https://news.yahoo.com/russia-says-airstrike-syria-killed-205958584.html

MOSCOW (AP) — The Russian military said Monday that its airstrike killed about 200 militants in eastern Syria.

Rear Adm. Alexander Karpov, the head of the Russian military's Reconciliation Center in Syria, said Russian warplanes hit two militant hideouts northeast of Palmyra.

Karpov said in a statement carried by Russian news agencies that the air raid killed some 200 militants and destroyed 24 vehicles and about 500 kilograms (over 1,100 pounds) of ammunition and explosives. He said the militants' base had served as a staging ground for terror attacks across Syria.

Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since 2015, helping President Bashar Assad's government retake control over most of the country after a devastating 10-year conflict.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the airstrikes, saying they preceded a sweep by Russian troops and the Syrian Fifth Corps in search of Islamic State militants cells in the Homs desert. The Observatory said 26 IS militants were killed.

The Observatory said the raid might have been in response to the Islamic State group's claims that it had killed two Russian soldiers in the desert. The ground operation began Monday under the heavy cover by Russian military helicopters.

https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/56786715
>Di number of pipo wey don die for world for di Covid-19 pandemic don pass three million, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Dis new record dey come one day aft oga of World Health Organization (WHO) warn say di world dey "approach di highest rate of infection" so far.

India - dey experience second wave - don record more dan 230,000 new cases on Saturday alone.

Almost 140 million cases na im dem don record since di pandemic began.

WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus bin warn on Friday say "cases and deaths dey continue to increase at worrying rates".

Im add say "for world, di number of new cases per week don nearly doubled for di past two months".

US, India and Brazil - kontris wit di highest number of infections, also get total more dan million deaths put togeda, according to Johns Hopkins University.

>Wetin dey happun for India?
Until few weeks ago, India bin get di pandemic under control. Cases had been below 20,000 a day for much of January and February - a low figure in a country of more than a 1.3 billion people.

But di infections began dey rise sharply: Saturday make am three day wey di record dey increase back-to-back for three day, wit more dan 234,000 cases reported.

Di capital Delhi dey lockdown for di weekend, wit restrictions for several oda states, as officials dey try control di spread.

Now all eyes dey on di Kumbh Mela festival, wey still dey happun even wit fear say lmillions of Hindu worshippers wey attend dis year festival fit cari di virus go home wit dem.

About 1,600 pipo test positive dis week for gathering wey happun for northern state of Uttrakhand, for Ganges river waterside.

>Two men killed after Tesla that may have been in autonomous driving or self driving mode didn’t adhere to a curve, slammed into a tree then burst into flames in the Woodlands, officials say. Firefighters say they had to call Tesla to figure out how to oust the blaze

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/tesla-model-s-crash-autopilot-dead/

https://www.axios.com/capitol-breach-proud-boys-leaders-bail-judge-11a14abd-d591-4d23-b3c6-feefb0ce045a.html

A federal judge will revoke bail for two leaders of the Proud Boys, a paramilitary right-wing extremist group, after they were released while awaiting trial for their involvement in the Capitol insurrection, Politico reports.

Why it matters: The judge said he was swayed by new evidence from prosecutors showing encrypted messages and profanity-laden social media posts from the defendants that vowed violence against lawmakers who planned to certify the election.

What they're saying: "The defendants stand charged with seeking to steal one of the crown jewels of our country, in a sense, by interfering with the peaceful transfer of power," Judge Timothy Kelly said about his decision. "It’s no exaggeration to say the rule of law ... in the end, the existence of our constitutional republic is threatened by it."

>The ruling, previewed in a Monday court hearing, reverses an earlier decision to free the men pending trial. New evidence brought by prosecutors shows Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs played a key role in orchestrating the riots, according to Kelly, which became a deciding factor in the case.
>Prosecutors say Nordean helped plan the Proud Boys' tactical strategy for Jan. 6: divide into smaller groups and overwhelm police.
>Prosecutors are also holding Nordean and Biggs partially responsible for significant damage caused by a fellow Proud Boy who smashed a window with a riot shield. The group's actions led to one of the earliest breaches of the Capitol, per Politico.

Honestly, I don't know what to say. I feel like incest is one of the few areas where the heterosexual version is (morally) wrong.
>Consensual incest advocates are rooting for an anonymous New York parent who wants to marry their own adult child.

>Australian Richard Morris, who is pushing to change incest laws in about 60 countries, said he supports the legal push in Manhattan Federal Court and that such behavior between consenting adults “should not be criminalized.”

>He and other advocates have launched about 130 petitions, mostly on change.org, seeking to change incest laws around the world. Most have received little support.

>“We haven’t moved any mountains yet,” he told The Post.

>Morris was inspired to fight for those in consenting incestual relationships, he said, after learning about a Scottish case in which a long-separated father and daughter were reunited, started an affair and were then criminally convicted.
https://nypost.com/2021/04/17/consensual-incest-should-be-decriminalized-advocates-say/amp/

The right to live supersedes your right to own devices to murder.

https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-violence-merrick-garland-gun-politics-gun-violence-7ddb30681ca3abbf1a0faa286e3df7b2

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden, in his first major gun control measures since taking office, is announcing executive actions Thursday aimed at addressing what the White House calls a “gun violence public health epidemic.”

