Litmus...

 

Union leaders told the Senate Democrats' campaign arm in a private call not to expect them to back lawmakers in upcoming elections unless they coalesce behind the pro-labor Protecting the Right to Organize Act, three sources told Politico.

One lawmaker, in particular, became the center of attention, two sources said: Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), one of only three senators in the majority who have yet to sign onto the PRO Act and who is expected to face a tough reelection battle next year.

Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema and Virginia’s Mark Warner have also not backed the measure. The package thus far has 47 Senate cosponsors 45 Democrats, two independents leaving it well short of the 60 “yes” votes needed to overcome the filibuster. But unions see it as a litmus test.

Stroke...

 

Over three months after he died in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection on January 6, the chief medical officer for the District of Columbia has ruled that Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick suffered two strokes a day after the attack, not injuries inflicted by rioters as other officials previously claimed.

Medical examiner Francisco J. Diaz said that the autopsy found no evidence that Sicknick showed signs of internal or external injuries, and that there was no evidence that he suffered an allergic reaction to chemical irritants, which would have caused his throat to close up. 

Though Diaz did note that the events that “transpired played a role in his condition,” the ruling will make it unlikely that prosectors will pursue homicide charges against two men already charged with assaulting Sicknick with bear spray.

How wrong was the Media?  Just a thought.

Protected...

 

Over $180 billion is spent each year on the global sex trade, with over 10 million women providing services as prostitutes. Some are forced into the trade due to human traffickers, while others enter the trade due to financial hardships…

The Netherlands began regulating prostitution in 2000, the sex trade was more or less tolerated for decades before.  Prostitution has been legal in Switzerland since 1942 and is protected by the constitution.

Europe's 'biggest brothel' is Germany. Sex work was tolerated as early as the 1800s, the government formally legalized it in 2002. The trade has since exploded into a $16.3 billion a year business with as many as over 1 million sex workers [USA estimated number of prostitutes is the same].

The idea behind legalizing the trade was that it would root out organized crime, limit human trafficking, improve worker access to healthcare, and make sex work safer.

What is the story in USA?

What criminal activities are associated with the ilegality of prostitution?

Packing...

 

Decriminalized...

 

The Manhattan district attorney's office will no longer prosecute arrests for prostitution or unlicensed massage in a new, formal policy that may be a first for New York.

Vance's office dismissed more than 900 open cases for those offenses, dating back to the 1970s, as well has more than 5,000 cases tied to the now-repealed "loitering for the purpose of prostitution" statute.

While the office had, since 2016, not prosecuted prostitution cases if the defendant went through mandatory counseling, under the new policy all offers of services will be voluntary and all charges dismissed by the office's Human Trafficking Response Unit.

Other DAs have, however, made similar moves. Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez moved to dismiss more than 1,000 prostitution cases earlier this year; he has also previously called for Albany to decriminalize sex work..

Are we going to legalize this act and protect women, men, families and bankrupts Human Trafficking?....

It's a Boy...

One New Hampshire family's gender reveal party was such a blast that it rattled towns, set off reports of an earthquake, and could be heard from across the state line.

Police in Kingston, a town not far from the Massachusetts border, received reports of a loud explosion. They responded to Torromeo quarry where they found people who acknowledged holding a gender reveal party with explosives.

The source was Tannerite — 80 pounds (36 kilograms) of it, police said. The family thought the quarry would be the safest spot to blow up the explosive, which is typically sold over the counter as a target for firearms practice, police said.

Nearby residents said the blast rocked their homes. Some reported property damage.

“We heard this god-awful blast,” Sara Taglieri, who lives in a home that abuts the quarry, told the television station. “It knocked pictures off our walls ... I’m all up for silliness and what not, but that was extreme."

Short...

 

Infrastructure...

 

Sleep...

Investigators at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital found that those who get five or less hours of sleep per night are twice as likely to develop dementia than those who slept seven to eight hours per night. Even more, they discovered a link between sleep disturbance and sleep deficiency with overall risk of death. 

They found a variety of sleep related factors influenced chances of developing dementia. For example, routinely taking 30 minutes or longer to fall asleep was associated with a 45 percent greater risk for incident dementia, while "routinely experiencing a difficulty in maintaining alertness, routinely napping, reporting poor sleep quality, and sleeping five or fewer hours per night was also associated with increased risk of death."   Just a thought.

Extraordinary...

 

And so we have been left with a two-dimensional portrait of the duke; salt-tongued and short-tempered, a man who told off-colour jokes and made politically incorrect remarks.
 Prince Philip was an extraordinary man who lived an extraordinary life; a life intimately connected with the sweeping changes of our turbulent 20th Century, a life of fascinating contrast and contradiction, of service and some degree of solitude. A complex, clever, eternally restless man.

Philip fought for Britain in the Royal Navy, three of his sisters actively supported the Nazi cause.

When peace came, and with it eventual economic recovery, Philip would throw himself into the construction of a better Britain, urging the country to adopt scientific methods, embracing the ideas of industrial design, planning, education and training. 

A decade before Harold Wilson talked of the "white heat of the technological revolution", Philip was urging modernity on the nation in speeches and interviews. And as the country and the world became richer and consumed ever more, Philip warned of the impact on the environment, well before it was even vaguely fashionable.