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n this date in 1961, Czechoslovakian maternity ward nurse Marie Fikackova was hanged at Prague’s Pankrac Prison for murdering newborns in her care. Fickakova, nee Schmidlova, was a well-liked 24-year-old with a failed marriage already at her back when she was arrested in February 1960 after two infants died of brain injuries the same night during her shift at the Sušice hospital. Under lengthy interrogation, Fikackova finally confessed to having developed the habit of relieving the agitation of her menses (her story, not mine!) by permanently silencing newborns who bawled too much. We all have our personality quirks, but if...

Andrea Bocelli is making sure everyone’s Easter is music-filled despite the fact that many church-goers across the globe will be unable to attend services in-person due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The Italian opera star will perform a solo concert, Andrea Bocelli: Music for Hope, this Easter Sunday from the Duomo cathedral in Milan, Italy, and it will be live-streamed on his YouTube channel. Since the Duomo in Milan has been closed amid the outbreak, Bocelli, 61, and cathedral organist Emanuele Vianelli will perform songs like “Ave Maria” and “Sancta Maria” to an empty venue.

he power of the coronavirus pandemic as a potential global “game changer” may be on full display in the South China Sea. China is stepping up its operations in the international waterway while the U.S. Defense department grapples with over 1,500 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in its ranks. The pandemic began in Wuhan, China and peaked in the Communist country in February. China’s numbers may reek of skepticism but by all accounts, they have seen the worst of the disease. Barring any 2nd wave of COVID-19, the country is slowly returning to normal with their military unscathed and at full...

Pseudo-frostbite, hives and redness may appear with or without respiratory symptoms. The novel coronavirus may cause dermatological symptoms such as pseudo-frostbite, hives and persistent, sometimes painful redness, as symptoms that affect the body outside the respiratory system continue to be found that may be associated with coronavirus infections, according to the French National Union of Dermatologists-Venereologists (SNDV – skin and sexually transmitted disease doctors). The organization received numerous reports of cases with these symptoms in COVID-19 patients. They may also appear without respiratory symptoms, according to a press release by SNDV. A WhatsApp group of over 400 dermatologists has been...

Has anyone given thought to the Litigation coming from everywhere once the Corona crisis has subsided?

Governor Cuomo is considering opening drive-in movie theaters during the pandemic. He announced Sunday that the Empire State Development is looking into making drive-ins an exception to the state mandate that all non-essential businesses must be closed. "Where is the public safety issue? It’s a drive-in theater. You’re in the car with the same people," said Governor Cuomo during his daily briefing. Paul Dean is the owner of the Vintage Drive In in Avon. He opened the drive-in in 1997 and hopes he can open it again this season. "This would be an avenue for people to come out and...

The USNS Comfort and the Javits Convention Center are still sitting mostly empty despite being set up in New York City to treat coronavirus patients while emergency rooms across the city overflow with patients. The 1,000-bed Comfort and 2,500-bed Javits Center were set up by the federal government and military to alleviate the strain on New York's hospitals at the height of the pandemic. But immediately, hospital executives expressed frustration and outrage at the red tape that was stopping them from actually contributing to the crisis. The first problem was that neither was willing to take COVID-19 patients. The Comfort...

The hastily built field hospital set up by the Army in Seattle's pro football stadium is shutting down without ever seeing a patient, so the service can shift resources where they're more urgently needed, Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee said. Medical equipment at the CenturyLink Field Event Center is being returned to the Federal Emergency Management Agency for use elsewhere, but the governor cautioned against reading too much into the move. "Don't let this decision give you the impression that we are out of the woods," Inslee said in a statement Wednesday. "We have to keep our guard up and...

Knut M. Wittkowski is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics and research design at Rockefeller University in New York for over 20 years. He is a proven expert in modeling epidemics. He made a first determination in the 1980s, when he denied the danger of an HIV epidemic in the heterosexual population - and was right. In the current debate about SARS-CORONA VIRUS-2, Professor Wittkowski is now declaring, based on data from the registration authorities and on experience with dealing with respiratory diseases, that the epidemic has already passed its peak. The following interview was translated from German to English...

Dating back to the 12th-century and the Norman invasion of Ireland, Portlick Castle, in Athlone, County Westmeath, is on the market for $1,519,660 (€1,400,000), that's about as much as you'd pay for a large semi-detached house in Dublin! Portlick Castle boasts of ten bedrooms and 12 bathrooms. A lakeside property, nestled on 12 acres of land it really is the stuff of dreams. Of course, there's a little nightmarish stuff too! No house as old as this gets through the centuries without picking up a few ghost stories and Portlick has a few. According to the real estate agent, Stan...

