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*Acapulco Saw the Future of Hurricanes: More Sudden and Furious*
As of last Monday night in Acapulco, Mexico, no formal hurricane warning had been issued for what would become, barely a day later, the first Category 5 storm ever to make landfall on the Pacific Coast of North or South America.
Forecasts from 36 hours before landfall had projected maximum winds of 60 miles per hour. Sixteen hours before landfall, the National Hurricane Center still forecast only a Category 1 hurricane. Within hours, what had been a quotidian tropical storm grew into a record-breaking, city-splintering Category 5 monster. The wind reached 165 miles per hour, more than 100 miles per hour greater than had been forecast around bedtime on Monday. Dozens died. The resort city, home to one million people, was left “in ruins”: the electricity cut out, as did water and internet service. The damage was almost certain to make the storm the most expensive one in Mexican history. “In all of Acapulco there is not a standing pole,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico said on Thursday. One station registered wind above 200 miles per hour; the local forest was so thoroughly cleared of branches and leaves that satellite images flipped from green to brown. Some large high-rises had been ripped apart, others made skeletal; you could see clear through the building frames, an empty stack of boxes open to the winds. A day or two before, people living in those apartments might not have even heard about the storm.
The damage is, if spectacular, also tragically familiar. But the out-of-nowhere arrival is profoundly new. Hurricane Otis had the second-most drastic intensification of any storm on record in the eastern Pacific. The most dramatic one intensified much farther from shore, and did not make landfall as a Category 5.
In this way, Otis seems less like our conventional experience of hurricanes, according to which vulnerable communities are afforded by meteorologists perhaps a week of warning and a few calm days for evacuation, than of wildfires, which can spark so suddenly and spread so rapidly that those living in high-risk areas often spend weeks of summer on red-flag alert ready to evacuate on just a few hours’ notice. High water temperature is to hurricanes what low humidity and strong winds are to wildfires, and perhaps those living on hurricane-prone coasts will soon begin monitoring ocean heat like those living in the wildland-urban interface routinely track “fire weather,” knowing what unusually warm conditions offshore mean for what a new storm might quickly become.
*Here’s What Doesn’t Happen After a Mass Shooting*
A few things you can bet on when there’s been a terrible mass shooting in this country.
One is that the heartbreaking stories about victims and chilling ones about the craziness of the shooter will not necessarily be followed by a strong bipartisan drive for significantly better gun laws.
POP QUIZ
After an assault-rifle-brandishing madman killed 18 people and injured 13 more in Maine, the new House speaker, Mike Johnson, was asked what to do about mass shootings. He said:
A. “Let’s ban assault weapons, pronto.”
B. “Shooting? What shooting?”
C. “Hey, I thought you said you were going to ask about impeaching Biden.”
D. “The problem is the human heart, not guns.”
Did you guess it was D, people? Perhaps we should avoid complaining until we see if Speaker Johnson proposes new legislation requiring the police to stop and search all human hearts.
Gun control — or, as its proponents prefer, gun safety — always becomes a big topic of conversation after a horrific shooting. But nothing else necessarily happens.
One of the very few serious improvements came last year when Congress finally passed a reform bill drafted by Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. Who had been working on that kind of legislation for nearly a decade, ever since one crazed man with an assault rifle killed 26 people, including 20 small children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in his congressional district.
Passing the bill was quite a leap forward from the time Murphy first brought up the idea and could find only one Republican colleague even willing to sit down and discuss it. But success didn’t come until after another mass shooting at a Texas school took the lives of 19 children and two teachers.
Murphy’s bill expanded background checks for gun buyers under 21 and made it easier to keep weapons out of the hands of domestic abusers. Great idea, right? Unfortunately, a federal appeals court recently declared that it’s unconstitutional to bar people from owning guns just because they have … domestic violence restraining orders against them.
Yes! That decision involved Zackey Rahimi, who was having a fight with his girlfriend in a Texas parking lot, began beating her head against the car dashboard, and then pulled his gun and fired at a bystander-witness. It was one of many, many shootings Rahimi had been accused of, and he was charged under that domestic violence restraining order law.
No no no no, said the appeals court: Remember the Second Amendment.
Now, the Rahimi case is on its way to — oh dear — the Supreme Court. A group that basically said last year that gun legislation will fly only if our founders had come up with an “analogous” measure.
