The Full Belmonte, 6/20/2022
“A combination of rough weather, staff shortages and infrastructure challenges have left the major airlines struggling to keep up with the surge in travel. Between Friday and Sunday, more than 3,200 flights were canceled and about 9,000 flights were delayed, according to the data group FlightAware. The increase in delays and cancellations comes just days after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg urged airline CEOs to improve their flight schedulesand better respond to disruptions. This past Friday clocked in as the most popular air travel day of 2022, statistics from the TSA show. Airports haven't been that crowded since Thanksgiving 2021.” Read more at CNN
“The CDC signed off on Covid-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months on Saturday, clearing the way for vaccinations to begin soon. The announcement came shortly after the CDC's vaccine advisers voted unanimously in support of recommending the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccines to the nation's youngest age group. President Joe Biden praised the CDC's decision, calling it a ‘monumental step forward in our nation's fight against the virus.’ While vaccinations may not begin until Tuesday in some places, health officials must now contend with a large number of parents who remain reluctant to quickly vaccinate. Just 18% of parents of children under 5 said they would vaccinate their child against Covid-19 as soon as a vaccine became available, an April survey found.” Read more at CNN
“Ukraine's bid to join the European Union could bring ‘greater hostile activity’ from Russia as the EU considers whether the country should be formally considered for candidate status, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned. Leaders of the EU's 27 member states will meet this week to discuss the possible path forward for Ukraine. However, even though the EU and its members have broadly supported Ukraine in its war effort, Ukraine's ongoing fight raises several issues and could slow down the timeline. In fact, experts say it is highly unlikely that Ukraine will be able to meet the EU’s criteria to start negotiations until after the war ends. The average time for a country to join the EU is four years and 10 months.” Read more at CNN
“The House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol will hold a hearing Tuesday that will show evidence of then-President Donald Trump's involvement in a scheme to submit fake electors, Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff told CNN on Sunday. Federal prosecutors are reviewing the fake Electoral College certifications created by Trump allies that falsely declared him the winner of seven states that he lost in 2020. The fake certificates were sent to the National Archives by Trump's allies in the weeks after the election and had no impact on the electoral outcome. Schiff, a member of the panel, also said the committee plans to show ‘courageous state officials who stood up and said they wouldn't go along with this plan to either call legislators back into session or decertify the results for Joe Biden.’” Read more at CNN
A Yellowstone National Park ranger stands on a road wiped out by flooding along the Gardner River in Montana. Photo: Matthew Brown/AP
“Most of Yellowstone National Park should reopen within the next two weeks — much faster than originally expected, AP reports.
Yellowstone will partially reopen at 8 a.m. Wednesday, more than a week after 10,000 visitors were forced out when the Yellowstone and other rivers went over their banks.
Yellowstone Superintendent Cam Sholly said the park will admit fewer visitors for the time being. It may take years to restore some roads.
Only portions of the park that can be accessed along its ‘southern loop’ of roads will be opened initially.
Within two weeks, officials plan to also open the northern loop, giving visitors access to Tower Fall and Mammoth Hot Springs.” Read more at Axios
Photo: David Goldman/AP
Above: Harley Holmes, 8, cleans out her room in Fromberg, Mont. Flood damage is forcing her family from their home.
Gov. Ron DeSantis leads an event in Miami in January to promote monoclonal antibodies for COVID patients and bash Biden administration restrictions. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
“The New Yorker's Dexter Filkins writes that in a recent phone interview, former President Trump took credit for the victory by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: ‘If I didn't endorse him, he wouldn’t have won.’
Trump told Filkins he's ‘very close to making a decision’ about whether to run in 2024: ‘I don’t know if Ron is running, and I don't ask him ... It's his prerogative. I think I would win.’
Why it matters: The Florida governor ‘channels the same rage as the former President, but with greater discipline,’ the magazine says.
Filkins quotes a consultant to Republican candidates as saying lots of colleagues are angling to work for DeSantis in a presidential race:
‘Everyone is trying to get a piece of him.’
‘DeSantis has remade the political landscape in Florida,’ Filkins concludes:
It seems conceivable that he could attempt something similar on a national level — though some political observers wonder whether he could endure the countless hours of banal conversation required to succeed in a national election. ‘He’s going to have to go sit in a diner and listen to the local county chairman ... for twenty minutes,’ a Republican consultant told me.
‘It is possible that the only thing that will complicate DeSantis’s ascent is his own impatience,’ Filkins adds:
At 43, "he can afford to wait. But there is every indication that he doesn’t want to. 'Ron has been told for four years that he’s Trump’s successor ... ,' the consultant told me. ‘Ron has heard way too many times, 'You’re next.’” Read more at Axios
“Colombia has elected a former guerrilla fighter Gustavo Petro as president, making him the South American country’s first leftist head of state.
