Tues-Ukraine Takes a Dump & The Hunger Trifecta Is No Game

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Today's Worst Joke in the World

Kitchen remodelers are counter productive.
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Today's Worst Person in the World Nominees

The Man Most Responsible For Our Horrible SCOTUS Speaks

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggested on Monday that women's reproductive rights have become "outdated" -- and that's why the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.

Could the Choice in Texas be Any Clearer?  One Party Talks About Blame.  One Party Talks About Solutions.  







Here is the Future the QOP Wants

The news from the US that women face tighter restrictions on abortion has been felt in El Salvador, which itself has very strict laws preventing access.

In February, four women sat down before the full glare of El Salvador's press. Between them, they had served nearly 50 years in prison.

Their crime was to have the misfortune of suffering a miscarriage - in a country with one of the strictest abortion laws in the world.

Is No Art Safe?

Two men have been arrested after a gang of robbers smashed glass display cases at a European fine art fair in the Dutch city of Maastricht.

In a brazen raid on the Tefaf art fair, one of the men was filmed smashing cases with a sledgehammer while accomplices kept visitors away.

One visitor picked up a large vase in an apparent attempt to halt the robbers before quickly putting it back.

Two suspects from Belgium were quickly arrested a short distance away.

Although most of the displays in that section of the Maastricht exhibition featured fine art, some display cases exhibited jewels including diamonds.

One of the gang appeared to brandish a firearm while another attacked the display cases and could be seen grabbing items and putting them in a bag. The faces of all four were uncovered, although they all wore caps and blazers.








Wagner Group is Giving All Mercenaries a Bad Reputation?  What?  All Mercenaries Already Have a Bad Reputation?

Finally, the day came when Ag could not handle it any more.

He and his neighbours in the rural hinterlands of Timbuktu region in northern Mali had heard the stories from survivors passing through their town. They said white soldiers believed to be Russians had been coming into markets in nearby towns along with the Malian army – looting shops and attacking and killing people indiscriminately.

So Ag and his friends panicked, packed their belongings and fled, not stopping until they left the country.

When the Russians arrive in town with the Malian army, “they take everything they find in the market,” he told Al Jazeera at the M’bera refugee camp, in neighbouring Mauritania, where he and his family arrived about a month ago. “Often, they attack the people who try to escape. If you try to run, they’ll kill you without knowing who you are.”

Mali’s military is in the 10th year of a war which started out as a separatist rebellion before morphing into a fight led by armed groups affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Russia-linked Wagner mercenaries reportedly arrived in Mali to support the military last December.

Who Knows What Evil Lurks in the Heart of Eastman's Phone?  The DOJ Does.

John Eastman, the Trump-allied lawyer who wrote memos urging then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the 2020 election results, said in a court filing Monday that federal agents seized his phone last week.

Who is Dumber?  The Man or the Girlfriend?  How Many Lives Were Ruined?

An 8-year-old who found his father’s gun accidentally shot and killed a 1-year-old and wounded a 2-year-old at a Florida motel over the weekend, a sheriff said Monday.

Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons said the 8-year-old's father left a gun in a holster in the closet. After the adult left, the boy found the weapon, which fired while he was playing with it, the sheriff said.

One round struck the 1-year-old girl, who died, he said. The bullet also struck a 2-year-old girl who is expected to recover, according to the sheriff.

The father was staying at the motel with a girlfriend, who was asleep at the time, Simmons said. The children killed and wounded were her children, he said.

The father was arrested on charges of being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, tampering with evidence, culpable negligence and failure to safely store a firearm, the sheriff said.

There were at least 392 unintentional shootings by children younger than 18 last year, with 163 deaths, according to the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety, which tracks reports.

Sarah Sander Wants Kids to Be As Safe in the Womb as At School.

School shootings in 2020-21 rose to the highest number in two decades, a new federal report looking at crime and safety in U.S. schools has found.

The National Center for Education Statistics on Tuesday released a 31-page report that found there were at least 93 incidents with casualties at public and private schools across the United States in 2020-21.

The number represented the highest total since data collection began, the agency said, marking a major rise from the 23 incidents recorded in the 2000-01 school year.

