Fri - Well, It's One, Two, Three, What Are We Fighting For?

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Norwegian Ships Have Bar Codes, So You Can Scan Da Navy In.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

This Dispatcher Is Lucky There Are Lots of Jobs Around. 

The 911 dispatcher accused of hanging up on an employee calling for help during the supermarket shooting that killed 10 Black people in Buffalo, New York, last month has been fired, officials said.

The assistant office manager at Tops Friendly Market called 911 when a white gunman, 18, stormed the store on May 14 and opened fire.

She told The Buffalo News that she was whispering during the call because she feared the shooter would hear her.

The dispatcher allegedly shouted at her, asked why she was whispering and hung up.


This Should Be An Easy Question


So Should This.  



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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

New York Is Doing Something - Exhibit 1

New York's legislature voted Thursday to ban anyone under age 21 from buying or possessing a semi-automatic rifle, a major change to state firearm laws pushed through less than three weeks after an 18-year-old used one of the guns to kill 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo.

The bill raising the age limit is the most significant part of a package of gun control measures announced earlier this week by Democratic legislative leaders and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Other new legislation will restrict civilian purchases of bullet-resistant armor, which was worn by the killer in Buffalo, and require new guns to be equipped with microstamping technology that can help law enforcement investigators trace bullets to particular firearms.

New York Is Doing Something - Exhibit 2

Following an early morning vote in Albany on Friday, lawmakers in New York passed a bill to ban certain bitcoin mining operations that run on carbon-based power sources. The measure now heads to the desk of Governor Kathy Hochul, who could sign it into law or veto it.

If Hochul signs the bill, it would make New York the first state in the country to ban blockchain technology infrastructure, according to Perianne Boring, founder and president of the Chamber of Digital Commerce. Industry insiders also tell CNBC it could have a domino effect across the U.S., which is currently at the forefront of the global bitcoin mining industry, accounting for 38 percent of the world’s miners.

Can You Imagine Previous Guy Doing This?  He Might Tell People to Add Bleach to Their Formula.



It Has Been a Long Time


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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 100

Fighting

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russian forces have occupied about 20 percent of his nation’s territory.

The situation in the key city of Severodonetsk, in Luhansk province in eastern Ukraine, is “the hardest right now”, as well as in cities and communities nearby, such as Lysychansk and Bakhmut, Zelenskyy said.

Ukrainian forces have had some success fighting Russian forces in the city of Severodonetsk but the overall military situation in the Donbas region has not changed, Zelenskyy said.

Zelenskyy urged the country’s Western allies to provide more weapons to help Ukraine reach an “inflection point” and prevail in the war.

In the 100 days of Russia’s invasion, more than 400km (249 miles) of roads have been damaged, and almost 70 schools, 50 kindergartens, 33 hospitals and 237 rural outpatient clinics destroyed in the Luhansk region, the governor said.

The United Nations confirmed 9,151 civilian casualties in Ukraine since the start of the invasion on February 24, including 4,169 people killed and 4,982 injured.

An artillery shell killed a woman in the town of Lysychansk on Thursday, the Luhansk governor said.

Some 60 percent of the infrastructure and residential buildings in Lysychansk has been destroyed by attacks, a local official said.

Ukraine’s prosecutor general’s office has begun an investigation into 10 Russian military personnel who allegedly looted the property of civilians in the town of Bucha, in the Kyiv region.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet launched a week-long series of exercises with more than 40 ships and up to 20 aircraft taking part, Russian news agencies quoted the defence ministry as saying.

The Kharkiv regional prosecutor’s office charged a 47-year-old man for allegedly producing and distributing materials that justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Interfax reported.

Diplomacy

US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Washington, and discussed the implications of Russia’s war on Ukraine for transatlantic security.

The US announced new sanctions against Russian officials, oligarchs and businessmen linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The US added 71 new Russian and Belarusian entities to its trade blacklist, including aircraft plants and shipbuilding and research institutes.

The European Union gave its final approval to new sanctions on Russian oil and top bank Sberbank, after much wrangling with Hungary.

Russia said it did not rule out a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy.

Approximately 50 embassies have resumed work in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said.

The State Department spokesman, Ned Price, defended the United States’ position that it has supplied Ukraine with advanced weapons after receiving assurances that the country would not strike Russian territory.

Economy

Putin will host the head of the African Union for talks focused on grain supplies and political cooperation.

UN aid chief Martin Griffiths is in Moscow to discuss allowing exports of grain and other food from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, a UN spokesperson said.

