The Full Belmonte, 4/14/2022
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk is offering to buy Twitter, a swift turn just days after deciding not to join the social media company's board of directors.
Twitter Inc. said in a regulatory filing Thursday that Musk provided a letter to the company the day prior with a proposal to buy the remaining shares. The 50-year-old business mogul, currently the richest man in the world, already has 9% stock of Twitter – making him the biggest shareholder.
In the Wednesday letter, Musk offered $54.20 per share of Twitter's stock, which comes out to $41.3 billion, and said that would be his final offer.
‘I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,’ Musk said in the proposal. ‘However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.’
Musk revealed over recent weeks that he'd been buying shares in almost daily batches starting Jan. 31, prompting Twitter to quickly give Musk a seat on its board on the condition that he not own more than 14.9% of the company’s outstanding stock, according to a filing. But Musk backed out of the deal and launched a series of since-deleted tweets about how to better the company – all before this takeover attempt.” Read more at USA Today
Russia said the Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, was seriously damaged and its crew evacuated following an explosion. Photograph: Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters
“Russia says the flagship of its Black Sea fleet has been seriously damaged and its crew evacuated following an explosion that a Ukrainian official said was the result of a missile strike.
‘As a result of a fire, ammunition detonated on the Moskva missile cruiser. The ship was seriously damaged,’ the Russian defence ministry was quoted as saying by state-run news agency TASS, adding that the cause of the fire was being determined and that the crew had been evacuated.
A Ukrainian official earlier said the Moskva had been hit by two anti-ship missiles but did not give any evidence.
‘Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage to the Russian ship,’ Maksym Marchenko, the governor of Odesa, wrote on Telegram.” Read more at The Guardian
“President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday that he has authorized an additional $800 million in security assistance to Ukraine, including weapons and ammunition. The move came after Biden spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.” Read more at USA Today
“Thousands of Ukrainians have arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border to ask for temporary admission to the United States on humanitarian grounds. Despite quick volunteer mobilization to create shelters for the refugees, their efforts have been overwhelmed by the sheer number of new arrivals.” Read more at NPR
“Ukraine thwarted a cyberattack on its electric grid. Malware was detected in systems at a regional energy transmitter, and code analysis showed a trigger timed for last Friday. Had the hack succeeded, millions of individuals and businesses in the region might have lost power, the country’s deputy energy minister said.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Despite global COVID-19 deaths falling to the lowest levels since March 2020, the World Health Organization and the Biden administration say the pandemic is still a public health emergency. WHO says more still needs to be done to mitigate the virus, and some countries are still seeing spikes.
The public transit mask mandate in the U.S. was set to expire next Monday, but the Biden administration extended it another 15 days to May 3 due to the increasing spread of an omicron subvariant.” Read more at NPR
“Healthy children ages 5 to 11 mount a safe, strong immune response to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 booster, according to a new study from the companies.
Blood samples from 30 children showed a 36-fold increase in antibodies against the omicron variant after receiving the third shot. In 140 children, a third dose also increased antibodies six-fold against the original strain of the virus.
Because the vaccine is already approved in adults, regulators have allowed immune responses to be used as a metric of effectiveness, instead of actual infections. No new safety issues arose among the 400 children in the booster trial.
The positive results ‘reinforce the potential function of a third dose of the vaccine in maintaining high levels of protection against the virus in this age group,’ according to a Pfizer news release.” Read more at USA Today
“As many as 200,000 children have lost a parent to Covid in the U.S., and grandparents are stepping in.” Read more at New York Times
“In the year ending in March, food prices rose 8.8% -- the biggest 12-month increase since 1981, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced this week. As for the types of foods that have become notably more expensive, flour jumped 14.2%, milk rose 13.3%, eggs went up 11.2% and fruits and vegetables went up 8.5%. Bacon increased 18.2% and butter went up 6%. Prices are spiking across the board as food supplies tighten due to several factors, including droughts impacting crops and disruptions in the market caused by the war in Ukraine. A few items did become slightly cheaper last month though. Doughnuts, peanut butter and ham all declined less than 2%.” Read more at CNN
“Two of former President Donald J. Trump’s top White House lawyers met on Wednesday with the House committee investigating the Capitol attack, after Mr. Trump authorized them to engage with the panel, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Pat A. Cipollone, the former White House counsel, and Patrick F. Philbin, who was his deputy, met separately with the panel, two people familiar with the sessions said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the meetings.
