The Full Belmonte, 3/30/2022
“Russia’s defense ministry said the country will ‘drastically reduce military activity’ in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv and Chernihiv after a round of peace talks in Istanbul yesterday. However, US officials are skeptical of the claims, and the situation on the ground shows a Russian offensive in full force. Ukrainian officials say there was no reduction in hostilities overnight, and no area in the country was without sirens as the siege persists. New images and video from cities like Irpin and Mariupol show the extent of the destruction, with entire blocks obliterated. US leaders are facing pressure to form a united front against Russia and its neighboring allies, but a well-supported bill to suspend normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus is languishing in the Senate because of split priorities and a looming recess.” Read more at CNN
“Official White House records show a gap of more than seven hours in the call logs of then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, as violence unfolded on Capitol Hill, The Washington Post and CBS News reported. That’s a massive gap in communication during a critical time, and now House investigators are looking into whether Trump communicated through other means during those hours – for instance, through burner phones or other people’s devices. The call logs were part of the records turned over earlier this year by the National Archives to the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack. Meanwhile, in an interview with JustTheNews, Trump continued a pattern of soliciting foreign help for domestic political affairs when he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to release any damaging information he has about the Biden family.” Read more at CNN
“Twenty-one states filed suit Tuesday seeking an immediate end to a federal mandate that requires people to wear masks when traveling on airplanes, buses, subways and other modes of public transportation.
The effort in mostly Republican-led states is the latest effort seeking to abolish the mandate, put into place in February 2021, shortly after President Biden took office. The mandate was extended this month through April 18.” Read more at Washington Post
“As expected, the FDA has authorized a second Covid-19 booster shot for adults over the age of 50 as soon as four months after their initial booster dose. The CDC has also given its permissive recommendation to the move, which means the agency doesn't outright recommend it, but acknowledges it is something people can do if they want. There is general scientific agreement that third Covid-19 doses help strengthen immunity against severe illness from the virus, but the science is far from settled on when, or even if, fourth doses might be needed. Complicating things even further is the rise of the extremely contagious BA.2 variant, which is now the dominant coronavirus strain in the US.” Read more at CNN
“WASHINGTON — Senator Susan Collins of Maine plans to vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, ensuring that President Biden’s nominee and the first Black woman to be put forward for the post will receive at least one Republican backer.
After a second personal meeting with the judge on Tuesday afternoon, Ms. Collins said Judge Jackson had alleviated some concerns that surfaced after last week’s contentious Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, when Republicans attacked the nominee for her record and grilled her on a host of divisive issues.” Read more at New York Times
“Indigenous Canadian leaders and survivors of Canada’s residential schools met with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Monday, seeking a papal apology for the Catholic Church's role in the deadly and damaging residential schools system. Hundreds of unmarked graves were discovered last year on the grounds of former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission has reported that more than 4,000 Indigenous children died either from neglect or abuse at the schools, many of which were run by the Catholic Church. During this week’s meeting, the delegation asked the Pope to consider if the church should use its resources to help with work linked to the discovery of unmarked graves on residential school properties.” Read more at CNN
“A controversial election overhaul effort in Georgia has stalled after a state Senate committee gutted the massive bill following complaints from both parties that it was complicating their work in an election year. The bill sped through the GOP-led state House earlier this month, but now faces a time crunch as the Georgia General Assembly is set to adjourn next Monday. The initial overhaul would give the state investigations agency authority to initiate election fraud probes, and calls for public inspection of original paper ballots and limits on third-party donations for election administration. The only part of the bill the state’s Senate Ethics Committee chose to keep was a requirement that employers provide time off for workers to vote during the early voting period. The decision was praised by voting rights activists who have criticized repeated attempts by the state’s conservative leadership to change the state’s election code, including a restrictive voting law passed last March.” Read more at CNN
“After 12 decades of failed attempts, lynching is finally a federal hate crime.Under the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, perpetrators can receive up to 30 years in prison when a conspiracy to commit a hate crime results in death or serious bodily injury.”
“Another multi-day severe weather outbreak is on tap for the central, southern and eastern U.S. this week. While storms were expected to fire up Tuesday across the central U.S., the day with the highest risk for severe weather will be Wednesday in the Deep South , forecasters said. More than 55 million people are at risk some type of severe weather Wednesday, the Storm Prediction Center said. On Thursday, that number drops down 20 million. States such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are all in the area where the risk is the highest. ‘All severe hazards are possible, including significant gusts over 75 mph and strong (EF2+) tornadoes,’ according to the Center. Flash flooding will also be a concern Wednesday, especially as rivers remain at fairly high levels after the last outbreak of rain and storms.” Read more at USA Today
“The Justice Department endorsed congressional bills that would keep big platforms — Meta, Google, Apple and Amazon — from giving preferential treatment to their own products, Axios' Ashley Gold reports.
