Post by mhbruin on Mar 12, 2022 12:15:08 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 556 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
First time we have been below 50,000 cases since July 22nd.
↓ 48.0% Cases, two-week change
↓ 32.2% Deaths, two-week change
971,545 Total confirmed deaths
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California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday March 8)
There was some rain in the Nor Cal. A little more in the ten-day.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Give Us Your Criminals, Your Sociopath, Your Evil People Yearning to Kill.
Social media channels and private messaging groups are being used in Russia to recruit a new brigade of mercenaries to fight in Ukraine alongside the army, the BBC has learned.
The BBC has spoken to a serving mercenary and a former fighter with close links to one of Russia's leading mercenary organisations, who have shared details of the recruitment campaign.
The serving mercenary said many veterans of the secretive Wagner organisation were contacted on a private Telegram group a few weeks before the start of the war. They were invited to a "picnic in Ukraine", with references to tasting "Salo", a pork fat traditionally eaten in Ukraine.
The message appeals to "those with criminal records, debts, banned from mercenary groups or without an external passport" to apply. The message also included that "those from the Russian-occupied areas of Luhansk and Donetsk republics and Crimea - cordially invited".
Is It the Man Who Gives the Order, or the Man Who Carries It Out?
Tetyana Vlasenko was bleeding from 12 bullet wounds to her legs when she begged a Russian military officer nearby for help. His soldiers had opened fire on her family’s car, yet the officer was apologetic as the soldiers gave them first aid.
While she lay there seriously hurt, she recalls him saying, “I’m sorry for doing this but we have an order to shoot everything that is moving, and you cannot imagine how many cars like this we have full of Nazis who are trying to bomb us,” Tetyana, 42, told NBC News on Wednesday from her bed in Kyiv City Hospital 17.
Her husband, Roman, 50, and their daughter, Katherina, 16, were also hit in their legs.
Robbing a Casino Is a Bad Bet
An off-duty Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer accused of robbing a casino with his department-issued gun and suspected in two other robberies has been charged with federal crimes, officials announced Thursday.
Caleb Rogers, 33, has been charged with interference with commerce by robbery and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence in connection with a robbery last month, prosecutors with the Justice Department’s Las Vegas office said.
He was arrested Feb. 27 after reportedly robbing the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino at gunpoint and attempting to abscond with $78,898 just before 7 a.m., according to federal prosecutors.
“Get away from the money,” he said to two employees and climbed over a counter, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada. “I’ve got a gun. I will shoot you!”
Rogers grabbed the loot, and after an alarm was triggered, made for the parking garage, prosecutors said. But at least one hotel security employee tackled him.
The Buildings Are Falling! The Buildings Are Falling! And They Are Doing Nothing
In the nine months since 98 people died in the collapse of a Surfside, Florida, condominium, state lawmakers have pledged to pass measures that could help avoid a similar disaster.
On Friday, they failed.
Negotiations between the Florida Senate and House of Representatives, both controlled by Republicans, broke down, with the two sides unable to agree on a bill that would require inspections of aging condo buildings and mandate that condo boards conduct studies to determine how much they need to set aside for repairs. The talks were undone by a disagreement over how much flexibility to give condo owners in the funding of those reserves.
Everything Else He Does is a Disaster. Why Should This Be Any Different?
An Excellent Question
Deutsche Bank Make Walls Street Look Like Mother Teresea
The money laundering business was very lucrative for Deutsche Bank and it did it really all over the world. The biggest places it was doing it were with Russian customers. And Deutsche Bank has a long, proud history of being one of the few Western banks [that has], more or less without interruption, been operating in Russia for a very long time. And Russia in the early 2000s was a place where there were a lot of people getting very rich very quickly, often through suspicious means. It became very important for them to have a way to get their money out of Russia and converted from rubles into euros or dollars or pounds. ... Many Western banks were very wary of doing business with these Russians because there were a lot of suspicions. And, in fact, it was true that a lot of this money came through corruption or kleptocracy, things like that. Deutsche Bank was very happy to fill that void. It arranged for a number of workarounds for Russians where they could either move their money to a country like Latvia, for example, and then have it wired into the U.S.
Ted Pretends to Be a Trucker and Fails.
