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

• The Republicans Finally Face Merrick Garland—and Act as if They Were the Ones Unfairly Treated - Ted Cruz’s arrogance is hard to match, but he was not the only Republican whose questioning was, to put it generously, lacking in perspective. - link

• The Awful Uncertainty of the Coronavirus Death Toll - The new number—half a million Americans dead—is only an approximation of the pandemic’s real effects. - link

• The Rural Alaskan Towns Leading the Country in Vaccine Distribution - In Native communities where tribal health organizations are in charge of distributing the vaccine, herd immunity is on the horizon. - link

• Inside Xinjiang’s Prison State - Survivors detail the scope of China’s campaign of persecution against ethnic and religious minorities. - link

• The Good, the Bad, and the Embarrassing in America’s COVID-19 Response - Were Americans too unruly, or did elected officials expect too little of them? - link

From Vox

• Black Americans have disproportionately suffered from pollution. It’s time for a new policy. -

  

  Marrying civil rights and environmental protections could close the gap on health disparities caused by industrial polluters.

  Sharon Lavigne has lived in St. James Parish, Louisiana, a predominantly Black community, all her life. She remembers when the air wasn’t covered with thick gray smog, when the water was still safe to drink, when the gardens were productive and fertile.

  But now, she says, “we are sick and we are dying.”

  Lavigne has watched her neighbors die from cancer and suffer from respiratory illnesses. About five years ago, she too was diagnosed with pollution-linked autoimmune hepatitis, with tests showing she had aluminum inside her body. The reason for the community’s decline in health, environmentalists say, is a burgeoning fossil fuel industry right in their backyards.

  Over the past three decades, roughly 150 chemical plants and refineries have been building facilities up and down the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that straddles New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which includes St. James Parish. According to data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), seven out of 10 US census tracts with the country’s highest cancer risk levels from air pollution are located in this corridor, known as “Cancer Alley.”

  So when Lavigne heard that the Taiwanese plastics manufacturer Formosa was going to build a $9.4 billion petrochemical complex just two miles from her home, she retired from her teaching job in 2018 and started the faith-based environmental justice group RISE St. James to fight the new development project.

  Formosa’s vast 2,400-acre site, currently marked off with fences, sits on two former 19th-century sugarcane plantations and a burial ground for the enslaved, which the company failed to disclose until RISE St. James filed a public records request. Still, the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality approved permits last year for Formosa to build the complex of 14 plastics plants, despite the company’s own models revealing that it could more than double the amount of toxic pollutants in the area and emit more of the carcinogenic chemical ethylene oxide than almost any other facility in the country.

  

  

  

  A view of St. James Catholic Church near a field of oil storage tanks.

  The predominantly Black communities of St. James Parish and the rest of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley are not alone in this problem. According to the National Black Environmental Justice Network, Black Americans in 19 states are 79 percent more likely to live with industrial pollution than white people. Researchers also found that Black people breathe 56 percent more pollution than they cause, whereas white people breathe 17 percent less pollution than they generate.

  Lavigne said industries “come to Black communities because they think no one’s going to say anything. They think no one is going to fight.”

  Environmental groups like RISE St. James usually have one ally in their corner when fighting industrial polluters: the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), a bedrock law that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of proposed infrastructure such as the construction of major highways, prison complexes, airports, pipelines, landfills, and refineries. Passed by Congress in 1969, NEPA, followed by the Clean Air and Water Acts, was part of a broader plan to protect the environment from any point source of pollution or contamination.

  The law is not perfect, though. Since the link between racism and the environment didn’t click for many in the late 1960s and ’70s, when these environmental laws were created, NEPA’s lack of civil rights protections resulted in the further oppression and exclusion of Black communities across the country. Polluting industries would set up shop in marginalized neighborhoods with no regard to the systemic injustice baked into the fabric of the community, and there was little recourse to stop these polluters from doing so.

  But with the rise of the environmental justice movement in the late 1970s, Black environmentalists and policy experts began floating the idea of stronger environmental policies that draw from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The idea was to protect historically disadvantaged neighborhoods from racist policies that could exacerbate a community’s social and environmental burdens.

  “People often forget the legacies of slavery, of Jim Crow segregation and out of that chain, laws that were deeply entrenched within the social structure of the Southern environment that worsened our quality of life,” said Beverly Wright, the founder and executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, who has advised President Joe Biden on environmental justice policies. “That legacy resulted in communities that had been inundated with toxic facilities, impacting our health, the value of the homes where people live, causing them to have higher cancer rates, and to eventually be relocated from within the midst of these facilities.”