Ukraine is working with international partners to create a UN-backed mission to restore Black Sea shipping routes, its foreign ministry said.

Russia described the EU’s decision to largely phase out imports of Russian oil as “self-destructive”.

Ukraine hoisted its main interest rate to 25 percent from 10 percent to tackle double-digit inflation and protect the Ukrainian hryvnia as some business activity returns.

Well, It's One, Two, Three, What Are We Fighting For?  Gimme An "F".  Gimme a "U".  Gimme a "C".

Some Russian troops are refusing to return to fight in Ukraine because of their experiences on the front line at the start of the invasion, according to Russian human rights lawyers and activists. The BBC has been speaking to one such soldier.

"I don't want to go [back to Ukraine] to kill and be killed," says Sergey - not his real name - who spent five weeks fighting in Ukraine earlier this year.

He is now home in Russia, having taken legal advice to avoid being sent back to the front line. Sergey is just one of hundreds of Russian soldiers understood to have been seeking such advice.

Sergey says he is traumatised by his experience in Ukraine.

"I had thought that we were the Russian army, the most super-duper in the world," says the young man bitterly. Instead they were expected to operate without even basic equipment, such as night vision devices, he says.

"We were like blind kittens. I'm shocked by our army. It wouldn't cost much to equip us. Why wasn't it done?"

Sergey joined the army as a conscript - most Russian men between the ages of 18-27 must complete one year of compulsory military service. But, after a few months, he made the decision to sign a two-year professional contract which would also give him a salary.

In January, Sergey was sent near the border with Ukraine for what he was told would be military drills. A month later - 24 February, the day Russia launched its invasion - he was told to cross the border. Almost immediately his unit found itself under attack.

As they stopped for the evening in an abandoned farm, their commander said: "Well, as you will have worked out by now, this is not a joke."

Sergey says he was completely shocked.

"My first thoughts were 'Is this really happening to me?'"

They were continually shelled, he says, both when moving and when parked overnight. In his unit of 50 people, 10 were killed and 10 others wounded. Almost all his comrades were under the age of 25.



Severodonetsk

After feigning a fighting retreat of Severodonetsk—a city way out on a salient, isolated and exposed to assault from multiple sides—Ukraine’s defenders unexpectedly stiffened up, halted the Russian advance, and perhaps even retook some ground. Some claim Ukraine laid a trap modeled after the famous Russian defeat in Grozny during the first Chechen war, where rebels famously lured Russian troops into the city center before trapping and massacring a whole lot of them.

Many have spent the last week commenting about the folly of defending Severodonetsk when Ukraine can fall back behind the river and hold a much more defensible (and higher elevation) line at Lysychansk. (Here’s just one of those stories.) But for whatever reason, despite horrific losses in the Donbas front (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says 80-100 Ukrainian dead every day, and another 500 injured), Ukraine has decided this city utterly lacking in strategic value is worth the blood.




Kharkiv


While the map has changed slowly, there has been fierce fighting in the region as Russia attempts to push Ukraine back from the border. The invaders want Kharkiv back in artillery range, and their own Belgorod out of Ukrainian range. And Russia is spooked enough about those small but steady gains that it has begun digging defensive lines at Kupiansk, Russia’s most important logistical hub for its entire northeastern war effort.

Kherson

Ukraine has launched a three-pronged counter-offensive north of Kherson, in Ukraine’s southern front. Much like in Kharkiv, Ukraine seems to be moving slowly and deliberately, lacking the strength to fully collapse Russian lines, but pushing them methodically back.

A Tale of One Lawyer.  

“Along with eight others, Dmitri told his commanders that he refused to rejoin the invasion. “They were furious. But they eventually calmed down because there wasn’t much they could do,” he said….

Under Russian military rules, troops who refuse to fight in Ukraine can face dismissal but cannot be prosecuted, said Mikhail Benyash, a lawyer who has been advising soldiers who choose that option.

Benyash said “hundreds and hundreds” of soldiers had been in touch with his team for advice on how they could avoid being sent to fight. Among them were 12 national guardsmen from Russia’s southern city of Krasnodar who were fired after refusing to go to Ukraine.:

Putin Thinks A Dictatorship Can Put Up With the Pain Longer Than Democracies

Russian President Vladimir Putin is digging in for a long war of attrition over Ukraine and will be relentless in trying to use economic weapons, such as a blockade of Ukrainian grain exports, to whittle away Western support for Kyiv, according to members of Russia’s economic elite.