Nothing Is Too Low for the QOP
Setting a Low Barr
Former Attorney General William Barr admitted to CNN’s Jake Tapper Friday that Donald Trump is “not my idea of a president” — just four days after he said on another network that he’d vote for Trump if the GOP picked him to run.
TucKKKer and Friends Help Vlad the Invader
Russia’s baseless claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the U.S. too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some supporters of ex-President Donald Trump.
Despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders and officials at the White House and Pentagon, the online popularity of the claims suggests some Americans are willing to trust Kremlin propaganda over the U.S. media and government.
Like any effective conspiracy theory, the Russian claim relies on some truths: Ukraine does maintain a network of biological labs dedicated to research into pathogens, and those labs have received funding and research support from the U.S.
But the labs are owned and operated by Ukraine, and the work is not secret. It’s part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade. The U.S. efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.
“The labs are not secret,” said Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, in an email to the Associated Press. “They are not being used in relation to bioweapons. This is all disinformation.”
That hasn’t stopped the claim from being embraced by some on the far-right, by Fox News hosts, and by groups that push debunked claims that COVID-19 is a bioweapon created by the U.S.
After All, the QOP is the Party of Treason
How Much Crazy Can You Squeeze Into 2 Minutes?
Is This An Honor Code Violation?
West Point said Friday that cadets were “involved” in what NBC News affiliate WTVJ of Miami reported was a mass fentanyl overdose among spring breakers in Florida.
In a statement, the military academy said it was aware of the incident Thursday in Wilton Manors, north of Fort Lauderdale. The school declined further comment.
WTVJ reported that six people in their 20s overdosed while staying at a rental home.
When paramedics arrived Thursday afternoon, they found four men in cardiac arrest in the front yard, the station reported, citing Fort Lauderdale Fire Chief Steve Gollan.
Four are thought to have used cocaine laced with the powerful synthetic opioid that has a potency dozens of times stronger than morphine, Gollan said.
The other two overdosed when they tried to administer CPR and were exposed to the drug, Gollan said, according to the station.
All six were from West Point, and two remained hospitalized and in critical condition, the station reported.
There Are Fans and Then There Are Fanatics.
On Saturday, a violent brawl in the stands at a Mexican soccer game left more than two dozen people injured and led to 14 arrests.
On Sunday, an unidentified fan told an Iowa basketball player to kill himself after he missed a free throw near the end of a loss to Illinois.
On Monday, Los Angeles Lakers guard Russell Westbrook talked about not wanting to bring his kids to NBA games, because of the terrible things they'll likely hear fans say about their dad.
And on Tuesday, a fight between spectators delayed the Northeast Conference men's championship game between Bryant and Wagner.
"Athletic competition should bring out the best in us," the league's commissioner, Noreen Morris, said in a statement the next day. "Sadly, we didn’t see that last night."
--------------
Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Some People Can Even Turn Spam Into Something Tasty
A Norwegian computer expert has created a website enabling anyone to send an email about the war in Ukraine to up to 150 Russian email addresses at a time, so that Russian people have a chance to hear the truth their government is hiding.
All over Russia email inboxes are pinging.
Millions of messages are being received with the same intriguing subject Ya vam ne vrag - I am not your enemy.
The message appears in Russian with an English translation and it begins: "Dear friend, I am writing to you to express my concern for the secure future of our children on this planet. Most of the world has condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine."
The lengthy email goes on to implore Russian people to reject the war in Ukraine and seek the truth about the invasion from non-state news services.
--------------
Invasions Have Consequences
Getting the Truth In
A digital Iron Curtain may be descending on Russia, as President Vladimir Putin struggles to control the narrative about his war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has already moved to block Facebook and Twitter, and its latest step in that direction came Friday as the government announced plans to block Instagram in the country, as well.
But despite Putin's efforts to clamp down on social media and information within his borders, a growing number of Russian internet users appear determined to access outside sources and circumvent the Kremlin's restrictions.
To defeat Russia's internet censorship, many are turning to specialized circumvention technology that's been widely used in other countries with restricted online freedoms, including China and Iran. Digital rights experts say Putin may have inadvertently sparked a massive, permanent shift in digital literacy in Russia that will work against the regime for years.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russians have been flocking to virtual private networks (VPNs) and encrypted messaging apps, tools that can be used to access blocked websites such as Facebook or safely share news about the war in Ukraine without running afoul of new, draconian laws banning what Russian authorities consider to be "fake" claims about the conflict.
