Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalUN condemns child marriage in Zimbabwe as girl dies after giving birth
The United Nations has condemned the practice of child marriage in Zimbabwe following the death of a 14-year-old girl after she gave birth at a church shrine, an incident that caused outrage among citizens and rights activists.
The case has brought to the fore the practice of child marriage within Zimbabwe’s apostolic churches, which also allow polygamy.
The government has traditionally turned a blind eye to child marriage. Zimbabwe has two sets of marriage laws, the Marriage Act and Customary Marriages Act. Neither law gives a minimum age for marriage consent, while the customary law allows polygamy.
A new bill being debated by parliament seeks to synchronise the laws, ban marriage of anyone below 18 years and prosecute anyone involved in the marriage of a minor.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/08/un-condemns-child-marriage-zimbabwe-girl-dies-after-giving-birth
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Please note that the state of New York just recently raised the marriage age to 18. Also this is kind of painful to me because in my genealogical research I found a young woman in my husband's tree who was married at 15 and died shortly after giving birth at 17.
Baby girl with Covid-19 airlifted 150 miles because of Houston hospital bed shortage
An 11-month-old girl with Covid-19 is stable and no longer intubated one day after she was airlifted to a Texas hospital 150 miles away because of a shortage of pediatric beds in the Houston area.
The baby has made “an amazing recovery,” said Dr. Dominic Lucia, a pediatric emergency physician and chief medical officer at Baylor Scott & White McLane Children’s Medical Center – Temple, where the child was transported on Thursday.
“She’s no longer requiring the breathing machine. She’s actually off that right now… and she’s actually resting with mom. She’s looking great.”
The child, Ava Amira Rivera, tested positive for Covid-19, according to Amanda Callaway, a spokeswoman for Harris Health System. Callaway said Ava was having seizures and needed to be intubated but Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital, where she was first taken, does not offer pediatric services.
None of the major pediatric hospitals in the area had beds available, Callaway said.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/06/us/houston-baby-girl-airlifted-covid/index.html
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Another indictment of our "great" healthcare system...and Texas
Spoiler? Tom Daley takes 10m diving bronze and uses platform for LGBTQ+ awareness
Tom Daley took the bronze medal in the 10m platform dive on an afternoon of vertiginously high-grade competition. This was a thrilling final, perhaps the finest 10m dive competition staged, with gold and silver medals decided by the final dive of Tokyo 2020.
With six breathless rounds all but completed Cao Yuan of China, a gold medallist in 2012 and 2016, needed a stellar final effort to reclaim top spot from his countryman, Yang Jian, who had just produced a jaw-dropping forward four and a half somersaults pike, the most difficult dive in the competition.
Cao nailed it to take gold by a wafer-thin 1.95pts. Daley, who had led until the fourth round, finished 32pts back from that Chinese one-two. A bronze here to go with his gold in the synchro and successes at previous Games makes Daley the first British diver to win four Olympic medals.
In the glow of victory he refused to rule out returning for Paris 2024, when he will be 30, tempted by the lure of two extra events and by the basic joy of competing.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/07/tom-daley-takes-bronze-in-platform-diving-final-at-tokyo-olympics
Spoiler? Tom Daley takes 10m diving bronze and uses platform for LGBTQ+ awareness
Tom Daley took the bronze medal in the 10m platform dive on an afternoon of vertiginously high-grade competition. This was a thrilling final, perhaps the finest 10m dive competition staged, with gold and silver medals decided by the final dive of Tokyo 2020.
With six breathless rounds all but completed Cao Yuan of China, a gold medallist in 2012 and 2016, needed a stellar final effort to reclaim top spot from his countryman, Yang Jian, who had just produced a jaw-dropping forward four and a half somersaults pike, the most difficult dive in the competition.
Cao nailed it to take gold by a wafer-thin 1.95pts. Daley, who had led until the fourth round, finished 32pts back from that Chinese one-two. A bronze here to go with his gold in the synchro and successes at previous Games makes Daley the first British diver to win four Olympic medals.
In the glow of victory he refused to rule out returning for Paris 2024, when he will be 30, tempted by the lure of two extra events and by the basic joy of competing.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/07/tom-daley-takes-bronze-in-platform-diving-final-at-tokyo-olympics
My grandson is off to college today
Yeah, I know, I have 8 grandsons and I'm not supposed to have favorites, but this one has always been special to me. He was my daughter's firstborn and technically the second in the family, as he came along 3 years behind my son's boy and before she met her husband, who brought along all the steps and provided her second son also. When this one was born, I said to her and to my late ex, "The other one is all about his grandpa, this one is MINE." And so he is.
He's always been athletic and has played organized sports since he was little. AYSO soccer, then Upward basketball, then basketball at school, some pee wee football, and more basketball. We really thought basketball would be it for him, but he was sick and missed tryouts in 6th grade for the next year, so he went out for football instead at the invitation of the coach. He was always big and seemed to have the smarts for it, so he became an offensive lineman, first a tackle and then a center. He continued this path in high school, and although his high school team was not exactly a winning program, he attracted the attention of a number of D-I schools in the area and a few HBCUs too. He even had the option of walking on at Tennessee; however, that program is/was such a mess he wouldn't even consider it. But there was one program that kept after him, a D-II school where he had a friend playing. He made a couple of unofficial visits there and finally an official visit, and that's the one he chose--Wheeling University in WV (formerly Wheeling Jesuit, and still with a strong Jesuit influence, which his mom likes). So he's off to there today with two cars, one driven by mom and one by stepdad, both stuffed to the roof with what he needs.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that he's also been an honor roll student almost every semester since kindergarten and missed being an honors graduate by .2 of a point, and was also considered a natural leader by pretty much everyone at every school he ever attended. He's worked summers at different jobs (but they have to be outdoors; he can't stand being penned up!) and is very responsible. He wants a job, eventually, that will allow him to spend most of his time outdoors, so he's planning to major in environmental science. Where that will lead is anyone's guess, but he says he won't be a park ranger."Not wearing one of those dorky hats!"