The Kremlin has seized on recent signs of hesitancy by some European governments as an indication the West could lose focus in seeking to counter Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, especially as global energy costs surge following the imposition of sanctions on Moscow.

Putin “believes the West will become exhausted,” said one well-connected Russian billionaire, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. Putin had not expected the West’s initially strong and united response, “but now he is trying to reshape the situation and he believes that in the longer term he will win,” the billionaire said. Western leaders are vulnerable to election cycles, and “he believes public opinion can flip in one day.”

The embargo on Russia’s seaborne oil exports announced by the European Union this week — hailed by Charles Michel, president of the European Council, as putting maximum “pressure on Russia to end the war” — would “have little influence over the short term,” said one Russian official close to Moscow diplomatic circles, also speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “The Kremlin mood is that we can’t lose — no matter what the price.”

The Kremlin has pointed out that the E.U.’s move has only provoked a further surge in global energy prices and says it will seek to divert supplies to other markets in Asia, despite a ban on insuring Russian shipments that was also imposed by the E.U. and Britain.

The populations of E.U. countries “are feeling the impact of these sanctions more than we are,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with The Washington Post. “The West has made mistake after mistake, which has led to growing crises, and to say that this is all because of what is going on in Ukraine and what Putin is doing is incorrect.”
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The New Normal.  People Who Cannot Get Food or Water.

A viral video showing two women scaling the wall of a well to access water has highlighted the acute shortage in several areas of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.

The video shows the women on the wall of the well without a rope or harness to access water.

People in Ghusiya village have been forced to take such extreme measures after wells and ponds have dried.

Several other areas across India are facing similar water crisis.

Videos showing Indians risking their lives to get water frequently go viral. In April, a similar video showed a woman going down a well in Maharashtra state to get water.

A 2019 global report had named India among 17 countries where "water stress" was "extremely high".


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Does This Mean You Don't Have to Tip?

California regulators on Thursday gave a robotic taxi service the green light to begin charging passengers for driverless rides in San Francisco, a first in a state where dozens of companies have been trying to train vehicles to steer themselves on increasingly congested roads.

The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously granted Cruise, a company controlled by automaker General Motors, approval to launch its driverless ride-hailing service. The regulators issued the permit despite safety concerns arising from Cruise’s inability to pick up and drop off passengers at the curb in its autonomous taxis, requiring the vehicles to double park in traffic lanes.

The ride-hailing service initially will consist of just 30 electric vehicles confined to transporting passengers in less congested parts of San Francisco from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Those restrictions are designed to minimize chances of the robotic taxis causing property damage, injuries or death if something goes awry. It will also allow regulators to assess how the technology works before permitting the service to expand.

Cruise and another robotic car pioneer, Waymo, already have been charging passengers for rides in parts of San Francisco in autonomous vehicles with a back-up human driver present to take control if something goes wrong with the technology.

I Have Had Taxi Rides With Human Drivers That Were Terrifying
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Congress Has Been Putting Off Dealing With This.  Ridiculous!!

A stronger-than-expected economic recovery from the pandemic has pushed back the go-broke dates for Social Security and Medicare, but officials warn that the current economic turbulence is putting additional pressures on the bedrock retirement programs.

The annual Social Security and Medicare trustees report released Thursday says Social Security’s trust fund will be unable to pay full benefits beginning in 2035, instead of last year’s estimate of 2034. The year before that it estimated an exhaustion date of 2035.

The projected depletion date for Medicare’s trust fund for inpatient hospital care moved back two years to 2028 from last year’s forecast of 2026.

The Longer They Wait, the Harder It Will Be.
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Don't Panic Over Hispanic Voters






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They Waited Until Months Before the Midterms to Start This??

Jared Kushner’s cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia has long drawn scrutiny. Now it’s the subject of a House investigation.

House Oversight Committee chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) on Thursday sent a letter to Kushner seeking information about a $2 billion investment the Saudi government made in Kushner’s brand-new investment firm just six months after he left the White House.

“The Committee is concerned by your decision to solicit billions of dollars from the Saudi government immediately following your significant involvement in shaping U.S.-Saudi relations,” the eight-page letter says.

“Your close relationship with Crown Prince bin Salman [and] your pro-Saudi positions during the Trump Administration ... create the appearance of a quid pro quo for your foreign policy work during the Trump Administration.”

The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF) reportedly made the investment over the objections of its own advisers, who, among other things, were concerned about Kushner’s inexperience and a $25 million yearly management fee.
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Asking About the Doors, He Finds That People Are Strange, But Not Overseas.


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