It was not immediately clear how much information Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Philbin had provided to the committee or what they said, but they were present for key moments in the buildup to the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, including pivotal conversations and meetings in which Mr. Trump discussed using the powers of his office to try to overturn the election.
Their cooperation, which was reported earlier by Politico, added to the more than two dozen White House officials who agreed to take the committee’s questions.” Read more at New York Times
“WASHINGTON — Dustin Thompson’s trip down what he called ‘the rabbit hole’ of election misinformation began eight months before a single vote was cast in 2020. It ended inside the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where he was part of the mob of Trump supporters that stormed inside during Congress’s counting of electoral votes in the worst attack on the building since the War of 1812.
An exterminator from Columbus, Ohio, Mr. Thompson, 38, was laid off in March 2020, at the start of the pandemic. Alone at home with his new wife, he began spending long days on the internet, steeping himself in conspiracy theories about the upcoming vote.
As the election approached, he said, he fully believed that if Donald J. Trump ended up losing, it would only be because the voting had been rigged, as the president had been warning publicly for months. Even after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was declared the winner, Mr. Thompson could not accept that it was true.
All of this, he told a jury at his criminal trial on Wednesday, led him to Washington on Jan. 6 for a Stop the Steal rally, where he and a friend listened to Mr. Trump give an incendiary speech near the White House.
In an hour on the witness stand, Mr. Thompson blamed Mr. Trump for what eventually occurred, saying that he had been answering the president’s call to go to the Capitol and ‘fight like hell’ when he joined the throng swarming into the building and made off with a bottle of bourbon and a coat rack.
‘If the president’s giving you almost an order to do something,’ he said, ‘I felt obligated to do that.’
Mr. Thompson’s story is not unusual. At several points during the Justice Department’s vast investigation of the Capitol attack, many people charged with crimes have sought to blame Mr. Trump in various ways for their actions, mostly at pretrial bail hearings or at sentencings after pleading guilty.
But Mr. Thompson is the first defendant to attempt the argument at trial in front of a jury. In making his case, he offered a window into the toxic and relentless flood of conspiracy theories and lies, stoked by Mr. Trump, that helped give rise to the riot.
The move comes with considerable risk, and its success or failure could determine not only Mr. Thompson’s fate, but that of other defendants accused of taking part in the violence of Jan. 6.” Read more at New York Times
New York City Police and law enforcement officials lead subway shooting suspect Frank James (center) away from a police station in New York yesterday.
“Police have arrested Frank R. James, the man suspected of shooting 10 people in the Brooklyn subway. James called in a tip to the police, giving his own location. He has been charged in federal court on one count of violating a law prohibiting terrorist and other violent attacks against mass transit systems.” Read more at NPR
“Grand Rapids, Michigan, police released video Wednesday of an officer's fatal shooting of Patrick Lyoya, a Black man, on April 6. The video, a collection of police footage, a home security camera and a cellphone video, shows the unnamed officer pulling over Lyoya, 26, for a ‘license plate that doesn't match the car.’ Later, the two struggled, and the officer was heard telling Lyoya to ‘stop’ and to ‘let go of the Taser.’ After about 90 seconds, the officer was lying on top of Lyoya, who was facedown on the ground. The officer, who was still yelling for Lyoya to ‘let go of the Taser,’ then shot him. City Manager Mark Washington said Wednesday the city is ‘determined to get this right ...’ Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney who represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, is representing Lyoya's family. He released a statement Wednesday demanding the officer be terminated, arrested and prosecuted. Crump and Lyoya's family are expected to hold a news conference Thursday afternoon.” Read more at USA Today
Protesters march through Grand Rapids, Michigan, near the police department during a demonstration held after videos of the shooting of Patrick Lyoya, by a Grand Rapids police officer from April 4, 2022 were released to the public on April 13, 2022.Daniel Shular, AP
“The Kentucky Legislature overrode its governor’s veto and passed new abortion regulations Wednesday that local providers said would force them to cease offering the procedure immediately, potentially making Kentucky the first state in decades without legal access to abortion.
