Daily-Dose

Contents

• From New Yorker
• From Vox
• From The Hindu: Sports
• From The Hindu: National News
• From BBC: Europe
• From Ars Technica
• From Jokes Subreddit

From New Yorker

• Don’t Take the Surprising Drop in G.D.P. at Face Value - Some special factors reduced headline growth in the first quarter. - link

• The Exile of Guatemala’s Anti-Corruption Efforts - A group of prosecutors and judges who investigated the country’s most powerful officials has been forced to flee to Washington, D.C. - link

• The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War - For centuries, the country has lived in the shadow of empire. But its past also provides the key to its present. - link

• Ohio Primary Map: Live Election Results - The latest results from the Ohio primary ahead of the 2022 midterms. - link

• Can Sustainable Suburbs Save Southern California? - Developers are planning new towns full of electric cars outside L.A. Critics say that sprawl—even if it comes with new tech and carbon offsets—will worsen the environmental crisis. - link

From Vox

• Just admit that you loooove Twitter -

  

  Twitter is for writers, and writers are annoying. None of us can look away.

  I’m going to attempt the impossible and use his name only once in this piece, but as you may have heard, Elon Musk is in the process of buying Twitter. Musk is (fuck, sorry), among other things, not a very good person, and I don’t look forward to his reign at the website where I spend a significant amount of time any more than you do. But first I need the people who make up Twitter’s loudest contingent to admit something: that they do not hate Twitter, it is not a “hell site” or a “garbage fire,” and that, in fact, they want to kiss Twitter on the mouth.

  Right now, a lot of important people are talking about how much Twitter sucks, how it has always sucked, and how it will suck even worse when its new owner succeeds at doing whatever he wants with it, which as we all know is going to be cloaked in some kind of moral crusade for free speech and will end up incentivizing the worst people in the world to be even more brazenly terrible. As Katie Notopoulos points out in her correct piece on why Twitter users actually deserve an evil overlord, there are good reasons to hate the platform: coordinated harassment campaigns, trolls, bots, doxxing, threats, the official Denny’s brand account, and perhaps worst of all, people who use a random tweet as a springboard to talk about their unrelated personal grievances.

  Set all of those things aside for a moment, though, and think about who Twitter is really for, who spends the most time there, and what its main purpose is. Twitter is a platform of words, meaning that one of its most vocal demographics is writers. And writers are annoying.

  It is extremely funny, for instance, that on basically every other social media platform, the most ardent users proudly call themselves “creators,” a term that evokes art and inventiveness and excitement. Some of them are even able to make money there, like real, life-altering money!

  Writers, on the other hand, aside from not making money on Twitter, are also for the most part deeply ashamed of their use of it, referring to the platform regularly in exactly the same tone I am doing now, as a smelly, fetid swamp full of decomposing yet self- righteous bog people. Sure, some people are making money on Twitter, via tips or “Super Follows” or the many sex workers who have built livings off of its comparatively lax content restrictions. But the real capital is found in the zillions of mostly meaningless interactions on Twitter, which carry oversized weight in the minds of people involved in them. Which, of course, makes them even more fun to pay attention to.

  Why else would the media be so obsessed with talking about and spending time on a platform that by most accounts is irrelevant to the vast majority of Americans? It’s because the media is full of writers, all of whom are obsessed with how they stack up against their friends and nemeses, and Twitter is the easiest way to keep score. Writers often joke that they hope to one day be so successful as to never have to log onto Twitter again, and some lucky few have certainly achieved that dream. They say they’re only there out of obligation or the sense that they’ll become irrelevant should they ever log off. But you can be at the top of your field, regarded as an expert, a visionary, a Correct Opinion Haver, making hundreds of thousands, if not millions — if not billions! — of dollars, and you still will be poisoned by the part of the human condition that craves tiny spurts of attention and immediate rewards for the least possible effort. You can pontificate that Twitter is rotting our brains and you might be correct, but when has the knowledge that something is bad for us ever prevented human beings from doing it anyway?

  There is something sanctimonious and condescending about a big writer guy tweeting about how bad the platform is when they have gained so much influence and power from using it; it is not dissimilar from the rash of “regreditorials” from men who got really, really rich building tech companies and then realized that Facebook and Google are actually pretty bad for everyone but themselves.