Good Luck Getting Him Out of Russia
Russian Soldiers are Literally Eating (Sh...) Feces.
On the operational level, the corruption in defense procurement has also likely undermined logistics, manifesting in soldiers receiving inadequate equipment and supplies on the ground. Poor logistics slows down the advancement of troops, undermines their morale and hinders military effectiveness.
Early on in the invasion, there were accounts indicating that some Russian soldiers received rations that had expired in 2015. Most companies responsible for providing food to the Russian military are connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin — the patron of PMC Wagner, the mercenary organization, and sponsor of the Internet Research Agency, which has been accused of meddling in the United States elections. Several years ago, Prigozhin’s companies were accused by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny of forming a cartel and gaming the state’s bidding system for defense orders, receiving contracts for several hundred million dollars. The quality of food and housing in the Russian military is reportedly worse than in its prisons, with unreasonably small meals and some carrying harmful Escherichia coli bacteria.
I Don't Usually Like Politico, But This Story is Very Good
--------------
There Are No Good Mosquitos, But Some Are Better Than Others
A British biotech firm this week got the green light from U.S. regulators to release over 2 million genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida and California as part of an expanded effort to combat transmission of diseases like Zika, dengue fever and canine heartworm.
The experimental public health effort, which still requires final approval from state regulators, follows the 2021 release of 144,000 genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys by British biotech firm Oxitec.
Oxitec said its genetically modified male, and thus non-biting, mosquitoes "find and mate with invasive female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, mediating a reduction of the target population as the female offspring of these encounters cannot survive," thus reducing the overall population.
In a news release announcing approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, Oxitec described its release in Florida in 2021 as a "success."
--------------
Previous Guy is a Gift the Keeps on Giving. And Taking From Us.
The State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face “serious and credible” threats from Iran.
The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated Feb. 14 and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday.
Pompeo and Hook led the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and the report says U.S. intelligence assesses that the threats to them have remained constant since they left government and could intensify. The threats have persisted even as President Joe Biden's administration has been engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran over a U.S. return to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
As a former secretary of state, Pompeo was automatically given 180 days of protection by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security after leaving office. But that protection has been repeatedly extended in 60-day increments by Secretary of State Antony Blinken due to “a serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department,” the report said.
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First time we have been below 50,000 cases since July 22nd.
↓ 48.0% Cases, two-week change
↓ 32.2% Deaths, two-week change
971,545 Total confirmed deaths
New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Mar 10 | ||
| Mar 9 | 37,146 | 1,179 |
| Mar 8 | 37,879 | 1,161 |
| Mar 7 | 40,433 | 1,208 |
| Mar 6 | 42,204 | 1,259 |
| Mar 5 | 43,665 | 1,281 |
| Mar 4 | 45,555 | 1,319 |
| Mar 3 | 49,888 | 1,413 |
| Mar 2 | 53,016 | 1,558 |
| Mar 1 | 56,253 | 1,674 |
| Feb 28 | 68,480 | 1,832 |
| Feb 27 | 62,556 | 1,686 |
| Feb 26 | 66,053 | 1,719 |
| Feb 25 | 69,203 | 1,751 |
| Feb 24 | 72,111 | 1,720 |
| Feb 23 | 75,208 | 1,674 |
| Feb 22 | 79,539 | 1,602 |
| Feb 21 | 78,306 | 1,872 |
| Feb 20 | 98,012 | 1,872 |
| Feb 19 | 100,129 | 1,890 |
| Feb 18 | 103,462 | 1,920 |
| Feb 17 | 112,653 | 1,998 |
| Feb 16 | 121,664 | 2,020 |
| Feb 15 | 134,468 | 2,100 |
| Feb 14 | 146,921 | 2,208 |
| Feb 13 | 161,197 | 2,196 |
| Feb 12 | 168,881 | 2,197 |
| Feb 11 | 175,395 | 2,241 |
| Feb 10 | 190,401 | 2,305 |
| Feb 9 | 215,418 | 2,313 |
| Feb 8 | 230,602 | 2,303 |
| Feb 7 | 247,319 | 2,404 |
| Feb 6 | 291,471 | 2,294 |
| Feb 5 | 298,890 | 2,331 |
| Feb 4 | 313,117 | 2,404 |
| Feb 16, 2021 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 76.6% | 65.2% | 44.2% |
| % of Population 5+ | 81.4% | 69.3% | |
| % of Population 12+ | 86.3% | 73.6% | 45.8% |
| % of Population 18+ | 88.1% | 75.2% | 47.6% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 88.9% | 66.7% |
California Precipitation (Updated Tuesday March 8)
There was some rain in the Nor Cal. A little more in the ten-day.