Petro beat Rodolfo Hernández, a gaff-prone former mayor of Bucaramanga and business mogul, with 50.47% of the vote in a runoff election on Sunday and will take office in July amid a host of challenges, not least of which is the deepening discontent over inequality and rising costs of living. Hernández had 47.27%, with almost all ballots counted, according to results released by election authorities.
Petro’s election marks a tidal shift for Colombia, a country that has never before had a leftist president, and follows similar victories for the left in Peru, Chile and Honduras.” Read more at The Guardian
“KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia’s military kept on grinding down Ukraine’s defenses Monday, with combat in eastern areas said to be entering a ‘decisive’ phase, as the war’s consequences for food and fuel supplies increasingly weighed on minds around the globe.
In Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, which in recent weeks has become the focal point of Moscow’s attempt to impose its will on its neighbor, battles raged for the control of multiple villages, the local governor said.
Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said the Kremlin had ordered the Russian military to overrun the entire Luhansk region by next Sunday. Currently, Moscow’s forces control about 95% of the region.” Read more at AP News
“NEW YORK (AP) — What’s the price of peace?
That question could be partially answered Monday night when Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov auctions off his Nobel Peace Prize medal. The proceeds will go directly to UNICEF in its efforts to help children displaced by the war in Ukraine.
Muratov, awarded the gold medal in October 2021, helped found the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and was the publication’s editor-in-chief when it shut down in March amid the Kremlin’s clampdown on journalists and public dissent in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
It was Muratov’s idea to auction off his prize, having already announced he was donating the accompanying $500,000 cash award to charity. The idea of the donation, he said, ‘is to give the children refugees a chance for a future.’” Read more at AP News
Japan's constitution currently defines marriage as one between ‘both sexes’
“Japan's ban on same-sex marriages does not violate the constitution, a district court in Osaka has ruled.
The ruling dealt a blow to gay couples and rights activists, after another district court in Sapporo ruled in 2021 that the failure to recognise same-sex marriage was ‘unconstitutional’.
Japan's constitution defines marriage as one between ‘both sexes’.
It is the only country in the G7 group of developed nations that doesn't allow people of the same gender to marry.
Opinion polls show a majority of the general public is in favour of allowing same-sex marriage in Japan.
Several areas - including Tokyo - have begun issuing partnership certificates, to help same-sex couples rent properties and gain hospital visitation rights.” Read more at BBC
Image caption, President Macron has fallen well short of winning the 289 he needed to keep control of the Assembly
“Less than two months after he was re-elected president, Emmanuel Macron has lost control of the French National Assembly following a strong performance by a left alliance and the far right.
He had called on voters to deliver a solid majority.
But his centrist coalition lost dozens of seats in an election that has left French politics fragmented.
The prime minister he had only recently appointed, Elisabeth Borne, said the situation was unprecedented.
A storm broke over Paris as she returned to her Matignon residence from a long meeting at the presidential Élysée palace to say that modern France had never seen a National Assembly like this one.
‘This situation represents a risk for our country, given the risks we're facing nationally and internationally,’ she said. ‘We will work as of tomorrow to build a working majority.’
That seems a stretch when the two other biggest groups in the Assembly are not remotely interested in collaboration. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire was adamant that France was not ungovernable, but said it was going to require a lot of imagination.
Image caption, The French prime minister said her government would draw the consequences from the result
Far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon was enjoying his success in bringing together mainstream parties from the left with Communists and Greens into an alliance called Nupes.
He told supporters that the presidential party had suffered a total rout and every possibility was now in their hands. His alliance now becomes the biggest opposition force in France, although opinion polls had indicated they could have performed even better.
Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally party were also in jubilant mood after turning eight seats into 89. The people had spoken, she said: Emmanuel's Macron's adventure was over and he had been consigned to a minority government. Spokeswoman Laure Lavalette said the National Assembly now better reflected the views of French voters and her party would engage in ‘constructive opposition’.” Read more at BBC
“DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Authorities in India and Bangladesh struggled Monday to deliver food and drinking water to hundreds of thousands of people evacuated from their homes in days of flooding that have submerged wide swaths of the countries.
The floods triggered by monsoon rains have killed more than a dozen people, marooned millions and flooded millions of houses.” Read more at AP News
“BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) — The unsettled future of golf was in the surest of hands over the final four tantalizing hours of the U.S. Open.
