HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

Seems like Father's Day is so late this year, but it has been the third Sunday of June since 1910, credited to Sonora Smart Dodd. In some parts of the world this day is a holiday. There is also a Global Day of Parents, created by the United Nations, and since 2013 has been annually celebrated on June 1.

How many of you knew that the U.S. has a Parent's Day, signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton? Held on the fourth Sunday in July. The driving force for this day was the Unification Church. This religious movement was created by Sung Myung Moon of South Korea, and people who belong to that church are known as Moonies. He was the person who founded The Washington Times in 1982 to compete with The Washington Post as a conservative option. I was working in the U.S. Senate when this happened. Moon passed away in 2012 at the age of 92.

Anyone ever send you this?

I got one, so did a reference check. Snopes had a point-by-point refutation of this made up item that has been bouncing around since 2015. In short, sounds enticing and you can try, but will get stymied by bureaucracy and legality. Could also land you in jail.

A tribute to Chuck Berry, Brown Eyed Handsome Man, was replayed this past week by PBS. It was originally created four years ago just after he passed away. End your week with this montage of dancing to Johnny B. Goode.

Happy Father's Day.

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A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

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HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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