  

  

With a new Democratic administration, activists say now is the time to marry civil rights protections with NEPA. Strengthening NEPA — often called the “Magna Carta” of environmental laws — by invoking the Civil Rights Act would give underserved populations, like St. James Parish, a greater chance of eliminating the legacy pollution that has choked their communities. Adding these protections, without creating an entirely new policy, wouldn’t be very complicated for the Biden administration to do. It wouldn’t even need the help of Congress.

The birth of the environmental justice movement started with Black people

Environmental injustice — the disproportionate harm that low-income communities and communities of color face from both the causes (fossil fuel pollution) and effects (extreme heat and severe flooding) of climate change — has long been a product of systemic racism.

For instance, a 2019 study found that redlining, the government-sanctioned effort to segregate communities of color that began in the 1930s, is a strong indicator of which neighborhoods suffer the most from extreme heat. While white neighborhoods historically received more community investment in clean green spaces that help cool the area, Black neighborhoods were deprived of resources and slotted next to traffic-choked highways and other industrial infrastructure.

Fossil fuel companies exploited this segregation. In places like Mossville, Louisiana, a small, unincorporated town founded by formerly enslaved people in 1790, nearly all its Black residents have been bought out by the South African petrochemical giant Sasol to build a gargantuan chemical complex. A similar scenario played out in the East End neighborhood of Freeport, Texas, labeled as the “Negro District” in the 1930s. Housing, residents, and once-thriving businesses in East End have dwindled, a trend recently accelerated as officials voted to use eminent domain to expand the port’s shipping channels to make room for large polluting industrial ships.

Such systemic injustices are as old as America. But there’s growing scientific awareness and pushback against these inequities. Environmental lobbying groups had long been overwhelmingly white, focusing more on nature conservation and less on community impact. It wasn’t until recently that Big Green groups began to reckon with their racist past. In the wake of last summer’s nationwide protests for racial justice, for example, Sierra Club put out a statement that acknowledged the role it played in perpetuating white supremacy in the movement.

Meanwhile, environmental justice pioneers such as Wright and Robert Bullard, a professor of environmental policy at Texas Southern University, have put out academic research on the ties between systemic racism and its environmental impact on vulnerable communities, which has led to more people being educated and involved in making those connections. It wasn’t until Lavigne attended a community advocacy organization meeting in 2017, for instance, that she linked what’s been happening to their environment and public health to industrial pollution in her backyard.

“Environmental justice is not a footnote anymore; it’s a headline,” Bullard said. “Over the last four decades working on this, I realized while we’ve been able to make a lot of changes over the years, there’s still a lot of work that still needs to happen — and it needs to happen in warp speed, because we don’t have a lot of time since climate change is with us right now.”

The modern environmental justice movement is often traced back to 1978, when a private contractor hired by a transformer-manufacturing company discharged a carcinogenic chemical known as polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) in 14 counties in North Carolina. In response, alarmed residents brought a barrage of complaints and lawsuits against the state and involved parties. This litigation led the state to excavate the 31,000 gallons of soil laced with toxic PCBs, but they needed a place to put it. They chose the small Warren County town of Afton — an overwhelmingly Black, rural, and poor community — as a “suitable” home.

Mapping Inequality; public domain

Many environmental scientists questioned just how suitable the location was. Warren County’s Black community was especially agitated. Afton residents relied on the town’s local wells for drinking water, which could be contaminated by this landfill. For six weeks, residents alongside civil rights groups across the country protested the move. Black activists linked their arms and lay on the ground to block the 6,000 dump trucks rolling into their backyards, headed for the newly constructed hazardous waste landfill. Hundreds of protesters were arrested.

“The truth of the matter is that the only way that we got communities of color, especially Black folks, involved in the [environmental justice] movement was by making them see that there was a discriminatory aspect or civil rights violation involved,” Wright said. “So when we talk about some communities having cleaner air than others, it’s because of discriminatory policies and for certain it goes directly to civil rights.”

In court hearings, NEPA was a first line of defense for communities fighting the landfill. But North Carolina courts carved out an exception to requirements that the state prepare an environmental impact statement, claiming that formal compliance with the law was unnecessary. It was clear to community members and activists that the decision was more politically motivated than based in science: Majority-white governmental institutions, likely sympathetic to corporate interests, ultimately allowed a Black, poor, rural, and politically powerless community to be home to a toxic landfill.

