Record number of wedded couple’s years – Cleaning up the shipping industry – Donald Trump assails his niece – Evening statistics
Since yesterday’s entry was a long one and since there are not many new developments, today’s will be fairly brief. Amid all of the gloomy news I’ve seen for at least the last month I’ve come across one item that offers a glimmer of consolation. A record was broken in Ecuador by Julio Mora Tapia, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, two retired teachers who have been married for 79 years, both of them lucid and in good health. There have been marriages that are longer still, but their marriage has the greatest combined ages of any pair, just short of 215 years. They have four surviving children, 11 grandchildren, 21 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. The families of both the husband and the wife had disapproved of their engagement, so they quietly slipped away one day to get married before the registrar, thereby beginning a romance that has lasted nearly eight decades.
Another bit of inspiriting news, one on a much larger scale, is that the global shipping industry is turning its attention to “green” fuels. It has been estimated that if all of the ships combined were ranked as a single country, it would be the sixth-largest polluter in the world. But shipping companies are now gradually replacing their traditional fuels with hydrogen cells and “biofuel,” fuel created from animal and plant oils. The shipping companies are not merely mouthing platitudes to placate the environmentalists; they are actively supporting research and development, and already have begun implementing the newer, cleaner fuels on many vessels. Maersk, the largest shipping company in the world, has set itself the goal of being carbon-free by 2050. We are likely to see cleaner waters and clearer air very soon.
I have spoken of the familial (not to say incestuous) atmosphere of the Republican Convention; and now yet another Trump relative has acquired headlines. Donald Trump has been greatly irritated by Mary Trump’s tell-all book about him and his family; and when Donald Trump is irritated, he is not one to suffer in silence. He has assailed Mary Trump as “an unstable niece, who was now rightfully shunned, scorned and mocked her entire life, and never even liked by her own very kind & caring grandfather!” A relative is unstable, therefore she must be “rightly” scorned and mocked: that is as good a way as any to sum up Trump’s mindset.
Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 25,153,553; # of deaths worldwide: 845,925; # of cases U.S.: 6,136,947; # of deaths U.S.: 186,825.