The Full Belmonte, 12/25/21
Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
“President Biden and Dr. Jill Biden today visited Children's National Hospital in D.C.
POTUS asked: Who wants to be a doctor? One or two hands went up, according to a White House pool report.
One boy wants to be a chef. Other kids said police officer, aerospace engineer, author and biomedical engineer.” Read more at Axios
“A 28-year-old California woman pleaded guilty on Wednesday to repeatedly punching a flight attendant in May, bloodying her face and chipping three teeth, federal prosecutors said, part of a surge in violent behavior by airline passengers in the past year.
The woman, Vyvianna M. Quinonez of Sacramento, Calif., was charged with interference with flight crew members and attendants, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California said in a statement on Wednesday. She faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
The assault unfolded toward the end of a Southwest Airlines flight from Sacramento to San Diego, prosecutors said. The flight attendant, who was not identified, had asked Ms. Quinonez to buckle her seatbelt, put up her tray table and ‘wear her facemask properly,’ the statement said.
Ms. Quinonez started filming the flight attendant on her phone and pushed the woman, prosecutors said.
The attack escalated from there, as captured on video by another passenger.
Ms. Quinonez, who was sitting in an aisle seat, stood up and punched the flight attendant in the face multiple times, according to the video. She also grabbed the flight attendant’s hair before the woman was able to move back up the aisle. Several passengers grabbed at Ms. Quinonez’s clothes to try to stop her, prosecutors said.
A man then ‘jumped in between’ Ms. Quinonez and the flight attendant, prosecutors said.
‘Hey, you better sit down,’ he said in the video, using an expletive.
Ms. Quinonez responded, but it was not clear in the video what she said. Her mask had not been covering her nose, but she pulled it up.
‘Don’t you dare touch a flight attendant like that,’ the man said in the video.
The flight attendant was covering her face as blood streamed from beneath her left eye, according to the video. She walked away into the galley as multiple passengers yelled at Ms. Quinonez. ‘A child is here,’ one woman said, referring to a boy sitting in the row in front of Ms. Quinonez.
Prosecutors said the flight attendant was taken to a hospital with injuries that included a swollen eye, a bruised arm and a cut under her eye that had to be stitched. They said she also had three chipped teeth, two of which had to be replaced with crowns.
Southwest Airlines did not comment on Wednesday night.
Ms. Quinonez is set to be sentenced on March 11, prosecutors said. It was not clear if Ms. Quinonez had a lawyer, and she did not respond on Wednesday to messages left at a number listed under her name.
‘The flight attendant who was assaulted was simply doing her job,’ Randy Grossman, the acting U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, said in the statement. ‘It’s inexcusable for anyone to use violence on an airplane for any reason.’
After the attack, both Southwest and American Airlines announced in May that they would continue a suspension of alcohol service on flights in an effort to stop the surge of unruly passenger behavior.
Since Jan. 1, the Federal Aviation Administration has received about 5,700 reports of unruly passengers, including more than 4,100 reports of passengers refusing to comply with a federal mandate that they wear masks on planes.
The F.A.A. has fined several passengers tens of thousands of dollars this year for clashing with airline crews over mask requirements and other safety instructions. Earlier this year, the agency imposed a zero-tolerance policy for interfering with or assaulting flight attendants that carries a fine of up to $35,000 and possible jail time.
However, some say the new policy is not enough. In a statement in October, the Association of Professional Flight Attendants called on the F.A.A. and the Department of Transportation to implement a central registry of sorts so that all U.S. airlines could ban rowdy passengers.” Read more at New York Times
“Hundreds of thousands of people in the UK will be forced to self-isolate on Christmas Day after a record 122,186 tested positive for Covid, the highest daily figure since the pandemic began….
The Omicron variant has become the dominant strain in Portugal, one of the countries with the highest Covid vaccination rates worldwide, officials said.
‘The Omicron variant is already dominant in Portugal,’ the General Directorate of Health said, ‘accounting for 61.5% of cases on December 22.’
