https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1295373389486596096
Olga Lautman
@olgaNYC1211
·
Aug 17, 2020
I deleted this tweet. Am told it is Belarusian paratroopers. Will update with any new information

Olga Lautman @olgaNYC1211

Special forces*

https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1295365586072096768
Olga Lautman @olgaNYC1211

Local residents recorded the entry of Russian armored vehicles into Belarus. 24 armored military carriers are near Orsha heading towards Minsk direction

Kavkaz Center @newkc14

‼ Срочно

Местные жители зафиксировали ввод российской бронетехники в #Беларусь. На видео колонна российских войск - 24 БТРа - выдвигается в сторону Орши и далее на #Минск.

Local residents recorded the entry of Russian armored vehicles into #Беларусь ... In the video, a column of Russian troops - 24 armored personnel carriers - moves towards Orsha and further on #Минск ...

Embedded video

10:23 AM · Aug 17, 2020

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53788018

The potentially record-breaking temperature was recorded in Death Valley, California

58 minutes ago

What could be the highest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth - 130F (54.4C) - may have been reached in Death Valley National Park, California.

The recording is being verified by the US National Weather Service.

It comes amid a heatwave on the US's west coast, where temperatures are forecast to rise further this week.

The scorching conditions have led to two days of blackouts in California, after a power plant malfunctioned on Saturday.

What were the previous records?
Sunday's reading was recorded in Furnace Creek in Death Valley.

Before this, the hottest temperature reliably recorded on Earth was 129.2F (54C) - also in Death Valley in 2013.

A higher reading of 134F, or 56.6C a century earlier, also in Death Valley, is disputed. It is believed by some modern weather experts to have been erroneous, along with several other searing temperatures recorded that summer.

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https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1294798968942219265
Adam Schiff @RepAdamSchiff

The Postmaster General must resign.

He’s slowed delivery, banned overtime & decommissioned mail-sorting machines.

Right before the election. During a pandemic.

The House must demand answers. Hearings should start now. It can’t wait.

We won’t let Trump destroy the Post Office.

8:51 PM · Aug 15, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/15/health/us-coronavirus-saturday/index.html

By Christina Maxouris, CNN

Updated 10:19 AM ET, Sat August 15, 2020

(CNN)Health experts say children make up more than 7% of all coronavirus cases in the US -- while comprising about 22% of the country's population -- and the number and rate of child cases have been "steadily increasing" from March to July.

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"Recent evidence suggests that children likely have the same or higher viral loads in their nasopharynx compared with adults and that children can spread the virus effectively in households and camp settings," the guidance states.

Transmission of the virus to and among children may have been reduced in spring and early summer due to mitigation measures like stay-at-home orders and school closures, the CDC says.

But now, schools and universities across the country are reopening and in some cases have had to readjust their approach following positive tests among students and staff. How to safely welcome students back has been an ongoing debate between local and state leaders as some push for a return to normalcy and others fear returning to class could prove deadly for some. In some cases, teachers have opted to resign rather than risk contracting the virus.

"So if I'm put into a classroom of 30 or more kids, it's a small room, there's one exit, the ventilation isn't all that great for schools," Arizona teacher Matt Chicci, who quit his job, told CNN. "It's not a good situation."

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https://twitter.com/AnneSerling/status/1294613129549283328
Anne Serling @AnneSerling

"The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.”

Rod Serling



8:33 AM · Aug 15, 2020

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/08/14/iowa-derecho-attention-aid/


A drone image shows damaged grain bins at the Heartland Co-Op grain elevator Aug. 11 in Luther, Iowa. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said early estimates indicate that 10 million acres, nearly a third of state land used for crops, were damaged when a powerful storm battered the region a day earlier. (Daniel Acker/Getty Images)

By Lyz Lenz
Lyz Lenz, a columnist for the Cedar Rapids Gazette, is the author of "God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America" and "Belabored: A Vindication of the Rights of Pregnant Women."