“I don’t think anybody’s conceded the court will rule against us on Rahimi,” the ever-optimistic Murphy said when I called him. “If they did, it would be just an absolute, stunning blow to democracy.”
About the founders: Historians will tell you that when the Constitution was adopted, America had no significant standing army. Perfectly reasonable, therefore, that George Washington and his colleagues wanted the citizenry to be ready to rise up and fight if the British re-invaded.
I asked the senator what he thought Washington would say to him about our current gun laws if the two of them sat down for lunch. Murphy demurred: “He’d probably have a lot of other things he’d want to talk about.”
*Risk of a Wider Middle East War Threatens a ‘Fragile’ World Economy*
After shocks from the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, there’s little cushion if the fighting between Hamas and Israel becomes a regional conflict.
Fears that Israel’s expanding military operations in Gaza could escalate into a regional conflict are clouding the global economy’s outlook, threatening to dampen growth and reignite a rise in energy and food prices.
Rich and poor nations were just beginning to catch their breath after a three-year string of economic shocks that included the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Stinging inflation has been dropping, oil prices have stabilized and predicted recessions have been avoided.
Now, some leading international financial institutions and private investors warn that the fragile recovery could turn bad.
“This is the first time that we’ve had two energy shocks at the same time,” said Indermit Gill, chief economist at the World Bank, referring to the impact of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East on oil and gas prices.
Those price increases not only chip away at the buying power of families and companies but also push up the cost of food production, adding to high levels of food insecurity, particularly in developing countries like Egypt, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
As it is, nations are already struggling with unusually high levels of debt, limp private investment and the slowest recovery in trade in five decades, making it tougher for them to grow their way out of the crisis. Higher interest rates, the result of central bank efforts to tame inflation, have made it more difficult for governments and private companies to get access to credit and stave off default.
“All of these things are happening all at the same time,” Mr. Gill said. “We are in one of the most fragile junctures for the world economy.”
Mr. Gill’s assessment echoes those of other analysts. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said last month that “this may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades,” and described the conflict in Gaza as “the highest and most important thing for the Western world.”
The recent economic troubles have been fueled by deepening geopolitical conflicts that span continents. Tensions between the United States and China over technology transfers and security only complicate efforts to work together on other problems like climate change, debt relief or violent regional conflicts.
The overriding political preoccupations also mean that traditional monetary and fiscal tools like adjusting interest rates or government spending may be less effective.
The brutal fighting between Israel and Hamas has already taken the lives of thousands of civilians and inflicted wrenching misery on both sides. If the conflict stays contained, though, the ripple effects on the world economy are likely to remain limited, most analysts agree.
*Italy’s Prime Minister Broke Up With Her Boyfriend. It’s Actually Quite a Big Deal.*
Giorgia Meloni broke the glass ceiling again. After becoming the first woman and the first post-fascist leader to be prime minister of Italy, she recently became the first head of government to announce on social media that she had dumped her boyfriend.
“My relationship with Andrea Giambruno, which lasted nearly 10 years, ends here,” she wrote in October on X, formerly known as Twitter, informing the country that the couple had been drifting apart and it was time to call it a day. “I have nothing more to say on this,” she concluded.
But that wasn’t really true. She did have more to say.
In a postscript to that message, she addressed “those who hoped to weaken me by striking me in my private life.” “No matter how much a water drop may hope to carve the stone, the stone remains stone and the drop is only water,” she wrote, somewhat cryptically. The strange addendum made clear that behind the personal announcement was a political battle. For days, it was all the papers and news shows could talk about.
Perhaps it’s hard, from afar, to see what all the fuss is about. The ending of Ms. Meloni’s relationship may seem like a trivial — or at least personal — concern. Yet the whole drama, from the circumstances of the boyfriend’s fall from grace to the breakup itself, offers a window onto the nature of power in Italy, where politics, media and business interests are toxically entwined. It says a lot about how the country is run.
Mr. Giambruno and Ms. Meloni met nearly a decade ago in TV studios. She was the ambitious leader of a small far-right party constantly looking for visibility; he was a youngish anchorman on the rise. It seemed a perfect match. The two were open about their political differences on issues like cannabis legalization and same-sex marriage, and despite Ms. Meloni’s enthusiasm for the traditional family, they never married. In 2016 they had a daughter. It was a relationship made and lived in the media limelight. It would end that way, too.