  Here is where I will bravely admit that I sometimes enjoy being on Twitter. I’ve made actual friends there, and I owe probably a decent chunk of my career to having a little bit of a Twitter following. It’s not always good; I don’t love the anxious feeling I get when I’m scrolling simply because it is something to do that is not the thing I should be doing, but that is less Twitter’s fault than my own inability to manage my time. I don’t like when people are being mean or scoldy in a way that goes beyond merely annoying and into “these feelings should maybe be dealt with in private.” And I don’t like that Twitter makes people feel as though if they’re not saying the loudest, most extreme version of the thing they are trying to say, then they’re not saying anything at all.

  Maybe you’re not on Twitter and this sounds incredibly dramatic. Even so, if you have used the internet at all you have participated in and benefited from the platform’s influence, either the actually important parts (many a grassroots social movement, for one) or the still-pretty-important parts (iconic shitposts, inventive joke formats). Without Twitter, we wouldn’t have Black Twitter or Weird Twitter or all the other forms of delightful internet-born humor that have made their way into mainstream culture. Like all social platforms, Twitter is a double-edged sword: By shoving millions of people into a single virtual room, the mechanisms by which progressive change can flourish work just as well for the movements opposing it. I will spare you the lecture on echo chambers and extremist rabbit holes because I’d argue that what these common critiques often miss is that the problem of Twitter is less that it’s an ad-supported, algorithmic feed and more that it’s simply too big for any one company to manage. The same is even more true for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google, Apple, and most of the platforms that are now so integral to American life that losing or breaking up one of them is almost unfathomable.

  Perhaps its new leader will make the site so unpleasant as to be unusable for normal people. That would be a really, really weird thing to witness. Consider the lost clout! Consider the meltdowns! But I think it would take a great deal of mismanagement for that to happen. After all, how could anyone think that creating a message board made up of more than 200 million writers too ugly to be of much interest on Instagram or too sexy for its puritanical content restrictions would yield results that were anything less than what Twitter is: chaotic, fun, evil, disgusting, delightfully sinister, a billion other things. How could it have been any different? And how could we ever look away?

  This column was first published in The Goods newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one, plus get newsletter exclusives.

• Where will abortion still be legal after Roe v. Wade is overruled? -

  

  The Supreme Court is poised to overrule Roe v. Wade. Here’s what happens next.

  Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt signed legislation last month banning nearly all abortions in that state — the only exception is for abortions necessary “to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.” The new law increases the maximum penalty to 10 years plus a $100,000 fine.

Two lessons can be gleaned from this effort to make Oklahoma law more anti-abortion than it already was. Both hinge on the Supreme Courtoverturning Roe v. Wade — which it is poised to do, according to a leaked draft opinion published by Politico Monday night.

First, nearly half the states in the country will almost immediately permit little to no access to abortion when the decision is finalized and announced. Second, more states could quickly follow, while states with existing bans could enact even more restrictive laws.

Last December, the Court heard oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case out of Mississippi that explicitly asks the Court to overrule Roe, the landmark 1973 case that established a constitutional right to an abortion. Less than two weeks later, the Court handed down a decision in a case out of Texas that permits states to ban abortion completely, as long as they use a needlessly complicated mechanism to enforce the law.

According to the leaked opinion on Dobbs, five conservative justices voted to overturn Roe and the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Justices have changed their initial votes in the past, but that’s unlikely to happen here, so Roe is almost certainly in its final days.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-reproductive rights research group, and to news reports tracking recent anti-abortion legislation, 22 states already have laws on the books that either ban abortion outright or ban it very early in a pregnancy. These aren’t just the so-called “trigger laws,” which are designed to quickly take effect with minimal to no legislative effort if Roe is overturned. Oklahoma and several other states still have abortion bans from before 1973, when Roe was originally handed down, that were never repealed during the half- century in which Roe prevented them from operating. Other states have passed new abortion bans since 1973.

The reason these extant bans haven’t been enforced is that anyone charged with violating them would have won in court, because Roe forbids states from banning abortions. Without Roe, however, that would no longer be the case.

