March 23, 2023

Thursday, March 23, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

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Joe is always busy.

Kamala is always busy.

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Ramadan began last night.

9 questions about Ramadan you were too embarrassed to ask.

Ramadan is the Muslim holy month, and most of the world's estimated 1.9 billion Muslims will observe it in some form.

Which means there's a good chance you — or a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, your child's teacher — will be celebrating, fasting, and doing all sorts of other activities that are unique to the holy month.

But what is Ramadan, exactly? What’s the deal with fasting? And is there anything special you should do or say when you’re around Muslim friends and acquaintances during Ramadan?

1) What is Ramadan actually about?

Ramadan is the most sacred month of the year for Muslims — the Prophet Mohammedreportedly said, "When the month of Ramadan starts, the gates of heaven are opened and the gates of hell are closed and the devils are chained."

Muslims believe it was during this month that God revealed the first verses of the Quran, Islam's sacred text, to Mohammed, on a night known as "The Night of Power" (or Laylat al-Qadr in Arabic).

2) How does fasting work?

Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars — or duties — of Islam, along with the testimony of faith, prayer, charitable giving, and making a pilgrimage to Mecca. All Muslims are required to take part every year, though there are special dispensations for those who are ill, pregnant or nursing, menstruating, or traveling, and for young children and the elderly.

The practice of fasting serves several spiritual and social purposes: to remind you of your human frailty and your dependence on God for sustenance, to show you what it feels like to be hungry and thirsty so you feel compassion for (and a duty to help) the poor and needy, and to reduce the distractions in life so you can more clearly focus on your relationship with God.

During Ramadan, Muslims abstain from eating any food, drinking any liquids, smoking cigarettes, and engaging in any sexual activity, from dawn to sunset. That includes taking medication (even if you swallow a pill dry, without drinking any water). Chewing gum is also prohibited (though I didn't find that one out until about halfway through my first Ramadan after converting — oops).

Doing any of those things "invalidates" your fast for the day, and you just start over the next day. To make up for days you didn't fast, you can either fast later in the year (either all at once or a day here and there) or provide a meal to a needy person for each day you missed.

Muslims are also supposed to try to curb negative thoughts and emotions like jealousy and anger, and even lesser things like swearing, complaining, and gossiping, during the month. Some people may also choose to give up or limit activities like listening to music and watching television, often in favor of listening to recitations of the Quran.

To read more about Ramadan, click here. (Vox).

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The attacks go on.

Do you think it is fair to say that Trump doesn’t admire DeSantis?

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Trump’s lawyer in Classified Document case may be a witness, not his lawyer.

Trump Lawyer in Mar-a-Lago Case Must Hand Over Records, Appeals Court Says.

The ruling compelling the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, to turn over documents came after a lightning round of appeals court filings overnight.

A federal appeals court ruled on Wednesday that a lawyer representing former President Donald J. Trump in the investigation into his handling of classified material had to answer a grand jury’s questions and give prosecutors documents related to his legal work.

The ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a victory for the special counsel overseeing the investigation and followed Mr. Trump’s effort to stop the lawyer, M. Evan Corcoran, from handing over what are likely to be dozens of documents to investigators.

The behind-the-scenes fight shed new light on the efforts by prosecutors to assemble evidence about whether Mr. Trump committed a crime in defying the government’s efforts to reclaim classified materials he took after leaving the White House.

The litigation — all of which has taken place behind closed doors or under seal — centers on whether prosecutors can force Mr. Corcoran to provide information on who knew what about the continued presence of classified material at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s residence and private club in Florida, after the government had demanded its return last spring.

The case involves a balancing act between attorney-client privilege, which generally protects lawyers from divulging private communications with their clients to the government, and a special provision of the law known as the crime-fraud exception. That exception allows prosecutors to break through attorney-client privilege when they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services have been used in furthering a crime, typically by the client. (New York Times).

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5 states allow firing squads. What kind of country is this?

As lethal injection faces hurdles, Idaho turns back to firing squads.

Idaho banned firing squads in 2009 but seems set to reverse course as drug shortages and botched executions hinder lethal injections.

The Idaho Senate on Monday passed a bill with a veto-proof majority that would restore firing squads as a backup execution method when lethal injection is unavailable or becomes unconstitutional.


The move is an about-face in a state where firing squads were a legal but unused execution method for nearly 30 years before the ban was instituted in 2009.


One year earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had voted to uphold the lethal-injection procedure, clearing the path for death penalty states to set aside older execution methods that looked brutal by comparison. Idaho was among the states that took the rare step of proactively removing a method it never expected to use again.


Proponents of the new bill have argued that firing squads are an effective and constitutional lethal practice that would allow the state to carry out executions that prisoners were sentenced to years earlier.


State Sen. Doug Ricks, a Republican who co-sponsored the bill, said it comes down to upholding the rule of law.
“The people on death row have been convicted by a jury of their peers, but unless we have an alternative method to carry out these sentences, then we essentially have no death penalty in Idaho,” Ricks said Tuesday, adding that carrying out the sentences is a matter of “closure” for victims’ families.


