the "Headline That Caught My Attention or the WTF" thread

Sheesh, when I saw this headline I was figuring this would be going in the Only In Maine thread since Wyman's frozen blueberries are the only frozen blueberries you can find around here, not something from Chile.

E. Coli Illnesses Linked to Frozen Blueberries Rise to 17, F.D.A. Says​

The affected frozen fruit products, which were distributed to 19 states and to retailers like Walmart and Publix, were recalled starting in July.

Frozen blueberries in deep purple.

There have been six hospitalizations related to E. coli illnesses linked to frozen blueberries, the Food and Drug Administration said.

The total number of people sickened by E. coli linked to recalled frozen blueberries has increased to 17, the Food and Drug Administration said in an update on Thursday.

The illnesses were reported from May 11 to Aug. 2 in Florida and Georgia. So far, there have been six hospitalizations, and no deaths have been reported, the agency said.

In July, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the F.D.A. announced that they were investigating an E. coli outbreak linked to frozen blueberries after a voluntary recall by Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur S.A., of San Carlos, Chile.

Later that month, the grocery store chain Publix recalled all GreenWise Organic Frozen Whole Blueberries and Whole Mixed Berries because of potential E. coli contamination.

On Wednesday, Frutas y Hortalizas del Sur S.A., expanded its July recall to include one lot of Great Value brand frozen organic mixed berry products sold at Walmart stores.

The latest recalled products were sold in 10-ounce packages with a lot code of 6040 01-6 and a best by date of Feb. 9, 2028, the F.D.A. said.

“Do not eat, sell, or serve a specific lot of recalled Great Value frozen berries or recalled GreenWise frozen berries,” the agency said on its website.

The affected product has been sold in a total of 19 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin

The F.D.A. said that consumers should check their freezers for any of the recalled products and throw them away or return them to the place of purchase for a refund.

Symptoms of an E. coli infection can begin anywhere from a few days to nine days after consuming contaminated food. They include stomach cramps, diarrhea, fever, nausea and vomiting.

Some E. coli infections can cause severe bloody diarrhea and lead to life-threatening conditions, including high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease and kidney failure, the F.D.A. said.

The federal agency advised consumers who ate recalled frozen berry products and have any symptoms that resemble an E. coli infection to consult their health care providers immediately.
 
This raises some questions, considering some of the things we've heard about a different religious population in France.

www.cbsnews.com

France opens investigation after female Eiffel Tower staff removed for Hindu group's visit

The mayor of Paris announced an investigation into why female staff at the Eiffel Tower were taken off duty for a visit from a Hindu religious group.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

One wonders if it had been the other group, if making accommodation would have been the same issue? Our illustrious governor is certainly known to accommodate their beliefs.
 
They're lucky it didn't blow up the whole building [/S]

www.newsday.com

Teacher at Eastport-South Manor High School opens box of art supplies — and finds box of bullets inside

The high school teacher found the bullets in a sealed box within the box of art supplies, administration officials said in a statement to families.
www.newsday.com

A routine back-to-school ritual took an alarming turn of events Tuesday when officials said a teacher unpacking a delivery of art supplies to Eastport-South Manor Junior-Senior High School discovered a box of bullets packed with the shipment.

In a statement to the school community Eastport-South Manor Central School District Superintendent Joseph A. Steimel said Suffolk County police were immediately notified of the situation. Initial indications are the incident is the result of a "severe packaging and shipping error" made by a third-party distributor. The bullets look to have been labeled for shipment to a sporting goods store in Louisiana.

It was not immediately clear how many bullets were in the shipment , or their calib
er.

I guess they could have overreacted more. They could have evacuated the building. But now one has to wonder if getting the police involved over a simple order-fill error is going to bring the rain on this poor company. It's illegal to ship ammunition to NY unless it's to an FFL because dopey, malicious rules.
 
Avenger said:
This raises some questions, considering some of the things we've heard about a different religious population in France.

www.cbsnews.com

France opens investigation after female Eiffel Tower staff removed for Hindu group's visit

The mayor of Paris announced an investigation into why female staff at the Eiffel Tower were taken off duty for a visit from a Hindu religious group.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

One wonders if it had been the other group, if making accommodation would have been the same issue? Our illustrious governor is certainly known to accommodate their beliefs.
Click to expand...

Just looked it up, and found that France has banned that particular garment, probably rendering the point moot.