Even in states that already restrict or ban abortion, we are likely to see an arms race among red-state lawmakers to enact broader and more draconian anti-abortion laws. Oklahoma’s Stitt has said that he will sign any anti-abortion bill that passes the state legislature — and it’s unlikely that he’s alone among Republican governors.

What happens immediately after Roe is overruled?

As mentioned above, 22 states reportedly have laws on the books which impose very strict restrictions on abortion. This includes 18 states that would either ban abortion outright, or ban it only with limited exceptions — such as if the person seeking an abortion could die or face “irreversible impairment of a major bodily function” if their pregnancy is not terminated.

Some, but not all, of these states also permit termination of a pregnancy that results from rape or incest. Meanwhile, some states do not even permit abortions when the person seeking the abortion will be permanently disabled, but won’t die, if they don’t receive an abortion. Oklahoma’s new law, for example, only permits an abortion “to save the life of a pregnant woman in a medical emergency.”

Again, these laws are largely dormant right now, because of Roe and subsequent Supreme Court decisions protecting a right to abortion. And some of these laws are “trigger” laws that explicitly do not take effect until Roe is overruled. But these abortion restrictions will come roaring into effect once the Supreme Court gives them the green light, most likely shutting down all abortion clinics in the states with the strictest laws.

The 18 states with near-total bans on the books are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

In some cases, these bans are quite old, and predate Roe v. Wade itself. Wisconsin’s law, which makes performing an abortion a felony punishable by up to six years in prison, is more than 170 years old. It is unlikely to be repealed anytime soon, moreover, because the state’s legislature is gerrymandered to all but ensure that Republicans will control it. And the state’s GOP-controlled supreme court ruled that any new maps must use the old, gerrymandered maps as a baseline.

In other states, however, it is possible that state courts could intervene to restore abortion rights, even if the Supreme Court eliminates the federal constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), for example, recently asked her state’s supreme court to hold that Michiganders have a right to abortion. Democrats control a narrow majority of the seats on that court.

Michigan and Wisconsin are two of four states — the others are Arizona and West Virginia — that reportedly have a pre-Roe abortion ban on the books, but do not have a more recent law banning abortions. There could be additional litigation in all four of these states to determine whether the old law may take effect, though Republicans control the state supreme courts in Arizona, West Virginia, and Wisconsin, so those courts are likely to reinstate the old bans.

Nevertheless, this legal uncertainty might explain why Oklahoma lawmakers decided to pass a new abortion ban despite the fact that the state already had one on the books. As Elizabeth Nash, an expert on state reproductive health policy with Guttmacher, told Vox, it is “much simpler to pass a new ban” than to wait for a state supreme court to rule on the old one.

In a few cases, there will be some lag time between when the Supreme Court overrules Roe, and when the state’s abortion ban takes effect. Idaho’s near-total ban on abortions, for example, takes effect 30 days after Roe is overruled.

In any event, barring intervention by state lawmakers or state courts, nearly all abortions are likely to be illegal in 18 states by the this summer — and that’s assuming lawmakers in states that do not have bans on the books do not enact new ones after Roe is overruled. The number of states with near-total abortion bans could rapidly grow.

Additionally, four other states — Georgia, Iowa, Ohio, and South Carolina — have laws on the books banning abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy, according to Guttmacher. That’s before many people know they’re pregnant. (There’s also the unusual case of North Carolina, which once had an abortion ban on the books. But a more recent law appears to have legalized abortion up to the 20th week of pregnancy.)

Some states also have overlapping abortion restrictions. Idaho, for example, has a six-week ban and a “trigger” law that bans nearly all abortions a month after Roe falls. Abortion providers in states with overlapping restrictions would need to comply with all of them — which means that if one of those restrictions is an absolute ban, they would not be allowed to perform abortions.

The arms race

When Roe is overruled, the most immediate impact will be that states are free to restrict or ban abortions if they choose. That means every election that will decide control of a state legislature or governor’s mansion could swiftly become a referendum on abortion.

The Oklahoma legislature’s decision to enact stricter sentences for abortion providers, even though the state already had a law on the books making performing abortions a felony, suggests that Republican lawmakers will likely try to score points with their base by enacting more and more draconian laws.