In mid-October, damning off-air videos and audio recordings emerged of Mr. Giambruno. In the videos, he could be heard making inappropriate remarks and awkwardly flirting with a co-worker. (“Why didn’t we meet before?” he complained to her.) In the audio recordings, things went even further. Among many lewd comments, he invited female colleagues to join his team, where they would do “threesomes” and “foursomes.” Days after the recordings became public, Ms. Meloni announced their relationship was over.
The network where Mr. Giambruno works — he was suspended from his show last week but remains on staff — is the Mediaset group, the biggest private broadcaster in Italy. His fall was an inside job: Someone recorded the compromising scenes and leaked them to the popular satirical program “Striscia la Notizia,” also broadcast by Mediaset. The company is owned by the Berlusconi family.
When Ms. Meloni took office in October last year, Mr. Giambruno stepped down as anchor of a news program to avoid potential conflicts of interest and went to work behind the scenes on a different show. But it wasn’t long before Mediaset was encouraging him to take a more prominent role. In July he began hosting a daily show on current affairs, inevitably finding himself in the awkward position of commenting on a government led by his partner.
Ms. Meloni, who has always prided herself on being an independent, self-made politician who could not be blackmailed, was suddenly exposed to proxy political attacks as people criticized her partner. Mr. Giambruno didn’t make it difficult: Under heavy scrutiny, he made some serious missteps — like suggesting women should avoid getting drunk if they wanted to avoid sexual predators — and forced Ms. Meloni to publicly clarify that he did not speak on her behalf.
The leaked recordings, deeply embarrassing for the prime minister, were the last straw. Ms. Meloni reportedly read the whole operation as a conspiracy against her. Who was behind it? Marina Berlusconi — a 57-year-old businesswoman and the oldest child of Silvio Berlusconi, the four-time prime minister who died in June — was the obvious culprit. Though she does not have a role in Mediaset (the company is run by her brother Pier Silvio), Ms. Berlusconi is the chair of the company’s parent, Fininvest.
Ms. Berlusconi maintains that she has no intention of running for office, but that doesn’t mean she’s not interested in influencing politics. The family has a leading role in Forza Italia, a conservative party founded by Mr. Berlusconi that plays a small yet decisive role in the government coalition. (It helps that the children agreed to cover the party’s debt, worth $95 million, previously guaranteed by Mr. Berlusconi.) At the same time, the family, at the head of an estimated $6.8 billion empire, wants to make sure the government doesn’t interfere with its business interests.
In September, for example, Ms. Berlusconi sharply criticized the government’s proposed windfall tax on banks that would target the extra profits made from higher interest rates. The measure, a brainchild of Ms. Meloni, would have eaten into the earnings of Banca Mediolanum, which is partly controlled by the Berlusconi family and is central to its empire. Following Ms. Berlusconi’s lead, Forza Italia successfully worked to water down the bill.
*What to Know About the New Covid Variants*
HV.1 has overtaken EG.5 as the leading variant in the U.S.
Two closely related variants, EG.5 and HV.1, now comprise roughly half of the Covid-19 cases in the United States.
EG.5 became the dominant variant nationwide in August. At that time, the World Health Organization classified it as a “variant of interest,” meaning it has genetic changes that give it an advantage and its prevalence was growing. Since then, the variant appears to have plateaued, holding steady at about 20 to 25 percent of cases in September and October.
HV.1 emerged in the United States at the end of the summer and has progressively made up a larger proportion of the circulating virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it overtook EG.5 as the dominant variant last week, and now accounts for one in four Covid cases.
Experts have also been watching two other variants, BA.2.86 and JN.1, that make up only a tiny fraction of cases but scientists say carry an alarming number of mutations.
How worried should people be about these variants?
EG.5 & HV.1
While severe illness in older adults and people with underlying conditions is always a concern, as is long Covid in anyone who gets infected, experts say EG.5 and HV.1 do not pose a substantial threat — or at least no more of one than any of the other major variants that have circulated this year.
The EG.5 variant was identified in China in February 2023 and was first detected in the United States in April. It is a descendant of the Omicron variant XBB.1.9.2 and has one notable mutation that helps it to evade antibodies developed by the immune system in response to earlier variants and vaccines.
