Stateside with Gavin Wood in West Hollywood LOCAL BOY CONQUERS THE WORLD

■ Hi everyone, remotely from my suite at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites in West Hollywood comes this week’s news.

Bob Prfitchard hits home

■ Bob Pritchard is known as ‘Mr Marketer’, and is an internationally renowned businessman, marketer, speaker and radio host.

His clients include many of the world's leading companies including the Coca-Cola Company, Citibank, Anheuser-Busch, Mercedes-Benz, and Frito-Lay.

Bob has more than 30 years of experience as a business, marketing trouble shooter and consultant.

This Los Angeles based businessman is about to get married for the seventh time and he is planning a rock and roll wedding underneath the legendary Hollywood sign in October.

Bob was guest speaker at the entertainment industry’s Marquee Club at the Emerald Hotel in South Melbourne.

Bob Pritchard grew up around South Melbourne and sang on Kommotion and Uptight, television shows back in the sixties, and he also sang at teenage dances back then.

Not one to stand still, he moved to America to find his way into international business speaking. Bob is one of the best.

Whole Foods shuts down

■ The popular grocery store chain shuttered its San Francisco flagship location a little more than a year after it opened, citing worker safety concerns.

“We are closing our Trinity location only for the time being,” a Whole Foods spokesperson told the local outlet in a statement.

“If we feel we can ensure the safety of our team members in the store, we will evaluate a reopening of our Trinity location.”

The company said rampant drug use and growing crime led to its decision, a city hall source said. The Whole Foods store had already reduced its hours after experiencing “high theft” and hostile patrons, a store manager said.

Dahl books ‘updated’

■ The publisher of Roald Dahl, the famed children’s author who wrote ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’,’Matilda’, ‘James and the Giant Peach’, and ‘The BFG’, among other works, has collaborated with the Roald Dahl Story Co., which manages the works’ copyrights and trademarks, to make hundreds of alterations in order not to offend anyone with Dahl’s original works. The Roald Dahl Story Co. admitted they had worked with Inclusive Minds, which monitors children’s literature for inclusion, diversity, and accessibility.

Asian population problem

■ Asia faces a problem: Its population is aging faster than any other continent’s. A growing percentage of people in Japan, South Korea and China are over 65, and those countries’ economies are suffering because of a lack of available workers. Governments are struggling to find the money to support retirees.

Biden drops George

■ Every president since Nixon had hung a portrait of George Washington above the fireplace in the Oval Office, but not Biden. That spot has instead gone to Franklin D. Roosevelt. When Biden looks up from his desk, he sees the portrait. He tells people that F.D.R. is the president who never forgot about the working class.

Suspect Drinking Water

■ Nearly half of the tap water in the United States is estimated to have at least one type of polyfluoroalkyl substance, or PFAS, a new national study from the US Geological Survey released recently shows. The group of chemicals, commonly used in consumer products like non-stick cookware and linings of fast food boxes, have been linked to human illnesses like cancer, low birth weight, and thyroid disease. The agency claims it’s the first comprehensive study of its kind on unregulated private wells giving average consumers information about the risks of PFAS when they grab a glass of water from their kitchen sink, said Kelly Smalling, the study’s lead author and research hydrologist.

Out and About Decade-Old Drugs

■ For a decade now, the world has had highly effective medications for hepatitis C infections. In the United States, they’ve mostly been sitting on the shelf, according to a new study.

These drugs are called direct-acting antivirals because they block proteins the virus needs to copy itself. Sold as pills, these drugs are easy to take with almost no side effects and they cure an astonishing 95 per cent of the patients who take them. American patients pay more than twice as much for prescription drugs as patients in 32 other wealthy countries they are often unable to afford them. Using testing data from Quest Diagnostics, a large commercial laboratory, researchers were able to track the fates of 1 million Americans diagnosed with hepatitis C infections in the decade since the most effective drugs were introduced. Overall, just one in tree were cured over that time period. “Today nearly 15,000 Americans die annually from hepatitis C,” said Dr Jonathan Mermin, director of the National Centre for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention at the CDC. “These deaths could have been prevented. Thousands of people are dying every year in our country and many more are suffering from an infection that has been curable for over 10 years.”

