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(CNN) Nurse Katie Sefton never thought Covid-19 could get this bad -- and certainly not this late in the pandemic. "I was really hoping that we'd (all) get vaccinated and things would be back to normal," said Sefton, an assistant manager at Sparrow Hospital in Lansing, Michigan. But this week Michigan had more patients hospitalized for Covid-19 than ever before. Covid-19 hospitalizations jumped 88% in the past month, according to the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.

As another lawsuit hits the actor, accusing him of creating a ‘toxic’ work environment, his status as the industry’s most wanted leading man shows no sign of returning. The descriptions sound like a typical day at sea for Captain Jack Sparrow: “volatile”, “reckless”, “vices”, “chaos”, “hurricane”. The Pirates of the Caribbean character is, after all, a drunken pirate who sails through fiascos and misadventures. It is Johnny Depp, however, not Sparrow, who is accused of presiding over such mayhem in a drama playing out not on screen but in court. Oh, how I loved you, Johnny Depp. Now I see...

<p>This thread is a friendly collaborative place for FReepers to analyze information and share opinons. FReepers have a wide variety of reasons for investigating Q Anon content; this is not the appropriate place to criticize or badger those who choose to use some of their time in this manner.</p>

ANIMAL rights activists face trial on terrorism charges in America next month for their campaign against a British research centre. The seven members of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac) are all from America, but at least one trained as an activist in Britain. They were arrested in FBI raids across four states over their alleged activities against Huntingdon Life Sciences. The company’s headquarters are in Cambridgeshire, but it has a laboratory in New Jersey. The seven, who face trial in New Jersey, are charged with conspiring to commit animal enterprise terrorism. If convicted they face heavy fines and up to...

Google has acquired iOS and Mac email client Sparrow, with the team behind the popular app heading to Google to work with the Gmail team. “We care a lot about how people communicate, and we did our best to provide you with the most intuitive and pleasurable mailing experience,” Dom Leca, CEO of Sparrow, said in a statement on the company’s website. “Now we’re joining the Gmail team to accomplish a bigger vision — one that we think we can better achieve with Google.” In the note on Sparrow’s site, Leca also thanked the app’s users who have provided support...

China’s Worst Self-Inflicted Environmental Disaster: The Campaign to Wipe Out the Common Sparrow Back in the 1950s, China was going through its Great Leap Forward, an effort to transform China from a largely agrarian nation to a thriving industrial Marxist powerhouse. These sweeping (and often brutal) reforms, touched virtually every facet of Chinese life — and as one particular episode in China's history points out, the animal kingdom was also far from immune. In 1958, China ordered the extermination of several pests, including sparrows — an ill-fated campaign that eventually led to catastrophe. The Four Pests campaign Chinese leader Mao...

Second missile test misses mark; MND vows to investigate By Rich Chang / Staff Reporter Thu, Mar 24, 2011 - Page 3 Mechanical problems and human error were behind another less-than-stellar air defense missile test on Monday, on the heels of an equally unsatisfactory major missile exercise earlier this year. Minister of National Defense Kao Hua-chu (高華柱) said mechanical problem and operational shortcomings were responsible for the poor performance of Monday’s missile tests, adding that the military would continue to investigate the causes of the malfunctions. Missile performance is “unstable,” Kao told reporters in the legislature yesterday. The missile exercise...

Military to check under-performing Sparrow missiles 2011/01/18 22:45:41 Taipei, Jan. 18 (CNA) Following a poor showing by six missiles in a test firing Tuesday, three of which were U.S.-made Sparrows, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said it will check each and every one of the remaining missiles to find out what went wrong. MND spokesman Yu Sy-tue said 11 of the 15 scenarios tested at southern Taiwan's Jiupeng military base had successful outcomes. "The 73.3 percent success rate was within the MND's target range of between 70 percent and 95 percent -- but barely a passing grade, " Yu...

A force to be reckoned with Posted on 9 August 2010 in Defence The Egyptian Air Force (EAF) or Al Quwwat Al Jawwiya Il Misriya, is one of the largest air arms in the region and is also one of the longest established. Formed in 1930 as the Egyptian Army Air Force, it became fully independent in 1937. Initially it had close links with the British Royal Air Force and was primarily equipped with British-supplied aircraft. Spitfires gave way to Meteors and Vampires before the 1952 revolution, after which the new president, General Gamal Abdel Nasser, turned to the Soviet...

"When you look at the golden age of piracy, 1692 to about 1725, pirates were considered what they in fact were -- ruthless brigands, murderers, thieves," says W. Thomas Smith Jr., co-author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Pirates." "Robert Louis Stevenson's book romanticized pirates and made them very personable. That was taken a step further with the story of 'Peter Pan,' where Captain Hook was loosely based on the image of Blackbeard -- and as we all know, Blackbeard was a horrible guy." So, Mr. Smith, who's your favorite pirate? "I would have to say, I guess, Blackbeard --...

The matter of the malevolent robin is no longer a federal case. U.S. District Judge William D. Stiehl on Tuesday dismissed a Centreville woman's suit alleging that a bird attacked and seriously injured her while she was shopping at Lowe's Home Center in Fairview Heights.

Animal rights activists in the Netherlands want charges laid in the shooting of a rare sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes as a TV company was setting up for a world-record attempt. The sparrow, which is on the national endangered list, had flown into an exposition centre on Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden. After knocking over the dominoes, it was chased into a corner and shot by an exterminator with an air rifle. "Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there's a danger to...

Bird Nearly Ruins Dominoes Record Attempt Mon Nov 14, 5:01 PM ET AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - A sparrow knocked over 23,000 dominoes in the Netherlands, nearly ruining a world record attempt before it was shot to death Monday, the state news agency reported. The unfortunate bird flew through an open window at an exposition center in the northern city of Leeuwarden where employees of television company Endemol NV have worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes on Friday night. Only a system of 750 built-in...

Israel successfully tested the Arrow–2 anti-missile missile Tuesday morning, intercepting an incoming rocket at high altitude, the Defense Ministry announced. It was the 11th test of the anti-ballistic missile system. The United States has put up most of the funding for the Arrow program and US officials were on hand for the test. Describing the test launch as "routine," a defense ministry statement said its objectives were to demonstrate the Arrow's systems improved performance against incoming targets at a higher altitude. Launched at the Palmahim Air Force Base south of Tel Aviv at 7:15 am, it shot down a live...