Of the 93 incidents recorded in the 2020-21 school year, 43 included fatalities and 50 involved injuries.

Uvalde Police Continue to Be Horrible Cops

A mother who heroically saved her children during the tragic Uvalde school shooting in May is experiencing harassment at the hands of local cops, Fox 29 reported. According to the local news outlet, the mother of two children who attended the Robb Elementary school where two teachers and 19 children were killed has faced backlash from law enforcement, even at home. “The other night we were exercising and we had a cop parked at the corner like, flickering us with his headlights," Angeli Rose Gomez told reporters.

She added that because of this and similar incidents, she has had to separate from her boys, "just so my sons don't feel like they have to watch cops passing by, stopping, parking."
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Today's Best Person in the World Nominees

Joe Burrow is As Accurate With His Comments As With His Passes



How Many Lives Have These Vaccines Saved?

U.S. regulators plan to decide by early July on whether to change the design of COVID-19 vaccines this fall in order to combat more recent variants of the coronavirus, with hopes of launching a booster campaign by October, a top Food and Drug Administration official said on Tuesday.

"The better the match of the vaccines to the circulating strain we believe may correspond to improve vaccine effectiveness, and potentially to a better durability of protection," Dr. Peter Marks, director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at a meeting of outside advisers to the regulator.

The committee is scheduled to vote on a recommendation on whether to make the change later on Tuesday.

The updated shots are likely to be redesigned to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, experts say. The exact composition of the retooled shots and whether they also will include some of the original vaccine alongside new components will be considered at the meeting.

Pfizer Inc, Moderna Inc and Novavax Inc are scheduled to present data at the meeting. All three companies have been testing versions of their vaccines updated to combat the BA.1 Omicron variant that was circulating and led to a massive surge in infections last winter.

Both Moderna and Pfizer with partner BioNTech have said that their respective redesigned vaccines generate a better immune response against BA.1 than their current shots that were designed for the original virus that emerged from China.

They have said that their new vaccines also appear to work against the more recently circulating BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants, even though that protection is not as strong as against BA.1.
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Invasions Have Consequences

Day 125

Fighting

Russian missiles hit a crowded shopping centre in Kremenchuk, Poltava, killing at least 18 people and wounding 59 others, officials said. More than 40 people have been reported missing.

More than 1,000 people were inside when two Russian missiles slammed into the shopping mall, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said. He called the strike “one of the most defiant terrorist attacks in European history”.

Russian forces and Moscow-backed separatists now control part of an oil refinery in the city of Lysychansk, Moscow state news agency TASS reported. The governor of Ukraine’s Luhansk region Serhiy Haidai said Russian forces are storming the town of Lysychansk from the west and southwest.

Five people were killed and more than 30 people were wounded in Russian attacks on Kharkiv on Monday, Zelenskyy said.

Diplomacy

US President Joe Biden plans to announce an extension of US troop presence in Poland and changes to US deployments in several Baltic nations that he authorised ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, NBC News has cited officials as saying.

Any encroachment on the Russian-annexed Crimean peninsula by a NATO member state could amount to a declaration of war on Russia which could lead to “World War III,” Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev, has been quoted as saying.

The United Nations Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Tuesday on Russia’s targeting of civilians, with the Kremenchuk attack being “the main focus”, the UN body stated.

Economy

The Group of Seven (G7) club of wealthy nations pledged to stand with Ukraine “for as long as it takes”, promising new sanctions.

The White House said Russia had defaulted on its foreign sovereign bonds for the first time in a century – an assertion Moscow rejected.

Biden raised the tariff rate on certain Russian imports to 35 percent as a result of suspending Russia’s “most favoured nation” trading status.

Making Russia Tankless is Not Thankless

Claimed Ukrainian tank kills per day:

June 27: 20
June 26: 21
June 24: 4
June 23: 3
June 22: 8
June 21: 0
June 20: 19
June 19: 9
June 18: 3

If you keep going back, you’ll see that zero to nine is about the usual range, with a few bigger days here and there, like June 20. I don’t recall ever seeing two 20+ tank days in a row.