Though the residents of Warren County lost and the toxin-laced soil ended up in the landfills, the incident is still studied by environmental researchers as the hallmark of the environmental justice movement. It was the first major environmental disaster in which civil rights groups, environmentalists, and Black residents fought in solidarity against an act of environmental racism, a term unused until much later.

Today there continues to be no shortage of polluting facilities and infrastructure — factories, highways, waste incinerators, and refineries — being built and erasing low-income communities of color, especially Black neighborhoods. Historians and environmental experts say regulatory agencies, industry executives, and politicians believe it is easier to build in these communities, since many cannot afford to hire legal expertise, or do not have the means to fight back.

“These communities who are affected by disparities in air pollution or just toxic contamination, in general, come from a place of feeling that they are being discriminated against or somehow treated differently from white people,” Wright said.

Activists call these places “sacrifice zones,” but industrial giants have underestimated how much these typically segregated Black communities will fight for clean air and water, even if they have to do it on their own.

Karla Ann Cote/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Seth Herald/AFP via Getty Images

For example, in Port Arthur, Texas, its predominantly Black residents are challenging the mammoth oil and gas refineries that dot the port’s skyline and cover the area in thick gray smoke. In Philadelphia last year, Black activists led the fight to shut down the largest oil refinery on the East Coast after years of suffering from facility explosions, bad air quality, and pollution-linked asthma and cancer. In Flint, Michigan, the water that the city’s predominantly Black residents had been consuming for years has resulted in serious public health and environmental issues, particularly lead poisoning, that government officials both exacerbated and tried to ignore. Residents are still fighting for a large class-action settlement and government accountability today.

Why it’s vital to marry two historical policies for environmental justice legislation

Although NEPA has long been a vital tool to shield communities from forms of environmental racism, it isn’t a foolproof policy. It requires federal agencies to prepare an environmental impact statement that describes any environmental or public health ramification that a development project would pose; however, what a state or federal agency does with these reports is left entirely to their discretion. This often means that projects often go forth, regardless of community concerns for potential environmental and public health impacts.

In most cases, the decision-makers behind the NEPA process also have financial ties to oil and gas lobbyists or the fossil fuel industry. Additionally, the public comment process required under NEPA raises accessibility questions, since state agencies tend to hold hearings far from the proposed site and don’t actively reach out to communities for public input, making it difficult for impacted communities to engage in the review process. These loopholes then make it easier for agencies to approve permits for development projects.

What is in communities’ favor is that the NEPA process can take years, allowing room for activist protests. This has been a major concern for polluting industries, and it was the driving reason behind the Trump administration’s decision to slash the mandated timeline under NEPA review in 2020. Trump’s environmental agenda focused on weakening, rolling back, and dismantling more than 100 critical environmental regulations, such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the NEPA.

His administration’s overhaul of the Magna Carta environmental policy included narrowing the scope of the environmental review process, limiting consideration of safer project alternatives, and scrapping the requirement to evaluate any project’s contribution to climate change. While Biden might be able to reverse the previous administration’s new rules, another Republican president could undo it again through the same process.

That’s why, environmental justice advocates say, vulnerable communities need a stronger policy now.

Bullard said that taking an integrative approach toward strengthening environmental regulations such as NEPA to include a racial justice framework is the best way to address the historical neglect in pollution-burdened communities. He and Wright believe the early steps the Biden administration has taken in centering environmental justice across his climate and economic agendas, as well as appointing Michael Regan, the first Black man, to lead the EPA, creates an urgency to right the wrongs of the previous administration.

“As climate policies get pushed out, what often gets lost is the policy framing of climate which has historically been more about dealing with just the science — the parts per million, the greenhouse gases — and not, until the last five to 10 years, the justice framing or equity framing,” Bullard said. “We have to come up with frameworks that would allow the environmental justice part to get lifted up into the climate framework, because it is a racial justice issue.”

Some policy experts say that applying Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — which prohibits federally funded entities from discriminating on the basis of race in their programs, policies, and projects — to NEPA would help dismantle the environmental inequities rooted in systemic racism that communities face. Title VI alone outlaws intentional discrimination, which many activists allege happens whenever an industrial facility sets up shop in marginalized communities like Afton and St. James Parish.

The task of strengthening NEPA under the Biden administration — including adding back the Trump administration’s removed regulatory requirements and adding a civil rights protection mandate — would fall under the domain of the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). The council would need to solicit new rule recommendations to the bedrock policy, propose new regulations, gather public comments, and conduct public hearings, which could take roughly a year. Biden’s new offices of environmental justice under the EPA and Justice Department, which he included in his sweeping executive order on climate change, could also look into avenues that could solidify and protect these vital changes.

