Fear of the Plague

 The Spanish passenger of the Antarctic voyage suspected of contact with the Hantavirus was put off on an isolated islet in the Canaries.  After the Regina Coeli Sunday morning prayer, Pope Leo XIV thanked the people of the Canary Islands for allowing the arrival of the MV Hondius, affected by a hantavirus outbreak. 

The British passenger was landed on Tristan da Cunha. 

Tristan da Cunha — the world's most remote inhabited island.

It sits in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, roughly halfway between South Africa and South America. It's a British Overseas Territory with only about 200 residents, no airstrip, and normally accessible only by a six-day boat journey.

A British Army specialist team of 8 people — six paratroopers and two military clinicians — parachuted from an RAF A400M aircraft onto the island after a suspected Hantavirus case was confirmed in a British national who had been a passenger on a cruise ship hit by an outbreak.

The logistics were extraordinary: The A400M flew 6,788 km from RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, refuelling mid-flight from a RAF Voyager tanker aircraft, before reaching the island. Haaretz

Pandemic on the making

 Hantavirus causes respiratory disease. The cruise ship cluster is grabbing attention because of the person-to-person transmission via the Andes strain, and because passengers from many countries disembarked before the outbreak was detected.   The colalarga rat transmitted the mutated Hantavirus to a passenger of the cruise ship, killing several other passengers. Now they are trying to localize those who came into contact with an infected persons. One woman who flew in the same plane has been identified, and she is dead. They are trying to stop the epidemic before it endangers the whole world. 

My Alma Mater

From the La Plata El Dia, Argentina:

"Our faculty has an enormous pending debt with the educational system, since more than 70% of the students who enter do not go to the second year," Marín warned in one of the strongest passages of his message; "the graduation rate is lower compared to that observed 10 years ago." In that sense, he compared that before it reached 67% while today it is around 18%"

I don't believe that in 2016, 67% graduated, because in my time, graduating classes were no more than 10% of the entrants. I don't know exactly how many graduated in my class because I was the first to finish and left La Plata the day I passed the last exam. 

The Ebal Mountain

 

Har Ebal, the Samaritan Jews' sacred mountain. Taken in 2012.

In the Book of Joshua, after the Battle of Ai, Joshua built an altar of unhewn stones there, the Israelites then made peace offerings on it, the Law of Moses was written onto the stones, and the Israelites split into two groups and pronounced blessings and curses as instructed there.

In February 2021 a portion of the site was destroyed by the Palestinian Authority and the stones were ground up and used to pave the road.

President Trump Negotiating

 
US President Donald Trump told Fox News that Iran would be "blown off the face of the earth' if it attacks the US naval vessels escorting merchant vessels through the Strait of Hormuz.

Thinking out of the box

 
        Thinking

https://x.com/i/status/1939933166354972760

Who is Who in British Politics

Zack Polanski is a latecomer to electoral politics. He grew up in Manchester in a Jewish family, came out as gay as a teenager and spent two decades as an actor, boosting his income with odd jobs including hypnotherapist. In 2013 he told a reporter that he could enlarge her breasts using “the unconscious” (he has since apologised). Two years later he joined the centrist Liberal Democrats but failed to mesmerise voters, standing unsuccessfully to be a councillor in London. He switched to the Greens in 2017. Eventually he was elected to the London Assembly, where he still sits.

The Economist’s poll tracker puts the Greens just three points behind Labour and the Conservatives, Britain’s two traditional parties of government.  Polanski is the leader of the Green Party. (from The Economist).