That mutation “may mean that more people are susceptible because the virus can escape a little bit more of that immunity,” said Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.
But EG.5, which has also been called Eris, does not appear to have any new capacities when it comes to its contagiousness, its symptoms or its likelihood of causing severe illness. Diagnostic tests and treatments such as Paxlovid continue to be effective against it. Perhaps more important, the new vaccines, which target a related XBB variant, appear to produce a sufficient number of antibodies that work against EG.5.
HV.1 is descended from EG.5 and is highly similar to it. There isn’t data yet on how well the new vaccines perform against HV.1, but Dr. Dan Barouch, the head of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said he doesn’t anticipate it will be substantially different from their efficacy against EG.5.
Given the variants’ similarity, it’s unclear exactly how HV.1 has overtaken EG.5, but one of the few additional mutations in HV.1 has likely given it an edge over its predecessor. “Whenever a new variant dominates, then by definition it has an advantage,” Dr. Barouch said. “And the advantage is either increased transmissibility or increased immune escape.”
BA.2.86 & JN.1
Another variant that scientists were watching closely earlier this fall was BA.2.86, nicknamed Pirola. Experts were initially worried about this variant because of the number of mutations it carries in the spike protein, which is what the virus uses to infect human cells and what our immune systems use to identify it. According to Jesse Bloom, a professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center who specializes in virus evolution, the mutations in BA.2.86 represent “an evolutionary jump similar in size” to the changes in the first Omicron variant compared to the original coronavirus strain.
Adding to the concern, early data indicated that the new vaccines may not be very effective against BA.2.86. However, evidence has since emerged that antibody levels produced in response to BA.2.86 are on par with those developed in response to EG.5, suggesting that the vaccines will be sufficiently protective against it. Another study found that BA.2.86 may not be as transmissible as other forms of the virus.
Consequently, BA.2.86 has not taken hold like scientists worried it might; currently, there are no cases of it reported on the C.D.C. variant tracker. Dr. Bloom said that it is not uncommon for new variants to fizzle out instead of spreading widely.
Just like EG.5 evolved to produce HV.1, JN.1 has recently emerged from BA.2.86. According to data released Oct. 18 on X (formerly Twitter) by scientists in China, JN.1 carries a mutation that gives it extra immune-evading capabilities, but it doesn’t appear to bind to human cells as well. Time will tell if JN.1 gains traction or follows the path of BA.2.86.
More than the risk conferred by any individual variant, it is the rapid rate of virus evolution that is most concerning to Trevor Bedford, a professor in the vaccine and infectious disease division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. “No single variant has been that impactful,” he said, “but the overall accumulation of these mutations is having significant impact.”
*Is Arthritis Avoidable?*
Joint pain, stiffness and swelling aren’t always inevitable results of aging, experts say. Here’s what you can do to reduce your risk.
Q: What can we do to avoid getting arthritis as we age?
What was once an easy run may feel tougher to complete. Or perhaps a challenging game of tennis might leave your hip or ankle sore for days.
Painful, stiff or swollen joints are a common complaint among older adults — and for many, they’re the first sign of what may feel like an unavoidable diagnosis: arthritis.
In a recent survey of more than 2,200 people between ages 50 and 80 in the United States, 60 percent said they had been told by a health care provider that they had some form of arthritis. And about three-quarters considered joint pain and arthritis a normal part of aging.
But arthritis is not inevitable as we age, said Kelli Dominick Allen, an exercise physiologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine.
“Sometimes people will start to get aches and pains in their joints and not do anything about it because they think everyone gets arthritis as they get older,” Dr. Allen said. “We shouldn’t think about arthritis as something that we just have to deal with passively.”
Arthritis is a catchall term for the more than 100 kinds of inflammatory joint conditions, each of which can arise for different reasons. Many of those causes have little to do with age, Dr. Allen said.
One form of degenerative joint disease, though, known as osteoarthritis, is somewhat more likely to occur as a person gets older, said Dr. Wayne McCormick, a geriatrician at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “It’s basically just worn-out joints,” he said.
Osteoarthritis is most commonly seen among people over 50, particularly women, Dr. Allen said.
