts everywhere. No impact is more
sudden than an earthquake. It’s almost like a bomb being dropped.
NY Times, Erdogan Visits Quake Area as Death Toll Passes 11,000 in Turkey and Syria Some 8,000 survivors have been pulled from the rubble. Now the death toll has reached at least 33,000, with numbers rising daily as more bodies are discovered. Yet, survivors have still been found 6 days in. Others have died while talking with family members helpless to reach them.
A father held his 15-yar-old daughter's hand until she died.
The earthquake has taken the world’s attention away
from Ukraine, while Afghanistan has been all but forgotten. Earthquakes give little
warning, minutes at most, though certain zones in Turkey and parts of California
have a long history of earthquakes, so the threat is always looming there. Structures
in earthquake zones must be built to withstand the tremors, though that’s not
always possible. Even the relatively minor earthquake we had in Washington back
in 2011 gave me quite a shock when I felt the whole house suddenly began to shake,
as has been mentioned.
Today, Newborn baby is rescued after her mother gave birth in
earthquake rubble and died
A baby girl was rescued after her mother gave birth to her and then died, along with other family members caught in the disaster. She is a miracle child, the only survivor in her immediate family.
While the word’s attention has been focused
on Turkey, Ukraine has taken a back seat, and Haiti has been all but forgotten,
but not my me, as I am still volunteer Caribbean Coordinator for Amnesty
International USA. Here is part of an answer
I gave to a recent inquiry:
“I'm
glad you are interested in Haiti. My long history with Haiti is not only with Amnesty International.
I was an election observer in Haiti (in Les Cayes) when Aristide was elected in
1990. My last mission to Haiti was in 1997. Many in Haiti are asking for an
urgent international intervention as the country is now in collapse and gangs
have taken over. The UN intervention there in 2010 sent in Nepalese Peace
Keepers who brought cholera into Haiti for the first time, resulting in
wholesale deaths in a population not previously exposed, so a UN intervention
might not be welcome. Therefore, it would be best to have a body based in the
Americas that includes the US, but is not exclusively under US leadership.
Canada, because it has French speakers, should also be included. Other
participants might be volunteers--maybe Brazil and Colombia? The
Haitian people certainly deserve the attention of the rest of the world, as
they are suffering on all fronts now.”
During this Black History Month, NPR heralded
California Rep. Maxine Waters, a woman my own age, for her 32 years of
Congressional service. Many years ago, as volunteer Caribbean Coordinator for
Amnesty International-USA, I visited her office before a planned trip to Cuba to
try to interest her in asking Fidel Castro to free a number of political prisoners.
But she immediately shut me down, saying, “I don’t want to hear about political
prisoners.” Instead, she spoke about her excitement about the trip and her
eagerness to meet with Mr. Castro.
ABC News, George Santos' constituents speak out, worry about
services: 'You obviously can't take his word'
He doesn’t seem ready to quit and his constituents are not quite
sure what to do about it. As long as remains on Congress, he’s still collecting
a paycheck.
BBC
News, Another horrible, no
good, very bad week for George Santos
NYTimes, In Post-Roe World, These Conservatives Embrace a New
Kind of Welfare
Some prolife advocates support cash payments to families raising
children. In today’s world, especially where birthrates are falling, as here in
the US, such measures could help reverse that trend. It takes a lot more money
and effort to raise a child to adulthood than to have an abortion.
More abortions in this country have meant fewer babies and
reduced population growth. Maybe prolife advocates can get behind President
Biden’s family support proposals before an actual population decline hits the
US. I support the individual rights of both men and women, fathers and mothers,
as well as those of incipient humans of both genders. But sometimes those
rights don’t coincide. Childrearing incentives might help.