Why it matters: The DOJ support shows the Biden administration thinks the bipartisan bills can be enforced and will help encourage tech competition.
What's next: The Senate's American Competition and Innovation Act,and its companion bill in the House, await full passage. And there's a packed congressional agenda and bitter partisanship to contend with.
But the forceful administration endorsement shows ‘the seriousness of the DOJ’s antitrust concerns in the technology sector,’ Jeffrey Jacobovitz, senior counsel at law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP and former FTC attorney, told Axios.” Read more at Axios
“A former Yale University employee pleaded guilty to a decades-long scheme to steal millions of dollars of computers and iPads from the medical school.” Read more at NPR
“The Foo Fighters have canceled all of their upcoming tour dates following the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins. It's unclear if the band will still perform at the Grammys this weekend.” Read more at NPR
“Florida’s controversial ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill was signed into law Monday. Schoolteachers worry it might have a chilling effect on conversations in the classroom and further stigmatize LGBTQ youth.” Read more at NPR
“Tragedy in Oregon: The man accused of driving into a homeless camp, killing four people and hospitalizing two others, was driving 35 mph above the speed limit with a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, prosecutors said.” Read more at USA Today
“A judge has approved a settlement between Activision Blizzard and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agency filed a complaint against the company alleging severe sexual harassment and pregnancy discrimination.” Read more at NPR
“‘Significant danger’
When Russia began its invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Vladimir Putin and his inner circle were not the only people who expected a rapid Russian march to victory. Many independent observers did, too.
Instead, Ukraine has held firm.
Ukrainian civilians have shown resilience amid terrible suffering. Its military has kept Russia from taking over Kyiv and even regained some ground in the northeast. And the Russian military has suffered heavy losses, partly because of an overly ambitious strategy — evidently reflecting Putin’s wishes more than military reality — that left its forces stretched thin and vulnerable to counterattacks.
Russia’s early failures explain its new willingness to hold peace negotiations and its promised pullback from Kyiv. U.S. officials understandably expressed skepticism yesterday about whether Putin is genuinely open to ending the war. But Russia really does appear to have narrowed its goals, in response to its battlefield struggles. That’s good news for Ukraine.
At the same time, Russia’s new strategy creates a potential challenge: Increasingly, Russia appears to be concentrating its effort in fewer areas — particularly the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine.
‘We’ve seen a major shift toward one specific front in this war,’ Michael Kofman of the Russia studies program at CNA told me. ‘For Russia, it’s much more rational.’
Why Donbas matters
The Donbas region, on the border with Russia, makes up about 9 percent of Ukraine’s landmass. Many of its residents have long felt at least as much of a connection to Russia as to the rest of Ukraine.
The New York Times
After Russia invaded a nearby region of Ukraine in 2014 and annexed it — Crimea — Moscow-backed separatists in Donbas started their own civil war against Ukraine’s government. The separatists proclaimed the formation of two breakaway republics, and fighting has continued sporadically over the past eight years. Last month, Putin recognized both republics.
Focusing on Donbas has multiple advantages for Russia. In recent weeks, it has already made progress in taking over territory there. It can hold that territory without the long, exposed supply lines that Ukraine has successfully attacked elsewhere. A battle over Donbas also gives Russia an opportunity to encircle and destroy a large chunk of Ukraine’s military. More than a third of all Ukrainian troops may be in the region, fighting both the separatists and the Russian military.
Russia appears to be on the verge of being able to create such a pincer around these Ukrainian troops, coming from both the east and the south. Experts refer to this Russian progress as a ‘land bridge’ from Crimea to the Donbas.
The city of Mariupol, in southern Donbas, is a part of this story. Putin and his military planners have attacked Mariupol so brutally because it is the largest city in the potential land bridge that they do not yet control. It also has a major port.
(This Times story examines Russia’s attempts to starve the people of Mariupol, including the physical and psychological toll of hunger. ‘The fire was gone from their eyes,’ one mother said about her children, describing her futile attempts to distract them by reading fairy tales.)
Damaged houses in Mariupol.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
Some analysts, like Kofman, believe that Russia would struggle to maintain the land bridge for an extended period. Its military would face many of the same challenges — a dedicated opposition, dispersed over a large territory — that have bedeviled it elsewhere in Ukraine.