There may be hope for them yet.
 
www.foxnews.com

Nike forgot that Republicans buy sneakers, too, and now it's getting booted from the S&P 100

Michael Jordan's famous sneakers quote haunts Nike as the brand exits the S&P 100 after a stunning $200 billion collapse tied to left-wing politics.
www.foxnews.com www.foxnews.com

Nike’s decline finally cost it blue-chip status​

S&P isn’t kicking Nike out because the index committee hated the Kaepernick ad or saw Dylan Mulvaney in a sports bra. Nike is getting kicked out because its value collapsed.

The politics didn’t wipe out $200 billion by itself. But Nike volunteered to alienate customers while it was already losing ground everywhere else.

The sports apparel giant reached a market value of approximately $281 billion near its November 2021 peak. Nike shares closed Tuesday at $38.10, giving the company a market capitalization of roughly $56.5 billion. The stock was about 79% below its Nov. 5, 2021 intraday record of $179.10, and more than $220 billion in market value had disappeared.

Nike kept choosing left-wing politics at home​


In 2019, Nike pulled a Fourth of July-themed Air Max sneaker featuring the Betsy Ross flag because it said the design could "unintentionally offend." A year later, the company launched its "For Once, Don’t Do It" racial-justice campaign and publicly embraced Black Lives Matter messaging.

Then Nike partnered with Dylan Mulvaney in 2023 for a paid promotion of women’s leggings and sports bras. Also, OutKick reported that researchers and a Boston Children’s Hospital publication had described Nike as supporting a proposed study involving transgender youth athletes. A Nike executive, speaking to OutKick on background, later said the study "was never initialized" and was "not moving forward," while researcher Joanna Harper subsequently said Nike had pulled out after critics learned of it.

Nike made left-wing politics part of its identity and repeatedly dared customers to object.
 
But wait,.... There's.MORE!

www.newsday.com

Refund process begins for Suffolk's illegal red light camera fees. Here's how to apply.

Drivers must submit a claim by Dec. 8 to be eligible for reimbursements of up to $36 per ticket.
www.newsday.com

Suffolk County has begun sending out mailers and launched a website so that drivers who paid the county’s illegal red light camera fees from 2013 to 2023 can get reimbursed.

The private contractor handling Suffolk’s claims process began sending out mailers on Wednesday, according to one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Each mailer contains a “class member identification number." Recipients must use it within three months to file a claim online or by mail, according to samples posted online.

The claims are part of a class action settlement the county reached in July regarding $30 administrative fees it used to charge on top of the base fine of $50, which courts found violated state law.

You'd almost think they don't know who's money they stole. It's bad enough they're only giving back less than half of what they fleeced, but the victims need to fill out paperwork to reclaim their own money.

Ho Lee Fwook!

BTW, Nassau is still playing rhe "voluntary" card. I guess if you don't fill out the forms to get your property back, you "volunteered" to let Suffolk keep it too.

ROTTEN.
TO.
THE.
CORE!
 
I think “they” said that voter fraud was not an issue in the outcome of elections.

I think the clueless people don’t know their ass from their elbows as to the value of masks.
 
Interesting, was once on the wrong side of a pair of markers that didn't end up making actual sense. Mother Nature always has some surprises up her sleeve...

How Did a Heart Drug With So Much Promise Fall So Flat?​

Cardiologists are struggling to figure out why a drug that should have prevented heart attacks didn’t work at all.

Until last Friday, cardiologists thought they were on the verge of a new frontier in treating heart disease.

Three companies were conducting large clinical trials on experimental drugs that slash levels of a blood protein, Lp(a), thought to cause heart attacks and stroke. Doctors were eagerly awaiting the results, hoping the drug could be as important as a statin.

When Novartis, the first company to complete its trial, announced its results, late Friday afternoon, after the markets closed, cardiologists were shocked. The drug could lower Lp(a) levels by 80 percent, but it did not prevent heart attacks and strokes. It had failed.

“There’s something we don’t understand here,” said Dr. John Alexander, a cardiologist at Duke.

Cardiologists regularly see patients who have had heart attacks even though their cholesterol and blood pressure levels are low. They do not have diabetes or obesity, and they do not smoke, either. All too often, though, they have high levels of Lp(a).

About 20 percent of Americans have elevated levels; people with the highest levels of the protein can have double or triple the risk of a heart attack.

So there was no question that Lp(a) was important. A drug to lower the level of the protein, cardiologists hoped, could provide a way for these patients to protect themselves.