August 14, 2020 at 12:52 p.m. EDT

On Monday, Iowa was leveled by what amounted to a level-two hurricane. But you wouldn’t know that from reading, listening to or watching the news.

While the storm did garner some coverage, mostly via wire stories, its impact remains underreported days later. The dispatches, focused on crop damage and electrical outages, have been shouted down by the coverage of the veepstakes and the fate of college football. Conservatives’ consternation over the new Cardi B single has gotten more attention than the Iowans left without power or food for what may be weeks. And all this, as the pandemic continues to wreak havoc throughout the state.

Iowa’s last disaster, breathlessly covered by the media, was the caucuses. After that, everyone moved out. The dearth of coverage means we are struggling here, and no one knows.

The storm was called a derecho, a term for sustained straight-lined winds. As local TV news anchor Beth Malicki tweeted Wednesday, “This isn’t a few trees down and the inconvenience of power out. It’s like a tornado hit whole counties.”

Gusts of 112 mph were recorded in Linn County. As I drove through the town of Cedar Rapids on Monday, I saw billboards bent in half, whole buildings collapsed, trees smashed through roofs and windows. The scope and breadth of the disaster is still being calculated, but by some estimates, more than 10 million acres, or 43 percent, of the state’s soybean and corn crops have been damaged.

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/qanon-promotes-pedo-ring-conspiracy-theories-now-theyre-stealing-kids

The far-right fringe group infamous for promoting nutjob conspiracy theories about pedophile rings has moved on to criminally meddling in child custody cases.

Will Sommer

Published Aug. 15, 2020 5:04AM ET

Part One of Two Parts:

QAnon conspiracy theorist Alpalus Slyman pushed his Honda Odyssey past 110 mph while his five children screamed in the back of the minivan and police officers from two states pursued him down the highway.

“Donald Trump, I need a miracle or something,” Slyman, a 29-year-old Boston man, said during his June 11 chase across Massachusetts and New Hampshire, in remarks captured on a livestream.

“QAnon, help me. QAnon, help me!”

It’s not clear what set off the police chase, but Slyman appears to have been convinced by QAnon theories that the government was out to kidnap his children. Inspired by videos he had watched online, Slyman warned his children during the chase that the police were coming to abduct them—or maybe just shoot them in a staged killing. In return, they begged him to pull over. His daughter even tried to grab the wheel of the minivan and drive it off the road after he accused her and his wife, who had dived out of the vehicle at the start of the chase, of being agents of the nefarious cabal that QAnon believers say controls the world.

“They want to make us crazy,” Slyman said, “but I’m not crazy. My wife and my daughter were a part of it.”

Desperate, Slyman’s daughter told her father she was working for the mythical cabal in a failed attempt to scare him into stopping the minivan. Then Slyman told his children, who ranged from 8 months to 13 years old, about the QAnon belief that a video of Hillary Clinton and aide Huma Abedin eating childrens’ brains was discovered on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Phenol_Plot


The August 15, 1915, edition of the New York World broke the news of the Great Phenol plot and other clandestine pro-German activities that were organized by Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff and Heinrich Albert.

The Great Phenol Plot was a conspiracy by the German Government during the early years of World War I to divert American-produced phenol away from the manufacture of high explosives that supported the British war effort, to the production of aspirin by the German-owned Bayer company, who could no longer import phenol from Britain.

Background
At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, most phenol used by American manufacturers was imported from the United Kingdom. It was used to produce, among other things, Thomas Edison's "Diamond Disc" phonograph records (which were not made from shellac like other disc records of the time), the salicylic acid used to make aspirin, and the high explosive trinitrophenol. British phenol was soon being used almost exclusively for making explosives for the war effort, leaving little for export. By 1915, the price of phenol rose to the point that Bayer's aspirin plant was forced to drastically cut production; this was especially problematic because Bayer was instituting a new branding strategy in anticipation of the expiry of the aspirin patent in the United States. Counterfeiters and Canadian importers and smugglers were stepping up to meet demand for aspirin, and the war had disrupted the links between the American Bayer plant (in Rensselaer, New York) and the central Bayer headquarters in Germany. Thomas Edison was also facing phenol supply problems; in response, he built a factory near Johnstown, Pennsylvania capable of manufacturing 12 short tons (11 t) of phenol per day. Edison's excess phenol seemed destined for American trinitrophenol production, which would be used to support the British.

