 of a night time landing at a narrow airstrip in the wilderness:
‘The air was heavy, with life gone out of it. Men’s voices came from across the runway, sounding, after the deep drone of the plane, like the thin bleating of reed pipes or like the fluted whispers of a bamboo forest.’ (West with the Night, p.18.)
In contrast, McLain’s narrative sometimes lapses into ‘syrupy’ sentimentality, diminishing the character of the real, fearless and often taciturn, Beryl Markham, a woman who at times was acknowledged by those who knew her to have been a first-class bitch! Certainly, to achieve what she did in the Kenya of the early 20th century, would have taken a lot more tenacity of spirit than depicted by McLain in her novel.
Purely as fiction, ‘Circling the Sun’ is well worth reading. It tells the story of a remarkable woman and gives a window into the harshness and overwhelming beauty of the African landscape and the sometimes eccentric denizens who risked not only their fortunes but their own lives in trying to tame this majestic land.COVID-19 hospitalizations are on the rise in California as the Omicron variant spreads, combining with a holiday wave of the Delta strain to spark concerns of in addition another surge that could strain the state’s healthcare system.
There were 3,589 COVID-19 patients in the state’s hospitals as of Friday, an increase of approximately 12% from two weeks before, according to The Times’ hospitalization tracker. Some Southern California counties have seen bigger jumps, with hospitalizations rising by nearly 31% in L.A. County and by approximately 26% in Riverside County during the same period.
California had recorded 49 situations of the Omicron variant as of Wednesday, although not all samples are sequenced to clarify variants. That’s much lower than the 184,700 identified situations of the Delta variant, which remains principal in the state, but health officials expect the number will rise. Omicron is thought to be more contagious than Delta and better at evading immunity generated by vaccines or past infections, although experts say vaccines nevertheless offer protection against harsh illness and death.
While there are early indications Omicron might cause less harsh illness than other variants, if enough people are infected, hospitals could be overwhelmed nonetheless, health officials say. That comes as the system already faces multiple challenges, including meaningful staffing shortages and increased need for other healthcare sets like flu treatment and procedures that were put on keep up earlier in the pandemic.
The majority of California’s Omicron situations — 38 — have been recorded by L.A. County, which on Saturday reported 3,730 new situations of the coronavirus, its highest single-day total in months and more than double the number of new situations reported Wednesday. As of Thursday, the county was averaging just over 1,587 daily situations over the past week, an increase of nearly 19% from two weeks before, according to The Times’ tracker. The county’s daily positivity rate for those who seek testing also has crept upward, from a seven-day average of 1.2% Sunday to 1.7% Saturday, health officials said.
Orange and Riverside counties on Friday reported their first proven situations of the Omicron variant. In Orange County, the variant was found to have infected a fully vaccinated man who had recently traveled domestically outside California and experienced mild illness, public health authorities said.
In Riverside County, the variant infected a 41-year-old fully vaccinated man from the western portion of the county who was tested in L.A. County on Dec. 8, public health officials said. Health officials are investigating whether the man had recently traveled, they said.
“The reporting of this case reminds us of the importance of taking steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in all its forms,” Dr. Geoffrey Leung, Riverside County public health officer, said in a statement. He additional that people should get vaccinated and receive booster shots. Health officials are also continuing to recommend that people use masks in indoor public places, avoid large gatherings and wash their hands frequently.
Outbreaks of the virus have forced the postponement of sporting events, including the Los Angeles Rams game against the Seattle Seahawks scheduled for Sunday, which was moved to Tuesday, and the Anaheim Ducks game against the Calgary Flames slated for Tuesday, which has not in addition been rescheduled.
The first U.S. case of the Omicron variant was reported Dec. 1 in a fully vaccinated traveler who had recently returned to San Francisco from South Africa. The variant has also been identified in San Bernardino, San Diego, Santa Clara and Ventura counties.
The variant, which has spread rapidly around the world since it was first identified in South Africa last month, appears to be fueling surges in other countries and on the East Coast. In the New York and New Jersey areas, Omicron is estimated to explain 13% of new coronavirus situations, compared with 3% nationally. New York public health officials on Friday reported the state’s highest single-day total of new coronavirus situations since the pandemic began.
Nationally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention forecasts there could be more than 1 million new coronavirus situations recorded the week of Christmas. By contrast, around Halloween, there were 500,000 new weekly situations.
President Biden is expected to discuss the Omicron variant in a speech on Tuesday, according to NBC News.
Times staff writers Rong-Gong Lin II and Emily Alpert-Reyes contributed to this report.
The anti-money laundering unit of Germany's customs authority reportedly failed to share dozens of warnings with police that online payments company Wirecard was facilitating suspicious transactions even before the scandal broke in June.
The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) only handed over a small portion of the information it had about Wirecard's transactions, broadcaster NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Tuesday.
The FIU reportedly received a total of around 1,000 reports in connection with Wirecard, 97 of which were found to potentially offer information related to the Wirecard allegations. However, it only forwarded a fraction of them to the Bavarian state police and the responsible public prosecutor's office in Munich, according to the reports.
A spokesman for the Munich public prosecutor said that "only two reports from the FIU were received" before June 2020, both of which had triggered investigations.
Left Party politician Fabio de Masi told NDR and Süddeutsche Zeitung that the unit's process with the reports shows that the FIU is a "security time bomb," and that "it urgently needs to be clarified whether it withheld information that would have allowed the criminal investigators in Bavaria to recognize th scandal earlier."
Chairman of the Association of German Criminal Police Officers Sebastian Fiedler said the review process was a "security-policy catastrophe." It can be considered certain that "there are countless other scandals in the data pool of the FIU," said Fiedler. He also called on Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz to have the FIU's process independently reviewed.
xdg-settings gets various settings from the desktop environment. For instance, desktop environments often provide proxy configuration and default web browser settings. Using xdg-settings these parameters can be extracted for use by applications that do not use the desktop environment's libraries (which would use the settings natively).
xdg-settings is for use inside a desktop session only. It is not recommended to use xdg-settings as root.
List all properties xdg-settings knows about.
When using xdg-settings to get, check or set a desktop setting, properties and possibly sub-properties are used to specify the setting to be changed.
Some properties (such as default-web-browser) fully describe the setting to be changed. Other properties (such as default-url-scheme-handler) require more information (in this case the actual scheme to set the default handler for) which must be provided in a sub-property.Earlier this week I attended the exposition at the Worldwide Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) conference in Philadelphia, where over 600 distributors displayed their wares for the 1000’s of potential legislation enforcement consumers in attendance. As the sales interval gets fully underway, and folks around the world are planning what presents to buy their loved ones for his or her respective festive celebrations, all eyes flip to the store shelves, attempting to determine what the perfect gadgets are on provide.
Happily, as CNBC’s in-house expertise product editor — and someone who has spent his complete career testing devices — I was able to call in and check dozens of new products that launched this year. How this work – if you enter coins or swipe card within the panel, the panel reveals you some of the artwork work for a couple of minutes after which will get closed and if you want to see it once more or explore extra, further it’s essential to swipe your card or add cash into it. That is how artists are using technology.
Rancho la Paz – a little white town in the mountains of Miajs and the home of about 100 Andalusian horses.
In the south of Andalusia, between Malaga and Marbella, in the mountains of Mijas with views over Fuengirola and the Costa del Sol you find La Paz.
An independent little white town has grown up here during the years: 27 rustic typical Andalusian apartments are distributed all over the ranch, between palms and oleander the swimming pool invites to refresh during the “Spanish siesta” in summer. On the roofed over terrace in between lots of flowers, you have your meals and