Scientists don’t know precisely why some people are more prone to joint inflammation and pain with age than others. But about 12 percent of osteoarthritis cases are a result of joint injuries, such as meniscus or ligament tears, from when they were young.
Arthritis is also more common among people who have a family history of the condition, or who have certain chronic conditions such as obesity, heart disease or diabetes.
Some people may find that their joint pain limits their activities as they age. But others, whose X-rays may show significantly worn-out joints, may experience no pain at all, Dr. McCormick said. As a result, he added, “each person has to develop their own plan of how to stay healthy and functional with the help of their physician.”
For most people, Dr. Allen said, preventing arthritis later in life should begin many years before it is a concern — by taking steps to prevent joint injuries during sports or exercise, and recovering properly when they occur.
For those who are not at risk of developing sports-related injuries, staying physically active and maintaining a healthy weight can help to prevent excessive wear and tear of your joints and to reduce pain if arthritis sets in later in life, Dr. Allen said.
In a 2015 review of 44 clinical trials, for instance, researchers found that participants who exercised regularly had reduced knee pain related to osteoarthritis and improved physical function and quality of life.
“It actually does help if you can do low-impact exercise, like a stationary bicycle where your knees, hips and joints aren’t receiving so much impact,” Dr. McCormick said. Strengthening muscles such as the quadriceps and hamstrings helps to support the joints, he added.
In addition to regular exercise, supportive knee or ankle braces, over-the-counter pain medications such as ibuprofen or acetaminophen, or steroid injections into a problematic joint can all help relieve joint pain to varying degrees, Dr. McCormick said.
Not every option works for everyone, he added, so it’s important to explore and find what helps you to stay active.
Similarly, dietary supplements such as glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate — or herbal remedies such as Boswellia (an herbal extract made from the bark of the Boswellia tree) — may help relieve symptoms for some people. But there isn’t much scientific evidence to support their use, Dr. Allen said.
“There have been a fair number of clinical trials, but really mixed evidence on their effects,” she said.
But Dr. McCormick said that, in his experience, it’s “very unusual for these supplements to be harmful,” so they could be worth trying — or stopping if they don’t seem to help.
Ultimately, finding ways to live a pain-free, active and healthy lifestyle is the best way to reduce your risk of developing arthritis later in life, Dr. Allen said.
Many of the actions that reduce the risk for other chronic conditions such as diabetes or heart disease “are really powerful tools” for lowering age-related joint disease risk too, Dr. Allen said.
“Somebody who’s trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle will already be doing the things that are most important for reducing arthritis risk,” she said.
🌄Excelente día, le compartimos las notas principales de esta mañana por parte de Cadena Política.
📰 1.- ¿Qué es el Día de los Difuntos?
📰2.- Elon Musk estima que X vale unos 19,000 mdd, 25,000 mdd menos de lo que pagó
📰3.- Industria Mexicana Brinda Firme Respaldo al Plan de Reconstrucción de Acapulco
📰4.- Cementerio judío en Viena es profanado con esvásticas nazis
📰5.- Xoloitzcuintles: Guardianes en el Camino de los Difuntos
📢 Sigue el canal de Cadena Política en WhatsApp:
*MAGACÍN CDMX EN EL INDEPENDIENTE*
*•* *MENSAJE POLÍTICO*
*Taboada sería ungido el domingo*
https://cdmx.info/taboada-seria-ungido-el-domingo/
*•* *GLORIETA DE COLÓN*
*✓Audios de Martí son ‘fake’, pero sí apoya a Brugada*
*✓Agresión a periodistas en Congreso CDMX*
https://cdmx.info/audios-de-marti-son-fake-pero-si-apoya-a-brugada/
*CDMX 2024*
*Taboada será el candidato en CDMX: PAN*
https://cdmx.info/taboada-sera-el-candidato-en-cdmx-pan/
*Paridad dejaría fuera a Harfuch*
https://cdmx.info/paridad-dejaria-fuera-a-harfuch/
*Apoyan a Harfuch consejeros de Morena*
https://cdmx.info/apoyan-a-harfuch-consejeros-de-morena/
*NACIONAL*
*Encabeza Ana Lilia Rivera primer envío de víveres a Guerrero*
https://cdmx.info/encabeza-ana-lilia-rivera-primer-envio-de-viveres-a-guerrero/
*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*
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