∙ Interesting facts in mid-year crime report in this issue. It seems crime was down during COVID lockdowns and closures, but up again as things open-up. I guess crooks were afraid of getting sick (tough way to fight crime).

∙Enrollment in the Ventura Unified School District has reached its lowest point in 25 years, a decline that will mean less funding for schools in years to come.

The district enrolled 15,874 students this past school year, the lowest since 1996-97. At its largest, the district had 17,794 students in 2003-04. Ventura currently has 15,742 students enrolled for the fall.

A committee will be formed that will focus on ways to address the decline and its long term effects.

∙I would like to hear from readers if they have felt the same way as I have as we venture out more to attend events and eat at restaurants. Being in introvert (that is different then being shy), my DNA changed due to basically being sequestered for over a year.

A few weeks ago, there was an event at the museum that I looked forward to going to and on the day of the event I was thinking of every reason not to go. I finally went but it wasn’t easy, and I felt awkward attending. I’m feeling more comfortable getting out now but still have a tendency to just want to stay home.

∙Speaking about DNA, according to a new study published by Science Advances as little as 1.5 percent of our DNA is unique to modern humans, and not shared with our ancestral species.

“That’s a pretty small percentage,” Nathan Schaefer, a University of California scholar and co-author of the report stated. “This kind of finding is why scientists are turning away from thinking that we human are so vastly different from Neanderthals.”

The study compared modern human DNA to that extracted from the fossilized remains of extinct Neanderthals and Denisovans, two pre-human species that died off 35,000 and 50,000 years ago, respectively. Both species are believed to have bred with early humans.

∙Two Swedish prison guards were held hostage for nine hours by two inmates demanding pizza as ransom, they were released when the food was delivered. I’m sure they could have held out for an Antipasto salad also.

∙An Alabama doctor has revealed heartbreaking details about her recent conversations with patients dying from COVID-19, amid a surge in cases caused by the Delta variant in the state with the lowest vaccination rate in the nation.

“I’m admitting young healthy people to the hospital with very serious COVID,” Dr. Brytney Cobia wrote. “One of the last things they do before they’re intubated is beg me for the vaccine. I hold their hand and tell them that I’m sorry, but it’s too late.

“A few days later when I call time of death, I hug their family members and I tell them the best way to honor their loved one is to go get vaccinated and encourage everyone they know to do the same,” Cobia added. “They cry. And they tell me they didn’t know. They thought it was a hoax. They thought it was political. They thought because they had a certain blood type or a certain skin color they wouldn’t get as sick. They thought it was ‘just the flu’. But they were wrong. And they wish they could go back.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued an impassioned plea for residents of her state to get vaccinated against Covid-19, arguing it was “time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks” for the disease’s continued spread. I want folks to get vaccinated. That’s the cure. That prevents everything,” Ivey, a Republican stated. (Alabama has about a 33% vaccination rate).

For months, conservative Nashville, Tennessee-based radio host Phil Valentine has repeatedly made posts on multiple social media platforms telling his fans that if they weren’t at risk for COVID, they shouldn’t get the vaccine. That message changed on July 23, when the Valentine family made a public statement on the Facebook page of his talk radio station’s Facebook page that he had COVID.

A man who mocked Covid-19 vaccinations died this week at a Los Angeles-area hospital after contracting the virus. Stephen Harmon was 34. Stephen Harmon posted photos of himself in his hospital bed, wrote that he had pneumonia and critically low oxygen levels and was going to be intubated.

Three days before his death, Harmon tweeted: “If you don’t have faith that God can heal me over your stupid ventilator then keep the Hell out of my ICU room, there’s no room in here for fear or lack of faith!” Perhaps before waiting for God to cure him he should have been vaccinated as a back-up.

∙I have mentioned this before but will again. I receive emails from Trump fan’s that basically call me a clown, an idiot and worse for criticizing him. A 3-year-old could email me that. My response is always the same; “Instead of knocking me, explain why you support Trump.” I never receive a response. I’m still waiting.

∙GUNS IN THE NEWS

A drive-by shooting targeting a party bus in Chicago has left eight people injured in what was the third mass attack in the city in a span of six hours, police say.

Eight people were injured in a shooting near a car wash in Fort Worth, Texas, after a group of men got into an argument. One of the men left the scene during the argument, returned with a gun and began firing “toward groups of people,” Fort Worth Police said in a news release. Multiple people returned gunfire, the release said. Most of the victims are believed to have been innocent bystanders who weren’t involved in the initial argument, according to Fort Worth Police.

Authorities are investigating a Massachusetts shooting that left two Black people dead as a hate crime after investigators found “some troubling white supremacist rhetoric” in the gunman’s handwriting.

A man and a woman were finishing dinner at a restaurant at the Downtown Aquarium in Houston, Texas when a man seated at the other end of the bar got up, approached the pair and opened fire. Then the male suspect killed himself.

California Governor Newsom asked, at a meeting with members of a gun victim’s family, “What the hell’s wrong with us? When are we going to put down our arms, literally and figuratively? What is going on in the United States of America?”

∙Former Attorney General William Barr bluntly dismissed some of former President Donald Trump’s election fraud allegations as “bulls***. My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr recalled at one point. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there.”

In spite of this, based only on Trump’s absurd claims that the elections were stolen, more than 6 in 10 GOP voters either “strongly” (39%) or “somewhat” (22%) agreed with the statement that the 2020 election “was stolen from Donald Trump.

Those numbers are astonishing.

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer called a Trump statement accusing the county of deleting an elections database “unhinged” and called on other Republicans to stop the unfounded accusations.” We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country,” Richer tweeted.