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    The death of a pregnant woman can only be a tragedy. But the loss of 2016 Olympic medalist Tori Bowie, a Mississippi native who died in May from childbirth complications, also serves as a reminder that America’s maternal mortality rate is far too high.

    Alex Anastasio voted for Donald Trump for president twice, attended Trump rallies, organized events for him and placed signs in front of her home in Pennsylvania. And she was deeply hopeful in the early days following the 2020 election that once all of the votes were counted, he would serve a second term -- so hopeful, indeed, that she was initially involved in a voter recount effort in support of that.

    Watch out for China. This nuclearized, troop-laden, threatening, ultra-aggressive military monster has just come up with another warning of evil intent. It is negotiating with Cuba about a joint military training and enhanced intelligence center 100 miles from Florida. The center would no doubt host vast numbers of China’s 2 million-plus active troops as combat readiness grows and U.S. military secrets become a reading pleasure.

    During the failed August 1991 putsch in Russia, the good guys were reformers Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. The bad guys were an incompetent claque of the military and KGB within the Politburo, and the rebellion fizzled when Yeltsin climbed on that tank in Moscow. The Kremlin’s nukes were kept secure, and the world caught its breath. The once all-powerful Soviet Union then peacefully flickered out of existence.

    Like many people, I was glued to the news for much of Saturday, watching what seemed, at least for a moment, to be the first stages of a coup d'etat -- and it still might be. The only thing we know for certain is that if this is the beginning of the end of Vladimir Putin's rule, that story won't begin with the mutinous mercenary warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin leading an armored column of troops, guns a-blazing, into Moscow.

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    It’s summertime, and that means the library is bustling with activity. Of course much of that activity centers around kids and encouraging them to keep learning and practicing their reading throughout the summer, but we have lots of things for adults, too, I promise.

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