Already this year, lawmakers in 30 states have introduced at least 82 bills banning at least some kinds of abortions. Some Republican governors have spent years touting their plans to make their state the most anti-abortion state in the nation.

State lawmakers, moreover, aren’t the only officials who are likely to face political pressure to crack down on abortion providers. Prosecutors, especially elected prosecutors, may face pressure to bring charges against doctors who perform abortions, even those that are entirely legal under state law.

Think of a state like Oklahoma, where, in a post-Roe world, abortions will only be legal if necessary to save a patient’s life in a “medical emergency.” Prosecutors could target physicians and force them to provide evidence that a particular abortion was truly necessary to save their patient’s life.

Meanwhile, the mere threat of such prosecutions could lead to unnecessary deaths, as doctors may be unwilling to perform a medically necessary abortion and risk felony charges.

One factor that could mitigate the impact of state-level abortion bans is that more than half of abortions in the United States are medication abortions — in which the patient takes pills to induce a miscarriage rather than undergoing a surgery. States commonly ban a wide range of drugs, such as marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, but that’s hardly prevented people who want to obtain these drugs from doing so. It’s unlikely that state governments will be any more effective at eliminating access to mifepristone, a common abortion drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

It’s also not clear whether the Supreme Court will allow states to ban federally approved drugs, although the current Court’s hostility to abortion rights suggests that they might permit states to do so in the future.

What we do know is that the end of Roe will be just the beginning of a new war over abortion rights. Much of the battle will shift to state legislatures, but Congress and the courts will remain important players. And Republicans, both in elected roles and the judiciary, will likely face considerable pressure to enact more rigid abortion bans.

• Florida’s new election police unit is the scariest voter suppression effort yet -

  

  DeSantis’s law will sniff out problems that don’t exist.

  For decades, Florida had a reputation as the state with the nation’s most outstandingly bad voting procedures and Election Day fiascos. This was the state, after all, whose chaotic recount dragged a presidential election on for five weeks in 2000, the one that lost nearly 60,000 ballots in 2004, and then destroyed a county’s physical ballots in 2016, and then had a 2018 midterms debacle that somehow led to yet another round of painfully slow statewide recounts.

  By the 2020 presidential election, however, Florida appeared to have worked out the kinks. Bipartisan progress on election reform in the Florida legislature over two decades rectified much of the chaos by expanding voting options and standardizing equipment across the state. More than 11 million Florida voters — or about 77 percent of those registered — cast a ballot in 2020, with millions voting early or by mail, and the state went on to smoothly and quickly tally votes as others looked on with envy. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) publicly bragged about the state’s successful tabulation — “The way Florida did it, I think inspired confidence. I think that’s how elections should be run,” he said at the time — which is why he sent voting rights and election security experts and activists reeling last week when he signed a bill creating an elections police force to curb alleged election crimes and irregularities.

  Perhaps the centerpiece of the legislation, the police force — one of the first in the nation — will include 15 staff members who will lead election fraud investigations and 10 police officers who will investigate election crimes, costing taxpayers $3.7 million. It will be housed within the newly established Office of Election Crimes and Security within Florida’s Department of State. Florida has never previously had an office dedicated to the enforcement of election laws; investigations were previously handled by Florida’s secretary of state, the attorney general, and the Department of Law Enforcement.

  The legislation is an odd about-face — but not a wholly unexpected one — for a state and governor who praised Florida’s election security and integrity gains. While DeSantis said in a statement last week that the new law is necessary to “do more to ensure our elections remain secure” and that “bad actors are held accountable,” investigations into the voter and election fraud that he and other Republicans allege repeatedly show that fraud is rare. One New York Times investigation, in which reporters called election officials in every state, found no evidence of substantial voter fraud. A separate Associated Press analysis found fewer than 475 possible claims of fraud out of 25.5 million votes cast in six battleground states. Florida’s secretary of state reported receiving 262 fraud complaints in 2020, with just 75 of them referred to law enforcement. The Trump administration’s own Homeland Security officials declared 2020 America’s most secure election in history.

