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Japan Fearing Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak with Olympics on the Horizon

The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are right around the corner and the Wuhan Coronavirus has the entire nation concerned. There are expected to be millions of visitors across Japan to support the Olympics, and Japan is worried a coronavirus outbreak may have a devastating impact on the nation:

Although Japan has seen just one case, the outbreak highlights the risk of contagion given the millions of visitors expected for the Summer Games.

“We have to be very careful about what kind of infectious diseases will appear at the Tokyo Olympics,” Kazuhiro Tateda, president of the Japanese Association for Infectious Diseases, told a briefing on Wednesday.

“At these kinds of mass gatherings, the risks increase that infectious diseases and resistant bacteria can be carried in.”

Being a Tokyo resident, and someone who frequently travels abroad, this virus is extremely concerning. On the one hand, I do not want to unknowingly catch something while abroad on business. On the other, I do not want the influx of tourists to have any major, lasting health effects on Japan.

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Hitting the Gym in January is Total Hell on the Legs

I recently got back in to the gym and it has been a struggle. The first week was not fun, with every muscle in my body aching after finishing working out. As Wired points out, which I absolutely can confirm, hitting the gym in January is literal hell on the legs:

But actually that soreness might be the sign of a workout well done. What you’re likely experiencing when your muscles ache the day after a tough gym session is something called DOMS: delayed onset muscle soreness.

When you put your muscles to work, tiny tears appear in the muscle fibres, and it's repairing these tears that leads to inflammation and soreness. DOMS happens after your muscles lengthen under tension, something called eccentric muscle contraction. For example when you’re lowering down a weight and your arm extends slowly, and the muscle tears slightly. It’s also common after downhill running, rock climbing and resistance based exercises.

“We call it the good pain because it shows that your training session was actually quite effective,” says Aamer Sandoo, lecturer in sport and exercise science at Bangor University in Wales. When the muscle repairs those tears, it makes it stronger. With exercise, we're trying to cause trauma to the muscle and the body's response is to make a stronger muscle by depositing more fibres within it.

The good kind of pain. I sure hope whatever I am currently attempting to do in the gym will have a positive effect. To stay motivated I need to see some fairly rapid indication the hard work I am investing in the gym is actually paying dividends towards my ultimate goal of de-beer-belly-ifying!

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How Jeff Bezos’ iPhone X Was Hacked by Saudi Arabia

Jeff Bezos owns not just Amazon, but also the Washington Post, a newspaper highly critical of both President Donald Trump and Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud. This in-depth New York Times articles details a likely scenario how Jeff Bezos had his iPhone X hacked purportedly by Saudi Arabia.

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"Why Are They Doing This to Me??" Trump Asks Friends

President Donald J Trump, the third president to be officially impeached, seemingly cannot wrap his head around any of this:

Meanwhile, with his lawyers going about their business defending the president, Trump, who was at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, appeared “distracted” by the impeachment process. According to CNN, the president was asking people at the resort, “Why are they doing this to me?” adding, that he “can’t understand why” he is impeached.

Someone who cannot figure out why they are being impeached, after having had his administration undertake sketchy operation after sketchy operation, while completely blocking the administration from speaking to Congress to substantiate his "perfect call" with the Ukraine, is obviously unqualified to be in a position of such import. Simply put, President Trump should not be the leader of the free world.

The best leaders are capable of self-reflection and understanding where their decisions went awry. They make adjustments moving forward. Some work, some do not. However, the fact that Trump cannot understand he did anything wrong speaks to his entire life of entitlement, never having learned lessons and being punished for wrong doing. So this whole concept of pivoting based on lessons learned is as completely foreign to him as is running a successful business.

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What will an Iranian Cyber Attack on the US Look Like?

As a result of the recent assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by the United States there has been a major uptick in cyber activity by Iran. This should come as no surprise because a kinetic response is more or less off the table. This leaves cyber as their only current recourse.

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Senate Republicans are Bathed in Shame

The impeachment of President Donald Trump is officially underway, with the Senate having affirmed their oath to administer impartial justice. However, as most of the global witnesses have observed, over half of the current US Senate has basically buried their heads in the sand, essentially rendering a shameless verdict before the trial begins.

How in God’s name — and it was in God’s name — can the Republicans who have already decided to acquit President Trump take a solemn oath to administer “impartial justice”? They’re partial to the core, unabashedly so, as their united march toward a foregone conclusion shows. A mind-meld this ironclad isn’t a reflection of facts. It’s a triumph of factionalism.

The majority of the party’s senators have said outright or clearly signaled that they have no intention of finding the president guilty and removing him from office. Yapping lap dogs like Lindsey Graham and obedient manservants like Mitch McConnell have gone further, mocking the whole impeachment process.

So the oath they took: How does that work? Did they cross the fingers on their left hands? Do they reason that American politics has reached a nadir of such fundamental hypocrisy and overweening partisanship that no one regards that pledge as anything but window dressing?

If the tables were reversed you can rest assured the Republicans would be crying day and night on state-sponsored TV, and be doing everything in their power to ensure the Democratic president was removed from office.

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Suicides in Japan Fall Below 20,000 to Record Low in 2019

Although Japan is stereotypically known as the suicide country, the latest statistics are painting a different picture. The number of officially recorded suicides in Japan has decreased to below 20,000 for the first time since 1978:

There is still a possibility that final tallies, which will be published in March, will show a slight increase to above 20,000, the ministry said. But even so, it’s possible that the 2019 figure will represent an all-time low, breaking the mark set in 1981 of 20,434, according to ministry official Yoshindo Nonaka.

The ministry’s figures show that 2019 marked a 10th consecutive year-on-year decrease in the number of suicides, down 881 people — or 4.2 percent — from a year earlier

The number of suicides recorded in Japan stood at 19,959 last year, falling below the 20,000 mark for the first time since authorities began keeping such records in 1978, according to preliminary figures released Friday by the health ministry.

Although the exact reason is not yet known, I think everyone can agree the downward trend is extremely positive.