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

In drafting the rules for NEPA to include civil rights protections, CEQ can conduct a Title VI or disparate impact analysis to identify the cumulative environmental and health impact of adding another polluting facility within a community. If the chosen location is an overwhelmingly Black community already inundated with polluting facilities, for instance, then the state agency shouldn’t be allowed to approve permits to develop another project since it will only compound the area’s underlying environmental and health conditions.

To enact more permanent change than what can be done through executive action, there are several bills floating around Congress. In February 2020, Democratic Reps. Raúl M. Grijalva of Arizona and Donald McEachin of Virginia introduced a comprehensive bill called the Environmental Justice for All Act — which came as a result of community engagement and more than 350 public comments from community members and leaders of the environmental justice movement.

The bill strengthens NEPA and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and codifies Bill Clinton’s longstanding 1994 executive order that directs federal agencies to identify the disproportionate environmental and human health impacts of any federal actions on low-income communities of color. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker has also introduced a separate environmental justice bill that includes reinstating giving individuals the right, under the Civil Rights Act, to bring actions against entities engaging in discriminatory practices.

These are effective yet ambitious policies in addressing the environmental harms Black and other marginalized communities often face. But they may take some time for Congress to take up, despite overwhelming support from Democrats and environmental activists. Adding and strengthening NEPA with civil rights protections, though, does not need to go through Congress — just the CEQ review process that Biden could get started on once his nominee to head the CEQ, Brenda Mallory, the first Black woman to lead the office, gets confirmed.

Bullard is hopeful that Biden will carry out his environmental justice promises: “Knowing the history of the environmental justice movement, it’s very important to see how the climate-framing in this new administration, and the policies as they get moved out, that they have taken that justice lens,” Bullard said.

Lavigne and the rest of the activists in St. James Parish will continue to hold their ground — and to hold the administration accountable. “Industry will continue to sacrifice Black people’s lives to make billions of dollars off of our community,” Lavigne said. “It’s the new form of slavery. I want President Biden to come down here in Cancer Alley to see what we’re going through.”

Julie Dermansky is a independent photojournalist and multimedia reporter based in the News Orleans, Louisiana.

• Biden launched airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria to “send a message” -

  

  It’s the first known military action of Joe Biden’s presidency.

  President Joe Biden on Thursday launched military airstrikes against two Iranian-backed militias in Syria in retaliation for a recent spate of aggressions, including a rocket attack in Iraq last week that injured US troops and killed a Filipino contractor.

  In the strike, Biden’s first known military action since taking office, the US hit seven targets with seven bombs used by the groups Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada to smuggle weapons. As of now it’s unclear if anyone was hurt or killed, though US officials expect about “a handful of people” may have died, the Washington Post reported.

  Politico reported Biden chose the “middle” option presented to him. The other plans remain unknown.

  A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak freely about sensitive discussions, told me the administration’s thinking behind the airstrikes was that they needed to “send a message that the US will not turn a blind eye to attacks on our forces by Iranian-sponsored militias.”

  Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said the president ordered the “proportionate military response” to send “an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

  The strikes occurred around 6 pm Eastern time and had been planned over several days, according to the Wall Street Journal. Biden made the decision this morning, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Thursday.

  “I’m confident in the target that we went after, we know what we hit,” the secretary said, noting he advised Biden to launch the strikes. “We’re confident that that target was being used by the same Shia militants” who attacked US troops last week.

  Some experts are already applauding the president’s decision.

  “This was a golden move by the Biden administration,” said Phillip Smyth, an expert on Shia militias at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, because it let Tehran know the new American team is willing to strike Iranian-linked targets wherever they operate throughout the Middle East. “This is the administration saying ‘we mean business.’”

  It was also a way of sending that message without angering Iraq, Smyth added, which bristled at US airstrikes on Iranian proxies in Iraq during the Trump administration, seeing them as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. Targeting a weapons facility in Syria avoids that problem.

  Others, like the Institute for Policy Studies’ Phyllis Bennis, believe the decision was unnecessarily “provocative and dangerous.”

  “Is this what ‘‘America is Back’ is supposed to mean?” she asked rhetorically.

  The question now is what the retaliatory attack might mean for the Biden administration’s effort to reenter the Iran nuclear deal. Washington agreed to join an informal meeting with Iran brokered by the European Union, but Tehran said it was still “considering” the offer. It’s possible that the regime might balk at future talks after Biden’s action.

