For those regulars of this blog site, I will get to our American Melody cruise on the Mississippi River.  But first, my topic of the day: the  Cicada . This is not a travel site.  No city/town has that name. Not about those swarming insects from 13- or 17-year broods.   Anyway, this happens not to be one of those springs when they emerge .  Although there will come a few stragglers, like this one shown.  Brood XXIII will strike in 2028.  In prime cicada years, you can more readily find chocolate chip cicada cookies. The Cicada I'm referring to today is the  new COVID variant . This will be an encore, for this variant first appeared in 2024. Cicada is nickname for BA.3.2, which first infected people in South Africa. Cicada is responsible for 30% of Europe's COVID ailments. More: Scientists say that Cicada carries   70 to 75 new mutations   in the spike protein, the portion that the human immune system recognizes and targets. That's m...

Before I enter into my medical posting of today, a few facts and thoughts about the War in Iraq: Oil prices rose today WTI Crude Oil ( USA ):  Up to $100/barrel, dropped to $93/barrel and seems headed towards $95/barrel. Brent Crude Oil ( Europe ):  Jumped to $116/barrel, then dropped to $100/barrel and at this moment was up to $102/barrel. The Forbes Advisor   notes a roughly $0.05 increase in the national average from yesterday, and a nearly $1 increase from a month ago. President Donald Trump met today with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi in the White House, but couldn't convince her to send any warships to the Strait of Hormuz.  As of this moment, the USA and Israel are the only countries involved against Iran. However, as Iran keeps sending drones to energy sites of neighboring countries, they are finally "thinking" about retaliating. As you know,  Israel opened a second front in Lebanon against the Hezbollah . Trump is mulling over possibly invading...