Friday News: Solar Becomes “global juggernaut wiping out fossil fuels”; “Pence Gets Subpoena From Special Counsel in Jan. 6 Investigation”; “Republican clown-car caucus is undermining itself”; Youngkin’s “politicization of history standards deserves an ‘F’”

by Lowell

Here are a few international, national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, February 10.

• Corruption endangers world’s shrinking fisheries
• “Monster Profits” Highlight Fossil-Fuel Industry’s Destructive Resilience (“The so-called Big Five raked in an unprecedented $200 billion last year.”)
• As climate change disrupts ecosystems, a new outbreak of bird flu spreads to mammals (Human disruption and destruction of ecosystems is a disaster in many ways, including for pandemics.)
• The Nigerian-Israeli Climate Activist Making Global Waves and Cleaning Beaches (“At just 20 years old, Nigerian-Israeli climate activist Sharona Shnayder helped launch a worldwide movement to clean up trash, now with chapters on every continent except Antarctica”)
• The return of El Nino could make the world even hotter — endangering a critical climate threshold
• Joe Biden and Brazilian President ‘Lula’ meet to talk climate change, protecting the Amazon
• Solar’s stunning journey from lab curiosity to global juggernaut wiping out fossil fuels
• Russia is expected to launch a new Ukraine offensive, but it faces a familiar obstacle: Mud
• Russia is draining a massive Ukrainian reservoir, endangering a nuclear plant (“Satellite data show water levels plummeting at the massive Kakhovka Reservoir. The reservoir supplies drinking water, irrigates vast tracts of farmland, and cools Europe’s largest nuclear plant.” WTF???)
• Russian ‘full-scale offensive’ has begun, Ukrainian official says (“Ukrainian air defense systems are currently ‘in action’ defending the capital Kyiv from a Russian attack”)
• Russia to Slash Oil Output in Response to Sanctions
• Ukraine war: More blackouts after ‘massive’ Russian attack
• Ukraine’s rocket campaign reliant on U.S. precision targeting, officials say
• Wagner Group leader stops recruiting prisoners to fight in Ukraine
• Ukraine’s defiant city is nearly surrounded as Russia presses for a bloody victory
• Can Putin win? (“A Russian assault is expected in Donbas, but all will depend on whether Russia has fixed major flaws in logistics and coordination.”)
• Russia hits targets across Ukraine with missiles, drones
• Quake Latest: Turkey Seeks Russia’s Nod on Syria Aid Dispatch
• Turkey’s Earthquake Response Is as Political as the Conditions That Increased The Devastation (“The ethnic minorities and refugees leading the community response in Turkey already knew not to rely on the government.”)
• ‘No More Antakya’: Turks Say Quake Wiped Out a City, and a Civilization
• Pressure mounts on UN to provide urgent support to north-western Syria (“Rescue teams say death tolls will continue to rise if UN does not speed up ‘overly cautious’ delivery of aid into rebel-held region”)
• First Thing: pressure mounts on UN to provide urgent support in Syria
• WHO warns Turkey and Syria quake survivors face “secondary disaster”
• Will Turkey’s earthquake response threaten President Erdogan’s grip on power?
• If the US and China go to the brink, can they figure out how to de-escalate?
• The US says Xi didn’t know about the balloon. That raises even more questions
• What we know: US officials disclosed new details about the balloon’s capabilities
• China Balloon Had Western-Made Parts With English Writing, Lawmakers Told
• US delayed shooting down Chinese spy balloon partly to aid recovery efforts, defense officials say
• North Korean Parade Puts Missile Production Prowess on Display
• Shinzo Abe Book Criticizes Trump as Weak on North Korea
• U.S. officials prepping legislation to revamp asylum system (“U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is developing a sweeping bill that would revamp the country’s asylum system to speed up the resolution of claims in large-scale processing centers at the border with Mexico”)
• Google and Bing Are a Mess. Will AI Solve Their Problems?
• The Covid emergency in the U.S. ends May 11. HHS officials say here’s what to expect
• Biden administration braces for ruling that could ban abortion pills
• 40 million would lose abortion access if court blocks pill, study shows
• Wildfire Smoke May Worsen Extreme Blazes Near Some Coasts, According to New Research
• Scoop: Inside Biden’s big deficit-cutting plan
• House GOP hearing exposes Trump’s complete takeover: Republicans are now a collection of crybabies (“Trump remade the GOP in his image. As Biden campaigns to protect Medicare, Republicans are raging about Twitter”)
• War Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery, Democrats Are Radicals (“Republicans, however, do live in such a universe — and what Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed us was that they can’t step outside that universe even when they should have strong political incentives to sound like normal people and pretend to care about regular Americans’ concerns.”)
• The Republican clown-car caucus is undermining itself
• A new poll gives us insight into a troubling anti-American movement (“Christian Nationalism is vast, resilient and dangerous.”)
• What climate law? Voters clueless about Biden’s top achievement (How can you have a democracy when most voters don’t know who did what, or even that it happened at all, in order to properly assign credit/blame and vote accordingly?)
• Joe Biden attacks Republican ‘dream’ to slash Medicare and Social Security (“President makes comments in Florida speech, vowing to safeguard programs ahead of anticipated 2024 re-election campaign”)