Masks NOT healthy

■ A new study out of Germany details the elevated CO2 levels in the air a masked person breathes, levels that are actually harmful if you’re pregnant. Citing CO2 safety standards set by the Navy, the scientists find that while masked, someone is breathing extremely toxic levels of CO2. And in fact, the authors postulate: this might be why some maskmandate countries saw an increase in stillbirths and a drop-in childhood test scores during the pandemic, while COVIDchillaxed Sweden did not.

San Francisco is safe

■ Since becoming one of city’s highest-profile employers, the Twitter owner has had a lot to say about the state of things in the City by the Bay, raising questions about whether the social media company’s headquarters would remain there. The billionaire has described it as “post-apocalyptic,” claimed many Twitter employees “feel unsafe” coming to work in the city’s downtown and suggested “you could literally film a Walking Dead episode in downtown SF.” City leaders say critics are unfairly portraying San Francisco as unsafe, citing statistics that show a violent crime rate lower than many large cities.

Infections on the rise

■ The risk of getting sick from E. coli, salmonella, listeria and other foodborne germs rose to pre-pandemic levels in 2022, says the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. “Progress in reducing (intestinal) infection incidence was not observed during 2022, as influences of the COVID-19 pandemic subsided,” the CDC said in its weekly Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. “Collaboration among food growers, processors, retail stores, restaurants, and regulators is needed to reduce pathogen contamination during poultry slaughter and to prevent contamination of leafy greens.” Each year, approximately 9 million Americans are sickened by pathogens in food, according to the CDC’s Foodborne Diseases Active Surveillance Network. Also known as Food Net, it monitors diagnosed infections caused by eight common foodborne pathogens at 10 sites in the United States. Among the millions of illnesses, about 56,000 people are admitted to hospitals and 1,350 die every year.

Thoroughly washing and drying your hands is the most important factor in preventing the spread of gastrointestinal infections, experts say. Other key tips include not leaving your food out at room temperature for hours at a time, washing your hands when handling raw meat, avoiding contamination of surfaces with raw meat and thoroughly washing your leafy greens and other fruit and vegetables.

■ If you are considering coming over to California for a holiday, then I have got a special deal for you. We would love to see you at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Suites, 8585 Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood. I have secured a terrific holiday deal for readers of the Melbourne Observer and The Local Paper. Please mention ‘Melbourne Observer’ when you book to receive the ‘Special Rate of the Day’ for your advance bookings. Please contact: Jennifer at info@ramadaweho.com Happy Holidays, Gavin Wood.

Military recruiting down

■ Most new recruits are children of military families, but that pipeline is now under threat with bad news for the Pentagon, given already acute recruitment problems, and for US military readiness. Since 9/11 gave recruiting a patriotic boost, the military has endured 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no decisive victories, scandals over shoddy military housing and healthcare, poor pay for lower ranks and rising rates of post-traumatic stress and suicide. And in a tight labour market, young people have plenty of options.

Transgender suicide

■ A new Danish landmark study finds that suicide rates and psychiatric conditions are much higher among trans-identifying people. Trans-identifying people in Denmark had a suicide death rate 3.5 times higher and a suicide attempt rate 7.7 times higher than people who did not identify as transgender, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

There were 92 suicide attempts and 12 suicide deaths among the study’s 3759 trans-identifying people between 1980 and 2021.

The study analysed the medical and legal gender change records of nearly seven million people in Denmark, including almost 3800 transgender people, over the last four decades. Trans-identifying people also tended to die younger overall, whether, by suicide or something else, the study found.

Lovatts Crossword No 5

Across Across Down Down

149. Dinners or lunches

150. Crocodile Dundee star, Paul ...

152. Brahma follower

154. Sends (money)

157. East Timor's capital

158. Foot arches

162. Part of eye

163. Exotic flower 166. Loop 167. Missile-launch pit

169. Nevada divorce city 171. Taj Mahal site

172. Fleet 173. Takes a break

175. Indigenous New Zealander

176. Acute remorse

179. Burnt brightly

180. Mountain chain

182. Relaxation art, ... chi (1'2)

183. Food additive (1,1,1)

184. Regal

186. Oval

189. Communications industry

190. Not anybody (2-3)

191. Of sound system

192. Freshness

196. Sacred ritual

197. Pig in a ...

198. Dummy pill

199. Paralysed

201. Tennis ace, Gabriela ...

202. Men's neck scarves

203. Capital of South Korea

204. Shameful secret, ... in the cupboard

205. Away from home, far ...

208. Movie theatre 210. News footage 211. Petticoat 212. Understand 213. Personal identity 215. Indigestion 219. Striped equine