| Percent of Average for this Date | Last Week | 2 Weeks ago | 3 Weeks ago | 9 Weeks ago | |
| Northern Sierra Precipitation | 84% (61% of full season average) | 87% (60%) | 93% (60%) | 99% (59%) | 170% |
| San Joaquin Precipitation | 74% (53%) | 76% (51%) | 80% (51%) | 86% (51%) | 170% |
| Tulare Basin Precipitation | 71% (51%) | 70% (48%) | 75% (47%) | 79% (46%) | 151% |
| Snow Water Content - North | 55% (52%) | 59% (53%) | 61% (52%) | 68% (53%) | 134% |
| Snow Water Content - Central | 59% (64%) | 58% (66%) | 71% (59%) | 75% (57%) | 148% |
| Snow Water Content - South | 60% (66%) | 54% (63%) | 67% (54%) | 74% (54%) | 158% |
--------------
Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees
Give Us Your Criminals, Your Sociopath, Your Evil People Yearning to Kill.
Social media channels and private messaging groups are being used in Russia to recruit a new brigade of mercenaries to fight in Ukraine alongside the army, the BBC has learned.
The BBC has spoken to a serving mercenary and a former fighter with close links to one of Russia's leading mercenary organisations, who have shared details of the recruitment campaign.
The serving mercenary said many veterans of the secretive Wagner organisation were contacted on a private Telegram group a few weeks before the start of the war. They were invited to a "picnic in Ukraine", with references to tasting "Salo", a pork fat traditionally eaten in Ukraine.
The message appeals to "those with criminal records, debts, banned from mercenary groups or without an external passport" to apply. The message also included that "those from the Russian-occupied areas of Luhansk and Donetsk republics and Crimea - cordially invited".
Is It the Man Who Gives the Order, or the Man Who Carries It Out?
Tetyana Vlasenko was bleeding from 12 bullet wounds to her legs when she begged a Russian military officer nearby for help. His soldiers had opened fire on her family’s car, yet the officer was apologetic as the soldiers gave them first aid.
While she lay there seriously hurt, she recalls him saying, “I’m sorry for doing this but we have an order to shoot everything that is moving, and you cannot imagine how many cars like this we have full of Nazis who are trying to bomb us,” Tetyana, 42, told NBC News on Wednesday from her bed in Kyiv City Hospital 17.
Her husband, Roman, 50, and their daughter, Katherina, 16, were also hit in their legs.
Robbing a Casino Is a Bad Bet
An off-duty Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer accused of robbing a casino with his department-issued gun and suspected in two other robberies has been charged with federal crimes, officials announced Thursday.
Caleb Rogers, 33, has been charged with interference with commerce by robbery and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence in connection with a robbery last month, prosecutors with the Justice Department’s Las Vegas office said.
He was arrested Feb. 27 after reportedly robbing the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino at gunpoint and attempting to abscond with $78,898 just before 7 a.m., according to federal prosecutors.
“Get away from the money,” he said to two employees and climbed over a counter, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Nevada. “I’ve got a gun. I will shoot you!”
Rogers grabbed the loot, and after an alarm was triggered, made for the parking garage, prosecutors said. But at least one hotel security employee tackled him.
The Buildings Are Falling! The Buildings Are Falling! And They Are Doing Nothing
In the nine months since 98 people died in the collapse of a Surfside, Florida, condominium, state lawmakers have pledged to pass measures that could help avoid a similar disaster.
On Friday, they failed.
Negotiations between the Florida Senate and House of Representatives, both controlled by Republicans, broke down, with the two sides unable to agree on a bill that would require inspections of aging condo buildings and mandate that condo boards conduct studies to determine how much they need to set aside for repairs. The talks were undone by a disagreement over how much flexibility to give condo owners in the funding of those reserves.
Everything Else He Does is a Disaster. Why Should This Be Any Different?
