Cryptocurrency, Investing, Money, Economy, Business, and Debt:
Bitcoin Reaching $100K Is Start of 'Massive Wave' of Institutional Interest: Samson Mow
A quarter of US shoppers have dumped favorite stores over political stances
Microsoft reveals Mojarana 1 quantum chip as quantum computing wars heat up
Microsoft (MSFT) on Wednesday announced a new kind of quantum computer chip that it says will make quantum computers useful in years, rather than decades in the future. The chip, called Majorana 1, uses what Microsoft says is a new type of material called a topoconductor, which the company claims takes advantage of a new state of matter that is not solid, liquid, or gas, but a topological state.
Coronavirus News, Analysis, and Opinion:
How COVID Pushed a Generation of Young People to the Right
Research suggests that pandemics are more likely to reduce rather than build trust in scientific and political authorities.
U.S. reverses plan to shut down free covid test program
The Trump administration reversed a plan late Tuesday to shut down the government website that ships free coronavirus tests to households, after The Washington Post reported that the administration was preparing to end the program and was evaluating the costs of destroying or disposing of tens of millions of tests.
Politics:
Trump falsely claims Ukraine started war with Russia
…Trump criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and continued to parrot the Kremlin’s talking points about the war.
Said Trump: “I think I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going well. But today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.”
Trump and Musk Set Their Sights on Social Security
Before President Donald Trump started mass layoffs of federal workers, he demonized them, arguing, despite evidence to the contrary, that most never went into the office.
As he moved to cut foreign aid, he and Elon Musk alleged widespread waste and abuse, although they offered little evidence to back up their claims and may simply disagree with how the money was being spent.
With that in mind, consider what the Trump administration is now doing to Social Security, seeding the idea, which is not backed up by known facts, that millions of dead people are collecting payments.
USDA ‘Accidentally’ Fired Bird Flu Staff
Europe quietly works on a plan to send troops to Ukraine for post-war security
High Ranking Federal Prosecutor Resigns in Protest
The head of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., resigned Tuesday morning after declining to comply with a Trump administration demand to freeze assets of a multibillion-dollar Biden administration environmental grant initiative.
Trump’s confidential plan to put Ukraine in a stranglehold
Panic in Kyiv as US president demands higher share of GDP than Germany’s First World War reparations
“There’s a whole big, oh, you can work from home. Nobody’s going to work from a home. They’re going to be going out. They’re going to play tennis. They’re going to play golf. They’re going to do a lot of things. They’re not working.” — Trump, just before heading out to play golf.
This is how it’s done: Brazil Charges Bolsonaro With Attempting a Coup
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, was charged Tuesday with overseeing a vast scheme to try to undermine his nation’s trust in the 2022 elections and then overturn that vote even after his allies could not find evidence of fraud after he lost.
Trump Media Group Sues Brazilian Judge
…Trump’s media company sued a Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday, accusing him of illegally censoring right-wing voices on social media.
The unusual move was made all the more extraordinary by its timing: Just hours earlier, the Brazilian justice had received an indictment that would force him to decide whether to order the arrest of Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president and an ally of Mr. Trump.
The justice is overseeing multiple criminal investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro.
F.D.A.’s Food Safety Chief Resigns Over Trump Administration Layoffs
The chief said the loss of critical employees overseeing the nation’s food supply made his work impossible. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s new health secretary, has pledged to gut the division.
Trump has seized on his reelection as an opportunity to rewrite the story of January 6. Just hours after he assumed the presidency, he granted pardons and commutations to the insurrectionists who broke into the Capitol, calling their prosecutions a ‘grave national injustice.’ The deletion of the Justice Department’s page on January 6 is a triumph for the insurrectionists whose crimes were erased, and for Republicans more generally, many of whom would simply rather not talk about the late unpleasantness.
But in the long term, the truth of what happened will prove difficult to bury. The roughly six hours during which rioters breached the Capitol are some of the most exhaustively documented in recent history, thanks to the many participants who filmed themselves in action and the investigative efforts of both the Justice Department and the House January 6 committee. Even Trump can’t wipe that away.
Serendipity:
Nat King Cole’s often overlooked role in the Civil Rights Movement
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