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The Chick Who Stole The Diary; Drove It To NY… And Went MIA, Last Weekend — Was Picked Up With Open Liquor In Coastal GA…

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There are some forms of MAGA. . . that just couldn’t be any… dumber. [She transported a private Biden family diary she knew was stolen… to NY, for Project Veritas (now bankrupted).]

She’d been sentenced to one month of jail, in the USDC in SDNY. She was to surrender by noon on July 9 (somewhere, as federal correctional inmate No. 18244-510). She was not only not in Florida — or NY, but was arrested in McIntosh County (rural sea-side country) in Georgia, while driving with open liquor, and no valid driver’s license, and reportedly… a container of cannabis, on Monday afternoon. She was immediately jailed, and is still in state custody.

But — good news! — it turns out the jail there is ALSO a federal facility (but clearly is no “club fed”!)… so she will do her time… right there. Her credit for voluntary surrender will be out the window, though… so we wait to see if she has to do the full six months stint now, in a tough jail in rural Georgia. Hilarious (Hat tip, to InnerCityPress, on this!). Here’s the AUSAs’ update, of this very morning (all as subsequently “so ordered” — by the able NYSD USDC Judge Swain):

…Re: United States v. Aimee Harris, 22 Cr. 457 (LTS)

Dear Chief Judge Swain:

The Government respectfully submits this letter to update the Court regarding defendant Aimee Harris’s scheduled surrender to the Bureau of Prisons, which the Court previously ordered to occur by July 9, 2024 at 12 p.m. As the Government informed the Court, in its letter dated July 9, 2024, the Government was informed by United States Pretrial Services that the defendant was arrested on July 8, 2024 in McIntosh County, Georgia and was being held in state custody. [Based on information that Pretrial Services received from the McIntosh County Sheriff’s Office, the Government understands that the defendant was charged with multiple offenses, including driving with a suspended license, speeding, possession of an open container, possession of marijuana, and obstruction of a law enforcement officer.]

Pretrial Services has further informed the Government that the defendant emailed her supervising officer on July 7, 2024 that she was going on a “one day road trip up to SC” on July 8, 2024 and would return Monday night. . . .

On July 9, 2024, the Government sought a warrant from the Court so that the defendant could immediately be taken into federal custody by the United States Marshals Service, which was executed by the Court.

The Government was informed today that the United States Marshals Service for the Southern District of Georgia has transferred the defendant to BOP custody, since the state facility where the defendant is being held is also utilized as a federal holding facility. The United States Marshals Service therefore requests that the Court vacate the July 9 arrest warrant so that the defendant can be designated and commence service of her sentence….

Respectfully submitted,

DAMIAN WILLIAMS
United States Attorney

By: /s/

Jacqueline Kelly
Robert B. Sobelman
Mitzi Steiner
Assistant United States Attorneys….

As I say… hilariously stupid MAGA clowns — all around. And no doubt, the Georgia authorities will prosecute on the driving offenses, and that jail sentence will be added on to the end of her federal stint. Couldn’t happen to a nicer… MAGAt.

Out.

Also Immaterial, But Rahway Has Closed The Elanco/Aqua Acquisition… First Announced February 2024.

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We first mentioned this $1.3 billion deal in February. Having now cleared all antitrust baffles, it is closed.

Here is the latest, from Yahoo! Biz reporting:

…Merck Animal Health, known as MSD Animal Health outside of the United States and Canada, a division of Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, N.J., USA, today announced the completion of its acquisition of the aqua business of Elanco Animal Health Incorporated. The completion of this acquisition bolsters Merck Animal Health’s position in the aqua industry with a comprehensive approach to promote fish health, welfare and sustainability in aquaculture, conservation, and fisheries….

As a result of the acquisition, Merck Animal Health now owns innovative products such as CLYNAV®, a new generation DNA-based vaccine that protects Atlantic salmon against pancreas disease and IMVIXA®, an anti-parasitic sea lice treatment and water treatment products for warm water production, complementing Merck Animal Health’s vaccine portfolio….

Now you know — smile. [Just for fun, here is some deep 2014 history, on the Elanco name, when Lilly owned its cattle fattener asset, called Optaflexx® (and Merck’s Zilmax® hit a deeply unfortunate ditch in the road) — all courtesy of yours truly. Grin.]

And Ariane 6 is safely in orbit. Well done, ESA! Onward.

नमस्ते

Immaterial, But… Another 1,000 Purported Zostavax® Suits, Against Merck Have Been Dismissed.

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Please forgive the dated (2018-era) graphic, but the early 2018 efficacy beat, by GSK’s Shingrix® offering remains at least as important as the fact of the recent Third Circuit dismissal.