221. Hospital worker

223. Supervisors

227. Prefabricated (concrete)

228. Unlock 230. Depart

231. Lace frill

232. Percussion instruments

233. Earth's environment, Mother ... 234. Temporary relief 238. Gaps

239. Design-tracing device

240. Rots

243. Group loyalty, ... de corps

246. Car repair set (4,3)

247. Desist

250. Swindle

251. NZ PM, ... Clark

253. Resupplies with weapons

256. Duplicate

257. Hoisting anchor cry (5-2)

258. Cruelty

262. West African country

263. Glue

266. Madam (2'2)

268. Writer, James ...

269. Nervous disorder

270. Aggravate 271. Many

272. Rascal

273. Surplus 274. LA suburb, ... Air 275. Spouse's boys

276. Holstered pistols (4,4)

277. Alberta's capital

278. Tooth doctors

1. Nightclub

2. Belonging to whom?

3. Golfing strokes

4. Unattractive

5. Scrape together (4,2)

7. Tidiest

8. Between

9. Investigate

10. Venison animal

11. Open-air pool

12. January 1st, New ... (4'1,3)

13. Strong painkiller

14. Accustoming

15. Hooded snakes

16. Infuriate

132. Propeller sound

133. Mode of expression

134. Octagon number

137. Sits idly

138. Uttered

141. Raise objections

142. Unwilling

143. Gave medicine to

151. Academy Awards

153. Achievable

155. Register

156. From Baghdad

159. Appointees

160. Employed (4,2)

161. Ancient

164. Length of metal links

165. Notions

168. Formerly Constantinople

170. City devastated by A-bomb

173. Curative

174. Hit with glancing blow

177. Faintness

178. Equatorial

181. Spray cans

185. Humorous account

186. Unveiled

187. Layabouts

188. Go in front

193. Stoat-like animals

194. Issue (from)

195. Procedures

200. Skilled arguers

201. Japanese meat dish

206. Died away, ... out

207. Curtains, cloth, etc

208. Middles

209. Most submissive

211. Tastes

214. Debarred

216. Longest Asian river

217. Simpler

218. Outdoor meals

220. French peak, Mont ...

222. Happen repeatedly

224. Motives

225. Allowed

226. Travelling stagehands

229. ... & hearty

232. Distribute, ... out

235. Tendency to fantasise

236. Iron

237. Tied

241. Explain in detail

242. Grand Canyon state

244. Tenor, ... Domingo

245. Imprecise

248. Panics

249. Ireland (poetic)

251. Residence

252. Lent to

253. Frisks

254. Paris landmark, ... Triomphe (3,2)

255. Fulfils (demand)

259. Delegate

260. Religious statues

261. Veils

262. Hitler's ... Kampf

264. Serpents

265. Grow weary

267. Donkey/horse cross

Crossroads

By Rob Foenander info@countrycrossroads com.au

Bette’s story

■ Melbourne singer songwriter Bette Ford is on a mission to make a difference.

Her mother Trish Simpson, who is also a singer and popular entertainer, had a double mastectomy in 2020 and is now back singing up a storm thanks to her medical team who acted quickly and decisively during Victoria’s lockdown in 2020.

Described as a melodramatic Melburnian with a uke and some stories to tell, Bette’s passion to raise awareness and money is unstoppable.

Proceeds from the sale of her music and shows are donated to the Breast Cancer Foundation. Her song Come Home Soon was written about her mum’s experience and reached number 1 on the charts.

More info on Bette https:// www.instagram.com/bette_foord_music/

Ron and Mario

■ TV and stage star Ron Lees will present the Mario Lanza Show along with special guests Peter Sullivan, Andrea Lees and Sandra Lees

Hosted by Issi Dye, the show commences 2pm on Sunday, August 6, at the Dorset Gardens Hotel. Tickets $25 and booking can be made on 9725 6211.

- Rob Foenander