It will be hard on his mom. In addition to being the apple of her eye, she's depended on him a lot, especially in recent years. I'm excited to see him grow up and can't wait to see what happens next.
Maybe an Olympic spoiler? And some poor sportsmanship
Israel's Linoy Ashram caused a huge upset in the Olympic rhythmic gymnastics individual all-around final, becoming the first non-Russian champion since 1996.
The 22-year-old toppled the long-standing reign by beating gold medal favourite Dina Averina of the Russian Olympic Committee into second place.
Averina was left in tears as the scores were revealed, and said she felt her awarded marks were too low.
"It's very hard to talk at the moment," Averina said afterwards
https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/58127312
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Rhythmic "gymnastics" is something I have trouble seeing as a sport. To me it looks more like a circus act. But you should at least be gracious enough to congratulate the winner.
A superfood fit for a pharaoh--Molokhia
"It's easy to swallow, so Egyptian mothers feed their babies on it after nursing," remarked Emad Farag, an employee at The St. Regis Cairo, as I slurped another spoonful of the mysterious moss-coloured soup. Of all the things I'd imagined I'd be dining on in Cairo's swankiest new hotel, "posh baby food" was not it.
But this uniquely gummy concoction is no ordinary baby food. Pronounced "mo-lo-h-i-a", but spelt innumerable ways, the unassuming green gloop was once the "food of kings" because of its curative powers. Originating from the word mulukia, which means "that which belongs to the royals", legend has it that a healing soup made from the molokhia plant nursed an Egyptian ruler back to health in the 10th Century. And so, a stew worthy of pharaohs was born, and a royal veggie was crowned.
"As far back as you can trace the roots, people ate what was local, and what is local along the Nile is molokhia," food historian-cum-food health writer Michelle Berriedale-Johnson said. To this day, 95% of Egyptians live along the fabled river's life-giving banks and arc-shaped delta.
"They were eating ful (a hearty fava bean stew) and molokhia in pharaonic times, and they're eating ful and molokhia now, because that's what grows and what suits their diet and the climate," Berriedale-Johnson continued. "You'll get leaves in some of the tomb paintings," she said of the saw-toothed leaf vegetable that belongs to the mallow family.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210802-a-superfood-fit-for-a-pharaoh
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Anyone ever had this? What does it taste like? I admit I'm not much for gloopy (don't like okra any way but fried or in gumbo) so...
Tokyo Olympics: German pentathlon coach thrown out for punching horse
A German coach has been thrown out of the Olympics for appearing to punch a horse who was refusing to jump or trot during the modern pentathlon.
Coach Kim Raisner was heard on German TV urging tearful athlete Annika Schleu to "really hit" the horse while she struggled to control Saint Boy during the showjumping round of Friday's women's event.
Schleu had been leading the event before the equestrian, where athletes are given just 20 minutes to bond with a horse they have never ridden.
Modern pentathlon's governing body, the UIPM, said it had reviewed video footage that appeared to show Raisner - who competed at the 2004 Olympics in modern pentathlon - striking the horse with her fist.
https://www.bbc.com/sport/olympics/58127366
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Assholes everywhere, I guess....I wish the horse had fought back, kicked her really hard!
Students can transfer schools to avoid COVID-19 'harassment' like mask mandates, Florida's BOE says
The Florida Board of Education passed a rule Friday allowing parents in the state to skirt mask mandates that districts may enforce for their children.
The rule, passed unanimously at an emergency meeting, lets parents transfer their kids to a private school or another district if they experience "COVID-19 harassment," including mask requirements.
According to the rule, these students would qualify for a Hope Scholarship, an existing program created to protect children who are bullied, assaulted, harassed or threatened in school.
The Florida Department of Health also announced a rule on Friday requiring school districts to allow parents to opt their children out of mask mandates.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/students-transfer-schools-avoid-harassment-mask-mandates-floridas/story?id=79319409
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FloriDUH shows once again why it has the largest wave of Covid-19 in the country.
'A violation': football star recounts having to strip during match to prove she was female
The international footballer Tabitha Chawinga is calling on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game.
Chawinga, who became the first woman from Malawi to sign for a European football team when she joined the Swedish club Krokom/Dvärsätts IF in 2014, said that she had been forced to strip in public during a match to prove she was female and was regularly trolled on social media about her looks.
“I don’t want other people to face the same. It makes me think, if they are insulting someone they have just met at the football ground, what would they do if I was born in their family. Could they have killed me?” she said in a telephone interview from China, where she now plays for Wuhan Jianghan University FC in the Chinese Women’s Super League and was voted Player of the Year two years in a row.
The 25-year-old, who has captained the Malawi national team and was ranked among the 100 best female footballers in the world by the Guardian last year, said that while playing for a girls’ school team when she was 13 she was forced to undress in front of the opposition to prove she was a girl. Her opponents did not believe she was female because of her physical appearance and how well she played.
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/aug/06/violation-of-dignity-football-star-had-to-strip-publicly-to-prove-she-was-female
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And this is what some legislators are trying to force our girls to submit to, to prove they aren't "trans" 
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Gender: Do not displayCurrent location: Virginia
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