But the failure of the Novartis study raised an uncomfortable possibility: Maybe Lp(a) is not a cause of heart disease, but instead is a marker of heart disease risk, like white hair is a mark of aging.

If Lp(a) is a marker, though, what is it marking? Is there another cause of heart disease that no one has thought of?

That is “the nagging question we are all pondering,” said Dr. David Maron, president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology.

There may not be an easy answer, either. “Maybe we were fooled into thinking this would be simple,” Dr. Alexander said.

Still, many researchers are not ready to throw out the Lp(a) hypothesis, saying that there might be other explanations for the failure and that they need to take a close look at the study data. The company will not provide the full data set until it is presented at the American Heart Association meeting in November.

“We still have a lot to learn,” said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Cardiologists say they have good reasons to think high levels of Lp(a) cause heart disease. The blood protein inserts itself into artery walls and can cause inflammation and blood clotting.

One possible explanation for the study’s failure, said Dr. Daniel Rader, a lipid specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, might be that it involved the wrong type of patients. The participants were people with very high Lp(a) levels who had already had heart attacks or strokes. The hope was that lowering Lp(a) would prevent them from future events.

Studies are done in a patient population that is more prone to heart attacks because it is easier to see if those patients are protected. But, Dr. Rader said, it might be too late to help them. The right group to test might be people at high risk of heart disease who have not yet had a heart attack. Or maybe, he said, lowering Lp(a) by 80 percent is not enough.

But if Lp(a) is not playing a major role in causing recurrent heart attacks and strokes in people who already have heart disease, what, then, is the driver?

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale, has a different thought. Cholesterol levels and blood pressure levels, he notes, can be low for decades and then soar later in life. But high Lp(a) levels are set by genetics and do not vary.

“You are stuck with your Lp(a) level,” Dr. Krumholz said. Whatever the level is, it is not going to change on its own. So lowering it in adulthood might be ineffective because it is too late to make a difference. Maybe, he said, a person would have to take a drug to lower Lp(a) for 20 years or even from birth.

Other studies of drugs that target Lp(a) by the pharmaceutical companies Lilly and Amgen are still underway, and those studies will be crucial in determining if lowering those levels are helpful, cardiologists said.

If those other studies are negative, Dr. Rader said, “I am not sure we will see a whole lot of enthusiasm for Lp(a).”
 
Rut-roh!!! Oil now up to $110 per barrel...

Gulf Tankers Are Running Out of Ways to Export Oil: ‘These Waters Aren’t Safe’​

Ship operators already faced severe risks in navigating the region, and now the danger is higher as Houthi militias assert control in the Red Sea.

The world’s most valuable energy corridors are pinching shut.

On Friday, Houthi militants backed by Iran expanded their control of the Red Sea, threatening a critical route for Persian Gulf crude. That left the region with few alternatives, since shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — once the world’s primary oil transit point — remains significantly constrained and far below what it was before the war.

And oil exports from Saudi Arabia, long the most important producer in the Middle East, plunged last month to their lowest point in at least 13 years.

The U.S. Navy has been able to keep oil flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz on sea paths close to the coast of Oman, the opposite side from Iran. But that has required an extensive and dangerous operation.

For shipping companies, the once routine operation of navigating the strait has become a high-risk endeavor. At least 23 ships were hit in the waterway near Oman in July and August. Since the war began at the end of February, at least 22 sailors have been killed in the Middle East.

“These waters aren’t safe,” said Michelle Wiese Bockmann, an analyst at Windward, a maritime intelligence company.

As the war in Iran nears its seventh month, it appears to be spinning out of control, analysts said. With no diplomatic end in sight, the Middle East, the epicenter of energy production, is facing its most severe supply crisis in decades.

The Trump administration “has been using a variety of tools very effectively to keep the oil price and the gasoline price at bay,” said Amos Hochstein, who served as a foreign affairs and energy adviser in the Biden administration. But now, he said, President Trump and his team are “stuck.”

The economic consequences are piling up.

Oil prices on Friday briefly topped $108 per barrel after escalating attacks from the Iranian-backed Houthi militia. That is roughly 50 percent above prewar levels. Average U.S. gasoline prices have climbed above $4 a gallon — over $1 more than they were a year ago. Also on Friday, the average cost of diesel, a staple fuel for trucking, farming and industry, topped $6 a gallon in the United States.

