Mahogany Praylor said goodbye to her youngest brother in April, expecting to see him soon: He was going to prison, but only for a few months.

Kevin Praylor, 43, had long struggled with mental illness, and he’d gotten in trouble because he didn’t tell his parole officer he had moved in with his sister, where he felt safest during his bouts of paranoia.

But in mid-July, Kevin Praylor’s family got a call from the unit chaplain, informing them he had killed himself.

“He always said he was scared to die,” Mahogany Praylor said. “I never worried about him hurting himself.”

Her brother’s death was one of five suicides in Texas prisons in less than one week. It’s an unusual cluster of fatal self-harm behind bars, just the second time since 2005 that so many Texas prisoners have taken their lives in six days, according to data analyzed by the Texas Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that publishes data on the Texas criminal justice system.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prison-suicides-have-been-rising-years-experts-fear-pandemic-has-n1276563

The Jacksonville Jaguars' preseason game against the Cleveland Browns also marked the return of Tim Tebow to the football field.

The former Heisman Trophy winner, who turned 34 on Saturday, celebrated his birthday and his return to the league by doing ... not much at all.

Getting just a handful of snaps, Tebow made a single appearance in the box score, being credited with one target in the fourth quarter. Tebow got his hand on a pass that was tipped at the line of scrimmage.

Tebow, who was drafted in the first round in 2010 after a record-setting career in college as the quarterback of the Florida Gators, has not appeared in a regular-season NFL game since 2012. He was last kicking around the NFL in the 2015 preseason, when he was cut by the Philadelphia Eagles. But now, after a detour through minor league baseball, he's back and trying to return to the NFL as a tight end.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/jaguars/2021/08/15/tim-tebow-jacksonville-jaguars-debut/8141155002/

Wagner is a Russian mercenary group whose operations have spanned the globe, from front-line fighting in Syria to guarding diamond mines in the Central African Republic. But it is notoriously secretive and, as such, difficult to scrutinise.
Now, the BBC has gained exclusive access to an electronic tablet left behind on a battlefield in Libya by a Wagner fighter, giving an unprecedented insight into how these operatives work.
And another clue given to us in Tripoli - a “shopping list” for state-of-the-art military equipment - suggests Wagner has probably been supported at the highest level despite the Russian government’s consistent denials that the organisation has any links to the state.
It was late one night in early February when I received the call in London. It was one of my contacts in Libya with some extraordinary news - a Samsung tablet had been retrieved from a battlefield in western Libya.
Russian mercenaries had been fighting there in support of Libyan renegade general Khalifa Haftar, against the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA). It’s believed the tablet had been left behind when the fighters retreated in the spring of 2020.

There had long been reports that Wagner had been operating in Libya. This surveillance footage, filmed by GNA fighters in December 2019 and shared with the BBC, is believed to show Wagner fighters.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/extra/8iaz6xit26/the-lost-tablet-and-the-secret-documents
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Financed, no doubt, by Vlad's oil oligarch buddies. I wonder who their "Erik, Prince of Darkness" is......

Don't know if he's bluffing or not, but he tells his dad he's feeling okay now. He could have had just a mild case, since he's young and extremely fit. He and his wife had been on a short vacation to the Greek islands, hoping to get pregnant (they have a 15 month old daughter and really want a sibling for her) and say they were very careful, avoiding crowds except at airports etc. The situation in Ukraine is that Pfizer is available for 60+ only, and something, possibly AZ, just became available for the younger set about the time they went on vacation. Now his wife doesn't want to get vaccinated because she thinks she might be pregnant and believes consequences to the child are unknown (which may be the info put out there, we dunno). So Matt wants to keep his dad (my brother) out of it since he urged more caution and Alonya got offended. There are medical folks in the family who could talk to her but she knows none of us personally.

A 15-year-old from Sri Lanka has spent his Covid lockdown building a solar-powered tuk-tuk. The best part is that Suntharalingam Piranawan used scraps for his homemade vehicle - and it works.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-58192468

Michael Kagan, a professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says the cancerous lymph nodes in his neck are like a “ticking time bomb.” But there’s little he can do.

MountainView Hospital, where he was scheduled to have his procedure last week, has put all surgeries requiring an overnight stay on hold as Covid-19 case counts and hospitalizations climb, according to a statement from spokesperson Jennifer McDonnell.

“I’m not getting any treatment so on any given day it could spread to another part of my body or it can grow and cause a much bigger problem,” Kagan told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on Tuesday. “I’m just living with a time bomb and I’m just letting it tick down, basically.”