Ricks acknowledged that if the law passes, it could be a year or more before the Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) is prepared to carry out an execution by firing squad — and that’s if it doesn’t face legal challenges.

The death penalty remains legal in 27 states, though three have gubernatorial moratoriums. With a steady multiyear decline in the death penalty, only a handful of states actually carry out executions.

Those that do have been forced by drug supply shortages and lawsuits to scramble for alternatives that are untested — such as Oklahoma’s nitrogen gas chamber — or antiquated.
Idaho would become the fifth state after Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Utah to approve firing squads as an execution method, though South Carolina’s firing-squad protocol remains in legal limbo.(Washington Post).

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On the other hand, this 👇 might bring us hope.

Court: Arizona governor not required to carry out execution.

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that state law doesn’t require Gov. Katie Hobbs to carry out execution of a prisoner who is scheduled to be put to death on April 6 for his conviction in a 2002 killing.

The decision marks a legal victory for the newly elected Democratic governor whose office said the state isn’t currently prepared to carry out the death penalty. The court had previously set the April 6 date for the execution of Aaron Gunches for his conviction in the shooting death of Ted Price near Mesa, Arizona.

The order came after Hobbs said executions will not be carried out until Arizonans can be confident that the state isn’t violating constitutional rights when it enforces the death penalty.

The governor vowed two weeks ago that she wouldn’t carry out the court’s order to execute Gunches on April 6, citing the review of death penalty protocols that she ordered because of Arizona’s history of mismanaging executions.

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First time being allowed to play on the field (which has never been equal.)

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Science enables us to learn from the past.

Beethoven’s DNA decoded from locks of hair saved by his fans.

Exploring the lives of historical celebrities using DNA analysis is still a relatively scattershot enterprise, in part because of a lack of well-preserved samples and the murky ethics involved.


Beethoven’s fame during his lifetime presented researchers with an opportunity: relatively easy access to many sources of putative DNA. Friends and admirers famously kept locks of his hair as mementos, many of which have been preserved over the years by private collectors and museums.


But first, they had to prove the hair came from Beethoven, a feat the composer himself made more challenging. The year before Beethoven died, the wife of a colleague earnestly wanted a lock of his hair, but she became the victim of a prank. Beethoven and his secretary instead sent a coarse snip of a goat’s beard, similar in texture and color to his own curls.

When Beethoven learned of the lady’s humiliation, he sent a lock of his own hair that is today known as the Halm-Thayer lock. It was one of the samples that the researchers studied.


The team had a second essential element: consent from Beethoven himself, in the form of the written pleas to his brothers for his hearing loss to be studied.


“That’s as good as it goes, from getting consent from a person in the past to be studied,” said Johannes Krause, an expert on ancient DNA at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology who leads the lab where the composer’s genome was sequenced.


In total, researchers extracted DNA from short strands of hair pulled from eight tufts. Under clean-room conditions, they decontaminated the hairs and prepared them for analysis.

The scientists studying his DNA did not discover a clear explanation for Beethoven’s deafness. But they identified genetic risk factors for liver disease, and they found signs he had a hepatitis B infection that could have contributed to his cirrhosis. They also found evidence that one of Beethoven’s relatively recent ancestors had a child with someone other than their spouse.


The study, published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology, illustrates the power of DNA to explore fundamental questions about life in the distant past. But most diseases are not purely genetic, so the data is limited in what it can reveal.


“I love this paper. Zeroing in on one extraordinarily famous individual — it feels a little bit like time travel,” said Robert C. Green, a medical geneticist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston who was not involved in the research. “It isn’t so much the specific questions they answered as the fact that they ruled a few things out, searched for others, and made some truly original findings.” (Washington Post).

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New Yorkers ask - Can a 1970s Logo be updated? Should it be updated?

New Yorkers bond over new city logo: They hate it.

“We ❤ NYC” is bringing New Yorkers together, but not the way organizers planned.

In the 1970s, graphic designer Milton Glaser brought a New York state tourism advertising campaign to life with his I ❤ NY logo, changing souvenir shops forever. About 50 years later, a new ad campaign is trying to leverage some of its magic, with a few changes — and it’s rubbing New Yorkers the wrong way.


“It’s not just a slogan,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) at the campaign’s Times Square news conference, introducing “We ❤ NYC” to the public and wearing a big We ❤ NYC sticker on her lapel. “It’s a spirit.”


According to the slogan’s website, “‘We ❤️NYC’ is a 21st Century version of the 70’s campaign” and will include advertisements (naturally), a city cleanup drive, volunteer opportunities, an Earth Day celebration, an Instagram account, a competition for musicians to play in subway stations “and much more.”

But what people seem to be bonding over the most is their disdain for the aesthetic. “Corny” and “inexcusably bad in so many ways,” one Twitter user wrote. Another called it an “affront to this great city.” New York Magazine proclaimed: “NYC’s New Promotional Logo Kinda Sucks.”

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