  Even so, it seems Biden calculated that protecting US troops operating in the Middle East from attacks by Iranian proxies takes priority over that diplomatic process. In so doing, he became the latest president to order a military operation in the Middle East.

• The $15 minimum wage is effectively dead — for now -

  

  The Senate parliamentarian says the minimum wage increase can’t be part of the stimulus bill.

  The $15 minimum wage is effectively dead — for now.

  The Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, told senators on Thursday that the policy did not have a significant enough effect on the federal budget to be included as part of the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill. That decision — while one that Democrats could ignore — means there likely won’t be any more action on the minimum wage in the near term.

  Democrats expressed disappointment at the decision.

  SCHUMER: “We are deeply disappointed in this decision. We are not going to give up the fight to raise the minimum wage to $15 to help millions of struggling American workers and their families. The American people deserve it, and we are committed to making it a reality.”

  — Erik Wasson (@elwasson) February 26, 2021

As Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a longtime champion of the $15 minimum wage, has previously said, Republican opposition to wage increases makes it unlikely lawmakers would be able to get the proposal through via regular order — which would need 60 votes. Budget reconciliation — the process that Democrats are utilizing to approve Covid-19 relief legislation — would only require 51.

“Let’s be clear. We are never going to get 10 Republicans to increase the minimum wage,” Sanders previously said. “The only way to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour now is to pass it with 51 votes through budget reconciliation.”

The parliamentarian’s decision narrows the path for changes to the minimum wage in this Congress: Although Republicans have put forth their own $10 minimum wage bill, the likelihood of a compromise is exceedingly slim.

Democrats could still ignore the parliamentarian

While the parliamentarian has made her decision, Democrats do have one other option: They could ignore her ruling and keep the minimum wage in their legislation anyway. That’s a route many progressives have urged Democrats take — though moderates like Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have lobbied against it.

It’s not a common practice — and it is seen as pretty partisan — but it would mean that Democrats are able to push the minimum wage through now, rather than banking on a compromise that may be a long time coming.

To do this, Democrats would simply keep the minimum wage in the relief bill, a move that would likely prompt a Republican challenge when the legislation hits the floor. At that time, the presiding officer could overrule that challenge and unless 60 members contest that decision, that ruling would stand.

Given signals from the White House — and enduring opposition from moderate Democrats — party leaders aren’t expected to use this approach, though they’ll still face pressure from progressives to do so.

The minimum wage has been stymied, again

The parliamentarian’s decision marks the latest instance of increases to the minimum wage getting stymied yet again.

Currently at $7.25, the federal minimum wage has not increased for more than a decade, even though an overwhelming majority of voters support changes to it. This week, a new Vox and Data for Progress poll found that 61 percent of likely voters would back a gradual minimum wage increase. In multiple Republican-leaning states, too, voters have supported ballot measures that would raise the minimum wage over time.

The Raise the Wage Act — which Democrats had pushed to keep in the relief package — would boost the minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 over the course of five years, and then peg additional updates to gains in the median wage. According to a Congressional Budget Office report, it had the potential to lift 900,000 people out of poverty and increase the pay of 27 million people.

Previously, the legislation had been blocked wholesale by Senate Republicans, who’ve expressed concerns about possible job losses and the burden this policy could impose on small business owners. (The Congressional Budget Office also estimates that the measure could cost 1.4 million jobs, though many economists think this figure is overblown.)

To get around GOP opposition, Democrats had fought for the inclusion of the policy in budget reconciliation — a move that’s been blocked this time around by procedural limitations.

Correction, February 25: A version of this article was published in error, wrongly stating that the parliamentarian ruled that the minimum wage increase was allowed under budget reconciliation.

From The Hindu: Sports

• Yusuf Pathan announces retirement from all forms of cricket - The all-rounder from Baroda played 57 ODIs and scored 810 runs at a strike-rate of 113.60 with two hundreds and three fifties. He also featured in 22 T20Is where he made 236 at a strike-rate of 146.58

• IPL 2021 | BCCI considering 4-5 venues; Mumbai a concern amid COVID surge - Earlier, there were discussions that Mumbai, with four stadiums - Wankhede, Brabourne, DY Patil and Reliance Stadium, will be a good option to create a single bio-secure bubble and hold the eight-week long tournament

• Hima inducted as DSP in Assam, says will continue her athletics career - The 21-year-old revealed that she had dreamt of becoming a police officer when she was young.

