Message: Florida is family friendly

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/desantis-bans-transgender-females-womens-sports

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill barring transgender females from competing in women’s and girls school sports programs.

“I can tell you that in Florida, girls are going to play girls sports and boys are going to play boys sports,” DeSantis said Tuesday at the signing ceremony at Trinity Christian Academy in Jacksonville.

The Republican governor said his state was focused on the “fairness and integrity” of athletic programs with the new bill, which bars athletes from competing on school sports teams for a gender that is different than one of their birth certificates.

“We believe in the state of Florida of protecting the fairness and integrity of women’s athletics,” he added.

The bill, which previously cleared the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature in April, would retroactively affect transgender athletes currently on athletic teams.

https://news.usni.org/2021/06/01/iranian-warship-thought-to-be-headed-to-venezuela-left-port-with-7-high-speed-missile-boats-aboard

Those boats seen in the satellite images match the characteristics of the Peykaap family of medium-sized fast attack craft operated by the sectarian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy (IRGCN). The IRGCN is responsible for the coastal security of Iran and the Strait of Hormuz and similar vessels equipped with torpedoes and missiles have been used to harass U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.

The seven missile craft aboard Makran are each approximately 57 feet (17.5 meters) long and match the Peykaap family of medium-sized fast attack craft operated by Iran. There are several variations of these craft in Iranian service, although all are generally similar. The latest Peykaap-II type (also known as the Bavar class) is 57 feet long and can carry two anti-ship missiles and two 12.75 inch torpedoes. The missiles could be of the Kowsar or Nasr types, which are derived from Chinese models with a quite modest range of around 18 nautical miles.

There has been concern that Venezuela may attempt to acquire ballistic missile technology from Iran. Some areas of the deck are now covered, so it has not been possible to assess the full cargo of the ship. Venezuela’s regime, led by President Nicola Maduro, has talked openly of acquiring arms from Iran. Meanwhile, Iranian special forces belonging to the IRGC’s Quds force may already be assisting the Venezuelan military.

If the boats are delivered, they may form the core of an asymmetrical warfare force within Venezuela’s armed forces. This could be focused on disrupting shipping as a means of countering superior naval forces. Shipping routes to and from the Panama Canal are near the Venezuelan coast.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/remember-the-irs-targeting-scandal-no-one-ever-got-punished-for-it

January 18, 2018

Obama took no action, and his handpicked IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, simply stonewalled congressional investigations. Lois Lerner, the head of the IRS unit at the heart of the scandal, retired with a full pension, and no disciplinary action was taken against any IRS employee.

Finally, last October, the IRS signed a consent decree in federal court in which it admitted to targeting conservative organizations for more than two years, from 2010 through 2013. It confessed that: its treatment of [conservative organizations] during the tax-exempt determinations process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding of some Plaintiffs’ information that TIGTA [U.S. Treasury Inspector General, Tax Administration] determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong.

This IRS targeting of conservative organizations in the run-up to the 2012 election should be one of the major scandals of our time. Researchers from Stockholm University, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and the American Enterprise Institute concluded that a fully mobilized Tea Party, unhindered by IRS harassment, would have brought the Republican Party between 5 and 8.5 million votes. You may recall Obama won the popular vote by just under 5 million votes.

Due to Chinas past record on Virus reporting the US must close all air traffic from China, be a real bitch if that started trending

https://www.trtworld.com/asia/china-reports-world-s-possibly-first-human-case-of-h10n3-bird-flu-47174

A man in eastern China has contracted what might be the world’s first human case of the H10N3 strain of bird flu, but the risk of large-scale spread is low, the government said.

The 41-year-old man in Jiangsu province, northwest of Shanghai, was hospitalised April 28 and is in stable condition, the National Health Commission said on its website on Tuesday.

No human case of H10N3 has been reported elsewhere, the commission said.

“This infection is an accidental cross-species transmission,” its statement said. “The risk of large-scale transmission is low.”