Huge day for now the 47th President of the United States (PUS47) Donald Trump.  Before leaving office,   outgoing President Joe Biden  thumbed his nose at Trump by pardoning a whole host of people: Liz Cheney and all the other members of the House Special Committee on the 6January2021 coup attempt, plus their staff and selected people who testified. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Anthony Fauci, who ran afoul of Trump's irrationality. There were a few others. Hunter Biden of course was already pardoned in December. You know how Trump likes to exaggerate reality, as for example his statement at his first Inauguration, where he said he had the the all-time-largest crowd?  Nope.  Trump drew 600,000 people.  President Barack Obama's first Inauguration had 1.8 million.  Well, this second time, his ceremony will be among the smallest ever, for it was done indoors in the Capitol Rotunda.   Veep JD Vance joked that he would...

  For one, Planet Earth is hot.    Europe had more heat deaths last year on record .   The tally was  61,000 deaths .  Will it be worse this year? A high-pressure system from north Africa called Cerberus could bring temperatures exceeding  113 F degrees  this weekend, particularly in the the Mediterranean region.  Sicily and Sardinia could reach the highest ever recorded here,  118.5 F !!! On July 9 Death Valley National Park's Furnace Creek Visitor Center hit  130 F (54.4 C),  beating the previous high set here in 2020.   In comparison, medium-rare steak has an internal temperature of 130-135 F. The hottest temperature ever, however, is contentious, for the 136.4 F (58 C) reading from Al Azizia in 1923 was officially decertified. Thus the current official world record is 134 F (56.7 C) set on July 10, 1913 in Death Valley. Yet, experts today insist that those early records are 100% bogus, and there seems to be s...