Others think a sustained land bridge is more likely. ‘With its long history of starting wars disastrously but then winning them by piling in more men and matériel to overwhelm the defender through sheer brute force, Russia has time on its side,’ said Keir Giles of the Conflict Studies Research Center in Britain. ‘It can keep up the pressure on Ukraine longer than Ukraine can keep up Western interest in supporting it in its fight for freedom.’
A new risk
Either way, Putin may try to use the cease-fire negotiations as a way to lock in the territory Russia now controls or soon may, including the land bridge. That prospect worries some experts who want to see Putin defeated. ‘We’re at the next moment of significant danger around this conflict,’ Frederick Kagan, a military expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told me.
If the West pressures Ukraine to accept a cease-fire that leaves the land bridge intact, Ukraine would be a broken country, Kagan argues. It would be cut off from a large number of its citizens and from economically important coal and natural gas resources in the east. Many parts of central Ukraine would be vulnerable to Russian attacks and disruption.
‘If we allow the Russians under the facade of a cease-fire to control that line, that’s exactly what I’m worried about,’ Kagan added.
The war has gone surprisingly well for Ukraine so far, but it still faces major risks. ‘I think a lot of folks in the West are more starry-eyed than Ukrainians are,’ Kofman said. ‘I’m skeptical that either side is ready for peace, because both sides in this war still have opportunities in the battlefield.’” Read more at New York Times
The scene of an attack near Tel Aviv yesterday.Nir Elias/Reuters
“A Palestinian gunman killed five people outside Tel Aviv, the fifth attack in Israel in two weeks.” Read more at New York Times
“Mexican security forces were watching the 43 student teachers who vanished in 2014 both before and during their abduction by criminal forces, according to a new investigation. Evidence turned up by the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts, an independent body probing the infamous Iguala case, has concluded that the state actively concealed evidence that could have helped locate the students, who were taken by corrupt local officials and turned over to a local cartel. The armed forces had intercepted communications that could have been used to track the students, the report found, but officials denied such data existed. The students were being tracked as their school was viewed by the authorities as a nest of potential left-wing dissent, Reuters reported Monday. The panel’s findings poke holes in the previous government’s conclusions on the case—that the students were massacred and incinerated—prompting the current administration to order it reopened. The report stopped short of concluding what had happened to most of the 43 missing, saying that the remains of only two of the students had been positively identified.” [The Daily Beast] Read more at Reuters
“Members of the public can now ride aboard Mexico’s answer to Air Force One, for a fee, after the government failed to find a buyer for the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador made offloading the $218 million jet, purchased during Felipe Calderon’s 2006-2012 term, a campaign promise in 2018, calling it an ‘insult’ to the people and has made a point of flying commercial throughout his presidency.
The plane will now be repurposed as a charter aircraft for weddings, birthdays, and corporate events, with proceeds used to cover the plane’s expenses.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Western sanctions have spared at least one big part of Russia’s financial world: its domestic-payments system. Even after Visa and Mastercard pulled out of the country earlier this month—a move that many in the West considered significant—most locals were still able to use their credit cards within national borders. That’s because of Russia’s yearslong effort to develop a homegrown systemof processing payments, known by the Russian initials NSPK. The Kremlin also has aggressively promoted Russia’s own card company, called Mir, which is built on NSPK’s infrastructure. Representatives for Visa and Mastercard declined to comment. Countries including China, Turkey and India have also developed their own payments infrastructure in recent years.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Isolated ally | One of Putin’s closest prewar allies in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, is poised to win a fourth consecutive term in elections on Sunday. But Orban, Europe’s longest-serving leader, is more isolated than ever, and a triumph at the polls may be a Pyrrhic victory on both the political and economic fronts.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Lives Lived: Joan Joyce’s softball pitching feats and achievements in basketball, volleyball and golf made her one of the greatest female athletes of her generation. She died at 81.” Read more at New York Times
“‘A very bright spot in our lives’: Actor Alec Baldwin and his wife Hilaria are expecting their seventh child.” Read more at USA Today
Meet the six-minute burger grilled by robotic hands in a mall. Photo: RoboBurger
“A company called RoboBurger is out with a machine that will make you a burger with custom toppings in six minutes for $6.99, Axios' Jennifer A. Kingson reports in What's Next.
In the food courts of the future, you could avoid human interaction by ordering from a hamburger vending machine, a pizza vending machine and, of course, cupcake vending machines.
The first RoboBurger machine was just installed in the Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City, New Jersey.” Read more at Axios