The bill imposes additional reporting requirements on providers related in part to medication abortions and stipulates that they can’t dispose of fetal remains as medical waste and must work with a funeral home to provide individual burial or cremation, among other provisions. The bill also bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with an exception for the life or health of the mother, similar to a Mississippi law now being weighed by the Supreme Court.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff in the Trump White House, has been removed from the voter rolls in North Carolina as officials investigate whether he fraudulently registered to vote and cast a ballot in the state during the 2020 presidential election, according to a local election official.
Mr. Meadows, who helped amplify former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of voter fraud, was ‘administratively removed’ from the poll book by the Macon County Board of Elections on Monday ‘after documentation indicated he lived in Virginia and last voted in the 2021 election there,’ Patrick Gannon, a spokesman for the North Carolina Board of Elections, said in a statement.
Mr. Meadows represented North Carolina in Congress until March 2020, when he went to work in the White House. Months later, Mr. Meadows and his wife, Debra, registered to vote using the address of a modest, three-bedroom mobile home with a rusted roof in Scaly Mountain, N.C.
On the voter registration application that Mr. Meadows submitted on Sept. 19, 2020, he stated that he intended to move into the home the following day.
And in November, he voted absentee by mail from that address, according to state records.
Last month, a report in The New Yorker cast doubt on whether Mr. Meadows had ever lived — or even spent the night — at the home.
Mr. Meadows did not immediately respond to telephone and text messages on Wednesday afternoon. A spokesman for Mr. Meadows, Ben Williamson, declined to comment.
In 2021, Mr. Meadows registered to vote in Virginia, where he and his wife own a condominium in the Washington suburbs, ahead of that state’s contentious election for governor. Property records show that Mr. and Ms. Meadows bought the unit in July 2017.
The inquiry into Mr. Meadows’s voting activity in North Carolina remains open, according to Anjanette Grube, public information officer for the state’s Bureau of Investigation.
Though documented cases of voter fraud are rare, Mr. Meadows and other Republicans have seized on the concept in order to claim, without evidence, that the results of last presidential election are illegitimate.” Read more at New York Times
“Veteran Senator Dianne Feinstein is sometimes unable to recognize longstanding colleagues or keep up with arguments in the chamber, according to a new report. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that on one recent conversation with another lawmaker, Feinstein, 88, who recently lost her husband, ‘repeated the same small-talk questions… with no apparent recognition the two had already had a similar conversation.’ The Chronicle report says ‘four U.S. senators, including three Democrats, as well as three former Feinstein staffers and the California Democratic member of Congress’ told them ‘that her memory is rapidly deteriorating’ and that she can ‘no longer fulfill her job duties without her staff doing much of the work required to represent the nearly 40 million people of California.’ The sources said that on good days, Feinstein ‘is nearly as sharp as she used to be’ and the Chronicle pointed out that she performed well during confirmation hearings for new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. A source described as ‘a staffer for a California Democrat’ told the paper, ‘There’s a joke on the Hill, we’ve got a great junior senator in Alex Padilla and an experienced staff in Feinstein’s office.’ In a statement, Feinstein said: ‘The last year has been extremely painful and distracting for me, flying back and forth to visit my dying husband who passed just a few weeks ago. But there’s no question I’m still serving and delivering for the people of California, and I’ll put my record up against anyone’s.’” [Daily Beast] Read more at San Francisco Chronicle
“Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is urging three other Mexican governors to come to an agreement after he and the governor of Nueva Leon state announced Wednesday to end the added new state trooper inspections at ports of entry. What began as border crossing delays last weekend turned into protests this week at crossings that handle $440 billion in goods annually — waiting in up to 10-plus hour lines. Truckers began blocking traffic across the Zaragoza bridge Monday, the only way they said they knew how to get attention to their ordeal. Abbott said the inspections would continue at other crossings along Texas' 1,200-mile border with Mexico until other Mexican governors struck similar deals. He blamed the Biden administration's immigration policies.” Read more at USA Today