  Joe Raedle/Getty Images

  The legislation quickly moved through both chambers of the Florida legislature in March and contains a number of provisions that worry voting and election experts. In lockstep with 2021 Florida election legislation that experts called a sweeping “voter suppression” law because it expanded restrictions on third-party voter registration, mail voting, drop boxes, and activities like handing out food and water to voters in line, the new law will also impose additional fines on those who collect and submit more than two absentee ballots, place more restrictions on drop box voting and voting by mail, and allow for more voter roll purges, among other actions.

  The new law adds to a national landscape in which 19 states passed 34 restrictive voting laws just last year. Though a federal judge recently struck down parts of the 2021 Florida law, known as SB 90 (the district court’s ruling is being appealed), on the grounds that it “runs roughshod over the right to vote” and is in line with Florida’s “grotesque history of racial discrimination,” election experts told Vox they believe much damage has already been done. Though signed just last week, the new law, SB 524, has already planted confusion in the minds of voters about new rules and inspired fear in local election workers who want to avoid penalties.

  “SB 90 has already made it harder to vote,” said Michelle Kanter Cohen, policy director and senior counsel with Fair Elections Center, a nonpartisan voting rights and elections reform organization. For example, it criminalizes a person dropping off their neighbor’s ballots, even if those neighbors are unable to leave home or infirm, calling it “ballot harvesting.” The new law has upped the penalty.

  “This bill doubles down on voter intimidation and barriers to voting, totally moving Florida in the wrong direction,” Kanter Cohen said. “The state should, after what was broadly considered to be a successful 2020 election, be moving toward increasing access to the ballot for Floridians.”

  Others see the potential for the new legislation, and DeSantis’s steadfast commitment to the national Republican Party, to spread and inspire other state legislatures.

  “Florida is one of a few states creating an elections police force, but I am concerned that there are going to be more states going down this road,” said Daniel Griffith, senior director of policy at Secure Democracy USA, a nonpartisan organization focused on election and voter access. “I want to see what legislatures do in 2023, because I suspect there will be a temptation to do more before the [2024 presidential] election. And I’m very concerned about what that more might look like.”

  What Florida’s new election law could actually do

  DeSantis and other proponents of the new law have argued that it supports election security, but experts warn that it could have the effect of intimidating and deterring voters, election administration officials, and third-party organizations that help voters navigate elections. The law’s various provisions create a perplexing network of roadblocks on top of last year’s legislation.

  What concerns election integrity experts is that DeSantis and his team have not defined nor identified the election crimes and irregularities that they will task the office with investigating. The phrase “election irregularities” used throughout the nearly 50-page law is vague, undefined, and would seem to give the new police force and investigators a lot of leeway in terms of what they investigate, Kanter Cohen said. Plus, the legislation doesn’t include a mechanism for how the state plans to track potentially frivolous and politically motivated complaints.

  “Any time there’s an undefined problem, you worry about how they’re going to use their resources,” Griffith said. “There’s an obvious concern of harassment or intimidation by law enforcement, so some voters may be deterred.”

  The election police force also harks back to a time when the United States openly relied on police to keep Black people and other marginalized groups from participating at the polls.

  “Once you tell these officers that this is their job, they’re going to look for work, and for those irregularities. It’s scary given the Southern history of using law enforcement to kill, threaten, and prevent people from voting,” said Cecile Scoon, a civil rights lawyer and the president of League of Women Voters of Florida, one of the advocacy groups challenging both SB 90 and SB 524 in court. “And especially for older voters, this is a very unwelcome full-circle return to Jim Crow.”

  Though much attention has been paid to Florida’s vision for an election police force, it is not the first state to create an election law enforcement body. Texas’ attorney general established an election integrity unit in 2021 and spent $2.2 million to close just three cases. A new Georgia election overhaul law also empowers the state’s bureau of investigations to look into election violations.

  Next, the law increases penalties for actions such as so-called “ballot harvesting” — a person or an organization collecting and submitting multiple ballots — from a first-degree misdemeanor to a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, a $5,000 fine, and up to five years of probation. Relatedly, the legislation raises the cap on fines of third-party registration groups — community organizations that help people register to vote — from $1,000 to $50,000. A group could face this penalty if they alter someone’s voter registration application without that person’s knowledge or consent.