• Democrats would love to make 2024 an entitlements election
• GOP races from Medicare, Social Security third rail
• After lauding Rick Scott’s radical GOP agenda, Sean Hannity claims Biden is smearing the GOP on Social Security and Medicare (Almost any time Republicans claim Democrats are “smearing” them, it means that Democrats are telling the truth about Republicans, and Republicans don’t want people to hear it.)
• Mainstream media’s extensive reporting on the GOP’s efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare undermines protests that the claim is “dishonest”
• Pence Gets Subpoena From Special Counsel in Jan. 6 Investigation
• First on CNN: Trump’s former national security adviser subpoenaed in special counsel probes of classified documents, January 6
• The Political Attack on Trans People Is an Attack on All of Us
• Extremist influencers are generating millions for Twitter, report says (“Ads from major brands are running alongside hateful content and dangerous conspiracy theories from far right Twitter users, group claims”)
• Elon Musk fires a top Twitter engineer over his declining view count (Musk is bonkers.)
• Elon Musk Is Reportedly Firing People Over His Own Flop Tweets (“Just weeks after hyping a ‘views’ feature to gauge Twitter impressions, the CEO is not happy with the data he’s seeing”)
• Musk’s First 100 Days at Twitter Defined by Rapid Change, Challenges
• Elon Musk’s reach on Twitter is dropping — he just fired a top engineer over it (“The chaos continues inside Twitter 2.0 as employees worry about what will break, what will get them fired, and what will get them busted by the FTC.”)
• Ron DeSantis once expressed support for privatizing Social Security and Medicare giving his rivals an opening
• The DeSantis Soft Bois Can Dish It, But Can’t Take It (“Groomer slander for thee, but not for me.”)
• Sen. Ron Johnson Tries to Speed-Run All of the Right’s Most Fevered Conspiracies (It’s utterly appalling that this nutjob was reelected.)
• The Memo: Trump and Biden find common enemy in DeSantis
• Republicans Are Terrified Trump Will Win the GOP Nomination and Lose to Biden
• “The Florida of Today Is the America of Tomorrow”: Ron DeSantis’s New College Takeover Is Just the Beginning of the Right’s Higher Ed Crusade
• Before facing Trump in 2024, DeSantis seeks wins on guns, abortion
• National media coverage fails to accurately cover DeSantis’ dystopian crusade against public education
• Florida Officials Had Repeated Contact With College Board Over African American Studies
• Florida high school athletes won’t have to report their periods after emergency vote
• ‘Chutzpah on top of audacity on top of delusion’: Nicolle Wallace slams Jordan’s weaponization committee
• Man who carried a Confederate flag in the Capitol on Jan. 6 is sentenced to 3 years
• Santos was charged with theft in 2017 case tied to Amish dog breeders
• GOP senators sympathetic to Romney’s call for Santos to resign
• Minnesota Congresswoman Escapes Attack in DC Apartment Building Elevator (“There is no evidence that the incidence was politically motivated”)
• Burt Bacharach, Composer Who Added a High Gloss to the ’60s, Dies at 94 (Rest in Peace to a superb musical genius.)
• Burt Bacharach, one of the world’s most accomplished songwriters, dies at 94
• Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman hospitalized overnight in Washington
• Sen. John Fetterman Remains In Hospital; MRI Rules Out Stroke
• A New Round in the Contentious Fight Over N.Y.’s Next Top Judge
• Missouri Republicans Vote to Affirm Toddlers’ Rights to Carry Firearms in the Streets
• North Carolina’s rehearing of voting rights cases is ‘power grab’, justice says (“State supreme court to reconsider two recent rulings that struck down state’s voter ID law and congressional districts”)
• Kaine, others reintroduce ‘Reproductive Freedom For All Act’
• Video: Rep. Don Beyer Remarks Opposing Republican Attacks On D.C. Self-Governance (“I firmly believe that D.C., like any other jurisdiction across the country, should be allowed to govern itself.”)
• Administration’s politicization of history standards deserves an ‘F’
• Video: Youngkin Claims China is Buying Land “Adjacent” to Pentagon (“He doesn’t have the data to back up any of his claims”)
• Pope & Schapiro: Crossover Day and the rest of the way
• Northern Va. is the heart of the internet. Not everyone is happy about that. (“The expansion of data centers in Northern Virginia, already home to the $8.4 billion industry’s largest hub, has sparked land use battles, with residents near the buildings using drones and cloud computing to make their case.”)
• House, Senate far apart as Virginia lawmakers pass budget plans
• Ranking the VA State Senate Primaries So Far, From Very Interesting to Not at All Interesting…and Everything in Between
• Three interesting bills of the week: menstrual health data, spying and K-9s in schools
• VA House Republicans Kill All Eight Amendments to Help Hardworking Virginians (“Under the Republican plan big corporations get over $350M in tax breaks, while the majority of Virginia households will get less than $50.”)
• The Virginia Energy Plan is a start. Now we need lawmakers to support Virginia families and our communities (“The General Assembly should approve bills allowing shared solar projects.”)
• Virginia says rural areas lack high-speed internet access, despite FCC map showing statewide coverage
• Virginia House rejects mandatory livestreaming bill as localities warn of six-figure costs
• D.C.-area forecast: Mild today. Chillier weekend, with rain likely Sunday.