Plot
Although the United States remained officially neutral until April 1917, it was increasingly throwing its support to the Allies through trade, especially after the May 1915 sinking of the British ocean liner Lusitania (which conveyed American passengers as well as munitions) by a German U-boat. While many Americans, including President Woodrow Wilson, supported the British, there was also considerable pro-German sentiment (though considerably less after the Lusitania's sinking). German ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff and Interior Ministry official Heinrich Albert were tasked with undermining American industry and maintaining public support for Germany. One of their agents was a former Bayer employee, Hugo Schweitzer.

Schweitzer, with money funneled from Germany through Albert, set up a contract for a front company called the Chemical Exchange Association to buy all of Edison's excess phenol. Much of the phenol would go to the German-owned Chemische Fabrik von Heyden's American subsidiary; Heyden was the supplier of Bayer's salicylic acid for aspirin manufacture. By July 1915, Edison's plants were selling about three tons of phenol per day to Schweitzer; Heyden's salicylic acid production was soon back on line, and in turn Bayer's aspirin plant was running as well. Schweitzer sold the remainder of the phenol at a considerable profit, being careful to distribute it to only non-war-related industries.

Albert, however, was under investigation by the Secret Service because of his propaganda activities. On July 24, 1915, he accidentally left his briefcase on a train; it was recovered by a Secret Service agent who had been following him. The briefcase contained details about the phenol plot and other covert activities to indirectly aid the German war effort. Although it was not incriminating enough to bring charges against Albert or the other conspirators (since the United States was still officially neutral and trade with Germany was legal), the documents were soon leaked to the New York World, an anti-German newspaper. The World published an exposé on August 15, 1915, and the publicity soon forced Albert to stop funding the phenol purchases.

Schweitzer quickly sought other financial backers. By September, he had signed a deal (backdated to June to hide Albert's involvement) with Richard Kny, a relative of the Heyden plant's manager. This allowed the phenol plot to continue for a short while longer. By the time the plot was discontinued, it had succeeded in diverting enough phenol, according to Albert, to make about 4.5 million pounds of explosives. Schweitzer defended his actions, arguing that making medicine and disinfectants was a better use of the phenol than making weapons. The public pressure soon forced Schweitzer and Edison to end the phenol deal, with the embarrassed Edison subsequently sending his excess phenol to the U.S. military, but by that time the deal had netted the plotters over $2 million (equivalent to $36.5 million in 2018) and there was already enough phenol to keep Bayer's aspirin plant running. Bayer's reputation took a large hit, however, just as the company was preparing to launch an advertising campaign to secure the connection between aspirin and the Bayer brand.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles%27_1965_US_tour



The Beatles staged their second concert tour of the United States (with one date in Canada) in the late summer of 1965. At the peak of American Beatlemania, they played a mixture of outdoor stadiums and indoor arenas, with historic concerts at Shea Stadium in New York and the Hollywood Bowl. Typically of the era, the tour was a "package" presentation, with several artists on the bill. The Beatles played for just 30 minutes at each show, following sets by support acts such as Brenda Holloway and the King Curtis Band, Cannibal & the Headhunters, and Sounds Incorporated.

After the tour's conclusion, the Beatles took a six-week break before reconvening in mid-October to record the album Rubber Soul.

Background
Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, scheduled the band's second full concert tour of America after a series of early-summer concerts in Europe. The group began rehearsing for the tour in London on 25 July, four days before attending the royal premiere of their second feature film, Help! The rehearsals doubled as preparation for their live performance on ABC Television's Blackpool Night Out and took place at the Saville Theatre on 30 July, and then at the ABC Theatre in Blackpool.