That is, Merck’s offering was likely not as effective as other competitors’. Even so, it is immaterial good news for Rahway, that these purported “vaccine injury” suits are likely at an end [A Supremes appeal would be pure-folly at this point.] Here’s Fierce on it all (as of yesterday):

…After a drawn-out litigation process, Merck & Co. seems to have finally washed its hands of more than a thousand lawsuits tied to its shingles vaccine Zostavax.

Late last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit tossed an appeal to resurrect certain lawsuits claiming Merck’s popular shot caused patients to develop shingles.

The appeals court made its decision after the plaintiffs filed a voluntary dismissal some two years after logging a loss in Pennsylvania, court documents show….

Not likely to change NYSE trading ranges at all… but now you know. Onward to tonight, off the coast of South America, and a fireball lighting up the inky Atlantic Ocean’s sky. Grin.

नमस्ते

Hinderaker… Sows Insurrection, Across The Pond This Morning — With Lies, About How Governance There Works.

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Clearly, Hinderaker’s musings are solidly imbued with racist and bigoted… lies, about England (he simply parrots the awfully hard right Telegraph coverage there). And how its coalitions form, or fall apart.

But make no mistake — his real target is his loony MAGA readership. He knows he can sway these low information / poorly educated ‘Muricans… by appealing to the “evil foreign mud people” trope.

And that is just what he does. He suggests there will be a “Muslim front” that will take over American politics. Poppycock.

We are not a “coalitions focused” country (any longer — not since about 1998). So all he says, in lying about Britain… is a nullity here.

Whatever John — the choice here (as we said overnight) is… simply, and starkly: Fascism… or the opposite of it.

Cheers.

A Tidally-Locked, Rocky, Mostly-Chilly World — But Might Have A Liquid Water Ocean, At 68° F? And Orbiting Around A Red-Dwarf Star…

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Again, thanks to our erstwhile Anon. for the heads up! This makes a quartet… and this one is… completely fascinating.

Because this exoplanet orbits very near its sun, one side forever faces that star, and that may well be enough to melt a “bullseye” water body, at the surface. An ocean, about half the size of the Atlantic (since the rocky core is about 5X the size of Earth), warmed to around 68° F. Cozy, for life as we know it, with a nitrogen rich atmosphere.

The fact that it orbits a cooler red dwarf nearby means based on the spectral data, that this system could well have been relatively stable for over 2 billion years. . . enough time, for the random events of evolutionary “proto-biology” to have now organized into single cells… or potentially… more. Here’s the Canadian paper just out, on it all — and a bit:

…When the exoplanet LHS 1140 b was first discovered, astronomers speculated that it might be a mini-Neptune: an essentially gaseous planet, but very small in size compared to Neptune. But after analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) collected in December 2023 – combined with previous data from other space telescopes such as Spitzer, Hubble and TESS – scientists have come to a very different conclusion.

Located some 48 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus, LHS 1140 b appears to be one of the most promising exoplanets in its star’s habitable zone, potentially harboring an atmosphere and even an ocean of liquid water. The results of this discovery by Université de Montréal astronomers are available on ArXiv and will soon be published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters….

Estimates based on all accumulated data reveal that LHS 1140 b is less dense than expected for a rocky planet with an Earth-like composition, suggesting that 10 to 20 per cent of its mass may be composed of water. This discovery points to LHS 1140 b being a compelling water world, likely resembling a snowball or ice planet with a potential liquid ocean at the sub-stellar point, the area of the planet’s surface that would always be facing the system’s host star due to the planet’s expected synchronous rotation (much like the Earth’s Moon).

“Of all currently known temperate exoplanets, LHS 1140 b could well be our best bet to one day indirectly confirm liquid water on the surface of an alien world beyond our Solar System,” said Cadieux, lead author of the new study. “This would be a major milestone in the search for potentially habitable exoplanets….”

Now you know… onward, to the Ariane 6 launch tonight by ESA, off the coast of South America… grinning ear to ear.

नमस्ते

It Sure Bugs The Powerline Boys, When Their Candidate’s Central Philosophy… Has A Clearly-Defined… Name.

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Well, since about mid-last week (commencing with the holiday that celebrates us rejecting a King’s rule, naturally), the boys have been taking turns bleating about how unfair it is to label Tangerine as anything other than a devoutly God-fearing Whyte Christian male. /SNARK.

And tonight it’s Steve’s turn: he (unwittingly) admits what we all know: the New Republic cover is… genius. So much so, Steve runs it in full, in a large format, in his purported take-down of it.

I suppose he thinks it will help anger the MAGA base.

I think he… knows… that what we saw in France, and in England, are the single thing these boys most fear: their candidate is Le Pen — and worse.