If there's one aspect of the public's appearance that's improved from sheltering in place, it may have been the beards of this year's Hunky Jesus contestants.

A week ago, I posted Early Observations on the Pandemic and Population Density, which suggested that the more worrying experience with the COVID-19 virus in the New York City metropolitan area could result from more intense person-to-person contacts: …the risk of infection is a function of being close to people who are infected.The most fundamental issue is thus, how close people are to one-another in their daily lives. The risk of infection can be expected to be higher where there are very high densities whether in residences, transport or employment locations. Jason Fox of Bloomberg, countered that weighted “metropolitan area”...

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A 102-year-old woman who was diagnosed with the coronavirus defied the odds and is now recovering. At 102 years old, Sophie Avouris, of Yonkers, has seen a lot in her life, entering this world in 1918 at the start of the Spanish flu. “She survived it, thank goodness,” her daughter, Effie Strouthides, said. Strouthides says back in March, doctors at a Manhattan nursing home and rehab facility called to tell her Avouris, who was recovering at the facility from hip surgery, tested positive for COVID-19. “And we were thinking at 102 years old, at high risk,...

Dear friends, on the very day that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead, our risen Savior and Lord clearly defined to all what a fool truly is. A fool as defined by the Word of God Himself (the Lord Jesus - John 1:1-3,14), is anyone who will not properly reason with themselves with the overwhelming biblical facts of TRUTH and REALITY of who Jesus is! The fool absolutely refuses to believe ALL that the Word of God (the Lord Jesus) has to say about the written Word of God - Matt. 5:17, Luke 24:27, 44, John 1:1-3;14 5:39,46, Acts...

Sen. Mitt Romney is among a bipartisan group of lawmakers demanding that President Donald Trump explain why he fired the intelligence community inspector general. The eight senators, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, say the explanation Trump gave for removing Michael Atkinson was insufficient and does not comply with the law. The president cited a lack of confidence in the intelligence community’s top watchdog. “Congressional intent is clear that an expression of lost confidence, without further explanation, is not sufficient to fulfill the requirements of the statute,” the senators wrote in a letter Thursday. “This is in large part because...

Below you will find regular, but not daily, updates on medical and political developments.April 12, 2020 New studies Stanford professor of medicine John Ioannidis concludes in a new study that the risk of death from Covid19 for people under 65 years of age, even in global „hotspots“, is equivalent to the risk of a fatal car accident for daily commuters driving between 9 and 400 miles.In a serological pilot study, the German virologist Hendrick Streeck comes to the interim result that the lethality of Covid19 is at 0.37% and the mortality (based on the total population) at 0.06%. These values...

Severe storms forecast for Texas, Louisiana, setting up threat of tornadoes in Southeast on Easter … A storm moving through Arizona on April 11, 2020, could bring thunderstorms to the Phoenix area. [Karen Kurtz/Arizona Republic] By Doug Stanglin, Posted Apr 11, 2020 at 3:20 PM Severe thunderstorms, fed by warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, are expected to pound Texas Saturday and begin pushing eastward, setting up the likelihood of damaging hail, winds and tornadoes for a large part of the Southeast by Easter. The storm system is then expected to push up the Atlantic coast on Monday....

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday thanked his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi for rushing a five-tonne cargo of medicines, including anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, seen as a possible cure for COVID-19. "Thank you, my dear friend @narendramodi, Prime Minister of India, for sending Chloroquine to Israel. All the citizens of Israel thank you!", Netanyahu said in a tweet Thursday evening. The Israeli’s PM’s thanked India two days after a plane carrying materials used to make medicines for treating coronavirus patients arrived in Israel from India on Tuesday. The five tonne shipment included ingredients for drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, being seen...

The Gillespie County Sheriff's Office is investigating reports of a fatal shooting and home invasion early Saturday morning. Deputies responded to the residence on the 15000 block of Ranch Road 965 around 12:45 a.m. after the caller reported an intruder had been shot by a person inside the home. Officials said the homeowner, 73-year-old Curtis Roys, was asleep when he heard a loud banging noise outside. He then discovered a young man on his back patio who, when confronted, pushed his way inside through the patio door and began to assault Roys with a blunt object. Reportedly, he then put...

President Trump delivered his first public rebuke of the nation’s top infectious disease expert and a member of his coronavirus task force on Sunday evening by resharing a tweet that said “Time to #FireFauci.” DeAnna Lorraine, a Trump supporter and former congressional candidate for California, tweeted: “Fauci is now saying that had Trump listened to the medical experts earlier he could’ve saved more lives. But Fauci was telling people on February 29th that there was nothing to worry about and it posed no threat to the US public at large.” Trump retweeted Lorraine and commented of her claims, “Sorry Fake...