Typically for the 1960s, the concerts were arranged in a package-tour format, with multiple acts on the bill. The support acts throughout the tour were Brenda Holloway and the King Curtis Band, Cannibal & the Headhunters, and Sounds Incorporated. The Beatles entourage comprised road managers Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans, Epstein, press officer Tony Barrow, and Alf Bicknell, who usually worked as the band's chauffeur. In his autobiography, Barrow recalls that a major part of the advance publicity for the tour was ensuring that interviews the individual Beatles gave to British publications were widely syndicated in the US. He adds that this was easily achieved, given the band's huge international popularity.

Shea Stadium concert
The opening show, at Shea Stadium in the New York borough of Queens, on 15 August was record-breaking and one of the most famous concert events of its era. It set records for attendance and revenue generation. Promoter Sid Bernstein said, "Over 55,000 people saw the Beatles at Shea Stadium. We took $304,000, the greatest gross ever in the history of show business." It remained the highest concert attendance in the United States until 1973, when Led Zeppelin played to an audience of 56,000 in Tampa, Florida. This demonstrated that outdoor concerts on a large scale could be successful and profitable. The Beatles received $160,000 for their performance, which equated to $100 for each second they were on stage. For this concert, the Young Rascals, a New York band championed by Bernstein, were added to the bill.

The Beatles were transported to the rooftop Port Authority Heliport at the World's Fair by a New York Airways Boeing Vertol 107-II helicopter, then took a Wells Fargo armoured truck to Shea Stadium. Two thousand security personnel were at the venue to handle crowd control. The crowd was confined to the spectator areas of the stadium, with nobody other than the band members, their entourage, and security personnel allowed on the field. As a result of this, the audience was a long distance away from the band while they played on a small stage in the middle of the field.

"Beatlemania" was at one of its highest marks at the Shea Concert. Film footage taken at the concert shows many teenagers and women crying, screaming, and even fainting. The crowd noise was such that security guards can be seen covering their ears as the Beatles enter the field. Despite the heavy security presence individual fans broke onto the field a number of times during the concert and had to be chased down and restrained. Concert film footage also shows John Lennon light-heartedly pointing out one such incident as he attempted to talk to the audience in between songs.

The deafening level of crowd noise, coupled with the distance between the band and the audience, meant that nobody in the stadium could hear much of anything. Vox had specially designed 100-watt amplifiers for this tour; however, it was still not anywhere near loud enough, so the Beatles used the house amplification system. Lennon described the noise as "wild" and also twice as deafening when the Beatles performed. On-stage "fold-back" speakers were not in common use in 1965, rendering the Beatles' playing inaudible to each other, forcing them to just play through a list of songs nervously, not knowing what kind of sound was being produced, or whether they were playing in unison. The Beatles section of the concert was extremely short by modern standards (just 30 minutes) but was the typical 1965 Beatles tour set list, with Starr opting to sing "Act Naturally" instead of "I Wanna Be Your Man". Referring to the enormity of the 1965 concert, Lennon later told Bernstein: "You know, Sid, at Shea Stadium I saw the top of the mountain." Barrow described it as "the ultimate pinnacle of Beatlemania" and "the group's brightly-shining summer solstice". The concert was attended by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones and their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Afterwards, the Beatles spent the evening and part of the next day socialising with Bob Dylan in their suite in the Warwick Hotel.





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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers


Rogers in 1922

William Penn Adair Rogers (November 4, 1879 – August 15, 1935) was an American stage and motion picture actor, vaudeville performer, cowboy, humorist, newspaper columnist, and social commentator from Oklahoma. He was a Cherokee citizen born in the Cherokee Nation, Indian Territory.

Known as "Oklahoma's Favorite Son", Rogers was born to a Cherokee family in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). As an entertainer and humorist, he traveled around the world three times, made 71 films (50 silent films and 21 "talkies" ), and wrote more than 4,000 nationally syndicated newspaper columns.