  This could present problems for formerly incarcerated people who just regained their right to vote, young people, voters of color, and people who need language assistance, since the data show that these groups disproportionately rely on voter registration drives. Laws prohibiting acquaintances from returning ballots on behalf of others could make it effectively illegal for voters with disabilities to cast a vote.

  “With regards to churches and small organizations, they’re gonna get cold feet,” Scoon said. “I’ve heard them say that with the raised penalties and a police force, they’re afraid they’re just going to be accused. That means there will be legal bills and public humiliation.”

  The law renames drop boxes to “secure ballot intake stations” and affirms the steps taken by SB 90 to limit the number of drop boxes and the times that they are available. It also requires supervisors of elections to conduct annual voter-list maintenance, opening the door to what experts say could be wrongful voter purges. Under the law, supervisors must use data to try to identify people who have moved or are ineligible to vote for reasons such as death. But the data that supervisors have used to make these determinations have historically been inaccurate. For example, officials often run into issues trying to confirm people’s citizenship, sometimes purging voters who are naturalized citizens, experts told Vox. Under the law, Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles must, on a monthly basis, submit the names of non-citizens legally in the country to whom it issued driver’s licenses or ID cards.

  Other sections of the new law include a ban on private funding for election administration, including covering the cost of any litigation, a ban on ranked-choice voting, and an instruction to the Department of State to devise a plan by early 2023 that makes voter ID requirements for mail-in ballots stricter.

  What the future of voting could look like

  How Florida’s new law affects voters in the state will first depend on what happens with SB 90. Since the March 31 court ruling saying parts of that 2021 law were unconstitutional and unfairly targeted Black voters, Florida officials have indicated that they intend to appeal the district court’s decision to the conservative 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, and the ruling is likely to be overturned there or by the Supreme Court. The law creating the special police force also will likely largely stand, Griffith said, since it is not as wide- reaching.

  Jabin Botsford/Washington Post via Getty Images

  DeSantis’s end goal, experts told Vox, is to please the national Republican Party, including former President Donald Trump, and to bolster his resume in preparation for a 2024 presidential run.

  “The people who supported this bill have really demonstrated that what they’re interested in is, simply, making it harder to vote,” Scoon said. “Especially since they’ve brought nothing forward to suggest that election problems are happening at any scale at all in the state.”

Voting rights and election integrity activists and experts are afraid it will only get worse before it gets better.

“It’s important to remember that these nuts and bolts matter to whether people can access the ballot,” Kanter Cohen said. “That’s why we’re out here fighting these nitty-gritty issues, because they do have an effect on access and whether people can have their voices heard.”

From The Hindu: Sports

• Mukesh’s parents revel in his success - The left-arm pacer has been a revelation for the Super Kings

• Bellator and Embosom impress -

• IPL 2022 | CSK, RCB square off in important mid-table clash - Both sides have their weak-links, with RCB struggling with their batting and CSK’s bowling looking fragile

• UEFA removes more Russian soccer teams from its competitions - A UEFA Champions League place is worth tens of millions of euros in UEFA prize money to Zenit St. Petersburg, which is owned by Russian state energy firm Gazprom

• UCL: Klopp warns Liverpool may suffer against Villarreal in Champions League final quest - Liverpool are aiming to win a remarkable quadruple of trophies in this campaign, taking a healthy 2-0 lead against
  Villarreal from UCL 2021-22 semifinals first leg

From The Hindu: National News

• ‘Apna Ghar’ hostel for migrant workers ready in Kozhikode district - Facility to ensure affordable accommodation for nearly 500 persons

• Alert Ham radio operators and police rescue ‘trafficked’ Bangladeshi woman in Vizag - Pendurthi police arrest two in the case; victim to be sent to Woman and Child Welfare Home

• Andhra Pradesh: Two girls feared drowned in Godavari near Rajamahendravaram - Incident had occurred while they were taking bath after running practice

• CAG flags dilution of legislative oversight - CAG concerned over State not fully disclosing its off budget borrowings

• More halts for trains from Friday -

From BBC: Europe

• In Ukrainian villages, a desperate wait for news of the missing - Stop in a village in the region west of Kyiv, and you will hear a story of someone who vanished.