A long line of trucks is seen stalled at the Zaragoza International Bridge, one of two ports of entry in Ciudad Juarez going into the U.S. on Tuesday, April 12, 2022.Omar Ornelas/El Paso Times
“Vice President Harris announced several new measures the administration is taking to address crippling medical debt. While the measures work to ease the debt Americans already have, it does less to prevent patients from being saddled with astronomical bills in the first place.” Read more at NPR
“McKinsey let its consultants advise both opioid makers and F.D.A. regulators, internal documents show.” Read more at New York Times
“At least 306 people were killed in South Africa yesterday after floods washed away roads and destroyed homes along the country's eastern coast. The regional government called it ‘one of the worst weather storms in the history’ of the KwaZulu-Natal province. The region has experienced extreme rainfall and damaging winds this week, particularly in the city of Durban, the government said in a Facebook post. Photos of the devastation show a bridge near Durban that was swept away and several shipping containers that were toppled in deep water due to the storm system. The extreme weather comes just months after heavy rainfall and floods hit additional parts of southern Africa, killing 230 people and affecting 1 million others.” Read more at CNN
“Russia has threatened to build up nuclear forces in the Baltic Sea region if Sweden and Finland join NATO. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, published a lengthy Telegram post on Thursday outlining the Kremlin’s response. Promising that Moscow would respond ‘without emotion, with a cool head,’ he said the additional two countries joining NATO would mean Moscow ‘officially has more opponents.’ Russia will be forced to ‘seriously strengthen the grouping of ground forces and air defense, and deploy significant naval forces in the waters of the Gulf of Finland,’ he said. ‘There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic, the balance must be restored,’ Medvedev wrote. ‘Until today, Russia has not taken such measures and was not going to.’ In response to the veiled threat, Lithuanian Defense Minister Arvydas Anusauskas pointed out that it was ‘quite strange’ Russia was threatening a nuclear buildup when it already has nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, on the Baltic Sea.” [Daily Beast] Read more at Sky News
“Troubling ties | Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s warm relations with the Kremlin haven’t been a problem for her so far, even after Putin invaded Ukraine. But Ania Nussbaum explains that her links are coming under more scrutiny as she faces Emmanuel Macron in an April 24 runoff, and she continues to advance views seen as pro-Russian.” Read more at Bloomberg
Le Pen meets Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow in 2017. Photographer: Mikhail Klimentye/AFP/Getty Images
“In early 2017, Peter McIndoe, now 23, was studying psychology at the University of Arkansas, and visiting friends in Memphis, Tennessee. He tells me this over Zoom from the US west coast, and has the most arresting face – wide-eyed, curious and intense, like the lead singer of an indie band, or a young monk. ‘This was right after the Donald Trump election, and things were really tense. I remember people walking around saying they felt as if they were in a movie. Things felt so unstable.’
It was the weekend of simultaneous Women’s Marches across the US (indeed, the world), and McIndoe looked out of the window and noticed ‘counterprotesters, who were older, bigger white men. They were clear aggravators. They were encroaching on something that was not their event, they had no business being there.’ Added to that, ‘it felt like chaos, because the world felt like chaos’.
McIndoe made a placard, and went out to join the march. ‘It’s not like I sat down and thought I’m going to make a satire. I just thought: ‘I should write a sign that has nothing to do with what is going on.’ An absurdist statement to bring to the equation.’
That statement was ‘birds aren’t real’. As he stood with the counterprotesters, and they asked what his sign meant, he improvised. He said he was part of a movement that had been around for 50 years, and was originally started to save American birds, but had failed. The ‘deep state’ had destroyed them all, and replaced them with surveillance drones. Every bird you see is actually a tiny feathered robot watching you.
Someone was filming him and put it on Facebook; it went viral, and Memphis is still the centre of the Birds Aren’t Real movement. Or is it a movement? You could call it a situationist spectacle, a piece of rolling performance art or a collective satire. MSNBC called it a ‘mass coping mechanism’ for generation Z, and as it has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, ‘mass’, at least, is on the money.