On Friday, Portugal recorded 11 deaths and 12,943 cases – a record since 29 January.
Schools, bars and clubs are closed until 10 January, with people told to work from home and face masks mandatory indoors.
Germany recorded 22,214 new cases, compared with 35,431 the day before, officials said. A further 157 deaths were recorded.
Thousands of people across England will receive a Christmas Day booster jab as the vaccination effort continues in the face of record case rates.” Read more at The Guardian
“Vice President Harris has tested negative for the novel coronavirus after being in close contact with an aide who tested positive for the virus.
Harris’s office said on Friday that Harris took a PCR test in the morning and tested negative for COVID-19. “ Read more at The Hill
“MADRID — Covid-19 infections were rising all across Spain, but the message from the country’s leader was clear: The government was not entering 2022 with the restrictions of 2020.
‘The situation is different this time, and because of that, we’re taking different measures,’ Pedro Sánchez, the prime minister, said this week, adding that he understood his people had grown impatient with the pandemic and that he was ‘fully aware of the fatigue.’
Across Europe, that fatigue is as palpable as the dampened Christmas spirit. The fatigue of another named variant of the coronavirus and another wave of infections. The fatigue of another grim year watching New Year’s Eve gatherings get canceled or curtailed, one by one.
But along with the exhaustion, another feeling is taking root: that the coronavirus will not be eradicated with vaccines or lockdowns, but has become something endemic that people must learn to live with, maybe for years to come….
This week, the rough outlines of how Europe might manage its latest outbreak were taking shape, at least for now, driven by everything from politics to people’s desperation to move on, especially at Christmas. Full lockdowns have mainly given way to less intrusive — and less protective — measures.
Spain kept a light touch, issuing limited new requirements on Thursday, like mandating masks outdoors and increasing the vaccination drive.
Even Italy, which suffered a particularly cruel first wave, introduced new rules on Thursday that were far less rigid than those imposed during its worst days, shortening the time frame that health passes remained valid, making third shots indispensable; banning large outdoor events until the end of January; and opting for an outdoor mask mandate.” Read more at New York Times
“As the highly transmissible Omicron variant began to surge across Colorado this month, Governor Jared Polis adopted a laissez-faire tone. Asked in a radio interview about the possibility of reinstating a statewide mask mandate, he replied that, with Covid vaccines now widely available, getting sick was the ‘own darn fault’ of the unvaccinated.
But health workers at hospitals in parts of Colorado that have been overwhelmed by coronavirus patients in recent weeks say they’re bracing for even worse.
‘We are encountering what almost feels like a war zone these days,’ said Stephanie Chrisley, an intensive care nurse at Longmont United hospital, about 50 miles north of Denver. She says she is sometimes tasked with caring for twice the number of patients she’d normally be responsible for. The job, she said, has become ‘morally distressing’.
Hospitals like Chrisley’s are preparing for an even bigger surge, one that will put the most vulnerable residents at risk. And as state leaders across the western US take a hands-off, wait-and-see approach to handling the new variant, experts worry that relying on vaccines alone without additional public health measures won’t be enough.
Vaccination rates across many western states are high, with between 60% and 70% of residents in Oregon, California, Washington, Colorado and New Mexico having been fully vaccinated (though not necessarily boosted). But Omicron, now the dominant variant in the US, appears to be more effective than previous variants at infecting even the doubly vaccinated.
‘In this moment, I would not agree with this sort of throwing the hands up and saying this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ said Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the epidemiology and biostatistics department at the University of California, San Francisco. ‘The spirit of public health is that we have to think collectively.’
Unlike Colorado, California reinstated its statewide indoor mask mandate last Wednesday. But the state has so far avoided issuing the stay-at-home orders it used to curb infections last December, leaving it up to restaurants and businesses to decide whether or not to scale back service or close. Residents, meanwhile, have been left to individually assess the risks of dining out, going to the gym or meeting with friends and family for the holidays.