Now, it’s reasonable to suspect these numbers. Combatants have an incentive to exaggerate the losses of their enemy. If you asked Russia, they’ve destroyed more tanks than Ukraine had at the beginning of the war, three times over. It’s hilarious. Ukraine’s numbers are more reasonable, but there’s no way to confirm. For context, Ukraine claims 1,440 total tank kills. Oryx’s list of visually confirmed kills puts the number at 789, and the guy is on vacation without updates for the past week. So we can confirm 55% to 60% of Ukraine’s claims, which is actually quite remarkable. It lends some credence to the numbers.

Ukraine Takes a Dump














“Totally destroyed” is an understatement. What was once a series of roads, buildings, vehicles, and emplacements is now literally a dirt pit.

Here's what it looked like before the Russians arrived

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What's Going On With Iran?

Iran and the United States are expected to begin holding indirect nuclear talks in Qatar, with the European Union mediating between the two.

The talks, set to start on Tuesday, have renewed hopes for a diplomatic solution after earlier negotiations stalled in March.

What are the chances of success?

Even though a return to the negotiating table is a sign that things may move forward, there is no guarantee of success.

Issues relating to sanctions remain unresolved, and Israel has been warning against a revival of the deal, wanting more pressure on Iran instead.

Iran says it wants to ensure it will enjoy the economic benefits promised under the original deal.

The clock is ticking; earlier this month, Iran took down 27 IAEA cameras in response to a resolution censuring Iran introduced by the US, France, the UK and Germany. If the cameras are not turned back on, the agency will find it harder to track activity at Iran’s nuclear sites, which could kill the JCPOA.

Israel, the biggest opponent of the nuclear deal, continues to threaten that it will take action to make sure Iran cannot build a nuclear bomb.
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Bed, Bath, & Broke

Retailers typically want their sales numbers to be red hot, not their customers. But Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) is reportedly dealing with cooled momentum and heated customers at its stores.

A new report from Bank of America claims that the company has cut air conditioning in an effort to quickly lower expenses to make up for a slump in sales.

Bed Bath & Beyond told CNN that any changes in store temperature guidelines did not come from corporate. “We’ve been contacted about this report, and to be clear, no Bed Bath & Beyond stores were directed to adjust their air conditioning and there have been no corporate policy changes in regard to utilities usage,” said a representative.

Still, analysts at Bank of America who have conducted store visits report mounting concerns, including labor hours that have been meaningfully cut, scaled back utilities, reduced store operating hours and canceled remodeling projects. Rewards programs have also been scaled back and replaced. The analysts expect Bed Bath & Beyond’s management will soon announce more store closures and halt openings of its Buy Buy Baby stores.
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UK Governmet Involved in Killing Kittens

British taxpayers now officially hold shares in a company that throws sex parties.

A government loan provided to Killing Kittens to help it through the pandemic has converted into an equity stake in the company, the British Business Bank confirmed on Tuesday.

Killing Kittens, which organizes women-led adult parties in cities including London and New York, secured the investment in 2020 from the UK government’s Future Fund, which was designed to help startups survive the coronavirus pandemic.

The company was founded by Emma Sayle in 2005, and organizes members-only parties in exclusive venues where “established gender stereotypes” are challenged, according to its website. It recorded a 330% increase in traffic to its website during coronavirus lockdowns, and now calls itself “the fastest-growing adult social network.”

At one point, the pandemic forced the company to move all its events and workshops online, accelerating existing plans to enter the sex tech industry — a fast-growing sector that encompasses products and businesses focused on enhancing sexual experiences.

Killing Kittens now has a mobile app that allows users to meet each other “for casual dating, friendship, kink partners or a long-term relationship,” according to a description on its website.

Apparently Hello Kitty Isn't Involved
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Raise Your Hand If You Believe This Will Go Smoothly.  Anyone?  Any Hands?

About 2 million federal student loan borrowers, many of whom are seeking debt relief from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, will get a new federal student loan servicer as soon as early July.

FedLoan – an arm of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency known as PHEAA – is currently servicing those loans.

But a year ago, PHEAA decided to end its contract with the federal government. Beginning last fall, the federal loans serviced by FedLoan have been transferred in stages to several other servicers. About 2 million accounts still need to be transferred.