It’s the most perfect, playful distillation of where we are in relation to the media landscape we’ve built but can’t control, and which only half of us can find our way around. It’s a made-up conspiracy theory that is just realistic enough, as conspiracies go, to convince QAnon supporters that birds aren’t real, but has just enough satirical flags that generation Z recognises immediately what is going on. It’s a conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy, a little aneurysm of reality and mockery in the bloodstream of the mad pizzagate-style theories that animate the ‘alt-right’.” Read more at The Guardian
Victims were lured by the promise of Basset hound puppies that were never delivered. Photograph: monicadoallo/Getty Images/iStockphoto
“The pandemic sent Americans’ demand for pets soaring as a growing number of people sought out a canine companion. Now, Google is going after an alleged fraudster for running a fake puppy scam that exploited people’s desire for ‘personal gain’.
In the new lawsuit, filed on Monday, the company accused the Cameroon-based defendant of using a network of fake websites, Google Voice phone numbers and Gmail accounts to pretend to sell purebred puppies, including basset hounds and maltipoos, that didn’t exist.” Read more at The Guardian
Some of Rihanna’s recent outfits.Victor Boyko/Getty Images For Gucci, Mike Coppola/Getty Images, Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Fenty Beauty by Rihanna
“Rihanna was already an icon — she’s had more than a dozen chart-topping hits, is known for her trendsetting red-carpet looks, and founded hugely successful cosmetics and lingerie lines. Now, she’s changing what a celebrity pregnancy looks like.
What sets Rihanna’s maternity outfits apart is that they’re not so different from what she wore before. She has embraced her body throughout her pregnancy, showing up to events in sheer tops and bras, skintight dresses, and custom-made jumpsuits designed to flaunt her belly. Rihanna is showing that she is ‘autonomous, powerful and herself, even while carrying a life,’ Renée Ann Cramer, author of ‘Pregnant With the Stars,’ told The Times.
It’s a significant move considering that the pregnant body has long been ‘policed, hidden away and considered problematic,’ our fashion critic Vanessa Friedman writes. Three decades ago, many stores banned an issue of Vanity Fair featuring a naked and pregnant Demi Moore on the cover. The photographer who snapped that cover, Annie Leibovitz, has now photographed Rihanna for the May issue of Vogue. Her outfit: a red lace bodysuit.” Read more at New York Times
“‘Malicious lie’: In testimony in a defamation trial, Johnny Depp’s friend said Amber Heard’s accusations against the actor were not true.” Read more at USA Today
April 13, 2022: Amber Heard speaks with her legal team as she attends Johnny Depp's defamation trial against her at the Fairfax County Circuit Courthouse in Fairfax, Va.Pool photo by EVELYN HOCKSTEIN
“‘Unacceptable conduct on set’: Actor Frank Langella, 84, has been ousted from the Netflix series ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ following an investigation of sexual harassment allegations.” Read more at USA Today
“Actor Cuba Gooding Jr. has pleaded guilty to forcibly touching a woman and will be sentenced to counseling rather than jail time.” Read more at NPR
“NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has confirmed the largest icy comet nucleus ever seen by scientists. It's 80 miles in diameter, which is larger than Rhode Island.” Read more at NPR
“The head of the WNBA players union says Britney Griner's detainment in Russia is a pay equity issue. Griner was in Russia in the first place because players need to ‘supplement our incomes’ and ‘maintain our game,’ she said.” Read more at NPR
“‘I'm not sure if I have anything left to give’: Allyson Felix, the most decorated American and women's Olympic track and field athlete, will retire following the 2022 season.” Read more at USA Today
Allyson Felix celebrates after Team USA won the 4x400-meter women's relay at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympic Games.James Lang, USA TODAY Sports
“ Bodybuilding legend Cedric McMillan has died at age 44.” Read more at USA Today
Cedric McMillan, bodybuilding, 1977-2022Quinn Rooney, Getty Images
Mark Von Holden/Invision/AP
“When comedian Ali Wong announced she was divorcing her husband, some news outlets used a photo of the comedian and actor Randall Park, prompting ridicule from the #wrongasian movement.” Read more at NPR