Mr. Trump said this week that he believed the war in Iran would not end until after the U.S. midterm election in November, but claimed gas prices would come “tumbling down” after the voting. In truth, analysts said, the Trump administration has few options left for ending the war or lowering energy prices. Last month, administration officials imposed tight new economic sanctions on Tehran in the hope the move would topple the regime, but it has not.

“They could bomb, or they could talk,” said Gregory Brew, an analyst at the Eurasia Group, a research firm.

Iran has demanded, among other things, the end of a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports and the release of frozen assets overseas. Iran has also continually claimed it will maintain control over the Strait of Hormuz.

“There may be a clear way out, which would be surrender to Iran,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a special representative for Iran and Venezuela during the first Trump administration. But, he added, “the question to the president would be: Are you willing to grant that to get past the election?”

On Friday, Houthi rebel groups gained control of the strategic Red Sea port city of Mokha in Yemen, pushing out forces allied with the Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. Just days earlier, the Houthis injured 73 civilians and hit energy facilities in the southern part of Saudi Arabia.

Fawaz A. Gerges, a London School of Economics professor focusing on the Middle East, called the Houthi control of Mokha “a game changer” for the militant group as well as for Iran.

The Saudi Energy Ministry said on Friday that its East-West Pipeline, the conduit it had been using instead of the Strait of Hormuz, had been “targeted multiple times” by attacks the day before and had been shut down as a “precautionary measure.”

After the first U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran restricted access though the Strait of Hormuz. That turned the Bab al-Mandab Strait, at the south entry to the Red Sea, into a backup route for Middle East oil, particularly for Saudi Arabia. Now the Houthis have a stranglehold there.

“This new development gives the Houthis important leverage with Saudi Arabia, their staunch enemy, and also the global trade system,” Mr. Gerges said. He added, “As a result, Iran is in a stronger position now to increase the pain to the U.S. economy and the world.”

In the past week, only two Saudi Arabian cargoes passed through the Bab al-Mandab Strait out of the Red Sea, according to Kpler, a maritime data firm.

Saudi Arabia has another Red Sea option to export oil — sending it north though a pipeline near the Suez Canal. But that route through the Mediterranean is costlier and adds weeks to the voyage to Asia, where most of the kingdom’s customers are.

Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is a small fraction of the 130 or so vessels a day before the war, according to ship-tracking companies. An average of 19 ships per day have transited the strait in September, down from 20 in August and a high of 34 in June, when a memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran was briefly in place.

Kpler recorded just nine ships as having passed through the strait on Thursday.

Ms. Wiese Bockmann, the analyst at Windward, calculated that crude oil exports from Gulf countries, aside from Iran, in August was about two-thirds of what it was before the war.

Just in the past week, U.S. forces have disabled or destroyed at least eight Iranian tankers, she said, and Iran has retaliated with deadly attacks against vessels passing through the strait near Oman. The intensifying attacks are causing shipowners, even ones with a high appetite for risk, to hold off on braving the region.
 
Roccus7 said:
Interesting, was once on the wrong side of a pair of markers that didn't end up making actual sense. Mother Nature always has some surprises up her sleeve...

How Did a Heart Drug With So Much Promise Fall So Flat?​

Cardiologists are struggling to figure out why a drug that should have prevented heart attacks didn’t work at all.

Until last Friday, cardiologists thought they were on the verge of a new frontier in treating heart disease.

Three companies were conducting large clinical trials on experimental drugs that slash levels of a blood protein, Lp(a), thought to cause heart attacks and stroke. Doctors were eagerly awaiting the results, hoping the drug could be as important as a statin.

When Novartis, the first company to complete its trial, announced its results, late Friday afternoon, after the markets closed, cardiologists were shocked. The drug could lower Lp(a) levels by 80 percent, but it did not prevent heart attacks and strokes. It had failed.

“There’s something we don’t understand here,” said Dr. John Alexander, a cardiologist at Duke.

Cardiologists regularly see patients who have had heart attacks even though their cholesterol and blood pressure levels are low. They do not have diabetes or obesity, and they do not smoke, either. All too often, though, they have high levels of Lp(a).

About 20 percent of Americans have elevated levels; people with the highest levels of the protein can have double or triple the risk of a heart attack.

So there was no question that Lp(a) was important. A drug to lower the level of the protein, cardiologists hoped, could provide a way for these patients to protect themselves.

But the failure of the Novartis study raised an uncomfortable possibility: Maybe Lp(a) is not a cause of heart disease, but instead is a marker of heart disease risk, like white hair is a mark of aging.