• Why Europe will have to face the true cost of being in debt to China - The Beijing investment offers that need to be weighed up by European countries.

• This is your finest hour, UK PM to tell Ukraine - The PM invokes Churchill in a speech to Ukrainian MPs as he pledges £300m more in military aid.

• EU accuses Apple of breaking competition law over contactless payments - The US tech giant denies it is restricting rivals’ access to its mobile payments technology.

• Trader made error in ‘flash crash’, Citigroup says - The benchmark Stockholm OMX 30 share index fell by 8% at one point on Monday morning.

From Ars Technica

• Botnet that hid for 18 months boasted some of the coolest tradecraft ever - Once-unknown group uses a tunnel fetish and a chameleon’s ability to blend in. - link

• Omicron subvariants BA.4, BA.5 evade protection from earlier omicron infection - Data suggests possibility of new infection wave, though vaccination boosts protection. - link

• Listen to the X-ray echoes of a black hole as it devours a companion star - MIT’s “reverberation machine” algorithm revealed eight new sources of those echoes. - link

• Apple clarifies its controversial app removal emails with a clearer policy statement - Also, devs will now have 90 days to respond to a removal notice instead of 30. - link

• Lawsuit claims more Fitbits are burn hazards, includes gross pictures - Lawsuit says Fitbits are supposed to help customers “burn calories—not their skin.” - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• Karen goes to the doctor not feeling well -

  Karen: Doctor, I’ve not been feeling well lately. .

  Doctor: I’ve looked at your lab reports and I’m afraid I have some bad news.

  Karen: Don’t give me this lab nonsense. I believe in homeopathic medicine, faith-based approaches and healing crystals. All my life, they have never failed me. Now will you do things my way or do I need to see the manager?!?

  Doctor: Sure, we’ll do things your way. No need to raise your temper. Why don’t we try an astrology based approach?

  Karen: At last a sensible approach.

  Doctor: So, what’s your star sign?

  Karen: it’s cancer.

  Doctor: Well what a fucking coincidence.

  submitted by /u/nikan69
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• (from my 11 yo) What does Darth Vader say after cutting someone’s head off with a lightsaber? -

  “I find your lack of face disturbing.”

  submitted by /u/Laez
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• A guy goes to the supermarket and notices an attractive woman waving at him. She says hello. He’s rather taken aback because he can’t place where he knows her from -

  So he says, “Do you know me?” To which she replies, “I think you’re the father of one of my kids.” Now his mind travels back to the only time he has ever been unfaithful to his wife and says, “My God, are you the stripper from my bachelor party that I made love to on the pool table with all my buddies watching while your partner whipped my butt with wet celery?” She looks into his eyes and says calmly, “No, I’m your son’s teacher.”

  submitted by /u/B-L-O-C-K-S
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• There is a horse. The horse says “I don’t think.” and disappears. -

  This is a reference to the Descartes quote “I think, therefore I am.”

  But if I had explained that earlier, it would have been putting Descartes before the horse.

  submitted by /u/James-1-5-
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• She kept busy -

  A man arrived home early from work and caught his sexy young wife in bed with another man… The dishonored husband challenged the other man to an old-fashioned duel using his pistols, announcing angrily, “Whoever manages to shoot first and kill the other, gets her…” The other man agreed to the duel. They went into another room so the woman didn’t have to see what was sure to end in a bloody mess. Once in the other room, the husband turned to the man and reasoned, “Neither of us should have to die. We’ll both fire a shot in the air and lay on the ground as if we’re dead and when she comes in she’ll see our lifeless bodies on the floor and rush to the one she really loves. Whoever she chooses can have her…” The other man agreed that it was a good idea that no one would have to die. So, they each walked off ten paces, fired bullets into the air, and then pretended to collapse dead on the floor… After hearing the shots, the wife threw the door open and looked down at the two men momentarily, then she turned and walked out of the room and yelled, “Darling, you can come out now, they’re both dead!”

  submitted by /u/According_Ad9856
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