Slower population growth has certainly hit the US now. The
year 2021 was the first time since 1937 that the U.S. population grew by fewer
than one million, reflecting the lowest numeric growth since at least 1900,
when the Census Bureau began annual population estimates. (Reuters)
US women of childbearing age would need to have an average of 2.1 children to maintain our national population. American women are now having their first child at later ages, ending up with fewer children and some are choosing to have none. After producing 2, many American families put on the brakes. I know many such families myself. When both parents are working, managing more than 2 kids becomes challenging. I can attest to that from personal experience—even more so, since I was the single working mother of 4, but not during their entire childhood, as before my husband left, I worked only part-time (though he did not help out with childcare, only with finances). But now that some jobs can be done from home, working from home or on a hybrid schedule should give more flexibility to working parents. In my day, when first commuting to Shady Grove, then to Bethesda, and back home to Capitol Hill, I was always racing the clock to pick up my kids by 6 pm when their day care closed. Fines for delay were $1 per minute.
The current US birthrate has shown a slight uptick from the pandemic low, now reaching 1.78, but still insufficient to keep overall population from declining. Only immigrants have helped our country make up the shortfall. Fortune, The U.S. population is finally growing again—but not because Americans are having more kids
Denmark, Sweden, and Norway offer financial incentives to parents until children reach adulthood. The US tax system also favors parents, but mainly if they are already working and paying taxes, but Nordic countries give the subsidies outright. The US may need to do the same to incentivize the birth rate and should give an extra bonus to families with more than 2 children, as that now seems to be the popular limit.
Despite incentives for having children, in Europe, total population shrank slightly both in 2021 and 2022, yet, at the same time, modest efforts in France and Portugal to raise the retirement age have also sparked strong backlash. In Portugal, protesters came out in numbers against a proposal to raise the civil service retirement age from 65 to 66, while pensioners there have also taken to the streets to demand cost-of-living increases. In France, a move to raise the retirement age to 64 from 62 has evoked massive and continuing protests. Most Europeans are living longer now but don’t want to give up retirement benefits or have to keep on working any longer.
China, as the result of its previous one-child policy, is experiencing
a seemingly irreversible actual population decline. And elderly citizens there have
mounted rare public protests after medical benefits have been cut. The Guardian, Elderly Chinese
people protest in Wuhan against medical benefits cuts “Ripping off ordinary folks like us? Why not rip off you officials first
and cut your [benefits] by half? This is outrageous,” shouted a voice at police
officers from behind the camera in a video on Radio
Free Asia’s Twitter account.
Apparently, Chinese authorities did not want to be seen
coming down too hard against elders, so these protests were not shut down nor were
wholesale arrests made. Police have just blocked
protesters have just been blocked from reaching government buildings. It’s been
unprecedented in China that so many protesters have been able to gather
together.
NextShark, Chinese scientist behind world’s first gene-edited
babies shares children’s status
After spending 3 years in prison for his gene editing experiment, He Jiankui, says the girls, now age 4, are doing well and have a younger sibling. He had been trying to make them immune to HIV, but is not sure that his efforts had the intended effect. He has vowed to leave the family alone from now on after his time in prison.
TIME, China’s Residential Schools Separate a Million Tibetan
Children From Their Families, U.N. Says
Like residential schools for indigenous children in the US and Canada, this effort will not have a favorable outcome. Tibetan families have more children than other populations under Chinese control, but these are not the children that Chinese authorities would want to see abound.
Elsewhere in Asia, Japan limits some benefits after 2 children
but should reverse that policy to boost its own population downturn. South
Korea now also has a slightly shrinking population. Thailand has seen a small
decline as well. Viet Nam, like China, first reversed its one-child policy, then
its 2-child policy in the face of greater longevity, but has yet to experience actual
population decline, just slower growth. With contraception more readily available
and more women in the workforce, large families are becoming increasingly rare
throughout Asia. Most Asian countries do not welcome immigrants nor do most immigrants
actually want to go there. In Asia, population growth has been seen mainly in the
Philippines.
Meanwhile, here at home, Donald Trump is again/still
running for reelection, but this time without the apparent support of his wife
or children, most of whom seem to be busy elsewhere.
HuffPost, Trump Put Nearly $1 Million Of Donor Money Into His Own
Pockets Since Leaving Office He urges donors to send money directly to him, not to the RNC.
I hope I’m right that Mr. Trump is becoming increasingly irrelevant. However, other
Republican presidential hopefuls do not inspire my enthusiasm either.
HuffPost Donald Trump’s Tall Tales From 9/11 The former president is once again glorifying himself for helping with rescue efforts in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attack. Except there’s no proof he actually did.