In Oregon, officials this week warned that a winter surge would tip already strained hospital systems across the state over the edge and in New Mexico, some hospitals had already been operating under ‘crisis standards’ of care, as patients with Covid-19 and other ailments overwhelm emergency rooms and intensive care units.” Read more at The Guardian
In California, stronger masking rules are likely to help stem the spread of the virus. But getting rapid at-home tests remains costly and inconvenient, hurting low-income workers at risk of exposure to the virus and who are most in need of frequent testing.
Although a double dose of vaccines seems to protect people from severe illness and hospitalization, workers at restaurants, grocery stores, food processing centers and other jobs where they must interact in close quarters with other people could still carry and transmit the omicron variant to older and immunocompromised relatives, she said.
Relying on vaccines alone also leaves out those who are struggling to access vaccines, or are unable to take them due to age or preexisting conditions.
In many parts of California, Colorado and the broader west, vaccination rates among Latino residents have lagged, a reality that experts say is at least in part due to a lack of outreach and access. Across California, data have also shown lagging vaccination rates among the poorest residents. Even those who want vaccines may face language barriers in scheduling a shot, said Ninez Ponce, a professor of public health at UCLA and the principal investigator of the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS), the largest state health survey in the United States. Others who work multiple jobs while juggling childcare may have trouble finding the time off to get a first dose or booster.
Chrisley, the ICU nurse, said she was disheartened by Polis’ stance that the unvaccinated only have themselves to blame for contracting the virus. “I have a three-year-old who can’t be vaccinated yet. I have friends who are getting treatments for certain illnesses, which prevents them from being able to get vaccinated. There are people who have allergies to certain vaccines,” she said. Just the vaccines aren’t enough to protect everyone, she said. Moreover, especially amid severe medical worker shortages, a surge of unvaccinated Covid-19 patients in hospitals will mean that patients with other illnesses and injuries will be left with nowhere to go for treatment – and everyone will suffer.
Nurses at Chrisley’s hospital recently led a drive to unionize, saying that their workload was unsustainable. “This has always been a hard job, but it has been getting harder,” she said.
“SAN FRANCISCO — The Board of Supervisors approved an emergency order to tackle the opioid epidemic in San Francisco’s troubled Tenderloin neighborhood, despite reservations by some that the declaration will be used by the mayor to criminalize people who are homeless, addicted to drugs or both.
The vote shortly after midnight on Friday was 8-2, following a marathon 10 hours of debate and public comment. The public health emergency declaration authorizes the Department of Emergency Management to re-allocate city staff and bypass contracting and permitting regulations to set up a new temporary center where people can access expanded drug treatment and counseling.
Advocates for the homeless and substance users urged supervisors to reject the emergency order because Mayor London Breed has also pledged to flood the district with police to halt crime, which some residents want. The mayor also said some drug users may wind up in jail unless they accept services, although drug possession is a misdemeanor crime and rarely enforced.
The board ultimately approved the declaration, calling the abundance of cheap fentanyl a crisis. More people in San Francisco died of overdose last year than of COVID-19.” Read more at Boston Globe
“A former Boston College student who sent her boyfriend tens of thousands of frenzied text messages, some telling him to ‘go kill yourself,’ before he jumped to his death, received a suspended sentence and probation after pleading guilty on Thursday to involuntary manslaughter.
At the hearing in Boston, Judge Robert Ullmann of Suffolk County Superior Court advised the former student, Inyoung You, 23, to live her life in a manner honoring the memory of her boyfriend, Alexander Urtula, The Boston Globe reported.
The judge said he hoped Ms. You’s actions would ‘drive home to teens and young adults on social media that this type of messaging — demeaning someone when they’re feeling down, even suggesting suicide, can have devastating consequences.’
Ms. You was given a suspended two-and-a-half-year prison sentence and 10 years of probation. The suspended sentence means that she can avoid time behind bars if she upholds the terms of her probation, which include completing 300 hours of community service, continuing mental health treatment and abstaining from profit related to the case, her lawyer said.” Read more at New York Times
Protesters painted ‘Justice for Daunte Wright’ on the pavement near a memorial for George Floyd in Minneapolis in April.JOSHUA RASHAAD MCFADDEN/NYT
“For the second time this year, a jury in Minneapolis has ruled against a former police officer for killing a Black man.