By the mid-1930s Rogers was hugely popular in the United States, its leading political wit and the highest paid of Hollywood film stars. He died in 1935 with aviator Wiley Post when their small airplane crashed in northern Alaska.

Rogers's vaudeville rope act led to success in the Ziegfeld Follies, which in turn led to the first of his many movie contracts. His 1920s syndicated newspaper column and his radio appearances increased his visibility and popularity. Rogers crusaded for aviation expansion and provided Americans with first-hand accounts of his world travels. His earthy anecdotes and folksy style allowed him to poke fun at gangsters, prohibition, politicians, government programs, and a host of other controversial topics in a way that was appreciated by a national audience, with no one offended. His aphorisms, couched in humorous terms, were widely quoted: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Rogers even provided an epigram on his most famous epigram:

When I die, my epitaph, or whatever you call those signs on gravestones, is going to read: "I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident [sic] like." I am so proud of that, I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_Post


Wiley Post

Wiley Hardeman Post (November 22, 1898 – August 15, 1935) was a famed American aviator during the interwar period and the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high-altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits and discovered the jet stream. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's aircraft crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow in the Territory of Alaska.

Post's Lockheed Vega aircraft, the Winnie Mae, was on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center from 2003 to 2011. It is now featured in the "Time and Navigation" gallery on the second floor of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

<snip>

Aviation and death


Rogers standing on the wing of a seaplane belonging to famed aviation pioneer Wiley Post, hours before their fatal crash on 15 August 1935

Rogers became an advocate for the aviation industry after noticing advancements in Europe and befriending Charles Lindbergh, the most famous American aviator of the era. During his 1926 European trip, Rogers witnessed the European advances in commercial air service and compared them to the almost nonexistent facilities in the United States. Rogers' newspaper columns frequently emphasized the safety record, speed, and convenience of this means of transportation, and he helped shape public opinion on the subject.

In 1935 the famed aviator Wiley Post, an Oklahoman, became interested in surveying a mail-and-passenger air route from the West Coast to Russia. He attached a Lockheed Explorer wing to a Lockheed Orion fuselage, fitting floats for landing in the lakes of Alaska and Siberia. Rogers visited Post often at the airport in Burbank, California, while he was modifying the aircraft. He asked Post to fly him through Alaska in search of new material for his newspaper column.

After making a test flight in July, Post and Rogers left Lake Washington in Renton in the Lockheed Orion-Explorer in early August and then made several stops in Alaska. While Post piloted the aircraft, Rogers wrote his columns on his typewriter. Before they left Fairbanks, they signed and mailed a burgee, a distinguishing flag belonging to the South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club. The signed burgee is on display at South Coast Corinthian Yacht Club in Marina del Rey, California. On August 15, they left Fairbanks for Point Barrow.

When about 20 miles southwest of Point Barrow and having difficulty in figuring their position due to bad weather, they landed in a lagoon to ask directions. On takeoff, the engine failed at low altitude, and the aircraft plunged into the lagoon, shearing off the right wing, and ended up inverted in the shallow water of the lagoon. Both men died instantly. Rogers was buried August 21, 1935, in Forest Lawn Park in Glendale, California;[30] it was a temporary interment. He was reinterred at the Will Rogers Memorial in Claremore, Oklahoma.

Experts have studied the factors in the accident, and still disagree about it. Bobby H. Johnson and R. Stanley Mohler argued in a 1971 article that Post had ordered floats that did not reach Seattle in time for the planned trip. He used a set that was designed for a larger type of plane, making the already nose-heavy hybrid aircraft still more nose-heavy. But, Bryan and Frances Sterling maintain in their 2001 book Forgotten Eagle: Wiley Post: America's Heroic Aviation Pioneer that their research showed the floats were the correct type for the aircraft, thereby suggesting another cause for the crash.

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