And another day of marching on, delays, communications, vaccine privileges, Myanmar crackdown, ‘loyal opposition,’ financial compensation, a lack of punishment, taboos on sexual health, and racist standards comes to a close:
“Apparently the biggest threat we face as a nation is using extinct species of humans as a metaphor.” -- Dan Rather
Deaths
US: 533,636 (+1984)
World: 2,581,649 (+9893)
Cases
US: 29,526,086 (+69,709)
World: 116,216,580 (+451,175)
The Insurrection Was Put Down. The GOP Plan for Minority Rule Marches On. How Republicans are breaking democracy. This isn’t about which party wins elections, but whether democracy itself survives. Some anti-democratic measures were deliberately built into a system that was designed to benefit rich white men: The Senate was created to boost small conservative states and serve as a check on the more democratic House of Representatives, while the Electoral College prevented the direct election of the president and enhanced the power of slave states through the three-fifths clause. But these features have metastasized to a degree the Founding Fathers could have never anticipated, and in ways that threaten the very notion of representative government.
GOP Sen. Johnson delays Covid relief bill by forcing all 628 pages to be read out loud.
Federal investigators are examining communications between US lawmakers and Capitol rioters.
Wealthy Florida Keys enclave received vaccines in January before much of the state. As Florida’s eldest residents struggled to sign up to receive their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, nearly all those ages 65 years and older in a wealthy gated enclave in the Florida Keys had been vaccinated by mid-January.
California to give 40% of vaccine to Latino, high-risk areas. California will begin sending 40% of all vaccine doses to the most vulnerable neighborhoods in the state to try to inoculate people most at risk from the coronavirus and get the state’s economy open more quickly.
Great apes at San Diego Zoo become first non-humans to receive COVID-19 vaccine.
'Everything will be OK': slain Myanmar teen's T-shirt slogan spurs defiance. But she had known it might not be OK - leaving details of her blood group, a contact number and a request to donate her body in the event of her death. Angel, also known as Kyal Sin, was killed by a shot to the head on the streets of Mandalay as she fought for a tentative democracy in which she had proudly voted for the first time last year, an election overturned by the Feb. 1 coup.
Myanmar crackdown on protests, widely filmed, sparks outrage. Footage of a brutal crackdown on protests against a coup in Myanmar unleashed outrage and calls for a stronger international response Thursday, a day after 38 people were killed. Videos showed security forces shooting a person at point-blank range and chasing down and savagely beating demonstrators.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett's first majority written opinion limits reach of FOIA. Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned her first Supreme Court majority opinion on Thursday, writing a 7-2 decision that will shield federal agencies from having to disclose certain materials under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act.
Fox News will be 'loyal opposition' against Biden, Fox CEO says.Murdoch's remark is an on-the-record acknowledgement of something that has long been obvious to fans and critics but never stated so publicly by the executive leadership itself — that Fox News is firmly aligned with Republicans and the right and intends to use its platform to fight against Democrats. -- So he admits that Fox News is not actually interested in reporting the news, just to be the ‘loyal opposition’ against Biden. But many (most, if not all?) Fox News viewers believe they are getting the actual news. This doesn’t bode well for our future. Stop watching Fox News.
A judge is ordering the state of Mississippi to pay $500,000 to a Black man who was wrongfully imprisoned more than 22 years and was tried six times in a quadruple murder case.
Oregon lawmakers pushing to compensate people wrongfully convicted, imprisoned. The bill gives people who are wrongfully convicted and imprisoned $65,000 for every year they were behind bars and up to $25,000 for every additional year served on parole or supervision. The bill also calls for records to be expunged.
Biden response to Khashoggi investigation 'shocking,' U.N. official says. The United Nations official who investigated the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi sharply criticized President Biden’s response to the killing, saying his administration’s failure to sanction Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent a “dangerous” message to world leaders that they could kill dissidents and journalists with impunity...“I thought Joe Biden had made a commitment during his campaign regarding truth telling and accountability, so I was expecting certainly more. I also felt this kind of message is actually dangerous. It gave the impression to would-be killers of journalists that as long as they have a friendly relationship with the United States they can proceed with killing dissidents. Yes, maybe they will be named [and] a little bit shamed. But nothing else. That to me is an extraordinary source of disappointment and frustration.”
US decision not to punish crown prince puts us in grave danger, Saudi exiles say. Exiled dissidents who have been warned about threats against them by Saudi Arabia said they have been put in greater danger by the Biden administration’s decision to forgo direct sanctions on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – even as US intelligence agencies acknowledged that he was complicit in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Idaho lawmaker draws ire after saying moms should stay home. A decision by Idaho lawmakers to reject a $6 million federal grant to improve early childhood education — and comments from one lawmaker who said mothers belong at home — raised the ire of women across the state.
A Malaysian artist born without a uterus is taking on cultural barriers and taboos on sexual health. When she was 17, Malaysian writer and performer Wani Ardy consulted doctor after doctor when she failed to begin menstruating. They all told her the same thing: she did not have a uterus...It wasn’t until her 20s that Wani finally learned that her rare condition had a name - Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH) - when internal sex organs such as the womb or the vagina are either absent or underdeveloped at birth.
Shamed for body hair growing up, Desi women now challenging racist standards. When white models and influencers decided thick eyebrows were in, South Asian women struggled to recover the natural features they had been shamed into thinning. Now, they’re undoing the internalized shame they've felt about their body hair for years. "You know, it's one of those things you're never conscious of until a white person points it out."
Powerful quake hits off New Zealand, prompting evacuations. One of the biggest earthquakes to hit the South Pacific in modern history forced thousands of people in New Zealand to evacuate and triggered tsunami warnings across the world Friday, but it did not appear to cause injuries or major damage because it struck in remote ocean. The magnitude 8.1 quake was the largest in a series of tremors that hit the region over several hours, including two earlier quakes that registered magnitude 7.4 and magnitude 7.3.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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