An Excellent Question
Deutsche Bank Make Walls Street Look Like Mother Teresea
The money laundering business was very lucrative for Deutsche Bank and it did it really all over the world. The biggest places it was doing it were with Russian customers. And Deutsche Bank has a long, proud history of being one of the few Western banks [that has], more or less without interruption, been operating in Russia for a very long time. And Russia in the early 2000s was a place where there were a lot of people getting very rich very quickly, often through suspicious means. It became very important for them to have a way to get their money out of Russia and converted from rubles into euros or dollars or pounds. ... Many Western banks were very wary of doing business with these Russians because there were a lot of suspicions. And, in fact, it was true that a lot of this money came through corruption or kleptocracy, things like that. Deutsche Bank was very happy to fill that void. It arranged for a number of workarounds for Russians where they could either move their money to a country like Latvia, for example, and then have it wired into the U.S.
Ted Pretends to Be a Trucker and Fails.
Nothing Is Too Low for the QOP
Setting a Low Barr
Former Attorney General William Barr admitted to CNN’s Jake Tapper Friday that Donald Trump is “not my idea of a president” — just four days after he said on another network that he’d vote for Trump if the GOP picked him to run.
TucKKKer and Friends Help Vlad the Invader
Russia’s baseless claims about secret American biological warfare labs in Ukraine are taking root in the U.S. too, uniting COVID-19 conspiracy theorists, QAnon adherents and some supporters of ex-President Donald Trump.
Despite rebuttals from independent scientists, Ukrainian leaders and officials at the White House and Pentagon, the online popularity of the claims suggests some Americans are willing to trust Kremlin propaganda over the U.S. media and government.
Like any effective conspiracy theory, the Russian claim relies on some truths: Ukraine does maintain a network of biological labs dedicated to research into pathogens, and those labs have received funding and research support from the U.S.
But the labs are owned and operated by Ukraine, and the work is not secret. It’s part of an initiative called the Biological Threat Reduction Program that aims to reduce the likelihood of deadly outbreaks, whether natural or manmade. The U.S. efforts date back to work in the 1990s to dismantle the former Soviet Union’s program for weapons of mass destruction.
“The labs are not secret,” said Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, in an email to the Associated Press. “They are not being used in relation to bioweapons. This is all disinformation.”
That hasn’t stopped the claim from being embraced by some on the far-right, by Fox News hosts, and by groups that push debunked claims that COVID-19 is a bioweapon created by the U.S.
After All, the QOP is the Party of Treason
How Much Crazy Can You Squeeze Into 2 Minutes?
Is This An Honor Code Violation?
West Point said Friday that cadets were “involved” in what NBC News affiliate WTVJ of Miami reported was a mass fentanyl overdose among spring breakers in Florida.
In a statement, the military academy said it was aware of the incident Thursday in Wilton Manors, north of Fort Lauderdale. The school declined further comment.
WTVJ reported that six people in their 20s overdosed while staying at a rental home.
When paramedics arrived Thursday afternoon, they found four men in cardiac arrest in the front yard, the station reported, citing Fort Lauderdale Fire Chief Steve Gollan.
Four are thought to have used cocaine laced with the powerful synthetic opioid that has a potency dozens of times stronger than morphine, Gollan said.
The other two overdosed when they tried to administer CPR and were exposed to the drug, Gollan said, according to the station.
All six were from West Point, and two remained hospitalized and in critical condition, the station reported.
There Are Fans and Then There Are Fanatics.
On Saturday, a violent brawl in the stands at a Mexican soccer game left more than two dozen people injured and led to 14 arrests.
On Sunday, an unidentified fan told an Iowa basketball player to kill himself after he missed a free throw near the end of a loss to Illinois.
On Monday, Los Angeles Lakers guard Russell Westbrook talked about not wanting to bring his kids to NBA games, because of the terrible things they'll likely hear fans say about their dad.
And on Tuesday, a fight between spectators delayed the Northeast Conference men's championship game between Bryant and Wagner.
"Athletic competition should bring out the best in us," the league's commissioner, Noreen Morris, said in a statement the next day. "Sadly, we didn’t see that last night."
--------------
Today's Best Person in the World Nominees
Some People Can Even Turn Spam Into Something Tasty
A Norwegian computer expert has created a website enabling anyone to send an email about the war in Ukraine to up to 150 Russian email addresses at a time, so that Russian people have a chance to hear the truth their government is hiding.