With Covid-19 case numbers surging across the United States and many unvaccinated Americans falling ill, the number of available hospital beds has been dwindling in parts of the country. Some hospitals now report their intensive care units, which are usually reserved for the most critically ill patients, are full – a grim reality that’s forcing health care leaders to make tough decisions, whether that be redirecting new patients to other facilities, canceling surgeries or creating makeshift ICU beds in the middle of emergency rooms.

“It’s a nightmare,” said Dr. Teri Dyess, director of hospital medicine at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson, Mississippi. “We’ve had people drive here (from) three hours away for their planned surgery and we have no beds to put them in after they operate.”

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/14/us/full-icus-summer-covid-surge/index.html
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And people still don't want to wear masks or get vaccinated because FREEDUMB!

It's only a few days into the new school year, but New Mexico’s largest district is reeling from a shooting that left one student dead and landed another in custody.

The gunfire at Washington Middle School during the lunch hour Friday marked the second shooting in Albuquerque in less than 24 hours. With the city on pace to shatter its homicide record this year, top state officials said they were heartbroken by what they described as a scourge.

“These tragedies should never occur. That they do tells us there is more work to be done,” Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said.

The boy who was killed was a “hero," Police Chief Harold Medina said Friday night in a brief statement.

“He stood up for a friend and tried to de-escalate a violent confrontation between classmates,” Medina said. He said the incident was “a tragedy that has shaken our community.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-mexico-school-shooting-victim-tried-de-escalate-violent-confrontation-n1276841

Russia is on fire.

Massive wildfires are wiping out entire Siberian villages, killing people, emitting dangerous smoke, and destroying woods and national parks across more than 5 million hectares.

The fires, which started in May in Yakutia, are now larger than all wildfires around the planet combined, according to Greenpeace. There is no official death toll yet, but at least five people are known to have died so far.

For months, Russian authorities have been saying that the situation was under control. Finally, on Thursday, the minister of Emergency Situations, Yevgeny Zinichev, traveled to the epicenter of the disaster in Yakutia and concluded: the fires will reach Moscow, if nobody stops them.

There are more than 3,000 miles between Moscow and Yakutia, a republic four times the size of France, located in northeastern Siberia. It is one of the coldest places on the planet in winter time. But this summer has been unusually hot, with unprecedented droughts and strong winds fueling the disaster.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-worlds-biggest-fires-may-reach-moscow-thanks-to-vladimir-putin?ref=home
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Scary stuff

The man suspected of killing five people before turning the gun on himself in a mass shooting in England on Thursday night was an incel Trump supporter who posted about “devil worshipers” in government.

The suspected shooter has been named by police as Jake Davison, a 22-year-old who is reported to have worked in construction. In a six-minute rampage, Davison killed his mom, Maxine Davison, a 3-year-old girl named Sophie Martyn, the girl’s father, Lee Martyn, as well as two bystanders, Stephen Washington and Kate Shepherd.

It was the worst mass shooting in Britain since 2010.

(snip)

In disturbing YouTube videos posted just weeks before the shooting, Davison appears to be deeply unhappy about his life. Under the username “Professor Waffle,” he refers to people like him as “blackpillers,” incels who believe unattractive men will never be romantically successful regardless of how much effort they put into how they look. In one comment under his video, he wrote that he’d been “consuming the blackpill overdose.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/jake-davison-suspected-mass-shooter-said-he-was-an-american-trump-supporting-virgin?ref=home
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Let me clue you incels....it's not your body that's the problem, it's your BRAIN!

Gov. Ralph Northam announced Thursday he will require universal masking in all Virginia K-12 schools.

A portion of his press release is as follows:

“Governor Northam today announced a Public Health Emergency Order requiring universal masking in all indoor settings in Virginia’s K-12 schools. This order reinforces current state law, which requires Virginia schools adhere to mitigation strategies outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). As of July 28, CDC guidelines include universal masking for all students, teachers, and staff. SB 1303 was passed by an overwhelming bipartisan majority of the General Assembly earlier this year.

“We all share the same goal of keeping our schools open and keeping our students safe,” said Governor Northam. “That’s why the General Assembly passed this law with overwhelming bipartisan support. This Public Health Order makes it very clear that masks are required in all indoor K-12 settings, and Virginia expects all schools to comply. I’m grateful to the work of the General Assembly and the Health Department, and I look forward to a safe start to the school year.”

73 percent of all adults in Virginia have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. As of August 10, 40.3 percent of 12-15 year-olds in Virginia and 51.7 percent of 16-17 year olds in Virginia are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Children under 12 are not yet eligible to receive any available vaccination, which is one reason CDC updated its guidance to recommend universal masking in all K-12 schools. Masks are a proven tool to reduce in-school transmission, even in communities with high levels of spread.”

https://www.whsv.com/2021/08/12/gov-northam-announces-universal-mask-mandate-k-12-schools/
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Thank goodness we have a governor with some sense and an MD degree!