In July, loans held by borrowers enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program will start being transferred to the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, known as MOHELA. These transfers will continue throughout the summer, according to the Department of Education.

In recent years, FedLoan was tasked with handling the loans for every borrower seeking debt relief from the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which cancels the debt of government and nonprofit workers after making 10 years of qualifying payments. Once a borrower indicated they want to enroll in the program, their loans were transferred to FedLoan.

But FedLoan drew criticism from borrower advocates for making errors and providing misinformation to borrowers about the qualifications. In 2021, PHEAA settled a lawsuit brought by Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, alleging the loan servicer violated state and federal consumer protection laws. PHEAA agreed to provide individual audits to all 200,000 Massachusetts borrowers it services.
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If a State Says Life Begins as Conception, These Will Be Illegal, Too.

CVS and Rite Aid are limiting the amount of Plan B that a customer can buy to “ensure equitable access" and because of increased demand, respectively, the companies said in statements.

"We have ample supply of Plan B and Aftera across all of our CVS Pharmacy stores and CVS.com. To ensure equitable access and consistent supply on store shelves, we’ve implemented a temporary purchase limit of three on these products," a statement from Ethan Slavin with CVS Health said.

Meanwhile, Terri Hickey, the director of public relations for Rite Aid said: "Due to increased demand, at this time we are limiting purchases of Plan B contraceptive pills to three per customer."
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If You Don't Talk About It, Maybe It Doesn't Exist.

A year ago, when world leaders gathered at the annual Group of Seven summit, the Covid pandemic was omnipresent — from restrictions on those traveling for the gathering to the pledge by those present to donate a billion vaccine doses.

But as the leaders of the wealthiest democracies met again this week in the Bavarian Alps, combating the pandemic had fallen off the agenda, even as much of the developing world remains unvaccinated and health officials warn of another winter surge.

There were no announcements about new efforts to fight the coronavirus or expand access to vaccines or treatments, no masks were worn in public by world leaders, and there were no vaccine or testing requirements for those traveling to the summit. President Joe Biden made no mention of the virus in any of his remarks.

Maybe Hunger is the Bigger Pandemic Right Now.
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The Hunger Trifecta Is No Game

1)  The war in Ukraine is disrupting food supplies, causing shortages and raising prices.
2)  The war is also raising oil prices making the transport of food more expensive'
3)  Because of COVID, most governments are deeply in debt making it harder to provide food subsidies or aid.

Poor people, particularly those in poor countries, are having a hard time getting enough to eat.
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The Economist has built a statistical model to examine the relationship between food- and fuel-price inflation and political unrest. It reveals that both have historically been good predictors of mass protests, riots and political violence. If our model’s findings continue to hold true, many countries can expect to see a doubling of unrest this year .

The greatest risk is in places that were already precarious: countries such as Jordan and Egypt that depend on food and fuel imports and have rickety public finances. Many such places are badly or oppressively governed. In Turkey the supply shock has accelerated ruinous inflation caused by dotty monetary policy. Around the world, the cost-of-living squeeze is adding to people’s grievances and raising the chance that they will take to the streets. This is more likely to turn violent in places with lots of underemployed, single young men. As their purchasing power falls, many will conclude that they will never be able to afford to marry and have a family. Frustrated and humiliated, some will feel they have nothing to lose if they join a riot.
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Compared to Putin, He is a Small-Time Terrorist.  He Isn't Blowing Up Shopping Malls.  But Still Good News.

U.S. forces killed a senior terrorist leader in an airstrike in Syria on Monday, according to military officials.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said the target of the strike, Abu Hamzah al Yemeni, was a senior leader of an al-Qaida-affiliated terrorist group known as Hurras al-Din.

The leader was riding alone on a motorcycle in Idlib province at the time of the attack, CENTCOM said.

Violent groups like Hurras al-Din pose an ongoing threat to the U.S. and its allies, according to the statement.

An early review showed no sign of civilian casualties, according to the U.S. military.

The strike came 10 days after a rare ground raid by U.S. forces in northwestern Syria captured a top ISIS leader.
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