All over Russia email inboxes are pinging.
Millions of messages are being received with the same intriguing subject Ya vam ne vrag - I am not your enemy.
The message appears in Russian with an English translation and it begins: "Dear friend, I am writing to you to express my concern for the secure future of our children on this planet. Most of the world has condemned Putin's invasion of Ukraine."
The lengthy email goes on to implore Russian people to reject the war in Ukraine and seek the truth about the invasion from non-state news services.
--------------
Invasions Have Consequences
Getting the Truth In
A digital Iron Curtain may be descending on Russia, as President Vladimir Putin struggles to control the narrative about his war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has already moved to block Facebook and Twitter, and its latest step in that direction came Friday as the government announced plans to block Instagram in the country, as well.
But despite Putin's efforts to clamp down on social media and information within his borders, a growing number of Russian internet users appear determined to access outside sources and circumvent the Kremlin's restrictions.
To defeat Russia's internet censorship, many are turning to specialized circumvention technology that's been widely used in other countries with restricted online freedoms, including China and Iran. Digital rights experts say Putin may have inadvertently sparked a massive, permanent shift in digital literacy in Russia that will work against the regime for years.
Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russians have been flocking to virtual private networks (VPNs) and encrypted messaging apps, tools that can be used to access blocked websites such as Facebook or safely share news about the war in Ukraine without running afoul of new, draconian laws banning what Russian authorities consider to be "fake" claims about the conflict.
Good Luck Getting Him Out of Russia
Russian Soldiers are Literally Eating
On the operational level, the corruption in defense procurement has also likely undermined logistics, manifesting in soldiers receiving inadequate equipment and supplies on the ground. Poor logistics slows down the advancement of troops, undermines their morale and hinders military effectiveness.
Early on in the invasion, there were accounts indicating that some Russian soldiers received rations that had expired in 2015. Most companies responsible for providing food to the Russian military are connected to Yevgeny Prigozhin — the patron of PMC Wagner, the mercenary organization, and sponsor of the Internet Research Agency, which has been accused of meddling in the United States elections. Several years ago, Prigozhin’s companies were accused by Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny of forming a cartel and gaming the state’s bidding system for defense orders, receiving contracts for several hundred million dollars. The quality of food and housing in the Russian military is reportedly worse than in its prisons, with unreasonably small meals and some carrying harmful Escherichia coli bacteria.
I Don't Usually Like Politico, But This Story is Very Good
--------------
There Are No Good Mosquitos, But Some Are Better Than Others
A British biotech firm this week got the green light from U.S. regulators to release over 2 million genetically modified mosquitoes in Florida and California as part of an expanded effort to combat transmission of diseases like Zika, dengue fever and canine heartworm.
The experimental public health effort, which still requires final approval from state regulators, follows the 2021 release of 144,000 genetically modified mosquitoes in the Florida Keys by British biotech firm Oxitec.
Oxitec said its genetically modified male, and thus non-biting, mosquitoes "find and mate with invasive female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, mediating a reduction of the target population as the female offspring of these encounters cannot survive," thus reducing the overall population.
In a news release announcing approval from the Environmental Protection Agency, Oxitec described its release in Florida in 2021 as a "success."
--------------
Previous Guy is a Gift the Keeps on Giving. And Taking From Us.
The State Department says it’s paying more than $2 million per month to provide 24-hour security to former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a former top aide, both of whom face “serious and credible” threats from Iran.
The department told Congress in a report that the cost of protecting Pompeo and former Iran envoy Brian Hook between August 2021 and February 2022 amounted to $13.1 million. The report, dated Feb. 14 and marked “sensitive but unclassified,” was obtained by The Associated Press on Saturday.
Pompeo and Hook led the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and the report says U.S. intelligence assesses that the threats to them have remained constant since they left government and could intensify. The threats have persisted even as President Joe Biden's administration has been engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran over a U.S. return to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal.
As a former secretary of state, Pompeo was automatically given 180 days of protection by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security after leaving office. But that protection has been repeatedly extended in 60-day increments by Secretary of State Antony Blinken due to “a serious and credible threat from a foreign power or agent of a foreign power arising from duties performed by former Secretary Pompeo while employed by the department,” the report said.
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