Like the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, the verdict Thursday against Kimberly Potter on two counts of manslaughter for the shooting death of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop represented an unusual decision to send a police officer to prison.
And yet, despite the two high-profile convictions in Minneapolis, a review of the data a year and a half after America’s summer of protest shows that accountability for officers who kill remains elusive and that the sheer numbers of people killed in encounters with police have remained steady at an alarming level.” Read more at Boston Globe
“WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday rejected work requirements for Medicaid recipients in Georgia, the last state to have a federal waiver for such restrictions, as it extended its rollback of a signature health policy of the Trump administration.
The announcement from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, delivered in a 79-page letter to Georgia’s health agency, also reversed a federal waiver allowing the state to charge premiums for the health insurance program for the poor.
The Medicaid agency said the worsening coronavirus pandemic, and the emergence of the Omicron variant, had made Georgia’s work requirement ‘infeasible under the current circumstances’ as Covid cases surged.” Read more at New York Times
“ROME (AP) — Pope Francis celebrated Christmas Eve Mass before an estimated 2,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica on Friday, going ahead with the service despite the resurgence in COVID-19 cases that has prompted a new vaccine mandate for Vatican employees.
A maskless Francis processed down the central aisle as the Sistine Chapel choir sang ‘Noel,’ kicking off the Vatican’s Christmas holiday that commemorates the birth of Jesus in a manger in Bethlehem. He remained maskless throughout the service.
In his homily, Francis urged the faithful to focus on the ‘littleness’ of Jesus, and remember that he came into the world poor, without even a proper crib.
‘That is where God is, in littleness,’ Francis said. ‘This is the message: God does not rise up in grandeur, but lowers himself into littleness. Littleness is the path that he chose to draw near to us, to touch our hearts, to save us and to bring us back to what really matters.’
Attendance on Friday was limited to about 2,000 people, far more than the 200 allowed in 2020 when Italy was in a full Christmas lockdown. But the number is a fraction of the capacity of St. Peter’s, which can seat up to 20,000 and in pre-pandemic times would be packed for one of the most popular Vatican liturgies of the year.” Read more at Boston Globe
“SEOUL — The government of President Moon Jae-in said Friday that it would pardon former President Park Geun-hye, who is serving a 20-year prison term after she was convicted on bribery and other criminal charges.
Park, 69, who became the first democratically elected South Korean leader to be removed from office through parliamentary impeachment, will be freed Dec. 31 to promote ‘reconciliation and consolidate national power to help overcome the national crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic,’ the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
She has served four years and nine months of her sentence. Concerns about her health were raised after she was taken to a hospital in Seoul, the capital, for various illnesses last month.” Read more at Boston Globe
“TOKYO — Japan’s Cabinet on Friday approved the country’s biggest increase in military spending in decades, as officials expressed growing concern about the possibility of being pulled into a conflict over Taiwan.
The increase of 6.5% is part of the largest annual budget package in Japan’s history, totaling more than $940 billion. It includes hundreds of billions in spending meant to help the economy recover from damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic.
It also includes more than $51.5 billion for the military, reflecting a substantial increase in a defense budget far smaller than that of its ally the United States or of China, the regional giant. Officials have argued that the spending is needed to protect Japan in a security environment that is becoming “more challenging at unprecedented speed.” Read more at Boston Globe
“In recent weeks, some of the most famous destinations along Mexico’s Caribbean coast have seen alarming displays of violence, still-rare collisionsbetween the country’s profound security problems and its glittering tourist attractions. Many have pointed to those incidents as illustration of Mexico’s lawlessness. But Mexican officials say that critique fails to account for the way tourists’ increasing demand for drugs has emboldened the cartels that sell to them.