Their candidate is worse… than the worst days of Boris Johnson.

And when he said on national TV two weeks ago, that he will try to lock Mr. Biden up, for the imagined crime of honestly opposing him — and honestly beating him at the ballot box by about 8 million votes… we should believe him.

He wants dictator powers, and Chief Justice Roberts is doing his level best to give him the immunity to be just that.

So… as with abortion rights access, in 2020, Americans will turn out in force — to vote against a… FOURTH Reich.

Count on it, boys.

Cheers.

Thanks To Anon., We Have More Near Earth Asteroid Space Science To Offer, This Morning…

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This makes a recent trifecta of space themed science spots, here as we await anything material on our main power alley. [Thanks, Anon.!]

Per CNN, then — the story:

…When NASA scientists recently tracked the orbits of two space rocks as they made close approaches of Earth, they discovered a surprise: One of the asteroids has a little moon.

Astronomers regularly track the trajectories of asteroids to ensure that none of them are on a potential collision course with our planet.

While neither of the recent asteroids whizzed by at a concerning distance, the space rocks can yield valuable information that NASA uses to prepare for any potential future collision scenarios….

Astronomers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory… used [Goldstone, a] planetary radar — through the Deep Space Network to track and take images of the asteroids.

The Deep Space Network is a system of radio antennae on Earth that helps the agency communicate with spacecraft exploring our solar system and releases radio waves to act as radar across space….

In fact, Goldstone and the rest of the Deep Space Network of radar dishes are the way we stay in communication with now nearly 50 year old Voyager 1 and 2 missions, as well.

There you have it — even the tiniest space bodies, seem occasionally to possess fellow travellers. Shepherded moons, indeed. Grinning….

नमस्ते

Speed Merchant! A Tiny Star That May Reach “Escape Velocity”…

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Discovered by citizen astronomers who are pouring over petabytes of raw data, an ancient brown dwarf — super cooled — is moving 1.3 million mph, on a trajectory to escape our galaxy. The speedster is about 450 light years away from us — now on the other side of our Milky Way.

The leading hypothesis is that it was “sling-shotted” by either a binary pair of black holes in a globular cluster, or by a paired star — one that went supernova billions of years ago, giving it a violent shove. Here’s the story:

…Thanks to the efforts of a citizen science project called Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 and a team of astronomers from around the country, a rare hypervelocity L subdwarf star has been found racing through the Milky Way. More remarkably, this star may be on a trajectory that causes it to leave the Milky Way altogether. The research, led by University of California San Diego Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics Adam Burgasser, was presented last month at a press conference during the 244th national meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Madison, Wisconsin….

It may seem like the Sun is stationary while the planets in its orbit are moving, but the Sun is actually orbiting around the Milky Way galaxy at an impressive rate of about 220 kilometers per second — almost half a million miles per hour.

As fast as that may seem, when a faint red star was discovered crossing the sky at a noticeably quick pace, scientists took notice….

Yep — now you know… I’ll forever be fascinated by the fleet of foot among us. Smiling, now, in the luminously clearer dawn.

नमस्ते

Finally! Hinderaker Sees Than French Governance… Requires… Compromises. Hilarious.

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Today, John Hinderaker apparently still persists, two weeks later, with his knowing lie — that there is something illicit in French coalition building. It has been largely this way since 1870, John… and certainly — ever since 1958 (the Fifth Republic).

Wake up, man.

And do shut it.

Get ready for a landslide loss for fascism here in the US, in November.

Your boy Tangerine… is toast.

Watch and learn. Again.

Out.

The European Space Agency Will Launch Ariane 6 (From French Guiana Spaceport) — On Tuesday Evening, US Time.

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We will tune in to the ESA feed, a lil’ before 8 pm, local — and you may want to as well. Do see below, from our friends in Paris.

Here’s that Ariane 6 launch story — and a bit:

…Ariane 6 is scheduled to launch on 9 July 2024, with a launch window from 15:00-19:00 local time at Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana (19:00–23:00 BST, 9 July 20:00–10 July 00:00 CEST).

This is a big moment for Europe, as the rocket will ensure our guaranteed, autonomous access to space – and all of the science, Earth observation, technology development and commercial possibilities that it entails. With many features brand new to Ariane 6, we’ll be able to carry more and take it further, while sustainably disposing of the launcher’s upper stage to prevent it becoming space debris.

Watch the entire launch live on ESAWebTV, starting half an hour before liftoff. The transmission is available in English with commentary by Katy Haswell and ESA Ariane 6 launch system engineer Tina Büchner da Costa….

In passing we will remark that we love the idea of helping South American economies — by placing major launch facilities on the continent’s coast. More stable weather for launch days; less crowded skies. Well played, ESA!

नमस्ते