The sport, almost always at its best when major titles are at stake, went on a wild ride courtesy of Matt Fitzpatrick and Will Zalatoris, two 20-somethings trying to win their first major titles but playing like they’d been doing this for years.
There were ties, lead changes and enough momentum shifts to make an NBA crowd edgy. There was tension. In the end, it was a career-defining shot from a fairway bunker that left Fitzpatrick holding the trophy — and a putt missed by a whisker that left Zalatoris holding his head in his hands in agony after yet another excruciating close call at a major.
‘When they show the highlights of future U.S. Opens, that’s one that’s going to be shown because that was just incredible,’ Zalatoris said.
He was speaking of the shot Fitzpatrick hit from the fairway bunker on No. 18 while leading by one. It was a 9-iron from 156 yards. The shot elevated out of the sand, and had enough juice to clear the gaping bunker guarding the green. It came to rest 18 feet above the hole.
But not until Zalatoris’ 14-foot putt to tie stopped a millimeter to the left of the cup — a miss that sent him buckling to the ground and gave him his third second-place finish in only seven starts at the majors — was the tournament over.
With tears welling in his eyes, Fitzpatrick’s caddie, Billy Foster, kissed the 18th flag; it was his first major, too, after four decades in the business.
Then, suddenly, golf’s biggest debate wasn’t about the future of the breakaway LIV Tour, or the stability of the PGA Tour, or how that tour will punish those who have dared to defect. Instead, as Zalatoris suggested, it’s about where Fitzpatrick’s bunker shot might fit in the pantheon of the greatest shots executed under major-championship pressure.
“It’s one of the best shots I ever hit, no doubt about it” Fitzpatrick said.
That the shot, and the day, came at one of golf’s most hallowed shrines only felt right. The Country Club outside of Boston is where Frances Ouimet knocked off one of the game’s greats, Harry Vardon, in a 1913 upset that helped put golf on the map in the United States.
Curtis Strange won the last U.S. Open here in 1988. Justin Leonard made a long putt to lift the U.S. to its Ryder Cup victory here in 1999.
Some thought the U.S. Open had simply outgrown the course, and the property, but the USGA decided to take a chance on the hilly, craggy, windswept layout filled with blind shots and crooked fairways everywhere.
The Country Club delivered. So did Fitzpatrick and Zalatoris, with supporting help from Scottie Scheffler, the top-ranked Masters champion who tied for second with Zalatoris. Most of his best shots over the weekend came on the front nine.
Scheffler was watching near the 18th green when Zalatoris’ birdie putt missed by less than an inch.” Read more at AP News
“Fina will also aim to establish an 'open' category at competitions for swimmers whose gender identity is different than their birth sex.
The new policy, which was passed with 71% of the vote from 152 Fina members, was described as "only a first step towards full inclusion" for transgender athletes.
The 34-page policy document says that male-to-female transgender athletes could compete in the women's category - but only ‘provided they have not experienced any part of male puberty beyond Tanner Stage 2 [which marks the start of physical development], or before age 12, whichever is later’.
The decision was made during an extraordinary general congress at the ongoing World Championships in Budapest.
It means that transgender American college swimmer Lia Thomas, who has expressed a desire to compete for a place at the Olympics, would be blocked from participating in the female category at the Games.” Read more at BBC
“Oscar-winning director Paul Haggis has been arrested in southern Italy on suspicion of aggravated sexual assault, Italian news agencies have reported.
Brindisi prosecutors said he was also accused of ‘aggravated personal injury and crimes committed to the prejudice of a young foreign woman’.
The ANSA and AGI agencies also report Mr Haggis has denied the allegations via his lawyer, Michele Laforgia.” Read more at BBC
“Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two white men 40 years ago. He was targeted because he was Asiand his death continues to resonate today as racist attacks against Asian Americans have risen sharply during the pandemic.” Read more at NPR
Buzz Lightyear, voiced by Chris Evans, in "Lightyear." Photo: Disney/Pixar via AP
“‘Lightyear’ didn't go to infinity — or beyond: Pixar's first major theatrical release since March 2020 blasted off with a lower-than-expected debut weekend, AP reports.
The film opened with an estimated $51 million in North American sales vs. some projections of $70 million.
‘Jurassic World: Dominion’ stayed in first place.
Why it matters: The family audience has proved a little more reluctant than other segments to return to theaters.
Many studios, including Disney and Pixar, have opted for streaming or hybrid releases for animated titles.
Zoom out: ‘Lightyear’ is an origin story about the movie that inspired Buzz Lightyear, the space-ranger action figure in the ‘Toy Story’ movies.” Read more at Axios