If Lp(a) is a marker, though, what is it marking? Is there another cause of heart disease that no one has thought of?

That is “the nagging question we are all pondering,” said Dr. David Maron, president of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology.

There may not be an easy answer, either. “Maybe we were fooled into thinking this would be simple,” Dr. Alexander said.

Still, many researchers are not ready to throw out the Lp(a) hypothesis, saying that there might be other explanations for the failure and that they need to take a close look at the study data. The company will not provide the full data set until it is presented at the American Heart Association meeting in November.

“We still have a lot to learn,” said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

Cardiologists say they have good reasons to think high levels of Lp(a) cause heart disease. The blood protein inserts itself into artery walls and can cause inflammation and blood clotting.

One possible explanation for the study’s failure, said Dr. Daniel Rader, a lipid specialist at the University of Pennsylvania, might be that it involved the wrong type of patients. The participants were people with very high Lp(a) levels who had already had heart attacks or strokes. The hope was that lowering Lp(a) would prevent them from future events.

Studies are done in a patient population that is more prone to heart attacks because it is easier to see if those patients are protected. But, Dr. Rader said, it might be too late to help them. The right group to test might be people at high risk of heart disease who have not yet had a heart attack. Or maybe, he said, lowering Lp(a) by 80 percent is not enough.

But if Lp(a) is not playing a major role in causing recurrent heart attacks and strokes in people who already have heart disease, what, then, is the driver?

Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a cardiologist at Yale, has a different thought. Cholesterol levels and blood pressure levels, he notes, can be low for decades and then soar later in life. But high Lp(a) levels are set by genetics and do not vary.

“You are stuck with your Lp(a) level,” Dr. Krumholz said. Whatever the level is, it is not going to change on its own. So lowering it in adulthood might be ineffective because it is too late to make a difference. Maybe, he said, a person would have to take a drug to lower Lp(a) for 20 years or even from birth.

Other studies of drugs that target Lp(a) by the pharmaceutical companies Lilly and Amgen are still underway, and those studies will be crucial in determining if lowering those levels are helpful, cardiologists said.

If those other studies are negative, Dr. Rader said, “I am not sure we will see a whole lot of enthusiasm for Lp(a).”
Click to expand...
Sounds like the COVID jab tossed a spanner into their studies.
 
Rut-roh!! Watch out @MOJOE, but there may be a silver lining to this cloud, my empasis...

An Unusual Plume of Dust Is Headed to Florida​

Saharan dust often reaches South Florida, but rarely this late in the year.

A layer of Saharan dust half the size of the continental United States filled the atmosphere over much of the Caribbean on Saturday and was filtering into South Florida.

The cloud is unusually large for this time of year. Dry, dusty air collects from North Africa and moves across the Atlantic Ocean multiple times every year, but it is more common from mid-June through mid-August.

“These plumes are still coming off Africa in September, but they’re smaller and they usually don’t reach a place like Miami,” said Jason Dunion, a research meteorologist at the University of Miami who monitors Saharan dust.

The worst of the dust was expected in the Caribbean but light concentrations were reaching southern Florida on Saturday morning as the cloud brushed the tip of the state.

“It looks like it will stick around through the weekend and then starts to dissipate early next week,” said Chris Fischer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Miami.

The transport of dust from the Sahara to places around the world is a sublime occurrence in the weather world.

Wind pulls the dust from the desert floor and pushes it as much as a mile above the Earth’s surface. Depending on the direction of the winds high in the atmosphere, the dust can drift into the Middle East or Europe or travel to the United States.

The particle-filled air makes skies hazy and can degrade air quality, especially when the dust drifts toward the ground. It also suppresses rain clouds and thunderstorms, bringing dry weather.

“The clouds bubble up into the dry air and collapse,” Mr. Dunion said.

It also hinders the formation of hurricanes over the Atlantic Ocean, he said.

On Friday, the dust layer hovered over the Caribbean, and the Weather Service office in Puerto Rico warned of reduced visibility and deteriorating air quality.

“The sky is not the ‘blue, blue’ that we normally see,” Maria Novoa-Garcia, a meteorologist with the Weather Service in Carolina, Puerto Rico, said on Friday. “It’s more of a pale blue, grayish sky.”

Dust concentrations are usually highest in June and July on the island.

“This is very atypical for September,” Ms. Novoa-Garcia said. “Right now we are going through drought conditions. We’re not seeing the precipitation that we usually do.”
 

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