The Israel-Hamas War seems to be escalating.  However, Egypt is beginning to allow foreigners to enter from the Rafah Gate in southern part of the Gaza Strip.   Updates here,   From the morning  New York Times: That is the conclusion of   a new study   by Patrick Sharkey and Megan Kang at Princeton. Stricter gun laws passed by 40 states from 1991 to 2016 reduced gun deaths by nearly 4,300 in 2016, or about 10 percent of the nationwide total. States with stricter laws, such as background checks and waiting periods, consistently had fewer gun deaths, as this chart by my colleague Ashley Wu shows: But on to our cruise.  Aomori is the the capital city of Aomori Prefecture.  Means Blue Forest, with a current population of around 265,000, the northern most of Honshu Island.  There were 319,000 people living here in 2000, and this number has since then been declining, as is the entire country, which was up to 127 million in 2007, but is today down to 125 million. What distinguishes Aomori is

  From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):          DAY    USA    WORLD     Brazil      India      South Africa June     9    1093     4732       1185        246       82 July    22     1205     7128        1293      1120      572 Aug    12     1504     6556        1242       835      130 Sept     9     1208      6222       1136      1168       82 Oct     21     1225      6849         571       703       85 Nov    25     2304    12025        620       518      118 Dec     30     3880    14748       1224       299     465 Jan      14       4142    15512        1151        189      712                  Feb      3       4005   14265       1209       107     398 Mar     2        1989     9490       1726       110      194           17        1289      9736        2736       171       74            24         936    10206       3158       277       55           25        1405   10470       2244       249      121   Summary:  What?  Hopefully not another wave for the USA. Yesterd

That second mass shooting yesterday  ( I reported on the Atlanta killings yesterday--scroll down to the next posting ) could well trigger significant progress in gun legislation.  For the first time in a long time, Democrats are in control of all three, the Senate, House and White House, when significant incidents of this type previously occurred.   The shooter was Ahmad Al Aliwa Alissa, 21, who was born in the USA.  He killed ten, including a police officer.  He was captured alive, so we'll know why soon. Boulder is around 38 miles from Columbine.  It was almost 22 years ago that 12 students and a teacher were murdered by fellow students at Columbine High school .  Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold both committed suicide that day As you know, there was an assault rifle ban in 1994 during a Democratic White House, but expired in 2004 when a Republican was president.  Gun control was on President Joe Biden's priority list, and these two shootings mean one of two things