AND THE WORLD CONTINUES TO TURN

By now, you must be supersaturated on travel. Today, I return to my usual reportage, special focus depending on the day of the week, and a wide range of topics, with in-depth looks at energy, the environment, space, humanity, politics and such.

The world hotspot these days is the Middle East.

63-year old Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and seven others, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, were killed in a helicopter crash. There was fog and the weather was bad.
The knee-jerk reaction of somehow blaming Israel did not occur.

Instead, former Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that the United states was one of the main culprits.

Why? The U.S. has placed sanctions on helicopter parts..
Most of the operating helicopters date back before the 1979 Islamic Revolution 45 years ago.
The helicopter that crashed was a Bell 212, one of their newer ones, purchased in the early 2000s. There are 15 of them of average age 35 years in Iran.

Raisi was being groomed to replace the 85-year old Supreme Leader Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei (right), who has been at the top since 1989, or 35 years. He is the longest-serving head of state in the Middle East.
Named caretake for now is First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber. There will be an election for the next president.

Donald Trump's hush money trial saw a conclusion of Michael Cohen's stand on the stand, and is now into witnesses for the defense.

First, Daniel Sitko, a paralegal detailing times of phone calls between Cohen and Robert Costello.
Then Robert Costello (right), a former informal counsel to Michael Cohen, and long-time ally of Rudy Giuliani. Costello is a Cohen antagonist and critic, who tried to keep Cohen from flipping. Cohen has previously stated that he did not trust Costello, and lied to him.
Judge Merchan has already scolded Costello.

The trial recessed with Costello on the stand, and will return tomorrow. It now looks like the trial will conclude with final testimony next week.

There is still a chance that Donald Trump himself could testify. Most think not. But whoops, his sycophants will need to change to yellow ties. The only major name today of a bunch, was lawyer Alan Dershowitz. And he is the only one to get the memo for today with a blue tie.

I've been saying for weeks that I think there will be a hung jury.

If with all his louthsomeness and danger to the future of the USA, Donald Trump can today show a lead over Joe Biden for our next president, I can't image all l2 jurors unanimously voting guilty.

One of them, for example, gets half his information from Trump's Truth Social.
But even if Trump is judged guilty, he will appeal, and that will take years to sort out.
Then, too, the jury could decide to acquit Trump. It will mostly hinge on Michael Cohen. While he almost always lied when it came to protecting Trump, is he also lying now as revenge.

So what? Well, for one, there is always Mike Lukovich.

A decision will be reached by the end of this month.
Whatever happens, Donald Trump will still in mid-July get confirmed by the Republican Convention to be their candidate for president.
There will debates between Trump and Biden on June 27, hosted by CNN, and September 10, hosted by ABC.
There will be an election for president of the USA on 5November2024.

Did you watch Saturday Night Live this weekend?

Cold Open about Mother's Day.
Weekend Update....Trump, condom, Biden, Cohen....

What about American Idol last night? It went on for 3 hours.

And the winner is....
Abi Carter sings her original new single, This Isn't Over.

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

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

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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