Biden also is nominating David Chipman, a former federal agent and adviser at the gun control group Giffords, to be director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Biden has faced increasing pressure to act after a recent series of mass shootings, but the White House has repeatedly emphasized the need for legislative action. While the House passed a background-check bill last month, gun control measures face slim prospects in an evenly divided Senate, where Republicans remain near-unified against most proposals.

A White House fact sheet said those shootings “underscored the relentlessness” of the epidemic.

Biden is to be joined at the late morning Rose Garden event by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Most of the actions are coming from the Justice Department.

Biden is tightening regulations of buyers of “ghost guns” — homemade firearms that usually are assembled from parts and milled with a metal-cutting machine and often lack serial numbers used to trace them. It’s legal to build a gun in a home or a workshop and there is no federal requirement for a background check. The goal is to “help stop the proliferation of these firearms,” according to the White House.

The Justice Department will issue a proposed rule aimed at reining in ghost guns within 30 days, though details of the rule weren’t immediately issued.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/capitol-riot-january-6-commission/2021/04/17/109572e6-9ed9-11eb-9d05-ae06f4529ece_story.html

Congress’s pursuit of an independent investigation into the Jan. 6 insurrection is facing long odds, as bipartisan resolve to hold the perpetrators and instigators accountable erodes, and Republicans face sustained pressure to disavow that it was supporters of former president Donald Trump who attacked the U.S. Capitol.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced late last week that she had drafted a fresh proposal for an outside commission to examine what caused the deadly riot. But in a sign of how delicate the political climate has become, she has yet to share her recommendations with Republican leaders, who shot down her initial approach, labeling it too narrow in scope and too heavily weighted toward Democrats in composition.

“Compromise has been necessary,” Pelosi wrote in a letter to other Democrats, informing them she had begun to share her latest proposal with other Republicans in Congress. “It is my hope that we can reach agreement very soon.”

A spokesman for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) declined to comment on a proposal that the leader had not yet seen, adding that “hopefully the speaker has addressed our basic concerns of equal representation and subpoena authority.”

Behind the scenes, Democrats are developing contingency plans. Pelosi acknowledged this week that one backup option is to appoint a select committee of House members to investigate events surrounding the riot, though she told USA Today that it was “not my preference.” Another would be to defer to congressional committees that are currently examining the failures in planning that left the Capitol vulnerable to attack, which Pelosi has called a potential “resource” to a future commission, should one be established.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/17/us/vaccine-hesitancy-politics.html
About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds of counties around the country, vaccination rates are low, with some even languishing in the teens.

The disparity in vaccination rates has so far mainly broken down along political lines. The New York Times examined survey and vaccine administration data for nearly every U.S. county and found that both willingness to receive a vaccine and actual vaccination rates to date were lower, on average, in counties where a majority of residents voted to re-elect former President Donald J. Trump in 2020. The phenomenon has left some places with a shortage of supply and others with a glut.
For months, health officials across the United States have been racing to inoculate people as variants of the coronavirus have continued to gain a foothold, carrying mutations that can make infections more contagious and, in some cases, deadlier. Vaccinations have sped up and, in many places, people are still unable to book appointments because of high demand. In Michigan, where cases have spiraled out of control, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, recently urged President Biden to send additional doses.

But in more rural — and more Republican — areas, health officials said that supply is far exceeding demand.

In a county in Wyoming, a local health official asked the state to stop sending first doses of the vaccine because the freezer was already stuffed to capacity with unwanted vials.

In an Iowa county, a clinic called people who had volunteered to give shots to tell them not to come in because so few residents had signed up for appointments.

what we already know: CNN fair and balanced is bullshit and they are a domestic propaganda wing
CNN director shown on undercover video boasting about removing Trump from office and admitting to spreading propaganda
>inb4 shills claim video is fake
>a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information

A CNN staffer can be seen in a newly released undercover video calling out his own network for “propaganda” and boasting that the cable news giant successfully removed former President Donald Trump from office.

"Look at what we did, we got Trump out," Charles Chester, a network technical director at CNN, said. "I am 100% going to say it. And I 100% believe it that if it wasn't for CNN, I don't know that Trump would have got voted out."

Chester bragged that the network pushed a story it “didn’t know anything about” relating to Trump’s physical health in order to damage him.

"Trump was, I don't know, like, shaking his hand or whatever ... We brought in, like, so many medical people to like all tell a story that, like, it was all speculation that he was, like, neurologically damaged, that he was losing it, he's unfit to, you know, whatever," Chester said. "We were creating a story that we didn't know anything about."

Chester added that the network did what it could to paint President Joe Biden as young and healthy to combat criticisms of his old age and possibly declining mental facilities.

“We would always show shots of him jogging ... him in his aviator shades, and, like, you paint him as a young geriatric," Chester said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/cnn-director-shown-on-undercover-video-boasting-about-removing-trump-from-office-and-admitting-to-spreading-propaganda/ar-BB1fCA7W