In Tulum, a German and Indian tourist were killed by gunmen in October. In November, the shootout at the Hyatt spared tourists, but left two apparent cartel members dead. This month, gunmen arrived at a well-known Cancún beach on water scooters in another apparent targeted killing attempt. They fired their weapons before taking off into the Caribbean. No one was wounded.” Read more at Washington Post
Edward D. Shames’s paratrooper company parachuted behind Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and held off Hitler’s troops in their prolonged siege of the Belgian town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.Credit...PJF Military Collection /Alamy
“Edward D. Shames, the last surviving officer of the World War II paratrooper company whose exploits were recounted in the best-selling book and subsequent mini-series ‘Band of Brothers,’ died on Dec. 3 at his home in Virginia Beach. He was 99.
His death was confirmed by his son Douglas.
Mr. Shames’s Easy Company, Second Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division parachuted behind Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. It fought the Germans in France, jumped into the German-occupied Netherlands in Operation Market Garden and held off Hitler’s troops in their prolonged siege of the Belgian town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.
When the Germans surrendered in May 1945, Easy Company had reached Eagle’s Nest, Hitler’s abandoned mountain retreat near the Austrian border.
The historian Stephen E. Ambrose interviewed veterans of Easy Company for his book ‘Band of Brothers’ (1992). (He took the book’s title from Shakespeare’s ‘Henry V,’ in which the king, in a St. Crispin’s Day oration, seeks to inspire his troops to defeat the French in the battle of Agincourt:
‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;/For he to-day that sheds his blood with me/Shall be my brother. …’” Read more at New York Times
“Dave Draper, a popular bodybuilder of the 1960s who won three major titles before dropping out of competition at age 28, died on Nov. 30 at his home in Aptos, Calif., near Santa Cruz. He was 79.
The cause was congestive heart failure, his wife, Laree Draper, said.
Mr. Draper — who stood six feet tall, had a 54-inch chest and competed at 235 pounds — emerged as a force in bodybuilding in 1962 with his victory at the Mr. New Jersey competition. He soon moved to Southern California, where he continued to sculpt his body at the Dungeon, a gym on the fabled Muscle Beach in Santa Monica, and at Gold’s Gym, in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.
He loved lifting weights for its physical and spiritual benefits. But he disliked the preening and posing required of bodybuilders at competitions and exhibitions….
Despite that ambivalence, Mr. Draper, who became known as the Blond Bomber, was a star on the bodybuilding scene of the 1960s. He was named Mr. America in 1965, and Mr. Universe in 1966 — before Arnold Schwarzenegger had arrived from Austria — and won the Mr. World title in 1970.
‘Dave trained harder than anybody else and always wore jeans to the gym,’ Frank Zane, a three-time Mr. Olympia, said in a phone interview. ‘He loved to train, and he was very strong. He just didn’t like competing.’
Mr. Draper’s spectacular physique found an occasional home in Hollywood. He had roles in sitcoms like ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ (as Dave Universe, a date for Elly May Clampett) and ‘The Monkees’ (as a character named Bulk). He was also in a few films, including ‘Don’t Make Waves’ (1967), in which he played Sharon Tate’s boyfriend.” Read more at New York Times
“Amy Schneider – who's won 17 consecutive games of Jeopardy! – is climbing the ladder of series champions.
She's now collected the fourth-highest winnings in regular season play with $687,400, behind legends Matt Amodio ($1,518,601), James Holzhauer ($2,462,216) and Ken Jennings ($2,520,700).
The engineering manager from Oakland, California, became the first openly transgender contestant to qualify for a spot in the next tournament of top winners after just five wins earlier this year. She's since opened up about the value of on-screen representation.
‘I am so incredibly grateful,’ she said in a recent interview with San Francisco station KGO-TV. ‘Hopefully I can send a positive message to the nerdy trans girl who wants to be on the show too.’…” Read more at USA Today
Aww:'Jeopardy' contestant Amy Schneider wants to 'send a positive message to the nerdy trans girl'