• R. Vinay Kumar announces retirement from first-class and international cricket - Vinay played one Test, 31 ODIs and 9 T20 Internationals for India; led Karnataka to successive Ranji Trophy titles

• Indian can win against odds in all conditions, a mark of all great teams, says Hayden - The wickets in Chennai and Ahmedabad came in for sharp criticism during the second and third Test of the ongoing series.

From The Hindu: National News

• India to supply four more mobile harbour cranes to Iran’s Chabahar port - In January, India supplied a consignment of two mobile harbour cranes to the Chabahar port having a total contract value of over USD 25 million.

• Rahul Gandhi’s day out at sea in Kerala - The Congress leader’s adventures at sea in Kerala was shot by fishing vlogger, Sebin Cyriac, for his channel, Fishing Freaks

• Five Assembly polls to begin March 27, counting of votes on May 2 - Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora announced the poll schedule on February 26, 2021.

• Andhra Pradesh SEC to review poll preparedness from February 27 - A statement released by the SEC office said these meetings would focus on key issues such as implementation of Model Code of Conduct.

• Worldview with Suhasini Haidar | India-Pakistan ceasefire agreement - Diplomatic Affairs Editor Suhasini Haidar takes a look at the recent border developments between India and Pakistan.

From BBC: Europe

• Coronavirus: EU urged to adopt ‘vaccine passports’ - Greece and Austria want coronavirus-free tourists this summer, but other EU states have concerns.

• Alexei Navalny: Jailed Putin critic ‘moved out of Moscow prison’ - Alexei Navalny’s aides suggest the anti-corruption activist may have been sent to a prison camp.

• Shamima Begum cannot return to UK, Supreme Court rules - The ruling means she will not be able to come back to fight the decision to remove her British citizenship.

• British Airways owner IAG calls for digital health passes - IAG, which owns British Airways and Iberia, makes a record loss after the pandemic grounds flights.

• North Korea: Russian diplomats leave by hand-pushed trolley - The diplomats had no choice as Pyongyang has banned trains from leaving as part of Covid measures.

From Ars Technica

• Rocket Report: Cornwall says “LOL, no” to space tourism, Korean rocket on track - “If we were to entertain this it would be quite ridiculous.” - link

• Review: Thought-provoking sci-fi drama Bliss works on multiple levels - Is it real, or is it a simulation? And how could you ever be sure? - link

• Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade leads latest PlayStation game-reveal event - Plus, closer looks at Deathloop, Returnal, Solar Ash, more. - link

• CDC’s VaccineFinder aims to help you find COVID shots—but needs a lot of work - The site is still ramping up, but aims to be a central, streamlined resource. - link

• The genetics of relatively healthy obesity - A new study finds genes linked to both high fat and indicators of good health. - link

From Jokes Subreddit

• A boy, his father and his mother are having dinner. But the boy doesn’t want to eat his broccoli. -

  • Eat your broccoli! - says the mother.

  • No! - exclaims the boy.

  The father then leans toward the boy and whispers something in his ear. The boy quickly eats his broccoli and goes into his room.

  • What did you tell him?

  • I told him that if he didn’t ate his broccoli, his dick wouldn’t grow.

  The woman then stands up and slaps the man as hard as she can.

  • What was that for? - he asks, confused.

  • FOR NOT EATING YOUR BROCCOLI WHEN YOU WERE A CHILD!

  submitted by /u/dhejejwj
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• I can’t take my dog to the park as all the ducks keep trying to bite him… -

  My fault for getting one that’s pure bread.

  submitted by /u/PogbaIsGood
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• My girlfriend said I’m terrible in bed -

  But it’s unfair to make a conclusion in 17 seconds

  submitted by /u/AnInsaneMoose
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• My girlfriend asked me to name off all my sexual partners in order -

  I probably should’ve stopped when I got to her name

  submitted by /u/dhejejwj
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• “Doc, I think my son has gonorrhea,” a patient told his urologist on the phone. “The only woman he’s screwed is our maid.” “OK, don’t be hard on him. He’s just a kid,” the doc soothed. “Get him in here right away and I’ll take care of him.” -

  “But, Doc, I’ve been screwing the maid, too, and I’ve got the same symptoms he has.”

  “Then you come in with him and I’ll fix you both up,” replied the doctor.

  “Well,” the man admitted, “I think my wife now has it, too.”

  “Son of a bitch!” the physician roared. “That means we’ve all got it!”

  submitted by /u/YZXFILE
  [link] [comments]