Massive layoffs have been seen at Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, and Goldman Sachs, and now Disney, yet a half million jobs were added in the US in January. However, new jobs are not at the same salary levels.
Also on the home front, unfortunately, children who have spent years with loving foster families have been removed recently to join siblings or native families by judges who value biological ties above emotional bonds. And it would unwise to allow a former foster family to keep in touch with a child after such a drastic move, as that would probably prevent their bonding with the new family. As a former social worker myself, I would advise that a child older than a year spending at least one year with a foster family in a successful placement should not then be moved just on the basis of biological or tribal ties. Later on, when the child has been legally adopted by the foster family, then any acquaintance with the birth family or tribe can be pursued. In this type of case, “blood” is not thicker than water.
However, the phrase “blood is thicker than
water” may be commonly misused or misunderstood and so may not actually apply to
family ties. The Voice of America website examines the origins of the phrase "blood
is thicker than water,” finding that history shows it “actually means that bloodshed on the battlefield creates stronger ties than the water
of the womb does, or family ties. Not only are we using ‘blood is thicker than
water’ incorrectly, the current usage is opposite from the original meaning.”
AP, 5 priests sentenced to 10 years for conspiracy in
Nicaragua
After all the efforts by myself and many others to successfully oust Daniel Ortega back in 1990, it’s been disconcerting to see that he managed to get his foot in the door once again and has slowly restored a de facto dictatorship in Nicaragua. I was immediately suspicious when he won election in 2006 with about 30% of the vote, the highest count then, promising a different type of presidency than previously as a Sandinista. At first, he even allowed Peace Corps volunteers into the country, but I remained wary. With each successive term, he has methodically consolidated his power. I no longer have the energy to try to fight him any more. (Ortega himself is now age 77.)
Here’s some surprising good news about Nicaragua: CBS News, U.S. facilitates release of 222 Nicaraguan political prisoners, including at least 1 American Washington — The Biden administration is helping to facilitate the release of 222 political prisoners in Nicaragua — including at least one American citizen — who are being flown to the U.S. on Thursday [Feb, 9], in some cases after several years in custody. The prisoners are en route to Washington and scheduled to land at Dulles International Airport later in the day, two U.S. officials tell CBS News. They said Nicaragua opted to unilaterally release the prisoners, who are a mix of opposition leaders, journalists and academics. The identity of the American prisoner, and whether or not the person is a dual citizen, was not immediately known.
The prisoners consented to being released and leaving Nicaragua voluntarily, and will be given legal status in the U.S., with plans to parole them for humanitarian reasons for at least two years, the officials said. It was also not immediately clear what, if anything, Nicaragua will get in exchange for releasing the prisoners. The decision to release the prisoners by the government of Daniel Ortega comes after the number of Nicaraguans seeking to enter the U.S. illegally spiked to a record high last year, fueled by migrants fleeing political persecution and harsh economic conditions.
AP, Nicaraguan bishop who refused exile gets 26 years in
prison
We are all temporary vessels for the expression of language and culture which we then pass along to the next generation after making our own impact and personal tweaks. Our American language, English, is certainly dominant now in the world, spoken as a 2nd language everywhere, giving most English-speakers little incentive to learn another language. Many modern words: internet, microchip, and email, are used in the English version in other languages. I am fortunate to have also learned both spoken and written Spanish with near-native fluency and with no evident accent, a language spoken in Spain, in most of Latin America, and also by many in the US. For 16 years after returning from the Peace Corps in 2004, I worked all over the DC region as an on-call Spanish interpreter (after passing a difficult recorded oral test), stopping only with the pandemic. I had tried to teach my kids by speaking Spanish to them early on, but they’d resisted, including my son adopted from Colombia, though he later took a college course in Spanish. Their father, with us for only part of their childhood, did not speak Spanish which thwarted my efforts. But the best way to learn another language is the way I learned, through immersion at an early age. Later, I learned to read and write Spanish. I did take my kids to Latin America, but they weren’t there long enough to learn more than a few phrases.
Nothing
ever stands still, so our life is never boring. Something unexpected always
happens, challenging us to respond,
The following job solicitation looks intriguing: Tranquil Multi Dynamic Advisory
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