IAM, MICHAEL, VOLDYMYR AND HENRY

The highlight of Iam Tongi's crowning as the 2023 American Idol last night was his performance with James Blunt, singing Blunt's Monsters together. Blunt wrote the song when his father Charles was battling stage four chronic kidney disease and awaiting a donor. Tragic, but Iam's father Rodney passed away with stage four kidney disease less than two years ago. James' father, though, did find a donor in 2020, and lives on.

Also yesterday, Michael Block, a club pro, and only one of 20 to make the cut to play the weekend, stole the show with his hole in one on the 15th hole. Watch his shot here. He had to finish within the top 15 to enable him to play in the 2024 Valhalla PGA Championship, and one swing qualified him to finish tied for 15. Bruce Koepka is the first "deserter" to win a major. These are those who joined the LIV Invitational Series funded by Saudi Arabia, and the ones you don't see on TV anymore.

There is something eerily symbolic about this photo of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida posing in front of the Cenotaph at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

The Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima invited Zelenskyy. Japan was the only country to ever face this calamity. The greatest fear today is Putin going nuclear. In the background is the only structure left standing near the hypocenter when the first atomic bomb fell in 1945. The Genbaku Dome was once the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotional Hall.

I end with the 101+ birthday party of Henry at 15 Craigside. He became 101 this past November, but he was in a hospital. We had purchased the candles, but delayed the cake. At his age, some thought we would never use those candles. But he's back and looking healthier than ever.

Dobash cake and champagne.

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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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